Has the Democrats’ push to depose Biden begun?

The contour lines of an approaching scenario in which Biden, exposed as both frail and mendacious, is forced to step down & concede the presidency to his radical Vice President, are gradually coming into focus

 A significant portion of the public does not believe that the November 3, 2020, presidential election was fairly conducted…Once again, four justices on this court cannot be bothered with addressing what the statutes require to assure that absentee ballots are lawfully cast Patience D. Roggensack, Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, December 14, 2020. 
 …a majority of this court unconstitutionally converts the…Elections Commission’s mere advice into governing “law,” thereby supplanting the actual election laws enacted by the people’s elected representatives in the legislature and defying the will of [the state’s]citizens. When the state’s highest court refuses to uphold the law, and stands by while an unelected body of six commissioners rewrites it, our system of representative government is subverted—Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley, December 14, 2020.  
Investigators have been examining multiple financial issues, including whether Hunter Biden and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China…Some of those transactions involved people who the FBI believe sparked counterintelligence concerns, a common issue when dealing with Chinese business—CNN, December 10, 2020.
The November 2020 elections were an extraordinary event in which the bizarre—even the outlandish—became an integral part of the everyday humdrum routine.

The implausible and even more implausible?

This is not a politically partisan observation—for it is valid no matter which side of the Democrat/GOP political divide one might happen to be. After all, it is difficult to know what is more implausibly far-fetched:
(a) that—as the Republicans claim—there was pervasive electoral fraud on a scale so massive that it determined—indeed, inverted—the outcome of the ballot; or
(b) that—as the Democrats claim—as a lackluster and lackadaisical candidate, perceptibly frail and aging, Joe Biden genuinely managed to amass the highest number of votes ever in a presidential election, surpassing Obama’s previous 2008 record by almost 12 million votes.
Making this latter scenario even more difficult to accept at face value is that Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, was hardly an electrifying voter getter, having being forced to drop out quite early on in her own party’s primaries for its choice of a presidential candidate. Indeed, Biden’s choice of Harris as his prospective vice president was, in itself, more than a little incongruous, as she had viciously excoriated him during the primaries for his record on race relations, complicity with segregationists, and sexual impropriety, adamantly proclaiming that she believed the women who had complained about his unwanted sexual advances.

“Many doubt the fairness of November elections…”

Indeed, in light of his anemic, largely “no-show” election campaign, in which he studiously avoided articulating his position on a number of crucial issues, Biden’s apparent electoral achievement is even mor bewildering. Indeed, referring to the Biden campaign, one media channel observed dourly: “There is no surge of feeling, zero passion…Instead, the closest thing to enthusiasm…among voters is resigned, faint praise. ‘He’s a decent man’…but you can’t move the needle of history with flaccid decency.”
Another channel noted: “Biden’s performance [in exceeding Obama’s 2008 record] is incredible considering the voter enthusiasm – especially among young people – that his former boss had…”.
Accordingly, the sentiment expressed by the Chief Justice of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, Patience D. Roggensack, was hardly surprising when she warned that, A significant portion of the public does not believe that the November 3, 2020, presidential election was fairly conducted.” 
These words were part of Roggensack’s dissenting opinion in a hearing on several challenges by Donald Trump to Wisconsin’s election results. Although the motion was rejected by a 4-3 vote, at least one of the majority justices is on public record as being vehemently inimical to Trump, and the decision was severely criticized by the dissenting minority as being judicially unsound.
Thus, Justice Annette Ziegler, wrote, “The majority seems to create a new bright-line rule that the candidates and voters are without recourse and without any notice should the court decide to later conjure up an artificial deadline concluding that it prefers that something would have been done earlier…That has never been the law, and it should not be today.

Abdicating constitutional duty in the most important election of our time? 

Disapprovingly, she chastised: “It is a game of “gotcha.” I respectfully dissent, because I would decide the issues presented and declare what the law is.
Accusing the majority of “abdication of its constitutional duty”, she lamented: “Unfortunately, our court’s adoption of laches as a means to avoid judicial decisionmaking has become a pattern of conduct. A majority of this court decided not to address the issues in this case when originally presented to us … In concluding that it is again paralyzed from engaging in pertinent legal analysis, our court, unfortunately, provides no answer or even any analysis of the relevant statutes, in the most important election…of our time.” 
Ziegler was at pains to underline: “To be clear, I am not interested in a particular outcome. I am interested in the court fulfilling its constitutional responsibility.”
Expressing grave concern over the majority’s indecision, Ziegler chided: “While sometimes it may be difficult to undertake analysis of hot-button legal issues——as a good number of people will be upset no matter what this court does——it is our constitutional duty. We cannot hide from our obligation under the guise of laches.”
Accordingly, she concluded that: “the rule of law and equity demand that we answer these questions for not only this election, but for elections to come.
Indeed, given the relative proximity of the court hearing to the actual ballot process, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, in order to comply with the majority conditions for the motion to be heard on its merits, the Trump legal team would have had to submit its case against the alleged infractions before those infractions were committed! 

Covering corruption…or not?

The apparent judicial reluctance to deal with allegations of widespread fraud leads us to another manifestation of partisan reticence, that of the mainstream media in their pre-election coverage of news highly pertinent to the voters’ decision at the ballot box—which seems to have drastically subsided in the wake of the elections.
Arguably, this was best capsulated in the December 10th headline in an established Tennessee daily:Uninterested before the election, national media now find Hunter Biden story worth mentioning.
The ensuing editorial shrewdly observes: “Too late to help the voting public form an objective opinion about their presidential choice, the national media has suddenly decided that the Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden are worth mentioning.”
It continues: We have long believed— and said — that the younger Biden’s business dealings, and his father’s major or minor role in them, was at least a disqualifying criterion for the elder Biden’s presidential election. It is clear, after all, that the younger Biden would not have been involved with various businesses in the Ukraine and China over the last decade had his father not been vice president at the time.”
Indeed, it is clear!
In a grave reproach of the mainstream media, it asserted: “National media outlets knew before last month’s election that federal prosecutors had opened a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China, but they did not pursue the story.” 
In a stinging rebuke, it charged: “They also refused to further investigate the New York Post pre-election story about emails allegedly contained on the younger Biden’s laptop pointing to shady dealings between Joe Biden and Ukraine…In truth, they withheld critical information from readers and viewers so that Biden might beat President Donald Trump, the man they l[o]ve to hate.” 

“Too disgusting to repeat…” 

For example, leaked recordings exposed CNN’s president and political director blocking coverage of the New York Post’s explosive exposé on Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings overseas.
Thus, on October 14, political director David Chalian was heard on a conference call, instructing: “Obviously we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden.
Just two days later (October 16), CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker informed his staff that: “I don’t think that we should be repeating unsubstantiated smears just because the right-wing media suggests that we should.
On October 22, in a televised discussion, CNN anchor Jeff Tapper told his colleague Bakari Sellers, that, “…the rightwing is going crazy with all sorts of allegations about Biden and his family. Too disgusting to even repeat here.
The Media Research Center (MRC) conducted a review spanning the period October 14-22 of ABC, CBS, NBC’s evening and morning shows and their Sunday roundtable programs, as well as ABC’s and NBC’s townhall events with Joe Biden and President Trump.
According to MRC: “Out of a total of 73.5 hours of news programming, there were less than 17 minutes (16 minutes, 42 seconds) spent on the latest scandals involving Joe Biden’s son.” To be precise, the media watchdog found that ABC devoted zero (!) seconds to the reported Hunter Biden scandals, NBC just 6 minutes, 9 seconds, while, CBS led the broadcast networks with a “still-measly 10 minutes and 33 seconds.” 
All-pervasive “Russian disinformation” 
Moreover, even when the Biden story was mentioned, it was, by and large, denigrated as “Russian disinformation” (see for example here and here). 
On October 19, Politico published a report, dramatically headlined Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.
It commences with the following unequivocal pronouncement: “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation’.”
However, in the letter itself, the “former intel officials”, who—unsurprisingly—included the ardently pro-Biden and fervently anti-Trump John Brennan (former CIA Director), and James Clapper (former Director of National Intelligence), seem to be far less unequivocally clear-cut and strident. Indeed, they were at pains to insert a paragraph, clearly formulated to protect their professional “rear-ends”: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post… are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement…[However] there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.” 
This, of course, leaves the reader to puzzle over that if the “former intel officials” had no clue whether or not the emails were, in fact, authentic or the product of “Russian involvement”, how could they possibly make the determination that they were—and why would they lend they names and reputations to create a politically partisan impression, which, by their own admission, they could not substantiate?
Or were they counting on the assumption that few ever read beyond the headlines and the opening paragraph?

