Article by Tyler O'Neil in PJMedia

 

The Hunter Biden Corruption Scandal Is a Reckoning for the Legacy Media

New revelations from Hunter Biden’s laptop and his former business partner, Tony Bobulinski, have implicated former Vice President Joe Biden in his son’s notorious business deals in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere. More evidence for the evolving story is emerging, day by day. Yet the very same media outlets that ran with the “salacious and unverified” Steele dossier recounting outlandish claims about President Donald Trump and Russia have refused to cover this very real scandal, despite its clear implications in the two weeks before the 2020 election.

While the scandal is particularly damning for Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., who has yet to give a detailed response to the allegations, it also stands as a particularly ugly indictment on the left-leaning legacy media outlets that have rushed to bury an evolving scandal in the critical days before a presidential election.

Why it matters

The media blackout on the Hunter Biden story is egregious due to the magnitude of the scandal. Americans are likely familiar with the basic narrative of the Hunter Biden-Burisma scandal because it featured prominently in the House Democrats’ impeachment against Trump.

While Joe Biden served as the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine, his son Hunter — who had no experience in fossil fuels — was named to the board of a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian gas company, Burisma. The VP’s son reportedly raked in $83,000 each month for the gig. Later, his father pressured the president of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who says he was investigating Burisma at the time.

The new emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop appear to demonstrate that Joe Biden met with a Burisma executive months before he pressured Ukraine to fire the prosecutor.

While Joe Biden was the Obama point person on China, Hunter Biden flew to the Middle Kingdom and entered into many lucrative deals with the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese state-owned businesses. Hunter’s deals arguably endangered American military and nuclear secrets, and the Obama administration went soft on China at the time.

The Biden family traded on their influential last name before Joe Biden became Obama’s vice president. The FBI investigated Joe Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign. Only Christopher Tigani, a wealthy beer distributor who bundled cash for the campaign, faced charges, but he exposed Joe Biden’s “Delaware Way” soft corruption.

Biden had repeatedly denied ever discussing the deals with Hunter or any other members of his family, but on Thursday, Tony Bobulinski, who worked with Hunter Biden on the China deals, contradicted the Democratic nominee’s claims. “I have heard Joe Biden say that he has never discussed business with Hunter. That is false. I have firsthand knowledge about this because I directly dealt with the Biden family, including Joe Biden,” Bobulinski said.

Bobulinski held up three phones he said he would turn over to the FBI and to the Senate as evidence of Biden corruption. He also insisted that Joe Biden was “the Big Guy” mentioned in various emails, including one email saying “the Big Guy” would get a 10 percent cut in the business.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), notorious for pushing the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, claimed that “this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.”

Many former intelligence officials have also claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop and the emails it revealed seem to be Russian disinformation, though they acknowledged they “do not have evidence” to prove that claim.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe rebutted this claim, as did the FBI and the Department of Justice. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claims his staff independently confirmed the veracity of the laptop, and paperwork for the laptop appears to bear Hunter Biden’s signature.

Finally, the Biden campaign has not directly claimed that the laptop and the emails are a fabrication, instead merely repeating the argument that the whole scandal is a “Russian plant.”

The scandal is still developing, but the sources have been confirmed to a much greater extent than the Steele dossier had been before the media ran with countless salacious stories. If Joe Biden really did enrich himself through his son’s lucrative business deals with the People’s Republic of China while serving as vice president, that has the potential to become one of the greatest scandals in American history. Yet the legacy media is fighting to bury the story, rather than altering the American people to it.

Big Tech sets the agenda

When The New York Post ran the first story on the Hunter Biden emails last week, Facebook and Twitter took unprecedented actions to suppress it. Twitter briefly suspended the accounts of the Trump campaign, the White House press secretary, and a congressional committee. Facebook, meanwhile, moved to suppress the Post article’s reach even before an independent fact check could be performed.

Twitter defended these actions by claiming that the Post article had violated its “Hacked Materials Policy.” Twitter should be ashamed of this ludicrous response, considering the fact that it did not crack down on other stories that should arguably fall under the Hacked Materials Policy, such as Trump’s tax returns.

It appears Facebook and Twitter aimed to set the agenda for suppressing the story and helping Joe Biden. The legacy media followed suit.

The legacy media blinds itself

Many legacy media outlets have refused to report on the evolving Hunter Biden scandal. National Public Radio announced that it would not cover the story because the bombshell stories are “pure distractions” or “stories that are not really stories.” As PJ Media’s Jim Treacher noted, this boils down to the puerile statement, “’cause we don’t wanna, so there.”

On Thursday, President Donald Trump released the footage of his 60 Minutes interview with CBS News’s Leslie Stahl. He seems to have taken this drastic step because Stahl denied the reality of the Hunter Biden scandal and the Obamagate scandal. She suggested that 60 Minutes could not air Trump’s comments because “we can’t verify them.”

Trump noted that a legacy media reporter asked Biden what flavor of ice cream he got, even while the Democrat was “in the midst of a scandal.”

Stahl cut the president off, insisting, “He’s not.” She later went on to claim that CBS News “can’t verify” Trump’s claim that the Obama administration “spied on his campaign,” even though an FBI staffer pleaded guilty to altering an application to the FISA court to get surveillance on Trump campaign operatives.

Yet the media bias grew worse around the time of the final presidential debate.

After Bobulinski gave his statement and before the debate began, CNN’s Jake Tapper said the Hunter Biden scandal was “too disgusting to even repeat.” He claimed that some of the “allegations about Biden and his family… are just wildly unhinged.”

Following Trump’s decision to mention the scandal sparingly in the debate, Tapper condemned the Hunter Biden revelations as “the Gaetz Mc-Breitbart nonsense.”

“The campaign that Trump and his allies in the media and members of his family and Trump-allied websites and such are leveling, with charges so heinous I’m not even going to say them, just nonsense, crap, tied into Qanon, tied into Pizzagate, tied into the worst things you could say about a person — with no evidence, just completely made up — is so disgusting and so beneath what this election should be,” Tapper added.

