Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

Category Archives: Politics

Backlash Forces Salvation Army to Withdraw “Let’s Talk About Racism” Guide

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:11
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:

The Salvation Army issued its “clarification” over its intentions for publishing and making public its “Let’s Talk About Racism” guide on Saturday. It was a non-apology:

Some individuals and groups have recently attempted to mislabel our organization to serve their own agendas. They have claimed that we believe our donors should apologize for their skin color, that The Salvation Army believes America is an inherently racist society, and that we have abandoned our Christian faith for one ideology or another.

 

Those claims are simply false, and they distort the very goal of our work.

There was no apology. No “upon careful reflection” we have summarily rejected any suggestion that the Salvation Army or its donors and supporters are racists. No “rejection” of the Marxist philosophy oozing from the guide that demands apologies from everyone who, by birth, is guilty of racism.

No. Instead, thanks to reviewers such as this writer at TheNewAmerican.com, “it has since become a focus of controversy.”

If there is any note of sorrow or error, it appears here in the Army’s non-apology:

We have done our best to provide accurate information, but unfortunately, some have chosen to ignore those efforts.

Nevertheless:

At the same time, International Headquarters realized that certain aspects of the guide may need to be clarified.

 

Consequently, for both reasons, the International Social Justice Commission has now withdrawn the guide for appropriate review.

The Army “remains undeterred in our mission … [that we and our] supporters know that ours is a message of love, even for those who disagree or attack us. That is the model set by Christ, and we strive to follow it every day.”

There was no attack. There was merely exposure. From the Army’s guidebook that is being withdrawn for “review,” one finds this:

 

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational, and social pressures that perpetuate racism.

And so, rooting out latent racism in the Army has now been expanded to include rooting out that latent racism in everyone who was being born with a certain skin color:

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias, and discrimination from our lives.

Part of that “rooting out” demands that Salvationists must “lament, repent, and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed,” according to the guide.

The Army is now suffering from an increasing awareness among its members and donors about its adoption of the Critical Race Theory and the bullying that goes along with it. As Christian radio show host Greg Koukl noted:

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention that racial essentialism inherent in that view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

Those “certain aspects of the guide” that “may need to be clarified” by the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission, which issued the guide, should include identifying the underlying purposes of CRT: division, hatred, and the resulting need to recreate the culture into that of perfect communism: everyone is equal, by force.

New York Times Declares Democrats Are in Trouble

Monday, 29 November 2021 15:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 29, 2021:  

The New York Times assigned four of its political journalists to see just how much trouble the Democratic Party is in, going into the midterms. On Saturday their verdict came in: serious, bordering on disastrous.

The party is not only losing the support of many of the its most loyal supporters, but it’s also losing the support of the critical independent voter who has traditionally supported the party.

The Times journalists reported that “Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters … [because Biden and the Democrat Party] are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.”

This, despite the expectation that passage of the massive trillion-dollar infrastructure bill and the House’s passage of the even larger “Build Back Better” bill would galvanize their support. Instead, reported the Times, “The president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful.”

While RealClear Politics continues to chronicle the collapse in support for Biden, the damage he is doing to the vital independent voter support is staggering: “Among some of his core constituencies … [there are] double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters.”

Those voters are unimpressed with Biden’s so-called legislative “victories” and are instead dealing with everyday challenges such as rising inflation at the grocery store and the gas station and the controversy over who has the right to determine who will educate their children (and how).

The Times has a poll to prove their point:

According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either the infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally.

The reporters’ conclusion was dismal:

The national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who [in addition] may lose seats in redistricting [as well as facing] the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.

On the other hand, Republicans see what’s happening and are seizing the opportunity to turn out House Democrats next year. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reported last Friday that, as of that date, nearly 1,000 Republicans have filed candidacy papers in 379 of the 435 House districts across the country, up significantly from the same time in 2019.

That number includes 196 women, 179 veterans, and 177 who are minorities. As Representative Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chairman of the NRCC, exuded:

In this environment, no Democrat’s seat is safe, and vulnerable Democrats have a choice to make: retire, or lose.

As of this writing, 17 Democrats have done just that, raising further alarm bells for Miles Coleman, the associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball published by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. Said Coleman, “Swing district members like Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) [and] Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) leaving … [is] a potential warning sign for Democrats.”

This was echoed by Michael McAdams, a spokesman for the NRCC: “The writing is on the wall: Democrats’ majority is doomed, and smart Democrats are calling it quits while they still can.” 

The history of midterms doesn’t treat the president’s party kindly, especially one whose job approval ratings continue to decline. The party of a president with an approval rating under 50 percent loses an average of 37 House seats in the midterms, according to Gallup. Biden’s approval is anywhere from 36 to 45 percent, report the most recent polls. RealClear Politics reports its average is under 42 percent for Biden, versus 53 percent disapproving, an 11-point negative spread.

 

As Biden goes, so goes the Democrat Party. When Rasmussen quizzed 1,200 likely voters over whether they think Biden should run for reelection in 2024, less than a third agreed. They said that in a rematch with Trump, Biden would lose by double-digits, 45 to 32 percent. Among independents — the key Democrat demographic — Biden would lose, 47-20 percent.

