Month: September 2020

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign released a “Platinum Plan” that outlines promises he is making to black Americans over the next 4 years, if he remains the U.S. president.

As The Epoch Times’ Mimi Nguyen Ly details below, the plan seeks to uplift black communities through, in part, an investment of about $500 billion.

The Trump campaign announced late Friday:

“After years of neglect by Democrat politicians, black Americans have finally found a true advocate in President Trump, who is working tirelessly to deliver greater opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness to their communities.

“While Joe Biden takes black voters for granted—and even questions their blackness if they dare to support conservative ideals—President Trump is working hard to earn the black vote through his Platinum Plan.”

The president’s daughter, Senior White House Adviser Ivanka Trump posted details of the plan on Twitter late Friday.

The “Platinum Plan” (pdf) is based on four core values – opportunity, security, prosperity, and fairness.

The plan seeks to add some 3 million new jobs for the black community, create 500,000 new black-owned businesses, and increase access to capital in black communities by almost $500 billion.

Part of the plan includes bringing back manufacturing jobs to the United States to advance jobs and business, and having an immigration policy that protects American jobs. It also calls to “increase activity in opportunity zones including benefits for local hires.”

Trump is also promising access to better education and job training opportunities, and will work to “advance home ownership opportunities and enhance financial literacy in the black community,” according to the plan.

People listen while President Donald Trump speaks during an event for black supporters at the Cobb Galleria Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sept. 25, 2020. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the next 4 years, Trump promises to lower the cost of healthcare, and “bring better and tailored healthcare to address historic disparities” for the black community. The president will also ensure that black churches can compete for federal resources, and “defend religious freedom exemptions to respect religious believers and always protect life.”

The president also seeks to further criminal justice reform, with his plan saying that he will “commit to working on a Second Step Act.” He will also work towards “safe urban neighborhoods with highest policing standards,” the plan states.

Other aspects of the plan includes making Juneteenth a National Holiday, prosecuting the KKK, designating Antifa a terrorist organization, and making lynching a national hate crime.

Trump’s move to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization came after FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that those who engaged in recent violent protests are targets of serious FBI investigations.

“We have seen Antifa adherence coalescing and working together in what I would describe as small groups and nodes,” Wray has said. Wray added that the bureau is conducting multiple investigations “into some anarchist violent extremists, some of whom operate through these nodes.”

Before that, Attorney General William Barr in August said Antifa is a “revolutionary group” that is bent on establishing communism or socialism in the United States.

“They are a revolutionary group that is interested in some form of socialism, communism. They’re essentially Bolsheviks. Their tactics are fascistic,” Barr said in an interview with Fox News on Aug. 9.

At a “Black Voices for Trump” campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, Trump characterized his Platinum Plan as a “black empowerment plan,” and warned black voters against supporting his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden.

“Though black Americans have traditionally been shut out of opportunities to grow our own businesses and create generational wealth, President Trump is working hard to give us access to the American Dream,” K. Carl Smith, Black Voices for Trump advisory board member, said in a statement.

“President Trump is a businessman and understands that pride, community, and dedication are built through entrepreneurship.”

President Donald Trump elbow bumps with Herschel Walker during a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sept. 25, 2020. (John Bazemore/AP Photo)

“No one in Washington politics today has done more to hurt black Americans than Joe Biden,” Trump told supporters on Friday. “For half a century, Joe’s personally advocated or enacted virtually every policy that has caused pain and suffering in the black community. You know that.”

In a statement prior to Trump’s rally in Georgia, Biden said, “As president, I will work to advance racial equity across the American economy and build back better … I promise to fight for black working families and direct real investments to advance racial equity as part of our nation’s economic recovery.”

Singer John Legend (real name John Roger Stephens) says that Americans might “have to start thinking about going somewhere else” if President Trump is reelected.

Legend joins a long tradition of Hollywood liberals who vow to leave the country over President Trump but then don’t.

“At some point, if that project [to destroy democracy] was to be in any way successful, you’d have to think about going somewhere that is a true democracy, that has respect for the rule of law and human rights,” Legend virtue signaled in an interview this week with Cosmopolitan UK.

“If America chooses to be that place then people will have to start thinking about going somewhere else. It is truly disturbing and concerning,” he added.

“We were born and raised here, all of our families are here. It would be hard to leave. But I don’t know what one’s supposed to do when you have a leader who is trying to destroy democracy,” Legend added.