“And I just want viewers at home to be ready because all of their grandparents’ Facebook feeds and all of the Twittersphere, it’s going to be so heinous over the next eleven days,” the CNN host said.

—@JakeTapper warns about final days of campaign w/Trump allies pushing "crap tied into QAnon" about Bidens.

"It is so disgusting," Tapper says, warning viewers it will soon be all over their "grandparents' Facebook feeds."

"It's going to be so heinous over the next 11 days." pic.twitter.com/yoVF540ibo

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 23, 2020

Tapper appears to have mentioned Qanon because former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani revealed some texts that suggest Joe Biden knew about Hunter Biden’s alleged sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl and did nothing. This salacious claim is not “completely made up,” however. Giuliani turned over the texts to the Delaware State Police.

Tapper’s Pizzagate reference was utterly uncalled for. As mentioned above, a great deal of emerging evidence has backed up the Hunter Biden scandal, while Pizzagate relied on baseless claims that Hillary Clinton’s emails included secret code words for a pedophile ring — the same kind of conspiracy theory as Qanon. Infamously, an armed man essentially invaded Comet Ping Pong, the pizzeria at the center of Pizzagate, and tried to force the staff to reveal the supposedly sexually enslaved children. When he realized the conspiracy theory was false, he turned himself over to the authorities.

The Hunter Biden scandal is nothing like Pizzagate. Pizzagate involved secret coded messages and none of the recipients of Hillary Clinton’s emails ever confirmed the supposed “code” behind the emails. Bobulinski’s game-changing testimony definitively demonstrated that the Hunter Biden scandal is grounded in reality.

Yet legacy media reporters and commentators did not just attack Trump for discussing the story. As National Review‘s Ryan Mills reported, many attacked fellow journalists simply for sharing the bombshell New York Post story and asking Biden questions. The woke Twitter mob excoriated The New York Times‘ Maggie Haberman and Politico‘s Jake Sherman for even acknowledging the story, even as they questioned the reporting.

Fellow journalists condemned CBS News reporter Bo Erickson for daring to ask Biden about it, and Biden condemned the scandal as “another smear campaign.”

Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security advisor, accused Erickson of “acting as the far end of a Russian disinformation operation.”

ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd replied to Erickson’s report, saying, “Lordy, you ask someone about an article that has already been proven false and having Russia propaganda as its basis? I would suggest taking a look in the mirror.”

When Politico’s Marc Caputo dared to defend Erickson, Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, attacked him.

“This stance means you are perfectly happy being a tool of a Russian campaign to hurt one candidate and help another,” Tanden wrote. “You’ve learned zero since 2016.”

John Harwood, CNN’s White House correspondent, claimed that a recent Fox News phone-in interview with Trump “makes clear disinformation by Russian intelligence on Biden isn’t enough to carry him across the finish line on its own.”

Vox Associate Editor Aaron Rupar argued that Trump has “made amplifying a Russian disinformation campaign against the Bidens a centerpiece of his re-election rallies.”

Newsweek columnist Seth Abramson said it “should beggar belief, with all we know about Kremlin attacks on the United States, an American media outlet of any political persuasion would willingly act as a conduit for Russian disinformation.”

The legacy media appears to have caught a severe case of groupthink, and it seems the growing level of evidence isn’t enough to convince them to cover this extremely newsworthy scandal.

The decision to bury this scandal is a huge blemish on the legacy media. It is unconscionable for media outlets to dismiss the Hunter Biden scandal without evidence and even in the face of increasing evidence.

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France teacher attack: Seven charged over Samuel Paty's killing

 Seven people have been charged over the death of a French teacher who was beheaded close to his school last week.

 

Samuel Paty, 47, was targeted for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to his students.

His killer, 18-year-old Abdullakh Anzorov, was shot dead by police shortly after last Friday's attack.

But seven people, including two students and a parent of one of Mr Paty's pupils, were detained in the days following the killing.

On Wednesday, prosecutors said six of the suspects had been charged with complicity in a terrorist murder and placed under judicial investigation.

One man is accused of having close contact with the killer and faces the lesser charge of associating with a terrorist.

 

 

All of the suspects, other than the two students who are minors at just 14 and 15, are in custody.

Mr Paty's killing stunned France and led to an outpouring of support at memorial ceremonies and marches around the country.

On Wednesday evening, President Emmanuel Macron hailed Mr Paty as "a quiet hero" and "the face of the Republic" at an event in Paris.

He then presented the teacher's family with the nation's highest honour, the Légion d'honneur.

 

 

Who has been charged?

France's chief anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-François Ricard announced the charges on Wednesday, and gave fuller details of the police investigation at a press conference.

Two teenage students, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were allegedly paid around €300 (£270; $355) by the killer to identify Mr Paty outside the school.

The killer told the students he wanted to "hit" and "humiliate" Mr Paty and "make him apologise for the cartoon of the Prophet [Muhammad]", Mr Ricard said.

The teenagers are alleged to have described the teacher to Anzorov and stayed with him for more than two hours until Mr Paty appeared.

A man named only as Brahim C, a parent of one of Mr Paty's pupils, is also under investigation. The 48-year-old is accused of orchestrating a hate campaign against Mr Paty and exchanging text messages with the killer before the attack.

On Wednesday, Mr Ricard said there was a "direct causal link" between the online campaign and Mr Paty's death.

 

 

Also in custody is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a preacher and activist who was reportedly known to the French intelligence services for years.

Both he and Brahim C made videos in which they reportedly insulted Mr Paty and demanded his suspension.

Earlier, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told Europe 1 radio that the pair had "apparently launched a fatwa against the teacher".

Three friends of Anzorov are also facing prosecution. One of them allegedly drove him to the school, while another is accused of helping him purchase a weapon.

Both men have been charged with complicity in a terrorist murder while the third was charged with the lesser offence of terrorist association.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, it emerged that Anzorov had been in contact with a Russian-speaking jihadist in Syria before he carried out the attack.

