He bloody well better drop out

During last night’s CNN marathon townhall on Climate Change, Joe Biden suffered from a bloody eye.

I mean, let’s not jump to conclusions or anything.  Who doesn’t spontaneously bleed from the eyes? It’s totally normal and not at all a sign that bloody Joe Biden is too sickly to run for President of the United States.

This is Joe Biden’s “dropping like a sack of potatoes and having to be hoisted into the Scooby Van” moment.

I realize Jill Biden wants Democrats to swallow hard and vote for Joe.  But come on. Does she really expect them to swallow bloody eyes?

Then again, DOCTOR Jill Biden isn’t a real doctor. Shame that. Maybe if Jill had a medical background she wouldn’t subject her sickly husband to the stresses and strains of a Presidential campaign.

There is something wrong with this man health-wise.

And it isn’t necessarily his age.  I’ve said before that my dad is 80 and he is in far better health than Joe bloody Biden.

Shouldn’t spontaneous eye-bleeding be considered a gigantic red flag?

Sure, if everything else about Joe Biden was tickety-boo, a little bloody eye moment wouldn’t be that big a deal.

But when you couple bloody eyes with the near-constant gaffes, fantastical flights of fancy and the moments of forgetfulness, the only logical conclusion is that Joe Biden should do the smart thing and bloody well drop out of this race.

And the fact that he isn’t doesn’t say much about the people who are advising him.

You can’t spin bleeding eyes in a good light.

And the straining necessary to try and spin it just might cause more bloody eyes.

re-blogged from Patriot Retort

Liberals Guide

Dems Propose First Gun Grab Since Lexington And Concord

'Mandatory gun buyback' is a silly euphemism

The media should stop using absurdly lazy phrases like “mandatory gun buybacks.” Unless the politician they’re talking about is in the business of selling firearms, it’s impossible for him to “buy back” anything. No government official—not Joe Biden, not Beto O’Rourke, not any of the candidates who now support “buyback” programs—has ever sold firearms.

What Democrats propose can be more accurately described as “the first American gun confiscation effort since Lexington and Concord,” or some variation on that theme. Although tax dollars will be meted out in an effort to incentivize volunteers, the policy is to confiscate AR-15s, the vast majority of which have been legally purchased by Americans who have undergone background checks and never used a gun for a criminal purpose.

The “mandatory gun buyback” exemplifies the impracticality and absurdity of do-somethingism (although Biden’s proposal to ban “magazines that hold bullets”—so most guns—is also a contender!). Democrats want to turn millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals overnight for refusing to adhere to a law that retroactively transforms the exercise of a constitutional right into a crime.

They do it without any evidence that it would curtail rare mass shootings or save lives.

While national confiscation would be unprecedented in American history, we already possess hard evidence that bans of assault rifles don’t alter gun violence trends. Gun homicides continued to drop steeply after an “assault weapons” ban expired in 2004. It’s also worth noting that in 2017, the last year of available FBI data, there was a near-historic low of 7,032 murders with handguns, and 403 by “rifles” of any kind, not only “assault weapons.”

To put that in perspective, there were 1,591 knife homicides during that same span, 467 people killed with blunt objects, and another 696 with fists and kicking. (Not every police department reports the type of gun used in homicides (3,096 of them), but it’s reasonable to believe that similar trends apply, since those murders took place in big cities where handguns are most prevalent.)

Although a number of Democrats now unequivocally support a “buyback,” no one has explained how the procedure will unfurl. What will the penalty be for ignoring the “buybacks”? Fines? Prison terms?

Will local police be tasked with opening case files on the 100 million homes of suspected gun owners who are armed with hundreds of millions of firearms, or will it be the FBI? Maybe Democrats will propose “paying back” family members and neighbors who snitch on gun owners? How else will they figure out who owns these AR-15s? There is no national tracking of sales.

Then again, many Democrats support “universal background checks,” which would necessitate a national database. So subsequent confiscations would be far easier, I suppose. (I can remember a time not very long ago when liberals accused a person of being a tin-foil-hatted nutter for merely suggesting that anyone had designs on their guns.)

It’s unclear to me if every candidate supports mandatory buybacks. Imprecision, after all, is the hallmark of gun-control rhetoric. Of course a non-coercive “buyback” program wouldn’t work either because no patriotic American is going to sell his firearms under market value. If you pay gun owners more than market value, they will surely turn a profit and purchase new weapons.

The criminal class and deranged would-be mass shooters have absolutely no incentive to participate, anyway. But you knew that.

Then there is the little matter of constitutionality. I’ve noticed an uptick in gun grabbers—a phrase that’s no longer hyperbole—arguing that Americans don’t need AR-15s to hunt, as if it mattered.

Although ARs are used by hunters, I’m certain nothing in the Second Amendment mentions hunting, because the right of self-defense—an individual concern, as well as a collective one—has nothing to do with shooting deer, and everything to do with protecting Americans from those who endeavor to strip them of their inalienable rights.

The District of Columbia v. Heller decision found that the Second Amendment protected weapons “in common use by law-abiding citizens.” The AR-15 clearly meets both criteria. It’s one of the most popular guns in America. Its semi-automatic mechanism is the same mechanism found in a majority of other legal firearms in the nation.

