Displaying posts categorized under

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

Joe Biden Is The Commander In Hiding Biden ‘has replaced in-person meetings with video calls. He allows only a limited number of people in the building…He doesn’t leave the White House often…. He isn’t planning any foreign or domestic trips.’By Gabe Kaminsky

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/10/joe-biden-is-the-commander-in-hiding/

78-year-old President Joe Biden is nowhere to be seen, aside from sporadic television appearances through a black mask the size of a Rawlings baseball mitt, or appearing to be on the verge of collapse from dehydration in social media videos.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced Biden’s name will not appear on the $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus direct payments being sent out to millions of Americans this month. “This is not about him,” Psaki said. “This is about the American people getting relief.”

While Psaki claims this action is due to the federal government’s efforts to expedite the relief process, it is a strikingly on-cue representation of Biden’s reclusive campaign and presidency. Biden’s name missing from the checks is an avatar of him going missing from campaigning and now the presidency. The man has repeatedly and noticeably avoided the public eye since deciding to run for the president for the third time.

According to a final count of 2020 presidential rallies, Biden hosted a total of 53 compared to former President Trump’s 86. Biden canceled public speaking events in advance, notably all rallies prior to his debate with Trump in October.

Dozens of Biden’s supposed “rallies” were performed digitally, presumably out of fear of contracting COVID or perhaps in desperation for another Botox shot to keep the facade going that he is actually in fine mental and physical condition to be the president. In a virtual town hall back in April 2020, Biden seemingly fell asleep on camera with Hillary Clinton. In October 2020, he claimed to voters in Toledo, Ohio he was running for the Senate.

The Biden “gaffes” just kept on coming. They still do.

Whistleblower: Biden’s FAA Forcing Air Traffic Controllers to Wear Masks While Speaking to Pilots, Causing Serious Read-Back Errors By Debra Heine (!!!!!???###)

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/09/whistleblower-bidens-faa-forcing-air-traffic-controllers-to-wear-masks-while-speaking-to-pilots-causing-serious-read-back-errors/

An Air traffic controller is ringing alarm bells about the Biden administration’s mask mandates, warning that the face coverings are creating a serious safety hazard.

Investigative journalist Alex Berenson reported on Twitter that he received an “urgent warning” from an air traffic controller who works at a major Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC) for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The whistleblower told Berenson that the FAA issued a guidance about a month ago requiring controllers to “wear masks at all times” while at work and in position, and warned that the directive could have devastating consequences for airline passengers and pilots.

Prior to this, he said, most controllers took off masks while speaking directly with pilots.

The whistleblower noted that posters have gone up where he works that say “mask up for the mission,” and his supervisors are now insisting that they keep the masks on while speaking with pilots.

“For context, our headsets use a boom microphone that adjusts to fit somewhere an inch or two away from our face. It has created an issue where we get a lot more read-back errors from pilots on instructions because they can’t hear us clearly over the radio,” he explained.

“A bad readback or failure to even copy can cause a lot of problems when we’re busy because we use up more time to correct them,” he continued. “Worst case scenario is a pilot thinks we say something, reads it back wrong, and it results in disaster because we can’t correct them before we lose them on radios.”

The plague of racist ‘anti-racism’ is infecting the legal profession By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/the_plague_of_racist_antiracism_is_infecting_the_legal_profession.html

Tuesday brought two stories about the pernicious influence of Critical Race Theory or racist “anti-racism” infecting the way law is being taught and practiced in America. One story concerns a college professor putting pressure on law schools to stop admitting white students. Another story involves Coca-Cola’s lead in-house counsel telling outside law firms that, if they want to do business with Coke, they need to hire blacks in huge numbers. It’s blackmail and it’s illegal. But Coke is woke (and getting broke) so it acts with “anti-racist” impunity.

The first story concerns a teacher at the University of Dayton who’s taken her pique at failing to get into law school and turned it into a woke, anti-white project:

If you’ve been eyeing law school, perhaps you wondered which ones are the whitest.

If so, a teacher at the University of Dayton’s got you covered.

She’s crafted a report ranking said schools according to the percentage of white first-year students.

But the list isn’t only to help you make an informed choice; she wants to encourage colleges to put the kibosh on whiteness overload.

As relayed by Discovery Institute Director Christopher F. Rufo, during a March 4th virtual event, Professor Emeritus Vernellia R. Randall unveiled her “2021 The Whitest Law School Report.”

The Dems’ Willful Errors Multiply Recreating and expanding Obama’s catastrophic chaos. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/dems-willful-errors-multiply-bruce-thornton/

Remember when Donald Trump was attacked daily for his cruel and racist immigration policies? When the clichés du jour were “ripped from their family’s arms” and “held in cages”? The “cages” filling the news were actually from the Obama era, but progressives notoriously take liberties with the truth when taking advantage of a useful crisis.