Anzorov was born in Moscow and his family is from Russia's Muslim-majority Chechnya region in the North Caucasus. He had lived in France since 2008.

 

 

Why was Samuel Paty targeted?

The teacher had been the target of threats since he showed the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a class on 6 October.

• 
  

Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad can cause serious offence to Muslims because Islamic tradition explicitly forbids images of Muhammad and Allah (God).

The issue is particularly sensitive in France because of the decision by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

A trial is currently under way over the killing of 12 people by Islamist extremists at the magazine's offices in 2015 following their publication.

France's Muslim community, which is Europe's largest, comprises about 10% of the population.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54632353 

 

 

 

 

 

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2020/10/22/the-russians-made-me-write-this-n2578497

The Russians Made Me Write This

• Derek Hunter

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.

Source: Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

To hear leftists on cable news tell it, there’s a Russian behind every bush and tree. They hear everything you say, and see more of you than New Yorker magazine staff members saw of Jeffrey Toobin. In fact, the Russian disinformation plotters are more omniscient than Santa Claus. You’d be insane to deny them their will, they’re that good…or so liberals believe.

Democrats have tried a lot of campaign strategies this election season – you’re a racist, now vote for me; the country sucks, let us run it; you don’t know how bad you have it; etc., etc. – but at the end they’ve settled on an old favorite: RUSSIA!

They’ve been playing this game throughout the Trump administration – Donald Trump has been everything from a Russian puppet to a Russian agent, depending on the day of the week. He was horrible at both, sending actual military assistance to Ukraine in the form of weapons, not just MREs and pillows. If you’re doing the bidding of a dictator you don’t aid a country that dictator has invaded with heavy weaponry.

The narrative that President Trump was in league with Putin didn’t stand up to scrutiny, so now the left is trying a different approach with an old familiar ring: Russia is interfering in the election again.

Last time it was through a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads. I said at the time, if Russia can change an election with a few grand on absurd social media posts we should ask them to look at everything our government does, because that level of efficiency is amazing. This time, it’s through a strategy that would make a James Bond villain envious.

If we’re to believe what the Morning Joe-set is trying to sell, Russian operatives filled a laptop with pictures of Hunter Biden, including at least one of him unconscious with a crack pipe in his mouth, and a string of shady, if not incriminating, emails. They then sent that laptop to a computer repair shop more than a year and a half ago and left it on the off chance that Joe would not only enter the race for the Democrat nomination (it was dropped off a week before Joe announced), but that he would beat the other 700 Democrats in the field. If, in the event that he did all that, they could then unleash all that manufactured data on the public, but only after the computer was in the hands of the FBI for 10 months. Oh, and they got the people on those shady, if not incriminating, email threads to vouch for their authenticity. On top of all that, they also somehow convinced Joe, Hunter, and the entire Biden campaign to refuse to deny all of it was real.

That’s one hell of a plan. If the Russians can pull that off, we’d be crazy to cross them. Maybe they also trained Toobin in how to use Zoom? There’s nothing they can’t do!

Theoretically, if the Russians did all that because they wanted to help Donald Trump, they would have done something similar for all the viable candidates, right? Just in case, I mean. Where is the rest of it? Where’s the plot against Pete Buttigieg? Seems like the set-up for Kamala Harris would be relevant, doesn’t it? Why waste it? Hit the campaign with a two-for.

Of course, everyone espousing the idea that Hunter’s laptop “reeks of Russian disinformation” knows they’re lying, they just don’t care. Who’s going to call them on it? Certainly no one they work with. On the contrary, if they want their contracts renewed, a shot at a job in a Biden administration, or even access to one they know they’d better toe the line. Not that it’s a tough choice for them, they’re on the team.

Maybe they think people will forget, that credibility and public trust will return to them once they stop spitting in our faces while telling us it’s raining?

More likely is that they just don’t care. Their audiences are what they are; after lying to them for 3 years about collusion, they stuck around. There’s literally nothing they can do to lose the audience they have left and that’s enough. They’ll make their millions, get good seats at restaurants in Manhattan (at least the ones that survive De Blasio and Cuomo), and will be the toasts of their social circles, so what do they care?

Jeffrey Toobin’s wife knows what her husband is – he’s fathered a child outside their marriage and has a history of, um, less that faithful actions (actually, quite scummy) – and she’s still around. Liberal media consumers are kind of like that – they don’t care what the people filling them with lies do or say, as long as they’re there when they turn on the TV, filling them with comfort food, and making them feel superior to everyone not as “enlightened” as they are.

Most importantly, these lying elites are protecting them from the Russians plotting against them…as wealthy Russian politicians and oligarchs suffer under sanctions imposed on them by their puppet/agent, Donald Trump.

These people are morons. (The Russians made me write that.)

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.

FLASHBACK: Health Experts Predicted Up To...

FLASHBACK: Health Experts Predicted Up To 200,000 COVID Deaths In US 

‘If We Do Things Almost Perfectly’

Kylee Zempel reporting for The Federalist

Less than two weeks before the presidential election, Team Biden and the media continue pushing the number of COVID-19 deaths in America as evidence that President Donald Trump’s pandemic response has been a failure. A look back at early predictions from health experts, however, indicates the United States’ pandemic response has turned out to be closer to the best-case scenario.

The worst-case scenario would be between 1.6 million and 2.2 million deaths, White House Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx said during an NBC News interview back in March, during the early days of the pandemic. These projections would result from doing “nothing” to combat the virus, she said. 

“If we do things together, well, almost perfectly, we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities,” Birx continued. In other words, with a near-perfect pandemic response, the number of deaths from the Wuhan virus could reach almost as many as have been reported to date. Nearly eight full months after the first reported death from COVID-19 in the United States and after the worst early outbreaks, such as the New York nursing home sweep, the reported death toll remains at 222,000, just above Birx’s best-case scenario projection.