Abrupt change of heart

With the election over, there seems to have been a perceptible shift in the media attitude towards the allegations of malfeasance in the Biden family’s overseas business activities.
For example, CNN anchor, Jake Tapper, seems to have undergone an abrupt change of heart as to the gravity of these allegations, having, prior to the election—as we have seen—dismissed them in the strongest possible terms. However, several weeks after the presidential election, with Biden preparing to become the 46th president, Tapper apparently had few qualms in raising the subject publicly and the Biden family’s business ties began to be gradually emerging as fair game to him (see here).
A similar shift in journalistic sentiment was evident in other media channels.
Take for example, the Los Angeles Times (LAT). As early as March 6, it ran an editorial headlined The GOP’s Senate investigation into Hunter Biden is a charade — and they know it, proclaiming that the entire probe into the Biden’s far-flung business dealings was little more than flimsily disguised political shenanigans.
However, soon after the elections, this changed markedly.
On December 9, LAT ran a report headlined Hunter Biden tax inquiry examining Chinese business dealings. It disclosed that: “The Justice Department’s investigation scrutinizing Hunter Biden’s taxes has been examining some of his Chinese business dealings, among other financial transactions.” 

Abrupt (cont.) 

The report continued: “…The investigation was launched in 2018, a year before his father, Joe Biden, announced his candidacy for president”—i.e. months before the LAT editorial board dismissed GOP claims regarding the existence of such a probe as “a charade.”
Indeed, a little over a month after the polls had closed, it conceded that, “The younger Biden has a history of business dealings in a number of countries, and the revelation of a federal investigation puts a renewed spotlight on the questions about his financial dealings that dogged his father’s successful White House campaign.”
Three days later (December 12), LAT again raised the subject in a piece entitled
Hunter Biden subpoena seeks information on Burisma, other entities” stating that, “A subpoena seeking documents from Hunter Biden asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Ukraine gas company Burisma…”  Significantly, it added: “The breadth of the subpoena, issued Tuesday, underscores the wide lens prosecutors are taking as they examine the younger Biden’s finances and international business ventures…”

The harbinger of far-reaching political change? 

This post-election metamorphosis of media mood could also herald the onset of a far-reaching political shift within the Democratic party.
After all, in contrast to the accusations against Trump of colluding with Russia and conniving with Ukraine, which were based largely on third party hearsay and innuendo, the evidence accumulating against the Biden family seems far more solid and compelling—including first-hand witness accounts and emails, whose authenticity has yet to be denied.
As coverage on the alleged Biden scandal continues—and certainly if it turns out that Biden has been untruthful over his complicity in his family’s questionable business operations—his continued incumbency is likely to be increasingly challenged until it is no longer tenable and he is compelled to transfer power to his radical Vice President, Kamala Harris.
Of course, there will be those who discount this possibility as being beyond the bounds of probability.  However, they would do well to bear in mind that the overwhelming preponderance of the ideo-political energy in the party comes from the more radical Left-wing, which has already proven that it can assert its will on the party apparatus in the past.
Recently, rumblings for changes in leadership within the party have begun, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, calling for a structural change in the party and for the old guard to be replaced with younger legislators to promote the radical policies she advocates. Indeed, she has even called explicitly for the replacement of the party’s Congressional leadership–of both Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House…

Will frailty & mendacity ensconce Harris as president?

The contour lines of an approaching scenario in which Biden, exposed as both frail and mendacious, is forced to step down and concede the presidency to Harris, are gradually coming into focus.
With an ever-more critical press and an ever-more radical intra-party opposition, we may well be on the cusp of a new American (or rather unAmerican) revolution—a revolution in which a cardboard cutout president is driven from office by people imbued with a  political credo, forged by figures and ideas not only different from, but entirely contrary to, those that made America, America.
It is indeed, a scenario that risks transforming America into a de-Americanized post-America—an unrecognizable shadow of its former self.
That will be the terrible price the American electorate has inflicted on itself for submitting to the fit of puerile and petulant pique that molded its choice this November.
©Martin Sherman. All rights reserved.
RELATED VIDEO: Tom Fitton: Justice Department engaged in effort to protect Joe Biden.

I Saw Mommy Beheading Santa Claus: Another Precarious Christmas in the Age of Jihad


Another Christmas is upon us, and it’s the same old story: in Muslim lands, Christians are oppressed and in constant danger of violent jihad attacks. And in the lands once known as Christendom, jihadis threaten new jihad massacres.
And so it was no surprise when International Christian Concern reported Wednesday that “security forces in Pakistan reportedly stopped a major terror attack planned to take place on Christmas Day in Peshawar. In a raid on a house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Khyber district, four terrorists, including the leader of a banned militant outfit, were arrested.” Among those arrested was Zakir Afridi, the commander of the jihad terror group Lashkar-e-Islam.
“Along with the terrorists,” International Christian Concern reported, “security forces seized three suicide jackets and six improvised explosive devices.”
If this plot wasn’t inspired by a call from the Islamic State to murder Christians on Christmas Day, it certainly had the same goal in mind. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that “on December 12, 2020, online supporters of the Islamic State (ISIS) distributed an audio clip of a new nasheed (Islamic religious chant) titled ‘Coldly Kill Them With Hate And Rage.’” The jolly folks who “released the song on Telegram included a poster featuring a Christmas tree with a bomb attached to it, and the caption: ‘Just Terror 2020. Here are their holidays at your doorsteps, and we are here too! And we are about to enter them with you!’ The post also includes the hashtag #MerryChristmas, suggesting it be used on social media to disseminate the song.”
The charming ditty includes these lyrics: “They fought Islam day and night/Killed many Muslims all in one time/Vengeance fill the hearts and minds/Coldly kill them with hate and rage/Stab them, shoot them or a blast/Make their media cry and broadcast/The khilafah [caliphate].” Well, it ain’t exactly “The First Noel,” but at least they tried.
Meanwhile, OpIndia reported Monday that an old video from the renowned Islamic apologist Zakir Naik has gone viral this year. In it, Naik, who has been accused of ties to jihad terror activity, answers a young man’s question about whether or not it is permissible for Muslims to wish Christians a merry Christmas: “To reach your goals, you cannot use wrong means, brother. What is Haram [forbidden] to them is also Haram to you. When you are wishing Merry Christmas to them, you are agreeing that he is the son of God and that is Shirk [the grave sin of associating partners with Allah in worship]. Because they believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. Irrespective of whether they are practising Christians or not, they celebrate the day because of His birthday…Is saying Merry Christmas wrong? I am telling you it is wrong. It is 100% wrong according to me….If you don’t know what Christmas stands for and happen to wish someone, Allah may forgive you. If you drink alcohol, mistaking it for Pepsi, Allah may forgive you. But if you are doing it to build a relationship after knowing what Christmas stands for, you are building your place in Jahannam (Hell). Therefore, for reaching good means, you never have to follow bad means. You have to follow the guidance of the Quran and the Sunnah (literature based on life and deeds of Prophet Muhammad).”
In a similar vein, the German-language site Philosophia Perennis site reported Saturday that another old video has gone viral there, featuring a Muslim preacher, Abu Maher, declaring: “Christmas is an insult to Allah!” The video was published by the Deutschsprachige Muslimische Gemeinschaft e.V. (“German-speaking Muslim Community, DMG) which describes itself as “an association in Braunschweig that has existed for many years” and states that “we represent Islam according to the understanding of the first three generations after the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and want to convey Islam – based on the Qurân and Sunna (path of the Prophet) and its pure message – to our fellow human beings and society. It is important to us to enable all interested parties to get to know the values ​​and norms that Islam imposes on people.” The DMG adds: “As a Muslim community, we represent a part of the local society. We respect the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, but at the same time insist on our basic rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, and want like every citizen and let every citizen live and live in peace and mutual tolerance.”
In light, however, of its denunciation of Christmas, its call for peace and tolerance appears to be in reality a call for peace and tolerance on the basis of the submission of non-Muslims to Muslims.
None of this is new, or surprising. It’s just another Christmas in the age of jihad.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Pro-Israel Christian Group Torches Radical Hater Warnock in New Ad


A Radical’s Radical: Raphael Warnock is too radical for Georgia


Thank you, CUFI. Raphael Warnock is a dangerous and radical anti-Semite, and he must not be elected to the United States Senate.

Pro-Israel Christian Group Torches Warnock in New Ad

By Washington Free Beacon, December 23, 2020
The political arm of the largest pro-Israel membership group in the United States launched an ad campaign Wednesday targeting Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Democratic candidate for Senate in the Georgia runoff.
The 30-second spot from Christians United for Israel Action Fund takes aim at both Warnock’s record of statements critical of Israel and his recent attack on evangelical Christians, traditionally a staunchly pro-Israel denomination.
The ad calls him “Radical Raphael Warnock” and says he is “preaching a gospel of hate.” The voiceover says “Warnock demonized Christians who stand with Israel,” a reference to his sermon after the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem in 2018 in which he accused “mealy-mouthed evangelical preachers” of being “responsible for the mess that we found ourselves in … misquoting and misinterpreting the Scripture, talking about peace.”