The polling firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates conducted a poll in five key “swing” states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — asking voters how they would vote in 2024. Trump won in a walk, by 12 points in Michigan, 10 points in Wisconsin, eight points in Arizona, six points in Pennsylvania, and three points in Georgia. This, it seems, would be more than enough to overcome even the most egregious voter manipulations conducted by the Democrat Party in those states. As Tony Fabrizio said, “This new data clearly shows that today the voters in these five key states would be happy to return Trump to the White House and send Biden packing.”

Even the poll from Redfield & Wilton Strategies showed Trump leading Biden in their rematch in 2024, the first time Trump has led Biden in their polling.

It’s no wonder that the New York Times can find no good news for Democrats in the midterms. There just isn’t any.

Salvation Army Goes Woke; Demands Members, Donors Repent of Inherent Racism

Saturday, 27 November 2021 13:10
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Saturday, November 27, 2021:  

Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission shifted its attention to Critical Race Theory. In February this year, Brian Peddle, CEO and the 21st General of the Salvation Army, announced the shift in a video that he claimed would help “overcome the damage [that] racism has inflicted upon the world, and yes, The Salvation Army.”

In a guidebook titled Let’s Talk About Racism, the group claims that the new resource is designed “to fight the evil of racism and create a more just and equitable society.”

From the guidebook:

The Salvation Army acknowledges with regret, that Salvationists have sometime shared in the sins of racism and conformed to the economic, organizational and social pressures that perpetuate racism….

 

The Salvation Army is a holiness movement … [which] includes embracing diversity … and rooting out racism, bias and discrimination from our lives.

It declares that differences in “equity” prove that racism exists in the United States:

Many have come to believe that we live in a post-racial [colorblind] society, but racism is very real for our brothers and sisters who are refused jobs and housing, denied basic rights, and brutalized and oppressed simply because of the color of their skin.

Therefore, says the guide published by the Salvation Army, Salvationists must “lament, repent and apologize for biases or racist ideologies held and actions committed.”

That’s because “the subtle nature of racism is such that people who are not consciously racist easily function with the privileges, empowerment and benefits of the dominant ethnicity [white], thus unintentionally perpetuating injustice.”

Example:

For instance, devout Christians who naively use racial epithets or a well-intentioned Sunday School curriculum that only uses white photography and imagery [are guilty of racism].

The initiative claims that differences in living standards and income are not attributable to individual effort and other circumstances, but to discrimination. Therefore, repentance is required even if not deserved, according to the Army’s new marching orders.

The organization, founded in 1865, received almost 60 percent of its $3.3 billion in donations from “direct public support,” including volunteers ringing bells and hosting stands holding those familiar red buckets. The group says it helps financially some 23 million American families every year and claims a worldwide membership of nearly two million supporters.

Longtime supporters recognize the insidious and divisive nature of Critical Race Theory that has been adopted by the Salvation Army, including Christian talk-show host Greg Koukl. In an open letter to the group, he wrote:

I recently became aware of your International Social Justice Commission material, “Let’s Talk about Racism.” I read virtually every word of the material in every session and surveyed your bibliography. It rapidly became clear to me that TSA has fallen for critical race theory lock, stock, and barrel….

 

To see that TSA has been taken in by the likes of Ibram X. Kendi (“How to Be an Anti-Racist”), Robin DiAngelo (the author of the thoroughly discredited “White Fragility”), and the (also thoroughly discredited) NYT “1619 Project” has my head spinning.

 

Your material’s baseless claim that “our foundations were built on racism” is beyond belief….

 

CRT is a Trojan horse taking in well-intentioned Christian enterprises that — because they care about justice and oppose oppression — naively promote the most serious threat to biblical Christianity I have seen in 50 years….

 

There is a massive number of academics — black and white, Christian and non-Christian, atheist and theist — who have raised the alarm against the aggressive indoctrination and, frankly, bullying of CRT — not to mention the racial essentialism inherent in the view, the false witness it bears against virtuous people, and the general destruction it continues to wreak on race relations in this country.

 

CRT has set us back 50 years.

As a result, Koukl, who has been a public advocate for the Army for years, is pulling his support:

I spoke at length about this on my radio show this week, inviting my audience to read your material for themselves and make their own judgments.

 

I told them, though, that as for me, I was redirecting my giving elsewhere. I am not “cancelling” you, as many in the CRT movement would gladly do to me. Rather, I am carefully investing my resources in organizations that I fully trust will serve Christ in truth and only in truth, and I no longer trust The Salvation Army to do that.

Five Democrats Sink Biden’s Comptroller Nomination

Saturday, 27 November 2021 06:38
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 26, 2021: 

Just one Senate Democrat would have sunk the confirmation of Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee to be comptroller of the currency. Instead, she got five — Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). This, wrote Axios on Wednesday, “effectively kills her nomination.”

Every senator should have opposed her nomination. All Republicans would likely have voted against her if the Senate Banking Committee had moved her nomination to the floor. And every Democrat should have. In fact, the White House should never have offered her nomination in the first place.

But no. The powers that be want so desperately to change the United States into a carbon copy of the old Soviet Union, or Venezuela, that they continued to support her nomination even as it was sinking.

When three of the five senators — Tester, Warner and Sinema — told the committee’s chairman, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), that they were bailing, he informed the White House that her nomination was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water. The White House, fully under the control of leftists who are working to change America into a socialist state, continued to back Omarova: “The White House continues to strongly support her historic nomination. Saule Omarova is eminently qualified for this position.”

And then the White House spokesman told Axios: “She has been treated unfairly since her nomination with unacceptable red-baiting from Republicans like it’s the McCarthy era.”

