Bare-Knuckle Brawl Over GameStop Pits America’s Elites Vs. ‘Deplorables’

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/01/bare-knuckle-brawl-over-gamestop-pits-americas-elites-vs-deplorables/

Only someone living under a rock hasn’t heard about the GameStop stock market shorting scandal. While the mechanics of the stock market battle are interesting, they’re nothing new. What’s new is this: The battle this time is being waged by Deplorable America vs. Elite America. And Elite America isn’t at all happy about it.

It’s well known that the stock market isn’t controlled by small investors, but by massive financial institutions. Recent data show that mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, Wall Street investment banks, public pensions and the like control more than 80% of all shares traded. They are always the elephant in the room.

The little guys with trading portfolios of less than $100,000 or so, often operating online at lightning speed on no-commission trading sites – such as Robinhood – have a small piece of all the trading. They win only by exploiting cracks in a system dominated by big firms.

Which makes it all the more amazing that they were able to take out a major hedge fund with a short position in GameStop, a troubled chain of computer gaming stores that still has a big following on Reddit.

First, in case you don’t know what “shorting” a stock is, it’s basically borrowing a number of shares of a given stock to sell at the current price. The borrower sells the shares, then promises to pay back the lender the same number of shares at a later date.

Manchin Rejects Harris’s TV Interview in West Virginia: ‘We Need to Work Together’

https://www.theepochtimes.com/manchin-rejects-harris-tv-interview-in-west-virginia

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key swing vote in the Senate, said he was frustrated by Vice President Kamala Harris giving an interview in his home state of West Virginia, saying he was not notified by the Biden administration beforehand.

“I saw [the interview], I couldn’t believe it. No one called me [about it],” Manchin, considered perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, told WSAZ. “We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward, but we need to work together. That’s not a way of working together.”

Manchin was referring to a Senate impasse on the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 package, which includes expanded unemployment benefits and $1,400 stimulus payments.

Trump Names New Lead Lawyers for Impeachment Defense Team By Janita Kan

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-names-new-lead-lawyers-for-impeachment-defense-team_3678854.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-01-31-4

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday named two attorneys who will lead his impeachment defense legal team.

The two lawyers who will represent the former president in the upcoming Senate trial are David Schoen, an attorney from Alabama, and Bruce Castor Jr., a former prosecutor in Pennsylvania.

This comes a day after media reports, citing anonymous sources, said an earlier group of attorneys from South Carolina were no longer participating in the defense.

South Carolina-based lawyer Butch Bowers had previously been tapped to lead the president’s legal team but parted ways over differing opinions on the direction of the defense arguments, the reports said. Other lawyers on the team who also left were Deborah Barbier and former federal prosecutors Greg Harris, Johnny Gasser, and Josh Howard.

The Epoch Times reached out to the lawyers for confirmation about their departure.

Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, confirmed the reports of a reshuffle on Saturday evening, saying that the “final decision on our legal team” had not yet been made.

On Sunday, Trump’s office released a statement saying that Schoen and Castor would now lead the team, and that Schoen had already been working with Trump and other advisors in preparing for the upcoming trial.

“It is an honor to represent the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, and the United States Constitution,” Schoen said in the statement.

Corrupti-looza: Biden family wastes no time profiting from public office By Monica Showalter

The question is, why are they doing it so early?

In one-party states such as the old PRI-ruled Mexico, the stealing tended to start late. Before a Mexican president was escorted out for the next, he and his would sweep the presidential palace for everything not nailed down — the lightbulbs, the toilet seats, the doorknobs and more. There were exceptions, but it was generally the known narrative. In more than one Latin American country, the last-minute asset grab on the way out actually had a name — “La Pinata.” After all, as former PRI mayor of Mexico City, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, used to say: “A politician who’s poor is a poor politician.” 

Which brings us to Joe Biden, and his family’s unusually fast scramble to profit from his public office right out the gate.

Son Hunter still has his 10% China equity fund stake, contrary to what had been reported, and a new art gig just perfect for bringing in money from non-transparent sources, as the New York Post, in this excellent report notes, all because his blow-pipe ‘art’ done as his personal art therapy is somehow so very valuable. 

Brother Frank, meanwhile, is advertising his connections to old Joe for Florida law firm he’s connected with, using Joe’s name in a bid to drum up business. As New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin reported:

Democrats get ready to unleash the IRS for selective enforcement on political opponents By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/01/democrats_get_ready_to_unleash_the_irs_for_selective_enforcement_on_political_opponents.html

Democrats have an amazing array of third-world dictator tricks targeting their Republican opponents.