A spokesperson for the group said the ad is backed by a six-figure digital and social media buy targeting pro-Israel voters in Georgia, where the organization has approximately 500,000 members, according to the spokesperson.
Last month, Pastor Jay Bailey, CUFI’s Georgia state director, published an op-ed criticizing Warnock’s “condemnations of Israel” as “disgusting.”
The organization announced this week it had reached 10 million members.
Warnock is locked in a tight race with incumbent senator Kelly Loeffler (R.). The runoff election will take place on Jan. 5.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Nuclear Submarine enters Persian Gulf after Pompeo blames Iran for Rocket Attack on U.S. Embassy in Baghdad


Tension is heating up in the Persian Gulf following a rocket attack on the American Embassy in Baghdad that left a civilian dead.
The nuclear sub sends a clear message to Iran, but clearly Iran has been emboldened by its expectation of a Biden administration that will enable billions to flow once again into its coffers, facilitate its nuclear arsenal build-up, expand its influence in the Middle East, and further enable it to terrorize its targets abroad, including Iranian dissidents who should be safe in the West.

“Israeli Submarine Reportedly Crossed Suez in ‘Message’ to Iran as US Warships Enter Persian Gulf,” by Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik News, December 22, 2020:

A US nuclear-powered submarine entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December as part of Washington’s latest deterrence mission against Iran as tensions spiked after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the American Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.
An Israeli Navy submarine visibly crossed the Suez Canal above water last week in what is being seen as a show of force aimed at Iran, Kan News, a public broadcaster, reported on Monday night.
Arab intelligence officials had reportedly confirmed to Kan News that the IDF Navy submarine surfaced and faced the Persian Gulf, which lies on the other side of Saudi Arabia, in a deliberate act, approved by Egypt, and purportedly intended to ‘send a message’ to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
There has not been any official comment from the Israel Defence Forces, with the IDF saying it does not respond to “reports of this kind.”
Earlier, on 21 December IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi voiced a warning to Tehran against attacking Israel, vowing that the Jewish state would retaliate forcefully against any aggressive moves.
“Recently, we have heard increased threats from Iran against the State of Israel. If Iran and its partners, members of the radical axis [Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups], whether in the first circle of states or the second, carry out actions against Israel, they will discover their partnership to be very costly,” Kohavi was quoted by The Times of Israel as saying at a military ceremony. He added:
“The IDF will forcefully attack anyone who takes part, from near or far, in activities against the State of Israel or Israeli targets. I am saying this plainly and am describing the situation as it is — the response and all the plans have been prepared and practised.”
‘Message to Iran’
The reported move by the IDF Navy comes as a similar manoeuvre was undertaken on Monday by a US submarine. The US Navy confirmed that the guided-missile submarine USS Georgia entered the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on 21 December, accompanied by two American warships, the guided-missile cruisers USS Port Royal (CG 73) and USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), amid heightened tensions with Iran.
​A US Navy official confirmed to Fox News that the latest movements in the Persian Gulf had been “long planned” ahead of the approaching anniversary of the killing of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, in Iraq on 3 January 2020 by an American drone.
According to the American official, the manoeuvres were not in response to the rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on Sunday.
According to a statement from the US Navy, accompanied by photos of USS Georgia at the surface, the vessel can carry 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles and 66 special forces soldiers.
The Navy warned that the military move seeks to demonstrate “the United States’ commitment to regional partners and maritime security with a full spectrum of capabilities to remain ready to defend against any threat at any time.”
US military officials have been apprehensive of a possible attack by Iran to avenge the assassination of Soleimani in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in Iraq in early January.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Chief Commander, Hossein Salami, said in September on the guard’s website that Tehran will avenge the US killing of its top commander General Qasem Soleimani by targeting those involved, in an “honourable” retaliation.
Spike in Iran Tensions
The show of force in the Persian Gulf comes amid heightened tensions with Iran after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid the blame with Iranian-backed militias for a rocket attack on the US Embassy compound in Baghdad on 20 December.
The attack left at least one local civilian dead, while no embassy personnel were killed or injured, according to NPR, which cited US diplomatic sources….

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Some Republican Senators Are on Board With Electoral College Challenge: Rep. Taylor Greene

This article was published in the Epoch Times on December 23, 2020.

Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that some Republican senators will join an effort to challenge Electoral College votes when the joint session of Congress meets on Jan. 6.

The process must be initiated by requires one senator and one House representative. In addition to Greene, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and a number of GOP House lawmakers have pledged to challenge the votes.

“We have a very strong case, and our numbers are growing strong,” she said of the effort on Dec. 22 on Newsmax. “We talked to senators, and we’re good to go for this objection.”

Greene didn’t say which senators would join the challenge. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) have both suggested they might get involved, but there’s been no public confirmation.

If an objection is filed during the joint session for key states that cast Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, each chamber will have to hold a debate for two hours on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Then a vote will have to be held in each chamber on whether to throw the votes out.

*****

Continue reading at The Epoch Times

Fifty-Five Years of Denial about Black Lives

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right in 1965 about the black underclass but continues to be ignored or maligned.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan was “woke” about the injustices suffered by African Americans before most of today’s “wokes” were born. He was also right about the root cause of the permanency of the black underclass.

Strangely, however, instead of being remembered for his insights and caring, Moynihan has been maligned by the American intelligentsia through the years and is largely unknown by the new generation of social-justice activists and by the Black Lives Matter movement.

In 1965, Moynihan was a sociologist for the U.S. Department of Labor. He would later become a U.S. Senator. He published a scholarly paper in March of that year for the DOL, a report that contained an N-word in its title, which turns off prospective readers but was the official government terminology of the day: “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”

Moynihan should be a hero to today’s wokes. With sensitivity, compassion and honesty, he explained that slavery in the U.S. had been especially vile, because, unlike slavery in Brazil and elsewhere, slaves were seen by slaveowners as chattel and not as humans, a belief that resulted in male and female slaves not being allowed to marry, in slaves being separated from their families and sold, and in the establishment of a matriarchal subculture.

Later, during Jim Crow, black men who attempted to protect their families were humiliated or worse. And later still, welfare made black men unnecessary in providing for their families. These developments further entrenched the matriarchal culture and led black men to find counterproductive and self-defeating ways of expressing their masculinity.

Of course, as Moynihan went on to explain, blacks also faced poverty, discrimination, bad schools, and biased law enforcement. So did certain immigrant groups, but not to the same extent as blacks. With the advent of civil rights and voting rights, many blacks did overcome these barriers and rise to the middle-class, but to a lesser degree than disadvantaged immigrants.

Immigrants and poor whites in general had an advantage that blacks didn’t have: a much higher incidence of two-parent families. To that point, Moynihan wrote this:

As a direct result of this high rate of divorce, separation, and desertion, a very large percent of Negro families are headed by females. While the percentage of such families among whites has been dropping since 1940, it has been rising among Negroes.

The percent of nonwhite [black] families headed by a female is more than double the percent for whites. Fatherless nonwhite families increased by a sixth between 1950 and 1960, but held constant for white families.

It has been estimated that only a minority of Negro children reach the age of 18 having lived all their lives with both of their parents.

On a related note, Moynihan provided the following statistics on the welfare program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children:

The AFDC program, deriving from the long-established Mothers’ Aid programs, was established in 1935 principally to care for widows and orphans, although the legislation covered all children in homes deprived of parental support because one or both of their parents are absent or incapacitated.

In the beginning, the number of AFDC families in which the father was absent because of desertion was less than a third of the total. Today it is two thirds. HEW estimates “that between two thirds and three fourths of the 50 percent increase from 1948 to 1955 in the number of absent father families receiving ADC may be explained by an increase in broken homes in the population.”

A 1960 study of Aid to Dependent Children in Cook County, Ill. stated:

“The ‘typical’ ADC mother in Cook County was married and had children by her husband, who deserted; his whereabouts are unknown, and he does not contribute to the support of his children. She is not free to remarry and has had an illegitimate child since her husband left. (Almost 90 percent of the ADC families are Negro.)”

These excerpts are but a tiny fraction of the sobering statistics in the Moynihan report.

The key message of the report was that the trend of broken black families was going in the wrong direction and would result in a permanent underclass and increased social pathologies, which would not be overcome by civil rights (or by diversity and inclusion today). Indeed, since the report, the percent of one-parent black families has more than doubled, with a corresponding rise in pathologies, especially and most horrendously, the shootings of teens by other teens. This mirrors what Moynihan predicted, as follows:

The family structure of lower-class Negroes is highly unstable, and in many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown.

There is considerable evidence that the Negro community is in fact dividing between a stable middle class group that is steadily growing stronger and more successful, and an increasingly disorganized and disadvantaged lower class group. There are indications, for example, that the middle class Negro family puts a higher premium on family stability and the conserving of family resources than does the white middle class family.

What Moynihan didn’t foresee was that the percent of one-parent white families would also more than double over the upcoming decades, due to changing mores, women entering the workforce, and the feminist movement – a trend that also has resulted in entrenched social pathologies.

Today, tellingly, certain Asian races in America have the highest percent of traditional families and the highest income and educational achievement.

