May they stroke out, vapor lock & go into a permanent vegetative state.
Before the Second Amendment sanctuary movement took off in VA, there were around 265 2A sanctuary municipalities nationwide. Since the November election Virginia has added over 100 new ones. file IMG iStock
Warrenton, VA –-(Ammoland.com)- Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund has submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors in rural Virginia.
Kristine Chapman of the Bloomberg funded anti-gun group sent the request to Fauquier County Administrator Paul S. McCulla. Chapman asked McCulla to provide her with all written and electronic documents pertaining to the Board’s consideration for a resolution that protects its citizen’s right to bear arms under the US Constitution and Virginia Constitution. The Board of Supervisors considered the resolution at its December 12th, 2019 meeting.
Chapman, a resident of the ultra-liberal DC suburb of Arlington, wants all emails and other correspondence that the Supervisors received from the public about their Second Amendment Sanctuary resolution. They also want the communications that the Supervisors sent to each other and the general public dealing with the resolution.
Everytown For Gun Safety also wants all drafts of the resolutions, preparatory memos, and summaries of all meetings dealing with the counties’ Second Amendment sanctuary movement. The December 12th meeting went late into the night as speaker after speaker voiced their support the resolution. Over 2000 gun-rights supporters turned up to the meeting.
The Second Amendment Sanctuary movement has taken off in Virginia after Democrats, on the back of Bloomberg’s money, took control over both houses of the Virginia legislature. Almost immediately, the new leftist regime started proposing California-style Draconian gun laws. Most of the state is still pro-gun and began to resist what a lot of Virginia residents saw as the beginning of tyranny.
Before the Second Amendment sanctuary movement took off in Virginia, there were around 265 Second Amendment sanctuary municipalities nationwide. Since the November election Virginia has added over 100 new ones to the list. The movement has caught the eye of both sides of the gun debate.
The anti-gun group has also requested all written and electronic communications dealing with Fauquier County’s enforcement of gun laws. It seems that Everytown is trying to figure the county’s plan to or not to enforce new gun laws. Many counties in the Commonwealth have taken a stand against enforcing new gun laws.
These groups look at being included in Everytown’s FOIA request as a signed that they are getting the job done in Virginia. Matt Ballard of III% United Patriots, who runs their Second Amendment sanctuary efforts, thinks the request is a sign that the pro-gun side is winning the fight.
“Everytown is grasping at straws and using fear tactics,” Ballard told AmmoLand. “Ill% United Patriots of Virginia will not back down from applying pressure to socialist ideologies. III% United Patriot of Virginia would like to remind you; we are the grassroots community. Our members have been in the majority of council and board meetings asking for 2A sanctuaries against your unconstitutional, fearmongering and misinformation attempts in our great state of Virginia. We are comprised of many different ethnicities and professions. We are using the system that our founding fathers have put in place to combat unconstitutional and unjust laws. We will not stand for the ideological hatred that Everytown has put towards the common, every day American. We will not compromise. We have nothing to hide. We support anyone who wants to use FOIA, as it’s the people’s right to keep tabs on the government.”
Fauquier County will vote on the resolution on December 23rd. The public is encouraged to contact the board members and let their stance be known.
Kristine Chapman and Everytown For Gun Safety did not respond to AmmoLand’s request for comment.
Oh, December. That time of year when your Facebook feed is filled with obnoxious memes about “The War on Christmas” (spoiler: it doesn’t exist), and how Christians are oppressed because they can’t say “Merry Christmas” (spoiler: that’s just a lie)….
It’s the Christians who take personal offense to every greeting except “Merry Christmas.”…
President Trump may want you to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” but a new survey released Tuesday shows a growing number of Americans say they don’t mind how they’re greeted during the holiday season.
The Pew Research Center found that 52% of U.S. adults who said it didn’t matter to them how they were greeted in stores over the holidays, up from 46% in 2012….
The center noted that the “War on Christmas” has been a conservative talking point for more than a decade.
It’s that time of year again, folks. It’s time for the War on Christmas.
What is that, you may ask? The short answer: a sometimes histrionic yuletide debate over whether the United States is a country that respects Christianity….
