Missouri Governor Will Sign Bill Nullifying Federal Gun Laws: Spokeswoman
Missouri
Gov. Mike Parson will sign newly passed legislation that would ban
state law enforcement agencies from enforcing new federal gun laws
following proposed rulemaking from the Biden administration to regulate
firearms with stabilizing braces.
According to Parson spokeswoman Kelli Jones, the Republican governor
will sign the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” which says that it is
the duty of courts and law enforcement agencies in Missouri to protect
the Second Amendment rights of citizens to keep and bear arms. It also
declares federal laws that infringe on that right null.
“The Governor is aware of the legal implications of this bill, but
also that, now more than ever, we must define a limited role for federal
government in order to protect citizen’s rights guaranteed by the
Second Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Jones said in a
statement to news outlets on Thursday.
The bill, she said, is about allowing Missourians “to protect
themselves and acknowledging the federalist constitutional structure of
our government.”
Parson will sign the bill at a shooting range in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit, reports said.
Gun-control advocacy groups and Democrats criticized the bill, saying
it would violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Democrats have
also argued that because Missouri has a relatively high number of
shootings and murders, the measure would be dangerous.
“This bill has no benefit, and will interfere with the enforcement of
the critical protections that help keep Missourians safe from gun
violence,” gun-control group Moms Demand Action spokeswoman Tara Bennett
said in a statement after Parson indicated he would support the bill.
“There is no doubt this bill should not become law.”
But Republicans in the state legislature said that the federal
government will continue to push for more and more gun control measures.
“Gun bans directly, magazine bans, attacks on private gun
manufacturers, red flag laws and restrictions on individual citizens
from buying firearms,” state Sen. Eric Burlison, a Republican, said in
January.
“We are doing this bill because the Second Amendment is under attack.
It’s under attack by the Democrats, specifically the Biden
administration and the Democrats in Washington,” said state Rep. Jered
Taylor, a Republican, when the bill passed in May.
The Second Amendment Preservation Act has been introduced in the
state legislature several times since 2013. Previously, the bill was
vetoed by Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon.
This year, however, the bill was approved by the Senate in a 22-10 vote, and the House approved the measure 111-42.
Earlier this month, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives (ATF) proposed a new rule that would consider most firearms
with stabilizing pistol braces illegal. The rule would define a handgun
as a short-barreled rifle if it is equipped with a stabilizing pistol
brace, which, according to the ATF’s own estimate, is a popular
accessory.
‘Hundreds’ of Whistleblowers Say Military Forcing ‘Anti-American Indoctrination’ on Them: Sen. Cotton
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) told Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin
on June 10 that “hundreds” of military whistleblowers have reported
being forced to receive “anti-American indoctrination” training,
including critical race theory (CRT).
In a Senate hearing with Austin, Cotton claimed that within the
military, there’s “plummeting morale, growing mistrust between races and
sexes where none existed just six months ago and unexpected retirements
and separations based on these trainings alone.”
One whistleblower, Cotton alleged, said that military history
training was replaced with training about police brutality, “systemic
racism,” and “white privilege.” Another said that his unit had to read
“White Fragility” by feminist author and critical theory proponent Robin
DiAngelo, according to the senator.
In May, the Space Force confirmed it relieved Lt. Col. Matthew
Lohmeier, a former instructor and fighter pilot, as commander of the
11th Space Warning Squadron. While it didn’t specifically name the
reason why Lohmeier was terminated, the Space Force cited comments made
by Lohmeier during a podcast in which he denounced CRT and warned about
the spread of Marxism within the Space Force’s ranks.
CRT, which draws heavily upon Marxist critical theory and
postmodernist writers, denounces U.S. and Western culture as oppressive,
and often claims American culture and institutions are promoting
“systemic racism” or “white supremacy.” Some critics have said the
ideology’s proponents apply the Marxist tactic of “class struggle” to
drive people along the lines of gender, race, and ethnicity, rather than
between the “proletariat” and “bourgeoisie.”
In the hearing, Austin told Cotton that some training is designed to
make sure that the armed forces are “welcoming to everyone who can
qualify and who is fit to serve.”
“We ought to look like the America we support and defend, and senior
leadership should look like what’s in the ranks,” Austin said.
But Cotton suggested that claims the military is attempting to foster diversity with such training are incorrect.