“Red-baiting” is a disparaging term often used by communist sympathizers to deflect legitimate criticism of an individual harboring communist views in an attempt, often successful, of painting the accuser of being driven by xenophobic or fanatical right-wing ideologies. It’s an attempt at smearing opponents to communism and its forced imposition on America.

So, too, is the phrase the White House spokesman used — “like it’s the McCarthy era” — referring to legitimate attempts in the 1950s to expose communists who were infiltrating sensitive and influential agencies of the federal government. 

The senators were no doubt influenced by the letter they received from 41 state banking associations and the Independent Community Bankers of America. They might not have seen her as part of the plan to turn America into a socialist nightmare but they certainly saw that, if successful, private banking, and their profession, would disappear.

 

“We take this unusual step,” they wrote, “based on the nature of Prof. Omarova’s public positions and the impact they would have on community banks … [her] proposal [to eliminate all private banking in the United States] is anathema to community banks and would undermine the role they play in driving local economic activity and development.… [She] stands well outside of … consensus … and could seek as Comptroller to undermine it and thereby jeopardize American economic growth.”

They failed to mention her ultimate purpose, as exposed by the Wall Street Journal:

She proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumers’ bank deposits, effectively ending [private] banking as we know it. [Her plan would] become the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources … [just as] Venezuela and China are doing.

Senator Bill Hagarty (R-Tenn.) wasn’t so inhibited. He told Fox News:

President Biden’s choice for banking regulator is a Marxist academic who wants to destroy the American banking and energy sectors and implement socialism in the United States, proving once again that this White House is beholden to the radical left elements of the Democrat party.

Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), in a speech on the floor of the Senate, said:

There’s a lot that’s extraordinary and radical here — but maybe the heart of it is that Ms. Omarova doesn’t just want tightened regulation of banks. What she wants is to, and I quote — this is her words — “effectively end banking as we know it.” Those are words she wrote just last year.

Much has been written about her Marxist positions on banking. Something little known is her 2020 paper, “The Peoples’ Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy,” in which she offers a “blueprint for a comprehensive restructuring of the central bank’s balance sheet as the basis for redesigning the core architecture of modern finance.”

She expanded on that theme in a lecture she gave in January 2021:

There will be no more private bank deposit accounts, and all of the deposit accounts will be held directly at the Fed.

 

And there are very interesting implications from that thought experiment; for example, with the much more direct and proactive tools of monetary policy, like helicopter money, which is, you know, considered radical, primarily because economists really do not know how to manage the issue of what would happen in the inflationary environment when the central bank needs to contract the supply of money.

 

How is it politically feasible for the central bank to effectively take money away from people’s accounts?

Her plan answers that question: The Fed could simply remove a quantity of those heretofore privately held dollars and thus “shrink” the money supply to fight inflation.

At this writing, the White House hasn’t officially announced that they are pulling her nomination, nor has Omarova decided that the battle is lost and officially withdrawn her nomination. But, for all intents and purposes, it’s over.

Moderate Democrats Panicking Over 2022 and 2024

Wednesday, 24 November 2021 15:41
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 24, 2021:  

As Joe Biden continues to plummet in the polls, moderate Democrats are panicking about what’s increasingly likely to happen in 2022 and 2024.

First, the polls. Taking RealClear Politics as reliable, Biden is now 11 points underwater (53-42) on his job approval. Some polls are showing him 19 points underwater.

On the economy, he’s 18 points underwater; on immigration, 32 points; on foreign policy, 18 points; and on the 2022 generic congressional vote in 2022 Republicans hold a four-point advantage, with some polls showing more like 13 points favoring a generic Republican over a generic Democrat in the coming midterm elections.

For many Republicans, this is unalloyed good news. For moderate Democrats such as A.B Stoddard, it’s reason for panic, fear, and disbelief. Not that the Democrats’ surrender to the far left isn’t of concern. It’s the consequent rise of the specter of Donald Trump behind the scenes in 2022 and front and center in 2024 that has her worried.

Stoddard has the credentials of a moderate Democrat, having her views acceptable not only at MSNBC and CNN but Fox News as well. Covering the Senate since 1994, she has remained reliably centrist — although vehemently in her dislike for Trump — and now watches with horror at what the progressives are doing to her party.

She bought the line that Biden, having legitimately won (although by the slimmest of margins) the election in 2020, would “return the United States to a state of normalcy after the disruption, and destruction, of former President Trump.” But nothing is normal:

Voters already believe someone else should replace [Biden] on the ticket in 2024, only 10 months after he was inaugurated….

 

Approval ratings for Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, are terrible. Throw in a GOP takeover of potentially both chambers of Congress next year … and you have the makings of a full party crack-up.

Biden is mentally unfit, as Stoddard reviews the latest polls. Especially unnerving is that “a new Harvard-Harris poll found 53% of voters doubt his mental fitness and 58% said he is too old to do his job.” (He turned 79 on November 20.)

She laments:

There is nothing reassuring about the oldest president to ever be elected promising three years out that he can handle a second presidential campaign, let alone a second term, when the odds are that he cannot.

And just who would take his place? Kamala Harris? Stoddard quotes former Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, a confidant of Biden, when he was asked about Harris: “I’m hoping the president runs for reelection, but [if] for whatever reason that might not be the case, it’s hard to believe there would be a short list without Kamala’s name on it. She’s the vice president of the United States.” As Stoddard noted, “If you are the vice president this is no small insult.” 