The arguments for a ban on “assault weapons”— a purposefully elastic phrase that allows the liberal legislator’s imagination to run wild — is centered on aesthetics, on the false claim that the AR is a “weapon of war,” and on the firearm tastes of a handful of deranged, sociopathic murderers.

Democrats and their allies like to mock these sorts of arguments as nothing more than semantics; mostly because they need to conflate and euphemize terms to make their arguments work. It’s how they generate favorable polling. I’m sure you’ve heard about the popularity of gun-control measures. But like “Medicare for all,” and other vaguely positive sounding policies, once voters learn what specifics entail, those numbers tend to settle along the usual partisan lines.

If you think you’re going to have overwhelming support for “mandatory gun buybacks” when people learn that you’re really talking about “the confiscation of 20 million guns,” you’re fooling yourself.

written by David Harsanyi for The Federalist

https://stream.org/separation-church-state-go-one-way/

Why Does Separation of Church and State Only Go One Way?

Let’s put aside for a moment that the current idea of “separation of Church and state” is not what the Founders (specifically, Thomas Jefferson) intended. I simply want to make an observation: When liberals quote the Bible to support their views, nobody bats an eyelash (aside from conservatives raising charges of hypocrisy). When conservatives quote the Bible to support their views, liberals howl, “separation of Church and state!”

But this has been the pattern for years. Christian faith on the left is praiseworthy. Christian faith on the right is dangerous.

Think back to the 1988 president elections when both Pat Robertson and Jesse Jackson ran for president.

In September, 1987, the New York Times announced, “Robertson Quits as Baptist Minister.”

He did this in order to run as president, thereby making clear he was not doing so as a gospel minister but simply as another citizen of the United States.

In contrast, Jesse Jackson continued to be known as “The Reverend Jesse Jackson.” No problem at all! No conflict, no confusion, no issue.

It’s the same until this day.

Cruz and Buttigieg

For years now, Senator Ted Cruz, along with other, conservative Christian candidates, are accused of holding to dominion theology, meaning, they want to impose a Christian theocracy on the nation.

Is there even a shred of evidence for this? Not a chance. But why should that stop the fearmongers who cry out, “separation of Church and state!”

In contrast, Mayor Pete Buttigieg can quote the Bible to his heart’s content to support his immigration policies (and other policies), and that’s perfectly fine. No separation of Church and state here.

What happens when conservative Christians quote scriptures to support their views on abortion or same-sex “marriage”? They are hate-mongers and bigots who want to impose their view of God on America. They are dominionists and theocrats. They are dangerous!

What happens when liberal Christians quote scriptures to support their views on abortion or same-sex “marriage”? They are enlightened and tolerant. They are people of conscience. They are helpful. They are virtuous!

In the same way, it would not go well for a conservative to quote Scripture in support of the Second Amendment. But it’s no problem when a liberal like Alyssa Milano quotes 1 Peter 4:8 in support of gun control. (For the record, I’m not equating the right to bear arms with the sanctity of life in the womb or the definition of marriage as one man and one woman for life. I’m simply comparing the right’s use of Scripture with the left’s use of Scripture. And I’m making no comment about Milano’s misuse of 1 Peter 4:8, which is completely unrelated to gun control.)

Separation of Church and State Only Used Against Conservatives?

Someone might say to me, “But you’re missing the whole point. The issue is not quoting the Bible. The issue is your interpretation of the Bible. Your views are dangerous. The views on the left are not. We’re for a women’s right to choose, for a couple’s right to love each other. You’re the ones with the bigoted and destructive views. You’re the ones trying to impose your values on us.”

But that is entirely besides the point (aside from the fact that the arguments are easily refuted on other grounds).

The point is the alleged separation of Church and state, period.

That alleged separation does not only apply when the religious views are deemed dangerous. It applies across the board, as in, “You can’t bring your religion to bear on public policy!”

Again, that is the opposite of what the “wall of separation” was intended to do (it was intended to keep the state out of the Church and to prevent a one-state religion).

But in keeping with the contemporary misapplication of the principle, it is only enforced in one direction.

We only hear cries of “separation!” when conservatives point to Scripture to support their views.

Apply “Separation” Equally

Someone might protest, “But you’re still missing the point. Evangelical Christians are a large and substantial voting bloc, so their religiously-based votes are more dangerous.”

But, to repeat, that is to miss the point. The alleged separation is not based on numbers but on principle. Let it be applied equally both ways. (And would the Democrats have any problem if large numbers of liberal Christians voted their way? Hardly.)

Of course, my preference is that we rightly understand what the wall of separation is about, and that we then apply it equally, keeping the state from meddling with religious affairs. But until such time that we get that right, then let the liberals shut down the leftist ministers who openly support their politicians. And let the liberals tell Mayor Pete to stop quoting Scripture. And let the liberals cry “separation” on their own people.

I don’t think so!

Ironically, at the same time that the Democrats now present themselves as the party for the non-religious, they welcome religious support for their views. As long as the theology is left-leaning, it’s kosher.

