Monday, February 28, 2022



Some Russian banks will be kicked out of SWIFT. What does it mean for Putin?

This "penalty" is no more than a fleabite. With SOME Russian banks still having access, routing transactions via those banks should be no great problem. And WHY are "some" banks still in the system? Because the West needs Russian, oil, gas, aluminium etc. But to keep that flowing it has to be paid for. So Russian banks are needed for that. What a farce!

Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an invasion of Ukraine sparked global debate about whether Russia should be expelled from a once obscure part of the global banking system, known as SWIFT.

As Russian forces began their attack, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, made angry calls for Russia to be banned from SWIFT – but world leaders appeared divided. Now they have agreed to act, with the US, Britain and the European Union announcing that “selected” Russian banks would be removed from SWIFT, as part of a new wave of sanctions.

“We will keep working together to ensure Putin pays the price for his aggression,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Those pushing for Russia’s removal from SWIFT have argued it will deal a major economic blow to Russia and its president, Putin. But what exactly is SWIFT, and why is a ban from the network seen as such a serious penalty?

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is a vital piece of the plumbing that connects the world’s banks. It is a messaging system that allows banks to move money quickly and securely, supporting trillions of dollars in flows of trade and investment.

Based in Belgium, the company is a co-operative owned by financial institutions from around the world, which was founded in 1973 to replace the telex network (a network of teleprinter machines that sent messages). SWIFT says it connects more than 11,000 banks and other corporations from more than 200 countries.

Normally, payment infrastructure is one of the most unsexy parts of finance. It’s something few of us notice or care about unless it messes up. However, SWIFT is making news because it could be a powerful financial weapon to use against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

It is seen as a particularly tough financial penalty because it sits at the heart of the banking system: restricting Russian banks’ access to global money flows would make it much harder for Russian businesses to export or import, or to finance themselves from overseas.

A spokesman for SWIFT has highlighted its neutrality, saying it was set up for the “collective benefit” of its global community. “Any decision to impose sanctions on countries or individual entities rests solely with the competent government bodies and applicable legislators,” the spokesman said.

What difference does it make to not have SWIFT?

The European Commission says the move is aimed at collectively ensuring the war in Ukraine is a “strategic failure”. “Cutting banks off will stop them from conducting most of their financial transactions worldwide and effectively block Russian exports and imports,” said EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

She said the move was part of a range of sanctions that would “stop Putin from using his war chest”. The ban is not blanket one, though, which would effectively cut Russia out of the global financial system. The list of banks is still being worked out, with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock saying they would be “targeted, functional restrictions of SWIFT”.

In practice, a US lawyer told Reuters, “getting kicked out of SWIFT doesn’t make transactions impossible, it makes them much more difficult”, and it bumps up transaction costs significantly.

“You need a functioning banking system to have a functioning economy,” an analyst explained. “This goes some way toward undermining the Russian economy.”

The targeted approach does mean that Russia can continue to sell some gas to Europe, The New York Times reported.

It also leaves room for further action later. Along with Boris Johnson, Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, last week was strongly backing kicking Russia out of the system, saying it is “all about ensuring they get cut off, and that is the price that is paid”.

Why the initial hesitation in taking action?
One reason some European nations are wary is because cutting Russia out of the world banking system may well come at a cost to their own economies. The European Commission says Russia is the EU’s fifth-largest trading partner (the EU’s biggest goods exports to Russia in 2020 were machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, and manufactured goods). The SWIFT ban on some banks could make at least some of this more expensive and difficult.

Italy and Germany had particularly baulked at SWIFT action since it could hit them hard but as this recent move was announced, Germany’s Baerbock said, “after Russia’s shameless attack ... we are working hard on limiting the collateral damage of decoupling (Russia) from SWIFT so that it hits the right people.”

Another fear attached to a total SWIFT ban was that Russia could find ways to get around it, falling back on their own system, which would make it harder for the US to keep tabs on payments. Russia’s central bank has developed its own alternative to SWIFT called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages, but it is nowhere near as large as the SWIFT network – the Bank of Russia’s website says its system is used by about 400 banks.

There are also concerns about the potential role that could be played by cryptocurrencies to get around any sanctions, at a time when Western central banks are already wary about the rise of crypto assets as an alternative to government-backed money.

Has this been done before?

There is a precedent for SWIFT kicking out some banks: in 2012 it expelled Iranian banks sanctioned by the European Union. It reconnected many of the banks in 2016 after the sanctions were lifted.

And allies on both sides of the Atlantic considered the SWIFT option in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. Russia declared then that kicking it out of SWIFT would be equivalent to a declaration of war. The allies, criticised ever after for responding too weakly to Russia’s 2014 aggression, shelved the idea.

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Fascist Western banks

In state legislatures throughout the country, lawmakers are introducing bills to protect the rights of their constituents concerning freedom of speech and freedom of association. Bank lobbyists are aggressively opposing these consumer protection bills, which raises the question: why? The banks say they do not use ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) metrics, so why oppose these consumer protection bills that merely erect some guardrails to ensure that the rights, freedoms, and choices of citizens are protected?

The banks and others opposing legislation to protect consumers and small businesses from ESG discrimination say the legislation interferes with the free market, that the government is meddling with how a private business operates. However, does a free market in financial services exist today? The aggressiveness of banks' opposition to these ESG bills hints that there may be more to the story.

When the biggest banks in the world partner with large businesses, federal regulators, the United Nations, and entities in Net-Zero 2050 alliances, we are no longer operating under a free market. Crony capitalism, corporatism, or fascism, but not a free market. Individual citizens and independent businesses are seeing their choices and their freedoms slip away.

For those who do not believe that government and banks would ever collude to discriminate against a legal business, look into Operation Choke Point, an early test run of the "public private partnership" to enforce a political ideology. From Forbes, "Newly unsealed documents show top FDIC officials running operation choke point," federal regulators conspired to shut payday lenders and firearms business out of the banking system. Is that how a free market operates?

Some say the ESG movement is just the latest bogeyman, that there is no proof that the movement is impacting individuals and businesses. That is false.

In North Dakota, the director of mineral resources, Lynn Helms, recently returned from an energy conference in Houston and reported that oil companies now see the Bakken in North Dakota as a mature oil play and are shifting capital elsewhere. Among the reasons Helms cited for the about-face: a surge in attention among oil industry operators to their carbon footprints. According to the article, "[w]ith financiers increasingly factoring climate consequences into their investments, achieving a gas capture level near 100% has become 'goal number one' for many oil producers, Helms said, even more than expanding output."

During the 2021 legislative session in North Dakota, representatives of the lignite industry testified that coal operations are seeing increasing insurance premiums and a drop in the number of insurance companies willing to write insurance for any price. This is the ESG movement in action, and it will not stop with oil and coal.

Bank lobbyists say that no one should tell bankers how to run their businesses. The reality is that bankers are already being told how to run their businesses by the federal government, international agencies, and other influencers, whether they admit it or not. And that is bad news for small businesses and individual citizens.

The bank lobbyists who testify in opposition to the ESG consumer protection bills should be asked if any banks they represent have joined the U.N. Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The Alliance website says banks representing more than 40 percent of global banking assets are committed to aligning their lending and investment portfolios with net-zero emissions by 2050. In their own words: "The Alliance will reinforce, accelerate, and support the implementation of decarbonization strategies."

American banks that have signed on to the U.N. Net-Zero Banking Alliance to date include Bank of America, Blue Ridge Bank, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo.

The bank lobbyists should be asked how this alliance plans to meet the stated objective of reinforcing, accelerating, and supporting the implementation of "decarbonization strategies." Will the banks alter their business model? Will this alliance drive decisions on providing banking services to certain sectors, businesses, and individuals?

Also, does any of these seven large financial institutions have relationships with local state-chartered banks? If so, will the goals of the U.N. Net-Zero Alliance have an impact on how these large banks work with smaller community banks?

We can ask the same questions of the large insurers. Does any of the insurance companies doing business in your state belong to the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance? If so, what impacts will there be on businesses in the state as the goals of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance are pursued? A recent Bloomberg article shows that some efforts of the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance had to be scaled back, for now, when attorneys working with the group said certain actions could raise antitrust issues. The solution they are working on with government allies? Simply rewrite the antitrust laws.

Government's role is to protect the rights, freedoms, and liberties of individuals. Lawmakers at the state level should understand what the companies, governments, and other entities signing on to the ESG movement, the Net-Zero 2050 alliances, and the Great Reset intend to do. Read their own words — they are not hiding anything. And take them at their word.

Of course, this is just another conspiracy theory, right? Governments and banks would never join forces to track the social media posts of individuals, their banking activity, their alliances, and occupations to crack down on freedom of speech or freedom of assembly. This isn't the Hunger Games, is it? Just ask the truckers in Canada and their supporters.

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U.S.-Bound Migrants in Southern Mexico Are Counseled on Controversial 'Repressed Memories'

Two United Nations-sponsored groups in southern Mexico are reportedly coaching immigrants arriving there on “repressed memories” that would allow them to gain asylum cards in Mexico for passage northward and then illegal entry into the United States.

