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Why Andrew Cuomo had to go The New York governor was finished as soon as other Democrats no longer feared him Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 11th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/andrew-cuomo-resigns-new-york-metoo/

The announcement that Andrew Cuomo will resign in two weeks follows the total collapse of his political support among Democrats in New York State and Washington. His advisers told him impeachment was now certain, and he resigned just ahead of the inevitable, as President Nixon did when he was given the same message by his erstwhile congressional supporters.

The headlight of that oncoming train has been visible in Albany for months. The crash became certain when Attorney General Letitia James of New York issued her damning report on Cuomo’s behavior, buttressed by testimony from 11 accusers. After James’s report and press conference, all the top Democrats in the state and country began calling on Cuomo to resign. The major papers, which always support Democrats, did the same. How could any of them do otherwise in an environment where sexual harassment is, quite rightly, a prominent issue commanding bipartisan agreement?

As Cuomo’s defeat became inevitable, his enablers and enforcers began jumping ship or being thrown overboard. Since Cuomo had always ruled by fear, he was finished as soon as other Democrats no longer feared him.

Cuomo’s announcement leaves cable news with hours of airtime to fill. It’s obvious how they will fill it — and how they won’t. They could tell you about the Senate passage of a pork-laden $1.2 trillion bill, and the progressives’ demand, echoed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that the bill is too small and that she will only move it forward if it is coupled with another tax-and-spend bill that is three times as large.

We all know that won’t be their focus, and we all know why. T-and-A is a much bigger ratings draw than roads-and-bridges. The latest evidence for that eternal truth is that Cuomo was brought down by his grabbing and kissing, not his deadly mistake in sending COVID-positive patients back to nursing homes and then covering up what had happened and what he knew about it. That whole subject was far less interesting to news channels than harassment, and far less damaging to the governor. So, the cable channels will fill hours of air-time with predictable commentary about Cuomo’s fall, his misbehavior in the workplace and the end of a two-generation political dynasty.

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The Elite Beltway Pedigree of Officer ‘Redneck’ The only question now is which book publisher will give Fanone a multi-million- dollar advance. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/09/the-elite-beltway-pedigree-of-officer-redneck/

Officer Michael Fanone plays the part well.

He speaks with what most Americans would consider a rural drawl. He wears flannel shirts during CNN interviews and photo shoots. Large tattoos bedazzle his neck and arms; he has a beard. In a swooning front-cover profile for Time magazine, Fanone told Molly Ball he considers himself to be one of the “rednecks” who voted for Donald Trump.

But a few overlooked yet eye-popping details in Ball’s piece undermine Fanone’s public persona as the besieged D.C. undercover narcotics officer who donned an official uniform for the first time in 10 years to help rescue his colleagues from bloodthirsty Trump “insurrectionists” on January 6. Fanone has been on a nonstop publicity tour for seven months, stalking Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and confronting his police union for its lack of support.

It all has a familiar ring; a photo posted last week by Alexander Vindman, now on a nationwide media blitz to promote his book about his role in Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, was more than ironic. (Vindman is the national security officer who listened to Trump’s call with Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky and helped shape the conversation as an impeachable “quid pro quo.”)

The pair illustrates how D.C. partisans will go to any extreme to destroy Trump and now, his supporters.

Fanone, like Vindman, has deep ties to the Beltway establishment. He was born in D.C. in 1980 and raised in the suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, situated in one of the wealthiest counties in the nation and home to much of the capital elite. Far from the rough-and-tumble life he projects on CNN interviews, Fanone grew up a rich kid.

Ball’s article vaguely described Fanone’s father as a lawyer, “a partner in a big firm” in Washington, D.C.. Fanone, Ball claimed, “hated the stuffy status-grubbing of fancy-pants D.C.”

She does not disclose his father’s name—and there’s a reason why.

Fanone’s father appears to be Joseph Fanone, senior counsel for Ballard Spahr, a Democratic Party-connected firm based in Philadelphia. (A search of past residences and other open source information seems to confirm the relationship. News organizations like Time have refused to name Fanone’s father.)