Dr. Michael Brown (www.askdrbrown.org) is the host of the nationally syndicated Line of Fire radio program. His latest book is Jezebel’s War With America: The Plot to Destroy Our Country and What We Can Do to Turn the Tide. Connect with him on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

Black Slavery Exists

https://stream.org/report-black-slavery-today-muslim-dominated-african-nations/

Black Slavery Exists Today in Muslim-Dominated African Nations, but No One’s Talking About It

Today, an estimated 529,000 to 869,000 black men, women, and children are still slaves. They are bought, owned, sold, and traded by Arab and Muslim masters in five African countries. This statistic estimates those enslaved in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Sudan. It excludes Nigeria, for which there are no tangible estimates.

Western human rights organizations and the mainstream media are practically and painfully silent on this matter. It does not fit with their focus on Western white sin. Here is a brief survey of this quasi-taboo topic.

Sudan

In Sudan, slavery remains a painful vestige of the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983–2005). That’s when the Arab Muslim government in the north of the country declared a jihad upon the black, largely Christian south. They killed perhaps 2.5 million people and enslaved as many as 200,000.

Slaves rescued by grassroots abolitionists tell horrific stories. Abduction. Beatings. Forced conversion to Islam. Grueling labor. Female genital mutilation. Malnutrition. Rape.

Slaves rescued by grassroots abolitionists tell horrific stories.

The war ended in 2005. Black South Sudan became the world’s newest nation on July 9, 2011. Still, many black slaves remain the property of Arab masters across the new border in the north. The exact number is not known. As of 2006, James Aguer Alic, a former Sudanese government minister, estimated that it could be as high as 35,000.

Mauritania

In Mauritania, the very structure of society reinforces slavery. Over the centuries a cruel class system has evolved. The lighter-skinned Arabs (beydanes) and Arabized Berbers rule over the black former slaves. Those slaves have been forcibly Arabized over time (haratin). The free blacks in the south who refuse Arabization and call themselves “Negro-Africans” and the black chattel slave class (abid) are at the bottom. The country is entirely Muslim. Islam theoretically forbids the enslavement of one Muslim by another. However, in this case, Arab racism supersedes adherence to the Shari‘ah (Islamic law).

In 1993, a U.S. State Department report estimated that between 30,000 and 90,000 blacks lived as slaves owned by private masters. In 2012, a CNN investigation estimated that the number could be as high as 340,000 to 680,000.

No slave markets exist in Mauritania. All slaves are born in masters’ households. Pregnancy occurs from the master’s insemination of black slave women, or through mandated “breeding” of slave couples. In the absence of open markets, slaves change hands quietly in individual sales. They’re also traded as substitutes for money in the settling of gambling debts. They can even be rented.

Algeria and Libya

Sub-Saharan Africans fleeing violence and poverty for Europe are enslaved by Algerian and Libyan Arabs as they try to cross the Mediterranean. Today, according to the Global Slavery Index, around 106,000 black Africans are estimated to be enslaved in Algeria.

Migrant women, but also children (both male and female), risk being forced into sexual slavery. Men perform unskilled labor. Those who avoid slavery are also subjected to virulent Arab racism. This was recently confirmed by a recent New York Times report. This further marginalizes the already destitute.

 Africans hoping for a better life in Europe also travel to Libya to be trafficked across the Mediterranean, often to Italy. Once there, some are enslaved by local Arabs and traffickers. As of 2016, according to the U.N., there are between 700,000 and 1 million black African migrants in Libya. The Global Slavery Index estimates many as 48,000 of them live as slaves of some nature. Survivors report torture, sex trafficking and slavery. Some are even forced to become prostitutes only after they have reached their destinations.

The slave trade in Libya became international news when CNN obtained video of an actual slave auction in 2017.

Nigeria

In Nigeria, the long-running civil war between the Muslim majority and the 40% Christian minority involves the enslavement of Christian Nigerians. The taking of Christian slaves has become a source of compensation for Islamic fighters.

The recent rise of jihad organizations like ISIS affiliate Boko Haram has been the main source of contemporary slave raids. The most infamous incident of a slave raid was Boko Haram’s abduction of 276 Christian schoolgirls. It happened in the town of Chibok on April 14, 2014. It inspired Michelle Obama’s “#BringBackOurGirls” hashtag. Most slaves are young girls, kidnapped and kept as the concubines of the Islamic soldiers. Some of those prefer to become suicide bombers to escape the life of a sex slave.

Though the U.S. State Department’s 2018 human rights report on Nigeria mentions that the number of slaves captured and owned by Boko Haram terrorists today could be in the thousands, the full number is as of now “unknown.”

Charles Jacobs is President of the American Anti-Slavery Group, whose work can be seen on www.iabolish.org.

Joe Biden says ‘details are irrelevant’ as he continues to defend factually inaccurate war story

OAN Newsroom  — Thursday, 5, 2019

Joe Biden said “details are irrelevant” as he’s pushed on the inaccuracies of a war story he recently told on the campaign trail. The former vice president refused to apologize during his appearance on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Wednesday night, saying the “essence” of his claims were true.

