Displaying posts categorized under

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Nancy Pelosi calls federal law enforcement officers ‘stormtroopers’ By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/nancy_pelosi_calls_federal_law_enforcement_officers_stormtroopers.html

As always, she’s ignorant about the law, wrong about the facts, and in love with leftist violence.

Democrat-run Portland has given complete license to Black Lives Matter and Antifa, allowing increasingly violent protests that cause tens of millions of dollars in damage. When the mob eventually began to attack federal property and stated their intention to overthrow the U.S. system, the Department of Homeland Security sent in Customs and Border Patrol officers to arrest people violating the law. Antifa and the mob called what was happening “fascist.” It was to be expected that Portland’s mayor would echo this, but it’s disgusting that Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful woman in America, would also call CBP officers “stormtroopers.”

Monica Showalter has already described the violence and destruction on Portland’s streets, as well as the way the Portland mayor and Oregon (both Democrats) nastily refused to accept Trump’s offer of federal police aid, so I won’t repeat that here. It’s sufficient to say the violence is escalating:

Fact Check: Do Black People Suffer Disproportionately From Police Brutality? James D. Agresti

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/18/fact-check-do-black-people-suffer-disproportionately-from-police-brutality/

A recent New York Times article by Jeremy W. Peters claims it is a “fact” “that black people suffer disproportionately from police brutality.” He also asserts that President Trump’s rejection of this accusation is “racially inflammatory” and “racially divisive.” On the contrary, comprehensive facts show that this allegation against police is false. Furthermore, this deception has stoked racial divides and driven people to despise and even murder police officers.

In an interview with CBS News that is slated to air in full tonight, reporter Catherine Herridge asked Trump, “Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?” He responded that this is a “terrible question” and that “more white people” are killed by police than black people.

CBS News, the New York Times, and many other media outlets are criticizing Trump’s response because blacks are a much smaller portion of the U.S. population than whites. Thus, the odds of being killed by police are higher for each black person than each white person. This frequent argument is highly misleading because it omits facts that are vital to this issue. As detailed in a 2018 paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science:

“The most common means of testing for racial disparity in police use of deadly force is to compare the odds of being fatally shot for blacks to the odds of being fatally shot for whites.”
That logic is flawed because it relies upon the false assumption that white and black people commit life-threatening crimes at the same rates.
The rational way to analyze this issue is to compare the odds of being fatally shot to each race’s “involvement in those situations where the police may be more likely to use deadly force.”
Based on four different national datasets on “murder/nonnegligent manslaughter, violent crime, and weapons violations,” “in nearly every case, whites were either more likely to be fatally shot by police or police showed no significant disparity in either direction.”

The ‘Fatal Conceit’ of Dr. Fauci Let Anthony Fauci pontificate on cable news and pose for glossy photoshoots. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has a country to rescue. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/17/the-fatal-conceit-of-dr-fauci/

More than four months after abruptly saying goodbye to the daily life we once knew, Americans still live in a surreal and virus-induced dystopia. Summer, essentially, has been canceled: no big family weddings, no trips abroad, no open public beaches and pools, no baseball. Tens of millions remain out of work while small businesses close up shop, permanently altering the landscape of big cities and small towns across the country. Mini Gestapo populated by once-friendly neighbors police face coverings and six feet of separation.

Power-grabbing, attention-addicted governors hog local news cameras each day under the guise of “Coronavirus Update!” to riff about their keen abilities to fight a virus or spew invective at Donald Trump or issue another decree to inflict further misery upon their willing subjects.

As school children and their parents anxiously check email boxes for any update about the fall semester and working parents with small children are scrambling to develop backup plans for online learning, Democrats are pushing hard to keep kids and teachers at home—at least until Election Day.

One person, however, seems to be basking in the chaos and confusion: Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. After toiling in relative obscurity at that position for more than 35 years, Fauci is earning the sort of rock star treatment that legitimate rock stars dream about—or at least pay big bucks to an A-list publicist to produce.

But Fauci, thanks to U.S. taxpayers, is getting a free ride on the media’s nonstop publicity train. This week, Fauci graces the cover of InStyle, a fashion magazine that has yet to feature one of the most stylish First Ladies of all time, Melania Trump.