[T]he idea of a plot against Christmas gained wide publicity when Fox News promoted a 2005 book by a radio host, John Gibson, that alleged liberal antagonism toward the holiday, according to Dan Cassino, a professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University….
That argument became a sweeping shorthand for conservative anxieties, Mr. Cassino said.
“They say the next step after saying ‘Happy Holidays’ is abortion on demand and euthanasia,” he said….
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch just appeared on Fox and Friends this morning, making a point to parrot the “Merry Christmas” talking point of the GOP. If he’s willing to go on Fox and throw a shout out to Republican narratives, what ele[sic] is he willing to do?
Gorusch appeared to dive into the narrative about an alleged “War on Christmas” when he pointedly smiled and wished Earhardt a “Merry Christmas” at the top of the segment on the president’s favorite morning show….
As Salon’s Chauncey DeVega wrote last year, “There is another dimension to the ‘War on Christmas’ and the broader right-wing obsession with the culture wars. Both are examples of white identity politics and a deep desire (and effort) to maintain the cultural and political power of white right-wing Christians over all other groups. In many ways, the ‘War on Christmas’ is actually a proxy war for white supremacy.”
There is also an anti-Semitic undercurrent in the “War on Christmas” mythology. Henry Ford first pioneered the idea of a “War on Christmas” in his 1920s article series “The International Jew,” which promoted the anti-Semitic claim that Jews were conspiring to destroy the Christmas season in order to advance their own covert agenda. Though the notion that politically correct liberals war against Christmas has replaced this idea in recent years, the idea of a “War on Christmas” can still be viewed as an anti-Semitic dogwhistle….
On Fox News, Neil Gorsuch made a point to say “Merry Christmas” like he just gained the freedom to say it under Trump. This guy is such a worst case scenario of a stolen Supreme Court seat.
Today Donald J. Trump became the third president in U.S. history to be impeached (No, Nixon was not impeached.) This is by all accounts a somber moment, except those of the salivating pundits on MSNBC fighting to mask their giddy smiles like a chocolate smeared child who just licked the mixing bowl clean. We are living in history, albeit a part of history that is becoming troublingly frequent.
For 223 years, the American congress only saw fit to impeach one president, Andrew Johnson from Greeneville, TN. Johnson, the Southern leader of a newly restored Union, was impeached for over-extending his executive powers in the eyes of an antagonistic congress. In layman’s terms, they impeached him because they were tired of his constitutionally questionable antics.
On December 18, 1998, twenty-one years ago today, the republican controlled House of Representatives introduced articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about a sexual relationship with a former White House intern. Republicans and special counsel Ken Starr had a big swing and a miss earlier in the year, as the Starr Report failed to find conclusive evidence implicating Clinton in any of the myriad scandals he was alleged to have been involved in. Republicans found a different way. After failing to definitively prove he was involved with Whitewater, Travelgate, or Filegate, they caught him lying under oath about dipping his pen in the company ink.
The Trump impeachment has commonalities with both of these. Democrats have been incensed by Trump from day one, much like the union loyalists were with southern sympathizer Johnson. Like Clinton, from virtually day one Trump has been the subject of investigations, probes and lawsuits pertaining to a vast array of alleged scandals. Unlike Clinton, Trump is not a media darling and has had to battle intense media scrutiny as well as a host of pesky bureaucrats and Washington insiders.
The constitution calls for impeachment in cases of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” This is one of the most vague parts of our constitution. Presidents are not tried by the courts or convicted by juries. They are impeached by the House and tried in front of a jury constituted of all one-hundred senators. No president has ever been convicted by the Senate. So, what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors? Why do we have impeachment?
The only person who would almost certainly have been convicted and removed from office was President Richard Nixon. He resigned before that could happen. His sins were so severe they melted the partisan ice in Washington, his scandal so repugnant even his own party turned on him. This is not the case with Trump, nor was it with Clinton, or to a lesser extent Johnson.