Both the Jesuit Society of Refugees and an outfit called Fray Matias de Cordova, based in the Mexican city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala, are advertising “psychological" help in store windows there, according to Todd Bensman, a security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors greater restrictions on immigration.

At these sessions, in which thousands of immigrants have reportedly participated, people are helped to recover memories of alleged trauma they suffered in their home countries, Enrique Vidal of Fray Matias de Cordova told Bensman during a visit to the southern region last month. By claiming they are victims of such abuses, immigrants can qualify for asylum in Mexico even if, as in many cases, their initial application on economic hardship grounds has been rejected.

“With their newfound memories of more eligible claims,” Bensman wrote for his organization’s website, “the immigrants get asylum (a term many use interchangeably with refugee status) and Mexican residency cards, which many then promptly use to pass through Mexico and make illegal entry over the American border.”

The concept of repressed memory and its reliability as evidence has proved controversial in American jurisprudence. In the 1990s, several high profile cases involving day care centers made headlines, with stories of children subjected to bizarre sexual and satanic rites.

In the aftermath, some experts have sought to debunk the validity of “repressed memory” as a source of reliable evidence. While there is widespread agreement that a remembrance of horrific and traumatic experiences may sometimes be buried, such memories can also be created, according to academics who have delved into the psychology.

Bensman asked Vidal of the border aid group if “the people you are helping [have] already made the mistake of not telling the authorities their traumatic experiences that qualify” for asylum or refugee status, meaning on their appeals.

“Yes, that’s how it is,” Vidal replied.

According to excerpts transcribed from the interview, Vidal told Bensman that his group has achieved “a high percentage of success” – more than 90 percent – in helping clients overcome previous Mexican denials and obtain the necessary paperwork for immigrants from the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; Haiti and other countries to continue traveling northward.

The Jesuit Society of Refugees did not respond to questions it requested in writing from RealClearInvestigations on its activities in Tapachula and, in particular, the psychological counseling sessions.

The United Nations and the Mexican embassy also did not respond to questions. RCI left a phone message for Vidal in English and Spanish but the call was not returned.

Bensman said he had travelled to southern Mexico in January because Mexican authorities were bottling up thousands of immigrants in Chiapas and Tabasco states at the request of the Biden administration, which wants to slow the torrent of people heading to and crossing the U.S. southern border.

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Britain's security services have gone woke

Spies and soldiers should not be promoting identity politics.

We live in an increasingly volatile and unpredictable world. There are many hostile foreign-state actors, eager to infiltrate British public institutions and undermine our democratic structures. And there are myriad terror-related threats, too, especially from Islamic extremists.

Yet while the threats to our national security grow, MI5, MI6 and GCHQ chiefs are reportedly encouraging spies to focus on checking their ‘white privilege’. According to media reports this week, back in December staff were issued with a dossier entitled ‘Mission Critical’, and told to avoid using words such as ‘manpower’, ‘strong’ and ‘grip’ because these words can ‘reinforce dominant cultural patterns’.

Not to be outdone, the UK’s Ministry of Defence has launched its very own woke offensive in the past few days. As Russia plunged Europe into war, the MoD’s blue-tick verified ‘LGBT+ Network’ Twitter account proceeded to explore the meaning of the terms ‘lesbian’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’, ‘transgender’, ‘queer’ and, last but not least, ‘questioning’ – which, according to the MoD, is ‘the process of exploring your own sexual orientation and / or gender identity’. The account also celebrated the MoD’s ‘commitment and efforts to be a LGBTQ+ inclusive employer’, which have been recognised with a Stonewall ‘Workplace Index Silver award’.

These institutions are supposed to strengthen British national security, not to raise awareness of the latest progressive causes. The MoD surely has more pressing issues to concern itself with. Like the war that is unfolding in Europe, for instance.

Those who run our security institutions clearly lack seriousness. Their willingness to use these institutions to promote identity politics, even when our national security is threatened, is a sign of serious institutional decadence.

Moreover, the embrace of these woke concerns could actually impede the ability of the security services to perform their key functions. The MI5’s broader terror-related watchlist, for instance, contains 43,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom – as many as 39,000 – are Islamist extremists. Ordering agents to ‘check’ their ‘white privilege’ might actually inhibit their ability to deal with such militants (who tend to be from non-white, Muslim-majority communities). These attempts to make our security services more ‘inclusive’ could get in the way of protecting us.

In recent weeks, concerns have been raised about the influence of critical race theory and trans activism in our healthcare and education systems, and among civil servants. But the creeping influence of wokeness in our defence and security institutions is even more alarming. These institutions should have one priority only – the protection of our national security.

Britain continues to face many threats, both foreign and domestic. When those whose role it is to protect us are distracted by divisive identity politics, we are in deep trouble.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Sunday, February 27, 2022


Trump news – live: Ex-president’s intelligence chief ‘stunned’ by former boss’s praise for Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich has clearly outsmarted Joe Biden and the West generally. Western "sanctions" have been exposed as a paper tiger. Trump can see that and rightly notes the sad comparison between Biden and Putin. It is Biden his remarks are aimed at, not Vladimir Vladimirovich. Biden is very much a hopeless dummy. Trump does say that he is angry about the debacle in Ukraine

Trump does NOT say so but it might be noted that a lot of Western conservatives quietly admire the way old-fashioned values survive without much challenge in Russia. The American Left often is so extreme as to seem borderline insane. That doesn't wash in Russia. Conservative support for any action against Russia can therefore be expected to be reluctant and Trump's remarks may give some voice to that

Amusing, though, that Communist China is also supporting Russia. Strange bedfellows


Donald Trump’s former director of national intelligence has voiced his dismay at the ex-president’s remarks praising Vladimir Putin as he mounts a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Speaking to The Daily Beast, Dan Coats said he was “stunned” by Mr Trump’s remarks. “I cannot think of any other US president that would in a situation like this say what he said,” he told the site.

Twice in two days, the former president hailed Mr Putin as “smart” and blamed Joe Biden for what is happening. “He [Mr Putin] was going to be satisfied with a piece and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration,” Mr Trump said while speaking with Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham. “As an American I am angry about it and I am saddened by it. And it all happened because of a rigged election.”

In another video clip from Wednesday night that was circulated on social media, Mr Trump can be heard saying: “Trump said Putin is smart. He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.”

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'Left loves to deride capitalism' but also 'love what it creates for them,'

Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds said Friday that Democrats often “deride capitalism” but they also "love what capitalism does for them."

Donalds made the comment at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, and specifically target New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in his remarks about Democrats seeming duplicity over capitalism.

"She literally believes that we can print whatever [money] we want," he said. "It doesn't matter how much we borrow. It doesn't matter how much we spend. But she can believe all that when she drives her nice little Tesla and lives in one of the most expensive apartments in Washington D.C. You see, the left loves to deride capitalism but they actually love capitalism.

The Florida lawmaker also said about Democrats: "They love what it creates for them but they want you and they want me and they want every hard working American to bend the knee but America has woken up. We've realized we're not going down a socialism road and we are going to fight them this November," he added.

Donalds attributed record inflation levels to the Democratic-led Congress passing President Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act last March. He said they said are still pursuing a way to pass their signature, multi-trillion-dollar renewable-energy plan known as the Green New Deal.

"They've killed the Keystone pipeline," Donalds said. "They've opened up our borders. They want to spend massively."

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The Reason White People Have Disappeared From Commercials Is Totally deranged

If you were someone from the past and you time-traveled to this time period and watched television, you would think that all white people disappeared.

This is not coming from a place of malice, but an observation.

Now, I am not one to watch a lot of television, to be honest, and when I do I prefer streaming services. Even with streaming services, there are commercials and truthfully, I didn’t even really pay attention since I mute them when they come on.

However, while watching some television with my father, he made the comment that white people in commercials seemed to disappear.

At first, I said to him that I didn’t think so, but my opinion changed.

It is sort of like when you get a new car and then you notice that particular car all over the roads. I started to pay attention and he was correct, as usual.

Now, I am of Hispanic and Sicilian descent, so I obviously have no issue seeing other ethnic people on television. That’s not the issue. It’s the erasing of white people/couples in commercials that has me wondering what the heck is going on.

If we’re supposed to be a great big, diverse society, why are advertisers erasing a huge chunk of it?

Here is what American Thinker had to say on this topic, and as usual, they nailed it:

In the United States today, the White population (not including Hispanics) is 57.8%. In real life, Caucasians are still in the majority, but now on TV and the Internet, they are swept under the rug like trash. Blacks comprise 14% of the U.S. population but appear in 50% of commercials. White actors now appear to promote health insurance, gold, loans, and some medicines. Moreover, if a White person appears in a commercial, he/she is usually old, sick, a freak, or at the very least, an appendage to a Black partner. If there’s a doctor on the screen, he’s usually Black, while the patient is usually White. Caucasian young men appear in only 4% of the commercials! If some aliens began to study the population of Planet Earth through our TV commercials they would have a somewhat distorted picture of Americans, to put it mildly.

