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POLITICS

AMY KLOBUCHAR’S REFUSAL TO PROSECUTE OFFICER WHO KILLED GEORGE FLOYD

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/05/28/amy-klobuchar-declined

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), one of the women on presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s vice-presidential shortlist, refused to prosecute an excessive force case against the police officer who appears to have killed black man George Floyd, the man at the center of the latest Black Lives Matter controversy.

On Monday night, Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis police department, knelt on 46-year-old Floyd’s neck for nine minutes as the black man pleaded for his life. Floyd died after the encounter. Video of the encounter went viral on Tuesday, and the police department fired Chauvin Tuesday.

Yet Chauvin saw at least 10 conduct complaints during his 19-year tenure before his firing, and Klobuchar — then the Hennepin County attorney — declined to press charges against Chauvin in 2006. Chauvin was one of six officers involved in the shooting death of Wayne Reyes, who stabbed his girlfriend and a friend before fleeing. Police chased him and shot him, claiming he had pulled a shotgun on them. She did not prosecute the case, which went to a grand jury that declined to charge the officers with wrongdoing in 2008, according to The Guardian.

The Fear vs. Hope Election Are November’s results now out of the hands of the candidates? By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fear-vs-hope-election-11590605085?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

“EXCERPTS”

Have Donald Trump and Joe Biden already made their most important campaign decisions? An influential political analyst argues that the results of the 2020 presidential election will now be determined by events largely outside of their control.

“Each candidate seems to have settled on a strategy. The President, for his part, is spending a lot of time in toss-up states. The Journal’s Catherine Lucey reports:

On Wednesday, the president heads to Florida, his fourth battleground-state destination in four weeks, where he will witness the launch of the private SpaceX rocket, manned by NASA astronauts. While his megarallies are on hold, Mr. Trump’s incumbency affords him the ability to hit the road in his official capacity, in contrast with likely Democratic rival Joe Biden, who made his first foray out in public Monday but didn’t leave his home state of Delaware.

Meanwhile even as a campaign shut-in, Mr. Biden is trying to get young leftists enthused about his candidacy. He’s planning to expand his proposal to replace American energy sources. The Journal’s Eliza Collins reports:

So far Mr. Biden has proposed a $1.7 trillion climate plan over a decade. During the Democratic primary, Mr. Sanders, who dropped out of the race in April, proposed more than nine times that amount of spending over the same period.

“As for 2020, Mr. Rasmussen writes in the Deseret News that the election “will once again be decided by public reaction to the key issue of the day. For this election season, that issue is how successfully American society reopens in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. If in November voters are more optimistic than today, the president will be reelected. If not, he will be defeated”. Adds Mr. Rasmussen:

While both sides are still fumbling for a final answer — and the dynamics are clearly different from state-to-state — a broad campaign theme has emerged. Republicans want to focus on reopening society more quickly while Democrats are resisting and prefer a much slower approach. A related sub-theme has emerged with Republicans placing more trust in voters to make their own decisions while Democrats place more trust in government officials to establish rules for reopening.
Now that the political teams have chosen sides, real world events will decide the outcome of Election 2020.

To Save Time, The Babylon Bee Will Now Just Republish Everything Biden Says Verbatim

https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-offered-position-as-staff-writer-at-the-babylon-bee

The Bible tells us to work smarter, not harder. Or, better yet, don’t work at all if you can help it. You can look it up. It’s in the Proverbs somewhere.

That’s why we’re announcing today that we will simply be republishing everything Joe Biden says word for word rather than spending a lot of time and effort writing satire.

We at The Babylon Bee realized we were spending all this time trying to satirize Joe Biden when, frankly, he just can’t be satirized. He’s doing all the hard work for us with statements like “You ain’t black!” and, of gun violence, that “150 million people have been killed since 2007.” 

Every day is a real grind when we arrive at the sprawling Babylon Bee headquarters, settle in on our throne of Chick-fil-A sandwiches, and boot up the ol’ PC to check what Biden said over the past 24 hours. We’re tired of trying to out-parody things like “I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun and the kids used to reach in the pool and rub my leg down and watch the hair come back up again” and “Corn Pop was a bad dude.”

Like, what do you do with that? Seriously. Go ahead. Try to satirize it. Anything you do just doesn’t have that perfect mix of absurdity and reality that makes satire work so effective at communicating truth. So we’re throwing in the towel.

We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Joe Biden for being such a great satirical performance artist. You’re the real hero, Joe. The people really need comedy in a time like this, and you’re doing a great job. Keep it up!

Dems re-branding their plan to steal the election By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/dems_rebranding_their_plan_to_steal_the_election.html

Apparently “voting by mail” is not working well for Democrats in their focus group testing, as they push for changes that will make stealing the 2020 election easier.  Pretty much everyone has received mail destined for other people, so using the United States Postal Service as the brand name hinge for the scheme doesn’t test well.  There are too many associations with long lines, mistakes, delays, and the sort of results that come from a gigantic unionized federal bureaucracy.