Many middle- and working-class communities have become Potemkin villages, whether white or black. From the outside they look like communities of yesteryear, with nice ranch homes, lawns, and tree-lined streets. But the facades hide a divorce rate of 50%, substance abuse, and despondent, angry children – and in some cities, gangs of teens who sell drugs and prey on their neighbors, which in turn results in a larger police presence and the increased likelihood of misunderstandings or worse between cops and citizens.

The suburb of Ferguson outside of my hometown of St. Louis is a case in point. From the outside, the homes are nicer than the homes in my boyhood working-class neighborhood, but the worst thing my friends and I did as kids in the old hood was soap windows or ring doorbells and run. We didn’t steal from a neighborhood store, or walk the streets in the middle of the night, or fear the cops, who were part of the community and known by name.

Anyway, given that Moynihan has been proven prophetic, why is his report maligned or ignored today? Three reasons:

First, the report used the N-word, which at best is now seen as anachronistic, and at worst, is a trigger for accusations of racism or calls for cancelling.

Second, overly-sensitive feminists misinterpret Moynihan as having advocated for a patriarchal society, because of his concern over fathers being displaced from family life.

Third, his reference to illegitimacy is incorrectly seen as passing moral judgment, when in fact, he did no such thing but simply used statistics that were available at the time and were rough proxies for fatherless families. He knew that unmarried parents were not necessarily irresponsible parents or single parents.

I’ll close on a personal note and retell an anecdote that I’ve written about elsewhere.

At about the same time as the Moynihan report, I was a teen working as the only white on an otherwise all-black clubhouse staff at an exclusive St. Louis country club, where Italians and Jews weren’t welcome as members. St. Louis was the city known for the infamous Dredd Scott case, the infamous Pruitt-Igoe public housing complex, racial tensions and riots, and white flight to the suburbs. Now the city has just a fraction of its former population and one of the highest crime rates in the nation.

Waiters at the clubhouse restaurant were former waiters on Pullman train cars and were solidly in the middle-class. They were the epitome of good manners, personal grooming, and classy dress The same for clubhouse manager Bill Williams, who wore tailored suits and cufflinks, which were two articles of attire that my dad didn’t own.

For extra money on my off-hours, I would wash and wax their big Buicks and Pontiacs, which, unlike our family car, didn’t have rusted-out floorboards, through which the pavement could be seen flying by. Neighbors marveled at the cars and marveled even more when Bill Williams came for a visit.

At the lower end of the class spectrum were the cooks, dishwasher and janitors. A former prize fighter, the dishwasher had a long scar on his face and a violent temper, especially when drunk.

One of my jobs was cleaning the employee restroom in the basement of the clubhouse. After I had finished the chore one morning, the dishwasher walked into the restroom, peed on the floor, and said, “Clean it up whitey.” A young and muscular coworker, who happened to walk by at that moment, threw the dishwasher against the wall and said, “You clean it up, you black motherf _ _ _ _r.” Not wanting trouble, I said, “That’s okay. I’ll get it.”

Despite these class and behavioral differences, and despite the discrimination my coworkers faced in St. Louis, almost all of them were married and took pride in being good family men. They would invite me to their family picnics in Forest Park, where they would cook the best barbecued ribs in the world. Other than skin color and cuisine, the picnics were just like the picnics of Italian families.

Sadly, as Moynihan had warned, much of this family foundation subsequently crumbled, not only for many blacks but also for many whites. Sadder still, wokes don’t know this history and are unaware of the dreadful socioeconomic consequences of fatherless families.

The Moynihan report should be required reading in colleges, but that’s a pipe dream.

Americans in Name Only (AINO)


Who am I?
Identity is the universal conundrum of the human experience. We want to know who we are, where we came from, and if our lives have meaning. So, who are we?
We begin with our most basic identity. “It’s a boy!” “It’s a girl!” After sexual identity comes family identity, national identity, religious identity, educational identity, professional identity, and so on. Our identity gives us standing. We have identification cards that verify our identity. We have passports, licenses, diplomas, marriage certificates, and so on.
We verify our identity because we value our identity personally, and because ordered liberty requires verification that we are who we say we are. We trust that a hospital board certified surgeon is operating on us. We trust that a licensed pilot is flying our plane. We trust that those entrusted with our health and safety are trustworthy. American life is based on the ability to verify identity, and has established strict penalties for violating identity verification.
American jurisprudence is rooted in the motto “Trust and verify.” We give sworn testimony with an oath. “I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I shall give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Intentionally lying under oath is the crime of perjury – a felony punishable to up to five years in prison.
Identity is an integral part of the universal human experience because it defines reality. We either are, or we are not, who we say we are. In politics and international affairs, identity has both domestic and international implications.
National identity is the universal conundrum of world politics. We want to know who we are, where we came from, and if our lives have meaning. The 2020 American presidential election is redefining our national identity. What does it mean to be an American?
The three supporting pillars of American life, family, faith, and flag are being challenged. The traditional two-party system of Republicans and Democrats no longer represents patriotic disagreements on best policies and practices to preserve and protect our constitution and founding principles.
Today, the division is between globalism and American sovereignty. Our national identity as a sovereign constitutional republic is being challenged by globalists whose objective is planetary governance. The Democrat party is represented by corrupt, China-centric globalist Joe Biden. The Republican party is represented by populist, America-first patriot President Donald J. Trump.
RINO, the acronym for Republican in Name Only, has become part of everyday political language in America today. RINOs reject President Trump’s America-first agenda, and embrace Democrat China-centric globalism. I propose a new acronym, AINO, American in name only.
America is being convulsed by massive voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election designed to defeat Americanism and impose globalism. It is a redefinition of what it means to be an American. If the AINO coup d état succeeds, our national identity as Americans will be surrendered and replaced by a new identity as global citizens.
The ancient Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, teaches that war is deceit. The ruling Communist Chinese Party (CCP) is at war with America today, its goal is to make America its proxy.
When American companies started manufacturing in China they did it for cheap labor/increased profits – their interests were economic. But manufacturing in China means being in business with the CCP. China’s interests were always political. The CCP is a replacement socio-political system that exploits American greed to achieve its political objective of world dominance.
Short-term American greed is being exploited for long-term Chinese gain. It is the same short-term/long-term interests and thinking that distinguishes east from west. Multiculturalism requires mutual respect – replacement systems are singularities.
President Trump and his legal team are exposing the international and domestic conspiracy to fraudulently award Joe Biden the presidency.
Greedy technocrats, corporatists, mainstream media moguls, corrupt Congressional Republican RINOs, and Democrat AINOs have finally found common cause and come together in a unified attempt to stop POTUS from exposing them all! The bipartisan political corruption of the Washington swamp is so massive and so deep, it is positively staggering.
Patriotic Americans embrace their national identity as citizens of a sovereign constitutional republic. Patriotic Americans reject the political class and their globalist reset of enslavement. The reset that the majority of Americans voted for in 2016 and yes, again in 2020, is the draining of the treasonous, China-centered political swamp.
Sun Tzu was right – war is deceit. American identity is the core contention of the 2020 election and war on America. American patriots must stand with President Trump and fight the war of deceit, disinformation, and coup d état to preserve our American identity because we are Americans, not Americans in name only.
See Linda’s Pundicity page and website. Contact Linda at info@lindagoudsmit.com
©Linda Goudsmit. All rights reserved.

Mask Mandates Seem to Make CCP Virus Infection Rates Climb, Study Says

This article is published in The Epoch Times on December 22, 2020 and updated on December 23, 2020

Protective-mask mandates aimed at combating the spread of the CCP virus that causes the disease COVID-19 appear to promote its spread, according to a report from RationalGround.com, a clearinghouse of COVID-19 data trends that’s run by a grassroots group of data analysts, computer scientists, and actuaries.

Researchers examined cases covering a 229-day period running from May 1 through Dec. 15 and compared the days in which state governments had imposed mask mandates and the days when they hadn’t.

In states with a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID-19 cases, which works out to an average of 27 cases per 100,000 people per day. When states didn’t have a statewide order—including states that never had mandates, coupled with the period of time masking states didn’t have the mandate in place—there were 5,781,716 cases, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.

In other words, protective-mask mandates have a poor track record so far in fighting the coronavirus. States with mandates in place produced an average of 10 more reported infections per 100,000 people per day than states without mandates.

“The reverse correlation between periods of masking and non-masking is remarkable,” RationalGround.com co-founder Justin Hart tweeted on Dec. 20.

The 15 states that went without a statewide mask mandate for the duration of the analysis were Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming, Daniel Horowitz notes in an explainer at Conservative Review.