So why do advertisers ignore the long-standing rules of marketing, and to the detriment of their own financial interests, fill the media space with content that displaces and degrades its biggest market segment? The answer is simple. At the heart of this nonsense is political correctness in a form even an Orwell could not have foreseen. Business executives go out of their way to publicly show their conformity with the universal “diversity” and “critical racial theory” (CRT), demanding that the White man be blamed for all the sins one can imagine. Replacing ancient, long-vanished oppression of Blacks with real oppression of Whites, overcompensating and planting racism-in-reverse.

[…]

Ordinary people keep their mouths shut for fear of losing their jobs, not getting a holiday bonus, not getting promoted, or being socially ostracized This is understandable, and I wouldn’t blame them, although I wouldn’t respect them either. But what are people of higher position afraid of — the heads and owners of businesses? What is threatening them? Indeed, nobody is going to drive them out of their positions or take their business, though fear of boycotts can be realistic. They are afraid of various inconveniences: negative articles in the leftist press, social shunning, frivolous lawsuits, loss of state and federal licenses, government contracts, unexpected audits by the IRS, fines for alleged violations of minorities’ rights, and the like small and large troubles.

It’s a fascinating piece and really gets down into the nitty-gritty over how political correctness and social Marxism have rooted themselves in our society. To such a point now, where you wonder if we’ll ever break free.

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This Religious Prosecution in Finland Could Be ‘Harbinger’ for Other Democracies

A court in Finland heard final arguments this week in the prosecution of a member of Parliament and a Lutheran bishop for expressing opposition to same-sex marriage.

Charged under Finland’s “ethnic agitation law” are Päivi Räsänen, a member of Parliament who also is a medical doctor and former interior minister, and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola. Each faces up to two years in prison if convicted.

Andrew Brunson, an American pastor who was imprisoned in Turkey for about two years, traveled to Finland on behalf of the Family Research Council, an educational institute focused on traditional values, for closing arguments that wrapped up Tuesday.

Brunson brought 14,000 pledged prayer requests for the two defendants, FRC President Tony Perkins told The Daily Signal, adding that the Finnish court likely would issue a decision in early March.

Räsänen, 62, published a pamphlet in 2004 about the Bible’s teaching on marriage. In 2019, she was on a radio program and tweeted a picture of a Bible passage.

She is charged with three counts of violating Finland’s ethnic agitation law.

Authorities charged Pohjola with one count of violating the law in connection with hosting Räsänen’s pamphlet on his church’s website.

This type of prosecution could come to other Western democracies, including the United States, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said.

“The idea of Christians being persecuted in America just for living out our faith is not far away,” Roy told The Daily Signal in a written statement, adding:

In fact, we have already seen it happen here to Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cakeshop out in Colorado, and a football coach in Washington state—Joseph Kennedy—being fired for praying after high school football games. Think about all the surveillance going on, about the persistent intrusions on our liberties.

Roy co-wrote an op-ed with Perkins for Fox News about the case, noting a prosecutor had said that “the Bible cannot overrule Finnish law.” The prosecutor also said that use of the word “sin” can be “harmful,” they wrote.

“In regards to the Finnish law at the center of this case, we face the possibility of having a similar problem with American law in the future, particularly if the Democrats succeed in passing the Equality Act,” Roy told The Daily Signal. “That’s why Republicans cannot be focused only on taking back the House or the White House; we have to fight to take back America. Our freedom depends on it.”

Early in the case, the prosecutor’s office said that Räsänen’s statements “violate the equality and dignity of homosexuals, so they transcend the boundaries of freedom of speech and religion.”

In her defense, Räsänen said:

Ultimately, the three charges brought against me have to do with whether it is allowed in Finland to express your conviction that is based on the traditional teaching of the Bible and Christian churches. I do not see I would have in any way defamed homosexuals whose human dignity and human rights I have constantly said to respect and defend.

Perkins said the Finnish prosecution could be a “harbinger” of similar laws in Western democracies.

“This could be a warning for what is coming even in liberal democracies if they have lost their way on religious freedom and Christianity,” Perkins told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

The Family Research Council chief said the Equality Act, which passed the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, poses threats to Americans’ religious speech and religious freedom.

That bill stalled in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans each control 50 seats. If passed, the bill would add sexual orientation and gender identity as characteristics protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Critics assert that the bill would adversely affect parents, adoption agencies, religious organizations and schools, and girls and women’s sports.

“This is coming to America if we go down that path,” Perkins said, warning of a situation where “citizens just can’t express or act on [biblical] beliefs.”

“Finland says it’s fine to have beliefs in the Bible … as long as those beliefs stay between your ears. That’s not religious freedom,” he said. “Western civilization is a byproduct of a Judeo-Christian worldview.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Friday, February 25, 2022



Applause for Putin and Fears of War

In Taganrog, a port city in southern Russia, buses carrying hundreds of women and children from the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are arriving every day. The closest border crossing to the port city on the Sea of Azov is only about 70 kilometers (45 miles) to the north.

What do people here think about the crisis? Do they support Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has now recognized the breakaway territories in Ukraine’s Donbas after nearly eight years of fighting and has sent troops into the region? Will there be a new war?

DER SPIEGEL spoke with residents of the city:

Veronika, 25

"I think the fact that Putin has recognized the 'People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk’ isn’t a bad thing, it can help the people there. Normal men, who have tried for all these years to live in peace, have now been called on to fight in those regions. It is no secret that our army is well equipped, maybe it will save human lives if our military comes to their aid.

"Who Are We Supposed to Fight Against? Our Relatives?"
We live in a border city, what I want is peace for all. I see the situation not from a political perspective but from a human one. Politicians make the decisions way over our heads anyways. I feel for the people, especially the children, who really don’t deserve all this. There has been fighting for years. I live near the train station and every morning when I drive to work, I see the buses with the refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions waiting. (Eds. Note: The refugees are transferred onto trains that bring them to other parts of Russia further from the border). To be honest, tears came to my eyes when I saw all the buses full of people, when I drove by on Monday. After all, they will clearly not be able to go back anytime soon and are leaving their homes for a long time. I read that some of them are even being brought to Kazan.” (Eds. note: Kazan is located about 1,500 kilometers away.)

Alexander, 60, retired train conductor

"Putin is doing things right. I’m not afraid of a new war, not at my age. I’m already retired, live in a village outside of the city, take care of my garden, the potatoes. The situation in the Donbas will now calm down. It will take time, but that’s what will happen, I’m convinced of it.”

Ilya, 18 years old

"Of course I’m in favor of recognizing the territories. Will there be a new war? There’s already been one for eight years, and I’m afraid its not going to be coming to an end any time soon. Plus, there’s the propaganda war, which is like a lever that constantly exerts pressure on people to change their opinion. We can see how the Western media haven’t revised history on just one occasion. In the U.S., they say that it was the Americans who won World War II, and not the Russians. Of course, if worse comes to worst, I would be ready to fight for my country, for our sovereignty. Together with other volunteers on the weekend, I helped bring refugees from the Donetsk and Luhansk region to the train and to find their seats.”

Yulia, 43, market fruit vendor

Our volodya (Eds. Note: a nickname for Vladimir Putin) is just great. I have always voted for him. He’ll take care of things. The main thing is that he ensures peace. All of this makes me anxious, all the buses arriving here behind us with the refugees. When you only read about it, it’s different than when you see it yourself. All this is terrible, I feel for the people, the children.”

Tonya Vzhyol, 59, pensioner

"The territories have finally been recognized by the Kremlin as independent. This should have happened eight years ago. Thank God! What a speech by Putin, I watched it live on TV. I am so happy about it, what a day of celebration it is for us! My friends and I sent each other congratulations afterwards. My son believes that now, after the recognition of the 'People’s Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk,’ the danger of war will increase. I see it differently. I think we are one, one people, and I say that as someone who was myself born in Ukraine. I come from Zaporizhzhya region (Eds. Note: Area in southeastern Ukraine, west of the Donbas) and came to Taganrog after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I think that we belong together, not only the Donbas region, but also Kharkiv (a region in northeastern Ukraine), Dnipropetrovsk (in eastern Ukraine) and also my home region of Zaporizhzhya.”

Andrei Merkushkin, 28, train conductor from Rostov-on-Don

"To be honest, I try not to think about the issue at all if I can. I don’t want to be afraid of war and I try to block all of that out. Recognizing the 'People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk’ is really a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s good for the people there, they are further integrated into the Russian state. On the other hand, it could go badly for us. By that I mean, there could be a new war. God forbid that should happen. And then, the economic consequences that we are now already feeling, the exchange rate for the ruble has already crashed.”

Ilona, 58, with her dog Luziya, retired economist

"Putin’s speech was commendable. Though I don’t really like him, I think it is time for him to make way for a successor. I have always voted for the communists. But I support the fact that he has now recognized the 'People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.’ It is simply very unpleasant to live in a border region, so close to Ukraine, where the nationalists are shooting (Eds. Note: this is how she refers to Ukrainians). They recently tried to push into Russian territory. How do I know that? I saw it on the news.

The Ukrainians want to go to war. I am convinced of that. There is some kind of hatred involved: They hate eastern Ukrainians and Muscovites and think we have annexed territory (Eds. Note: she is referring to the Crimea). But that’s not true. The land used to belong to us and was taken from us after the end of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and Ukraine itself were founded by Lenin. Without Lenin there wouldn’t be any Ukraine, as Putin correctly pointed out. Now, Ukraine has forced us to take these measures, to recognize the 'people’s republics,’ to send troops – after all, the Ukrainians don’t want the regions and all the people there.”