According to a campaign disclosure website, Ballard Spahr donated 88 percent of its total political contributions to Democrats in 2020. One of the firm’s partners served as a legal advisor to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign last year. Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, is now a special counsel at Ballard Spahr.

In January 2019, Ballard Spahr opened up a government relations office in Washington, D.C. A few months later, the head of the lobbying shop, Ken Jarin, co-hosted Biden’s first official fundraiser. The event raised more than $6 million.

Lawyers for Ballard Spahr helped defend Pennsylvania’s rogue election rules for the 2020 presidential election. “We defeated more than a half-dozen lawsuits by the Trump campaign—represented by Rudy Giuliani and others—and a handful of Pennsylvania Republican Congressmen against the state and Boards of Elections in various counties, challenging mail-in voting practices and absentee ballot validity,” according to a post on the firm’s website. “In Delaware County, the Ballard Spahr team was successful in both state and federal courts. Our work helped secure the Third Circuit decision that cleared the path to election certification in Pennsylvania.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don’t let Dems bury Cuomo’s nursing-home horrors by ousting him only for sex charges By Jonathan S. Tobin

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/08/09/dont-let-dems-bury-cuomos-nursing-home-horrors/

It seems justice is finally going to be served to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. State Attorney General Letitia James’ report detailing Cuomo’s record as a serial sex-harasser delivered what may be the death blow to his time in office, forcing the desperate Love Gov to resign or suffer the indignity of impeachment.

Yes, it’s great to watch a man whose thuggish character was apparent throughout his tenure finally being called to account. But there’s something troubling about the way Cuomo is being hustled out of office: Obscured amid the details about his gross behavior and the way his aides and liberal feminist enablers tried to discredit the victims is the fact that Cuomo remains responsible for the deaths of perhaps thousands of elderly New Yorkers during the early months of the pandemic — and for his administration’s ongoing, illegal coverup of the numbers highlighting that fact.

Even as critics like Fox News meteorologist Janice Dean courageously spoke out about the issue, the governor spent most of 2020 as a national idol, venerated by the mainstream media for what President Joe Biden called the “gold standard” for coronavirus crisis management. The nation was riveted by his daily press briefings; he actually won a special Emmy for them.

It was not until James issued a report in January stating Cuomo underestimated the number of nursing-home deaths by as much as 50 percent that he began to feel any real heat. His problems worsened when an aide admitted his staff had deliberately hidden the true number of deaths to shield Team Cuomo from scrutiny. And, as The Post noted last week, the coverup hasn’t even ended yet, as the state continues to stall on releasing documents about his COVID record.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Eyes Wide Shut: AB 101 Bill Poses Danger for California Students California legislators must open their eyes to the unintended but inevitable consequences of AB 101, and the dangers they pose for California students.Tammi Rossman-Benjamin

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/339522/eyes-wide-shut-ab-101-bill-poses-danger-for-california-students/

“High school students want to see themselves reflected in history,” said Assemblymember Jose Medina, as he introduced his signature ethnic studies graduation requirement bill, AB 101, to colleagues on the Assembly floor.

Several of the bill’s numerous co-authors expanded on Medina’s sentiments in championing the bill: “It’s important that our students have every opportunity to learn about the history, accomplishments and contributions of diverse communities and leaders that call California home,” stated Assemblymember Robert Rivas. “It’s going to strengthen the diversity in our state,” affirmed Assemblymember Evan Low. “This bill,” promised Assembly member David Chiu, “is the next step to a more inclusive society, one that is reflective and supportive of students of all backgrounds and communities in our state.” And after noting that California is the most diverse state in the nation, Assemblymember Akilah Weber pleaded, “Let us prepare our children for a better future by empowering them with the knowledge of their history and the history of their classmates.”

After hearing these impassioned and moving speeches, one could hardly disagree with Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez, who wondered incredulously “why anyone would vote against this bill.”