Stoddard warns that party insiders are already building a list of challengers to Harris, including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But then, she adds, “2022 is currently expected to be wipeout year for the [Democrat] party.”

 

She is already mourning the departure of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, either by choice or by ballot, calling it “an incalculable loss if Democrats are facing minority status with a lame-duck president.”

And she voices fears that, once in control, the Republicans will turn the tables on Biden, bringing charges of impeachment.

She is right to be more than nervous, according to Conrad Black, writing at The Epoch Times. Stoddard “cannot be contemplating the future she envisioned without a sense of revulsion if not terror.”

Any president who could withstand the withering and continuous attacks from the kept media is a force to be reckoned with. Wrote Black:

[Trump] astounded almost everyone by being nominated and elected, and was the subject of an unprecedented sand-bag job from the national political media, the D.C. governmental establishment, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the academy, major league sports, and was falsely accused of being a Kremlin agent by former intelligence directors, dragged through the muck of the Trump-Russia collusion nonsense for most of his term, and subjected to two spurious impeachments, one after he had left office.

 

His reelection was opposed by 95 percent of the media, he was de-platformed by the oligarchic social media cartel, and outspent two to one. Ultimately, a great deal of creative (and constitutionally questionable but never judicially judged) changes in voting and vote-counting in swing states, supposedly to accommodate the COVID pandemic was deployed against him, and with over 40 million harvested votes, he would still have won if only about 55,000 votes had flipped in Pennsylvania and any two of Arizona, Georgia, or Wisconsin.

He is likely to return, according to Black:

Despite the close and questionable election result, it was almost universally assumed by his more fervent detractors like Ms. Stoddard that he was a dreadful aberration who had gone and would not be back.

 

The astounding irony is that, after six years of this colossal political donnybrook, Trump is the likely early favorite for the next election and the winner of this great single warrior combat.

The Democrats are virtually handing control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024 to Republicans:

The new administration has been unprecedentedly incompetent even to those of us who feared the worst — millions of illegal migrants, sky-rocketing crime, inflation, and deficits, a very unresponsive president reduced to insipid pleadings to China and OPEC, a completely unfeasible vice president, a shambles in COVID policy, and in Afghanistan the worst and most humiliating fiasco in the history of the U.S. armed forces since General Hull surrendered Detroit to the Canadians and British in 1812.

 

Sophisticated military hardware worth $85 billion was abandoned to the incoming Taliban terrorist-tainted government.

 

The response of the Democrats and their media allies to this shambles is to construe every disagreement as racist, as in their disgraceful misrepresentation, from Biden down, to acquitted Wisconsin murder defendant Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist vigilante.

In 2022 it will be all Republican, and in 2024 it will be Trump or someone he backs, says Black:

In over-reacting to Trump, a successful president, the Trump-haters largely delivered the great Democratic Party to a riffraff of socialists and are tied to a ludicrously inept regime that has little chance of avoiding Donald Trump’s electoral revenge: himself back again or a candidate he supports.

It’s no wonder that moderate Democrats such as Stoddard are in a state of panic. Barring a political miracle (either real or manufactured), Democrats are headed for destruction in 2022 and obliteration in 2024.

Liberty Counsel Files Brief in Boston’s “Christian Flag” Controversy

Tuesday, 23 November 2021 16:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 23, 2021:  

In Liberty Counsel’s brief filed at the Supreme Court last week, it claimed that Boston’s denial of Camp Constitution’s request to fly the Christian flag violated both the First and the 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution:

When Camp Constitution applied to raise a flag during its flag raising event [on September 17, 2017] to celebrate the civic contributions of Boston’s Christian community, during the week of the national recognition of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, the City denied the request without viewing the flag solely because it was called “Christian” on the application.

Such a denial, said the brief, “conflicts with [the Supreme Court’s] precedents holding that speech restrictions based on religious viewpoint or content violate the First Amendment.”

There are three flagpoles in front of Boston’s City Hall. One of them flies the city’s flag (which depicts the City Seal, containing the inscription SICUT PATRIBUS, SIT DEUS NOBIS — “God be with us as He was with our fathers”). But frequently the city will allow outside groups to fly their own flags from it to celebrate various events.

Camp Constitution wanted to fly the Christian flag for about an hour while some pastors and the founder of the camp made brief presentations about the Christian influence on Boston’s history.

It was expected to be a slam dunk. After all, at no time in the previous 12 years had any of the 284 requests from other groups to fly their flags been denied. But, said Hal Shurtleff, the founder of the camp, “when our application was denied because we wanted to fly the Christian flag, we just simply could not let this go.” He said that it was the word “Christian” that forced the denial. Said Shurtleff, “The fact that we called it the Christian flag was anathema [to the city]. Our application was denied, and we called off the celebration.”

And they filed suit. With the help of Liberty Counsel they appealed lower courts’ support of Boston’s decision, which claimed that somehow the “government speech” being exercised by the city in its denial was not covered by the First Amendment. 

But the Bunker Hill flag to commemorate the Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill was allowed to be displayed, which is virtually identical to the Christian flag (except for reverse color schemes and a pine tree in the upper left corner).

 

In announcing the filing of the brief, Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said:

Liberty Counsel looks forward to presenting this nationally important case to the Supreme Court. It is indisputable that Boston denied the private flag raising solely because the application contained the word “Christian” before the word “flag.” It was this single word that resulted in the first censorship of a private flag raising application after 12 years with no denials.

