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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Terry McAuliffe’s faith in the experts

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/terry-mcauliffe-faith-experts/

Parents shouldn’t control schools, he says, but what about when expertise is wrong?

Terry McAuliffe, Virginia’s former governor and Democratic power broker, is seeking to return to his old job in 2021. Polls show him narrowly ahead of his Republican opponent, Glenn Youngkin, by a one- to four-point margin.

That is by no means a safe distance for McAuliffe in a state that is widely understood to reflect national sentiment. Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, one year ahead of the congressional midterms, will be the first major contest held in the blazing light of Biden’s constitutional bonfire.

Many Americans believe that the government is absconding with their rights and liberties, and high on the list of stolen articles is their right to have some say in the education of their children. School boards in almost every state have been visited by throngs of citizens outraged over the imposition of curricula infused with the 1619 Project, critical race theory, the diversity-equity-inclusion agenda and other approaches that characterize the country as systemically racist. Many of those parents are also unhappy over their schools’ embrace of transgenderism and aggressive mask mandates.

Virginia has been no exception. Fairfax and Loudoun county school districts are frontline battlegrounds in the fight over curricula. Videos of parent rebellions and the heavy-handed responses of school boards have racked up millions of hits. Fairfax and Loudoun are adjacent in the metropolitan DC area. They are part of must-win Northern Virginia if McAuliffe is to prevail over Youngkin.

Hunter Biden and the Art of Corruption by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17811/hunter-biden-corruption

It is the latest in a string of scams Hunter Biden has undertaken. First, it was his being named, with no expertise whatsoever in either Ukraine or the oil and gas business, to the board of directors of Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company under investigation for fraud. Then it was the deluxe payday in 2012 for his Rosemont-Seneca real estate investment partnership, which was bankrolled to the tune of more than $1.5 billion by Chinese investors with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

It is genius-level corruption, an ethical nightmare for the White House, and a masterpiece of congressional and media dereliction of duty.

Bergès himself has said he is eager to expand his business into the Chinese market. Who will know if China’s art-loving billionaires, all connected deeply to the Communist Party and in some cases to the Chinese military, are Hunter’s benefactors?

Are we really supposed to believe that the anonymity of the buyers will remain a tight secret, and that Chinese government-connected buyers will not somehow let the Bidens know they are Hunter’s newest and biggest fans?

Money-laundering in the art market is nothing new. A Senate Homeland Security and Government Oversight committee report last year identified the art market as the “largest legal, unregulated market in the United States” and a significant weakness in the nation’s sanctions and anti-money laundering regimes. Simply put, art transactions are not covered under what’s known as the Bank Secrecy Act, which require financial institutions to maintain anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing controls.

Is there any reason to doubt that the proceeds from Hunter’s artistic payday will somehow once again find their way into the Biden family estate?

Why are they failing to scrutinize what is so obviously a back-door scheme to funnel money to the president’s son from foreign sources? Every American who cares about transparency in government should be outraged.

They say the beauty of art is in the eye of the beholder, but does that apply to corruption as well?

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, has now plunged into the world of international art, with a New York gallery owner brokering art sales for the rare, emerging talent. Apparently, Hunter’s paintings might sell for as much as $500,000 to various anonymous aficionados, according to Hunter’s new art dealer, Georges Bergès.

Broadway’s ‘Slave Play’ Holding Performances for ‘Black-Identifying’ Audiences Only By Stephen Frank

http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/broadways-slave-play-holding-performances-for-black-identifying-audiences-only/

The KKK must be laughing at the racists on Broadway.  Imagine a play where only one color can attend performances.

“The critically acclaimed drama Slave Play will bring back performances for black-only audiences when it returns to Broadway for a limited engagement starting November, with producers saying the invitation-only performances will be limited to “Black-identifying” people.

Slave Play was nominated for 12 Tony Awards but struck out during Sunday’s ceremony, taking home no awards despite being hotly tipped to dominate Broadway’s biggest night. The time-hopping drama, written by Jeremy O. Harris, tells the story of interracial relationships throughout American history, using slavery as the central motif to explore racism, microaggressions, and other contemporary ideas.”