The current numbers assume accurate reporting of cases and deaths, which has not been a given throughout parts of the pandemic, with different states employing varrying methods of reporting. Data became further inflated when states conflated positive cases with “probable” COVID-19 cases without actually administering tests, and spikes in the data could have been partially attributed to the expanded use of antibody tests, which revealed previous positives rather than current illness. For example, in July, hundreds of labs in Florida reported 100 percent positivity rates because they failed to include the negative test results. Positivity rates were actually often closer to 10 percent.

Even the CDC has noted that some of the excess “deaths could represent misclassified COVID-19 deaths, or potentially could be indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., deaths from other causes occurring in the context of health care shortages or overburdened health care systems).”

Further, it’s difficult for an administration to come out with the best-case scenario when, as Birx noted, “100 percent of Americans” aren’t doing “precisely what is required.” Public confidence in government mandates began to erode, however, due to authoritarian state and local leaders, such as those who discriminated against religious gatherings, for instance, while allowing mass protests. It’s probable many Americans also lost faith in widescale public health guidelines after so-called experts often wavered on their instructions, such as when they flipped on mask recommendations.

“There’s no reason people should be walking around with a mask,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on “60 Minutes” back in March. “Wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not proven to be the perfect protection that people think that it is.” Now mask-wearing is one of the top recommendations by the CDC, and mask mandates are prevalent. Many health professionals, however, have recently called for an immediate end to the lockdowns, while protecting vulnerable populations, to establish herd immunity.

Now just 12 days before the election, although former Vice President Joe Biden has insisted his coronavirus response would have been better, he has failed to give clarity about what he would have done differently. Given that current data indicates the Trump administration has handled the pandemic “almost perfectly,” all despite adverse circumstances, a few missteps, and state blunders, it’s hard to imagine a Biden-Harris administration could have done any better.

Donald Trump Owned the Debate Stage — and Joe Biden...

Shipwreckedcrew writing at RedState

I’ll get into the substance of some of the exchanges in articles later and tomorrow after I have a chance to read the transcript.

But in terms of style points and tactics, Donald Trump laid waste to Joe Biden — and the Presidential Commission on Debates — in the Third Presidential Debate.

I’ve been a federal court trial lawyer for 30 years with a pretty good record of success.  I’m not a “plodder” in the courtroom — for me the well of the courtroom is a stage and if you want to win you have to own it.

President Trump owned it tonight.  He “bossed” the debate.

Donald Trump learned from his mistakes in the first debate.  He took on the rules changes imposed by the Presidential Commission and said “Fine, let’s do this.”

I listened to the first 45 minutes while driving, and that gave me only their words to gauge — whether they answered questions, whether they evaded questions, whether their answers were substantive or fluff.

I listened for whether they responded to each other, and when an exchange ended, who got the better of the finish — who made their point and who had to give ground?

This one wasn’t even close.

If there had been a referee, this was a TKO in the 3rd round.

From the very start — WITHOUT BEING RUDE — Trump demanded that the exchanges end on his terms.  Over and over he demanded — politely — that Kristen Welker allow him to respond.  Sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes 10 seconds.  Some of his responses were better than others — some were exceptional.  And I can’t think of a SINGLE instance where Biden demanded the opportunity to come back in himself with something else to say.

By force of personality Trump demanded the final word time after time, Welker was forced to give it to him lest it look like the debate was about her rather than about voters being able to hear from the candidates.

Some of Pres. Trump’s lines are “stock” and worn, but he has a veteran debater’s ability to turn a phrase spontaneously that captures the moment.

I saw the last 30 minutes on television and two stood out — my reaction each time was “Nice — the thought and the verbalization”.

Paraphrasing:  “I ran because of you Joe.  You and Barack did such a horrible job I had to run. I could have stayed in private life, I had a great life.  But you’re the reason I ran. You two were so terrible, you’re the reason I ran.”

The second instance was in the discussion about Pres. Trump having accomplished criminal justice reform, and Joe Biden talking about his plan to go further with comprehensive drug treatment.

Pres. Trump asked the question — which he asked effectively in a few contexts throughout the debate — “You had eight years Joe. If you wanted to do it, if you could have done it, you had eight years and you didn’t get it done.”

Lamely, and without seeing how it was going to be turned around as a bullet right in his forehead, Biden said “We had to deal with a Republican Congress.”

In one of the best moments of the night Pres. Trump slipped the knife right between the ribs.  Paraphrasing again — “You have to convince them, Joe.  That’s what you have to do. You have to talk them into it.  That’s how things get done.”

In both instances, Joe Biden just pulled the blanket over his head and wondered when it was going to end.

All night long it was the same way. Pres. Trump was “Alpha” without going manic as he did in the first debate.  He verbally “stalked” Biden across the stage. Biden looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was.

When Joe Biden gets nervous his gaze becomes fixed.  For long periods of time he stared directly into the camera.  When he does that the features of his face narrow.  You have to move your head around and shift your focus to avoid taking on the look of having a “beady little stare.”  BIden had that look nearly the entire 30 minutes that I was able to watch on television.

In tactical terms familiar to MMA fans, Pres. Trump put together an impressive “ground and pound” effort.  He took Biden down, kept him down, and pounded him consistently over 90 minutes.

From an election standpoint, the timing was perfect.  He’s rebounded in the polls in the past few days — not that they are any more accurate now than they were before.  But the contest tonight showed that one of the participants is capable of being President, and the other is not.

Even Ivanka draws a bigger crowd than Kamala

Never underestimate the importance of voter enthusiasm.

posted by Dianny at Patriot Retort

Yesterday, Ivanka Trump was in Fort Meyers, Florida campaigning for her Dad. Three states away, Kamala Harris was campaigning in deep blue Asheville, North Carolina.

And the difference in crowd size between these two events couldn’t be more stark.

How bad is it for Biden/Harris that even Ivanka Trump can draw more people than the Democrat’s Vice Presidential candidate?