Vitaly, 27, works in a café

"My friends and I are all against the recognition of the 'People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.’ But many people are afraid to speak about it publicly, to criticize the leadership. There is a lot of pressure, along with the uncertainty and fear of what is coming. Repression in Russia has increased enormously recently.

I don’t like at all what’s happening now, Putin’s smugness, the feeling that everything we have seen recently seems very staged, as if this script had been written a long time ago. This is all very scary. I think that no matter what happens, it will not end well. I also don’t understand at all why Putin is acting like this – on what basis, based on what facts? His speech about Lenin, that everything was terrible back then, that is nonsense. He himself was a member of the Communist Party during the Soviet Union.

I like the fact that the EU and the U.S. reacted quickly with sanctions – and targeted at Putin’s entourage, not at all of us.”

Note: A further eight people did not want to speak or said they were not closely following the situation or only briefly said they supported Putin’s actions. Two people did not want to speak to foreign media, including an elderly lady who first said she wanted to award Putin the title Hero of Russia and then refused to be approached by a foreign journalist.

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Mission Creep: DHS and election officials should not control the narrative or free speech

People running for office have always bent opinion, lied and obfuscated about their positions, politics and facts. Often they believe their truths, which may be very different from someone else’s truth or the “real” truth. This is part and parcel of a democracy. One might even say, it is the “American Way.” It is not the government’s job, to determine what we believe, what we wish to vote for or to ensure accuracy of campaign speech.

That is mission creep.

They are constraining what is acceptable to discuss, what are approved opinions. They are purposefullly constraining the Overton window.

This is information control in the worst way.

It is not the job of the Department of Homeland, and local or national election officials to stop free speech, whether that “speech” is—on social media, TV or on a stage.

Conflating illegal foreign influences in elections, computer bots from foreign countries and free speech into the same governmental oversight is not ok. They are not the same.

This Politco article nicely demonstrates how election officials have seamlessly woven free speech with foreign influences can been seen in the following text:

Ten state chief election officials say in interviews they have had to refocus their positions to battle a constant flow of disinformation. This year, they say, will be no different...

“political candidates undermining the election systems that they still run for office in, and conspiracy theories that target even the most obscure parts of America’s election infrastructure”

The Politco article in question, goes on:

Voting for the 2022 midterms is already underway, and the nation’s top election officials are caught fighting a two-front war: Battling disinformation stemming from the last election, while simultaneously preparing for the next one.

The officials are no longer just running elections. They’ve become full-time myth-busters, contending with information threats coming from the other side of the globe—and their own ranks.

In interviews with 10 state chief election officials—along with conversations with staffers, current and former local officials and other election experts—many described how they have had to refocus their positions to battle a constant rolling boil of mis- and disinformation about election processes.

They’re dealing with political candidates undermining the election systems that they still run for office in, and conspiracy theories that target even the most obscure parts of America’s election infrastructure. And they say the country will face the same issues this year as it elects a new Congress and decides control of three dozen statehouses...

Election officials said they have increasingly been leaning on national partnerships—both with other secretaries and federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security—to help prepare local election workers.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said that she will soon host a workshop with CISA and local clerks in her state.

“It has exploded out of control,” Bellows said. “Disinformation can lead to people threatening harm” to election workers. She also said her office would work on further training for local officials, including de-escalation training, to help protect them in volatile situations.

Battling “mis, mal and disinformation” of American citizens is again mission creep. Free speech is free speech. It is our first amendment right.

Frankly, the idea that election officials are “leaning on” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security is downright scary. That election officials truly believe that people exercising their first amendment rights will cause others to “threaten harm to election officials” demonstrates the government’s authoritarian position on free speech rights in the 21st century. Only free speech that doesn’t impact on the government’s approved narrative is allowed.

Because we all know that elections in the USA are always fair and never corrupted, right?

Some good news!

Rumble Inc., The Neutral Video Platform, to go Public Through Combination With Cantor Fitzgerald’s CF Acquisition Corp. VI (Nasdaq: CFVI)

- Tremendous growth from 1.6 million average monthly active users in Q3 2020 to a record 36 million average monthly active users in Q3 2021

- 44 million monthly active users in August 2021

- Viewer engagement grew 44x from Q2 2020 to Q3 2021 to 8 billion minutes watched per month1

- Transaction is expected to provide approximately $400 million in proceeds2 to Rumble, including a fully committed PIPE of $100 million at $10.00 per share and $300 million of cash held in the trust account of CFVI

- Transaction values Rumble at an enterprise value of $2.1 billion3

- Rumble Founder and Chief Executive Officer to retain voting control to facilitate execution of Rumble’s neutral mission on behalf of all stakeholders
Youtube’s policies to censor speech are benefiting non-censored video platforms. Now we need to decrease Twitter and Facebook’s (“Meta”) online presence as well. Let’s make GETTR, GAB, MeWe and Substack continue to grow!

As I have been saying for many months now, Justin Trudeau has become a very wealthy man on his profits from the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. He is invested heavily in the Canadian company that holds the patents for the lipid nanoparticles. The Canadian government is also profiting nicely off of these companies—from their patent royalties.

Thanks to David Martin did the heavy lifting and has produced the documents and facts proving this point—that Trudeau and the Canadian government are tied in financially with the mRNA vaccine companies. Watch his video below (or on Rumble):

In my opinion: Trudeau’s conflicts of interest are vast. His vaccine mandates, authoritarian rule and use of emergency powers has benefited himself at the expense of Canadians. It is time for him to go.

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The state of California is introducing a new law that will allow activists to sue the makers of “Ghost Guns” and “Assault Weapons”

This new law has drawn the ire of 2A activists across the country and the press release from California Governor Gavin Newsom reads more like propaganda than a traditional press release.

From Newsom’s press release:

DEL MAR – Alongside California Attorney General Rob Bonta, legislators and local leaders, Governor Gavin Newsom today announced a new package of meaningful gun safety legislation to expand the state’s nation-leading protections against gun violence. The package includes a measure the Governor called for in December to help hold the gun industry accountable through private lawsuits, and a bill that would prohibit advertising of certain categories of weapons to children.

“California will continue to lead the fight to end gun violence with bold action to tackle the national crisis putting millions of Californians at risk,” said Governor Newsom. “It’s time to go on the offensive with new measures that empower individuals to hold irresponsible and negligent gun industry actors to account, crack down on shameful advertising that targets our kids and more. This is not about attacking law-abiding gun owners – it’s about stopping the tragic violence ravaging communities across the country.”

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place, Governor Newsom directed his Administration to work with the Legislature to propose a measure like the bill that will be introduced by Senator Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) today, modeled on the structure of Texas’s abortion law. The bill would allow private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes, transports, imports into the state or sells assault weapons, .50 BMG rifles, ghost guns, or ghost gun kits.

The state of California is no bastion for the 2nd Amendment but this legislation will likely result in many companies pulling out of the state entirely. Companies are not going to want to risk costly court battles, it will be more cost-effective for companies to simply stop shipping products and selling firearms in the state entirely.

The made-up and highly subjective terminology in the legislation is what makes this measure such a monster. “Assault weapon” means whatever it needs to when it comes to gun grabbers. Pretty much every firearm made of polymer has been called an “assault weapon” and you can expect activist groups in California to play fast and loose with the term so they can deal the maximum amount of damage with this legislation.

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Australian broadcaster slams calls for Australia to allow 235,000 new immigrants a year claiming it would push up house prices and bring wages down

Ben Fordham has slammed a push to open Australia to hundreds of thousands of skilled migrants as a 'quick fix' to pay back debts.

The 2GB radio host questioned if enthusiasm surrounding foreign workers was prompted by the tens of millions of dollars owed by the federal government.

He explained the influx would mean more tax could be collected but claimed it would stretch public services, inflate house prices, and pull wages down.

This is despite Australia having virtually no immigrants for two years since Covid closed the borders, and accepting 200,000 net a year before that.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg recently called for 235,000 new arrivals every year.

'That's the population of Hobart arriving in Australia every year,' Fordham said on his 2GB radio show.

'Our leaders see this as a money tree but is this really in our best interests?

'We're not talking about government interests or the treasurer, we're talking about the best interests of everyday Australians.

'It may satisfy economists but it won't help those who are waiting years for surgery and it won't assist anyone who can only dream of buying a house.'

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce backed the push to bring skilled migrants Down Under but said they had to be prepared to settle down in regional areas.

'We have to say 'if you want to come to Australia you have to live in Tamworth. Sydney's full,' he said on the 2GB show.

'Sydney does not want more people but regional areas do.'

Fordham said though immigrants were crucial in building Australia, he worried housing, health services and transport would suffer.

He said a mass influx of 190,000 or even 235,000 skilled workers may satisfy economists but make life tougher for residents.

'For our political leaders it's a quick fix,' he said.

Fordham said Sydney was crippled by some of the worst traffic congestion in the world with 500 schools already crowded with too many students.