“[It’s] about a very specific kind of anti-American indoctrination
that is seeping into some parts of our military, based on the
whistleblower complaints we have received,” he said.
“The military for decades has been one of the institutions in society
where you are most likely to get ahead based on your own performance,
your own merit, irrespective of the color of your skin, where you came
from, who your parents were.”
Austin agreed with Cotton’s sentiment.
“I absolutely agree with that. I am an example of that,” he said.
Austin went on to state that the military needs to be “a bit better,”
be “absolutely inclusive,” and promote “equity.” The terms “inclusive” and “equity” have been used in social justice circles for years.
Austin then argued that by doing so, it’ll be the “most effective and lethal fighting force in the world.”
We noted last month the inflation issues were not going to get better and indeed they are getting worse. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the latest inflation data, and the rate of inflation continues to increase at an alarming rate; now at 5% year over year for all items.
With only six months of JoeBama economic policy hitting so far, the rate of inflation is now four times larger under Biden than it was under Trump policies.
Everything the Biden administration is doing is making things worse, and now we are seeing big drops in real wages as the inflation rate is far beyond wage growth. Under Biden inflation is massive and wage growth is non-existent. This is an exact reversal of the Trump-era outcome where inflation was low and wage growth rates were high.
Year-over-year price comparisons for regular unleaded gasoline are now +58.2%. [Table 7] Stunning increases in fuel. Natural gas is up 13.5%. The prices of durable goods like furniture are up 9.8% while the prices for washers/dryers have jumped up over 26%. Used car prices are up 29.7%, while every durable good is showing massive increases (appliances, clothes, furniture, jewelry, etc). Even televisions are up almost 5%, after years of continually lower prices.
The May increase in energy prices “was the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980”, over forty years ago. Yes, with 28% increases in overall energy prices Biden is mirroring Jimmy Carter in the outcome of his economic policy (this is not accidental).
Food prices are also skyrocketing. If you have tried to purchase lemons, limes or citrus recently you would know the BLS measure of May inflation for citrus products at 9% is low considering what you are seeing right now. Things are getting worse. [Table 7 Has the Details]
The rapid increases in price for food and gasoline are hitting the middle-class hard. As this continues it will most likely have a downstream effect on more luxury items and durable goods (which also cost more). Spend more on food/gas and you might not be able to purchase that new furniture you wanted. Durable good inventories increase and manufacturing layoffs in those sectors begin.
Despite institutional investors purchasing homes, it will be very interesting to watch how the overall housing market responds over the next few months. If the trendline continues we should see a considerable softening in home sales, again depending on region, as the inflation hits the working class. However, the investment class will swoop-in and purchase homes, turning owners into renters…. Yes, the Great Reset includes exactly this dynamic.
With Biden facilitating the economic plans of the wealthy ideologues and global elites, middle-class Americans are being turned into serfs.
New facts about last summer's police clearing of
Lafayette Square show how our media peddle glaring disinformation on a
daily basis, on major stories.
The following is a transcript of my radar on Thursday’s edition of “Rising” on Hill TV.
People used to make the mistake of treating media criticism like
front-page news when it probably belonged on A2. Most of the time, a
story’s substance still warranted more attention than the media’s
treatment of it. But if newspapers still mattered today, media criticism
would belong front and center just about every single morning. The
daily failures of the legacy media are so severe and so damaging, they
now deserve just as much attention as the very news our news media is
failing to cover.
That
is to say, media is the public’s primary window into public affairs.
That window is now cracked and fogged to the point where the image is
entirely unrecognizable on the other side.
Yesterday, Mark Lee Greenblatt, Interior Department Inspector General, released a 37-page report
on his department’s ostensibly exhaustive, independent watchdog
investigation into the events of June 1 in Lafayette Square, that
historic patch of park land just north of the White House.
Lafayette Square was the scene of a memorable clash between
protesters and police on the evening of June 1, after which
then-President Trump walked through the square, from the White House to
St. John’s church, where he posed with a Bible and said, “We have the
greatest country in the world. We’re going to keep it nice and safe.”
The entire legacy media reported that the park was cleared in
connection with Trump’s “photo op,” which immediately hardened into a
narrative they treated like Gospel: Trump deputized police to violently
clear peaceful protesters for the sake of a photo op. Take this report
from George Stephanopoulos: “The administration asked police to clear
peaceful protesters from the park across the White House so that the
President could stage a photo op.”
