Tag: news

Authored by Martin Sieff via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

California now fulfills Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s nightmare vision in his prophetic masterpiece “The Possessed” as to what unlimited liberalism must inevitably create – if not stopped in its tracks and rolled back.

Where California goes today, the rest of the United States and much of the Western world goes tomorrow. But what we are now seeing in America’s most populous state is the complete internal collapse of the entire liberal progressive civilization and the society that has most frantically tried to fulfill it

For well over a hundred years, California, the self-styled “Golden State” has trail-blazed  the future of America especially through the two famously American industries of aerospace and motion pictures. Telecommunications, computers and Artificial Intelligence are now led from Silicon Valley and the state has dominated the national politics of the United States too.

California rapidly grew into the wealthiest and largest population US state. It has produced two two-term presidents (Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan), one of the most important Chief Justices of the Supreme Court (Earl Warren) and the likely next president – current Vice President Kamala Harris if 78-year-old Joe Biden cannot complete his term.

From 1928 to 2004, 14 out of 19 winning presidential election tickets included someone from either California or Texas and Biden’s choice of Harris put California back at the heart of national electoral politics last year.

Politically, California remains rock solid liberal. It has not elected a single Republican to national or statewide office since reelecting incumbent Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. In 2016, then-Governor Jerry Brown notoriously notoriously handed out state accreditation and driving licenses to untold hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, secure in the knowledge that they would all vote Democrat and so it proved. Registered Democrats now hold a 46 percent to 24 percent advantage over registered Republicans statewide.

California also holds a cast-iron grip on the national Democratic leadership in Congress through House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her key allies such as Congressman Adam Schiff, whose farcical bungles in the two impeachments of President Donald Trump did not dent his immutable position as one of Pelosi’s most youthful favored sons (he is merely 60) at all.

Yet now, California is in terminal collapse and crisis. Governor Gavin Newsom, farcically promoted by the national Mainstream Media (MSM) as a heroic White Knight in Shining Armor in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic last spring has been exposed even in his own state as a catastrophic bungler and hypocrite who has never had a clue what he was – or more usually was not – doing. As I write, California’s sick and tired citizens are close to providing the 1.5 million signatures necessary to pull Newsom into what would certainly be a chaotic recall election.

California was also ravaged last year by the worst wild fires in its history. The slavish media – told what to think by the mindless Los Angeles Times (once a great newspaper) and even more infantile San Francisco Chronicle – bent over backwards to avoid acknowledging the real causes but they have been exhaustively documented.

Witless romantic Green environmental policies scrapped the centuries old, wise practices of creating firebreaks in forests between clumps of trees that would limit fire outbreaks in hot weather. Far from “protecting the trees” and wildlife, as the kneejerk Greens demanded, the ending of windbreak spaces instead allowed forest fires to blaze on an unprecedented scale and at record speed.

At the same time, multiple millions of people sweated in even luxury suburbs through the rolling heat waves without any air conditioning relief because the state electric grid -another victim of ignorant Green prejudice falsely masquerading as “science” – repeatedly collapsed, unable to generate the necessary reliable requisite power levels at vital times.

Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and arguably the most populous now in the United States, has become a byword for violent crime and especially the stronghold of the enormous, ultraviolent and rapidly growing MS 13 organization, routinely mislabeled as a mere “gang” in media reports. MS 13 has up to 50,000 members worldwide of whom at least 10,000, officially, and probably twice as many according to the private assessments of many police officers are in LA.

The Trump administration had remarkable success – again unacknowledged in the liberal media – in deporting many thousands of MS 13 members. However, President Joe Biden has already ensured with his initial Executive Orders that the old open border policies of both Democratic presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) and Republican ones (Ronald Reagan and both George Bush’s) is being restored so they can flood back in again.

San Francisco – America’s “anything goes” city – is in even worse shape. Its most famous, historically popular and beautiful stylish locations are now swamped with aggressive, unsanitary street people who openly urinate and defecate in the streets. Public services, long superb, are now appalling.

Even the mindless liberal suburban classes who have relentlessly voted for and imposed these catastrophic polices over the past 40 and more years are now fleeing California as property values crash and taxes become too crushing even for them.

If California continues to trail-blaze the future for the rest of the United States, that future is now clear: It is a high taxation society with a huge, impoverished, unemployed and unemployable destitute class where the middle class is annihilated, organized gangs and general chaotic street crime including muggings, rapes and murders metastasize in all major urban areas and gangs more numerous and heavily armed than the police operate openly with impunity.

It is a society where unlimited abortion on demand to and even beyond the point of birth is acclaimed as a “moral” imperative supposedly superior to all the Ten Commandments.

For California now fulfills Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s nightmare vision in his prophetic masterpiece “The Possessed” or “The Devils ” as to what unlimited liberalism must inevitably create – if not stopped in its tracks and rolled back.

As goes California, so goes the rest of the United States: For a hundred years, since the infant silent movie industry entranced the entire world before and during World War I, that simple mantra has held true.

But if America’s future now has no future – what future can the rest of America look forward to?

Americans have been fascinated by market trends during the pandemic era, as everything from bitcoin, to baseball cards, is seeing prices rise, and central bankers like Jerome Powell have been repeatedly forced to swat away questions about asset bubbles.