'Before Covid came along, one in three patients in our hospitals were waiting too long to be treated in emergency rooms,' he said, with 100,000 on the waiting list for elective surgeries.

House prices in the Harbour City also soared up to three times the rate of wages, faster than the rest of the country.

He said the demand for housing in Sydney would result in many having nowhere to live, putting pressure on public services to help the homeless.

The influx of skilled migrants would also put pressure on the 900,000 Australians currently surviving on unemployment benefits, he claimed.

Business leaders are complaining of a job shortage and there are fears employers will favour migrants to avoid paying higher wages to Australians.

'More needs to be done to put Aussies in jobs, before sending an SOS to the other side of the world,' Fordham said.

'You've got to show some tough love to those who refuse to work. And if you're a leaner and not a lifter you can't keep on collecting a cheque from taxpayers.'

Economists said the arrival of foreign workers would fill the gaps in high and low-skill jobs and contribute at least $1 billion a year to the economy.

Accounting giant KPMG has suggested bumping net migration levels beyond 350,000 a year to reverse a population decline and stimulate demand, increasing the size of the labour pool.

The report said pushing migration to 350,000 people a year - equivalent to adding a city the size of Brisbane every seven years - would boost GDP by 4.4 per cent.

However, the Grattan Institute said numbers alone would be counter-productive and the migration policy must tilt even more towards skilled workers, even though they far outnumber family reunion arrivals.

Business groups demanded the nation's cap on permanent skilled migration to be bumped up to 200,000 per year, rather than the current 160,000.

National wages growth has been stuck below the long-term average of 3 per cent since mid-2013 and last year grew by just 2.2 per cent, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

Property prices in the year to January 2022 rose by 22.4 per cent, the fastest annual pace since June 1989, as professionals who could work from home took advantage of record-low interest rates to buy a bigger house or move to coastal regional areas.

The CoreLogic data showed an even more dramatic 29.8 per cent surge in Sydney's median house price to $1.39million, putting a home with a backyard beyond the reach of an average, full-time income earner on $90,329.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Thursday, February 24, 2022




Joe Manchin slams the door as another Biden nomination bites the dust

Joe Biden thought Americans gave him and his loony liberals a mandate to transform the country. Ironically, there’s an increasing amount of evidence that Americans didn’t really want Joe Biden to win the 2020 presidential election at all.

However, from day one in the White House, the Biden administration has been trying to cram radical progressive policies down American’s throats. It’s not working. Thankfully, there are a handful of reasonable moderates who are standing in the way.

The most visible of these few Democrats willing to stand up to the radical left is Joe Manchin. Manchin’s common sense objection to Biden’s insane tax and spend “Build Back Better” legislation buried it.

Now, Manchin is exercising that same type of moderate common sense to slam the door shut on another Joe Biden nomination. Biden nominated Robert Califf to run the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

What’s strange is why Biden thought he could ramrod through a controversial choice? Barack Obama nominated Califf for the same position. Califf did manage to get confirmed for a brief tenure as the head of the FDA.

According to Manchin, he failed miserably. Manchin harshly insisted, “In the five years since Dr. Califf was confirmed, more than 400,000 Americans, and 5,000 West Virginians have died from drug-related overdose.”

Manchin said, “Califf bears a great deal of responsibility for these deaths.” The long-time West Virginia Senator was puzzled over why Joe Biden would nominate someone who failed so miserably.

Manchin asked, “Why is this administration so committed to asking each of us in the Senate to reconfirm a person who had the opportunity to make a difference but show us who he really was?” Joe Biden continues to nominate highly controversial individuals for important positions.

He has crammed through a transgender for a high-ranking spot in the Department of Health Services. Recently, Biden announced another bizarre pick for a critical government job. Biden appointed a gender-fluid person to handle our nation’s nuclear waste.

Sam Brinton has some odd ѕexual fetiѕhes as well, reportedly being into kinky animal diversions. Califf is just another in a long line of strange appointments and nominations by Joe Biden.

This time, however, it’s for a position that requires U.S. Senate approval. Joe Manchin has said no. Looks like the West Virginia Senator has slammed the door as another Biden nomination bites the dust.

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End Of ROE? Lawmakers Pass Laws For A Post Roe vs Wade America

In an interesting turn of events, the tide has definitely changed in favor of those fighting to protect babies in the womb. There are a few reasons for this, besides God intervening, which include the nomination and confirmed 3 Supreme Court Justices, made by former President Donald J.Trump.

With more conservatives on the Supreme Court weighing in on a high-profile case that could unwind Roe v. Wade—and, with it, the “Constitutional right to abortion”—conservative state lawmakers are proactively introducing bills aimed at limiting abortion at the state level.

Republicans in at least nine states have proposed six-week abortion bans that mimic Texas’s civilian-enforced law that led to a 60 percent drop in abortions in its first month. Two additional states proposed trigger bans, although none of these bills have been advanced.

At least three more, Florida, Arizona, and West Virginia are considering laws that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, modeled on the Mississippi law at the center of the Supreme Court case. The Mississippi law will be debated at the Supreme Court, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Each state has passed the ban in at least one chamber and appears set to sign it into law in the coming weeks.

Susan Liebel, state director of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, said the bans show legislators in these states “have an expectation that the Supreme Court’s decision will, at a minimum, uphold a ban on abortion after 15 weeks.”

“An overwhelming majority of Americans reject abortion extremism and support these common-sense limits,” Liebel told the Washington Free Beacon. “We have great hope that all states will soon be able to enact the consensus of their people, while the pro-life movement continues striving for the day when all children and their mothers are protected in our laws.”

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, states would be able to restrict abortion prior to fetal viability, which is considered roughly 24 weeks, though recent research shows fetuses can feel pain as early as 12 weeks.

Even if the court only weakens Roe, it could be enough to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban. By setting viability at 15 weeks, the Court could keep Roe intact while still upholding the Mississippi law.

Republican-led states are prepared for either scenario. A dozen states have “trigger bans” in place that outlaw abortion if Roe is overturned. Another five states have pre-Roe bans that would be reenacted if the decision is overturned.

Polling data show 65 percent of Americans believe abortion should usually be illegal in the second trimester, which begins at 14 weeks. At 15 weeks, fetuses have all their major organs and can respond to taste and touch.

In what is shocking to those on the pro-life side, Florida has remained one of the top states for late-term abortions, with nearly a thousand after 20 weeks in 2019. In 2020, the state had more than 3,000 abortions past 15 weeks, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said the passage of 15-week bans and the introduction of more aggressive restrictions show a “tremendous amount of excitement among the pro-life grassroots” ahead of the Dobbs decision.

“After five decades, a lot of frustration has built up among the American people and their elected representatives precisely because Roe robbed them of their say in protecting vulnerable life in their state,” Mancini told the Free Beacon.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs is expected later this year.

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A twisted Louisiana ex-teacher who admitted to giving her students cupcakes laced with her husband’s sperm has been sentenced to 41 years in prison

A well-deserved sentence for a disgusting act

Cynthia Perkins, 36, was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to second-degree rape, production of child pornography and conspiracy of mingling harmful substances in Livingston, WTRF reported.

She has no possibility of parole for 40 years.

Perkins had faced 72 charges of various sex crimes, 68 of which were dropped in her plea agreement. As part of the deal, she agreed to testify against her husband, Dennis Perkins, a former sheriff’s deputy who is facing 150 criminal charges, many of which are also sex crimes, according to the indictment.

The couple were arrested in 2019 after they allegedly sexually abused a child together, among other crimes.

Perkins filed for divorce from her husband following their arrests and alleged that Dennis had manipulated her into committing the crimes.

The couple were busted after authorities received a tip at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Investigators later found nude photos of them with the minor.

A lawsuit filed against Dennis Perkins and the Livingston Parish School System claims that Cynthia Perkins filmed her husband supplying semen for the cupcakes that were later fed to children at Westside Junior High School.

Count 15 in the original indictment against the couple alleges the semen was mixed into both the desserts and energy drinks before it was served to victims.

“These three [charges] we thought [were] representative of what she had done and by agreeing to the facts as we put them out on the record, she prepared herself to testify against Dennis Perkins,” Assistant Louisiana Attorney General Barry Milligan told WTRF.

The AG’s office said it had spoken with victims seeking approval for the plea deal before negotiating.

“They feel that this serves justice and better protects their children,” said Assistant Louisiana Attorney General Erica McLellan.

Cynthia resigned from Westside Junior High School the day after her arrest, while Dennis was fired from his deputy role at the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Perkins’ attorney, Paul “Woody” Scott, said his client looks forward to testifying against her husband, whose trial is expected to begin in May.

“He is the real monster. That’s what she wants to make clear. It’s not about shifting blame, she took responsibility today. I mean, that’s what she did, but, she looks forward going after the real monster,” said Scott

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Ted Cruz says Biden's plan to pick a black Supreme Court nominee is 'racial discrimination' and his bid should be 'illegal'

Sen. Ted Cruz stepped up his attacks on Joe Biden's strategy for picking a Supreme court nominee on Sunday, saying it would be illegal for anyone else to specify the race and gender of job applicants.

Biden has made clear he will nominate a black woman to replace Justice Stephen Breyer who announced his retirement lat month.