The 76-year-old self-proclaimed “gaffe machine” told a story last week in New Hampshire, where he misrepresented critical details such as the heroic act, the location and his role in the ceremony.

Biden said the larger point he was trying to make was about the bravery of the men and women serving overseas, sparking push-back from Colbert about the importance of being factually accurate.

“Those details are irrelevant when the point I was trying to make is absolutely accurate,” stated Biden.

“But some details are relevant because that is where the devil is, in the details,” Colbert responded.
“The devil lives in the details if the details that you’re talking about would effect the outcome of something that is about to happen,” Biden replied.

The 2020 Democrat hopeful told Colbert that “all politicians” make gaffes, but that his have never been about anything “substantive.” However the frequency of his gaffes have even drawn criticism from Democrats, forcing Biden to assure his supporters that he is “not going nuts.”

Source: One America News

Hope In a Small Town

How President Trump inspired a 

dying man in Eastern North Carolina.

Clyde SwindellAugust 24, 2019

The first thing you should know about me is my town: New Bern, North Carolina. It’s a lazy town, just 10 minutes from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point and 20 minutes from Camp Lejeune, NC—so yeah, we love the Marine Corps and the US Military. 

The second thing you should know: I have stage four colorectal cancer. 
I am dying.

I had nothing in common with Donald J. Trump. Yet I couldn’t help but trust the man.

In late 2015, when Donald J. Trump took that now-famous escalator ride, I didn’t notice. I  had my candidate picked out: Dr. Ben Carson. I was utterly committed; his soft demeanor and wise understanding seemed to fit me. And it went great at first; he was challenging and ahead in the polls.

Then it came: the leftist media firebombing. First, they came for Herman Cain, because black conservatives were and are unfathomable to them. The media slammed him as unintelligent because of his religious beliefs. As horrible as it was in real-time, it was mesmerizing to watch a media narrative being constructed right in front of you.

Then Donald Trump jumped in. At first I was angry and startled. But I slowly began to see what we, as a nation, needed: a man who would, and could, defend himself. So I started to do my homework.

During this time, I was the General Manager of a Ford Dealership in Havelock, NC. I began to experience bowel problems: bleeding and other symptoms. I wasn’t too worried; I had always been reasonably healthy, and I worked out every day. It wasn’t until I was scheduled to have surgery to fix the bleeding that my world nearly shattered: I found out I had cancer.

With my wife Jennifer, the eternal optimist, we set out to beat this. We had invested well, and I could retire and fix my fight on this while she continued to work.

I love politics, always have, always will. The battle of human ideas feels like the Roman Colosseum to me. With all the new time on my hands, I had plenty of time to read and learn. Admittedly, I had nothing in common with Donald J. Trump. Yet I couldn’t help but trust the man. In 2008, I held my nose and voted for John McCain—I almost voted for Obama, because of hope.

And when Trump came along, I couldn’t help but be drawn to hope—again.

I started to follow Trump closely. After years and years of old-guard conservatives, who capitulated on everything, and let the left set narrative after narrative, I had to reevaluate things. I came across new, younger conservatives and independents who didn’t like war-hawk foreign policy, and who wanted to protect American citizens from illegal immigration.

I began to remember that America was always great. And like great men, this nation had its flaws, sure, but it maintained a tried and true method to correct and better itself.

Now, I am a 55-year-old man, but my wife says my best qualities are my ability to re-examine my priorities and start fresh if I need to. I began to read: I read people like Mollie Hemingway, Sean Davis—even Ben Shapiro. I began to see that they understood what I didn’t: America was still great, and could get even greater under Trump and these new conservative ideas.

One thing that happens when you approach death is that you think about your legacy. You think about children and what kind of nation you want to leave behind for them. After eight years of hearing how America and Americans were deplorable, colonialists, and inherently unjust, I had become downtrodden. I had lost my pride.

Now, I began to remember that America was always great. And like all great men, this nation had its flaws, sure, but it maintained a tried and true method to correct and better itself. These young warriors forced me to reflect, remember, and not be ashamed of being American.

I watched as Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck took swing after swing at Trump, questioning his motives. And saw Trump come back swinging, time and time again. His platform became more apparent: he was pro-life and carried a list of judges. I was sold.

All of a sudden, here in Eastern North Carolina, we heard someone who loved America, and that someone was going all in, hair on fire, to defend it. I realized he was endorsing me, my family, and all of the families in my community—regardless of color or creed or religion. I began seeing Latinos, young black men, and everyone else embrace the fervor. I had never seen anything like it before.

Mr. Trump is in the ‘Hope Business.’ He had us sold in this small town. And having been a conservative all my life, I knew the attacks were coming: charges of racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. But what I didn’t realize was that we had reached a point of frustration in this country where the media couldn’t turn public opinion.

Although the maelstrom that was to come was withering, what God made me realize was, as much as I loved Ben Carson, he was not ready for the fight. Donald J. Trump knew what was coming—and he leaned right into the fight. He didn’t waver—didn’t even flinch.

During the 2016 election, I was on heavy, heavy chemo. I’ve gone through six significant surgeries. One I even tried to reschedule so I can see Trump speak—needless to say, Jenn wasn’t happy with that stunt.