Presidents Clinton and Trump have something in common, besides impeachment and their one time mutual support for a southern border wall. They came to Washington as outsiders, and had a modicum of success achieving their policy goals. One was a slick, smooth talking lawyer from Arkansas who back slapped and baby kissed his way into America’s heart. The other, a brash New York tycoon who charged the breach with hellfire and brimstone. Either way, they were both outsiders who galled their political foes at every turn. The elusive Clinton slipped punches and scandals with a wink and a sly grin, while the brash Trump charged into his accusers like Smokin’ Joe Frazier, giving as many licks as he took.
Clinton wasn’t impeached for lying about a blue dress and an intern. He was impeached because republicans hated him. Trump was not impeached for some mysterious phone call to Ukraine. He was impeached because democrats hate him. Impeachment is the figurative ejector seat in our democracy. It was designed as a measure of last resort to protect the nation from its president. Does anyone really believe this phone call passes muster? We have now chosen to employ impeachment twice in twenty-one years, after using it only once before in the history of our nation.
We have impeached two out of the last four presidents.
Let that sink in.
This is a dismal reflection on the state of our politics.
Members of New York’s Muslim Patrol recently became embroiled in a near-explosive altercation outside the Masjid Taqwa in Brooklyn with members of the Bloods, a notoriously violent gang.
The Muslim Patrol gained international attention in the fall of 2018 after several of its patrol cars — which look like New York Police Department (NYPD) cars –were spotted in Brooklyn and Staten Island.
The Bloods are a violent African-American street gang known for trafficking drugs and guns. This criminal organization has made national headlines with targeted assassinations, drive-by shootings and deadly gun battles with law enforcement.
On December 10, a verbal altercation began in the evening when a teenage boy allegedly “disrespected” a Muslim woman outside the Brooklyn mosque on Fulton Street. The boy did not touch the woman, bystanders say, but did speak to her.
A Muslim Patrol member grabbed the teen by the collar and threw him against the gate of the Masjid Taqwa, a local mosque. While the boy was pressed firmly against the fence, the Muslim Patrol member held him by the neck and lectured him.
“That MCP [Muslim Community Patrol] officer snatched that boy up,” one witness said. “He grabbed him by the collar and threw him up against the gate and held onto him by the neck area.”
After the rebuke, the boy complained to his father, who happens to be a senior member of the local Bloods. The father rallied six other Blood members to join him and went to Masjid Taqwa, where at least one Blood member brandished a weapon.
“One of them was strapped,” a witness said of a Blood member who had a firearm. “He raised his jacket and flashed that gun. Those dudes came out there to shoot up that Masjid. The father, he wanted to mess that MCP officer up.”
According to the witness, the father said to the Muslim Patrol officer, “Dude, I’m going to bust in your f—— mouth if you ever put your hands on my child again.”
The situation escalated after the Muslim Patrol member called for backup. Soon, several Muslim Patrol cars arrived with sirens screaming and lights flashing.
Witnesses reported mutual shouting as the Bloods confronted the original Muslim Patrol member, who was quickly shoved into the mosque by his comrades to protect him.
Struggling with low poll numbers among Latino voters, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s campaign launched a Hispanic outreach effort on Monday that included a series of policy plans, websites, and online videos in English and Spanish.
Buttigieg announced the initiative on his social media accounts by invoking a Spanish-language slogan that is raising eyebrows among Latino leaders. The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, tweeted “El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido” (“the people united, will never be defeated”), a protest chant that is famously associated with Latin-American communist movements. The saying was also featured in several campaign communications, including as a call-to-action on its Latino website.
For decades, Americans have rallied to declare el pueblo unido, jamás será vencido — the people united, will never be defeated. To join us and learn more, text TOGETHER to 25859.
It is unclear which Americans Buttigieg is referring to, but Latin American Marxists have rallied behind the catchphrase for decades.
Once again, anti-gun officials contort case law and statute to undermine our Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Today, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro issued a tortured opinion defining partially-manufactured receivers as firearms. This opinion flies in stark contrast to the current, and widely held, understanding that receivers that are unfinished and require additional work to operate as a functional frame or receiver are not considered firearms and therefore aren’t regulated as such.