Glenn Greenwald collected just some of the many, many stories that aged so poorly. Here’s an excerpt from his Substack:
“Peaceful Protesters Tear-Gassed To Clear Way For Trump
Church Photo-Op,” read the NPR headline on June 1. The New York Times
ran with: “Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at
Church.” CNN devoted multiple segments to venting indignation while the
on-screen graphic declared: “Peaceful Protesters Near White House
Tear-Gassed, Shot With Rubber Bullets So Trump Can Have Church Photo
Op.”
The few journalists who did their jobs correctly, including my
colleague Mollie Hemingway, were viciously mocked. The dynamic reflects a
toxic combination of arrogance and incompetence. And the ratio of
arrogance to competence is wildly out of whack.
Greenblatt’s investigation
explicitly disputes the media narrative. He also shows his work,
providing pages of evidence based on many interviews to support a more
factual rendering of the day.
“The
evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the USPP cleared
the park to allow the President to survey the damage and walk to St.
John’s Church. Instead,” the report says. “The evidence we reviewed
showed that the USPP cleared the park to allow the contractor to safely
install the antiscale fencing in response to destruction of property and
injury to officers occurring on May 30 and 31.”
“Further, the evidence showed that the USPP did not know about the
President’s potential movement until mid- to late afternoon on June
1—hours after it had begun developing its operational plan and the
fencing contractor had arrived in the park,” according to the document.
Now I’m not going to treat this as the Gospel truth either. But it’s
obviously credible. So what explains the disconnect between this
watchdog investigation and the initial reports? It shouldn’t take
months-long IG probes for the public to get basic facts.
Interestingly, in a fact check published last June, Philip Bump of
the Washington Post glossed right over the Trump administration’s
contention that “somehow Barr’s instructions [to clear protesters] were
unrelated to Trump’s walk,” calling it “an argument which even Barr
didn’t directly reject when asked Thursday. (He claimed that there was
an existing plan to extend the secure area around the White House but
didn’t deny that the immediate need for doing so was Trump’s visit to
the church.)”
One
administration official not denying something is the thread that Bump
staked his narrative on in one of the most prestigious publications in
the entire world. Why? Because that thread comported with the hive
mind’s expectations of Trump so they all found ways to confirm it.
Their ideology is the source of their arrogance and their arrogance
is the source of their incompetence. The media is utterly broken.
Now, the IG report contains some important, newsworthy findings about
what actually went wrong with law enforcement that day. But to my point
at the beginning of this segment, its stark contrast with the entire
volume of legacy media coverage is equally newsworthy because it’s
strong evidence the bulk of the public was fed egregiously incorrect
information on a major story. And the broader implications of that are
even worse, exposing the massive cracks in our most important window
into pubic affairs.
Campaign platforms typically consist of policy goals. What the press
never understood about Donald Trump is that he basically ran on media
criticism and, sadly, a whole lot of it was entirely fair. That’s why it
resonated. But even after the host of “Celebrity Apprentice” defeated
the former Secretary of State in a presidential match-up, the media’s
necessary course correction never materialized. Things have clearly
gotten much, much worse.
They peddled the false, self-serving narratives of spies and flaks
for years, miring the country in a silly melodrama over a pee tape. Then
there’s the lab leak flip flop. How about the press’s treatment of
Andrew Cuomo last spring? It doesn’t just happen on the major stories
either.
We could talk about the hypocrisy of the press. We could talk about
their intolerance for ideological diversity. We could talk about their
elitism or their obsessions with Twitter. These are all variables in the
equation of their failure. But the most important takeaway is that the
media peddles glaring disinformation on a daily basis, on major stories.
That’s a big deal because it’s misinforming voters, and much more
effectively than those scary Boomer memes Putin put on Facebook.
Democracy dies in darkness, sure, but bumbling Harvard grads with
press credentials can turn the light switch off with their incompetence
just as much as corrupt rules can do it with their power and money. We
desperately need the free press. It’s our only way to keep the
government accountable and it’s a disaster right now. There’s your front
page.
Critical Race Theory Has Sparked a Civil War in American Education
On Tuesday, an upstate New York school board meeting almost descended into a brawl
after a school board member called a father an “a**hole” and tried to
punch him. On the same day, an English teacher at a private New Jersey
prep school announced she would resign due to “the hostile culture of conformity and fear that has taken hold of our school.” Also on the same day in Virginia, a teacher encouraged parents, students, and teachers to revolt against the ideology that is creeping into her school district.