'Democrats today believe in racial discrimination,' Cruz told Fox News Sunday. 'They're committed to it as a political proposition. I think it is wrong to stand up and say, "We're going to discriminate."

Cruz said that made 94 percent of the population ineligible, including Merrick Garland, nominated by Barack Obama for a Supreme Court seat.

'If he happened to nominate a justice who was an African-American woman, great,' he continued. 'But you know what, if Fox News put a posting, we're looking for a new host for Fox News Sunday and we will only hire an African American woman or a Hispanic man or a Native American woman, that would be illegal.'

Biden has said he will make his announcement before the end of February and is believed to have narrowed his selection to three women.

Leading conservatives - including former Vice President Mike Pence - have expressed concern about Biden's promise, warning that he could be overlooking the best person for the job.

But supporters say it will help make the court a better representation of America.

And the White House has previously called out Cruz for hypocrisy over President Donald Trump's choice of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died in September 2020.

'Just over a year ago, the previous president also promised to select a woman for the Supreme Court,' said Press Secretary Jen Psaki earlier this month.

'Not only were there no complaints about choosing a nominee from a specific demographic, from the same corners, but there was widespread praise of now Justice Barrett on those grounds with Republican lawmakers widely highlighting that they thought this was positive for women in America.

'So take Senator Cruz himself, he had no objection to Donald Trump promising he'd nominated a woman in 2020. Repeat: No objection at all.'

Coney Barrett was confirmed in October 2020, hurried through by Republicans with one eye on the looming presidential election.

Psaki was responding to an episode of Cruz's own podcast where he said Biden's policy was offensive to black women. 'The fact that he's willing to make a promise at the outset that it must be a black woman – I gotta say, that's offensive,' he said.

'Black women are, what, six percent of the U.S. population? He's saying to 94% of Americans, 'I don't give a damn about you – you are ineligible

'And he's also saying – it's actually an insult to black women. 'If he came and said, 'I'm going to put the best jurist on the court', and he looked at a number of people and he ended up nominating a black woman, he could credibly say, "OK I'm nominating the person who's most qualified."'

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Wednesday, February 23, 2022



Brussels statue of colonial king could be melted and made into memorial for Congo victims, says report

There is no doubt the Belgians were very rough on the Congolese but it may have some relevance that the Congolese are very disordered and criminal to this day

A bronze statue of colonial Belgian king Leopold II in the centre of Brussels could be melted down and turned into a monument to the millions who died under his rule of the Belgian Congo in the 19th century, a group of experts have recommended.

The group, composed of historians, architects and other specialists, also suggested creating an open-air statue park in which the equestrian figure could be displayed in a historical context alongside other controversial memorials.

The regional government of Brussels commissioned the group to write a report on the “decolonisation” of public spaces in the Belgian capital after a backlash against monuments to its colonial past during the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Protesters targeted the statue of Leopold II, known for his brutal treatment of his colonial subjects.

The notorious monarch ruled what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo as his personal fiefdom for decades in the late 19th century. Experts say his brutal rule left as many as 10 million people dead.

The Belgian state took ownership of the huge territory in central Africa in 1908 and retained power over it until the DRC became an independent nation in 1960.

Brussels is filled with memorials of the Belgian empire that was built in Leopold's reign. Besides a wealth of statues, there are scores of streets, squares and public transport stops named after colonial figures.

The report said that public space in the capital had been shaped by a “one-sided and propagandist perspective” since the empire.

It does not recommend tearing down all statues but suggests a case-by-case approach that consults locals before taking a decision. Some could be renamed or put in context with information plaques.

The streets and public spaces with colonial names should all be renamed, the report said, warning against public consultation due to the controversial outcome of a recent referendum on the name of a Brussels tunnel.

The public voted for the Leopold II tunnel to be renamed after Annie Cordy, a recently deceased singer whose songs were littered with colonial stereotypes.

Pascal Smet, the minister with responsibility for urban planning for the Brussels region, said the report offered a nuanced approach to addressing colonial monuments. “The easiest thing would be to get rid of all the statues, but they didn’t choose that,” he said.

“Of course we all know for the individuals that are living in our city today, nobody is responsible for the colonisation, so there is no question of culpability, but it’s a question of a collective responsibility,” he said.

“I think it very important, especially in the times that we are living now … not to be stuck in history, but to understand history.”

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Supreme Court agrees to hear case of Christian graphic designer who refused to create websites for same-sex weddings because of her religious beliefs

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to take up the case of a Christian graphic designer who has refused to create websites for same-sex marriage over her religious beliefs.

Lorie Smith, from Colorado, offers graphic and website design services and wants to expand to wedding website services, but she says her religious beliefs would lead her to decline any request from a same-sex couple to design a wedding website.

She also wants to post a statement on her website about her beliefs, but that would run afoul of a Colorado anti-discrimination law. Smith had argued the law violates her free speech and religious rights.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, indicated it would not look at the religious rights issue.

But the high court did say it would decide whether a law that requires an artist to speak or stay silent violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The case is expected to be argued in the fall.

In a 2-1 ruling last year, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Smith's attempt to overturn a lower court ruling throwing out her legal challenge.

The panel said Colorado had a compelling interest in protecting the 'dignity interests' of members of marginalized groups through its law, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.

The law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, was previously at the heart of Colorado baker Jack Phillips' case, which was decided in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court said at the time that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had acted with anti-religious bias against Phillips after he refused to bake a cake for two men who were getting married.

But it did not rule on the larger issue of whether a business can invoke religious objections to refuse service to LGBTQ people.

Both Smith and Phillips were represented by the Arizona-based Alliance Defending Freedom.

'The government doesn't have the power to silence or compel creative expression under the threat of punishment. It's shocking that the 10th Circuit would permit Colorado to punish artists whose speech isn't in line with state-approved ideology,' said Alliance of Defending Freedom General Counsel Kristen Waggoner, Smith's attorney.

'Colorado has weaponized its law to silence speech it disagrees with, to compel speech it approves of, and to punish anyone who dares to dissent. Colorado's law—and others like it—are a clear and present danger to every American's constitutionally protected freedoms and the very existence of a diverse and free nation.'

Late last year a group of 45 Republican federal lawmakers signed an amicus brief in support of Smith's case getting before the Supreme Court.

Signatories included Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Senate Minority Whip John Thune, and Colorado Reps. Ken Buck and Lauren Boebert.

In the brief they accuse the 10th Circuit Court of using the law to force an act 'conflicting with an individual’s deeply held beliefs.'

They claim, 'an atheist musician could be forced to perform at an evangelical church service. Or a Muslim tattoo artist could be forced to write “My religion is the only true religion” on the body of a Christian.'

'Religious speech holds a uniquely important and protected place in American history and jurisprudence. Ms. Smith and others like her deserve the strongest possible First Amendment protection,' the court filing reads.

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NYC reforms aimed at tinkering with racial makeup of criminals created more Black victims

Progressive leaders have ushered in criminal justice reforms theoretically intended to rectify the imbalance of Black Americans who are arrested, convicted and incarcerated. But in practice, in cities like New York, these reforms have backfired, resulting in a spike in crime, with more Black Americans victimized and more Black Americans incarcerated, according to experts.

"A lot of these policies were designed explicitly around the idea that Blacks are so disproportionately represented in the people who are arrested and the people who are prosecuted and convicted and incarcerated — and trying to design criminal justice policy to back-engineer that number to be more on par with the racial demographics of everybody of society," Hannah E. Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Monday. "That in itself has created a bigger problem."

Meyers and Jim Quinn, a former executive district attorney in the Queens district attorney’s office, recently published an essay in the New York Times arguing that by "aiming for racial equity in criminal justice rather than focusing solely on deterring and responding to crime, policymakers seem to have neglected the foundational purpose of law and order."

"What has followed — a sharp rise in victims of crime, who remain disproportionately Black, and a slight increase in the percentage of Rikers Island inmates who are Black — is a racial imbalance of a more troubling kind," the authors wrote in the article.

New York City is grappling with skyrocketing crime. Murders went up 52% from 2019 to 2021, while shootings were up 104% and car theft 91%. In 2020, Black New Yorkers were victims in 65% of murders and 74% of shootings, the authors of the NYT essay wrote.

In New York, policing and incarceration policies have been at the forefront of debate and such policies took effect as Black Lives Matter protests and the defund the police movement hit a fever pitch in 2020.

Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2017 supported releasing thousands of inmates at Rikers Island through the city’s "supervised release" program. In 2019, New York lawmakers passed sweeping changes to the state's bail laws that restrict crimes where judges can set bail. Also, in 2019, New York passed discovery reform, which required prosecutors to disclose their evidence to the defense earlier in case proceedings.

"I think you could talk to any prosecutor, especially any line prosecutor or anyone that's recently left a DAs office in a more senior role, and they will tell you … that discovery reform is having an enormous impact on crime," Meyers told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Monday.

The reforms were put in place as former Mayor Bill de Blasio moved to defund the police, which brought with it the end of the NYPD’s plainclothes unit and reassigning officers.

Meyers and Quinn wrote that such reforms are "harming Black New Yorkers" and they pointed to increasing crime levels in largely Black neighborhoods of NYC.