Hope was a dying word. Hope and faith are also what makes us human. Hope is what I see when President Trump hugs the flag like he was a kid again.

But there’s a reason I did that—in 2016, this country began to feel like a family again.

And I understand what family means, even with all my stupid mistakes. I have three children, one liberal and the other two conservative. My oldest is gay, my middle daughter is Annie Oakley, and my youngest son—he’s just a great kid.

I noticed that the people who were defending us weren’t the ones I donated to over the years—but young, fierce warriors, who had no reason to come to our defense. Elites like Bill Kristol, Tom Nichols, and Rick Wilson became antagonistic towards us. As of course did Hillary Clinton. Yet in this small town, it began to feel like we had fought back.

For the first time in my life, I felt like we were winning the culture war. I noticed that the left repositioned themselves; they didn’t even attempt to engage or argue. Instead, they began a campaign of censorship, extreme rhetoric, and outright violence.

Right beside my house, I can go deer hunting. I have hunted all my life. I could sense it: the left had been severely wounded. That being said, an animal is most dangerous at that point. All pretense of truth went out the window for this limping leftist establishment, and I watched in amazement as President Trump was forced to parry attack after attack. And, refusing to back down, he has time and time again survived their brutal onslaughts. Time and again, President Trump has steadied the ship and given us hope.

Hope is what I see when President Trump hugs the flag like he was a kid again. Hope is when I see manufacturing jobs returning. Hope is standing beside Israel, right when they need strong allies the most.

Hope is black men and women being released from prolonged prison sentences. Hope is bringing our troops home from a 19-year-long war. It’s daring to cancel drone strikes, because they may kill 150 unnamed, unknown, innocent people.

Hope is when our President signed the “Right to Try Act,” letting me use medical trials that I didn’t have access to, and removing the pharmacist gag order so they could help me manage my medications for the first time. I thought about titling this essay “dying in a small town.” For the first time since Reagan, it could be called living in a small town.

Being scared of dying is a natural thing; being scared for the future of this great nation is no longer necessary. Our republic is safe, with a new generation of fierce minds and culture warriors, and a leader who is willing and able to fight.

I can rest easy. I have hope.

Clyde Swindell is a retired United States Navy veteran. 

He lives in Eastern North Carolina.

DeBlasio Wants to be President - BWHAHAHA!

Since 2009 residents of this neghborhood have complained about this health issue to City Hall!  What has DeBlasio's administration done?

DeBlasio wasPublic Advocate from 2010 to 2013 then elected Mayor in 2014. So what has he done about this issue for 9 years?

It seems NOTHING!

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Some Queens residents are frustrated with a neighbor’s home that is covered in garbage.

The homeowner has received thousands of dollars in fines, yet nothing was done about it. CBS2’s Hazel Sanchez demanded answers from the city on Wednesday.

$300,000 in fines and 7 health notices, yet the city has done nothing!

Carminee Bhimull, the site’s 57-year-old resident, defended the unsightly pile of trash bags in a heap outside her South Jamaica home.

“What’s another person’s garbage is somebody else’s treasure. Don’t they say that?” Bhimull said.

This home in South Jamaica, Queens has its neighbors very upset. The homeowner, however, doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. (Photo: CBSN New York)

Neighbors said the smelly stash on 118th Avenue has been steadily growing, claiming Bhimull has been collecting garbage for more than 10 years. They’ve asked her to clean it up and even reached out to city agencies, but their complaints apparently fell on deaf ears.

“I’m just tired of this,” neighbor Patricia Johnson said. “I just want them to get rid of it, move those things. Get rid of all this mess. It’s just too much to deal with. It’s overbearing.”

Trash bags are piled as high as the second floor.

“And you can’t even pass there because there’s so much fleas and smelling,” Johnson said. “There’s 6-pound rats running around.”

Bhimull said what she has been doing is about survival, and none of it in her opinion is trash.

“It’s not garbage; it’s recyclable,” she said. “Is it OK to have recyclables?”

When asked why she hasn’t put it in the yard so the Department of Sanitation can pick it up, Bhimull said, “I do recyclable. I go around and I pick it up, so I can make an honest living. So what is the problem?”

Neighbors explained several.

“She picks up cans from everyone’s house. She’s getting the cans, but she saves them here and keeps them. There’s mice, rats, everything,” resident Garrick Austin said.

“It’s a fire hazard,” neighbor Shawn Farrior added. “People call the authorities, and everything, but it doesn’t help anything.”

“I try and call 311. I try and write letters. And they did nothing,” Johnson added. “I’m tired of talking to people. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve had enough of it.”

Old sanitation notices are tucked in Bhimull’s fence. She racked up more than $300,000 in fines since 2015 from the Department of Buildings for not keeping her property in safe and code-compliant conditions.

“I’m not saying I plan to do anything. You don’t know what’s gonna happen in two or three hours from now,” Bhimull said.

Since April, the Department of Health says the house has failed four inspections for creating conditions conducive to rats.

Mayor Bill de Blasio told Sanchez he reached out to several commissioners to find out how the yard got so out of control.

“We need to figure out if there are legal concerns or if we needed to get the Health Department involved. We need to figure out how to get it done,” de Blasio said.