And one of the most interesting markets – perhaps because millions have been confined almost exclusively to their homes during the quarantines and repeated waves of COVID-19 – has been real estate, as urban markets have seen their luster fade, while suburban areas are suddenly hot again.

The other day, the LA Times and other media outlets published a story explaining how falling rents in San Francisco are starting to draw tenants back from nearby Oakland. In fact, some parts of San Francisco are actually cheaper than parts of Oakland now.

Even on a foggy San Francisco morning, the view from Scott Simmons’ 25th-floor apartment stretches from downtown to Golden Gate Park. The home of the 42-year-old tech worker is also spacious for a one-bedroom, featuring hardwood floors, new appliances and granite countertops.

A year ago, when he was sharing a two-bedroom place with his brother, Simmons couldn’t have imagined living in an apartment like this one. But last fall, when Simmons heard about big rent declines during the COVID-19 pandemic, he discovered he could get way more for his money in the heart of San Francisco than in the neighborhood where he was doubling up in Oakland.

“It’s bananas,” Simmons said. “I never thought I was going to be someone who was going to have a nice view. It’s a luxury.”

In a survey from Improve.net in partnership with CraftJack found that the pandemic had a serious impact on prospective homeowners and their ability to move ahead with plans to buy. According to the survey, 72% of prospective buyers- basically everyone in the Gen Z and Millennial generations – among the sample of Americans surveyed said that the outbreak of COVID-19 had disrupted their plans to buy. Here’s a breakdown of the study’s highlights.

• 72% of prospective homebuyers said their savings plan for a home has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

• 54% of prospective homebuyers report that their moving and home buying plans have changed during the pandemic (30% have accelerated vs 24% have slowed or been put on hold).

• 52% say their interest in types of homes and locations has changed as a direct result of the pandemic.

• On the bright side, 54% of millennials and Gen Zers report being more motivated to become homeowners, as a direct result of the pandemic.

• The top home buying factors that have been impacted by the pandemic: 1. Access to nature 2. Proximity to family 3. Indoor space 4. Outdoor space 5. Home location.

• 36% of city residents say they value suburban living more than they did before the pandemic.

Read the full writeup from Improve.net below:

During the coronavirus pandemic, millions of Americans have felt their relationship with their home tested. Whether it’s because of remote learning, remote work, or simply having nowhere else to go, both space and functionality have been pushed to their limits for so many of us.

Many have embarked on home improvement projects to optimize their space – and used our home service cost estimator to see what they can afford – but sometimes making a change means more. Many Americans find themselves reflecting on long-term priorities and recalibrating their homeowner ideals.
In this study, we explore how attitudes, ideals, and needs have shifted for homeowners and aspiring homeowners alike. No doubt, a spirit of change is in the air. In fact, 79 percent of those we surveyed said all the change forced by the pandemic has inspired them to make other changes in their lives that may never have occurred.

We began by asking people about moving plans and buying plans. Four in 10 say their plans haven’t changed, but a majority of people report things have changed. Thirty-six percent say they either didn’t plan to move and now they’re moving, or their previous moving plans have accelerated.

Similarly, 30 percent report that homebuying plans have either materialized or accelerated. But an almost equal amount have said plans are slowing down or are on hold. On top of that, 72 percent of millennials and Gen Zers – basically everyone under 40 years old – who have been saving to buy a home say their savings plans have been disrupted by the pandemic.

That aside, the future looks bright for the real estate market as 54 percent of millennials and Gen Zers say they feel more motivated than ever to become homeowners, as a direct result of the pandemic. Across all generations, 52 percent say their interest in certain types of homes and/or locations has shifted since the beginning of the pandemic.

One of the things we were most curious about is how priorities have changed with respect to where and how people live. We were particularly interested to learn about the experience of younger people, those who either don’t yet own homes or are early in their homeownership journey.

We also asked people how well their homes are functioning for them, and in what ways they wish their space better supported their current lifestyles. Spoiler alert: contrary to much of the attention its been given, home office space is not the top priority right now.

Finally, we waded into the city versus suburbs debate. Even though many people are entrenched on this topic and have strong preferences, we sensed that attitudes have softened as a result of the pandemic. They have – at least one in three people say their opinion of city living has lessened over the past year and almost four in 10 say they feel more strongly about the suburbs.

We also asked both urbanites and suburbanites what they thought of the long-term prospect for big cities.

* * *

Source: Improve.net

Authored by Aaron Maté via RealClear Investigations (emphasis ours),

After four years of railing against “deep state” actors who, he said, tried to undermine his presidency, Donald Trump relented to U.S. intelligence leaders in his final days in office, allowing them to block the release of critical material in the Russia investigation, according to a former senior congressional investigator who later joined the Trump administration.

Kash Patel, whose work on the House Intelligence Committee helped unearth U.S. intelligence malpractice during the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, said he does not know why Trump did not force the release of documents that would expose further wrongdoing. But he said senior intelligence officials “continuously impeded” their release – usually by slow-walking their reviews of the material. Patel said Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was instrumental in blocking one of the most critical documents, he said.

Patel, who has seen the Russia probe’s underlying intelligence and co-wrote critical reports that have yet to be declassified, said new disclosures would expose additional misconduct and evidentiary holes in the CIA and FBI’s work.