Shapiro relies on two arguments to arrive at this absurd result. One, that unfinished receivers are “designed” to expel a projectile by action of an explosive. It doesn’t take a law degree to figure out how backward this thinking is. Partially-manufactured lowers are explicitly designed so that they are unable to expel a projectile by action of an explosive without further work. In other words, by their very nature, they are not firearms.
Two, Shapiro claims that these receivers “may be readily converted (to expel a projectile)” which he argues is analogous to the “may readily be restored” language of the federal National Firearms Act.
With this make-believe bridge, Shapiro then imports federal case law concerning the “may be readily restored” (to a machine gun) language to draw up extremely broad contours of what would be considered a firearm under state law. He uses extreme case law to lower the threshold for what constitutes a firearm to facilitate his anti-gun position and leanings.
Shapiro’s “theory” of treating non-functioning blocks of polymer, steel, or aluminum as “firearms” is the equivalent of calling a pile of aluminum tubes a bicycle or even considering a hickory or ash tree a baseball bat.
Make No Mistake — This opinion applies to much more than unfinished receiver kits!
Using the extremely vague description provided by AG Shapiro, almost any chunk of material (metal, polymer, etc.) could be considered a firearm and he and his anti-gun cronies can use this precedent to destroy our freedoms one step at a time.
The United Nations’ 25th Conference Of The Parties climate summit ended Sunday with participants unable to agree on what are the media are calling “key” emissions targets. Some participants are blaming America’s absence for the failure. The more sober-minded, though, are grateful President Donald Trump has no time for the global warming nonsense.
Even with the canonized Greta Thunberg threatening to put the world’s national leaders “against the wall” if they don’t “do their job and to protect our futures,” the principals could work out nothing more than, according to the all-in-on-the-global-warming-hysterics Guardian, “a partial agreement to ask countries to come up with more ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to meet the terms of the 2015 Paris accord.”
(For the record, the Swedish teen scold apologized for her comment. Maybe someone told her that her rant sounded as if she wanted to round up those who have failed her, and line them up for a firing squad, revealing a little too much of the fantasies many of the hate-filled alarmists play out in their heads.)
The response from activists was predictable. They made a “really futile and stupid gesture” by dumping horse manure outside the meeting and staging a mock hanging in which one of the “condemned” held a baby while she had a rope around her neck. Reuters said these woke folk were “frustrated” by the talks. Frustrated, we’d say, in the same way a child becomes upset and throws a tantrum because he couldn’t get his way.
The U.S. had no official representatives at the summit, though a delegation of congressional Democrats did travel to Madrid, where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi assured the delegates, feckless poseurs whose greatest achievement has been to convince the world that they’re important people doing important work, that “we are still in.”
“Our delegation is here to send a message that Congress’ commitment to take action on the climate crisis is iron clad,” she said.
As a member of the legislative branch, she has no authority to conduct foreign affairs, a duty left exclusively to the executive branch. So like the rest of summit, the Democrats’ appearance was all for show.
Outside the madness demonstrated by a few true believers, efforts to “fight global warming,” particularly at official levels, are a cover for other objectives. The climate alarmists hope to:
Show their moral superiority by claiming to be on the right side of the argument (which is why empty-headed celebrities are always so eager to demonstrate their support for the climate crusade).
Punish success, whether it’s national (produced by free-market economic systems), corporate (produced by hard work and savvy business decisions), or individual (produced by perseverance and character), and vilify and manage Western consumption habits.
Save the reputations of researchers who have staked their academic lives on the man-made global warming narrative.
Control the behavior of others.
Feed their oversized egos by making sure they’re seen associating with the “right” people.
Trump has promised to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, which has attracted the wrath of the domestic and international left, but is a sensible policy decision. No nation should handicap its economy and burden its citizens based on the sketchy conjecture that man is overheating his planet. Americans should be thankful they have a president who isn’t concerned about his reputation among elitists who haven’t changed their behavior since high school, yet are running, and ruining, our halls of government, foundational institutions, and once-respected academies.
Of course, the numbers are used to argue the case for “Free” College for All. I don’t need to point out to readers of this blog the stupidity of that idea.