What gives many Californians pause, however, is that the multicultural and inclusive vision of ethnic studies praised by lawmakers and embraced by the vast majority of Californians—one that celebrates the state’s diversity and offers students a non-politicized, fact-based understanding of the history, accomplishments and challenges of all Californians—is a far cry from the vision of ethnic studies proposed by the educators responsible for developing the curricula most likely to be used in schools.

No one understands this better than AB 101’s own author. In August 2019, after an enormous controversy erupted over the first draft of the state-mandated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC), Medina immediately joined 13 members of the Legislative Jewish Caucus in publicly opposing this draft. He stated that its antisemitic bias would “marginalize Jewish students and fuel hatred and discrimination against the Jewish community.” He understood that the first draft, which included overtly anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist material, would inevitably incite bigotry and hostility, especially antisemitism, in California classrooms. He also decided to postpone his graduation requirement bill, the precursor to AB 101, in the hope that a re-do of the ESMC would be consistent with the author’s desire for “a curriculum that is inclusive of all of our cultures and backgrounds.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A massive dose of common sense about January 6 By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/a_massive_dose_of_common_sense_about_january_6.html

I am a huge fan of Dov Fischer. He’s smart, funny, and very insightful. I shouldn’t be surprised then that Fischer has written what I think is the best article putting the events of January 6 in their proper perspective. The premise is a simple one: “I remain adamant that January 6 was not an insurrection. To say otherwise is a despicable lie.”

This is an important point. By calling events on January 6 an insurrection, the Biden administration is getting away with grossly abusing the rule of law and the Constitution to punish the people who were present at the Capitol on January 6.

Worse, this is happening even as the federal government has consistently given a pass to leftists (whether BLM or Antifa) who, for more than a year, have destroyed public property; looted and terrorized whole communities; set fire to buildings; attempted to kill or maim city, state, and federal law enforcement officers; injured ordinary people, and committed murder. And shame on every Republican in Congress who is silent about this two-tiered justice system and the creation of political prisoners in America.

But it’s not just that the label “insurrection” is allowing the Biden administration to justify fearsome punishments for those who were there on January 6. While I cry shame on the Republicans in Congress, the fact is that they’re cowed by that word “insurrection.” Ordinarily lacking in courage to begin with, these Congress critters have turned into lily-livered, quaking milquetoasts, afraid to stand for their principles on the floor of Congress.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden’s Immigration Policies Vs. National Security & Public Safety Administration orders “shields down” in the midst of numerous foreign threats. Michael Cutler

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bidens-immigration-policies-undermine-national-michael-cutler/

With just about all attention focused on the crisis on the U.S./Mexican border, scant if any attention is being paid to the many other ways aliens may enter the United States in violation of our immigration laws.

I have frequently written about the irrefutable fact that the United States has 50 border states and not just the four border states that abut with the Mexican border.

In addition to the four “border states” that everyone is well aware of, any state that lies along our nation’s northern border, lies along our nation’s 95,000 miles of coastline or has an international airport are all “border states.”

Aliens who run our nation’s borders are entering the United States without inspection, but then so do aliens who stow away on ships and then sneak off those ships.  Boats undoubtedly make landfall along our 95,000 mile coastline and enable aliens to also evade the inspections process that is mandated by immigration laws and protect the United States from the entry and presence of aliens who may pose a threat to national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans.

On June 6, 1993 a dilapidated and vermin-infested boat, the Golden Venture ran aground in the Rockaways, a coastal neighborhood in Queens, New York.  On board were some 300 illegal aliens from China who had paid alien smugglers thousands of dollars to enter the United States without inspection and they hoped, without detection.

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Gov. DeSantis’ Counterpunches Put Biden to Shame Tells Biden to do his job and keep out illegal immigrant super-spreaders. Joseph Klein

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/gov-desantiss-counterpunches-put-biden-shame-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden went after Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis by name on August 3rd (along with Texas Governor Gregg Abbott) over their handling of the COVID-19 Delta variant outbreaks in their states. These governors believe that individuals should be free to make up their own minds about wearing masks and getting vaccinated rather than being dictated to with arbitrary mandates. Biden does not agree.