Late Wednesday afternoon, firefighters arrived to inspect the home. That came as a relief to many neighbors.

“It’s torture,” Johnson said.

Health inspectors also showed up, telling Sanchez off camera it might take a court order before the city can go in and haul the mess away. EMS took Bhimull to the hospital for evaluation.

Nunes Files Racketeering Lawsuit Against Fusion GPS and Left-Wing Advocacy Group CfA

Glenn Simpson and Russian Friends

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against Fusion GPS and the Democratic group called Campaign for Government Accountability. 

According to Nunes, he was smeared for investigating Christopher Steele's dossier, which was then used to launch the probe into the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia. As chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee, Nunes pushed to investigate Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier that lead to the Russia probe.

From the Daily Caller:

The complaint, which the California Republican filed in federal court in Virginia, alleges that Fusion GPS and Campaign for Accountability (CfA) worked on a “joint and systematic effort to intimidate, harass, threaten, influence, interfere with, impede, and ultimately to derail” Nunes’ investigation of the dossier, which he directed as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

In the lawsuit, Nunes draws a link between CfA payments to Fusion GPS and a string of ethics complaints that the watchdog group filed against him last year.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Aug. 1 that CfA’s 2018 tax filings show the group paid Fusion GPS nearly $140,000 unspecified research activities.

CfA filed three complaints against Nunes with the Office of Congressional Ethics. In a Jan. 25, 2018 complaint, CfA accused Nunes of leaking sensitive House Intelligence Committee information about Fusion GPS.

In his complaint, Nunes claimed Fusion GPS owner Glenn Simpson lied during Congressional testimony.

Nunes contends that Fusion GPS and Simpson have also retaliated against him for fear that the Republican would submit criminal referrals against Simpson over testimony he gave HPSCI and the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017.

Nunes accuses Simpson of lying in his HPSCI testimony on Nov. 14, 2017 when he said that he had contact with the Justice Department and FBI regarding the dossier only after the 2016 election. Bruce Ohr, a Justice Department official whose wife was a contractor at Fusion GPS, testified on Aug. 28, 2018 that he and Simpson met in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 22, 2016.

Nunes also claims that Simpson lied during his Senate testimony on Aug. 22, 2017 when he denied having a client for Trump-related work after the 2016 election. A non-profit group called The Democracy Integrity Projecthired Fusion GPS and Steele’s London-based firm in 2017.

“Fearing a criminal referral for his false statements to the FBI and DOJ, for lying to Congress and the Senate, and for obstructing the House Intelligence Committee in its Russia investigation, the Defendants directly and aggressively retaliated against Plaintiff, employing the same or similar means and methods as Fusion GPS and Simpson have employed multiple times in the past to smear the opposition,” the complaint says.

Nunes is seeking $9.9 million in damages for complaints that he says were “fraudulent and retaliatory."

The Campaign for Government Accountability plans to fight the lawsuit.

“We have not received a copy of the complaint, but we look forward to vigorously defending ourselves against this obviously frivolous and baseless lawsuit,” Daniel Stevens, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, told the Fresno Bee. 

Source: Townhall

Soylent Green Is People!

A Swedish behavioral scientist has suggested that it may be necessary to turn to cannibalism and start eating humans in order to save the planet.

Appearing on Swedish television to talk about an event based around the “food of the future,” Magnus Söderlund said he would be holding seminars on the necessity of consuming human flesh in order to stop climate change.

Environmentalists blame the meat and farming industry for a large part of what they claim is the warming of the earth."

Anyone surprised the Liberals would think this is a viable option?

‘Woke’ Gestapo Demand Conformity

written by Derek Hunter for Townhall

I’m not a fan of tossing around the word “Nazi.” Unlike our friends on the left, I know history and prefer to, when possible, keep political discussions civil and on the topic at hand. But they don’t, on either of those points. Either they are intellectually incapable of discussion beyond a Neanderthal “fire bad” level, or they are simply of poor character and profoundly dishonest, and dare I say, evil people. Likely both.

The journey matters less than the destination in this case, because the destination, whichever path is taken to get there, is profoundly dangerous and wholly un-American. This was on full display this past week, from coast to coast.

Out on the left coast, actors Eric McCormack and Debra Messing, in the tradition of their ideological forefathers, want a list of anyone in Hollywood who happens to support President Trump.

McCormack tweeted a Hollywood Reporter story about a fundraiser the Ppesident is attending in Beverly Hills, asking the outlet to “kindly report on everyone attending this event, so the rest of us can be clear about who we don’t wanna work with.” Messing followed shortly thereafter with a similar request.

The two who, were it not for the luck of having an old hit TV show and “mailbox money” thanks to syndication, would be struggling actors appearing in cameos in forgettable straight-to-cable movies (seriously, check out their IMDB pages and see if you’ve ever heard of anything else they’ve done) would be willing to work with anyone in order to make ends meet.

But the success they did have went to their heads, and their millions allow them to advocate for blacklisting people they view as their enemies for thinking differently than they do. They’re Hitlerific!

