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Vernon Jones: ‘Antifa Are Burning Black Businesses… and Nobody Holds Joe Biden Accountable’ By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/election/tyler-o-neil/2020/10/16/vernon-jones-antifa-are-burning-black-businesses-and-nobody-holds-joe-biden-accountable-n1064598

On Friday, three prominent black supporters of President Donald Trump condemned Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s record on the black community in a press call. Trump campaign Senior Advisor Katrina Pierson, Georgia State Rep. Vernon Jones (D), and former NFL player Herschel Walker each claimed that Donald Trump “has done more for us in 47 months than Joe Biden has done in 47 years in public service.”

Toward the end of the call, Jones condemned Biden for refusing to condemn antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters and slammed the media for not asking Biden about them.

“Antifa are burning black businesses… and nobody holds Joe Biden accountable for that,” Jones declared. He lamented that “more black lives have been killed as the result of these riots and looting and shooting” than from police shootings of unarmed black men “but no one asks him about that.”

Instead, “the liberal media was calling it ‘peaceful protest.’” Jones called this a “black eye on journalism.”

Indeed, the destructive George Floyd riots have disproportionately damaged black communities in Kenosha, Wisc., Minneapolis, and Chicago. The riots destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments. At least 26 Americans have died in the riots, most of them black.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Buckle up: Hunter Biden laptop scandal may be about to get a whole lot worse Mark Anderson

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/buckle_up_hunter_biden_laptop_scandal_may_be_about_to_get_a_whole_lot_worse.html

Facebook and Twitter sacrificed the final shreds of their integrity to try to censor the N.Y. Post article revealing the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop.  But in their rush to throw themselves in the path of the bullet to save Joe, there was a big problem.  They forgot that Rudy Giuliani has the evidence.

The N.Y. Post article was an exclusive.  That means all “fact checkers” that Facebook and Twitter will unleash to fact-check the article will be based on speculation, not fact.  Because they don’t have the laptop.

And, judging from a new video from Giuliani, things may be about to explode in the social media giants’ faces.

If just a quarter of what Rudy Giuliani alleges is true, the evidence contained on the laptop is, finally, the true smoking gun.  This isn’t some salacious accusations bundled by a hired spy relying on Russian disinformation and gossip.  It’s Hunter’s own laptop.  That fact alone could be an enormous blow to the Biden campaign.

Giuliani released bombshell after bombshell in a video released Wednesday evening after the media did their best to censor the N.Y. Post article — making the social media censorship even more damning to those who tried to hide it from the public.  Since receiving the copy of the hard drive, Giuliani has been poring through it, carefully documenting and preparing his prosecution.  What he says he found is the actual evidence of payments, the money-laundering scheme they used, “illegal money for bribes,” and how “some of that money from Ukraine … went to Joe Biden.

Like a prosecutor laying out the case, Giuliani leads off the video with this: “In future days, you will see texts, emails, and photos that demonstrate crimes committed by the Biden crime family — in China (probably most of all), Russia, and several other countries.”

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2020: The ‘Cancel America’ election By Gregory D. Rohrbough

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/2020_the_cancel_america_election.html

THE KLINGENSTEIN VIDEO: https://f.io/C6ITyQwd

I’m a pretty quiet guy. I love politics, I’ve volunteered for and worked on campaigns, and I’m not shy about being either Christian or conservative — but I’m also not bombastic, egotistical, or easily offended. Donald Trump embodies each of these three characteristics, putting his personality on the opposite side of the spectrum from mine. I worked hard against him in the 2016 primaries, and couldn’t pull the lever in the general that year, leaving it blank and voting down-ticket.

But in two weeks, I’m going to pull the lever to help President Donald Trump win re-election. The alternative is a radicalized Democratic Party that uses Joe Biden as a puppet, believes America is racist, and wants to destroy our individual rights — with social media and mainstream media as willing accomplices, and an enfeebled Republican Party as the emasculated opposition.

I was already going to vote for Trump, but a recent speech by Tom Klingenstein has given more juice to the choice. I’d never heard of Klingenstein — he’s a businessman and Chairman of the Claremont Institute, but there isn’t a lot online about him. But his speech about why Trump is the man for our moment has 700,000 views after being posted by American Greatness and being endorsed by Rush Limbaugh. Real Clear Politics published the transcript, and Twitter is abuzz with Klingenstein’s message.