 

Censoring religious viewpoints in a public forum where secular viewpoints are permitted is unconstitutional. This case will have a national impact. Religious viewpoints must not be excluded from the marketplace.

That is exactly the point made by the brief:

The City’s reason for denying Camp Constitution’s flag raising event was precisely and only because the City deemed the flag objectionable, because it was called a “Christian Flag” on the application, even though Camp Constitution’s purpose — to commemorate the contributions of one of Boston’s diverse communities to the City and the Commonwealth — otherwise fit perfectly with the City’s permitted subject matters according to the City’s purposes for allowing flag raisings.

 

The flag’s appearance was not objectionable to [the city], but the flag’s description as “Christian” on the application triggered the denial.

 

If the flag had not been described as “Christian,” [the city] would have approved it.

 

Because viewpoint discrimination is prohibited in a designated public forum, the City’s exclusion of Camp Constitution’s flag for its Christian viewpoint was unconstitutional.

Oral arguments begin before the high court in January with a decision expected to be rendered in June 2022.

Internal Survey: More Than Half of NYPD Officers Wish They’d Never Joined

Monday, 22 November 2021 16:31
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 22, 2021: 

According to an internal survey just obtained by the New York Post, more than half of nearly 6,000 NYPD officers polled say they wish they’d never joined the department. Three out of four say that really outstanding officers don’t “receive appropriate recognition” for the work they do, while eight out of 10 said they aren’t supported by the department.

The combination of an anti-police mayor, a pro-criminal DA, a City Council determined to make life difficult for police officers, the “defund the police” movement, and the consequent rise of crime and attacks by communist BLM thugs has made life for the average police officer in the Big Apple difficult.

Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD sergeant and now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said:

This doesn’t look good for [Mayor-elect Eric] Adams. Not only is he inheriting a lot of bad legislation from the City Council and Albany, it sounds like he is getting an apathetic police department.

 

I don’t blame the cops. DAs that don’t prosecute, feckless politicians … what can they do?

What they can do is move. And an increasing number are doing just that. As Giacalone noted:

New York City police officers are well past [their] breaking point, and [the mayor] and the outgoing City Council are still piling on with policies that punish cops and erode public safety.

 

The intolerable environment and our substandard pay have every cop looking to get out as soon as they can.

A dozen have moved to Lakeland, Florida, to take advantage of Florida Governor Ron Santis’ offer of a $5,000 signing bonus, scholarships to the law enforcement academy, and “relocation support” that includes an additional $1,000 to help pay for the Equivalent Training Program required of new officers moving to the state.

It helps enormously that Lakeland pays more than New York City ($53,000 a year to start compared to $42,000 in the city), and that neither Lakeland nor Florida levy an income tax. New York City and the state levies both. 

DeSantis rolled out the red carpet in announcing the recruiting program, saying “Florida values our law enforcement community.… NYPD, Minneapolis, Seattle, if you’re not being treated well, we’ll treat you better here: you fill important needs for us and we’ll compensate you as a result.”

 

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody added:

These recruitment initiatives demonstrate our appreciation and commitment to the men and women who choose to wear the badge and [they also] serve as a reminder … that we have their backs.

Florida State Representative Kelli Stargel joined in:

Here in Florida we stand with law enforcement and are thrilled to welcome any officer who wants to relocate to a community where you will be respected and valued.

This was sweet music to former NYPD Officer Matthew Soto, who took the offer to move to Lakeland. He recounted his conversation with the recruiter from Lakeland: “[He] said that you could park your police vehicle in front of your house and, to me, I thought that was mind-blowing. I used to have to lie about what I used to do [in New York City]. I used to have to tell people I was … a bartender because … I was ashamed to be a law enforcement officer.”

Patrick Lynch, president of New York City’s Police Benevolent Association, told the Post: “Many New York City cops are weighing our sub-standard salary against the ever-increasing challenges, scrutiny and abuse, and they’re voting with their feet.”

Spokane, Washington, is upping the ante over Florida, offering a $15,000 signing bonus to NYPD police officers looking to move. The sheriff said:

New York [City] was one of the heaviest areas [we recruited because] their local leaders really came out and did not support their law enforcement … actually disrespected them.

The sheriff, Ozzie Knezovich, purchased billboards in Times Square and has targeted unhappy officers in Portland, Seattle, Denver, and Austin, Texas. He needs 40 new recruits and the protests, the anti-police sentiment, and vaccine mandates are making his job easier.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and Indiana Senator Mike Braun are using their Twitter accounts to entice police officers looking to move. Dunleavy wrote: “Consider the 49th state, where we back the blue.”

Police Officer Fired for Donating to Rittenhouse Defense Fund Wants Job Back

Monday, 22 November 2021 16:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 22, 2021: 

Norfolk, Virginia, police Lieutenant William Kelly wants his job back. He was fired back in April when BLM-supporting Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone learned that Kelly had donated $25 anonymously to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund. That was back when the world was certain that Rittenhouse, the “white supremacist,” had murdered people in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August 2020.

Because Kelly’s donation didn’t fit the narrative according to Boone, he was fired. Explained Boone:

His [Kelly’s] egregious comments erode the trust between the Norfolk Police Department and those they are sworn to serve. The City of Norfolk has a standard of behavior for all employees and we hold staff accountable.

Here is what Kelly wrote on the Christian crowd-funding site:

God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong. Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.