Legend, 41, performed at the Democratic National Convention and is a huge Biden supporter – while Trump has referred to the performer as “boring,” and referred to his wife Chrissy Teigen as “filthy-mouthed.”

Teigen deleted 60,000 tweets earlier this year after coming under fire for sexualizing children.

When will you explain these tweets @chrissyteigen ? Cc: @DOJPH pic.twitter.com/xzH5HwA3Uu

— 47™️ (@fadde) July 14, 2020

That said, Legend’s obvious virtue signal would be slightly more believable if he and Teigen hadn’t just bought a $17.5 million mansion in Beverly Hills.

Yeah, I’m gonna call bullshit pic.twitter.com/8Nr8GpfOeA

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) September 25, 2020

Submitted by SouthFront,

Over the past months, attacks on convoys of the US-led coalition moving military equipment and supplies have become an ordinary development in Iraq. Local Iranian-backed resistance groups demanding a US military withdrawal from the country have conducted over two dozen attacks so far. The most recent ones took place on September 22 and 23.

The September 22 attack erupted in the district of al-Dujayl, around 60 km to the north of Baghdad. According to Iraq’s Security Media Cell, the convoy was targeted with an improvised explosive device. No casualties were reported. On the afternoon of September 23, a second supply convoy of the U.S.-led coalition was targeted in the district of Awja, more than 160 km north of Baghdad.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (also known as Ashab al-Kahf) claimed responsibility for the September 23 incident saying that several military vehicles belonging to British forces were damaged. Meanwhile, another group, the Breaker of Titans Company (Saryat Qasim al-Jabbarin), said that it had attacked coalition convoys near the town of Hillah in Babylon province and in the district of Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad. In an official statement, the group claimed that it will continue attacks until U.S. forces are expelled from Iraq.

While regular attacks on supply convoys of the Coalition cause apparent media jitters, they have not caused any notable damage to the coalition forces themselves. Logistical and supply convoys are often operated by private military contractors and local forces affiliated with or just hired by the coalition.

The US military still has a strong presence at its fortified positions and remaining bases in central and northern Iraq. This year the Pentagon even reinforced the security of its forces by deploying Patriot surface-to-air missile and C-RAM (counter rocket, artillery, and mortar) systems. The C-RAM is now regularly employed to protect the US embassy area in Baghdad’s Green Zone from rocket strikes.

The US military has been also conducting active reconnaissance and electronic warfare operations to detect and suppress infrastructure of Iranian-backed forces working against its interests in the region. On September 24, a U.S. EC-130H Compass Call “electronic attack” aircraft was spotted over the southern and eastern regions of Iraq. The aircraft took off on September 24 from the Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE’s capital, Abu Dhabi. After crossing the Persian Gulf, the aircraft entered Iraq’s airspace and flew between the southern province of Basrah and the eastern city of Kut in a line parallel to the Iraqi-Iranian border.

The Compass Call is a heavily modified version of the C-130 Hercules developed to disrupt enemy command and control communications, perform offensive counter-information operations and carry out other kinds of electronic attacks. The U.S. Air Force’s EC-130Hs carry out missions over the Persian Gulf on a regular basis. Nevertheless, previously they rarely flew over Iraq.

Pro-Iranian sources claim that the increased US military and intelligence activity near Iranian borders are an indication of the US-Israeli preparations for aggressive actions in Iran. Despite this, in the current conditions, an open Iranian-US conflict in the Persian Gulf region in the near future remains an unlikely scenario. At the same time, the proxy conflict between Iranian-led forces and the US-Israeli-led bloc have been escalating.

Investors expect a ruling on ByteDance’s request for an injunction against the Trump Administration order banning TikTok by the end of the weekend (a hearing has been scheduled for Sunday), but in the meantime, it appears the White He is already moving on to its next action item in the ongoing economic war against China.

As was previewed a couple of weeks ago, the Trump Administration is moving to cut off Semiconduct Manufacturing International  Corporation – or SMIC – China’s biggest producer of microchips, with wafer fabrication sites all across the mainland, off from US-made supplies. A letter obtained by the FT dated on Friday orders American companies not to send any more products to SMIC.