“I say to these governors, ‘Please, help.’  But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing.  Use your power to save lives,” Biden pontificated.

Governor DeSantis fired back with a put-down that cut right through Biden’s hypocrisy. DeSantis responded to Biden’s call for the governor to get out of the way by saying that he has no intention of doing so if Biden harbors any thoughts of going after the rights of Floridians.

“Joe Biden…believes that vaccinations should be mandated by force of government and that you should have to show vaccination status to be able to participate in society,” DeSantis said at his August 4th news conference. “He wants that, but yet if you want to vote, he thinks it’s too much of a burden to show a picture I.D. when you’re voting. So no voter I.D., but have to show your medical papers just to be able to live an every day life? Give me a break. So I think the question is: we can either have a free society or we can have a bio-medical security state. And I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state.”

Referring to Biden’s open border policies allowing thousands of COVID-19-positive illegal immigrants to enter and remain in the United States, DeSantis added that Biden has “imported more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border. You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Arabs Celebrate Downfall of Tunisia’s Islamists by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17629/tunisia-islamists-downfall

Tunisia is the third Arab country after Egypt and Sudan to say that it is fed up with the rule of the Islamists. With the exception of Qatar, most of the Arab countries have long regarded the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups as a major threat to security, stability and peace.

The Palestinians… seem to be the only Arabs who continue to believe in the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, particularly Hamas, the terrorist group that has been ruling the Gaza Strip since July 2007.

Sawsan Al-Sha’er, one of Bahrain’s most influential journalists and intellectuals, expressed relief over the ouster of the Islamists of Tunisia and said that this should serve as a reminder to all Arabs that Islamist parties – Shiite and Sunni alike – care about nothing else but reaching power.

“The Arabs have discovered that these parties do not have a … development program, or a future vision; the only project they have is to reach a position of decision-making and seize power. The religious parties do not recognize sovereign borders, the state’s constitution, laws, and regulations. In all the Arab countries in which these parties have reached decision-making positions, they bypassed all constitutional and political frameworks, and they do not see anything wrong with that….” — Sawsan Al-Sha’er, Al-Ain, August 1, 2021.

According to Al-Sha’er, the Islamists want to… make them subject to foreign powers, especially Iran.

“What happened in Tunisia is similar to what happened in Egypt in 2013, when the Egyptian people rose up against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood and overthrew them after discovering their subversive project, confirming once again the failure of the Islamists in managing the affairs of the state…. it confirms that the Arabs can no longer tolerate this group and its policies.” — Amal Abdullah Al-Haddabi, Al-Ain, August 3, 2021.

Al-Haddabi pointed out that during the past decade, successive Tunisian governments that were dominated by the Islamists failed to score any achievements for the people.

Another reason the Tunisian Islamists failed, was because they “failed to believe in democracy in its true meaning, including freedom of the media, the independence of the judiciary and economic and social rights.” — Abdel Aziz Khamis Khamis, Saudi journalist, Sky News Arabia, August 2, 2021.

The jubilation in the Arab countries over the toppling of the Ennahdah Party sends a clear message to the rest of the world against embracing or appeasing the Islamists. Sadly, this is a message that continues to be ignored by the many Palestinians and leaders in the West who continue to support Hamas and other Iranian-backed Islamist groups that seek to eliminate Israel and keep the Palestinians mired in misery.

The removal of Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda [Renaissance] Party from power has been welcomed not only by Tunisians, but by many Arabs who have accused the Islamists, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood organization, of spreading chaos and instability in the Arab world.

The Ennahda Party was inspired by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the ideology of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

American Politics Reaches Its ‘Worse Than Trump’ Phase By Charles C. W. Cooke

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/american-politics-reaches-its-worse-than-trump-phase/

After four years spent painting Trump as a unique threat to the nation, progressive pundits have begun moving on to new villains.