He was surprised to learn that the crowd-funding website had been hacked and that his anonymous donation and comments had been published by the left-wing Guardian. That roused the indignation of enough progressives to cause them to e-mail their outrage — not about the breach but about the disclosure — to Norfolk leaders demanding that they fire Kelly.

In an interview with The Daily Mail, Kelly explained why he made the donation:

I was interested in giving him [Rittenhouse] the chance to defend himself in front of a jury. I know that lawyers are expensive, and it’s hard sometimes to get the message out there. I wanted to make sure that he had the means necessary to make his claim in court. It mattered.

 

The comments I made, my belief that he has a strong claim for self-defense was a personal opinion. I didn’t want my city or police department to be associated with it, so I chose to donate anonymously.

His opinion carried weight:

I’ve been a homicide detective, a violent crimes investigator for years. I have a background.

 

I watched the video of the shooting and I’d seen the video of journalists of Mr. Rittenhouse before the shooting and the protesters before the shooting and I thought it painted a pretty clear picture that Mr. Rittenhouse had a very strong claim for self-defense.

Apparently none of this mattered to the BLM-supporting Boone. 

In his 25-page grievance filing, Kelly wrote:

 

I admit that I privately and anonymously, and solely as an individual and not as an employee of the City of Norfolk, donated $25 to a Kyle Rittenhouse legal defense fund, and posted a message to Kyle Rittenhouse offering emotional support, using a GiveSendGo account for which I registered using my City of Norfolk email address.

 

My donation to that fund, my message, and my association with the City of Norfolk was intended and expected to be private and anonymous, and became public information solely due to unlawful electronic hacking of the account by third parties and subsequent publication of information obtained through that hacking by news media.

 

Nothing in my message presented an impression that I was representing, giving opinions or otherwise speaking on behalf of the City of Norfolk.

He then exposed the staggering hypocrisy of his boss:

My dismissal reflects inconsistency, unfairness and discrimination by the City of Norfolk in regard to speech by members of the Norfolk Police Department.

 

I engaged in speech which was private and anonymous but became public through no fault of my own, and which, when made public, upset a small number of vocal people for a very short time.

 

The Chief of Police of the Norfolk Police Department [Larry Boone], in contrast, has been permitted to parade through the streets of Norfolk, wearing his Norfolk Police Department uniform, holding a “Black Lives Matter” sign while marching with a crowd protesting against police and law enforcement.

He told the Daily Mail:

The hypocrisy is dumbfounding. For the leader of our organization to be able to advocate support for a movement that is at the very least divisive in America today, in uniform while on duty … [the sign] he was holding carried the name of a person who had recently been shot by a Norfolk police officer.

 

The sign demanded justice for that person, but that shooting was still under investigation to determine whether or not that officer should be charged criminally. It’s very inconsistent.

 

Yet I cannot, off-duty, on my own time make a donation and some comments that are well within the realm of public, acceptable discourse?

His attorney filed the grievance in May. It’s now November. The Rittenhouse case is over. Kelly, who is married with three children, is living off of his savings and his wife’s salary as a schoolteacher.

All he wants is that precious commodity that is disappearing in America: justice. He’d like his job back. He’d like assurance that his pension will be vested. And it would be nice if Chief Boone apologized.

New York Times Video asks: “What do Democrats do when they have all the Power?”

Sunday, 21 November 2021 11:38
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The opinion video produced by The New York Times and posted on Thursday reveals not only what Democrats do when they have all the power (see California), but what politicians in general do when given the opportunity: they mess things up. The greater the power, the greater the mess (see California).

The Times’ video journalist Johnny Harris teamed up with the Times’ lead writer on business and economics Binyamin Appelbaum to create the 14-minute-long video available on YouTube.

Harris focused on California where the mess is the greatest. The Democrats running the state follow the general Democratic Party platform which informs its progressive constituency that its three core values are “affordable housing,” “economic equality,” and “educational opportunity.”

But when focusing in on how California actually looks, Harris discovered that “liberal hypocrisy is fueling … inequality” in the state. In a written report supplementing the video the writers said:

In key respects, many blue states are actually doing worse than red states.

 

It is in blue states [like California] where affordable housing is often hardest to find, [where] there are some of the most acute disparities in education funding and [where] economic inequality is increasing most quickly….

 

Blue states are where the housing crisis is located.

 

Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic.

 

Blue states are the places where tens of thousands of homeless people are living on the streets.

 

Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country.

They point out that nine of the 15 most expensive metropolitan areas in the country are located in California (for instance the median price of a house in San Diego is $830,000, more than twice the national median).

The report exposes the bottomless hypocrisy of liberals who claim one thing and behave in another. Take Palo Alto, for example. The Democrat-controlled city council voted unanimously to rezone a 2½ acre site to allow construction of a high-rise housing development. The liberal community was outraged and voted it down, 85-15. Not in my neighborhood!

As Applebaum wrote, “I think people [there] aren’t living their values. There’s an aspect of greed here.”

Of course. Human beings seek their own best interests first, ideology be damned.

The report missed several opportunities to inform its readers. It’s not just Democrat hypocrites who are ruining blue states like California. Republicans have a long and tawdry record of ruining things as well, just more slowly.

That’s why limits must be placed on all politicians, not just in blue states. They must apply to all politicians everywhere or liberty is threatened and eventually lost.

As the author of Federalist 51 (either James Madison or Alexander Hamilton, writing under the name “Publius”) noted:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices [as separation of powers] should be necessary to control the abuses of government.