Continue Reading at The Epoch Times

Payment Processers Escalate War on Digital Army


RedPill78, a “citizen journalist” operating in Washington DC, was banned from YouTube back in October. That was part of the coordinated assault by big tech on the so-called QAnon journalists. But QAnon is an inexact term, used by the establishment to push dissident journalists into a box: “Conspiracy theorists (as if conspiracies don’t exist) who think the Democratic party has been taken over by satanic, baby-eating pedophiles.”
This is a gross mischaracterization, designed to discourage anyone from paying attention to the work of the Q collective.
What RedPill78, and tens of thousands of citizen journalists like him are part of is better described as a digital army. They are a threat to the establishment because they are doing investigative work that controlled mainstream journalists in America have neither the time nor the permission to conduct.
For now, RedPill78 has not been silenced, because he has migrated to RumbleDLivePilledOdysee, and others. Alternative, constantly proliferating video platforms working on distributed servers, theoretically, can continue to broadcast online unless the whole internet is shut down. To take them down, that is, you might have to take down everything.
There are many ways the empire can strike back, however, and kicking dissidents off of the major video platforms is only one of them.
On December 17, in the middle of a live show, RedPill78 learned that PayPal had terminated his account. Without providing examples of how his content had transgressed, and providing only innocuous, vague explanation, PayPal took away RedPill78’s ability to accept donations or subscription payments.
This represents a major escalation in the ongoing assault on free speech, and like video deplatforming, it is being rolled out slowly but systematically. What RedPill78 has experienced is just the beginning. Laura Loomer has been banned from riding Uber, solely because of her political opinions. Lana Lokteff has been banned from having any bank accounts, again solely because of her political opinions.
None of these victims of financial deplatforming have violated First Amendment principles. “Hate speech” and “misinformation,” besides being highly subjective concepts, are protected forms of speech. If you listen to RedPill78’s body of work, there is nothing to justify censorship, much less financial aggression.
RedPill78 is a threat because he is investigating fraud and corruption, and connecting the dots. Listen to his findings. See for yourself how close he and others are getting to truths, which if spread far and wide, could be very inconvenient for America’s ruling class.
The Federal Office of Comptroller of the Currency is considering a new rule that would bar banks from denying service for non-financial reasons, such as a customer’s political views. This could be implemented without approval of the U.S. Congress, but could be rescinded if Biden takes over the executive branch.
The Leftist dominated establishment should be careful what it wishes for. The instruments of repression they are perfecting with their big tech allies could be used against them, if enough Americans take the Red Pill.
EDITORS NOTE: This Winston84 Project column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — Sensing Their Moment. The rise of the atheists.



TRANSCRIPT
Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.
So a Catholic, a Jew and an atheist walk into a Congress. It has all the ingredients of a bad joke, but this is no laughing matter for the faithful. Three U.S. congressmen — the Catholic Jerry McNerney from California, the Jewish Jamie Raskin of Maryland and the atheist Jared Huffman of California — are intent on destroying all elements of religion in American public life.
And their plan may play out a lot smoother than many people think. They each belong to an organization called Secular Democrats of America, and they advocate for expunging religion from all aspects of the culture (except in the privacy of your own home, at least for now).
These three U.S. congressmen have submitted a 28-page proposal to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris asking them to eliminate religion from American public life by “re-educating Christians” in such a manner so that they keep their “religious dogma” to themselves and within their own homes.
First, you can certainly see that such a proposal would get a very friendly hearing in a Harris-Biden administration, if that comes to pass. After all, a Harris-Biden administration is essentially Obama 2.0 — with almost the entire anti-God gang back in place and ready to go at 10 minutes after noon on Jan. 20, less than a month away.
Of course, if that comes to pass, they will have cheated like Hell, literally, to get to that point. But, hey, what’s a little cheating to a man like Biden, who cheated his way through law school, plagiarizing a paper, which nearly got him kicked out? (Too bad it didn’t.) And, as a quick aside, this is what happens when someone is allowed to get away with stuff because they aren’t properly disciplined. Biden should have been expelled; now he’s on the verge of becoming president.
But back to the main issue — there are two things worth noting here: First, the welcome reception such a proposal would receive, and second, how these three anti-God freaks have things completely wrong. Recall that Obama was the most anti-God, anti-religion president ever, especially when it came to Christianity.
He proudly announced to the world that “America is no longer a Christian nation.” His entire administration, of course, was populated with staffers who hate religion and God and want it all swept away. Now, it appears those same people will be back, and this time with a venegence. When Trump won and they were all leaving their jobs, they had glum looks on their faces.
Well, they’re back, and since everybody now knows where everybody else stands, “Let the flood gates open” will be their mantra. The SDA (Secular Democrats of America) announce on their website that the future of America is with the irreligious — those who have no religion and want no religion. They even have pretty graphics trumpeting this, where they show (correctly) that 17% of Americans reject religion and 70% of those are Democrats — not exactly news there.
The SDA also lay out their goal in pretty clear terms — the bad guys always do, just for the record. Scroll down a little bit and there it is: “No one has the right to harm others in the name of religious belief.”
Now, while many Democrats in Congress and an incoming Biden administration may not be card-carrying, dues-paying members of SDA (although more than a dozen congressmen are), that agenda is embraced by a huge number of them. Recall that Kamala Harris just last year introduced a bill in the Senate saying the exact same thing. Of course, it got nowhere in the GOP-controlled Senate, but that’s not the point.
It will get traction in the executive branch when it comes to those vast powers, and if the Democrats win those Georgia Senate seats, look out. A political party that enjoys the support of 70% of those who reject religion and God having total control of the powers of the federal government? Say no more.
And don’t think you’d get a fair shake in the courts if you brought a case. “Fair” walked out the door in the aftermath of the election steal. Their refusal to pursue the vast fraud that this election was tells you everything you need to know. Most judges and justices on the high court have proven themselves to be nothing but go-along losers who find technicalities in the law or “judicial philosophy” to hide behind instead of stepping up and defending truth.
And even if they struck down some anti-religion agenda in some future hypothetical case, how long to do you think it would take the atheist, Party of Death to just pack the court to change the outcome down the road? Probably about 15 minutes.
The atheists (or, as they like to call themselves, “non-theists”) have long despised religion in general, but most especially Christianity — even theologically deficient Protestantism because even a somewhat dim understanding of Christ does not allow for their immoral agenda of child-slaughter, unbridled sex, sodomy, destruction of the family and so forth.
So of course, they want Christians driven back into their homes. If you all want to pray around your fireplace, fine. But leave all that Faith stuff at the door when when you step out into our new America. Faithful Catholics might wonder, as all this is taking shape, just where are the U.S. bishops in response.
Don’t get us wrong: Nothing would delight us more than to see the bishops stripped of the hundreds of millions of dollars they receive in federal money each year. They used that money over the decades to help create the social and political environment where atheists could actually come to power. So, good, take it all away.
Some of that money even went to groups who worked to get Biden illegitimately elected — money from the bishops, just to be clear. Remember, about a quarter of U.S. bishops, maybe more, are Democrats. Don’t forget that. They embraced the Democrat agenda because of the money they got and its support for homosexuality.
They hid all that under the disguise of “social justice,” of course, but any Catholic with two brain cells to rub together knows that was always a ruse. They care about “the poor” about as much as they care about the Faith, which is to say not at all.
My mother, God rest her soul, Mother Vortex had a name for such contemptible men: She called them “wastrels.” So just like the bishops hid their real agenda beneath a thin veneer of protecting the poor, the atheist Democrats are hiding their agenda beneath the veneer of protecting religion from government intrusion.
Sure they are. Sure their interest is in protecting Christians from government intrusion. Thanks, but no thanks. The God-haters are sensing their moment. Rightly or prematurely, they are sensing the wind is at their back and their moment has come.
Maybe they’re wrong. But ask yourself this: When it comes to believers versus atheists, who do you think has all the momentum? A sufficient number of people — believers —did not step up when they should have. So now, there will be a price to pay for that. The only remaining question is, “If people didn’t step up when the going was easy, how many will do so when it gets hard?”
©Church Militant. All rights reserved.

Is Going to Church “High Risk, Low Reward?”


Some leftist government officials, in the name of trying to fight the spread of COVID-19, have come down hard on churches.
For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared (5/7/20),

“We’re looking at the science, epidemiology, looking again at frequency, duration, time, and looking at low risk-high reward, low risk-low reward.” [Emphasis added]