Seated poolside at his D.C.-area home, Fauci, 79, dons a pair of dark shades—needed, presumably, to shield him from the glare of the spotlight he craves. The good doctor, as the headline for the puff piece describes him, and his wife were interviewed by their friend, NBC News anchor Norah O’Donnell. It’s standard Beltway fare—a mix of mutual admiration, deep reflections about their power over the little people, and cheeky personal anecdotes about how many languages they speak and how many books they read while the world burns.

Fatal Motorcycle Crash Listed as COVID-19 Death in Florida By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/07/17/fatal-motorcycle-crash-listed-as-covid-19-death-in-florida-n658267

A young Florida resident who died in a motorcycle accident is included in the state’s official COVID-19 death count, a state official reveals.

FOX 35 News in Orlando discovered this after asking Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino about two young COVID-19 patients in their twenties who died, and whether they had any preexisting conditions that contributed to their deaths.

“The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident,” Pino said.

Despite this shocking answer, Pino was not aware of this person’s data being removed from the state tally when asked.

“I don’t think so. I have to double-check,” Pino answered. “We were arguing, discussing, or trying to argue with the state. Not because of the numbers — it’s 100…it doesn’t make any difference if it’s 99 — but the fact that the individual didn’t die from COVID-19…died in the crash.”

Despite this, Pino then speculated that COVID-19 could have been a contributing factor to the fatal accident.

“But you could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash. I don’t know the conclusion of that one.”

Gov. Noem’s advice for states dealing with COVID-19: Trust your citizens, don’t ‘lay down mandates’ The South Dakota Republican governor says her constituents ‘stepped up”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/kristi-noem-covid-governors-trust-people-dont-lay-down-mandates

U.S. governors should put their faith in the residents of their states and forgo stringent coronavirus mandates, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said Friday.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Noem told host Steve Doocy that her state is “doing really good” following President Trump’s Fourth of July visit, noting that cases “continue to decline.””I think what we did here in South Dakota is really remarkable because we gave people their freedom,” she said. “We let the businesses stay open, we let people go to work, we told them to be smart, and we also asked them to be personally responsible. And, we’re seeing benefits of that each and every day in South Dakota.”

On Thursday, the South Dakota Department of Health reported four new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the death toll up to 115. There were also 42 new cases confirmed — raising the state’s total to 7,694 — and hospitalizations are now at 757.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are now over 3.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and more than 138,000 deaths.

However, whereas pandemic-ravaged states like Texas and California are home to millions, the U.S. Census Bureau shows Noem’s state at just over 884,000 residents.

“We did, in fact, we according to the national experts, did everything wrong,” she said. ” We did what the people on the ground saw. We aggressively addressed those situations, and came out better for it.

“So, I really think the people of South Dakota stepped up. They did the right thing and they trusted me. I trusted them and they made the right decision,” Noem stated.

COVID-19 Testing Data in Florida Inaccurate, Hospitals Say

https://www.theepochtimes.com/florida-labs-covid-19-positivity-rates-listed-by-state-are-wrong_3424223.html

Sky-high positivity rates listed by the Florida Department of Health in its daily CCP virus report are wrong, hospitals told The Epoch Times.

“It looks like there is an error in the data report. Lee Health has not experienced 100% positivity in our lab testing,” Pat Dolce, a spokeswoman for Lee Health, said in an emailed statement on Tuesday.

“We are reaching out to the Department of Health to resolve the discrepancy.”

The report (pdf) showed that Orlando Health had a 98 percent positivity rate.

That number “is incorrect,” an Orlando Health spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an email. The hospital system’s positivity rate is 9.4 percent as of July 12, she said.

A nurse takes a patient to their car from Memorial West Hospital where COVID-19 patients are treated, in Pembroke Pines, Fla., on July 13, 2020. (Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters)

The Orlando Veteran’s Medical Center was listed as having 76 percent positivity rate.

The FBI’s Dossier Deceit New evidence that the bureau knew the Russia info was phony in 2017.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbis-dossier-deceit-11595027626?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The Justice Department’s release of documents from the Obama Administration’s 2016-17 Trump-Russia investigation is beginning to paint a picture, and the more we learn the worse the FBI looks.