 

But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

But, as Lord Acton said, men are not angels: “All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

That is the message that is missing from the Times’ opinion video.

 

 

Latest Polls Reveal more bad news for Biden, Democrats

Sunday, 21 November 2021 11:35
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The bad news for Joe Biden continues to pile up. In the two latest polls by Quinnipiac University and Gallup, Americans’ disgust with his job performance plunges to new lows, with some saying the polls are even understating that disgust.

According to the poll conducted by Quinnipiac over last weekend (November 11 through 15), “Americans give President Biden a negative 36-53 percent job approval rating”, reported the pollster, which is “the lowest job approval rating he’s received.” While Republicans heartily disapprove and Democrats happily approve, the important swing voters – the independents – disapprove of his job performance by a jaw-dropping 56 percent to 29 percent who approve.

On specific issues Biden is uniformly castigated. On his response to the COVID virus, half of those polled disapprove. On the economy, 59 percent disapprove. On his foreign policy, 55 percent disapprove.

On his personal traits, 51 percent say he is dishonest. Regarding his leadership skills, 57 percent say they’re lacking.

As Tim Malloy, Quinnipiac’s polling analyst, said, “From character issues to … national and international concerns, [the Biden] ship continues to take on water.”

The same goes for Gallup. While asking slightly different questions the pollster tapped into the same discontent by voters:

President Joe Biden’s job rating remains underwater, with 42% of Americans approving and 55% disapproving.

Likewise, majorities of U.S. adults disapprove of Biden’s handling of five key issues – immigration, the economy, foreign affairs, crime, and healthcare. In all of them Americans’ disapproval rating ranges from 53 percent (healthcare) to 66 percent (immigration).

Said Gallup: “Biden’s overall job performance … remains the lowest of his presidency so far”, adding that “the greatest shift since January has been among independents.” Independents’ approval ratings, according to Gallup, are 36% on his handling of the economy, and 37% on his foreign policy.

On immigration, his approval rating in August was 46%. Now, its 36%. “That change,” said Gallup, “is owed mostly to a 15-point decline among Democrats.” Even Biden’s own are starting to disown him.

These polls follow one by Langer Research which was commissioned by ABC News and the Washington Post. Langer summed up what they found:

The Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points under water in job approval, and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans: 62 percent say so.

The polls results from Quinnipiac and Gallup could be optimistic. Those polls were taken the week after Congress passed his pork-laden “infrastructure” bill, and he was out on the hustings taking a victory lap. He should have gotten a boost. He didn’t.

Second, the man has been carried by the liberal mainstream media – propped up might be a better phrase – which has supported him from the beginning, and avoided any mention of his failures and shortcomings. Without that support it’s highly likely his numbers would be even worse.

With every poll at RealClear Politics showing Biden underwater anywhere from 10 to 19 percent (averaging 12 percent), and other polls all but conceding Democrat losses in the midterm elections next November, it’s time to consider just what Republicans should do once they have regained control of Congress.

Should they begin impeachment proceedings on the president, for various failures (illegal immigration, executive overreach with his vaccine mandates, etc.)? Should they revive the investigation into Hunter Biden?

Or should they focus on how to begin to repair the damage wrought by the Democrats? Could they complete the wall on the nation’s southern border without Biden’s consent? Should they repeal the tax increases embedded in his spending bills?

One of the first things they should do immediately is expose the communists that he has appointed to various high-level positions in the his administration.

And assuming a Republican wins the presidency in 2024 he could put the Fourth Branch (the administrative branch) back into the box by demanding each agency remove two rules for every new one proposed. He should continue to add constitutional conservatives to the federal bench. He should issue executive orders repealing those unconstitutionally declared by Biden.

As George Washington said to his troops preparing to cross the Delaware River on Christmas eve, 1776, he should “put none but Americans on guard tonight.”

Omarova Not Likely to Become Biden’s Comptroller of the Currency

Sunday, 21 November 2021 11:31
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 19, 2021:  

It is increasingly clear that Joe Biden’s nomination of a hard-core communist to the office of comptroller of the currency is too much even for far-left Democrat senators on the Senate Banking Committee. According to Politico, at least seven Democrat senators are having second thoughts after hearing her testimony on Thursday.

That testimony got feisty. Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) asked nominee Saule Omarova about her membership in a communist organization while she was growing up in the Soviet Union: “It’s commonly referred to as ‘Young Communists.’ Were you a member?”

When Omarova replied, “everybody in that country was a member,” Kennedy then asked pointedly if he should refer to her as “comrade” rather than “professor.” The chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), took umbrage and interrupted Kennedy. Kennedy shot back: “You’re not the witness, she is!”

Omarova answered Kennedy, “I am not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology.”

But everything in her background proves that she is, especially her plans to put every personal and private checking account for every American into the Federal Reserve so they can be monitored and managed.

She wants to create a “National Investment Authority” [NIA] that would direct private and government funds to support businesses that mesh with her totalitarian green agenda, and starve and bankrupt those that don’t.

The Wall Street Journal noted that in a recent paper she authored, “she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumers’ bank deposits, effectively ending [private] banking as we know it. [The NIA would] become the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources … [just as] Venezuela and China are doing.” 