Klingenstein’s message in both the viral speech and a more recent one is clear, concise, and heartfelt: that Trump might not get his vote in another time. But for 2020, the choice is stark: BLM riots have been endorsed by Democrats while most Republicans are muted or even silent in response. Churches have acquiesced to bans on attendance while bars, liquor stores, and BLM protests are open for business. And the child abuse called “transgenderism” is gaining steam, with Biden calling it the “civil rights issue of our time.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Biden’s Tax Whopper He’d raise taxes far higher than they were under Bush or Obama.

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-tax-whopper-11602888777?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Joe Biden got a pass from the media for the myriad whoppers he told about his policies in Thursday night’s town hall. But one that we can’t let slide was his claim that he only intends to make people earning more than $400,000 “pay what they did in the Bush Administration—39.6%.”

Where to begin? The Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 cut the top individual tax rate to 35% from 39.6%. A 2012 deal between the Obama Administration and House Republicans extended the Bush tax cuts for the middle class while returning the top rate to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, plus the 0.9% Medicare surtax imposed by ObamaCare.

Republicans in 2017 lowered the top rate to 37%, and Mr. Biden says he would merely return the rate to where it was before the GOP tax cuts. But that’s before add-ons. He would also restore the Pease deduction limitation for high earners, which tacks on the equivalent of 1.2%.

He also wants to extend the Social Security 12.4% payroll tax to income over $400,000. The current cap is $137,700. Half of the payroll tax is paid by the employer, but economists know it’s still a tax on labor income, which means workers. The top marginal rate would rise to 57% including 3.8% in Medicare taxes, and that’s before state taxes that run as high as 13.3% in California.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s New Covid Wave The lockdowns of the spring haven’t stopped a virus resurgence.

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-new-covid-wave-11602888710?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

One of the biggest falsehoods of 2020 is the notion that everyone other than the United States has a handle on Covid-19. This distortion undergirds Democratic and media criticism of President Trump and some governors for not locking down as aggressively as the Spanish or tracing contacts as assiduously as the Germans.

If only this were true. Instead, most places that have been held forth as coulda-woulda-shoulda models for Washington are now in the grip of their second virus wave. Nor are their pandemic politics any less messy.

Take Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel has been hailed as a leadership model. Germany quickly implemented a test-and-trace program to isolate cases and adopted a relatively mild spring lockdown that seemed to control the spread. Mrs. Merkel won plaudits for her bracing, science-driven media appearances, with credibility bolstered by her earlier career as a chemist.

No longer. Cases started rising again in August and as of this week the number of daily new cases exceeds the spring’s high. The number of deaths is still well short of the spring level, but German pandemic policy has descended into chaos anyway. Some cities have reimposed restrictions, or have added limits on nightlife not seen since the Allied occupation of the 1940s. Berlin faces new political disputes as some states try to ban hotel bookings made by residents of virus hot spots.

Spain and Italy bore the brunt of the spring’s first wave, and their draconian lockdowns were supposed to be a model for bringing a major outbreak under control. It hasn’t stuck. Spain is the epicenter of Europe’s second wave, with cases several times higher than in March and April and deaths rising too. The government has tried to reimpose a lockdown in some areas, but this time with fierce resistance from politicians and businesses wary of doing as much damage to the economy.

France also imposed a strict lockdown in the spring and is also suffering a large second wave. Authorities have imposed new curfews in some cities, including Paris. And police reportedly have raided the homes of some current and former officials as part of an investigation into the government’s earlier pandemic response.

In the United Kingdom, Covid-19 threatens to wreck Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government. Cases and hospitalizations are surging again, despite the alleged success of the spring lockdown. But local officials in the hardest-hit areas object to being singled out for regional lockdowns and demand national restrictions instead. The feud is dividing Mr. Johnson’s Tories while policy vacillations dent his credibility.

These European governments have at least learned lessons from earlier mistakes. The main one is that general lockdowns are no solution. Despite headlines about a return to lockdown in Europe, governments now use that term to mean restrictions that are much milder than the spring’s stay-home orders. Joe Biden might be the only politician in the West who hasn’t figured this out.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mexican Ex-Defense Minister Charged With Helping Cartel Ship Drugs Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos allegedly passed information on investigations to crime bosses:By David Luchnow José de Córdoba

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexican-ex-defense-minister-faces-drug-trafficking-money-laundering-charges-11602869775

MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s former defense minister received bribes from a drug cartel in exchange for allowing it to ship tons of cocaine and other drugs to the U.S., and used his position to pass along information on investigations to crime bosses, U.S. prosecutors alleged.