“I think there were people within the IC [Intelligence Community], at the heads of certain intelligence agencies, who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn’t look good on the agency itself,” Patel told RealClearInvestigations in his first in-depth interview since leaving government at the end of Trump’s term last month, having served in several intelligence and defense roles (full interview here).  

Trump did not respond to requests seeking comment sent to intermediaries.

Although a Department of Justice inspector general’s report in December 2019 exposed significant intelligence failings and malpractice, Patel said more damning information is still being kept under wraps. And despite an ongoing investigation by Special Counsel John Durham into the conduct of the officials who carried out the Trump-Russia inquiry, it is unclear if key documents will ever see the light of day.

Patel did not suggest that a game-changing smoking gun is being kept from the public. Core intelligence failures have been exposed – especially regarding the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele’s now debunked dossier to secure FISA warrants used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But he said the withheld material would reveal more misconduct as well as major problems with the CIA’s assessment that Russia, on Vladimir Putin’s orders, ordered a sweeping and systematic interference 2016 campaign to elect Trump. Patel was cautious about going into detail on any sensitive information that has not yet been declassified. 

‘Continuously Impeded’ in Public Disclosure 

Patel’s work on the House Intelligence Committee, under the leadership of its former Republican chairman, Devin Nunes, is widely credited with exposing the FBI’s reliance on Steele and misrepresentations to the FISA court. Yet congressional Democrats and major media outlets portrayed him as a behind-the-scenes saboteur who sought to “discredit” the Russia investigation. 

The media vitriol unnerved Patel, who had previously served as a national security official in the Obama-era Justice Department and Pentagon – a tenure that exceeds his time working under Trump. Patel says that ensuring public disclosure of critical information in such a consequential national security investigation motivated him to take the job in the first place.

“The agreement I made with Devin, I said, ‘Okay, I don’t really want to go to the Hill, but I’ll do the job on one basis: accountability and disclosure,” Patel said. “Everything we find, I don’t care if it’s good or bad or whatever, from your political perspective, we put it out.’ So the American public can just read it themselves, with a few protections here and there for some certain national security measures, but those are minimal redactions.”

That task proved difficult. The House Intelligence Committee’s disclosure efforts, Patel said, “were continuously impeded by members of the intelligence community themselves, with the same singular epithets that you’re going to harm sources and methods. …  And I just highlight that because, we didn’t lose a single source. We didn’t lose a single relationship, and no one died by the public disclosures we made because we did it in a systematic and professional fashion.”

“But each time we forced them to produce [documents],” Patel added, “it only showed their coverup and embarrassment.” These key revelations he helped expose include Justice official Bruce Ohr’s admission that he acted as a liaison to Steele even after the FBI officially terminated him; former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s false statements about leaks related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation; and the FBI’s reliance on the Steele dossier to spy on Page. “There is actually a law that prevents the FBI and DOJ from failing to disclose material to a court just to hide an embarrassment or mistake, and it came up during our investigation. It helped us compel disclosure.”

Assessing the ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’ 

For Patel, a key document that remains hidden from the public is the full report he helped prepare and which Trump chose not to declassify after pressure from the intelligence community: The House Intelligence Committee report about the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

The ICA is a foundational Russiagate document. Released just two weeks before Trump’s inauguration, it asserted that Russia waged an interference campaign to help defeat Hillary Clinton. Despite widespread media accounts that the ICA reflected the consensus view of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, it was a rushed job completed in a few weeks by a small group of CIA analysts led by then-CIA Director John Brennan, who merely consulted with FBI and NSA counterparts. The NSA even dissented from a key judgment that Russia and Putin specifically aimed to help install Trump, expressing only “moderate confidence.”

The March 2018 House report found that the production of the ICA “deviated from established CIA practice.” And the core judgment that Putin sought to help Trump, the House report found, resulted from “significant intelligence tradecraft failings that undermine confidence in the ICA judgments.”

Along with that March 2018 report, Patel and his intelligence committee colleagues produced a still-classified document that fleshed out the ICA’s “tradecraft failings” in greater detail.

“We went and looked at it [the ICA], and looked at the underlying evidence and cables, and talked to the people who did it,” Patel says. According to Patel, the ICA’s flaws begin with the unprecedentedly short window of time in which it was produced during the final days of the Obama White House. “In two to three weeks, you can’t have a comprehensive investigation of anything, in terms of interference and cybersecurity matters.”

Patel said that still classified information undermines another key claim – that Russia ordered a cyber-hacking campaign to help Trump. The March 2018 House report noted that the ICA’s judgments, “particularly on the cyber intrusion sections, employed appropriate caveats on sources and identified assumptions,” but those were drowned out by partisan insistence that Russia was the culprit.

Constrained from discussing the material, Patel said its release “would lend a lot of credence to” skepticism about the Mueller report’s claim that Russia waged a “sweeping and systematic” interference campaign to install Trump.

That skepticism was bolstered in July 2019 when the Mueller team was reprimanded by a U.S. District judge for falsely suggesting in its final report that a Russian social media firm acted in concert with the Kremlin. (Mueller’s prosecutors later dropped the case against the outfit.)