The latest evidence comes from Friday’s declassification via the Senate Judiciary Committee of the FBI’s interviews, over three days in January 2017, with the primary source for the infamous Steele dossier. The bureau used the dossier’s accusations as the basis for four warrants to surveil Trump aide Carter Page during the 2016 campaign and early months of the Trump Presidency. The 57 pages of notes from the source interviews make clear that the FBI knew the dossier was junk as early as January 2017.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz disclosed some of this in his December report on the FBI’s surveillance warrants, but the interview transcript adds more color—as in red for embarrassment.

Former British spy Christopher Steele, whose dirt-digging was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign, based nearly all of his dossier allegations on information from one unidentified “primary subsource.” The FBI didn’t corroborate the Steele dossier’s claims prior to its first application to surveil Mr. Page in October 2016, and it didn’t get around to interviewing the source until nearly four months later.

Learning About Racism From the Smithsonian The museum deep-sixes a poster that went viral – but keeps up a website that teaches noxious “lessons” on race. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/learning-about-racism-smithsonian-bruce-bawer/

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

That’s George Orwell in 1984, of course. But the picture those words conjure up seems unpleasantly familiar in 2020.

In 2020, everything’s upside-down. The inmates are running the asylum. The animals are running the zoo. The children are giving orders to the adults.

A group called Antifa (“Anti-Fascist”) is fascist. A group called “Black Lives Matter” is utterly indifferent to all but a minuscule percentage of black lives.

In 1976, Time Magazine reported on a comment made by Secretary of Education Earl Butz on a plane trip in reply to a question by Republican singer Pat Boone. Boone asked Butz why the party of Lincoln couldn’t attract more black voters. Butz said something that I will he have to redact heavily: “I’ll tell you what the [black people] want. It’s three things: first, a tight [female body part]; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to [defecate].”

Butz lost his job. And with good reason. His remark to Boone was a perfect example of what used to be called racism.

In 2020, however, racism is different. Today we’re told that all non-blacks, or at least all whites, are racists. Some of us, indeed, are racist without even knowing it. If you claim to be colorblind, you’re definitely racist. Ditto if you claim to care about the content of someone’s character rather than the color of his skin. Even if you’ve got a black spouse or a black child, you almost certainly harbor unexamined assumptions and exhibit behaviors that peg you as a racist.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-is-outrage-anti-semitism-sports-hollywood-1303210

Recent incidents of anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation. Given the New Woke-fulness in Hollywood and the sports world, we expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.

When reading the dark squishy entrails of popular culture, meh-rage in the face of sustained prejudice is an indisputable sign of the coming Apatholypse: apathy to all forms of social justice. After all, if it’s OK to discriminate against one group of people by hauling out cultural stereotypes without much pushback, it must be OK to do the same to others. Illogic begets illogic.

Ice Cube’s June 10 daylong series of tweets, which involved some creepy symbols and images, in general implied that Jews were responsible for the oppression of blacks. NFL player DeSean Jackson tweeted out several anti-Semitic messages, including a quote he incorrectly thought was from Hitler (not your go-to guy for why-can’t-we-all-get-along quotes) stating that Jews had a plan to “extort America” and achieve “world domination.” Isn’t that SPECTRE’s job in James Bond movies?

Trump’s New Chant: Build the Road Fixing environmental reviews will pay real dividends for years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-chant-build-the-road-11594941448?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Trump often gets itchy to sign some giant public-works spending bill. Here’s a much better gift to America: The White House on Wednesday finished its renovations to the process for environmental reviews. This might sound as dry as old cement, but it’ll help big projects get built for years to come—that is, if President Joe Biden doesn’t use an expedited procedure next year to undo it.

A 1970 law called the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, mandates an environmental study if a major project involves federal funding or permitting. In 1981 the expectation by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was that even for “large complex energy projects,” the whole review process “would require only about 12 months.”

Today that seems heavenly. In recent years the average review involving an environmental impact statement took 4.5 years, and the final document ran to 661 pages, before appendixes. In a quarter of cases, the process burned at least six years and 748 pages. Those timelines don’t necessarily count any subsequent lawsuits over whether the NEPA review was faulty. One sadly spectacular outlier was a 12-mile highway expansion in Denver that took 13 years to get through environmental review.

The Trump Administration’s reforms, which are the first comprehensive update to NEPA rules since 1978, establish presumptive limits. A full environmental impact statement, the new rules say, should take no more than two years and 300 pages. An environmental assessment, which is less intensive, should max out at a year and 75 pages. Going longer will require written permission by “a senior agency official.”