ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Louisiana’s Secretary of State Faces Lawsuit Over Election Integrity By Chris Queen

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/02/08/louisianas-secretary-of-state-faces-lawsuit-over-election-integrity-n1557288

The integrity of our elections has become a front-and-center issue in the past few years. Between the legitimate concerns that the 2020 presidential election instilled in many people and the wild conspiracy theories that have cropped up on both sides of the political aisle, voters have become increasingly concerned about whether their votes even count.

In response to the craziness of 2020, several states, Georgia and Texas among them, have enacted laws that, in the words of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, make it “easy to vote but hard to cheat.” Because these laws originated in states with Republican governors, the left decided to gin up fake outrage over “voter suppression” and even attempted a federal takeover of elections that would entrench Democrats in power for years.

With midterm elections coming up this year that could tip the balance of power in Congress, all eyes are on how various states are handling their voter rolls. Over half the states rely on the Electronic Registration and Information Center — ERIC for short.

Back in December, J. Christian Adams, PJ Media columnist and president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), introduced us to ERIC. The way ERIC works is that the states that pay into the ERIC program send in their voter rolls, and ERIC analyzes them for voters who are dead or registered in multiple states. The idea, of course, is that the states then clean up voter rolls based on this analysis.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Biden should have said on Jan. 6 By Liz Peek

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/588845-what-biden-should-have-said-on-jan-6

Here’s what we learned on Jan. 6: There will be no pivot. President Biden made it clear in his remarks that he will pursue the central theme that put him in the White House, no matter how low his polls sink or how bleak the outlook for his party.

What is that theme? That President Trump is an enemy of the state, and many of his supporters are every bit as deplorable as Hillary Clinton thought they were.

Trump hatred elected Biden; that’s all he’s got.

Biden did have a choice. When he addressed the nation in remembrance of the riot that shook the U.S. Capitol, the president could have more aggressively addressed doubts about the outcome of the 2020 election, which continue to unsettle our nation.

In a recent poll, only 46 percent of respondents said Biden’s election was “definitely” legitimate. That is a horrible outcome. Some 71 percent of Republicans described his victory as “definitely not” or “probably not” legitimate, as well as 31 percent of independents.

That is not good for Joe Biden, and he should have tackled this running sore of his presidency.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Organised Groups of Folks’ Terrorise Los Angeles Salvatore Babones

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/02/organised-groups-of-folks-terrorise-los-angeles/

“California is, of course, enjoying a wave of (minor) wealth redistribution arising from Proposition 47, a ‘successful’ 2014 referendum that reclassified many erstwhile felonies (including all thefts to a value of less than $950) as misdemeanors. In the spirit of the times, state prosecutors no longer bring charges in these cases, since the maximum penalty is only six months in jail (rarely imposed) or a fine of up to $1000. In the likely worst case scenario (or best case, depending on your point of view), most thieves will thus only be required to return the stolen goods. Stealing is, essentially, legal.”

In a soundbite straight outta Compton, California governor Gavin Newsom blamed “organised groups of folks that move from site to site” for a spate of New West train robberies (above) in Los Angeles. His first instinct was to call them “gangs”, but he immediately apologised, publicly acknowledging his error. The word “gangs”, you see, is pejorative to … well, gangs.

Luckily for the gangs of L.A., Newsom and the Democratic Party have made the New West a safe space for criminals of all kinds. In Los Angeles, the newsmakers are the organised groups of folks who board trains leaving the west coast ports to ransack containers arriving from China (they’re probably racist Trump supporters), while in San Francisco it’s the folks who organise flash robberies of department stores and shopping malls.

At least 48 Los Angeles gangs are prominent enough to have their own Wikipedia pages. A personal favorite is the Culver City Boys, which sounds like a group of folks who do odd jobs on the MGM Studies lot, or perhaps for the west coast offices of National Public Radio. In 2018, the Boys won a $30 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over city-imposed curfews. Don’t be shocked: gangs hiring lawyers is an old tradition in America. That’s how you know they’re gangs, not just groups of folks.

The Culver City Boys are reputed to be composed mainly of Mexican-Americans. The Rollin 60’s Neighborhood Crips, one of California’s oldest gangs (as the name would suggest), is believed to be largely African-American. The shot back to national prominence in 2019 with the death of rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hu$$le, a member who was shot at least six times in front of his clothing store in a dispute of obscure origin. Police believe the shooting arose out of a “personal dispute”, but a case of shoplifting gone wrong cannot be ruled out.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Deep State control of the education system By John Dietrich

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_deep_state_control_of_education_system.html

Progressive control of the U.S. educational system, operating secretly via entrenched bureaucrats and cooperating elected officials, has been exposed by incidents in Loudoun County, Virginia.  In other words, the Deep State rules the classrooms of America.