He has defined abortion clinics as essential. But churches were categorized as non-essential. Christian legal groups have had to fight with the governor to be able to practice religious freedom, which the Constitution guarantees. Newsom was not alone in his attempt to hamstring the churches.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam mandated that only ten people could attend church. But not to worry, said the Theologian-in-Chief of the Old Dominion state: “For me, God is wherever you are. You don’t have to sit in the church pew for God to hear your prayers.”
In November, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear ordered a halt of in-person worship services—even after having been hit with a federal judge’s restraining order earlier this year for doing the same.
All of this leads to an interesting question: What, if anything, do churches contribute to society? Are churches just “high risk, low reward”?
I spoke recently on the radio with Dr. Byron Johnson, Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor.
Johnson told me, “Churches are phenomenally important to society. The bulk of volunteering in America is done by people that come from places like churches. Americans give more than a billion dollars a day to charities. A significant portion of that comes from people that sit in pews of congregations.”
What else does church do for society? Since 2001, Gallup polls have conducted annual “November Health and Healthcare Surveys.” The results of 2020 showed a drop in overall mental health for Americans. Not surprising, in light of the lockdown.
Disrn.com reports (12/13/20) that church-goers were one exception: “… frequent church attendees were the only group in the U.S. that did not experience a mental health decline in 2020….Forty-six percent of Americans who regularly attend religious services said their mental health is ‘excellent,’ an increase from last year’s 42 percent.”
The Journal of the American Medical Association-Psychiatry published an article (5/6/20) on the potential impact of church attendance decreasing the number of “deaths from despair.”
The researchers found that church attendance does indeed help lower the frequency of deaths from despair (including from drugs, alcohol, and suicide). They conclude: “…attendance at religious services at least once per week was associated with a 68% lower hazard of death from despair among women and a 33% lower hazard among men compared with never attendance.”
They add, “The findings suggest that frequent attendance at religious services is associated with lower subsequent risk of deaths from despair.” Go to church and you’re less likely to kill yourself. Or others, for that matter.
Of course, the church was founded by Jesus Christ, Whose birth we celebrate at this time. Christmas is a reminder that a manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago once contained a baby that was fully God and fully man, who went on to live a perfect life and offer Himself as a sacrifice on behalf of sinners, so that those who believe in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.
Being assured of heaven in the next life has a positive impact on how we live this life. Church-going involves offering gratitude and sacrifices of praise for the ultimate Christmas gift—the Savior Jesus Christ.
One man of note personally viewed attending church a high priority in his life, even if his schedule was hectic, and the roads were muddy, and getting there was a challenge.
George Washington, the father of our country, was a devout church-goer, back in a day when it was much more taxing to attend. He normally went to the Anglican/Episcopal Church. However, when the Commander-in-Chief was leading the rebellion against the head of that denomination, King George III, Washington became more ecumenical in his worship practices.
He visited Christian churches of all kinds, including Presbyterian ones. The Morristown Presbyterian Church in New Jersey has a stained glass window of Washington receiving communion at that church, an event that occurred during the War. After the War, until his death, he regularly attended church—making Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria his home church for the last decade of his life.
In Washington’s case, church attendance may have been “high risk” only in the sense of the difficulty of getting there and back. But as is often the case, it was “high reward.”
If only some of our modern political leaders would learn from George’s example. Contrary to the opinion of today’s secular leaders, church tends to be high reward for the attenders and society at large.
©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Defending the “Defender in Chief.” John Yoo on Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power

Given the controversy over the election fraud surrounding the presidential election it is perhaps time to look back at what President Trump is really trying to do since his election. Professor John Yoo explains in his book Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power stated,

[T]he Founders would have seen Trump as returning to their vision of presidential power, even at his most controversial and outrageous.

On July 29, 2020 The Hoover Institution published the following commentary and video.

On the occasion of his new book, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump’s Fight for Presidential Power, Hoover visiting fellow and Berkeley Law School professor John Yoo joins the show to make a spirited case against the criticisms of Donald Trump for his supposed disruption of constitutional rules and norms. The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is a threat to the rule of law and the US Constitution. Mainstream media outlets have reported fresh examples of alleged executive overreach or authoritarian White House decisions nearly every day of his presidency. In the 2020 primaries, the candidates have rushed to accuse Trump of destroying our democracy and jeopardizing our nation’s very existence. In his book and on this show, John Yoo argues the opposite: that the Founders would have seen Trump as returning to their vision of presidential power, even at his most controversial and outrageous. It’s a fascinating and often humorous discussion that could not be more timely.


©The Hoover Institution. All rights reserved.

New York SINKS, Again, Leads Nation in Population Decline, Could Now Lose Two House Seats


We owe it all to Killer Cuomo and his Nazi sidekick Warren Wilhelm (De Blasio’s real name).
The upside? NY’s treacherous Democrat criminals lose political power.

New York, again, leads nation in population decline. And it could now lose two House seats.

Joseph Spector, New York State Team Published 10:10 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2020 | Updated 10:10 a.m. ET Dec. 23, 2020

More New Yorkers are leaving for Florida than other states, new Census figures show. New York State Team
New York’s population continued to decline more than any state in the nation, new figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau show.
The Empire State’s population fell by 126,355 people between July 2019 and July 2020, to 19.3 million, a drop of 0.65%, according to the preliminary figures. That’s the most of any state by total and by percentage.
Population decline continues to be a problem for New York, and it could play out in 2022 during federal reapportionment. At this rate, New York could lose as many as two U.S. House seats; it will certainly lose one, dropping it from 27 to 26 seats and impacting its clout in Washington.
New York could also be on the way to its first population decline in any decade since the 1970s, according to the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany.
New York’s population has been boosted by immigrants and new births, but even that has tailed off in recent years, E.J. McMahon, the group’s founder, wrote.
“The 2020 estimated New York population represented a net decline of 41,326, or 0.21%, from the official decennial census count in 2010 — largely because foreign immigration into the state has fallen off sharply since 2017, in line with a national trend,” he wrote.
Dig Deeper

Florida surpassed New York in 2014 as the third largest state in the nation, and the gap has widened since then.

Florida gained 241,256 people since July 2019, bringing its population to 21.7 million. Only Texas, the second most populous state behind California, gained more people over the past year, the census data showed.

New York has had an exodus over the past decade of about 1.4 million people, and about 21% of them went to Florida, by far the most of any other state, data last year showed.

The latest drop in New York was part of an overall decline of 153,065 people in the Northeast between July 2019 and July 2020, the most of any region in the nation.
New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Connecticut all had modest population declines over the past year.
Nationally, only Illinois neared New York in percent of population decline, down 79,487 people, or 0.63%, since last year.
Overall, the nation has gained nearly 21 million people since 2010, the Empire Center said, up 6.7%
Another economic blow: A slowdown in US population growth worsened by the coronavirus pandemic
Will San Francisco, New York and other big cities recover from COVID-19? What a post-vaccine city could look like
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has downplayed the population drop as the state faces criticism for high taxes driving people to less expensive states.
In 2018, Cuomo was knocked for saying upstate’s winter weather was a significant factor in people moving elsewhere, particularly the South.
“More people are leaving upstate net? Yes. People will make demographic choices about where they want to live,” Cuomo said two years ago.
“Some of them are climate-based. Some of them are based for personal reasons. So the diminishing population in upstate is not new. People were leaving upstate New York because they had to in the past.”
Cuomo has pointed to lower income taxes installed by his administration and a property-tax cap that has limited the growth since 2011 as ways the state has sought to lower the cost of living.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Disgraceful Slur’: Democrat Slammed for Attacking Trump Holocaust Memorial Council Appointee
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Some Republican Senators Are on Board With Electoral College Challenge [+Video]



We the people are watching. We will primary the traitors and Democrats in RINO clothing.
We the people are watching.  As for Senate Majority Leader McConnell,  we will drag him over the finish line like a beached whale.

Some Republican Senators Are on Board With Electoral College Challenge: Rep. Taylor-Greene

By Jack Phillips, The Epoch Times, December 23, 2020:
Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said that some Republican senators will join an effort to challenge Electoral College votes when the Joint Session of Congress meets on Jan. 6.
The process requires one senator and one House representative to initiate. Other than Taylor-Greene, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) and a number of GOP House lawmakers have pledged they would challenge the votes.
“We have a very strong case, and our numbers are growing strong,” she said Tuesday on Newsmax of the effort. “We talked to senators and we’re good to go for this objection.”
Taylor-Greene did not say what senators would join the challenge. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) have both suggested they might get involved, but there has been no public confirmation.
When an objection is filed during the Joint Session of Congress for key states that cast Electoral College votes for Joe Biden, each chamber would have to hold a debate for two hours on whether to disqualify a state’s votes. Then, a vote would have to be held in each chamber on whether to throw them out.
Taylor-Greene, meanwhile, added that she spoke with President Donald Trump about possibly challenging the votes, saying, “I didn’t run for Congress to sit by and be quiet, so I called the president.”
“I support him, I voted for him, just like everyone else and I’m happy to support him in this trying time,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has reportedly told GOP senators not to partake in the challenge, while the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), told reporters that it’s likely to fail.
Thune said he heard of no Republicans willing to join the Rep. Brooks-led effort.
“In the Senate, it would go down like a shot dog,” Thune told reporters. “And I just don’t think it makes a lot of sense to put everybody through this when you know what the ultimate outcome is going to be.”
Other than Brooks and Taylor-Greene, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas), Rep.-elect Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and others said they would join.
“We must stand up for the tens of millions of Americans who want answers to the irregularities surrounding this election,” Gooden said in his letter to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and John Cornyn (R-Texas). “It is our duty to ensure the integrity of our election is unwavering, and the American people deserve to feel confident their vote matters.”
Babin wrote that if Congress doesn’t investigate alleged voter fraud, he would object to the results. Around two-dozen Republicans in the House signed his letter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

President Trump Vetoes Defense Spending Bill, “It Is A Gift to China and Russia”


President Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 Wednesday, calling it a “gift” to U.S. adversaries China and Russia, making good on a promise to veto it if it did not repeal a law that shields certain Big Tech companies from liabilities.
There is too much wrong with the bill.
https://twitter.com/AFCyberGator/status/1341535290377252866?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1341535290377252866%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F12%2Fpresident-trump-vetoes-defense-spending-bill-it-is-a-gift-to-china-and-russia.html%2F
“I am returning, without my approval, H.R. 6395 … My Administration recognizes the importance of the Act to our national security. Unfortunately, the Act fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my Administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions. It is a ‘gift’ to China and Russia,” the president wrote.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1339594787133919239?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1339594787133919239%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fgellerreport.com%2F2020%2F12%2Fpresident-trump-vetoes-defense-spending-bill-it-is-a-gift-to-china-and-russia.html%2F


The president denounced the legislation for not including language that would strip social media companies from the protections they enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The measure, adopted in 1996, prevents companies such as Twitter and Facebook from being sued by anyone claiming to be harmed by a post. Trump, who claims social media companies are biased against conservatives, has said Section 230 is a threat to national security.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ALERT: University of Michigan ‘Words Matter Task Force’ says “picnic” is offensive


United States Constitution Amendment I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.