"In the police precinct that covers most of the Brownsville neighborhood as well as adjacent Ocean Hill, where around three-quarters of the residents are Black, shootings at the end of last year were up 144 percent, and murders were up 91 percent from two years earlier," they wrote.

Meyers said that "clearly there are issues we should be talking about, about why there's so much more criminality" in minority communities, but "you have to look upstream."

"You can't fix them necessarily by changing who you arrest or who you incarcerate. That's a colorblind system. That's not where you can insert the … do-gooder fixing of it," Meyers told Fox News Digital.

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Nearly one-third of NYC bus riders aren’t paying the fare

Nearly 30 percent of NYC bus riders aren’t paying their fare — costing the transit authority $56 million in the last three months of 2021 alone, according to the MTA’s latest fare evasion survey.

Transit number-crunchers estimated some 29.3 percent of riders on local bus routes did not pay the fare in the final three months of 2021 — up from 25.2 percent in the three months before that, the report showed.

The troubling spike brings the reported local bus fare evasion to the highest it’s been in at least a decade, according to a source familiar with the agency’s survey methodology.

“The high rate is mostly being driven by [an approximately] 50 percent non-payment rate in the Bronx, and a jump in non-payment on Staten Island,” the source said.

Transit coffers lost more funding to bus fare evasion in the final quarter of 2021 than from subway fare beaters. Even though there are nearly three-times as many subway riders as bus riders, the evasion rate underground was below 8 percent over the same period, costing the authority $41 million.

“if you can get away with not paying your fare on the bus, chances are you’ll also try it on subways,” warned MTA board member Andrew Albert. “We’re talking about massive fare loss on buses, which hurts the people who need it the most — the poor and those who cannot afford massive fare increases.”

MTA leaders have been sounding the alarm about fare evasion since 2017, but with little success. An audit last year by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli noted that farebeating had actually increased since the $24 million-per-year enforcement effort began.

Two of the city’s five district attorneys, in Manhattan and Brooklyn, stopped prosecuting transit “theft-of-services” in 2018.

The NYPD however still gives tickets for the violation on subways — some 14,573 in the fourth quarter of 2021 — and occasionally makes arrests. Bus enforcement, however, is non-existent; the Transit Bureau did not issue a single bus fare evasion summons in all of 2021, according to publicly available stats.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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Tuesday, February 22, 2022



Seattle Ends Bicycle Helmet Requirement For Racial Equity

Ah, Seattle! Home of the mythical Chief Seattle

There are a handful of larger cities in the United States whose political leaders while trying to resolve issues, instead, make things worse, but are never held accountable by the voters. Seattle, Washington is a prime example.

In January, the Seattle Police Department due to racism and equity concerns announced that it would no longer enforce certain non-criminal traffic violations. They also de-prioritized expired vehicle registrations and bicycle helmet violations.

Now, King County home to Seattle is following suit by removing the helmet requirement for all county bicyclists.

Despite acknowledging that bike helmets “provide a 63-88% reduction in the risk of head and brain injuries for people who ride bikes,” the King County Board of Health voted, 11 to 2, to repeal the helmet mandate, originally passed in 1993, because of accusations that the law was disproportionately enforced against people of color and homeless people.

“Helmets save lives, full stop. But the disproportional enforcement of the requirement gives us concern,” said King County Councilmember Joe McDermot. “When the Board of Health first adopted a helmet mandate, helmets weren’t part of our social norms and our culture, and so the legal requirements for helmets was new and carried weight. But I think societal norms and expectations have changed significantly in the 30 years since.”

“Seattle Police Department data collected and analyzed by Seattle Neighborhood Greenways and the Helmet Law Working Group shows that police disproportionately gave helmet law citations to black, indigenous, and people of color cyclists,” states the press release from the Public Health Insider for Seattle and King County.

“Their analysis found that black riders were nearly four times as likely to be cited by police for not wearing a helmet while biking compared to white riders,” the analysis reads. “Further, in Seattle, nearly half of the citations issued for biking without a helmet were given to people living homeless.”

“The recent action from the Board of Health removes a policy that has resulted in racist enforcement while re-emphasizing the importance of wearing a bike helmet coupled with County resources to make bike safety more accessible for all,” said Dennis Worsham – interim director for Public Health in Seattle and King County.

Worsham noted that the repeal was in line with the Board of Health’s 2020 “Racism is a Public Health Crisis” resolution that vowed to make the health agency a “vital player in dismantling oppressive systems that are grounded in white supremacy.”

The board said it would change its focus to other methods that don’t rely on law enforcement, such as educational campaigns and free helmet distribution.

“The Metropolitan King County Council recently budgeted more than $200,000 to buy helmets and expand education,” The Oregonian reported.

So the county, in spite of the fact that helmets work, but because black riders refuse to wear them, decriminalized the act.

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House Republicans Reject Ridiculous Immigration Plan

Americans want less immigration, not more. While that’s true of legal immigration, it’s doubly true of illegal immigration, something that native-born Americans and those that legally immigrated here both see as a plague and flagrant violation of the law.

Well, normal Americans, right and left think that way. They see that immigration depresses wages, can see that illegal immigrants commit crimes, and want it to stop.

The elites, however, don’t. Whether RINO politicians, corporatist Democrats, or the corporate sponsors of both those groups, they like the cheap labor supply created by illegal immigration and want to keep that pipeline of unskilled workers flowing, whatever the cost to average Americans.

Hence the push for “amnesty” for illegals from RINOs and Democrats; amnesty would give their corporate backers the legal cover they need to keep hiring those illegals and would encourage yet more illegals to keep rushing here in the pipeline of cheap labor.

Well, House Republicans are finally taking a much more populist tack, buoyed by polls showing that voters want the GOP to take a tough stance on illegal immigration, and are rejecting the 2013 amnesty proposal that many RINOs were hoping would be the basis of an immigration policy platform moving forward. As Breitbart reports:

“Hispanic battleground voters think Republicans in Congress (42%) can do a better job of dealing with jobs and the economy than Democrats in Congress (35%),” says the February 17 report by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC)

[…]The report’s release marks the semi-populist GOP’s informal ditching of the establishment wing’s long-standing claim that more amnesty and more immigration is the way to win Latino votes.

The more amnesty and immigration claim was the centerpiece of the controversial Growth and Opportunity Project report pushed by establishment Republicans after Gov. Mitt Romney was soundly beaten by President Barack Obama in 2012. The report was frequently described as the “postmortem” or “autopsy” report, and it described the establishment’s extensive and detailed plan for winning future presidential elections.

By rejecting that proposal, House Republicans are, in effect, choosing to side with their voters and constituents over the interests of the massive corporations and farming enterprises that want cheap labor to exploit as a way of keeping their costs down and profits up.

That choice is important not only because it means amnesty isn’t really on the table, which is welcome news to Americans frustrated and furious about the illegal immigration situation, but also because it places them alongside Trump, a noted illegal immigration hardliner, and against the Paul Ryan crowd.

As the battle for the soul of the GOP moves forward, Trump, DeSantis, and the MAGA wing will need more than Twitter warriors and a few firebrands echoing their viewpoints. Having the House side with them on that key piece of policy is good news, showing that many GOP reps are done with Ryan and his RINO vision of what should be done if and when the GOP reclaims power.

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Staunch US Ally Singapore Boasts World’s Freest Economy in Annual Heritage Foundation Rankings

Singapore keeps punching above its weight, demonstrating to the world the concrete benefit of preserving transparency, openness, and efficiency, which are the hallmarks of economic freedom.

For the third year in a row since 2020, when Singapore eclipsed Hong Kong, the small but vibrant Asian country has been top-rated in The Heritage Foundation’s annual Index of Economic Freedom, a global study that tracks economic governance and competitiveness based on the key pillars of the rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency, and market openness.

According to the just released 2022 index, Singapore’s economic freedom score is 84.4 out of 100, making its economy the freest in the world. As the scorecard notes, Singapore’s highly developed free market economy owes its success in large measure to its remarkably open and corruption-free business environment, prudent monetary and fiscal policies, and transparent legal framework.

Also notable is that the freedom to trade without imposing tariffs and to invest is very robust, with well-secured property rights facilitating entrepreneurship and innovation effectively. The overall rule of law is undergirded by a high degree of transparency and government accountability.

Singapore’s adherence to high levels of economic freedom has produced one of the world’s highest living standards—a feat few other nations in the developing world have been able to replicate. It’s worth noting that Singapore charted its free market path to prosperity at a time when many of the world’s most prominent intellectuals and political leaders were touting many other models.

Then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher welcomed Singapore’s founding prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, a fierce anti-communist and a stalwart friend of America, who was visiting the United Kingdom in 1990, noting:

Singapore has become a byword for excellence, whether it be in education, in commerce, in high technology, in your city administration and plans for traffic management, which others are now copying. …

Singapore is more important than ever now in the face of protectionism and the tendency to establish blocs of countries, which are more concerned with their internal trading arrangements than with keeping markets open to the whole world.

Those words ring more true now than they did back then.