Under Trump’s policies, in fact, we recovered some control of our border and started reducing the death and disorder the Dems’ virtually open border produced. “Asylum seekers,” an elastic category that seldom required evidence that a migrant faced lethal threats in his home country, now waited in Central America or Mexico for their application to be processed rather than being “caught and released” at the border and sent off to the rest of the country with only perfunctory monitoring.

With the incentive of easy entry gone, the long columns of marching hordes of migrants disappeared from the news, and apprehensions and deportations accelerated. A serious security wall was under construction. Illegal immigration, still an issue requiring our attention, was less in the news, and not just because of Covid. Trump, as he had promised, had taken common-sense actions and actually enforced our laws.

So of course, once back in power, the Dems set about recreating the Obama years’ dangerous chaos on our border. A couple of months in power is all Joe Biden has taken to return apprehensions to 70,000 a month, and the “the highest February numbers that we’ve ever seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program,” according to a Health and Human Services. And the drug mules and cartel human traffickers are back in business, to the tune of over $2 billion a year. A problem that was under control has not just returned, but been willfully worsened.

BEN WEIGARTEN: OUT OF HIS CENSUS

https://americanmind.org/salvo/out-of-his-census/

Biden’s betrayal of citizenship sabotages our republican form of government.

This article will be part of a longer forthcoming series regarding President Biden’s harmful Executive Orders.

President Joe Biden’s flurry of initial actions, on issues from immigration and race to environmentalism and regulatory policy, favor the ruling class, Woke progressives, and non-citizens. They punish the tens of millions of forgotten Americans of every color and creed who are most deeply impacted by their consequences. The longtime Swamp-dweller’s first days in office can best be summarized as: “unity and healing for me, but not for thee.”

One overlooked but significant executive order that demonstrates the administration’s contempt for you, and the principles you hold dear, concerns the census. It suggests that the president not only cares little for sovereignty, and the rule of law, but believes in fragrantly violating such principles, privileging noncitizens—including illegal aliens—and providing them representation to which they are not entitled.

The decennial census count is critically important because it is used for apportioning House seats, redistricting, and allocating hundreds of billions of federal dollars each year. It may strike readers as odd, but historically, the enumeration has included noncitizens, including illegal aliens. Therefore, areas with greater numbers of inhabitants—regardless of their legal status—have garnered greater political power in the way of representation and government largesse. Some American citizens see the weight of their votes augmented, while others see it reduced because of the actions of noncitizens, including illegal aliens—and because of a part-feckless and part-cynical political class that has allowed this policy to persist.

Biden’s Pick For Civil Rights Head Peddled The Jussie Smollett Hate Crime Hoax By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/09/bidens-pick-for-civil-rights-head-peddled-the-jussie-smollett-hate-crime-hoax/

President Joe Biden’s top pick to lead the Department of Justice’s civil rights division peddled the Jussie Smollett hoax on Twitter, criticizing anyone who questioned the black, gay actor’s falsified hate crime in 2019.

“Jussie Smollett subjected to a racist and homophobic attack. 2 white men wearing ski masks attacked him, put a rope around his neck, and poured bleach on him and as they yelled slurs. Prayers to @JussieSmollett for a speedy recovery from this hate crime,” Kristen Clarke tweeted shortly after the alleged incident.

Days after her initial post, Clarke, who will oversee hate crime investigations if confirmed, took to Twitter again, alleging that the Chicago Police Department was “demonizing survivors” after they requested access to Smollet’s cellphone and claiming that they shouldn’t be “casting doubt” on the actor’s claims that his assailants shouted racial slurs and beat him up while yelling pro-Trump slogans.

“To be clear — This is a BAD move by the Chicago Police Department. This is NOT how you treat survivors of a hate crime. Stop demonizing survivors and casting doubt on their claims if you want communities to trust that you will take #HateCrime seriously. @StopHateProj,” she wrote. 

Kanye West – Worth $3.2+ Billion – Received $2.4 Million in PPP Funding for His Sneaker Company By Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/09/kayne_west__worth_32_billion__received_24_million_in_ppp_funding_for_his_sneaker_company_766558.html

A famous singer’s shoe company, a millionaire actor’s film institute, and the California wineries of a legendary filmmaker, probably were not the “little guys” taxpayers thought Congress was targeting in last year’s coronavirus relief Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

When our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped the big PPP loans (the nearly 83,000 loans between $1 million and $10 million), a few familiar names popped up.

Kanye West, who claims a net worth of $3.2 billion, took $2.4 million for his clothing and sneaker company, Yeezy LLC, which the Wall Street Journal noted had a value of $2.9 billion, with $1.5 billion in yearly revenues.

Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute received $3.04 million in PPP loans. The non-profit’s IRS 990 lists $55.4 million in assets (FY2018).