The United States Constitution, Amendment I forbids the abridging of the freedom of speech. One of the departments of the University of Michigan seems to disagree.
The University of Michigan (UM) has issued an updated report on December 8, 2020 from its Information Technology Services (ITS) department titled “Words Matter Task Force Recommendations.” It seems that the UM ITS department wants to abridge their students, employees, vendors and faculty’s freedom of speech.
The Executive Summary of Words Matter Task Force Recommendations states:

Given the importance of communication and the ITS core value of inclusivity, the Words Matter Task Force was formed and charged with identifying terms used within ITS that are, or can be construed to be, racist, sexist, or non-inclusive.

What Words Are Now Considered Racist, Sexist or Non-Inclusive at UM?

Note in the table below that that the words man, men, picnic, he, she, grandfathered, and phrases like long time no see are now considered offensive. See the chart below of words and phrases that are now banned at UM.
The purpose of the is to impact language globally. According to the report:

The University of Michigan has the opportunity to influence change with vendors, suppliers, and associations. ITS can share with strategic partners the business case for using inclusive language, and prepare them on new terms they may hear ITS staff members use. There are a few scenarios that offer opportunities for communication and relationship building, including proactively reaching out to vendors to make them aware of changes they may experience when interacting with ITS; requesting a change from vendors toward inclusive language; and starting a conversation with other university partners to increase adoption. An email template example was developed that Service Owners can use to inform and prepare external partners. See Appendix D.

This is political correctness gone wild at a premier American university.
Mario Goveia in an email wrote:

As an alumnus of the University of Michigan during an era when knowledge and understanding were prized and robust differences of opinion were encouraged as a learning tool, I’m now being asked to think twice before I speak or write, in case I offend someone.
I just learned that the University’s “Information and Technology Services Department” has a “Words Matter Task Force”, which has decided that the word “PICNIC” is OFFENSIVE along with a whole list of other words deemed offensive.
This kind of thinking may explain how Biden-Harris got elected with their objective of turning us into a nanny state.  The Biden-voters in the task force suggested the use of “gatherings” instead of “picnic” without explaining why!
If you disagree you’re obviously a racist!
The US is being transformed from a “glass is always at least half full” country into a “glass is always less than half empty” country.

Inclusive Language
This list is not exhaustive and will continue to grow. 

Term Alternative Term
-men-, -man- -people, -person, or a wholly different word.
(e.g., “man-hours” can become “person-hours”)
blacklist/whitelist allowed/prohibited, include/exclude, allowlist/deny list
black-and-white thinking binary thinking, all-or-nothing thinking
brown bag lunch and learn
crack the whip manage the effort closely
crazy, insane outrageous, unthinkable, nonsensical, incomprehensible, ridiculous, egregious, irrational
crippled weakened, deteriorated
disabled when referring to a system: deactivated, broken
dummy placeholder, sample
gender-neutral he or she gender-neutral they, referring by name
grandfathered (in) legacy status, legacies in, exempted, excused
gypped/jipped defrauded, swindled, cheated, ripped off
handicapped restricted
girl/gal, boy/guy person, or use the person’s name
guys/gals (e.g., Hi guys!) everyone, folks (e.g., Hi everyone!)
honey, sweetheart, sweetie use the person’s name
long time, no see “It’s been a while,” “I haven’t seen you in ages!”
low man on the totem pole last in the pecking order, the bottom of the heap
master/slave leader/follower, primary/replica, primary/standby
native built-in, innate
off the reservation outside the norms, rogue, break with the group, off on your own
picnic gathering
preferred pronouns pronouns
privileged account elevated account
sanity check quick check, confidence check, coherence check
sold down the river betrayed, thrown under the bus
straw-man proposed conceptual design
uppity arrogant, conceited

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.
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Al-Azhar says Sharia forbids joining Muslim Brotherhood, accuses it of ‘immorality, aggression and terrorism’


Entities all over the Muslim world has been cracking down on the Muslim Brotherhood, all while the Brotherhood and its affiliates expand their influence throughout the West. The highly publicized Holy Land foundation trial – the largest terrorism financing trial in the history of the United States — exposed an extensive list of Brotherhood operatives in America, as well as offshoots in Canada. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Russia, Bahrain and Syria have all banned the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist group. The U.S., Canada, and the EU need to do the same. Labeling groups which are connected to Hamas as “unindicted co-conspirators” isn’t enough. Take, for instance, the Canadian government of the former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. It declared IRFAN-Canada (Islamic Relief) a terrorist entity for funding Hamas. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) recently reintroduced the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act, and explained that he believes it will “advance America’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism.” He’s right.
Last week, in a telling move, Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the head of the UAE fatwa council, withdrew from the speaker list at the Reviving the Islamic Spirit mega-conference in Toronto because it featured MB-linked groups.

“Al-Azhar decrees prohibition of joining Muslim Brotherhood,” by Mohammed Abu Zaid, Arab News, December 21, 2020:

CAIRO: Al-Azhar Fatwa Global Center has said that joining the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups is forbidden according to Shariah and that God has forbidden division and disagreement.
The Egyptian newspaper Al-Watan quoted Al-Azhar as saying in its announcement that God forbids people from pursuing any path that distracts them from following the truth, explaining that keeping to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, in accordance with Shariah, was the only way to please God.
“It is clear to the public what these groups have done in distorting some texts, cutting them out of their context, and using them to achieve personal goals or interests and corrupting the land,” the center said in the fatwa.
“Membership in these extremist groups is considered forbidden by Shariah.”
“Joining the terrorist Brotherhood is forbidden by law [and is considered] cooperating in immorality and aggression, for that group violates the law of God and is involved in terrorism,” said Abdullah Al-Najjar, a member of the Islamic Research Academy.
Hussein Al-Qadi, a researcher in religious affairs and Islamic movements, said that the fatwa is the first of its kind in the history of Al-Azhar.
“This fatwa has never been issued from Al-Azhar before. Various statements were issued by Al-Azhar describing the Brotherhood as being outdated. In fact, Imam Muhammad Mustafa Al-Maraghi, reformer and rector of Al-Azhar, demanded the dissolution of the Brotherhood,” Al-Qadi said….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

How $10 Million for Gender Programs in Pakistan Got Tied to a COVID Relief Bill


Hours before lawmakers voted on a multi-trillion dollar government funding package that included a $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill, congressional aides were spotted wheeling in the legislation.
It ran 5,593 pages.
“You’d have to read 560 pages an hour to finish it before midnight,” observed NBC News correspondent Garrett Haake.


Lawmakers did not wait until midnight to pass the legislation, however.
“The Senate passed the massive year-end legislation combining $900 billion in pandemic relief with $1.4 trillion to fund federal agencies through fiscal 2021,” Bloomberg reported. “The House passed the legislation earlier Monday night. The total bill is worth more than $2.3 trillion, including support for small businesses impacted by the pandemic, $600 payments for most individuals, supplemental unemployment insurance, regular funding for federal agencies and a bevy of tax breaks for companies.”
So how did lawmakers read 560 pages an hour before voting on the bill? The answer is simple: they didn’t. In fact, there was a great deal of confusion—in both media and Congress—on what precisely lawmakers were voting on. (More on that later.)
Naturally, perhaps, there was some bipartisan anger over the process.
“Congress is expected to vote on the second largest bill in US history today,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), “as of about 1pm, members don’t even have the legislative text of it yet.”
Despite her reservations, Ocasio-Cortez voted in favor of the bill. Others held out, however.
“No member can honestly say they know exactly what they voted for this evening,” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who voted against the legislation. “That is reason alone to vote no.”