Item A is their bid to use the IRS to cut off Republican freedom of assembly.

According to Judicial Watch:

Reminiscent of the Obama Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) witch hunt of conservative groups, a U.S. Senator who sits on the committee that oversees the tax agency is pushing it to revoke a student charity’s nonprofit status. The veteran lawmaker, Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, says the conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, should lose its nonprofit rating because it held large events that could help spread COVID-19. In a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig the senator describes the gatherings as “superspreader” events. He specifically mentions a Palm Beach, Florida winter gala at the Mar-a-Lago Club famously owned by former President Donald Trump.

“According to press reports and social media posts, many participants gathered and mingled indoors without wearing masks, in violation of Palm Beach County’s COVID-19 regulations,” Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, writes to the IRS chief. The powerful chamber has oversight over the IRS, among many other government agencies. “In holding these ‘superspreader’ events, Turning Point USA knowingly exposed hundreds of young people and staff working at the events to serious risk of infection,” the letter continues. The legislator asks the IRS to review whether the group, which has more than 250,000 student members, should continue to enjoy its tax-exempt nonprofit status. “Established law has long held that an organization is not eligible for tax exemption under section 501(c)(3) if a purpose of the organization is contrary to public policy or is illegal,” the letter states, reminding the IRS commissioner of a three-part test established to determine whether an organization’s activities are consistent with tax exemption under the code.

Which is a pretty impressive way of shutting conservative groups down. They’re so concerned about superspreader events, they want to permanently shut down conservative groups themselves for thier events so that conservatives can’t assemble at all. Sounds pretty convenient for their purposes.

Dems Press Pelosi to Smuggle Path to Citizenship Into COVID-19 Relief Bill By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/31/dems-press-pelosi-to-smuggle-path-to-citizenship-into-covid-19-relief-bill-n1419765

Considering the fact that Democrats are abandoning all hope of getting any Republican support in the Senate for Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, there is a growing movement to throw all sorts of radical proposals into the bill, which is now almost certain to be rammed through Congress using the reconciliation process.

That means a simple majority in the Senate could mandate a $15-per-hour minimum wage, climate boondoggles, “social justice” schemes, and a host of other proposals the American people were never asked to vote on.

But the biggest outrage being proposed by Democrats is giving a pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens. A hundred House Democrats led by the Hispanic Caucus signed a letter to the House leadership asking that “undocumented essential workers, Dreamers and temporary protected status recipients” be given a path to citizenship in the pandemic relief bill.

Politico:

“As you continue to work on assembling a COVID-19 reconciliation package and begin work on an economic recovery and jobs package, we urge you to include a pathway to citizenship for essential immigrant workers, Dreamers, and TPS holders, as well as their families,” the group of Democrats wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, shared first with POLITICO.

“The inclusion of these protections is not just a necessity for economic recovery, it is an issue of economic and racial justice for communities that have been the most vulnerable to the crisis and left out in previous relief packages,” they added.

Kamala Harris Sends Joe Manchin and Kirsten Sinema a Not-So-Subtle Message By Rick Moran,

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/31/kamala-harris-sends-joe-manchin-and-kirsten-sinema-a-not-so-subtle-message-n1419768

Joe Biden is putting pressure on moderate Democrats in the Senate to follow his lead to enact his agenda. With no margin for error at all in the Senate, the president is sending a not-so-subtle message to West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema that they better toe the line or suffer the consequences.

The pressure came from Vice President Kamala Harris who made two appearances on local TV stations — one in Arizona and one in West Virginia — to deliver the message.

Fox News:

Whether the Harris interviews were designed to pressure Manchin and Sinema into backing the American Rescue Plan was not immediately clear. Following the TV appearances, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked why the vice president chose to address local media in the two states.

“We want to make the case to the American people across the country. … This is a way to do just that,” Psaki said. She added that Harris would likely do more regional interviews in other states.

In her TV remarks, Harris explained the “urgency” of the $1.9 trillion plan that would give out an additional $1,400 in stimulus checks to Americans, expand unemployment insurance, and increase the child tax credit.

Biden’s Got a Berlin Problem Brewing By Dalibor Rohac & Ivana Stradner

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/01/bidens-got-a-berlin-problem-brewing/

The rise of a German politician with a record of Putin pandering is bad news for the new administration.