One ‘heart-rending’ factoid used in the article is that Black students will be ‘unfairly’ the biggest recipients of the crash. The figures are below.
Student Loan Default Rates Are Highest For African Americans
The default rate among African American graduates is more than five times the rate of white graduates.
BACHELOR’S DEGREE GRADUATES
TOTAL AMOUNT BORROWED
DEFAULT RATE
Black $55,667 20.6%
Hispanic or Latino $28,599 8.6%
White $26,005 4%
Asian $30,612 1.4%
Notes
Debt and default among bachelor’s degree graduates 12 years after college entry, 2004 entry cohort.
Source: Judith Scott-Clayton, Brookings Institution
Several considerations come to mind:
Black students are borrowing more than twice as much as White students, which might lead one to ask:
Are Black students majoring in subjects that pay off at higher levels than White students?
The short and dirty answer – No. A study of college majors, and the proportions of students by ethnicity and sex, is here. Very scholarly, very much supportive of the idea that minorities do not major in fields that will pay adequately with just a bachelor’s degree.
That’s a hard thing to get minorities/women to understand. A college degree is not just a college degree – major field of study counts.
I once had a discussion with an English teacher, who was indignant that her brother, with ‘only’ a bachelor’s degree, made considerably more than she, with a Master’s in English from a prestigious university.
I asked what her brother had majored in.
Electrical Engineering, I was told.
I diplomatically suggested that the field of engineering was short of people to fill those jobs, and might, therefore, pay more.
After being lectured about how pay should have NO relation to the number of applicants, but should be the same for the same ‘level’ of education required, I shrugged, and left.
She wasn’t unique. MANY women, and minorities, have those egalitarian principles. Of course, that does inhibit upward mobility for individuals, but, hey – they keep their ‘pure’ ideals.
So, how should the student debt crisis be handled?
Put a ceiling on the amount that can be borrowed. Limit that amount to a MAX equal to the amount that the average person in that field earns after 5 years. No loan guarantees after that amount.
Also, put a maximum on the amount that can be borrowed each year equal to a year’s tuition, minus other financial aid. If a college really wants a kid to attend, let them pony up a GRANT for room and board.
What does this mean? Fewer kids going to ‘away’ colleges, more attending local ones, including community/tech colleges.
NO money for coursework that is below college level. Let them take those classes at a junior college, before attending a four-year one. Admittance to four-year colleges for the low SAT/ill-prepared dependent on successful completion of an associate’s degree.
Yes, I realize that this will likely KILL Big 10 football/basketball, but some sacrifices have to be made.
Madrid (AFP) – A UN climate summit in Madrid risked collapsing Saturday after marathon negotiations between countries left them more divided than ever over on how to fight global warming and pay for its ravages.
Diplomats from rich nations, emerging giants and the world’s poorest countries — each for their own reasons — found fault in a draft agreement put forward by host Chile in a botched attempt to strike common ground.
Faced with five-alarm warnings from science, deadly extreme weather made worse by climate change, and weekly strikes by millions of young people, negotiations in Madrid were under pressure to send a clear signal that governments were willing to double down in tackling the crisis.
But the 12-day talks, now deep into overtime, had retreated even further from this goal on Saturday. “It appears that we are going backwards on the issue of ambition when we should be calling for a quantum leap in the other direction,” Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege said. . .
Veteran observers of UN climate talks were stunned by the state of play nearly 24 hours after the negotiations had been set to close.
“I have never seen such a disconnect between what the science requires and the people of the world demand, versus what the climate negotiations are delivering,” Alden Meyer, strategy and policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AFP. Alexandria Villasenor, a 14-year-old climate activist, said she had been “disappointed” in the lack of action at COP 25.
How is this failure possible? St. Greta of Thunberg—Time‘s Person of the Year!— was there, telling the adults in the room to get busy. Why don’t they listen to her!? Why? Why?
On December 13 & 14, 2009, professor, prophet, and soothsayer Al Gore predicted the North Polar Ice Cap could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years.
Gore made his prediction at COP15 Copenhagen which ran from Dec 7 – Dec 18, 2009, where he repeatedly referenced “state-of-the-art” computer modeling to suggest that the north polar ice cap may lose all of its ice by 2014.
“Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years,” Gore claimed.
“Join me in asking president Obama and the US Senate to set a deadline of 22 April for final action in the US Senate,” he said. “I do not believe we can wait till next November or December.”
[Gore] kept up the pace by calling for the international community to sign up to a fully fledged climate change treaty by July 2010 – and then announcing that Mexico was prepared to host a deal-making summit.
He scolded rich countries for demanding the developing world offer evidence of emissions cuts while at the same time trying to inflate the funds they were prepared to offer poor countries to deal with climate change. And he was just as tough on activists who have embraced him as a hero, demanding they set aside their pride and their principles and embrace a deal – no matter how imperfect. He said he recognized their frustration with the glacial pace of negotiations. He agreed that cap-and-trade schemes to cut carbon emissions were an imperfect solution – Gore confessed to favoring a carbon tax – but the current efforts for a deal were the best prospect of avoiding catastrophic climate change.
And there was no trace of sympathy for opponents of action on climate change. Gore began with a brief run-through of the latest science on melting of the Arctic ice cap, evidence he said “only reckless fools would ignore.”
The House on Wednesday passed a contentious agricultural bill that would likely put more than a million illegal immigrants on a pathway to legal status as part of what supporters say is a vital modernization of the industry’s workforce — but that immigration hawks blasted as a “large-scale amnesty.”
The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed 260-165, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. The bill provides a process for undocumented farmworkers to seek a temporary five-and-a-half-year “Certified Agricultural Worker” status if they have worked for approximately six months in the industry in the last two years.
That status can either be renewed indefinitely, or workers (along with their spouses and children) can begin a path to permanent legal status in the form of a green card. That path, according to the legislation, includes background checks and $1,000 fine.
To secure the green card, those who have worked in agriculture for 10 years or more must work for four more years, while those who’ve spent less than a decade in the sector would have to work eight more years. Once workers receive a green card, they are then free to pursue work in fields outside of agriculture.
The bill also streamlines the H-2A agriculture visa program, cutting processing time and costs for visa petitions. And it calls for the Department of Homeland Security to set up a pilot program that would give H-2A workers the ability to change jobs within the sector if they find work within two months…….
The Heritage Foundation described the bill as a “clear cut example of amnesty,” warning that it “threatens the legal immigration system’s legitimacy and incentivizes aliens and farmers to ignore the legal immigration system in the future if it best serves their needs.”
Y’all didn’t really think the gun-grabbers were going to stop after I-1639 did you?
Ferguson also proposes safety measures for ammunition sales
SEATTLE — Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced today he will propose a package of legislation to combat mass shootings in Washington state. Gov. Jay Inslee, a longtime supporter of gun safety measures, is joining Ferguson for the first time to propose limits to magazine capacity and a ban on the sale of assault weapons…………..
High-Capacity Magazine Limits……..
Ferguson and Inslee are proposing joint-request legislation to limit the capacity of magazines sold in Washington to 10-rounds……
Assault Weapons Sales
For the fourth consecutive session, Ferguson is proposing legislation to ban the sale of assault weapons. For the first time, Gov. Inslee will jointly request the legislation…………
Prohibits violent felons and other individuals who cannot lawfully obtain firearms from purchasing or possessing ammunition
Makes it illegal for firearms dealers to knowingly sell ammunition to violent felons and other individuals prohibited from owning firearms
Prohibits dealers from knowingly selling ammunition to violent offenders and other individuals prohibited from owning firearms
Requires ammunition sellers to obtain a state firearms license, which costs $125……..
Requires background checks for all ammunition sales 30 days after the U.S. Department of Justice changes its rules and authorizes dealers to use the national instant criminal background check system, known as NICS, to initiate a check for a transfer of ammunition…….
Late-entrant Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, billionaire and former mayor of New York City, isn’t exactly a popular guy.
To us, we remember him well enough — the guy who was so busy stealing salt shakers off New York diners’ tables and telling them how much Big Gulps were good for them that he forgot to prepare the huge metropolis for Hurricane Sandy.