The administration argued that the products pose an “unacceptable risk” of being diverted to “military end use,” according to a copy of the letter seen by the Financial Times. Just like sanctions on Huawei, the move threatens to cut off China’s biggest chipmaker from crucial US software and chipmaking equipment. Any companies that do want to export to SMIC will need to secure a special license from the Commerce Department.

“It all depends on how the US implements this. In the worst-case scenario, SMIC is completely cut off, which would severely set back China’s ability to produce chips. This would be a tipping point for US-China relations,” said Paul Triolo, head of tech policy analysis at consultancy Eurasia Group.

It’s clear that the administration’s move goes beyond national security, with the goal of knee-capping another Chinese ‘national champion’. SMIC, a “national champion” that is crucial to Beijing’s aims of achieving chip self-sufficiency, recently oversaw country’s biggest domestic IPO in a decade, when it raised $7.6 billion in Shanghai earlier this year.

The administration’s sanctions against Huawei have already seriously impacted SMIC. The rules appeared almost explicitly designed to stop SIMC from supplying certain chips to its largest customer, Huawei.

But US chipmakers will also feel some blowback: Qualcomm, which uses SMIC’s foundries to fabricate some of its chips, will need to find a new partner, which means the Trump Administration might also rob SIMC of its second-largest customer after Huawei.

On Saturday, SMIC said that it was engaging with the Department of Commerce about the new rules. The company reiterated that it “has no relationship with the Chinese military, and does not manufacture for any military end users or end-uses.”

To be sure, Chinese law requires all companies to cooperate with intelligence and military forces if so ordered by Beijing

SMIC added it had not received any formal notification of the sanctions.

Authored by Tyler O’Neil via PJMedia.com,

President Donald Trump will nominate a woman to succeed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday, and observers expect him to choose Amy Coney Barrett, a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. On Friday, after news outlets reported that Trump would choose Barrett, HBO host Bill Maher saved the potential nominee for her Roman Catholic faith. Yet perhaps no one has given a better response to such anti-religious bigotry than Barrett herself.

“Apparently, the pick is going to be Amy Coney. We’re going to be saying the name a lot because she’s a f***ing nut. Religion, I was right about that one, too,” Maher said.

“Amy Coney Barrett. Catholic. Really Catholic. I mean really, really Catholic, like speaking in tongues. She doesn’t believe in condoms, which she has in common with Trump, because he doesn’t either. We learned that from Stormy Daniels,” Maher quipped.

Maher’s objection to Barrett appears to be grounded in the idea that charismatic Roman Catholics are some dangerous anti-science sect and so they cannot treat legal issues dispassionately. Rather than just attack Catholicism, he attacked the broader Christian trend of believing that people still speak in tongues due to the Holy Spirit (a controversial position in Christianity, but one that extends to a broad swath of Christians). He even suggested that Barrett could not be trusted because of “religion.”

Yet Barrett is an originalist, which means she aims to uphold the original public meaning of the Constitution, rather than reinterpreting it in order to unilaterally amend the Constitution, writing her policy preferences in law as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade (1973), creating a new “right” to abortion.

Maher was far from the first to attack Barrett for her faith.

Other attacks on Barrett’s faith

During Barrett’s confirmation hearing for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) notoriously imposed something of a religious test.

“The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said, suggesting that Barrett’s religious convictions disqualified her from service on the federal bench.

After Ginsburg’s death, some on the Left have rushed to demonize Barrett. Washington Post book critic Ray Charles suggested that there was something nefarious to Barrett’s statement that she intends to pursue “the kingdom of God.” On the contrary, the “kingdom of God” is a common Christian phrase that has more to do with loving your neighbor as yourself than bringing about some kind of theocracy.

Similarly, Newsweek ran a story claiming that Barrett belonged to a secret cult-like organization that inspired Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. In truth, the pentecostal group to which Barrett belonged, People of Praise, had no connection with People of Hope, the group Atwood seized upon. Newsweek corrected the story but did not retract it.

Amy Coney Barrett’s response to such attacks

Last year at an event with Hillsdale College, Barrett’s student Stephanie Maloney asked the judge “What role, if any, should faith of a nominee have in the confirmation process?”

Barrett said, “None.”

“I mean, we have a long tradition of religious tolerance in this country. And in fact, the religious test clause in the Constitution makes it unconstitutional to impose a religious test on anyone who holds public office,” the judge explained.