“We had multiple versions, with redactions, at different levels of classifications we were willing to release,” Patel said.”But that was unfortunately the one report, which speaks directly to [an absence of concrete evidence] that’s still sitting in a safe, classified. And unfortunately, the American public – unless Biden acts – won’t see it.”

Confirming earlier media reports from late last year, Patel says it was Trump’s CIA Director Gina Haspel who personally thwarted the House report’s release. The report sits in a safe at CIA headquarters in Langley. “The CIA has possession of it, and POTUS chose not to put it out,” Patel says. He does not know why.

‘Outrageous’ Reliance on CrowdStrike

Another key set of documents that the public has yet to see are reports by Democratic National Committee cyber-contractor CrowdStrike – reports the FBI relied on to accuse Russia of hacking the DNC. The FBI bowed to the DNC’s refusal to hand over its servers for analysis, a decision that Patel finds “outrageous.”

“The FBI, who are the experts in looking at servers and exploiting this information so that the intelligence community can digest it and understand what happened, did not have access to the DNC servers in their entirety,” Patel said. “For some outrageous reason the FBI agreed to having CrowdStrike be the referee as to what it could and could not exploit, and could and could not look at.”

According Patel, Crowdstrike CEO Shawn Henry, a former top FBI official under Mueller, “totally took advantage of the situation to the unfortunate shortcoming of the American public.”

CrowdStrike’s credibility suffered a major blow in May 2020 with the disclosure of an explosive admission from Henry that had been kept under wraps for nearly three years. In  December 2017 testimony before the House Intel Committee showed he had acknowledged that his firm “did not have concrete evidence” that Russian hackers removed any data, including private emails, from the DNC servers. 

“We wanted those depositions declassified immediately after we took them,” Patel recalled. But the committee was “thwarted,” he says, by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence under Dan Coats, and later by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff once Democrats took control of Congress in January 2018. According to Patel, Schiff “didn’t want some of these transcripts to come out. And that was just extremely frustrating.” Working with Coats’ successor, Richard Grenell, Patel ultimately forced the release of the Henry transcript and dozens of others last year. 

Still classified, however, are the full CrowdStrike reports relied on by the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Patel said their release would underscore Henry’s admission while raising new questions about why the government used reports from DNC contractors – the other being Fusion GPS’ Steele dossier – for a consequential national security case involving a rival Republican campaign.

Doubting Reliability of CIA’s Kremlin Mole

The CIA relied on another questionable source for its assertion that Putin personally ordered and orchestrated an interference campaign to elect Trump: a purported mole inside the Kremlin. The mole has been outed as Oleg Smolenkov, a mid-level Kremlin official who fled Russia in 2017 for the United States where he lives under his own name. According to the New York Times, some CIA officials harbored doubts about Smolenkov’s “trustworthiness.”

Patel said he could not comment on whether he believes Smolenkov relayed credible information to the CIA. “I’m sort of in a bind on this one, still, with all the classified information I looked at, and the declassifications we’ve requested, but have not yet been granted.”

Patel did suggest, however, that those who have raised skepticism about the CIA’s reliance on Smolenkov are “rightly” trying to “get to the bottom” of the story. “But until that ICA product that we created, and some of the other documents are finally revealed – if I start talking about them, then I’m probably going to get the FBI knocking at my door.”

Will Key Documents Be Released?

On his last full day in office, President Trump ordered the declassification of an additional binder of material from the FBI’s initial Trump-Russia probe, Crossfire Hurricane. A source familiar with the documents covered under the declassification order confirmed to RealClearInvestigations that it does not contain the House committee’s assessment of the January 2017 that Patel wants released. Nor does it contain any of the CrowdStrike reports used by the FBI.

In addition to those closely guarded documents, Patel thinks that there is even more to learn about the fraudulent surveillance warrants on Carter Page. The public should see “the entire subject portion” of the final Carter Page FISA warrant, Patel said, as well as “the underlying source verification reporting” in which the FBI tried to justify it, despite relying on the Steele dossier. By reading what the FBI “used to prop up that FISA, the American public can see what a bunch of malarkey it was that they were relying on,” Patel added. “The American public needs to know about and read for themselves and make their own determination as to why their government allowed this to happen. Knowingly.

“And that’s not castigating an entire agency. We’re not disparaging the entire FBI because of Peter Strzok [the FBI agent dismissed, in part, because of anti-Trump bias] and his crew of miscreants. Same thing goes for the intelligence community. If they did some shoddy tradecraft, the American public has a right to know about it in an investigation involving the presidential election.”

You knew it was coming when the NYT set the stage yesterday with its latest anti-Assad hit piece titled “Having Won Syria’s War, al-Assad Is Mired in Economic Woes” (which makes only a passing reference just why Syria is mired in economic woes namely that “most of the country’s oil fields and much of its agricultural land are in the northeast, which is controlled by Kurdish-led forces backed by the United States”) and sure enough, just over a month since his inauguration, Biden reminded the world that the military-industrial complex is back in control by carrying out air strikes in eastern Syria against facilities that allegedly were used by “Iranian-backed” militia, the U.S. Defense Department said on Thursday night.

The strike marked the first (of many) overseas military attack ordered by Joe Biden, which in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that the strikes took place “at President Biden’s direction” and were authorized “in response to recent attacks against American and coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel.”