A major factor affecting the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election (and destined to affect the 2022 midterm elections) is the public’s reaction to progressive control of the educational system.  This control had been successfully concealed by the major media until an incident at a Loudoun County school board meeting made national news.  At this June 22, 2021 school board meeting, parent Scott Smith was arrested.

Smith was protesting the fact that his daughter had been raped in the girl’s bathroom on May 28 by a “transgender” student.  School officials’ first response was an attempt to cover up the incident.  School board member Beth Barts proclaimed, “Our students do not need to be protected, and they are not in danger.”  Superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed: “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”

Ziegler, who is paid $295,000 a year, intentionally lied to the public about this incident.  In fact, he was the creator of one of the records covering the incident.  On the day of the attack, he wrote school board members a note entitled  “CONFIDENTIAL School Incident.”  It stated, “This afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom.”  When this lie was exposed, he responded, “I regret that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families.”  He added, “My heart aches for you and I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming, and affirming environment that we aspire to provide.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Tony school in DC forces five-year-olds to parade around chanting ‘Black Lives Matter’ for the cameras By Monica Showalter

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/tony_school_in_dc_forces_5_yearolds_to_parade_around_chanting_black_lives_matter_for_the_cameras.html

What is it about radical leftists and getting their hands on people’s kids?

Libs of Tik Tok (hat tip: Daily Wire and We Love Trump) found this one, posted on the ritzy Lowell School’s site, showing very small schoolchildren, all around age 5, marching in their masks, with signs chanting “Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter…”  I suppose we’re supposed to say, “Aw, aren’t they cute,” but the normal response is, Who is forcing them to do that against their will?

I remember singing “ring around the rosie” at that particular age.

What’s more, as a five-year-old in the ’60s, I remember seeing Black Panther and Symbionese Liberation Army violence, riots, and gun-waving parade-arounds, Charles Manson and his leftist fangirls, and hippies spitting at troops in airports, on the television set as a kid.  I recall viewing those things as vile, hateful, threatening, something never to get involved with.  More to the point, it would have been unthinkable to force any five-year-old at that time to go around chanting for those causes as they are for today’s similar ones.  It simply would not have been done.

But here we are today, with near-toddlers being forced to march and parade around for the cameras chanting for an organization that is characterized by its cause and effects — violence, burning cities, dead police officers, police defunding, zero response to 9/11 calls, and big death spikes in the black community based on unchecked violent crime, corporate kowtowing to the crocodile, and humongous piles of money engulfed in colossal corruption.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dem Mask Hypocrisy on Full Display By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dem-mask-hypocrisy-on-full-display/

Last week ended with perennial Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, posting pictures of herself maskless in a classroom full of masked children and teachers. When the public reacted negatively to the images, Abrams defended herself by explaining that she had only appeared maskless in photos on the condition that everyone else around her did don face-coverings. Much better, then.

Abrams is far from alone, though. The pandemic has seen countless examples of politicians convinced that while it’s imperative that the little people — be they younger or less famous and wealthy — wear masks as their patriotic duty, the VIPs should remain exempt from such strictures.

Just a few days after Abrams’s gaffe, Representative Elissa Slotkin posted a picture of what appeared to be a townhall event in her district. Slotkin is in the foreground wearing an enormous smile. The other attendees appear in the background, wearing masks.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why the Spotify – Rogan fight will define Free Speech

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/08/why-the-joe-rogan-spotify-fight-will-define-free-speech-for-us-all/

Remind us again what it was that Joe Rogan said that got the left so apoplectic. Did he spew hate speech? Call for an insurrection? Say mean things about a protected minority?

No? The left wanted him canceled because he supposedly aired misinformation about COVID? Are you kidding? If this is the new standard for censorship, you can kiss free speech goodbye.

After all, anything can be labeled “misinformation.”

Would you dare to say climate change hysteria is unfounded? Or government-provided daycare is a bad idea? Or Joe Biden’s massive welfare expansion is a bad idea? Election fraud is real? Dogs are better pets than cats? Misinformation! Misinformation!! Misinformation!!! Misinformation!!!!