“So whether someone is Catholic or Jewish or Evangelical or Muslim or has no faith at all is irrelevant to the job,” Barrett added.

“I do have one thing that I want to add to that, though. I think when you step back and you think about the debate about whether someone’s religion has any bearing on their fitness for office, it seems to me that the premise of the question is that people of faith would have a uniquely difficult time separating out their moral commitments from their obligation to apply the law. And I think people of faith should reject that premise,” she added.

“All people, of course– well, we hope, most people– have deeply held moral convictions, whether or not they come from faith. People who have no faith, people who are not religious, have deeply held moral convictions,” Barrett noted. “And it’s just as important for those people to be sure– I just spent time talking about the job of a judge being to set aside moral convictions, personal moral convictions, and personal preferences, and follow the law. That’s a challenge for those of faith and for those who have no faith.”

“So I think the public should be absolutely concerned about whether a nominee for judicial office will be willing and able to set aside personal preferences, be they moral, be they political, whatever convictions they are,” Barrett explained. “The public should be concerned about whether a nominee can set those aside in favor of following the law.”

“But that’s not a challenge just for religious people. I mean, that’s a challenge for everyone. And so I think it’s a dangerous road to go down to say that only religious people would not be able to separate out moral convictions from their duty,” she said.

On Friday we pointed out that one week after one of the biggest inflows into stock funds on record – when retail traders furiously BTFD in hopes the market’s upward momentum would accelerate – speculators hit a brick wall and reversed furiously as stocks slumped, with US equity funds and ETFs reporting $26.87BN of outflows, the largest weekly outflow since December 2018 and the third largest outflow ever! In other this was the fastest and biggest sentiment reversal on record.

This record sentiment reversal was driven by despair-driven capitulation outflows from high beta and momentum names, as tech-focused ETFs suffered $1.23 billion worth of outflows, the largest since December 2018, when global stock markets tanked. September was also the first month of outflows for the tech sector since the March crash.

But nowhere has the sentiment shift been as clear as in Nasdaq 100 Mini futures, where after more than a year of bullish sentiment with just one tiny dip into bearish territory in May, speculators finally puked, sending the net non-commercial NQ futs to -134,311 contracts, surpassing the peak bearish sentiment during and after the financial crisis…

… and in fact the second highest on record, with just July 2006 more bearish. What happened back then? For the next generation of traders out there, that’s when Fed had just reached the peak of its rate-hike cycle (yes, there was a time when rates above 2% were possible), hammering the Nasdaq.

Back in 2006 the Fed responded by starting an easing cycle in 2007, and the resulting drop in rates from over 5% to 0% eventually allowed the Nasdaq to rebound and hit all time highs.

What is curious is that it took only a modest Nasdaq correction over the past month to send sentiment to the second most bearish on record. And unlike 2006, this time the Fed can’t cut rates any lower to reverse sentiment.

On the other hand, the Fed can and will do everything in its power to push sentiment even higher now that Powell has made it clear the Fed is all in the stock market as the primary wealth effect mechanism, in which case watch out once the near record short-squeeze in NQ futs begins: it can and will send the Nasdaq to all time highs faster than you can spell “Brrrrr.“

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Just as time is a one-way arrow, “the politicization of everything” is a one-way road to dissolution and collapse.

The essence of any Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything, as everything must be either supporting the status quo or it’s a threat to the status quo.

There is no middle ground in a Totalitarian society and so everything–literally everything– must be politicized to assess its true nature of being “for” or “against” the status quo.

In such a society, what cannot be politicized ceases to exist. It isn’t counted or recognized, and so it fades into a netherworld of shadows, a dangerous realm where the mere act of attempting to recognize a non-politicized experience is itself a threat to the status quo.

You will of course be thinking of the former Soviet Union (USSR) and other Totalitarian societies. Here’s an extreme example of how the politicization of everything works: a conventional worker in a conventional factory happens to mention to a co-worker that he dreamed Stalin had fallen ill, and this worried him. The co-worker reported this disturbing dream to the proper authorities, who instantly recognized the true nature of the dream and sentenced the worker to 10 years in the Gulag for having an anti-Soviet dream.

(A 10-year sentence in the Gulag was so common that it was nicknamed “a tenner.”)

In America circa 2020, “a tenner” for the wrong thought, opinion or dream takes other forms. Indeed, even the claim that a dream might not have a political angle is itself cause for being sentenced to “a tenner,” because the core of the Totalitarian society is the politicization of everything.