T hose who expect President Joe Biden to singlehandedly fix the transatlantic relationship are in for a disappointment. Although the new administration in Washington takes a far more sympathetic view of Europe than its predecessor did, it is not clear that the sentiment will be reciprocated — especially in Berlin.

Following nearly two decades of Angela Merkel’s leadership, Armin Laschet, premier of Germany’s most populous state, Nordrhein-Westfalen, was elected on January 16 as the new leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Barring large swings in polls before the parliamentary election in September, Laschet is on track to become Germany’s next chancellor.

That is bad news for efforts to repair the U.S.–EU relationship. The presence of Laschet at the helm of Europe’s largest economy would give a boost for those in Europe who are reluctant to take their obligations within NATO seriously and would risk tethering the EU closer to both China and Russia.

Much as Biden and Laschet are likely to see eye-to-eye on climate change and other “multilateral” issues, the presumptive German chancellor is a man of little patience with those who see the promotion of democratic values as integral to foreign policy. As such, he is likely to frustrate U.S.-led efforts to hold Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other dictators accountable for their domestic and international practices.

Herbert Hoover And The Jews By Saul Jay Singer

https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/herbert-hoov

Before serving as our 31st president (from 1929-1933), Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964) led the Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the third U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

When the United States entered World War I, President Wilson appointed Hoover, who became known as the country’s “food czar,” to lead the Food Administration. After the war, Hoover led the European Relief Council, which was charged with restoring Europe’s civilian economy and feeding the starving multitudes of Europe. Known as “the Great Humanitarian,” he is credited with saving literally millions of lives, including countless thousands in Jewish communities across Europe.

Hoover’s role administering European food relief brought him in contact with Europe’s Jews and sensitized him to their suffering from both severe economic distress and harsh anti-Semitic persecution. Moreover, a common interest in humanitarian work cemented friendships and political partnerships between Hoover and leading members of the Jewish community, particularly Bernard Baruch.

After Poland’s declaration of statehood in 1918, the Polish army began a campaign of terror against Polish Jews, including the April 5, 1919 summary execution of 37 Jewish residents of Pinsk by a Polish firing squad. Polish leader (and later first prime minister) Ignacy Jan Paderewski persisted in his claim that no Polish pogrom against Jews had ever been perpetrated, until Hoover secured his cooperation with blunt threats to withhold much-needed American support.

Hoover’s food aid to Poland was at the root of the Pinsk Massacre because the murdered Jews were reportedly meeting to discuss how to distribute Hoover’s aid when they were rounded up and shot. According to Lewis Strauss – whom Hoover put in charge of ensuring the equitable treatment of minority groups in the distribution of American aid (more on him below) – Hoover was “the only U.S. Government official to effectively press Poland and its prime minister to act against the pogromists.”

He Took an Envelope by: Diana West

https://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/4177/He-Took-an-Envelope.aspx

” He looted Nancy Pelosi’s Office and Bragged About It???”

No, Richard Barnett took an empty envelope, but more on that later.

For now, the following excerpt from the charging documents has caught my eye and fancy both. It describes the scene of the federal crimes Barnett has been charged with —   

Video surveillance from a camera positioned outside of the Speaker’s main office door captures individuals entering and exiting the office. At approximately 2:30 p.m., several unidentified individuals appear to try the door to the office however the door is locked.

At approximately 2:33 p.m. an unidentified individual pushes in the door to the office.

Got that? At around 2:30 p.m., several people tried the door to the Speaker’s main office and it was locked, according to the complaint. At 2:33 p.m., someone just pushes the door open. As written, it does not sound as this someone entered the main office.

What happened in those three minutes? It’s possible that the first several people unsuccessfully “to try the door” were too timid or otherwise unable to open what may have been a stiff or heavy unlocked door. But it’s also possible somebody unlocked the door in that brief interval. 

If so, the trap was set and waiting for a mouse. If not, a trap was waiting anyway. 

Seventeen minutes pass.

Enter mouse:

At 2:50 p.m. BARNETT is captured on surveillance video carrying an American flag and a cellular phone while entering the doors which lead to the Speaker’s conference room adjoining the main office space.

As he is entering it, he is following behind the unidentified individual in the brown jacket. At 2:56 p.m. BARNETT is captured leaving the main office doors of the Speaker’s office space with only a phone in his hand.