These episodes and many others like them illustrate how Marxist
critical race theory (CRT) has sparked a civil war in American
education. While school boards, administrators, and many teachers have
launched a coup to teach CRT in classrooms, many parents, teachers, and
leaders are fighting back. While this conflict may break down along
political lines, CRT represents a rejection of America’s highest ideals
and liberals should join conservatives in opposing it.
CRT justifies blatant racism in the name of promoting “equity.” One
of its architects has even supported racial discrimination to counter
historic discrimination and has called for a totalitarian bureaucracy
to enforce his vision of “equity.” This new racism masquerades as
“anti-racist,” but it judges people according to the color of their
skin, not the content of their character.
Marxist thinkers invented critical race theory (CRT) in order to
upend society by claiming that hidden racism pervades American
institutions. CRT teaches people to seize on any racial disparity as ipso facto proof
of racial discrimination, despite the clear prohibitions on racial
discrimination in federal law. Advocates claim that the American status
quo is racist — if not “white supremacist” — so extreme measures to
reverse historic injustices are the only “anti-racist” option.
Since American society must be secretly racist, CRT advocates attribute various aspects of society to the nefarious impact of “whiteness.” The Smithsonian briefly published
a “teaching tool” infographic on “whiteness.” That infographic claimed
that the nuclear family, science, capitalism, the Judeo-Christian
tradition, individualism, “objective, rational linear thinking,” and
even values such as “be polite” are aspects of oppressive whiteness. The
Smithsonian rightly removed the graphic after facing criticism, but
this incident illustrates just how mainstream CRT has become.
CRT has led teachers and authors to make comments about white people
that would be universally condemned if directed against any other race.
CRT proponents equate “whiteness” with racial oppression, subtly
branding all white people racist oppressors. Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes,
an associate professor of practical theology at Mercer University, published a devotional that included a prayer asking God to “please help me to hate white people. Or at least to want to hate them.”
Dr. Aruna Khilanani, a psychiatrist who gave a lecture at the Yale
University School of Medicine, said that “white people are out of their
minds,” describing them as “demented, violent predators.” She openly discussed
her “fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white
person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody
hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step.
Like I did the world a f***ing favor.” Yale condemned her remarks, two
months after she delivered them.
Last week, an Amazon driver violently attacked a
white woman who had been waiting for her package. The woman received a
notification that her package had arrived, so she went to the front door
of her apartment complex but failed to see the package. She asked
Ramirez, who was wearing an Amazon vest, about the package.
Ramirez told the woman she would have the package shortly, but the
woman reportedly waited for about 15 minutes in the lobby. When she
asked Ramirez about the package again, the driver reportedly told her to
“check her white privilege.” The woman reportedly said, “Well, you
don’t have to be a b***h about it.” As she started walking away, Ramirez
punched her from behind, hitting her in the face and breaking her nose.
PJ Media’s Kevin Downey, Jr. noted that
black offenders murder twice as many white victims as white offenders
murder black victims, a statistic that is wildly out of proportion given
the fact that white people outnumber black people 5 to 1. Downey also
noted that Colin Flaherty has written three books about
how the legacy media not only ignores black-on-white crime but also
claims that white people are oppressing and attacking black people.
CRT also inspired much
of the destruction of the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots last
summer. While many Americans protested after the death of George Floyd,
many of those protests devolved into arson and looting. In a tragic
irony, this violence in the name of helping black people destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments.
This nefarious ideology is spreading in America’s schools. When a
superintendent in Oregon said CRT-style “anti-racism” training “isn’t
optional anymore” and suggested that teachers who disagree should seek
work elsewhere, school board members defended him, as did the Oregon Department of Education.
The New York school board meeting that almost descended into a brawl
involved the passage of CRT-based curriculum and the hiring of a new
employee who would push CRT in the name of “equity.” The New Jersey prep
school teacher who resigned said she did so because her school had
embraced CRT. The Virginia teacher spoke out because Loudoun County
Schools has pushed CRT in the classroom.
Parents, teachers, voters, and elected officials should unite to
fight the divisive and dangerous ideology of critical race theory that
is making inroads in America’s schools. Parents are leading a
counter-revolution against this woke CRT coup, and Americans of all
stripes should join them. CRT has started this civil war in American
classrooms, but this nefarious ideology cannot have the last word.