Every object, entity, image, document, historical “fact,” person, thought, emotion, reaction, narrative, opinion, everything tangible or intangible, has a barely concealed political subtext in a Totalitarian society.

There is nothing innocuous, innocent or whimsical in a Totalitarian society, at least in the public sphere. In an era permeated by the cruel marriage of surveillance capitalism and the bitterly divided state, even the once-private sphere is subject to public exposure and shaming / sentencing.

As in an Orwellian nightmare, your “smart” phone, vehicle, TV or Alexa-powered doorbell can eavesdrop and record your private conversations and behaviors, and somebody somewhere has access to this data and can share it with others.

The ostensible justification is “your safety” or “to catch wrongdoing,” but this is transparently false. The real reason is to discern your political crimes. You need not commit any crimes per se to be persecuted; all that’s needed is some tiny bit of evidence that reflects your true beliefs which by definition must be supportive of the status quo via endless virtual-signaling; if not, then they are necessarily a threat to the status quo.

To remain confidential, everyday life must be treated as wartime. Your hand-written journal is safe, as long as you don’t share it digitally. But since we’ve morphed into an engagement-based social order, your selfhood now depends on engaging others digitally via “likes,” shares, etc. and sharing your most “engaging” images and experiences.

A non-shared, non-digital private life is now a form of non-existence that most people find painful and isolating. Hence the obsessive addiction to social media and “sharing” one’s (carefully edited) life online.

Alas, even the most careful editing cannot conceal your true beliefs which will be revealed by the smallest detail: your location, the brand of items you’re wearing, etc.

In a bitterly divided society, your beliefs will be political crimes to one camp or another. Any attempt to “find common ground” will be dismissed as a self-serving ploy, or more dangerously, as a hidden agenda of the forces attempting to destroy the Party.

Those furiously virtue-signaling to maintain their political righteousness within their chosen camp find the sands shifting beneath their feet. The most extreme virtue-signaling is rewarded until it becomes a new threat, and then those who strayed unknowingly beyond the invisible lines will find themselves cast out for political crimes whose definition is constantly changing.

Science has long be politicized, of course, but now it is being hyper-politicized as the stakes keep rising. Claims of neutrality are necessarily viewed as nothing more than clever facades to mask the real motives of self-interest and collusion.

Just as time is a one-way arrow, the politicization of everything is a one-way road to dissolution and collapse. Wishing it wasn’t so doesn’t make it so.

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HBO’s Bill Maher attempted to police and chastise third-party voters and “Hillary equivocators” among Democrats who see Joe Biden as just another establishment centrist. During his Friday show he told his audience “You all have to eat it one more time.”

“There’s no catching them in an inconsistency. They don’t care,” Maher said of Republicans. “The only rule Republicans play by is ‘the people who win make the rules.’ Power talks, losers walk.”

He added: “They have the power, and they’re going to use it to make a court with six conservatives. And when the 2020 election winds up in the lap of that court as they’re practically already promising it will, guess who wins?”

“How different it could have been…” Maher said, transitioning to 2016 and the question of Hillary Clinton.

He then he unleashed on fence-sitters and third party voters, which he appeared to blame for Trump’s taking the White House in the first place:

All the Hillary equivocators from 2016, the people who said she was racist, not really that different from Trump, the ones who voted third party, the ones who stayed home because, ‘you know, the lesser of two evils,’ sorry, but you all have to eat it one more time. Because oh how I would love me some of that Hillary evil right now. You know, the evil where liberals would currently have a 6-3 majority on the court, the evil where people wouldn’t be facing having their health care taken away or their right to vote or where America wasn’t sliding into autocracy…

He also provocatively quipped: “I hope you enjoy carrying your rape baby to term, you can name it Jill Stein.”

He urged that the only answer for progressives and liberals, even those not at all excited about a Biden presidency, is to give him an overwhelming victory in November.

But then again it is quite telling that this is where the Dems are: just like in 2016, Maher and others like Michael Moore must resort to policing their own amid complete lack of enthusiasm for sleepy Joe Biden.

* * *

Previously in 2017 Maher admitted to CNN of Hillary Clinton, she “wasn’t a great candidate” while also noting she brought no energy to the party compared to Trump’s 2016 appeal to young people.