The allegations were part of an indictment unsealed Friday against Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos, who served as defense minister from 2012 to 2018 in then-President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration and led the army’s war on drug cartels. U.S. agents arrested the retired general at Los Angeles International Airport on Thursday as he arrived with his family.

Gen. Cienfuegos, 72 years old, is the highest-ranking Mexican official ever charged with drug-related corruption. The arrest is expected to damage bilateral cooperation and trust in the campaign against narcotics trafficking; harm the image of one of the few institutions in Mexico that enjoy broad public support; and raise more doubts about Mexico’s strategy of relying on the army to chase cartels.

“This is a huge scandal,” said Jorge Chabat, a professor at the University of Guadalajara. “It’s a devastating blow to the Mexican army,” which he said is the most important pillar of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s security strategy.

Mexico’s president said the arrest showed that corruption is the country’s biggest problem and reinforced his longstanding claim that past administrations were hopelessly corrupt.

“I always said that it wasn’t just a crisis, but a decadence that we were suffering from,” Mr. López Obrador told a news conference. He won a landslide victory in the 2018 elections, promising to do away with a corrupt “mafia of power.”

Gen. Cienfuegos was unavailable to comment. Mexico’s army declined to comment on the allegations.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

U.S. Only Country to Hold Iran’s Mullahs Accountable by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16619/hold-iran-mullahs-accountable

Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”

Holding the Iranian leaders accountable only for human rights violation is not enough. Pressure must be imposed on the regime to stop its military adventurism.

Iran has also, since the beginning of the JCPOA, brought terror and assassination plots to the EU. If the mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, they will not even need to use them; just the threat to European cities should be enough to produce instantaneous acquiescence. German intelligence has acknowledged that more than 1,000 members of Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy, use the country to recruit, raise money and buy arms.

The EU needs to stop its appeasement policies with Iran’s mullahs. It needs to join the US in holding the Iranian leaders accountable.

The only Western government taking concrete steps to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its human rights violations, destabilizing behavior and aggressive policies in the Middle East is the Trump administration. On September 24, the United States blacklisted and slapped sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities over gross violations of human rights. Sanctions were also imposed on the judge who was involved in issuing the death sentence for the Iranian wrestling champion, Navid Afkari.

The EU, the UN and human rights organization have not taken any tangible action, even after Amnesty International released its report on Iran’s shocking human rights violations. Amnesty International warned that the Iranian regime has committed unacceptable atrocities, including victims being frequently “hooded or blindfolded; punched, kicked and flogged; beaten with sticks, rubber hosepipes, knives, batons and cables; suspended or forced into holding painful stress positions for prolonged periods; deprived of sufficient food and potable water; placed in prolonged solitary confinement, sometimes for weeks or even months; and denied medical care for injuries sustained during the protests or as a result of torture.”

The United States also imposed sanctions on Judge Seyyed Mahmoud Sadati, Judge Mohammad Soltani, Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court of Shiraz, and Adel Abad, Orumiyeh for being responsible for gross human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary detentions and unjustified executions. Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, pointed out during a hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

“The U.S. is committed to holding accountable those who deny freedom and justice to people of Iran and later today the United States will announce sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities including the judge who sentenced Navid Afkari to death.”

KRD NEWS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Is Wokeness Winning? The astonishing and continuing success of left illiberalism Andrew Sullivan

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/why-is-wokeness-winning?token=eyJ1c2VyX2l

A question I’ve wrestled with this past year or so is a pretty basic one: if critical race/gender/queer theory is unfalsifiable postmodern claptrap, as I have long contended, how has it conquered so many institutions so swiftly?

It’s been a staggering achievement, when you come to think of it. Critical theory was once an esoteric academic pursuit. Now it has become the core, underlying philosophy of the majority of American cultural institutions, universities, media, corporations, liberal churches, NGOs, philanthropies, and, of course, mainstream journalism. This summer felt like a psychic break from old-school liberalism, a moment when a big part of the American elite just decided to junk the principles that have long defined American democratic life, and embrace what Bari Weiss calls “a mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality.”