You know, there’s a reason Kamala Harris had to drop out of the primary two months before Iowa. Even Democrat voters just weren’t that into her.

Did the Biden Campaign really believe when they selected her as Joe’s running mate that something had changed? Because nothing has changed.

Last night, most folks on Twitter were comparing Kamala’s teeny, tiny North Carolina audience yesterday afternoon with President Trump’s North Carolina rally yesterday evening.

And, really, who can blame them.

I mean look at this crowd:

I’m sure some cranky Biden voter will say “That’s not fair! Trump is the top of the ticket! You shouldn’t compare Trump and Kamala; she’s only Biden’s running mate!”

Okay, here’s President Trump’s running mate Mike Pence in Ohio yesterday.

But that’s not the point, is it? The point is Ivanka Trump isn’t on the ticket at all, and still she can draw more people than Joe and Kamala combined.

And it isn’t just Ivanka. The same holds true for whenever Eric Trump, Lara Trump or Don Junior hold a campaign event.

In fact, enormous crowds gather to show their support for Trump even when nobody from the Trump campaign is scheduled to appear. Just think of the boat parades and car parades we’ve been seeing over the last several weeks.

The best Team Biden could garner by way of a car parade was three measly cars – and that was even with Mrs. Biden and Mr. Kamala on hand to wave to them.

And yesterday, when Team Biden deployed their “Big Gun?” The same Big Gun who used to draw thousands when he spoke?

Well, here’s Big Gun Barack Obama yesterday speaking through a bullhorn to a handful of people in Philly.

Who needs a bullhorn to talk to a small assembled gathering only ten feet away from him?

After that, just like Biden and Harris have been doing lately, Obama talked to a bunch of cars in a parking lot.

I’m beginning to suspect the reason they’re doing “car rallies” is since cars take up far more space than people, it make it look more full when in reality, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the Trump campaign’s crowds.

I know I keep saying this. But never underestimate the importance of voter enthusiasm.

And going into this election, the enthusiasm is with President Trump, not with Sleepy Joe and his inauthentic, cackling running mate.

 

Article by P.F. Whalen in The American Thinker

 

What the Toobin scandal really exposes

The scandal involving Jeffrey Toobin's masturbatory antics during a Zoom meeting last week has resulted in several unplanned byproducts, the most obvious of which is the comedic material the incident has generated.  If there were any late-night talk show hosts worth watching, we could all be enjoying several weeks' worth of side-splitting jokes.  Unfortunately for many of us, we have to rely on social media and the countless Toobin memes for that humor. 

It has also been entertaining to watch sides being drawn on the matter, with some in the industry coming to Toobin's defense and a few others, such as legal commentator Adrienne Lazarus, going on the attack.  "He's a privileged, white man who decided to pleasure himself at work to the detriment of his colleagues," Lazarus asserted.  "Black men are fired for much less and without your sympathy."  Admit it: it's hard not to smile.

The most significant consequence of the scandal, however, has to be the level to which the mainstream media's anti-factual mindset has once again been exposed. 

As the story came to light on Monday, Toobin attempted to explain himself by reasoning, "I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera."  Anyone with common sense and common decency was left scratching his head at the statement.  The issue, Mr. Toobin, is not only that your colleagues had the misfortune of, without warning, inadvertently catching a glimpse of your private parts, but the fact that you were even handling them during a business meeting in the first place.  In fact, that's the single most disturbing aspect of the entire incident, and one that has no doubt caused many of us to be stricken with a new phobia: the fear of getting on Zoom meetings. 

But the fact that the vast majority of the mainstream media didn't bat an eyelash at Toobin's explanation, and he indeed has not yet been fired by either CNN or the New Yorker, has once again given us an example of their way of thinking.  Pay no attention to reality, you obedient sheep — just listen to us, and we'll tell you how to think. 

For clarity, and contrary to Ms. Lazarus's suggestion, it seems obvious that Toobin's race has had no role in his employers' disinterest in discipline or the media's lack of accountability.  Toobin is getting a pass not because he is white, but because he is a leftist who hates Donald Trump and conservatives, and who works for CNN.  If a non-white person had behaved similarly, he would likely be treated the same as Toobin, provided he were on the left.  Imagine if an identical incident happened with a conservative legal pundit from Fox News.  Would the media be satisfied with an explanation of "my mistake was not that I was playing with myself during a business meeting; I just screwed up by allowing my laptop's camera to show it"?  We all know the answer.

The larger tale is how this mindset continues to infect the entire left and its media.  When email messages from Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, and other Democrats at the DNC became public knowledge in 2016, the focus of Democrats and the mainstream media was not on the content of those emails, some of which was highly damaging to the Clinton campaign.  No one from the DNC disputed their authenticity, but all the media wanted to talk about was how they were acquired.  Those mean old Russians did this, and how dare they let the American public know the truth about how we operate?

For the next three years, the media fed us a steady diet of the Russia Hoax.  On a daily basis, we would hear that "the walls are closing in" on Trump.  There were new "bombshells" seemingly every day about Donald Trump, Jr.'s meeting with Russians at Trump Tower.  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) promised forthcoming evidence showing sinister activities by President Trump and his campaign.  That whole time, there was nothing to the entire story.  There never was any "there" there.  As the Mueller report showed, it was a farce all along, and the left and its media were banking the entire time that America would just ignore reality and listen to their own, twisted narrative.  That's exactly what many Americans did.

We continue to see evidence of this ongoing strategy with the current scandal involving Joe and Hunter Biden.  There is far more evidence showing the Hunter Biden emails with Ukrainian officials to be genuine than any single aspect of the entire Russia Hoax, and the Biden campaign has indeed not denied their validity.  Does that matter to our prestigious mainstream media?  Of course not.  While a few intellectually curious journalists have asked Joe Biden for comments on the scandal, none has sufficiently followed up and forced the issue.  Instead, the media have tried to dismiss the scandal as Russian disinformation, even as the director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, has stated unequivocally that the assertion is nonsense.