Can you make believe a play only allowed white people to see a performance—the BLM, ANTIFA and the NAACP would close it down.  This is modern day racism.

The critically acclaimed drama Slave Play will bring back performances for black-only audiences when it returns to Broadway for a limited engagement starting November, with producers saying the invitation-only performances will be limited to “Black-identifying” people.

America’s descent into totalitarianism advances unabated By Terry Paulding

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/americas_descent_into_totalitarianism_advances_unabated.html

If you look around you can’t find a single thing America is doing right, unless “right,” means to deliberately destroy the nation. In light of the comprehensive assault against Americans, we who notice are told we’re crazy, we should ignore it, or we’re “canceled.” Yet the obvious trap that’s been strung leads inevitably to totalitarianism unless we break free from blind complacency or fear.

Energy policy threatens our gas supply and the government, simultaneously heightening COVID fear and promising to keep us “safe,” is abetting rapid inflation.

Commerce is a good indicator something’s wrong. There’s a flotilla of container ships languishing off Long Beach, California, our busiest port—and it turns out that this was already a problem in January:

It can take 8,000 trucks to haul the cargo away from a ship, Marine Exchange executive director Kip Louttit said in March. When all those trucks hit the road, there aren’t enough available when dockworkers are trying to unload the next ships in port.

Nine months later, nobody’s addressed this issue adequately, except that Costco’s again limited toilet paper purchases.

The shortage of hogs, leading to a lack of product and increased retail cost, is just one example of our broken supply chains. The industry can’t find workers, can’t transport products, and feed costs are sky-high. I talked to the butcher at Whole Foods, who said he “had no idea” when his supplies would be replenished—maybe in a few days, maybe not.

The labor market is a mess with simultaneously high unemployment and high worker demand. We’ve trained the entire service sector to be overly fearful of COVID, and many can’t rely on sending their kids to school. Government subsidies encouraged unemployment. Inflation makes hard (and allegedly deadly) work seem useless.

Whitmer Case Exposes Pattern of FBI Misconduct The conduct of FBI assets in the Whitmer case probably is not an outlier but rather, as increasingly appears to be the case, standard operating procedure at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/30/whitmer-case-exposes-pattern-of-fbi-misconduct/

As the first shoe related to the FBI’s involvement in the breach of the U.S. Capitol dropped—the New York Times last week reported at least two informants tied to the Proud Boys were working with the FBI before, during, and after January 6—another high-profile case continues to expose the bureau’s corrupt role in what the government also considers an act of domestic terrorism: a concocted plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation cottage in October 2020.

In fact, Joe Biden’s Justice Department has tied the two events together in an attempt to convince the public that right-wing militiamen, ostensibly loyal to Donald Trump, pose a looming threat to the country. In a recent sentencing memorandum for one man who pleaded guilty in the Whitmer case, government prosecutors wrote, “as the Capitol riots demonstrated, an inchoate conspiracy can turn into a grave substantive offense on short notice.”

Especially when at least a dozen FBI agents and informants take charge.

The Whitmer caper came to light when six men were arrested on federal charges of “conspiracy to commit kidnapping,” a felony punishable by life in prison. (A superseding indictment filed in April added a charge of domestic terrorism to the five remaining defendants. Several others face state charges.)

Headlines blared the shocking news just as early voting was underway in the crucial swing state. Team Biden and the Democrats made the most of this timely political gift: “There is a through line from President Trump’s dog whistles and tolerance of hate, vengeance, and lawlessness to plots such as this one. He is giving oxygen to the bigotry and hate we see on the march in our country,” Biden said in a statement on October 9.

During a press conference the same day, Whitmer suggested Trump was responsible. “When our leaders meet with, encourage, and or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions. They are complicit.”

Durham Issues New Subpoenas in Probe of FBI Russia Investigation, Targets Clinton Campaign Law Firm By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/durham-issues-new-subpoenas-including-to-clinton-campaign-law-firm/

Special Counsel John Durham, the attorney tapped by the Trump administration to audit the Russia investigation, has reportedly handed down a new set of subpoenas, including to a law firm with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. 

The grand jury subpoenas for documents were issued earlier this month, according to CNN, after Durham charged Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly knowingly making a false statement to the FBI.