Appearing last night in the safe environment of MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell show, where no uncomfortable questions would ever be raised, Nancy Pelosi rolled out the re-branding.  From now on, it will be called “voting at home.”  The entire three-and-a-half minute segment, with other verbal legerdemain, is below:

From Speech To Consumer Choice, Democrats Believe Everything Must Be Policed

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/05/27/from-speech-to-consumer-choice-democrats-believe-everything-must-be-policed/

Reading a weekend story in Campus Reform helped us see more clearly what we’ve been witnessing for decades. The political left is driven by an urge to supervise every aspect of our lives. It’s a corrosive impulse that shouldn’t be accepted anywhere in a free nation, let alone practiced. The backlash needs to begin now. If not, our liberty will eventually be overrun.

The story is from Michigan State University, which published an article claiming that video conferencing is full of “unconscious bias.” In it, MSU social science professor Amy Bonomi says:

Unconscious bias includes using language, symbolism and nonverbal cues that reinforce normative social identities with respect to gender, race, sexual preference, and socioeconomic status. For example, when the virtual background of a Zoom meeting attendee has pictures of his or her wedding, it unintentionally reinforces the idea that marriage is most fitting between opposite sexes.

In other words, when left alone, managers and coworkers will say things or show things that the speech police — who exist to ensure that only one side controls the narrative — don’t approve of.

Nothing in recent times illustrates the left’s inclination to control as does its response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Democrats want to keep people and businesses locked down while Republicans, with some exceptions, want to free people and unleash commerce.

Dem Economist Predicts Most Explosive Recovery Ever. Democrats Predictably Horrified By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/election/megan-fox/2020/05/26/dem-economist-predicts-most-explosive-recovery-ever-democrats-predictably-horrified-n428514

Democrats have finally admitted that economic recovery for the American people means defeat for them. They would rather watch us suffer so they can beat Donald Trump. Politico published an article called “The General Election Scenario That Democrats Are Dreading,” which confirms what we’ve all been suspecting: the longer the lockdown continues and Americans are out of work, the happier Democrats are.

What kind of people root for economic ruin over recovery? Democrats.

Jason Furman, a Harvard professor and economist who worked for Barack Obama, gave a presentation in April to a group of bipartisan officials about the coming economic recovery. Democrats on the call were reportedly terrified.

“We are about to see the best economic data we’ve seen in the history of this country,” he said.

The former cabinet secretaries and Federal Reserve chairs in the Zoom boxes were confused, though some of the Republicans may have been newly relieved and some of the Democrats suddenly concerned.

“Everyone looked puzzled and thought I had misspoken,” Furman said in an interview. Instead of forecasting a prolonged depression-level economic catastrophe, Furman laid out a detailed case for why the months preceding the November election could offer Trump the chance to brag — truthfully — about the most explosive monthly employment numbers and GDP growth ever.

Why Joe Biden can do no wrong By Jonathan Turley,

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/499283-why-joe-biden-can-do-no-wrong

One columnist declared that former Vice President Joe Biden could boil babies and she would still vote for him. Feminist leaders have said they believe Biden raped a Senate staffer but they still endorse him. Good government advocates have opposed any investigation into prior sexual harassment or corruption claims against Biden. It seems politicians and pundits alike have discovered the glory of the “presidential bull.” In this instance, Biden is akin to a papal indulgence that allows writers, members of Congress and journalists to forgive any sin in a holy crusade to retake Washington.

In the 11th century, Pope Urban II formalized the use of indulgences, which could be purchased to forgive sins. A papal bull of the Crusade accompanied those who fought in the Holy Land and committed atrocities in the name of a higher order. The practice was defended as essentially drawing from the “treasury of merit” created by Jesus Christ, the saints and the faithful.

Now the 2020 election has become the ultimate crusade, and President Trump’s critics seem to be enjoying indulgences in tossing aside moral and ethical considerations. The freedom that is Biden is nowhere more evident than in a recent column by The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, who wrote about the allegations of sexual assault made by former Biden staffer Tara Reade. Pollitt dispensed with any struggle over feminist or moral qualms, declaring, “I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them.”

Red Wave Coming? GOP Sweeps Election in Virginia Democratic Stronghold

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/elliebufkin/2020/05/22/red-wave-coming-democratic-stronghold-city-in-virginia-stunned-by-gop-sweep-n2569269

With the November general election less than six months away, results of local and special elections are giving an eye-opening preview of possible voter behavior. While recent polls still show Democratic hopefuls, including presumed presidential nominee Joe Biden, edging out their Republican counterparts in competitive parts of the country, actual ballots are telling a very different story. 