Hatter Society, one of those groups, said the Fidesz proposal "would seriously curb freedom of speech and children's rights".
The
proposal is included in a government bill that punishes paedophilia. It
says youngsters under 18 cannot be shown pornographic content, or any
content that encourages gender change or homosexuality, Reuters news
agency reports.
The
Fidesz government and Poland's ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS)
government are both under formal EU investigation for alleged breaches
of EU rule-of-law standards.
Neither
country recognises gay marriage and both have laws restricting gay
adoption. Hungary's constitution states that marriage is for
heterosexual couples.
In 2013 Russia passed a law imposing heavy fines for disseminating
so-called "gay propaganda" to people under 18. It bans promotion of
"homosexual behaviour among minors".
Last
year the Fidesz government condemned a Hungarian children's book,
Wonderland Is For Everyone, which recasts fairy tale characters in roles
representing minorities, notably Roma and gay people. Fidesz labelled
it "homosexual propaganda", saying it should be banned from schools.
Mr Orban, a Eurosceptic nationalist, has been re-elected in landslide votes since 2010.
He
has been widely criticised in the EU, accused of curbing the rights of
migrants and other minorities, politicising the courts and media, and
tolerating anti-Semitism. He claims to be defending Hungary's Christian
values in a Europe gripped by left-wing liberalism.
Fidesz
dominates the Hungarian parliament and media. But a new opposition
coalition has gained ground on Fidesz in opinion polls.
Article by Bruce Deitrick Price in The American Thinker
Normal, Healthy People Don't Want To Be Dictators
Here's
the problem with communism (and sometimes socialism). If you study
these subjects, you will encounter lots of abstract theories about how
best to organize society, money, property, and so on. Some ideas might
sound appealing. But they have little to do with communism as this
ideology has existed in the real world.
Better
to think of these theories as maps and guidebooks for people who want
to rule others. Communism appeals to dead souls hungry for
power. These are not normal, healthy people. When they finally seize
power, everyone else becomes a victim, even as never-ending propaganda
promises the perfect society.
The
last people you want in control of your life are control freaks eager
to be your masters. They think it's natural they should dictate your
activities. The word slave does not appear in the contract, but that is your job in their world.
Everyone
should reflect on the bloody history of socialism and communism, so
often with beautiful banners and abundant promises, but a decade later,
most of the wannabe bosses are dead or missing in action, replaced by
others like themselves. The smell of death hangs over this
history. The bigger the government, the more power is taken from the
people and given to commissars and bureaucrats. These people work to
increase the concentration of power in fewer hands — their hands.
If you were a follower of Germany's Hitler, Russia's Stalin, Cambodia's Pol Pot, or China's Mao,
you naturally expected to participate in their success. But these four
visionaries killed people, including devoted followers, by the
millions. Indeed, the real common denominator of the top socialists and
communists is their extreme comfort level with imprisonment, suffering,
and death.
Here
is the essence of the matter. Communists want you to think their
theories and plans are concerned with you and your happiness. That's a
lie. Their theories are concerned with helping them gain control of
you. A lot of these theories came from Karl Marx, a nobody around 1850,
but he was the leader of a tiny socialist party. I think he saw his
theories, grandiose and highly intellectual, to be his passport to the
top of the pyramid. But he was not a nice man. Disagreeing with his
fellow socialists, he often shouted, "I will annihilate you!" That arguably is the spirit of his teachings.
A U.K. historian writing about Hitler and Stalin concluded: "TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN." These
mass killers are described as "narcissistic and antisocial." Stalin,
always thinking big, mused: "The death of one man is a tragedy; the
death of a million is a statistic." A leader like this won't notice
whether you live or die.
Wikipedia
indicates that both men were comfortable with torture. The peak of
totalitarian terror was reached with the Nazi concentration
camps. These ranged from labor camps to extermination camps, and they are described as aiming to "eliminate all actual, potential, and imagined enemies of the regime."
Experts refer to the camps as involving "extreme viciousness." They also compare these camps with the Soviet Gulag system,
and they highlight the use of such camps as a method of punishment and
execution by Nazi and Stalinist regimes alike. Pol Pot and Mao were
similar.