From a broader foreign policy perspective, as America’s proven longtime partner in Southeast Asia and beyond, Singapore has consistently punched above its weight in regional and global affairs related to trade and security initiatives. Though only about three times the size of Washington, D.C., the city-state with fewer than 6 million people has been exerting economic and diplomatic sway on par with much larger countries.

Indeed, Singapore and the United States have a broad and deep partnership that has spanned decades. Although the two nations are not formal treaty allies, the bilateral security relationship between the United States and Singapore has been formalized and guided by a Strategic Framework Agreement, buttressed and further institutionalized by extensive trade and investment ties.

The U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in January 2004, was the first U.S. bilateral trade pact with an Asian country. The United States is by far the largest single-country investor in Singapore, with American companies accounting for more than 20% of foreign direct investment in the country. The cumulative level of American foreign direct investment in Singapore stands at over $300 billion, which exceeds the total of American foreign direct investment in India, China, and South Korea combined.

America’s latest Indo-Pacific Strategy defines its strategic ends to be to “advance a free and open Indo-Pacific that is more connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.” To that end, the United States and Singapore have been already programmatically working together in a long-term partnership reinforced by shared values and a common desire for peace and security.

Indeed, as the global economy faces new challenges from expanding Chinese influence, a free and open Singapore matters more than ever to the United States and to the world.

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The Gap Between Political Correctness and Reality

The Democratic Party increasingly exhibits traits of a revolutionary party bent on obtaining control over thought and discourse. The potential ability to exercise this kind of power enables the progressives who run the Democratic Party to inevitably steer the country towards their objectives, having already defined the acceptable bounds of language and debate.

Lenin defined a revolutionary party as one that awakens and cultivates working-class consciousness that can supplant the bourgeois owners. The revolutionary party’s aim is to steer this consciousness toward the creation of a socialist regime that will rule in the name of the proletariat. The key element is to subdue the bourgeois, property-owning regime and bury it.

A different path, less violent but no less comprehensive in its aims, was set forward by the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci. His goal was for the left to obtain cultural hegemony by dictating the meaning of words and thus imagination giving the socialist rulers comprehensive power because they controlled people’s minds.

Gramsci did not favor violence and subjugation as Lenin did. Rather, he wanted to form alliances between different groups and factions within society in support of socialist objectives. This was best achieved by a combination of measures, hard and soft, aimed at reworking imagination, thought, and language.

In this way, the socialists would define what is possible. Gramsci did not exactly specify what would be required to do this. In practice, he left open a range of despotic possibilities. His frequent appeals to Machiavelli indicate the state would inevitably loom large in his methods of control.

The late Angelo Codevilla, the brilliant political theorist, who understood our ruling class in masterful fashion, brilliantly unpacked the behavior of progressives in a 2016 essay titled “The Rise of Political Correctness” by pointing out the difference between Lenin and Gramsci’s approaches to gaining power.

Codevilla’s analysis is greatly needed as we confront a Democratic Party that seeks Gramsci’s cultural hegemony but acts positively Leninist towards its opponents, aiming to inter them through aggressive state and corporatist machinations.

In functioning as an ideological party, the party, state, and regime are an interlocking unit that enforces norms, behavior, and thought. The Democratic Party is wedded to a set of ideological propositions that it means to force on the broader population, even at the expense of its electoral prospects.

On Build Back Better, critical race theory, Defund the Police, COVID-19 safety measures, transgender-mania, and the rise of violent crime, public opinion is turning against progressives. Their inability to begin moderating or foregoing these policies speaks to a dogged refusal to give up the progressive dream of reshaping reality by law.

On a national level, many have noted that Democratic representatives in Congress function as if they face no real constraints on their power. The push for vast expansions in spending, green energy regulations, transfer payments, voting reform, among others, would increase state power beyond that achieved by the Great Society. But this is no longer the days of the Johnson administration, and unlike then, Democrats do not run Washington with massive majorities.

Democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate currently operate with hair-thin majorities. Rather than moderate their agenda they instead favor large scale reforms reforms as seen in the Build Back Better bill, for example. The Democratic majorities depend on swing-district and swing-state members who cannot afford to support the party’s radical efforts—this similarly does not restrain the leadership of the party. These hard limits on their power have been dismissed.

In this, Democrats in both houses of Congress and in the White House express a firm adherence to their ability to alter reality, to force upon the country sweeping progressive change without taking stock of the means and ends needed for such an achievement.

Perhaps the best evidence is the attempt to nationalize election law in one piece of legislation. State control over election law was a key bargain made in our nation’s founding. The states did not want their rules dictated to them by Washington, and that remains largely true today. Any attempt to change election law by removing the locus of power to Washington would require tremendous power to effect it.

The Democrats obviously are far removed from such a moment. That their attempts here failed dramatically illustrates the point. The fact that President Joe Biden, among other prominent Democrats, infamously stated that opponents to election law reform were racists, Confederates, and Jim-Crow types, suggests that his own presidency, his conception of statesmanship, is firmly tied to ideology, even above the prospects of a substantive change. Could the end merely be to proclaim ideological superiority over opponents and much of the country?

Surely the answer is no to a question that ignores the realities of competitive party politics. However, we need to drill down to the core of progressivism itself. That core is egalitarianism confirmed by history and instantiated by policy.

Returning to Codevilla’s analysis of political correctness, the point, he says, is to define reality as “the point of the state and progressive party in power.” The progressive, Codevilla argues, is charged with creating new truths and is perpetually “at war against nature’s laws and limits.”

Codevilla’s masterful use of Lenin and Gramsci opens before us both the ends and means of progressivism. Both thinkers mean to rule us for revolutionary ends, the progressive chooses between intentional destruction of opponents via Lenin or the cooptation of them with Gramsci’s redefinition of language.

We might see Democrats using Gramsci’s soft coercion through its ability to tell us what to say and celebrate, but Codevilla sees the party as positively Leninist. America’s constitutional order and its preconditions of limited power, property, family, and civil society, held together by a Judeo-Christian morality must be wiped away.

When Biden excoriated his opponents as racists in his Atlanta speech, including those within his own party who would not end the use of the filibuster, his goal was to treat the party’s ideological interest as a reality “that ranks above reality itself” to use Codevilla’s stirring formulation.

This is the essence of political correctness: the party’s reality is the truth. Biden failed in the short term in this effort, and in his major social spending plans in the Build Back Better bill. But nothing is finally over, the progressives always return.

The progressive dilemma here is that in its perpetual war against nature, reality does not yield. There is always a gap between this reality and progressive political correctness. And in that sense, progressives must embody these realities which is achieved by wielding power over others.

People must be forced to speak and act as if these realities were real. And is the substantive policy goal what really matters, or is what matters the forced affirmance by the wider society of progressive aims? In other words, must we accept that male simulacra of females are really females and permit them in female athletic competitions with predictable results?

The failure to admit this reality results in expulsion from polite society. Or, as Codevilla notes, “cultural hegemony is the goal.”

The new addition to progressive power is its power to enlist corporations in its struggles. The party-state comes to mind as the Democrats use the state to enlist corporations and crucially the tech companies in their favor. You will recall the countless companies who insisted that support for the election reform bill was tantamount to ensuring the right to vote continued for minorities against a recalcitrant Republican party whose state legislative minions were surely angling to take their voting rights away.

Frequently, the Biden White House now makes open appeals to tech companies regarding speech that should be favored or rejected on their platforms. Tech, media companies, and the government increasingly operate in alignment with each other.

Perhaps the longer term thinking of the ideological party is that they can force opinions to change by the incredible nexus of power they hold throughout society. There are few institutions not dominated or heavily influenced by progressive opinion and its favored diktats.

Even if the Democrats lose an election, they are still able to speak into the minds of millions utilizing the federal bureaucracy, corporate media, and supplicant corporations to guarantee them repeated bites at the apple. When they return to power, the groundwork is further made for tremendous change.

On this score, the attempt to centralize election law may have been the attempt of an ideological party to rewrite the rules in its favor precisely as an ideological party, one that knows it can no longer win elections within the coasts, save for major metropolitan areas. As such, the sweeping goal is to break out of this trench warfare. Stalled for now, this legislation will return in subsequent iterations, and the foundation is always being laid.

The opportunity now for opponents of the ideological party is in the massive gap that has opened between political correctness and reality. Americans are not rushing to support the expansive platform of the Democratic Party. They are going to have to be dragooned into it. And the revolutionary party has a strategy to achieve that, one that will force reality through a state-created and Wall Street led green energy economy where we learn that energy is a luxury good.

The education system will ensure that the American founding and its truths are buried by a Marxist inspired pedagogy despite parental resistance because charter schools and educational choice will be curtailed. Voting reform will provide Democrats much more favorable rules for victory. And massive social spending consolidates progressive gains by making even more citizens dependent on government programs.

The moment for conservatives becomes quite clear. Expose the gap between reality and political correctness for what it is, progressive failure to make their preferred reality true. This can only be done with a set of proposals that speaks to the distrust and anxiety Americans have about the current moment by giving them the freedom and confidence to live their lives on their own terms apart from any number of government commands reinforced by corporate and social media.

The failure to do so will lead to the revolutionary party’s ability to consolidate us into their altered reality.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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