The people who don’t have that luxury are the people who make sure they look good on camera, the stage hands who make sure they aren’t crushed by a collapsing set, the people who make sure there is food on set, etc. In other words, the “little people” they claim to care about. Not only do they not have millions and “mailbox money,” they’re also likely to be the type of people Messing and McCormack wouldn’t work with if they ever found out what they really think about things like taxes, illegal immigration, socialized medicine, and all the rest.

Thanks to the Gestapo tactics of the two lead actors on “Will & Grace,” they now have crew members and co-stars terrified their thoughts will be uncovered.

That’s their real goal – conformity or silence. At least while they’re out of power. Should they ever gain power…the sky is the limit.

But McCormack and Messing aren’t alone in the Hollywood-Holier-Than-Thou crowd. Another marginal talent living off memories and royalties of their past work is Alyssa Milano. She’s “fighting” on behalf of people who didn’t ask her to fight for them, who don’t need or want what she’s “fighting” for. She, like Tweedledum and Tweetledumber, know what’s best for others. After all, they watch MSNBC.

Milano tweeted, “I know some of you dislike me. But understand...I’m fighting for you, too. That you might be free to be you. That you might not have to work so hard to put food on the table. That you can control your own destiny free from discrimination. That you can live...just live.” Essentially, “Shut up, you ingrates, socialism is for your own good.”

The collective IQ of these three is about that of the average person’s shoe size, yet their ability to terrify people they work with is unlimited. None are A-list actors, but they’re likely the biggest name on any project they’re hired for. And you don’t work on a set very long if the “star” wants you gone. Producers just make up an excuse and you’re gone. A nice, clean kill.

On the other coast, Hollywood for ugly people, the anti-Republican forces claimed two more scalps.

Some “journalist” decided to violate the concept of “off the record” and tell people what the president’s personal assistant allegedly said over a night out with reporters. Why Madeleine Westerhout trusted reporters in the first place is a testament to the nature of power in Washington. If you are not one of them, they are not your friend. No matter how nice they may be, you are a vessel to advancing their agenda and careers, nothing more.

She learned that the hard way by reportedly saying the sorts of things everyone says about their boss at some point and finding it in print soon after.

Another fascistic guttersnipe with a press pass, a guy named Ben Penn, had himself a “scoop!” He found an anti-Semitic Facebook post by a Trump appointee in the Department of Labor. Only it wasn’t anti-Semitic, it was a sarcastic joke mocking anti-Semites. You’d have to have suffered a serious closed-head injury to not see that, or be a true-believing Brownshirt.

Just a few days after journalists were up in arms over the idea of Trump supporters exposing past racist and anti-Semitic social media posts by journalists, saying it was a threat (somehow) to democracy, another progressive Jihadi claimed his scalp and the target of this Bloomberg labor and employment “reporter,” a man named Leif Olson, was forced to resign over the lie.

In his acceptance speech for accolades and his Iron Cross, he told the bloodthirsty mob, “Lost in all of this is that Olson was part of a team of political appointees tasked with the heavy lift of drafting wage-hour regulations that are high priorities for Trump White House, business community. They're now down one adviser.” It was a scalp with purpose, and he, and his bosses at Bloomberg, are proud of it. (UPDATE: After this column was written, Olson got his job back.)

It’s important to remember, the left is out for blood. They are not your friend. If you refuse to conform, to get in line and shut up, they will happily destroy you. This is what they do when they’re out of power, just imagine what they’d do if they won. 

The Futility of a Gun Buyback

Article by Jon Stokes in "reason":

Gun bans are back in the news again, with the 2020 Democratic field lining up behind the (old, already-tried-and-failed) idea of a ban on the AR-15, the AK-47, and any other gun that looks remotely "military." 

The most aggressive recent version of this proposal was floated by a certain Texan who's currently sinking in the polls, and it includes a mandatory buyback. When asked if he plans to actually take away people's guns, Beto O'Rourke replied: "I want to be really clear that that's exactly what we are going to do. Americans who own AR-15s, AK-47s, will have to sell them to the government."

Meghan McCain's response to O'Rourke on The View—"if you're talking about taking people's guns from them, there's going to be a lot of violence"—and Tucker Carlson's subsequent pile-on (that it'll spark a "new Civil War") sent the usual suspects straight to the fainting couch, pearls in hand.

Media Matters has already put out two pieces on the remarks, one focused on Carlson and a breathless followup focused more generally on "right-wing media" reactions to the proposed gun ban. HuffPost reporter Zach Carter accused McCain of "mainstreaming apocalyptic thinking." (One wonders what he thinks of HuffPost headlines like "Are We Heading Toward Extinction?") Crooks & Liars amped everything up another notch by claiming Carlson's rhetoric about the danger of gun confiscation is itself dangerous.

Before we go any further with the back-and-forth about armed resistance, let's think about the reaction we can realistically expect to a watered-down AR-15 ban, with no mandatory buyback. How many gun owners would either hand over or destroy their assault weapons? And how many of the authorities whose job it would be to put refusers in jail would even try to enforce a ban?