Two affiliated companies of the legendary Godfather director and vineyard owner Francis Ford Coppola received PPP funding including Francis Ford Coppola Presents LLC ($7.3 million) and Niebaum Coppola Estate Winery, LP ($1.2 million).

Where’s the Outrage over Children in Cages? By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/wheres-the-outrage-over-children-in-cages/

In 2018, Joe Biden said that a “policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a deterrent, it’s unconscionable.” Biden went on describe the child-separation policy first implemented under the Obama administration as “abhorrent,” and one that threatened “to make us a pariah in the world.” The entire media spent weeks contemplating the depth of our collective immorality. Progressives compared detention centers to Nazi concentration camps. Joe Scarborough equated border agents to SS guards. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to the facility and broke down in tears. Charles Blow argued that Donald Trump was a baby snatcher. “These are children!” he wrote.

When Blow wrote his piece there were around 2,000 children being detained by the Border Patrol. This week, according to CBS News, around 3,200 migrant children were being held in Border Patrol facilities – a record — with almost half being held past the three-day legal limit. The coverage, as you can imagine, has a very different tone.

Then and now, it was a complicated issue. The Trump administration incompetently implemented its “zero tolerance” policy, but it certainly wasn’t snatching children like a depraved Gestapo. The fenced detention areas were built before Donald Trump had come into office. Only parents charged with entering the country illegally and who claim asylum after being apprehended were detained. Adults who opt not to be deported after entering illegally had to wait for adjudication of their case. While this happened, the law prohibited children from being held in the same detention centers as adults. This is done to protect children. It was then, and it is now.

The difference in tone, however, tells us that much of what we saw was nothing but performative partisan outrage.

Biden Prepares to Strip College Students of Due-Process Rights By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/biden-prepares-to-strip-college-students-of-due-process-rights/

Either we believe principles are the best means of fairness, or not. Biden, it seems, only believes in them for himself.

It’s always worth reminding people that if President Joe Biden were compelled to live by the standards he intends to institute for college students accused of sexual misconduct, he would be presumed guilty of rape, denied any legitimate opportunity to refute Tara Reade’s charges, and tossed from office in disgrace.

The New York Times reports today that Biden’s Kafkaesque “White House Gender Policy Council” is “beginning his promised effort to dismantle Trump-era rules on sexual misconduct that afforded greater protections to students accused of assault.” The subhead informs us that, “The Biden administration will examine regulations by Betsy DeVos that gave the force of law to rules that granted more due-process rights to students accused of sexual assault.”

The most disingenuous word here — though the piece is brimming with them — is “more.” History did not begin in 2015, and former education secretary Betsy DeVos did not invent more due-process rights in Title IX; she simply reinstated time-honored fundamental due-process rights that have guided justice systems in the liberal world for hundreds of years. The Constitution says — twice — that no citizen shall be arbitrarily “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” No means no.

It was only in 2011 that the Obama administration instituted fewer due-process rights through the force of law, denying the accused the ability to question accusers, the right to review the allegations and evidence presented by their accuser, the right to present exculpatory evidence, and the right to call witnesses. Basically, the right to mount a defense.

It was the Obama administration that asked schools to institute a system that empowered a single investigator, often without any training and susceptible to the vagaries of societal and political pressures, to pass unilateral judgment on these cases. Also, under the Obama administration rules, colleges were allowed to adjudicate sexual abuse and assault cases using a “preponderance of evidence” rather than a more stringent “clear and convincing evidence” standard.

The Smug Arrogance Of The ‘Science’ Crowd

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/09/the-smug-arrogance-of-the-science-crowd/

Last summer, fed up with Democrats’ claim that theirs is the “Party of Science,” we pointed out that it is in reality the Party of Science Fiction. We hope others have had their fill, too, and public opinion will force the Democrats to grow up.

“Science” is never invoked by the political left to illuminate, educate, or guide. It’s used to terminate discussion, to shut down debate. It’s employed in exactly the same way “racist” has been used for decades. Not as a legitimate charge but a bomb thrown into a conversation in an effort to “other” the person or persons the smear is directed toward. It’s a means closing off further dialogue, a bully’s tactic.

Those who respect an open marketplace of ideas, who believe that more speech rather than less is healthy for society, might wonder why the left wants to halt debate. It’s a good question with a clear and obvious answer: The zealous adherents to progressive politics know their ideas are empty of substance and therefore need to shout down, cancel, and indict those who dare think differently.

That would be the primary but not sole reason for those on the left to incessantly yell “science” and virtue-signal their beliefs. Many who appeal to “science” do so for status. It’s a convenient – and shallow – way of showing the rest of us that they’re intellectually and morally superior. They desperately want to think they’re on the right side of something, anything. Evidently doing so satisfies in them a need to overcome their deep insecurities.