The media's indifference to the Jeffrey Toobin scandal is just one more example of their aversion to the truth.  Engaging in self-abuse while one interacts with his colleagues during a Zoom meeting is repulsive, regardless of whether or not one's laptop's camera is functioning and regardless of how boring that meeting might be.  By accepting Toobin's explanation, and by failing to call out the utter absurdity of it, the media have once again shown their indifference to truth and their aversion to basic morals.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/10/what_the_toobin_scandal_really_exposes.html

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Melania Trump Emerges from Quarantine in Dior for Debate

 First Lady Melania Trump emerged from quarantine at the White House on Thursday, stepping out in a chic black ensemble for the final presidential debate.

 

 

For her first public outing since having the Chinese coronavirus, Melania Trump chose a black Christian Dior dress with a wide lapel and thin leather belt as she headed to Nashville, Tennessee alongside President Trump.

Mrs. Trump paired the Dior frock with a pair of acetate black sunglasses, likely by Saint Laurent, and black patent leather Christian Louboutin stilettos which Mrs. Trump owns in multiple colors.

Loyal Fashion Notes readers may recall that Mrs. Trump has worn versions of this Dior dress and belt combo before. In September 2018, on a trip to Manhattan, Mrs. Trump wore a similar Dior dress with black Louboutins

 

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2020/10/22/melania-trump-emerges-from-quarantine-in-dior-for-debate/ 

Biden Gun Policies

 Straight off the Biden website. 

https://joebiden.com/gunsafety/

The Biden Plan to End Our Gun Violence Epidemic

Joe Biden knows that gun violence is a public health epidemic. Almost 40,000 people die as a result of firearm injuries every year in the United States, and many more are wounded. Some of these deaths and injuries are the result of mass shootings that make national headlines. Others are the result of daily acts of gun violence or suicides that may not make national headlines, but are just as devastating to the families and communities left behind.

Joe Biden has taken on the National Rifle Association (NRA) on the national stage and won – twice. In 1993, he shepherded through Congress the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which established the background check system that has since kept more than 3 million firearms out of dangerous hands. In 1994, Biden – along with Senator Dianne Feinstein – secured the passage of 10-year bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As president, Joe Biden will defeat the NRA again.

Joe Biden also knows how to make progress on reducing gun violence using executive action. After the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, President Obama tasked Vice President Biden with developing both legislative proposals and executive actions to make our communities safer. As a result of this effort, the Obama-Biden Administration took more than two dozen actions, including narrowing the so-called “gun show loophole,” increasing the number of records in the background check system, and expanding funding for mental health services.

It’s within our grasp to end our gun violence epidemic and respect the Second Amendment, which is limited. As president, Biden will pursue constitutional, common-sense gun safety policies. Biden will:

Hold gun manufacturers accountable. In 2005, then-Senator Biden voted against the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but gun manufacturers successfully lobbied Congress to secure its passage. This law protects these manufacturers from being held civilly liable for their products – a protection granted to no other industry. Biden will prioritize repealing this protection.

Get weapons of war off our streets. The bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that Biden, along with Senator Feinstein, secured in 1994 reduced the lethality of mass shootings. But, in order to secure the passage of the bans, they had to agree to a 10-year sunset provision and when the time came, the Bush Administration failed to extend them. As president, Biden will:

• Ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Federal law prevents hunters from hunting migratory game birds with more than three shells in their shotgun. That means our federal law does more to protect ducks than children. It’s wrong. Joe Biden will enact legislation to once again ban assault weapons. This time, the bans will be designed based on lessons learned from the 1994 bans. For example, the ban on assault weapons will be designed to prevent manufacturers from circumventing the law by making minor changes that don’t limit the weapon’s lethality. While working to pass this legislation, Biden will also use his executive authority to ban the importation of assault weapons. 

• Regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act. Currently, the National Firearms Act requires individuals possessing machine-guns, silencers, and short-barreled rifles to undergo a background check and register those weapons with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Due to these requirements, such weapons are rarely used in crimes. As president, Biden will pursue legislation to regulate possession of existing assault weapons under the National Firearms Act. 

• Buy back the assault weapons and high-capacity magazines already in our communities. Biden will also institute a program to buy back weapons of war currently on our streets. This will give individuals who now possess assault weapons or high-capacity magazines two options: sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act.

• Reduce stockpiling of weapons. In order to reduce the stockpiling of firearms, Biden supports legislation restricting the number of firearms an individual may purchase per month to one.

Keep guns out of dangerous hands. The federal background check system (the National Instant Criminal Background Check System) is one of the best tools we have to prevent gun violence, but it’s only effective when it’s used. Biden will enact universal background check legislation and close other loopholes that allow people who should be prohibited from purchasing firearms from making those purchases. Specifically, he will:

• Require background checks for all gun sales. Today, an estimated 1 in 5 firearms are sold or transferred without a background check. Biden will enact universal background check legislation, requiring a background check for all gun sales with very limited exceptions, such as gifts between close family members. This will close the so-called “gun show and online sales loophole” that the Obama-Biden Administration narrowed, but which cannot be fully closed by executive action alone.

• • Close other loopholes in the federal background check system. In addition to closing the “boyfriend loophole” highlighted below, Biden will:

• • Reinstate the Obama-Biden policy to keep guns out of the hands of certain people unable to manage their affairs for mental reasons, which President Trump reversed. In 2016, the Obama-Biden Administration finalized a rule to make sure the Social Security Administration (SSA) sends to the background check system records that it holds of individuals who are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms because they have been adjudicated by the SSA as unable to manage their affairs for mental reasons. But one of the first actions Donald Trump took as president was to reverse this rule. President Biden will enact legislation to codify this policy.