“Specifically the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian backed militant groups including Kait’ib Hezbollah and Kait’ib Sayyid al Shuhada,” Kirbry said.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message; President Biden will act to protect American coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.”

The site is reportedly used as part of a weapons smuggling operation by the militias. The strikes were carried out to degrade the ability of the groups to carry out future attacks and to send a message about the recent attacks, the US official said.

The assault came after a series of rocket attacks in recent days on facilities in Iraq used by the U.S., including one that killed a contractor working with the U.S.-led coalition in the country.

What is amusing is that on one hand Biden is attacking “Iran-backed” militia in Syria, while at the same time he is reportedly seeking to restore the Nuclear deal with Iran and restore cordial relations. As Bloomberg notes, “by hitting a facility in Syria said to be operated by an Iranian-linked militia, the U.S. avoids raising tensions that would come with a strike directly on Iran, which the Biden administration is seeking to persuade to return to a 2015 nuclear deal that former President Donald Trump withdrew from three years ago.”

Of course, that’s hardly how the attack will be spun by Iran, where Biden just burned any political capital he may have had, and may soon have to resort to paradroping pallets full of billions of dollars in cash, similar to what Obama used to do.

What is even more amusing is that as usual, the deep state never actually had any proof (but it is always highly confident in everything, including that Russia is behind every evil in the world),  and the US had not definitively blamed any specific group for the rocket attacks or attributed them to any Iranian proxies in the region, but the administration had made it clear where they place the blame.

Biden administration officials condemned the Feb. 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out. Officials have noted that in the past, Iranian-backed Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket attacks that targeted U.S. personnel or facilities in Iraq.

Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, had said Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the Feb. 15 attack.

“Right now, we’re not able to give you a certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks, what groups, and I’m not going to get into the tactical details of every bit of weaponry used here,” Kirby said. “Let’s let the investigations complete and conclude, and then when we have more to say, we will.”

So… launch attacks first, and then conclude who is responsible later. Sounds like the good old MIC is back in action.

In any case, the strikes come as Washington and Tehran position themselves for negotiations about Iran’s nuclear program, potentially crippling the already fragile process.

The U.S. launched the strike one day after Biden spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi. The two leaders “discussed the recent rocket attacks against Iraqi and coalition personnel and agreed that those responsible for such attacks must be held fully to account,” the White House said Wednesday in a statement.

After throwing former Donald Trump under the bus following this month’s impeachment acquittal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says he would back the former president if he wins the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

“There’s a lot to happen between now and ’24. I’ve got at least four members that I think are planning on running for president. … Should be a wide open race,” McConnell told Fox News’ Bret Baier.

Then, when asked if he would support Trump in 2024 if nominated, McConnell replied: “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.”

After Mitch McConnell said a number of senators are likely to run in 2024, @BretBaier asked what he would do if Trump was the nominee: “If the President was the party’s nominee [in 2024], would you support him?”

McConnell replied w/this: “The nominee of the party? Absolutely.” pic.twitter.com/FZb9kXSiiZ

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 25, 2021

The statement was McConnell’s first mention of Trump weeks after he excoriated Trump on the Senate floor – calling him “morally responsible” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, despite the fact that he was acquitted of incitement.

Trump, in response, called McConnell “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”

“My point is what happened in the past is not something relevant now, we’re moving forward. We’ve got a new administration,” said McConnell, after Baier played a clip of the scathing floor speech, while similarly declining to reveal whether he blamed Trump for the loss of two Senate seats in Georgia, or whether Trump should speak on Sunday Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“I don’t have any advice to give the former president about where he should speak or what we should say,” said McConnell, who stressed that the GOP needs to unite heading into the 2022 midterms. As The Hill notes, “Republicans hold 50 seats, putting them on the cusp of the majority, but they are also playing defense in 20 states in 2022. “

Authored by Christian Britschgi via Reason.com,

Retail stores in most of California are only allowed to operate at 25 percent capacity. A new bill in the state legislature would ensure that whatever part of their shop is allowed to be open is as inclusive as possible.

Last week, Assembly Members Evan Low (D–Cupertino) and Cristina Garcia (D–Los Angeles) introduced a bill that would require retailers to offer their toys and childcare products in a gender-neutral format.

Brick-and-mortar shops would have to display the majority of their products and clothing aimed at children in one undivided, unisex area on the sales floor.

They’d also be barred from putting up signage that would indicate whether a product was intended for a boy or girl.

California-based retailers that sell children’s products online would also have to have a page on their website that offers these products in a general neutral fashion.

The bill would allow retailers to title that section of their website “kids,” “unisex,” or “gender neutral.”

The bill is nearly identical to one that Low introduced last year, telling Politico at the time that he was hoping to create a more inclusive shopping experience.

“This is an issue of children being able to express themselves without bias,” he said.

Low dropped the bill in May to prioritize COVID-19-related work but promised to pick up the fight later, saying in a statement that “the policy behind this bill is not only important in regards to addressing perceived societal norms but also ensuring that prejudice and judgment does not play a prominent role in our children’s lives. I look forward to working on this issue in the future.”

If passed, stores that did put dresses in a separate girls section could be hit with a $1,000 civil fine. The policy would only apply to retail department stores with over 500 employees.

Even without mandates, some retailers have been moving away from gendered in-store promotion. In 2015, Target announced that it would get rid of separate sections for bedding and toys.