We don't have to look to New Zealand's recent flop of a mandatory buyback, where less than 10 percent of the country's estimated number of newly banned weapons have been handed over  so far, to answer those questions. There's a great case study right here in the bluest of blue states: New York.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo hailed the 2013 New York SAFE Act as the toughest gun control law in the nation, and one of its most important provisions was the mandatory registration of all "assault weapons" in the state. This isn't a confiscation or even a ban, so it's nowhere near as severe as what O'Rourke and others are pushing—it's just a teeny weeny little registration requirement.

So how has that worked out? Well, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation's conservative estimate, New Yorkers owned about 1 million "assault weapons" at the time the ban was passed. So the 44,000 that were actually registered are about 4 percent of the total. This noncompliance with the law is widespread and mostly open, but the police aren't doing much about it. For instance, Hudson Valley One reported in 2016:

Upstate police agencies have also demonstrated a marked lack of enthusiasm for enforcing the ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. According to statistics compiled by the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, there have been just 11 arrests for failure to register an otherwise-legal assault weapon since the SAFE Act took effect in March 2013 and 62 for possession of a large capacity magazine. In Ulster County, where 463 assault weapons have been registered, there have been just three arrests for possession of large-capacity magazines and none for failure to register an assault weapon. Ulster County Sheriff Paul VanBlarcum has been a vocal critic of the law; he said he believed large numbers of Ulster County gun owners had chosen to ignore the registration requirement.

I could give several more examples of such reporting. But the upshot is that gun owners are overwhelmingly ignoring the law—and the police are overwhelmingly looking the other way.

A 2017 article from NYU law professor James Jacobs sums up the state of play. After detailing the electoral damage the backlash against the act did to New York Dems—"In 2014, Governor Andrew Cuomo was reelected by a much diminished majority and Republicans regained control of the State Senate"—Jacobs concludes that the "SAFE Act's impact on gun crime, suicides and accidents has never been seriously assessed, although both gun control proponents and gun rights advocates make extravagant claims. In truth, there seems little likelihood that the SAFE Act has had much, if any, effect since it has been only partially implemented, almost completely unenforced, and widely ignored. Its various provisions are easily circumvented" (emphasis mine).

New Yorkers are famous for their attitude, but this local police pushback on state and federal gun laws is not at all limited to New York. Nor is it a recent development. In 2013, for example, NBC reported on local sheriffs from Maryland to Colorado who publicly touted their refusal to enforce any gun laws they feel infringe on the Constitution. The growing Second Amendment Sanctuary movement, active in California, New Mexico, Oregon, and a handful of other states, is being led by local law enforcement.

If you're one of my many pro–gun control friends, you're no doubt offended at the spectacle of local police officials and city governments flat-out refusing to enforce democratically legislated marijuana laws…sorry, I mean immigration laws…oops, I mean gun laws.

I totally get that. When I read a quote like the following, there is indeed a part of me that thinks that if this radical insurrectionist loves cops and hates democracy this much, then maybe he should move to Hong Kong: "When [a prominent politician] kind of goes after these phantom sanctuary cities and talks about how bad they are, basically what he's going after is police chiefs. And I trust police chiefs, in terms of knowing what should be done to keep their communities safer, and police departments and mayors, a lot more than I trust [that Washington politician]."

Oh, no—I got mixed up again. That was former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, in a 2016 CNN interview on the topic of immigration sanctuary cities, and the politician he was criticizing is Donald Trump.

My point, other than the fact that hypocrisy around federalism is depressingly bipartisan, is not that it's either good or bad for local cops to veto laws. My point is that regardless of what you think of the gun owners who won't comply or the cops who'll inevitably let them off without even a verbal warning, there is no gun registration, gun ban, or gun confiscation that a U.S. Congress can pass and a U.S. president can sign that will be even close to fully complied with or enforced. Not one.

That isn't a boast or a threat. It's just a prediction, and a fairly safe one.

So the question I have for everyone who still wants to go down this road is this: What will you do in the face of the inevitable mass noncompliance? What is your Plan B?

Is the next step increased penalties for lawbreakers? If so, then how will you catch these lawbreakers in order to penalize them if the cops aren't interested in going after them?

Is your plan to go after the police, then? Would you declare war on any local sheriffs and even state police who ignore the law? If this stood a realistic chance of happening, you'd think they'd do it in New York, of all places. But a lot of that state's cops have been openly ignoring the country's "toughest" gun law, and we've heard crickets.

Or maybe you plan to escalate to door-to-door confiscation as a last resort. 

In that case, I think Meghan McCain's prediction of violence is about as safe as my prediction of mass noncompliance and law enforcement nullification. There would probably be a lot of ugliness and not a few dead bodies, not to mention a massive waste of the political capital of any party pushing the police into a shooting war with even a relatively small number of AR-15-owning bitter enders. 

Even if you think gun owners are bluffing and will hand 'em over peacefully when the time comes, you'd risk a violent escalation of America's worsening culture war solely for the sake of outlawing a category of weapons that are involved in the low triple-digits of U.S. deaths in any given year? 
Really?

This doesn't seem rational to me. It seems more like the kind of culture-war red meat you throw out there when you're trying to revive a flagging presidential campaign.

 https://reason.com/2019/09/05/the-futility-of-a-gun-buyback/