• • Close the “hate crime loophole.” Biden will enact legislationprohibiting an individual “who has been convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime, or received an enhanced sentence for a misdemeanor because of hate or bias in its commission” from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

• • Close the “Charleston loophole.” The Charleston loophole allows people to complete a firearms purchase if their background check is not completed within three business days. Biden supports the proposal in the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019, which extends the timeline from three to 10 business days. Biden will also direct the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to put on his desk within his first 100 days as president a report detailing the cases in which background checks are not completed within 10 business days and steps the federal government can take to reduce or eliminate this occurrence.

• • Close the “fugitive from justice” loophole created by the Trump Administration. Because of actions by the Trump Administration, records of almost 500,000 fugitives from justice who are prohibited from purchasing firearms were deleted from the background check system. The Biden Administration will restore these records, and enact legislation to make clear that people facing arrest warrants are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms.

End the online sale of firearms and ammunitions. Biden will enact legislation to prohibit all online sales of firearms, ammunition, kits, and gun parts.

Create an effective program to ensure individuals who become prohibited from possessing firearms relinquish their weapons. Federal law defines categories of individuals who are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms, and the federal background check system is an effective tool for ensuring prohibited persons cannot purchase firearms. But we lack any serious tool to ensure that when someone becomes newly prohibited – for example, because they commit a violent crime – they relinquish possession of their firearms. There are some promising models for how this could be enforced. For example, California has a mandatory process for ensuring relinquishment by any individual newly subject to a domestic violence restraining order. As president, Biden will direct the FBI and ATF to outline a model relinquishment process, enact any necessary legislation to ensure relinquishment when individuals newly fall under one of the federal prohibitions, and then provide technical and financial assistance to state and local governments to establish effective relinquishment processes on their own.

Incentivize state “extreme risk” laws. Extreme risk laws, also called “red flag” laws, enable family members or law enforcement officials to temporarily remove an individual’s access to firearms when that individual is in crisis and poses a danger to themselves or others. Biden will incentivize the adoption of these laws by giving states funds to implement them. And, he’ll direct the U.S. Department of Justice to issue best practices and offer technical assistance to states interested in enacting an extreme risk law.

Give states incentives to set up gun licensing programs. Biden will enact legislation to give states and local governments grants to require individuals to obtain a license prior to purchasing a gun.

Adequately fund the background check system. President Obama and Vice President Biden expanded incentives for states to submit records of prohibited persons into the background checks system. As president, Biden will continue to prioritize that funding and ensure that the FBI is adequately funded to accurately and efficiently handle the NICS system.

ADDRESSING THE DEADLY COMBINATION OF GUNS AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE The statistics tell a devastating and overwhelming story. The likelihood that a woman in a domestic violence situation will be killed increases by a factor of five if a gun is nearby. Half of mass shootings involve an individual shooting a family member or former intimate partner. This deadly connection tragically impacts children as well: 86% of children killed in shootings with four or more victims were involved in domestic or family violence. Biden recognizes that the gun violence and domestic violence epidemics are linked and cannot be solved in isolation. Addressing the interconnectedness of these challenges will be a core focus of Biden’s anti-violence work as president.  The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019, which Leader McConnell refuses to bring to the floor for a vote, includes a number of reforms to keep firearms out of the hands of abusers. Senator McConnell should ensure this legislation gets passed long before President Biden would take the oath of office. But if McConnell refuses to act, Biden will enact legislation to close the so-called “boyfriend loophole” and “stalking loophole” by prohibiting all individuals convicted of assault, battery, or stalking from purchasing or possessing firearms, regardless of their connection to the victim. This proposal is modeled after existing laws in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Nevada, New York, and Pennsylvania. Biden also supports enacting the proposal to prohibit anyone under a temporary restraining order from purchasing or possessing a firearm before their hearing. In addition, President Biden will: Establish a new Task Force on Online Harassment and Abuse to focus on the connection between mass shootings, online harassment, extremism, and violence against women. As President, Joe Biden will convene a national Task Force with federal agencies, state leaders, advocates, law enforcement, and technology experts to study rampant online sexual harassment, stalking, and threats, including revenge porn and deepfakes — and the connection between this harassment, mass shootings, extremism and violence against women. The Task Force will be charged with developing cutting-edge strategies and recommendations for how federal and state governments, social media companies, schools, and other public and private entities can tackle this unique challenge. The Task Force will consider platform accountability, transparent reporting requirements for incidents of harassment and response, and best practices.  Expand the use of evidence-based lethality assessments by law enforcement in cases of domestic violence. Lethality assessments, sometimes called “risk” or “danger” assessments, are a proven strategy to help law enforcement officers identify domestic violence survivors who are at high risk of being killed by their abusers. These survivors are then connected with social service programs that can offer services and safety planning. An evaluation of the Lethality Assessment Program (LEP) created by the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence showed promising results. Increased federal funding will incentivize jurisdictions to take advantage of implementing these programs more widely.

Make sure firearm owners take on the responsibility of ensuring their weapons are used safely.

• Put America on the path to ensuring that 100% of firearms sold in America are smart guns. Today, we have the technology to allow only authorized users to fire a gun. For example, existing smart gun technology requires a fingerprint match before use. Biden believes we should work to eventually require that 100% of firearms sold in the U.S. are smart guns. But, right now the NRA and gun manufacturers are bullying firearms dealers who try to sell these guns. Biden will stand up against these bullying tactics and issue a call to action for gun manufacturers, dealers, and other public and private entities to take steps to accelerate our transition to smart guns.

• Hold adults accountable for giving minors access to firearms. Biden supports legislation holding adults criminally and civilly liable for directly or negligently giving a minor access to a firearm, regardless of whether the minor actually gains possession of the firearm.

• Require gun owners to safely store their weapons. Biden will pass legislation requiring firearm owners to store weapons safely in their homes. 

Empower law enforcement to effectively enforce our gun laws.

• Prioritize prosecution of straw purchasers. “Straw purchasers” buy a firearm on behalf of an individual who cannot pass a background check. Biden will end those loopholes by enacting a law to make all straw purchases a serious federal crime and ensure the U.S. Justice Department has sufficient resources to prioritize their prosecution.