At the time, the company was careful to note that they weren’t eliminating all gender distinctions in their store layout and signage, saying that “some cases, like apparel, where there are fit and sizing differences” gender-based suggestions were appropriate.

Low’s bill would deprive Target and other retailers of making that choice for themselves.

That stores like Target are voluntarily moving toward more gender-neutral promotions shows that mandating such a change isn’t necessary to provide a genderless child section to shoppers. The fact that some haven’t made the same move suggests that there may still be customers who find gendered distinctions helpful.

Regulating how companies market their products online and in their stores could potentially raise First Amendment challenges as well.

The bill would appear to disadvantage brick-and-mortar stores versus online retailers. But it’s those same brick-and-mortar retailers that have been hammered by the pandemic and related lockdown restrictions. Having to spend more complying with new regulations is the last thing many need.

*  *  *

“There are clear political and social motivations behind this bill, namely to use the state to compel “inclusivity” and encourage the “self-expression” of disordered inclinations at a very young age. It’s despicable,” commented Evan James.

Two weeks ago we discussed the fact that President Biden was about to run into “the most important person no one has ever heard of” – namely, the parliamentarian.

The sudden interest in the obscure official was because the parliamentarian determines which laws can be repealed (or passed) using budget reconciliation, the procedure by which the Senate can avoid a filibuster and allow legislation to pass by a simple majority.

This makes the parliamentarian the powerful procedural traffic cop on Capitol Hill, as all of the headlines asserted. MacDonough stopped Republicans cold when they tried using reconciliation to repeal some provisions of Obamacare, and she might soon rule that a provision in the COVID relief bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 is out of order.

Well, tonight we just discovered how powerful she is as Axios reports that the Senate parliamentarian has ruled that the minimum wage increase cannot be included in the Democratic COVID-19 stimulus package.

The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that Democrats’ $15 minimum wage provision cannot be included in President Biden’s COVID relief bill.

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 26, 2021

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough was playing referee under what’s known as the “Byrd Rule,” a 1980s construct of then-Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat and master of Senate procedures. The rule requires that anything done under the cover of the budget must be central to the country’s fiscal situation.

Extraneous provisions can be struck by the motion of a single senator, and it requires 60 votes to waive the rule – the same threshold as a filibuster.

We do note that Vice President Kamala Harris could overrule the decision, but the administration has signaled they will not do so (especially with Manchin already signaling he is not comfortable with $15).

“We’re going to honor the rules of the Senate and work within that system to get this bill passed,” Mr. Klain said on MSNBC.

This is a significant blow to the more progressive wing of the party who have insisted the $15 minimum wage bill be a part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.

This means that any increase in the minimum wage will need bipartisan support.

Bear in mind that Republicans have introduced their own versions of bills to increase the minimum wage.

• Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) proposed an increase to $10/hour by 2025. This bill, however, contains a provision that would mandate E-Verify for all employers to ensure the rising wages go to “legally authorized workers,” which likely would not get any Democratic support.

• Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced an alternative to the Democrats’ proposal that would use federal dollars to increase low-earning workers’ income. One foreseeable problem: the subsidy would disproportionally benefit those in states that have kept their minimum wages low.

But, of course, Bernie and his pals won’t stand for anything less than $15!

Authored by Alex Newman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Leaked emails prove that, contrary to United Nations denials, UN human-rights officials did in fact give the names of Chinese dissidents to the communist regime in Beijing before those activists were set to testify in Geneva against the Communist Chinese Party’s abuses.

In fact, it appears from the leaked documents that the practice of handing over names of Chinese dissidents to the dictatorship was viewed as a “usual practice” by all involved. The whistleblower told The Epoch Times that it continues to this day, despite UN denials.

Chinese communist authorities used the names received from the UN to prevent the dissidents from leaving China. At least one dissident identified by the UN and detained by the CCP before leaving for Geneva, Cao Shunli, died while in detention.

If the dissident expected to embarrass Beijing at the UN was already abroad, the CCP frequently threatened or even kidnapped and tortured the person’s family, according to UN whistleblower Emma Reilly, who first exposed the scandal.

Critics of the regime whose names were handed over by the UN included activists concerned about Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Islamic Uyghur minority in Western China—all of which are being targeted by the CCP for various reasons.

In February of 2020, The Epoch Times reported on the scandal, and on the retaliation faced by Reilly for attempting to expose and halt the practice. Reilly’s case at the UN is ongoing. She remains employed there but is under “investigation.”

Prominent human-rights organizations around the world have slammed the UN practice for endangering the lives of dissidents and their families.

In comments to The Epoch Times, Reilly described it as “criminal” and even argued that it made the UN “complicit in genocide.”

For years, the UN denied that its agents were providing the names of dissidents to the CCP.

Thanks to leaked e-mails about the practice, however, it is now clear that the UN misled its member governments and the press surrounding the scandal.

One of the explosive emails in question was sent on Sept. 7, 2012, from a diplomat at the CCP’s Mission to the UN in Geneva requesting information on Chinese dissidents set to testify at the UN Human Rights Council.

“Following the usual practice, could you kindly heip me [sic] to check whether the persons on the attached list are requesting the accreditation of the 21st session of the HRC?” asked the CCP diplomat in an email to a UN liaison with non-governmental organizations. “My delegation has some security concern [sic] on these persons.”