Another
scholar focused on the violence and terror employed by Hitler and
Stalin. The Stalinist USSR underwent an "extraordinary brutalization"
of the relations between state and society "for the purpose of rapid modernization and industrialization." Other experts discuss "mass violence, and the way that it was used by both Stalinism and Nazism."
All
levels of Soviet society were affected by Stalinist repression. At the
top, high-ranking members of the Communist Party were arrested and
executed under the claim that they had plotted against Stalin. At the
bottom, the peasantry suffered the artificial famine that killed many
millions in Ukraine.
Point is, normal people don't want to torture people. Live and let live
— that's the central philosophy of Western culture. Sadly, normal
people are slow to see the threat from totalitarian players. The
essence of the people at the top of socialist and communist governments
tends to be exploit and let die.
Looking
at the track records of socialist and communist governments, you really
appreciate how brilliant George Orwell was. Both of his famous books
explore the monsters at the top. Think of the lead characters in Animal Farm: swine in every sense.
And consider the extraordinary candor of O'Brien, the Party boss in 1984. He
explains that constant pain is essential, otherwise how do the bosses
know that ordinary citizens are submitting, not merely pretending?
You
probably have noticed that our public schools seem determined to teach
everything that makes America look bad. In reality, American history
contains almost nothing comparable to the vast, relentless Terror that
is the norm in most historical socialist and communist countries.
All
the bad things done in these countries result in massive rates of
alcoholism, depression, divorce, suicide, and early death. Every good
thing is promised, but in reality, there is a slow, grinding desperation
in these far-left paradises, as in Venezuela today.
Teachers who seriously want to teach the history of this planet have to include material about communism. Some
say communist governments killed 100 million people; some estimates go
as high as 150 million. Schools should teach students how to recognize
the oncoming catastrophe.
Another resource is a museum in Washington, D.C. called Victims of Communism. Its website contains lots of interesting information.
The
corruption and decline of our schools is thoroughly exposed by the
increase in students supporting totalitarian tendencies. It's
disgusting, at least to me — young people who have everything working to
take everything away from everybody else.
Black Lives Matter announced they were "trained Marxists." That's enough to know you want to stay far away from them.
Money for Local Elections Should Come From the Local Government, Not a Billionaire Corporate Figurehead
Democrats often like to talk about getting corporate money out of
politics. Several candidates have even made it part of their campaign
platform.
Why then, is there such
an uproar from the Left regarding state-level election integrity
efforts that ban outsider money in local election administration? In a
confusing shift, progressives cheer as corporations criticize or leave
states like Georgia for cracking down on attempts to manipulate voters.
Honestly,
of all the headaches, disruptions, and inquiries after Election Day
(more like Election Week 2020), the discovery of the Facebook CEO’s
funding of local elections is one of the most alarming.
The
money was supposed to help counties and cities address the unique
COVID-19 challenges of the previous year. The expectation was the money
would largely be spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) and other
safety measures to help Americans vote safely. As CTCL said, Americans
shouldn’t have to choose between democracy and their own health. In
reality, little to none of it went to anything vaguely related to the
pandemic.
Public
records also reveal that the funding was not distributed equitably—not
even by population size. It appears that the money went mostly to
states, counties, and cities most likely to swing for the Democrat
candidates, influencing not only the way elections were conducted, but
also how they turned out.
It should be no surprise then, that
despite making up only three percent of the nation’s electoral votes and
only 3.2 percent of the U.S. population, Georgia was one of the largest
recipients of Zuckerbucks, receiving a whopping $45 million—$31 million for the general election and $14.5 million for the Senate elections.
In Georgia, counties that went for Biden received
significantly more funds, and were generally more likely to receive
Zuckerbucks in the first place—a concerning fact when considering these
grants were supposed to be used for PPE. In a new report
by the Foundation for Government Accountability, it was found that on
average, most Georgia counties moved to the left by less than 1
percentage point between 2016 and 2020. Counties that didn’t receive any
Zuckerbucks barely moved at all, but Zuckerbucks counties swung by, on
average, 2.3 percentage points towards Biden. Seventy-five percent of
Zuckerbucks-receiving counties saw a serious uptick in Democrat votes
that offset any upward change in Republican votes.
It was the same
story during the Senate runoff elections in January 2021. Of the $14.5
million in Zuckerbucks funneled into Georgia, 60 percent were allocated
to Fulton and Dekalb
counties alone, both Democrat strongholds. Again, this funding wasn’t
used on anything related to the pandemic and Democrat turnout was boosted compared to elsewhere in the state.