These days, he’s talking about packing the Supreme Court with anti-gun activists, a real political winner if there ever was one, given the repeated failure of such measures across the country. Gun control is always a loser. And voters know what rigging is, and packing the Court is rigging.
So it’s no surprise he’s seeing numbers like these following his multi-million-dollar shell-out for campaign ads, something the other candidates (not that they deserve any sympathy) can’t afford:
A newly-released poll shows billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is deeply unpopular with registered voters after jumping into the crowded 2020 Democrat primary field.
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday found voters react to Bloomberg twice as negatively than they do positively — 54 percent unfavorable and 26 percent favorable — signaling that it will take more than multi-million-dollar ad buys to win over the electorate.
This comes after he splashed out all that cash and hired all those best-and-brightests from the company he founded, Bloomberg News, as his campaign handlers.
Voters can now see him up close from those nonstop ads, praising himself as better than the mere middle class, selling himself to voters as “not a deplorable,” and they don’t like it.
The more he talks, the less they like him.
It all goes to show how bad his judgment is.
For starters, it makes sense that billionaire Bloomberg is annoying to leftists, given that they think all the world’s ills were caused by billionaires — and they don’t like billionaires as it is. Remember Occupy! Wall Street and all that hollering about the 1%. Bloomie, with his $55-billion or so fortune, would be around the top 0.01% actually, so his argument of course is on the importance of tamping down that dreaded 1%, something that tastes funny to leftists.
But he also isn’t resonating with moderates, who have some semblance of liking for capitalism. Instead of promoting capitalism for them, as Trump did for the right-wingers in 2016, he’s promising bigger government, all the money — and all the power, in hands like his.
Has he really done anything for “the people”? It’s true he’s hired a lot, but he made money off those hires, so no need to give him any special credits unless he gets honest with voters and tells them that capitalism helped him get rich and he will sure as heck make sure that capitalism, and not government, does the same thing for them.
He’s too far up in the economic stratosphere to recognize that. He’s in Buffett territory, a rich guy trying to defend his fortress at the expense of all those nouveaux riches.
Bad premise. No wonder it’s not working. Good to see him lose money on his own cynical buy-an-election ego project, though. Run, Mike, run…
ExxonMobil won a first-of-its-kind climate change fraud trial on Tuesday as a judge rejected the state of New York’s claim that the oil and gas giant misled investors in accounting for the financial risks of global warming.
New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager said the state failed to prove that Exxon violated the Martin Act, a broad state law that does not require proof of intent of shareholder fraud.
“The office of the Attorney General failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that ExxonMobil made any material misstatements or omissions about its practices and procedures that misled any reasonable investor,” Ostrager wrote in a 55-page ruling, deciding the case without a jury.
BLUF: “Ironically, the FISA court was created in 1978 to prevent Nixon-style political spying.”
As my section CWO often said when a plan went over like a lead balloon: “It briefed well.”
Yesterday’s IG report was only the latest in a long series of revelations about FBI misconduct at the FISA court:
*In 2002, the FISA court revealed that FBI agents had false or misleading claims in 75 cases and a top FBI counterterrorism official was prohibited from ever appearing before the court again.
*In 2005, FISA chief judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly proposed requiring FBI agents to swear to the accuracy of the information they presented; that never happened because it could have “slowed such investigations drastically,” the Washington Post reported. So FBI agents continued to have a license to exploit FISA secrecy to lie to the judges.
*In 2017, a FISA court decision included a 10-page litany of FBI violations, which “ranged from illegally sharing raw intelligence with unauthorized third parties to accessing intercepted attorney-client privileged communications without proper oversight.”
* In October, a secret FISA court ruling was released documenting the FBI’s illegal conducted warrantless searches of vast numbers of Americans’ emails despite congressional legislation seeking to curb FBI data roundups.
FBI machinations at the FISA court are especially perilous to American democracy because that court is extremely docile to federal agencies. The FISA court “created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans,” the New York Times reported in 2013 after Edward Snowden leaked court decisions. FISA decisions have “quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court…regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny.” The court’s servility can boggle the imagination, such as its rubber-stamping FBI requests that bizarrely claimed that the telephone records of all Americans were “relevant” to a terrorism investigation under the Patriot Act, thereby enabling N.S.A. data seizures later denounced by a federal judge as “almost Orwellian.”