The UN official, whose name was redacted from the leaked email, responded by confirming that two of the dissidents on the CCP’s list were in fact accredited and planning to attend.

“As per your request, kindly be advised that Dolkun Isa and He Geng were accredited by the Nonviolent Radical party, Transnational and Transparty for the 21st session of the Human Rights Council,” the UN official confirmed to the regime, with no apparent concern for the safety of either dissident or their families still in China.

Isa is the president of the World Uyghur Congress, which advocates on behalf of the Uyghur population of Western China’s Xinjiang region that is being brutally targeted by the CCP.

Numerous official sources around the world say the regime is holding more than a million Uyghurs in “re-education” camps. Former detainees who spoke with The Epoch Times revealed that they were being raped, tortured, brainwashed, and savagely abused.

Isa also serves as the vice president of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), which seeks to be a voice for nations and people groups without representation from a nation-state of their own.

The year after that email, at the request of the regime’s delegation, UN security attempted to remove Isa from the Human Rights Council chamber. However, Reilly—and only Reilly—intervened and prevented his ouster.

The other dissident identified by the UN in its email to the CCP mission, Geng He, is the wife of imprisoned Chinese human-rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, a Christian who wrote a book about the severe torture he was subjected to by the CCP for his work and beliefs.

One of the reasons for the brutal torture of Gao was the fact that his wife was speaking out at the UN, as revealed to the CCP in advance by the UN officials in that email.

Another leaked email, this one from 2013, showed the same CCP diplomat again seeking to confirm the identities of Chinese dissidents expected at the Human Rights Council to expose CCP abuses.

“The Chinese Mission had very good cooperation with you and your section in previous sessions,” the CCP diplomat said in to the UN official in the email obtained by The Epoch Times and other media. “We appreciate it a lot.”

“This time, I need you to do me a favor again,” the CCP diplomat continued. “Some anti-Chinese Government secessionists are trying to participate the HRC session [sic] under the disguise of other NGOs. They might pose a threat to the United Nations and the Chinese Delegation.”

“Could you please check and inform me whether the persons I list below have got accreditation for the 22th session [sic] of the Human Rights Council?” the CCP diplomat asked. “If you have any information, please contact me through email or at [number redacted].”

Among the names on the list was Dolkun Isa, again.

According to Isa, CCP agents have showed up at his house overseas to try to get him to stop speaking out. CCP operatives also arrested his family in China, including his mother, who died in a Chinese “concentration camp” in 2018. His older brother was also arrested. And his younger brother has been missing since 2016. CCP media outlets reported that Isa’s father died, too, though Isa does not know when or where.

The Epoch Times attempted to reach the CCP diplomat in question at the Swiss cell-phone number listed in the email, but was unsuccessful.

UN human-rights officials responded to that CCP mission email with the names of four activists who were expected to attend the Human Rights Council.

The Epoch Times is withholding the names of the activists that are not yet public for their protection and privacy.

Reilly was furious and horrified at the same time.

“This is a hideous practice, but if the UN is going to do it, at least they must make sure it’s public so people know the danger they are going to be put in,” she told The Epoch Times in a video-conference interview from Geneva. “This is basic decency and basic standards of humanity—don’t secretly put these people in danger. Is that too much to ask?”

Right from the start, the emails reveal that Reilly argued against giving the names of dissidents to the CCP. Instead, she advocated informing the targeted individuals.

However, Chief of the UN Human Rights Council Branch Eric Tistounet argued that the list of names was public and that the CCP requests could therefore not be resisted.

Indeed, Tistounet suggested acting as quickly as possible to avoid “exacerbating Chinese mistrust,” the emails show.

“When did that become part of the considerations?” Reilly asked rhetorically in comments to The Epoch Times.

News of the emails confirming that the UN was in fact handing over names of Chinese dissidents made a major splash in Turkish media. However, in Europe and the United States, the scandal has barely been mentioned in the press.

In remarks to The Epoch Times, Reilly urged journalists worldwide to examine the documents, transcripts of internal court cases, and other evidence to see who was telling the truth—and then to report that truth so the people of the world can see what is happening.

But Reilly said this is a systemic issue with the UN.

“The problem with the UN is there are no adults in the room, and there is no external oversight,” she said, citing other examples of whistleblowers who have been persecuted for trying to do the right thing. “Unless the member states act, this is going to continue.”

Reilly also expressed deep concern about the close relationship between CCP agents and senior officials within the UN human rights system charged with protecting human rights.

For years, senior UN officials attempted to mislead UN member states, the media, and the public about the name-sharing scandal, Reilly told The Epoch Times.

From 2013 to 2017, the UN claimed the practice was not happening. Much later, in January of 2021, a spokesman for the UN was quoted telling the Anadolu Agency that the practice was stopped “since 2015.”

However, in a Feb. 2, 2017, press release aiming to deflect the escalating criticism, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) admitted that it was indeed confirming to governments the identities of individuals being accredited to attend its human-rights events.

“Chinese authorities, and others, regularly ask the UN Human Rights Office, several days or weeks prior to Human Rights Council meetings, whether particular [non-governmental organization] delegates are attending the forthcoming session,” the UN OHCHR said. “The Office never confirms this information until the accreditation process is formally under way, and until it is sure that there is no obvious security risk.”