Investigators from the special counsel’s office are seeking additional documents from Sussmann’s former law firm, Perkins Coie, an indication that Durham may be looking to add to Sussmann’s charges or to bring cases against other defendants.

Durham was reportedly investigating whether Sussmann lied to the FBI regarding who — if anyone — he was representing when he told the Bureau about communications between the Trump Organization and the Kremlin-connected Russian bank Alfa Bank.

The indictment against Sussmann states that the former federal prosecutor lied to top FBI lawyer James Baker in a meeting on September 19, 2016. At that time, Sussmann presented data and analysis from cybersecurity researchers who suspected the Trump Organization was using a secret server to communicate with Alfa Bank.

The secret server theory was ultimately dismissed and never appeared in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

Durham uncovered discrepancies between Sussmann’s congressional testimony and his September interview with Baker. Before Congress, Sussmann testified that he was working on the Alfa Bank project for an unnamed cybersecurity expert, a contradiction of his claims to Baker that he wasn’t working for any specific client.

Meanwhile, Perkins Coie’s internal billing records obtained by Durham show that Sussmann billed hours spent on the Alfa Bank project to Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

Lies About Christopher Columbus Some reflections on Columbus Day — about defending our civilization. Armando Simón

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/we-havent-been-invaded-barbarians-armando-sim%C3%B3n/

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped.
—-George Orwell, 1984

Columbus Day is almost here (Monday, October 11) and we can expect leftists to, once again, crawl out to engage in their periodic acts of vandalism towards Columbus’ statues while feeling self-righteous, just as they have with statues of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Charles Dickens, the Virgin Mary, Gandhi, Churchill, Jefferson, Miguel de Cervantes, and many others, while conservatives do absolutely nothing to stop them other than shake their heads in disapproval and scratch their rear ends. In Providence, the vandalism was even done by a middle school teacher, which is not too surprising considering the state of education (notice that the desecration of the statues is not reported by the national media except to gloat over the Confederate statues).

And “punishment” for those acts of vandalism? A slap on the wrist. When Mike Forcia was told by the police that he would be charged with criminal damage to property for destroying a statue of Columbus, the AIM barbarian flippantly said, “I’m willing to take that.”

In regards to Churchill’s statue, a British woman declared, “Some say that he’s a racist; some that say he’s a hero. I haven’t personally met him.” These are the type of ignorant savages that are trying to reshape society in their image.

Yet, equally depressing—actually, worse—is that the few defenders appear to be equally ignorant, and have accepted the defamation, arguing that regardless of his “crimes,” Columbus’ exploratory achievements are praiseworthy.

Leftists’ animus towards Columbus is accompanied by accusations of genocide, rape, and mutilation of natives (however, he has not—yet—been accused of not providing transgender bathrooms in his ships). There is just one problem.

They are all a lie. Total fabrications—deliberate fabrications.

Some of the lies are so breathtakingly stupid as to leave one open-mouthed, such as the claims by some Native Americans that Columbus carried out genocide in this country, that he was responsible for “war crimes” committed in North America. State Rep. Rachel Talbot-Ross (D) of Maine called him “a war criminal.” So they have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day in a blatant act of cultural appropriation.

Columbus never set foot in North America.

Biden’s ‘Evacuation’ Was a Taliban Human Trafficking Scheme The Biden administration is covering up its final crime in Afghanistan. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/bidens-evacuation-was-taliban-human-trafficking-daniel-greenfield/

After Biden evacuated tens of thousands of Afghan “translators”, refugee resettlement groups are desperately looking for translators to translate to the translators.

Why do Afghan translators, who were supposed to be able to translate from English to their native language, need help from translators?

It’s because they’re not translators.

In the last two years, Front Page Magazine ran multiple articles like How the ‘Interpreter’ Scam Brought 75,000 Iraqis and Afghans to America and ‘Saving Afghan Interpreters’ is a Scam That Would Bring 100,000 Afghans to U.S. exposing the “translator” scam. Now tens of thousands of Afghans are arriving in this country and they need translators because they don’t speak English.