Gosar was right. FEE’s covered at length on Monday many of the provisions contained in the COVID-19 relief bill, highlighting its many glaring problems. But because of its massive length, we still don’t know everything in the package—which is several bills tied into one.
As Yahoo Finance reports, some of the lesser-known provisions “have raised some eyebrows.”
“Among them are a pair of assistance programs in Pakistan, whereby $15 million will be put toward “democracy programs” and $10 million will be distributed to ‘gender programs,’” reports Fox News correspondent Brittany De Lea.
You read that correctly. But technically this provision—and other defense measures such as $73 million in spending for Israel’s Iron Dome 9 defense system —is not part of the COVID relief package. It’s part of the defense bill contained in the $1.4 trillion omnibus that was bound up with the COVID relief bill.
So while the Pakistani gender programs were not technically included in the COVID relief bill, the end result is much the same. US senators could not vote for COVID relief without voting for gender programs in Pakistan, $35 million for abstinence programs, and tax changes for owners of race horses. (The process in the House was a bit more complicated.)


This is a slap in the face to Americans. During a year in which tens of millions of Americans were forced out of work and hundreds of thousands of businesses were destroyed, lawmakers could not even offer a clean relief bill.
At the risk of stating the obvious, many believe a relief bill passed during a deadly pandemic should focus on relief for individuals and businesses adversely impacted by the pandemic.
So naturally, many on Twitter did not react positively to the revelation that the COVID relief bill and the omnibus were, in a sense, mixed together.


People are right to see that tying COVID relief to defense provisions is, well, stupid. But there’s a phenomenon that helps explain why this happens. It’s called logrolling.
Logrolling is essentially the trading of favors among legislators for mutual benefit. Bills often get passed by winning the support of lawmakers by including provisions that benefit their special interests, but which may not align with any public good. As a result, successful legislation tends to be chock full of special-interest spending.
This trap is highlighted by “public choice” economics, which assumes that politicians vote to forward their own interests just like everyone else. In this case, however, they impose costs on the country in exchange for a big benefit to a special interest group who supports them.
If you’re wondering how a vote for COVID relief for Americans becomes tied to $10 million for gender programs in Pakistan and hundreds of millions of dollars in defense for another country, look to the incentives lurking within government institutions.
COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

San Francisco Sees More Overdose Deaths Than Covid Deaths in 2020


Data show alarming trends in drug overdoses and suicide as people—especially young people who are least at risk from COVID-19—are forcibly cut off from friends, families, and communities.


It’s quite likely that wherever you are reading this, you are currently subjected to lockdowns, restrictions, regulations, or executive orders to one degree or another, as government officials respond to the coronavirus pandemic with increasing coercion and control. Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that US states and cities have “imposed the most extensive restrictions on business and social gatherings” since the spring.
Many argue that these new restrictions are essential for slowing the current surge in coronavirus cases in certain areas, but some public health researchers have pointed out that lockdowns and related government orders that focus entirely on containing COVID-19 cases lead to worse public health outcomes in other areas. This collateral damage from lockdowns is already glaringly apparent. In particular, data show an alarming trend toward drug overdoses and suicide in 2020, as people—especially young people who are least at risk from COVID-19—are forcibly cut off from their friends, families, and communities.

The desperation is revealed in startling new statistics. According to the Associated Press, a total of 621 people have died of drug overdoses this year in San Francisco, compared to 173 deaths in the city from COVID-19. The number of San Francisco drug overdose deaths is up from 441 in 2019. California has enacted some of the strictest public health orders in the country this year, and is still seeing its cases rise.
One survey by YouGov found that 39 percent of respondents who were recovering from an addiction prior to lockdowns have relapsed. Other research shows increasing rates of drug and alcohol abuse in 2020, and the CDC reports that overdose deaths are accelerating during COVID-19.
Federal surveys show that 40 percent of Americans are now grappling with at least one mental health or drug-related problem.
Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, has been critical of widespread lockdowns since the beginning of the pandemic, warning that these coercive strategies would lead to other serious public health harms and increased mortality.
“The current lockdown strategy has led to many excess deaths, both from COVID-19 and from the collateral damage on other health outcomes,” Kulldorff recently told Newsweek. “A focused protection strategy, as outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration, would minimize disease and mortality by better protecting older and other high risk people while letting the young live near normal lives.”
Kulldorff also suggests that new data showing US excess deaths in 2020 for people ages 25-44 are mostly due to the collateral damage caused by lockdown policies.

In addition to rising drug and alcohol abuse and overdose deaths, suicidal thoughts and attempts are also increasing this year. The Washington Post reports that depression and anxiety have surged since the arrival of the coronavirus.
“Federal surveys show that 40 percent of Americans are now grappling with at least one mental health or drug-related problem. But young adults have been hit harder than any other age group, with 75 percent struggling,” the Post reports. “Even more alarming, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently asked young adults if they had thought about killing themselves in the past 30 days, 1 in 4 said they had.”
The Post explains that we won’t have accurate data on suicide rates for 2020 until another couple of years, due to slow reporting mechanisms. But state and city data for some areas suggest disturbing suicide numbers this year, including in Oregon’s Columbia County where suicides by summertime had already exceeded the area’s 2019 total, and DuPage County near Chicago reports a 23 percent increase in suicides over last year. Other large counties in the US have seen similarly ominous trends, and in Japan, more people died of suicide in the month of October alone than have died from COVID-19 this entire year.

As families weigh the trade-offs this holiday season between social isolation to slow the spread of coronavirus and the harms that this separation can cause, many of them are choosing to ignore public health warnings to avoid travel and holiday gatherings. The New York Times reports that millions of people have passed through airport security checkpoints this week, while The Wall Street Journal indicates that nearly 85 million Americans are expected to travel between Dec. 23 and Jan. 3, a decline of just under 30 percent from last year.
More families may be seeing the damage these lockdowns and related policies are causing their loved ones and are no longer willing to comply with draconian orders to stay away from others. Their decision may be made easier when they see public health officials and politicians personally violating the holiday travel and gathering warnings and rules they thrust on others.
COVID-19 should be taken seriously as a public health threat, but so too should the harms of lockdowns and government orders that are leading to record numbers of drug overdose deaths and suicides, along with other types of collateral damage such as rising global poverty and declining cancer screenings.
While public health and elected officials remain singularly focused on COVID-19, families gathering this holiday season recognize that ensuring the overall health and well-being of their loved ones extends beyond one virus.
COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). She is also an adjunct scholar at The Cato Institute and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly newsletter on parenting and education here.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump Calls Massive Spending Bill a ‘Disgrace,’ Says He Won’t Sign It


For those of you who were shocked, dismayed, stunned, depressed yesterday when you began hearing about what was in a bill passed by both Houses of Congress that was supposedly a COVID relief package, you got some solace later in the evening when President Trump went before the American people to say he would not sign the bill in its present form.
He stopped short of using the word “veto,” but said he won’t sign this monstrosity.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1341537886315950080?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1341537886315950080%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ffraudscrookscriminals.com%2F2020%2F12%2F23%2Ftrump-calls-massive-spending-bill-a-disgrace-says-he-wont-sign-it%2F
By the way, only six brave Republican Senators voted against the 5,000 plus page bill that NO one has read:
Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Rick Scott, R-Fla., Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.***
In the House it was 359 for and 53 against, see here.
Watch our President’s four minute display of leadership above (I see much of the media is calling it a rant).   He asks why we are sending billions abroad when Americans are hurting through no fault of their own.
Here is just one of dozens of news stories on the President’s big surprise to our disgusting House and Senate.
From the BBC:

Trump urges Congress to amend ‘wasteful’ coronavirus aid bill

In a video message posted on Twitter, he said the package “really is a disgrace”, full of “wasteful” items.
“It’s called the Covid relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with Covid,” he said.

See Rush Limbaugh’s extensive commentary on the bill from yesterday afternoon. He laments that the rats are back at work as they assume the Trump era is over. https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/12/22/nothing-changes-in-washington-the-covid-relief-bill-should-be-vetoed/

The $900bn bill includes one-off $600 payments to most Americans, but Mr Trump said the figure should be $2,000.
His statement stunned Capitol Hill.
Republicans and Democrats have been negotiating a coronavirus stimulus rescue package since July and Mr Trump – who has largely stayed out of the talks – had been expected to sign the legislation into law following its passage through Congress on Monday night.
[….]
However, Mr Trump has not specifically said he would veto the bill. Even if he does, US media say there could be enough votes from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to override his veto.
[….]
In Tuesday night’s message from the White House, Mr Trump baulked at spending in the bill on other countries, arguing that this money should go to struggling Americans.
He said: “This bill contains $85.5m for assistance to Cambodia, $134m to Burma, $1.3bn for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment, $25m for democracy and gender programmes in Pakistan, $505m to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.”
The president questioned why the Kennedy Center, a performing arts complex in Washington DC, was set to receive $40m when it is not open, and more than $1bn has been allocated to museums and galleries in the capital. [Which are also  mostly not open!—ed]

The President has nothing to lose now if he vetoes the monster that will put the US in even greater debt (to China?) for generations to come.  It will reaffirm his strong leadership that will be needed for the years ahead.
Yeah, they can override his veto, but then we will all know who puts Americans First and who puts us last. After all, the midterm elections are not far off.
*** These six should join Senator-elect Tuberville (and many Members of the House) in opposing a Biden/Harris presidency on January 6th.  What have they got to lose?
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EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.