Reilly said she was shocked by the language used in the release.

“The only security checks that are ever done are those done by the Chinese diplomats,” she told The Epoch Times.

Indeed, transcripts from the case show that Reilly challenged the UN to show any evidence of its supposed “security” checks before handing over the names. None was provided.

“It was all about whether these people would cause problems for the Chinese diplomats at the UN,” she said. “It had nothing to do with keeping anyone safe.”

This is a major violation of the UN’s own rules as well, Reilly said, noting that if governments want to know who is attending they are supposed to ask the plenary in front of other UN member states.

Despite the escalating scandal surrounding the practice and the UN’s retaliation against the whistleblower who exposed it, Reilly told The Epoch Times that the practice of handing dissident names to the CCP continues to this day.

“It has now become my personal mission and responsibility to prevent this UN complicity in genocide,” she said.

Documents obtained by The Epoch Times reveal that some of the highest-ranking officials within the UN system have been involved in an effort to silence, discredit, and retaliate against Reilly for her efforts.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights did not respond to requests for comment on the leaked emails or the broader scandal.

In early 2020, the UN OHCHR declined to comment to The Epoch Times, citing ongoing litigation. However, Reilly told The Epoch Times this week that she has given them full permission to comment on the case to the media.

Multiple spokesmen for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also declined to comment.

The global COVID death toll has surpassed another macabre milestone: more than 2.5MM people have died from the virus around the world.

Although globally new deaths are falling thanks to changing weather patterns and the rollout of various COVID-19 vaccines in certain hard-hit countries, with over 800K deaths, Europe is the hardest hit region, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, then the US and Canada.

Nearly half of these deaths can be attributed to just five countries: the US, Brazil, Mexico, India and the UK. They have reported 506K, 250K, 183K and 122.3K deaths each, respectively. The combined global tally according to Johns Hopkins University topped 1MM on Sept. 28, a little over nine months after the first death was recorded in Wuhan. The world topped 2MM on Jan. 15 – roughly six weeks ago.

Despite extreme differences in restrictions, vaccine roll-outs, and levels of inequality, the pace of COVID-linked deaths has slowed almost uniformly across every continent since the start of 2021, as the chart above shows, but since November, Europe has contributed roughly one-third of the global daily total.

Source: CNN

The US has seen a sharp drop in COVID deaths since the vaccines were rolled out late last year (Europe hasn’t had nearly as much success with getting vaccines to patients). And deaths among nursing home residents, seen as the most vulnerable, have fallen by an even greater margin.

But daily death tolls have fallen on every continent since the start of the year. Deaths in North America have fallen by nearly 25%, faster than Europe and Africa, which shed 13% to report 378 new deaths per day.

While Britain earlier this week laid out its plan for reopening its economy, EU officials said that despite initial delays, the bloc remains on track to reach its goal of fully vaccinating 70% of adults by mid-September, after AstraZeneca’s boss said on Thursday that he was confident the company could make up a huge shortfall in promised doses. Speaking by videolink, Pascal Soriot told the European Parliament that Europe had plans to accelerate its vaccination program, and that the delivery deficit (which is currently equal to around 60% of the 100 million doses that were supposed to be supplied between January and March) could be attributed to low production yields in the EU factories making AstraZeneca’s vaccine.

At any rate, while the UK prepares to wind down its COVID-fighting measures, other European economies, most notably Finland, are weighing whether to impose another round of restrictions.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Toy giant Hasbro has announced that Mr. Potato Head will become gender neutral ‘Potato Head’ in order to encourage kids to create “same sex families.”

Yes, really.

The company is dropping “Mr.” from the name in a move “designed to break away from traditional gender norms, particularly when it comes to creating Potato Head families,” according to Fast Company.

The change will help children “create same-sex families or single-parent families” as Hasbro seeks to lean away from representing the “traditional family structure.”

“Culture has evolved,” said Kimberly Boyd, an SVP and GM at Hasbro.

“Kids want to be able to represent their own experiences. The way the brand currently exists—with the “Mr.” and “Mrs.”—is limiting when it comes to both gender identity and family structure.”

The iconic Mr. Potato Head gets a 21st-century rebrand https://t.co/TqRtl9jv1X

— Fast Company (@FastCompany) February 25, 2021

“The brand’s solution is to drop the gendered honorific title altogether,” writes Elizabeth Segran.

“This means the toys don’t impose a fixed notion of gender identity or expression, freeing kids to do whatever feels most natural to them: A girl potato might want to wear pants and a boy potato might wear earrings. Hasbro will also sell boxed sets that don’t present a normative family structure. This approach is clever because it allows kids to project their own ideas about gender, sexuality, and family onto the toy, without necessarily offending parents that have more conservative notions about family.”

According to the report, the move is a bid to “stay relevant in the 21st century” while challenging “heteronormative narratives.”

In other words, Hasbro is cashing in on the million in free advertising exposure that this will generate as a result of creating yet another divisive thing for woke imbeciles and those who’ve retained a semblance of sanity to argue over.

While in the meantime, kids will further be indoctrinated about how abnormal traditional family structures have become.

What could possibly go wrong?

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