Special congressional elections in California and Wisconsin this month both yielded Republican victors after Democrats launched strong campaigns in both races. In California, Republican Mike Garcia beat Democrat Christy Smith by almost 10 points after receiving 10,000 fewer votes in the primary election just two months earlier. Garcia replaced Democrat Katie Hill, who resigned at the end of 2019, flipping a California House seat from blue to red for the first time in more than 20 years. 

As stunning as Garcia’s resounding victory for Republicans in California was, however, a shocking GOP blowout in the Staunton, Virginia city council election this week has given Democrats a reason to be alarmed. 

Like many cities in Virginia through the last several years, Staunton has trended toward liberal candidates in national and municipal elections, supporting Barack Obama in both the 2008 and 2012 elections, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. The city also helped buoy Democratic governors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam to victory in the past two gubernatorial elections while consistently electing a majority of Democrats to the city council.

Useless Senate Republicans No Match for the ‘Bums of Steele’ Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/22/useless-senate-republicans-no-match-for-the-bums-of-steele/

This whole fiasco lies at the feet of Senate Republicans. “Useless” might be too kind a description of them.

The letter, signed by one of the most powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill and addressed to Fusion GPS, indicated the jig was up.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asked Glenn Simpson, Fusion’s co-owner, 13 questions about his involvement with the so-called Steele dossier and ties to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “When political opposition research becomes the basis for law enforcement or intelligence efforts, it raises substantial questions about the independence of law enforcement and intelligence from politics,” Grassley wrote.

The letter showed that Senate Republicans were aware Christopher Steele was a paid operative working on behalf of Trump’s Democratic enemies inside and outside the government. Further, the dossier wasn’t raw intelligence exposing collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin; Grassley acknowledged the document was anti-Trump propaganda that influenced activity at Barack Obama’s FBI and seeded damaging news articles before the 2016 election.

In other words, Republicans knew at that point the whole dossier-fueled collusion storyline was a massive scam.

The date of the letter? March 24, 2017. A few days earlier, FBI Director James Comey confirmed during a House Intelligence Committee hearing that the FBI had opened a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, a stunning confession.

Think about it. As the Trump-Russia collusion scam took hold—while Americans were being warned that their new president would act as the stooge of Vladimir Putin—Republicans already knew it was Democratic stagecraft. Further, they knew Comey’s FBI had worked with Steele and relied on his unverified dirt to investigate Donald Trump.

But rather than call the Democrats’ bluff, Senate Republicans, who wield the gavels of every powerful committee, caved. A quiver of sharply worded letters, as I wrote last year, has been their only weaponry, At the same time, Senate Republicans backed a destructive special counsel probe into a crime they knew did not exist. (On the House side, only a handful of Republicans, most notably Devin Nunes of California, did the heavy lifting while paying a major personal price.)

Glenn Simpson testified before Grassley’s committee in August 2017—behind closed doors. The American people never got a glimpse of Simpson’s slipperiness or heard first-hand, at a critical time, that the dossier was opposition research funded by Clinton and the Democratic Party. We never heard Simpson explain how he and Steele—a foreigner—worked over the State Department, the Justice Department, top lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and the national news media in an attempt to influence the presidential election by portraying Trump as a Russian asset.

Imagine how an open hearing at the time would have shaped the public’s view of the collusion falsehood. President Trump, instead of being hunted by Mueller’s wolves, would have had a chance to counterpunch with Senate Republicans at his side. And more importantly, Americans could have learned the truth before it was too late. (The committee released a transcript of Simpson’s testimony in January 2018 but by then Mueller’s investigation was well underway.)

Biden’s offensive statement about blacks wasn’t the worst thing he said By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/bidens_offensive_statement_about_blacks_wasnt_the_worst_thing_he_said.html

Joe Biden took a lot of flak on Friday for saying on The Breakfast Club, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” However, bad as that line was, Biden said a lot of other things that were just as bad as his condescending, tone-deaf attempt at a “no true Scotsman” joke.

The Breakfast Club is a popular progressive morning show that is carried on 45 affiliate stations, while the YouTube channel boasts 4.41 million subscribers. To date, just the YouTube version of Biden’s May 22 interview with “Charlamagne tha God” has had over 700,000 views. This is a show with reach, and it allowed Biden to talk directly to a young black audience.

What Biden was pitching to the audience is that he’s been a black advocate since practically the day he stepped out of law school in the late 1960s. To that end, he used the Wuhan Virus to play the race card against Trump and then settled into his shtick about how he’s always acted in the best interests of American blacks. Little that he said supports this claim.

Biden began by boasting, “I’m ahead in all the national polls,” only to have Charlamagne point out the 2016 polling failures. Biden’s non sequitur response was that 2016 was “totally different” because “you had somebody who didn’t, they didn’t know” Trump, meaning that Trump “had no serious opposition that turned out to materialize.” I mention this short Biden argument as a reminder that even though Biden talks a lot, he often doesn’t say anything.