D elivering into the political ether a line that had hitherto been reserved to satirists, MSNBC’s Dean Obeidallah proposed on Tuesday that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is “more dangerous than Trump.” “Former President Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to our nation, at least, if you support our democratic republic,” Obeidallah wrote. “But DeSantis is more dangerous.”

That was quick.

The proximate cause of Dean Obeidallah’s ire is that Ron DeSantis isn’t setting the same masking rules for children as Dean Obeidallah would if Dean Obeidallah were the governor of Florida. Given that the CDC lists a national child-hospitalization rate of 0.5 per million — which, as the Wall Street Journal notes, “would amount to roughly 25 patients,” not all of whom are even “in the hospital for Covid” — I strongly disagree with Obeidallah’s assessment. But I’m aware that the details aren’t really the point here: This is simply how Democrats begin to talk about Republican candidates whom they believe are capable of winning a national election. When such candidates reach office, they’re Hitler. When they’ve left office, they’re bad, but not as bad as the ones in office. And when they’re dead, they’re the sort of Republicans whom the living ones should be more like — yes, even if, when they were alive, they, too, were deemed to be Hitler. The assertion that “DeSantis is worse than Trump” was inevitable from the moment Trump lost the 2020 presidential election.

One of the main reasons it proved so difficult to convince primary voters that Trump was bad news in 2015 was that those voters had been told the same scary things about almost every Republican candidate since Eisenhower. Barry Goldwater was an extremist who was going to kill us all. Ronald Reagan was an extremist who was going to kill us all. So was George W. Bush. So were John McCain and Mitt Romney. So, even, were the host of primary opponents Trump faced in 2015 — many of whom were cast by mainstream writers such as Jonathan Chait, Matt Yglesias, Eugene Robinson, and Paul Krugman as being less desirable candidates than Trump himself. As it turned out, many of the criticisms that the American Left leveled against Trump were correct. In the vast majority of cases, however, that’s not why they were leveled; they were leveled because they’re always leveled, irrespective of the justification for leveling them.

This being so, it should not be a great surprise that progressives are busy trying to cast DeSantis as “Trump 2.0” — nor, indeed, that they hope to cast anyone who has ever interacted with the 45th president as a troglodyte insurrectionist. But there is no reason for the rest of us to fall for it.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Rocks Are Racist Now: University Of Wisconsin Moves ‘Derogatory’ Boulder For 50K By Gabe Kaminsky

Posted By on August 10th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/09/rocks-are-racist-now-university-of-wisconsin-moves-derogatory-boulder-for-50k/

The University of Wisconsin at Madison is spending $50,000 to move a giant rock that leftist students insist is a symbol of racism—all because a century ago some publication used a racial epithet to refer to the rock.

Chamberlin Rock, which was positioned in the same spot on campus since 1925, is a boulder named after Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, a former university president and geologist. But according to students who testified at a Campus Planning Committee meeting last November, the rock is racist because it was referred to with a racial slur in a 1925 newspaper headline.

“The derogatory nickname was commonly used at the time to refer to any large, dark rock,” relayed a university press release. “The Wisconsin Black Student Union, in partnership with the Native American student organization Wunk Sheek, led an effort to remove the rock from campus. UW–Madison’s main campus is on ancestral Ho-Chunk land.”

The rock is deemed by experts to be more than 2 billion years old, and it will be used for educational purposes at its new location. Nearly 12,000 years ago, it came from northern Canada to Observatory Hill—the Wisconsin area—after being carried by glaciers.

The students, however, have evidently yet to unearth evidence that the professor the rock is named after is a racist. Instead, the boulder was characterized as oppressive because a writer 100 years ago referred to it with an outdated term, “nig-erhead,” which was used by people at the time to describe darker rocks, as noted by the university. The 42-ton boulder will be moved off-campus thanks to private donations.