• Notify law enforcement when a potential firearms purchaser fails a background check. Too often, when prohibited persons attempting to buy a firearm fail a background check, state and local law enforcement is never informed of the attempt. As president, Biden will direct the FBI to set up a process to ensure timely notification of denials to state and local law enforcement, and he’ll support legislation to codify this process. This empowers law enforcement to follow up and ensure prohibited persons do not attempt to acquire firearms through other means.

• Require firearms owners to report if their weapon is lost or stolen. Responsible gun owners have a responsibility to inform law enforcement if their weapon is lost or stolen. Biden will enact legislation to make this the law of the land.

• Stop “ghost guns.” One way people who cannot legally obtain a gun may gain access to a weapon is by assembling a one on their own, either by buying a kit of disassembled gun parts or 3D printing a working firearm. Biden will stop the proliferation of these so-called “ghost guns” by passing legislation requiring that purchasers of gun kits or 3D printing code pass a federal background check. Additionally, Biden will ensure that the authority for firearms exports stays with the State Department, and if needed, reverse a proposed rule by President Trump. This will ensure the State Department continues to block the code used to 3D print firearms from being made available on the Internet.

• Reform, fund, and empower the U.S. Justice Department to enforce our gun laws. Biden will direct his Attorney General to deliver to him within his first 100 days a set of recommendations for restructuring the ATF and related Justice Department agencies to most effectively enforce our gun laws. Biden will then work to secure sufficient funds for the Justice Department to effectively enforce our existing gun laws, increase the frequency of inspections of firearms dealers, and repeal riders that get in the way of that work.

• Direct the ATF to issue an annual report on firearms trafficking.This report will provide officials with critical information to better identify strategies for curbing firearms trafficking.

TACKLE URBAN GUN VIOLENCE WITH TARGETED, EVIDENCE-BASED COMMUNITY INTERVENTIONS Daily acts of gun violence in our communities may not make national headlines, but are just as devastating to survivors and victims’ families as gun violence that does make the front page. And, these daily acts of gun violence disproportionately impact communities of color. But there is reason to be optimistic. There are proven strategies for reducing gun violence in urban communities without turning to incarceration. For example, Group Violence Intervention organizes community leaders to work with individuals most likely to commit acts of gun violence, express the community’s demand that the gun violence stop, and connect individuals who may be likely perpetrators with social and economic support services that may deter violent behavior. These types of interventions have reduced homicides by as much as 60%. Hospital-Based Violence Intervention engages young people who have been injured by gun violence while they are still in the hospital, connecting them to social and economic services that may decrease the likelihood they engage in or are victims of gun violence in the future. Biden will create a $900 million, eight-year initiative to fund these and other types of evidence-based interventions in 40 cities across the country – the 20 cities with the highest number of homicides, and 20 cities with the highest number of homicides per capita. This proposal is estimated to save more than 12,000 lives over the eight-year program.

Dedicate the brightest scientific minds to solving the gun violence public health epidemic. In 2013, President Obama issued a memorandum clarifying that a longstanding appropriations rider that prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal scientific agencies from using federal dollars to “advocate or promote gun control” does not prohibit those agencies from researching the causes and prevention of gun violence. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) subsequently embarked on funding some of this research, though Republican leadership in Congress refused to appropriate any funds to the CDC for this work. Biden will call for Congress to appropriate $50 million to accelerate this research at the CDC and NIH. 

Prohibit the use of federal funds to arm or train educators to discharge firearms. We should be passing rational gun laws, not requiring educators who already have too much on their plates to also protect the safety of their students. Biden supports barring states from using federal dollars to arm or train educators to discharge firearms.

Address the epidemic of suicides by firearms. Biden believes any plan to address the gun violence epidemic must address suicides by firearms, which account for 6 in 10 gun-related deaths but are often left out of the conversation. Many of the policies noted above – including safe storage requirements and extreme risk protection orders – will have a serious impact on efforts to reduce gun violence. But there’s so much more we need to do to support people experiencing suicidal ideation. In the months ahead, Biden will put forward a comprehensive plan to improve access to mental health services.

SUPPORTING SURVIVORS OF VIOLENCE AND THEIR COMMUNITIES Violence causes ripples of trauma throughout our communities, impacting not just the victims of violence but also their communities and first responders. Fear of school shootings is having a noticeable impact on the mental health of Gen Z. Intimate partner violence is linked to depression, post-traumatic stress, and other mental health challenges among survivors. And, this trauma can be intergenerational. Science now shows that young children who witness violence – including in their home – literally alters the parts of their brains that affect “reasoning, planning, and behavioral control.” We need to reduce violence to prevent trauma from happening in the first place. But we also must treat the resulting trauma as a serious crisis in its own right. As president, Biden will: Make federal programs more trauma-informed. During his first 100 days, Biden will direct his Cabinet to conduct a review of all federal programs that directly serve communities likely to experience violence and identify reforms to make sure those programs effectively address resulting trauma. Biden will then invest significant federal funds in expanding and improving the federal government’s support for trauma-informed and culturally responsive care. Create a network of trauma care centers. Biden will bring together offices within the federal government to establish specialized trauma care centers for survivors of violence, with a special focus on survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Domestic violence services are focused on meeting the emergency needs of survivors, including safety planning and crisis intervention. As a result, frontline providers lack the resources they need to offer therapeutic services to help survivors heal from trauma. These trauma care centers will be flexible in meeting the needs of communities, and could be housed at rape crisis centers, domestic violence programs, universities, and existing mental health centers. Train health care and other service providers in trauma-centered care.To prevent revictimization and secondary trauma, Biden will align training efforts throughout relevant federal programs to include a focus on understanding the traumatic effects of violence, providing appropriate care to avoid furthering the trauma, linking survivors with evidence-based trauma therapies, and reducing myths about domestic and sexual violence. This will be accomplished through agency directives, policy guidance, and special conditions for grantees and contractors.