It’s everywhere. Across the country, schools and colleges are dumping SATs so they can engineer racial equity, and abolish the idea of merit. The Smithsonian backed the idea that working hard, showing up on time and perfecting a task are functions of “whiteness”. In California, there’s a ballot initiative to legalize government discrimination on the basis of race; and a new mandate that company boards add members from under-represented communities. Corporations who haven’t publicly committed themselves to the full woke project are being hounded by their employees into doing so, meaning hiring and firing on the basis of race, or forcing employees into re-education sessions, guided by DiAngelo and Kendi. The NBA, for Pete’s sake, is now a festival of wokeness, even as viewership collapses. CRT propaganda like the NYT’s 1619 Project can be exposed as untrue and unethical, but the paper can both debunk it in its own pages and still hail it as a triumph. And the pièce de resistance: 21 percent of liberal students in the Ivy League favor some level of violence to stop campus speech they disapprove of.

EDUCATION, KRD NEWS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

OPEN LETTER TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF BRENTWOOD SCHOOL (“BWS”)*****

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://mailchi.mp/5cc5d516eed9/krd-news-an-open-letter-you-must-read?e=9365a7c638

In order to perfect a more diverse, inclusive and equitable education for our children, we respectfully demand an open forum to discuss the seemingly deliberate radicalization of the present curriculum and significant redirection fo the literature being used to teach our children. We further request the immediate cessation of all references to the racist concepts of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and the 1619 Project, without any underlying factual basis with which to understand and contextualize such un-proven and intellectually challenged ideas. We demand an anti-racist environment for our children, not an exclusionary, divisive pedagogy that promotes the re-racialization of America.

Each week for months the administration sends us unsolicited incendiary social justice sermons on our shortcomings as individuals, a school, a country, and as a society. Equity is a wonderful goal, but must be realistically taught as a goal of opportunities and not outcomes. Critical Race Theory is nihilistic, and has as much epistemological support as Eugenics. It teaches our children that: 1) all white people are inherently complicit in racism and perpetuating white supremacy; 2) that science, reason, and rationality are biased white western creations; and 3) equality and objectivity are methods with which systemic racism is perpetuated. The same holds true for the concept of Intersectionality which proffers that everything is connected to overlapping discrimination and disadvantage to all but the white ruling class. These are cynical, pessimistic and divisive beliefs that validate destruction over reconciliation, social justice over equality, liberty and mutual respect.

The 1619 Project holds a special place in displacement education. It proposes an alternative universe with which no reputable historian agrees. It places the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, and that protecting the institution of slavery was a primary motive for the American Revolution. At the insistence of historical scholars, the NYT partially apologized for allowing this narrative to act as historical fact. Further, the National Association of Scholars on October 6, 2020, petitioned the Pulitzer Prize committee to revoke the 1619 Project’s award as a duplicitous attempt to alter the historical record in a manner to deceive the public. This is the reckless history BWS wants to teach our, your, children.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Liberal Totalitarianism on Campus By Daniel J. Mahoney

Posted By on October 17th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/16/liberal_totalitarianism_on_campus_144472.html

American liberals once prided themselves on their fidelity to the First Amendment. Indeed, they had an expansive understanding of it. They defended unpopular speech and even the most provocative examples of “freedom of expression.” One could question their hesitation to set limits in these areas, but there was something admirable about their principled defense of the free exchange of ideas.

This kind of liberalism, however, is in massive retreat today and is barely present on our colleges and university campuses. Instead, the forces of ideological correctness demand intellectual and even political conformity and seek out dissenting voices to humiliate and silence. Two recent examples from Harvard University and Middlebury College illustrate the illiberalism that has become ascendant on many campuses and in many of our cultural institutions. The responses to these incidents, however, provide some grounds for hope.

Last week, Harvard student Joshua M. Conde, an “editorial editor” for The Harvard Crimson, wrote an op-ed demanding that two instructors be fired for offenses against the new racial norms animating the woke left. The case of one of them, Diana J. Schaub, is best known to me. I have admired her writings and thoughtful presence in the conservative intellectual community going on 35 years now. She is also a friend. Dr. Schaub is a political theorist who has written gracefully and profoundly on the political thought of Montesquieu, the liberal French philosopher who was an inspiration for the federalism and separation of powers championed by the authors of the Federalist Papers. Her work also includes deeply thoughtful expositions of African American political thinkers.