It’s no coincidence and it’s not the result of nationwide party
alliance shifts—it’s the result of significant outsider funding going
into select jurisdictions with a partisan aim.
Georgia was right to ban ‘Zuckerbucks’ and any private funding like it from local election administration.
Money
for local elections should come from the local government, not a
billionaire corporate figurehead from California. It is more difficult
for Georgia voters to trust in the democratic process when there is
undue influence by outsiders. At a time with so much friction and
disagreement between political parties, adding in tens of millions of
dollars from a controversial source and so many conflicts of interest
into the mix is a good way to sow seeds of discord.
When churches are desecrated, when believers are
humiliated, when WaPo came after a local D.C. priest for tending his
flock during lockdowns, politicians lick their fingers, put them in the
air, and keep quiet.
If you’ve been trapped in an airport, incarcerated abroad, or in some
other way been forced to watch CNN over the past few years you may have
heard that America is suffering from a surge of “hate crimes.”
A lot of these hate crimes are fake: Nooses that turn out to be garage pulls, bleach attacks that were staged, graffiti that turned out to have been left by the supposed “victim” herself.
But there are real hate crimes that take place in America, and the best
way to tell they’re real is that the press isn’t talking about them —
or isn’t talking about them honestly.
But while few may know it, over just the past six weeks America has
seen a vicious spate of hate crimes targeting Catholics in the United
States.
In the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, a vandal
hopped the fence surrounding St. Athanasius Church, toppled a beautiful
wooden crucifix, shattering it, and then for some reason burned an
American flag.
In the nearby Windsor Terrace neighborhood, in the peaceful garden of
a church administrative building, a statue of the baby Jesus in his
mother’s arms was beheaded.
A week before that, in San Diego, California, three of the century-old stained glass windows in Sacred Heart Catholic Church were shattered,
but the vandal wasn’t done: A statue of a kneeling St. Juan Diego, the
first indigenous American saint, was decapitated with a stolen fire
extinguisher and a dozen other windows were smashed.
One day before that, back in Brooklyn, a statue of Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Polish martyr beaten to death in 1984 by Communist authorities for daring to stand for freedom, was spray-painted
with anti-Polish messages and covered in trash. It wasn’t the first
time it had been attacked: In 1990, a vandal spray-painted on the names
of Stalin and Lenin, two butchers of the Christian faithful.
On the night of May 2, at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Waltham, Massachusetts, a statue of Christ was decapitated in its church garden.
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts said when they first
started tracking anti-Catholic attacks in the Bay State five years ago,
there was about one a year. Since then, they have steadily increased. In
the past year, there have been 15 attacks — just in Massachusetts.
In March, there were attacks in Boston, Fort Worth, Texas and Spokane, Washington. In February, in Youngstown, Ohio, Floyds Knobs, Indiana, Denver, Colorado and El Paso,
Texas. In January, a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe — the patron of
the Americas and a very important image particularly across Latin
America — was shot six times at Houston’s Queen of Peace Catholic Church, there was a graffiti and arson attack on a cathedral in Toledo, Ohio and vulgar Marxist messages scrawled on St. Patrick’s in Manhattan. All told, in the past year there have been at least 67 anti-Catholic attacks nationwide.
The term “hate crime” gets used too often these days. More often
enough than not, if you hear the term “hate crime” you can rightly
assume it’s an attention-seeking fraud by the loudest “victim” in the
room, be they a student at Harvard or an actor in Hollywood.
So why use the term at all? Because the above are crimes committed
with the intention of instilling fear among Catholics: To let us know
that the Church is not welcome here, to let us all know that
Christianity — in its oldest and most visible institution — is not
welcome here, and to let you know that God and beauty and morality and
freedom and dignity and God’s faithful are a target in your community.
But it’s not just about vandalism and wanton desecration: There’s an
even darker aura emanating from our nation’s halls of power. In 2017,
when future Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was first nominated
to the Court of Appeals, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein complained
that “the dogma lives loudly” within her.
In
2019, President Donald Trump nominated Brian Buescher for a federal
court seat. Buescher was, and is, a member of the Catholic men’s
organization the Knights of Columbus, and to Sen. Mazie Hirono and
then-Sen. Kamala Harris, that made him an extremist, unwelcome in American life.