As I previously pointed out, there were more Afghan “translators” applying for visas than there were American soldiers for them to translate for. But the vast majority of SIV visa applicants were never translators. The number of actual translators, Afghans embedded with U.S. forces who risked their lives by working in the field, was miniscule and was its own special category.

But by the end, almost any Afghan who worked for any U.S. organization could apply for a visa.

Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan retreat made that existing scam so much worse because he didn’t evacuate the approved SIV visa holders who might have actually worked for the U.S.

State Department sources have said that the majority of SIVs were actually left behind.

The Biden administration claims to have evacuated 124,000 people, of them only 5,500 Americans, from Afghanistan. 60,000 have been brought into the United States. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted that only 1,800 are SIV holders, another 8,000 are citizens or have green cards.

That leaves over 50,000 Afghans who were just brought here with no legal basis.

As Inflation Fears Rise, Biden Starts Looking For Scapegoats

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/01/as-inflation-fears-rise-biden-starts-looking-for-scapegoats/

You know inflation is a problem when it gets harder to find something for $1 at Dollar Tree stores. And that’s exactly what’s happening as the discount chain announced that many of its goods would carry a price of up to $1.50.

There’s been more bad news on the inflation front this week, so, naturally, Biden is looking for someone or something else to blame – other than his own economic policies.

As soon as Biden conjured up his reckless $1.9 trillion “rescue” plan, economists left and right said that pumping that much deficit-financed spending into a fast-growing economy risked sparking an inflationary spiral, to which team Biden said “nonsense.”

When prices did spike in the spring, Biden insisted that “the overwhelming consensus is it’s going to pop up a little bit and then go back down.” 

That didn’t happen. This week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell, who’d previously dismissed inflation fears, said price increases have “been larger and longer-lasting than anticipated,” and that this will “likely remain so in coming months before moderating.” The Fed now predicts that inflation this year will be 4.2%, up from its June forecast of 3.4%.

Also this week, the London-based research firm Capital Economics said that the U.S. may be heading into an “era of higher inflation.”

A government of drunken sailors Shame on Congress and Joe Biden for their gigantic spending packages by Matt Purple

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/government-drunken-sailors-spending-debt/

It seems strange, but just two decades ago the United States government had a balanced budget. Bill Clinton had run for president as a new type of Democrat, calling for an end to the deficits that had so bedeviled George H.W. Bush.

Thanks in large part to pressure from Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, he pulled it off. Clinton trimmed military spending and signed into law a package of tax increases. This cued haunted house noises in the parlors of center-right think tanks, but Biden also approved more conservative-friendly measures like domestic spending cuts and welfare reform. This bipartisan approach, in conjunction with a galloping economy, led to the unthinkable: budget surpluses for four fiscal years in a row.

Such were the 1990s, baby, when champagne corks were flying and tech investors would dump $10 million into fishfood.homestead.com on a dare. Let’s return now to our own time, when the fiscal scene looks more like a nuclear winter crossed with a zombie apocalypse. Congress this year is set to run up a budget deficit of $3 trillion. The national debt, meanwhile, is about $2,881,600,000,000.00. And that isn’t even accurate. I left out a zero. But who can even tell anymore? And what’s a decimal place or two between generations treading red ink?

Into this overflowed fiscal pool has come crashing the cannonball of Joe Biden’s spending program. The centerpiece of the President’s domestic agenda is another $3.5 trillion bonanza, with all the usual Democratic goodies: universal pre-K, green initiatives, adding dental and vision to Medicare, free community college, child care. And then enter a separate package to rebuild America’s infrastructure, actual retail price, $1 trillion. And then bring on another $768 billion for a Defense Department that seems to believe the Cold War never ended.

When tallied up with other Biden proposals, the total tab comes to $6 trillion. That’s more than the United States spent on World War Two and Vietnam combined. It’s about seven times the cost of the New Deal and 10 times the cost of the moon landing. It’s enough to buy 30 Jeff Bezoses and launch them all into space on separate phallic-suggestive rockets. Let’s say Biden abruptly decided that America needed to become the world’s premier cat lady. With that much money, we could purchase 60 billion cats, enough to throw off the rest of the planet’s ecosystem.