Ironically, the FISA court was created in 1978 to prevent Nixon-style political spying.
And some crap for brains Federal gubbermint congresscritters and presidential candidiates, want laws passed that make it illegal for a teenager to even possess a gun.
REDSTONE TOWNSHIP, Pa. —
Pennsylvania State Police said a man was sent to an area hospital after being shot while trying to burglarize a home in Fayette County Friday night.
State police said the suspect has been identified as 39-year-old Adam Earl Morgan. Police said he is also responsible for two other burglaries, along National Pike, in Redstone Township, that happened on Friday night.
“He climbed up a table and some chairs,” said neighbor Joe Shashura.
The back window to Joe and Sue Shashura’s home had been broken and several items stolen, minutes before police said Morgan walked into their neighbor’s home and was shot.
“I guess it doesn’t take more than five or 1o minutes. He grabbed a pillowcase, filled it with jewelry, anything he could find, cash money and all that,” said Joe Shashura.
The Shashuras said they are typically home, but each was invited out by their daughters on the night of the break-in.
“Relieved that I wasn’t here. I was going to come home earlier, but my daughter asked me to go out to eat dinner,” said Sue Shashura. “I was very tired, I didn’t want to go, but things happen for a reason.”
Morgan was flown to a Pittsburgh-area hospital where he was charged with three counts of burglary.
Police said Morgan was shot by a teenager who was home alone at the time he broke in.
Police said Morgan ran away after being shot, but was later found lying along the road and taken to the hospital.
Some of the servicemembers killed in Afghanistan during that time period were people I didn’t just know, but worked with. What I think of Obammy isn’t fit to print.
The last time the Democratic Party blew up in a presidential election year was 1860. It had evolved from Jefferson’s 1800 bloc of yeoman farmers to Andrew Jackson’s rowdy caucus of frontier populists in the 1830s, and settled into a slough of pro-slavery apologists by the 1850s, including two do-nothing Democratic presidents, Pierce and Buchanan. The party held a nominating convention in the spring of 1860 and couldn’t come up with a candidate when a claque of southern “fire-eaters” walked out. They tried again a few months later and cracked up into three separate parties with three nominees — and of course Mr. Lincoln won the election. The result was the bloodiest war in US history.
That’s one way to drain a swamp. Historical obfuscators might say the Civil War was a lofty, legalistic quarrel over “state’s rights,” but of course it was really about the intolerable depravity of slavery. A hundred years later, the mysterious inversions of history converted the old slaver’s party into the Civil Rights party. That had a good fifty-year run. It included a hearty side-dish of anti-war sentiment, and a general disposition against the Big Brother treatment of citizens, including especially the overreach of the CIA and the FBI.
What is the Democratic Party today? Well, it’s the cheerleading squad for “seventeen” government agencies that add up to the craftily-labeled “intel community,” a warm-and-fuzzy coalition of snoops, false witnesses, rogue lawfare cadres, seditionists, and bad-faith artists working sedulously to hide their previous misdeeds with ever-fresh ones. They’re the party against free speech, the party against due process of law, the party determined to provoke war with Russia. They’re the party of sexual confusion, sexual hysteria, and sexual conflict, the party of kangaroo courts, cancel culture, erasing boundaries (including national borders), and of making up rules for all that as they go along — like the Nazis and Soviets used to do. The ideas and policies they advocate are so comprehensively crazy that their old support of slavery looks quaintly straightforward in comparison.
It’s taken a while for the full efflorescence of these political pathologies to present. But now they are finally on display for all to see in what is supposed to be a climactic impeachment melodrama. The impeachment process itself has revealed the party’s genius for inventing new debaucheries of law and government misconduct — the latest being Rep Adam Schiff’s blatantly illegal cadging of his opponents’ phone logs. And now, after three years of unchallenged wickedness, they literally face the moment of truth.
That is, when all the many players in this grand game of Gotcha have to face the consequences of what they have done.