Harris peppered Buescher with questions about the group. Was he
aware, she asked, that the Knights of Columbus are opposed to abortion?
Was he aware, she asked, that the Knights of Columbus think marriage
involves one biologically male-at-birth man being bound to one
biologically female-at-birth woman? Was. He. Aware. That the Knights of
Columbus believe in the teachings of the Catholic Church, unchanged for
millennia?
According to Hirono, these teachings were “extreme positions”
unworthy of a federal judge to hold. Presumably, that means that any
sincere Catholic is unfit for any office. And in this new United States
that the left is building, that is exactly the case.
It’s especially sinister that this is happening while supposed
Catholics hold the nation’s highest offices. Last summer, an Antifa mob
in San Francisco ripped down
a statue of St. Junipero Serra. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who
calls herself a Catholic, ignored the incident. “I’m trying to save the
world from coronavirus,” she said
when asked on the Feast of St. Serra about the attacks on the religion
she pretends to believe and in the district she pretends to represent. Three days later, another mob in Sacramento, California toppled another statue of Serra.
Who was Junipero Serra? He was a missionary who, in the 18th century,
traveled from California to Mexico City by foot to plead the case of
the American Indians and to protest their mistreatment by Spanish
soldiers. It was a perilous journey he took, there and back, to aide a
suffering people he dedicated his life to helping.
Pelosi likely knows this. Rewind just a few years, and there’s a
photo of then-Speaker of the House John Boehner, Rep. Steve Scalise, and
Pope Francis reflecting in front of a Vatican statue to this great man.
Who’s standing right next to them in deep reflection? Then-Vice
President Joe Biden and then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
2015: Nancy Pelosi & Joe Biden view St. Junípero Serra statue with Pope Francis.
2020: St. Junípero Serra statue is torn down in Pelosi's hometown and they don't even care. pic.twitter.com/vmd9DSosf7
But now, back in power, Pelosi is happy to indulge teenagers,
man-children and violent, anti-Catholic bigots who are happy to commit
targeted and hateful destruction while claiming it’s all for the benefit
of distant indigenous peoples they claim to represent. Neither she nor
now-President Biden are hapless bystanders — they’re among the most
powerful people in the world.
Trump wasn’t Catholic and never much pretended to be a devout man,
but when Catholics were attacked, and when the Christian church across
the street from the White House was set ablaze, he spoke up loudly, he
stood up to the hateful masked thugs, and he gave leave for enforcement
to do the same.
Biden says he’s a Catholic but seems to care about attacks on Catholic symbols and Catholic officials as little as he cares about Catholic beliefs.
Search online for then-candidate Biden’s harsh condemnation of the
desecration of St. Serra’s statue, its toppling, and the threats to
return to break into the church and scatter the saint’s remains into the
Pacific Ocean. The only thing you’ll find if you search this is his
picture looking solemn for the Vatican photo-op in 2015.
“The devil has changed his tactics,” Msgr. Charles Pope, a Capitol Hill priest and one of the archdiocese’ three exorcists, said in late 2020. “He’s no longer hiding in the shadows.”
It’s a frightening thought, but isn’t surprising. Since 2016,
influential members of America’s elite in politics, media, entertainment
and business have excused and even encouraged violence in America, and
under this elite cover, anti-Christian attacks have multiplied and
spread.
Satan isn’t afraid right now, and why would he be? Evil is taught so
freely in our society it’s celebrated and those who stand up for
innocent life, traditional marriage, the family, man and woman, and
Christianity are hated. It makes sense that they’re hated, too: When you
live in darkness so long your eyes get used to it, the light burns.
It’s sad, because when people are in need, when legal or illegal
immigrants need help, when our communities are suffering from homeless
and drugs and hungry, and when people are victimized by bigotry,
Catholics are — and have long been — on the the front line.
When Catholic leaders have marched against violence and hate and
hunger, politicians have been proud to walk with them. When the clergy
gives communion during Mass, politicians have been eager to be seen in
line. After all, they like the photos such opportunities provide. But
when churches are desecrated, when believers are humiliated, when The Washington Post came after a local D.C. priest
for tending his flock during lockdowns, those same politicians lick
their fingers, put them in the air, and decide to keep quiet.
With only six months of JoeBama economic policy hitting so far, the rate of inflation is now 