What information did Rogan spread about COVID that has so alarmed the left? That masks are ineffective? That all we needed was a 15-day lockdown to “slow the spread”? That there was no way the virus resulted from Chinese lab experiments? That schools had to be shut down? That this was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated”?

Oh, wait, those were all uttered by people like Anthony Fauci.

No, the left claims that Rogan, by not being sufficiently panicked about COVID and not toeing the line on the vaccination mandates, is guilty of second-degree murder, with Spotify being an accessory. As Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan put it, “People are dying because of COVID misinformation that Spotify packages as glib podcast fodder.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

‘Campaign of the Century’ Review: Revisiting Kennedy vs. Nixon A revisionist tract debunks the ‘conventional mythology’ surrounding the 1960 presidential election.By Robert W. Merry

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/campaign-of-the-century-review-revisiting-kennedy-vs-nixon-11644271787

When Richard Nixon ran against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas for the U.S. Senate in 1950, his House colleague John Kennedy slipped him a $1,000 campaign contribution from the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, who liked Nixon’s anticommunist fervor. Nine years later, when the two men emerged as likely presidential nominees for their respective parties, Kennedy asked Nixon to keep the matter secret so he could avoid a political firestorm from fellow Democrats. The Californian agreed; later, when columnist Drew Pearson got wind of the story, Nixon press secretary Herb Klein denied the report. Nixon acquiesced in the public lie to honor his private commitment to the man emerging as his most threatening political rival.

This intriguing anecdote, recounted in historian Irwin F. Gellman’s “Campaign of the Century,” encapsulates the author’s central thesis—that Richard Nixon got a raw deal from campaign reporters and later historians who portrayed him as a menacing political scoundrel, when in fact he deserved greater recognition for his “high road” politics. “Those who insist on seeing Nixon only as a dark and devious character,” Mr. Gellman writes, “overlook the fact that he ran by far the more honorable, and honest, campaign.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Facebook, other tech giants censor inconvenient facts about climate change By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://nypost.com/2022/02/07/facebook-other-tech-giants-censor-facts-about-climate-change/

The online world has become a free-speech battleground. Tech platforms have sided with illiberal regimes to censor posts while flagging “misinformation” in free countries. We all share a legitimate interest in avoiding outright falsehoods, but much censorship today — whether at dictators’ behest or in the name of eradicating “misinformation” — ultimately is about restricting discourse to a narrow corridor of the politically acceptable. That makes it harder to identify smart policies.

This is especially troubling for important issues like climate change. Global warming is real and man-made. However, social-media giants — Facebook in particular — are going far beyond censoring people for denying its existence.

Facebook monitors what people say about climate change in 100 countries and uses third-party fact-checkers to identify misinformation for flagging or removal.

Here’s something Facebook’s censors deemed unacceptable: I wrote a comment using the latest peer-reviewed research from the medical journal Lancet on deaths caused by heat and cold. The paper is the first to show that globally, every year, half a million people die because temperatures are too hot, while 4.5 million people die because it is too cold. In other words, nine times more people die from the cold than the heat.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Famed Alzheimer’s Researcher John Hardy Is a Knight … but Not in Shining Armor By Eric Felten

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/08/famed_alzheimers_researcher_john_hardy_is_a_knight__but_not_in_shining_armor_813737.html

The celebrated Alzheimer’s Disease researcher John Hardy was among the British doctors and medical researchers honored by Queen Elizabeth II with knighthoods at the dawn of the new year. It was just the latest on a long list of prestigious awards Hardy has collected, including the Potamkin Prize for his work identifying genetic aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, the MetLife Prize, the Thudichum medal, the Robert A. Pritzker Prize, and the Breakthrough Prize.

In 2018, Hardy added the Brain Prize to his list of accolades. Awarded by the Danish Lundbeck Foundation, it is regularly referred to as the “Nobel of neuroscience.” Winners are assumed to be on the short list for the Nobels themselves.

Missing among all the flattering kudos and attendant news coverage has been any mention of the geneticist’s leading role in a conspiracy that held Alzheimer’s research hostage to fraudulently acquired gene patents. The sordid affair mired efforts to find a cure in tangled, resource-sapping litigation. The last of the courthouse wrangling that began in 2003 wouldn’t be resolved for more than a decade – a resolution that came with a ringing rebuke from the bench expressing the judge’s outrage at the scheme, the schemers, and the damage they caused.