Senator Bill Hagarty (R-Tenn.) told Fox News about his “many concerns” over the nomination of a Chinese communist to the position:

 

President Biden’s choice for banking regulator is a Marxist academic who wants to destroy the American banking and energy sectors and implement socialism in the United States, proving once again that this White House is beholden to the radical left elements of the Democrat party.

Norbert Michel, who heads up the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, said that Omarova would make every effort to “federalize” the private banking sector in America, adding:

[The Comptroller of the Currency] has enormous discretion to direct banking activity through examination and enforcement actions, including types of customers banks lend [money] to….

 

It is clear that her policies would turn all private banks into state-run institutions.

Earlier Michel wrote, “It is true that the free enterprise system [is] not perfect, but the fact remains that there are countless examples of Omarova’s preferred approach making millions of people miserable.”

Naturally, the White House stands foursquare behind the communist that Biden has nominated to “federalize” America’s banking system:

Saule Omarova is eminently qualified and was nominated for this role given her strong track record on regulation and strong academic credentials [she is a professor at far-left Cornell University].

 

The White House strongly supports this historic nomination.

At least seven Democrats have their doubts after hearing her testimony, including Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Krysten Simena (D-Ariz.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). Each of them has constituencies that would be severely hurt, if not totally destroyed, if Omarova is confirmed and has her way.

Republican Wins Mayoral Race in Deeply Democrat Columbia, South Carolina

Sunday, 21 November 2021 11:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, November 18, 2021:  

In Columbia, South Carolina, the second-largest city in the state, a Republican won the mayor’s race on Tuesday — the first Republican to win in 30 years. The Democrat, Tameika Isaac Devine, should have won going away. After all, Richland County, where Columbia is located, went for Biden over Trump in 2020 by 38 percentage points. Barack Obama won the county by 29 points in 2012 and 33 points in 2008.

The winner, Daniel Rickenmann, almost couldn’t believe he’d won:

I’m just overwhelmed by all the support from the business community, the citizens of Columbia, the young people and the old, a cross-section of people.

 

I’m just excited about the opportunity to serve them and get to work.

Devine lost by four percentage points despite the historical advantage. She even received endorsements for top Democrats, including Obama and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who heads the Senate GOP’s reelection committee, rejoiced: “Last night, Republican [Rickenmann] had a big win. The red wave is coming!”

Democrats are losing, said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), who heads up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, because “we’re not getting the job done on messaging. It starts with the president.” 

Biden needs to get out more, said Maloney, and “tell the people what [we’ve] done.” In response, Biden is out touring some swing states, hyping the victory over the infrastructure bill he just signed.

 

But, as the No. 1 rule in successful marketing goes, “If you have a bad product, the more you advertise it the faster it is removed from the shelves.”

It’s increasingly likely that the “red wave” will be clearing a lot of Democratic shelves a year from now. Langer Research, a liberal pollster, has declared that “the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points under water in job approval, and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans: 62 percent say so.”

That discontent is flowing out to the midterms. Said Langer:

58 percent of all adults [that they polled] are inclined to look around for someone new to vote for … [they] currently favor Republican over Democratic candidates by 20 points.

The Democrat pollster summed it up:

Republican congressional candidates [now] hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences [51% to 41%] … dating back 40 years.

Of course, with the Democrats holding such slim majorities in Congress, it won’t take a “red wave” for the Republicans to regain control. Costas Panagopoulos, a liberal professor of political science at Northeastern University, put it well:

White House worries about a red wave in 2022 are certainly justified, but the truth is Republicans don’t need much given Democrats’ razor-thin majorities in both chambers of Congress.

 

A red ripple may be all the GOP needs to tip the partisan balance in its favor in 2022.

With another Republican win in a highly Democratic city, it’s looking like that “red wave” will be much more than just a “red ripple” next November.

Voters are getting the message.

Conservative Appeals Court to Hear Vax Mandate Lawsuits

Wednesday, 17 November 2021 21:08
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 17, 2021:

Thirty-four lawsuits were brought in all 11 courts of appeal as well as the D.C. court opposing the Biden vaccine mandate for businesses with more than 100 employees. Under law they had to be consolidated into one court, and the court that “won the lottery” yesterday was the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This bodes well for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which placed a temporary “stop” order on the Biden mandate. If the Sixth Court considers all that the Fifth Circuit uncovered, the three judges looking at all 34 lawsuits should have an easy time of it in making that temporary order permanent.

Of course, the Biden administration will demand that the full Sixth Circuit court hear the case if the three-judge panel rules against it. And if the full court affirms the ruling by the three judges, then the Biden attorneys will likely appeal to the Supreme Court. In short, this is the just the beginning of the battle over what the Constitution says, and what the Biden administration thinks and wishes that it says.

Of the 27 judges sitting on the Sixth Circuit (which oversees district courts in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee), 20 of them were nominated by Republican presidents: six by Trump, eight by Bush II, three by the elder Bush, and three by Reagan. The others were nominated either by Clinton or Obama.

The Fifth Circuit made clear the perfidy the Biden administration engaged in to justify its unconstitutional mandate. Judge Engelhardt wrote:

After the President voiced his displeasure with the country’s vaccination rate in September, the Administration pored over the U.S. Code in search of authority, or a “work-around,” for imposing a national vaccine mandate.

 

The vehicle it landed on was an OSHA ETS [emergency temporary standard].

The judge footnoted the source backing up his claim:

On September 9, 2021, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle’s tweet that stated, “OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.”

That should suffice for the Sixth Circuit three-judge panel to bring closure to the matter and affirm the Fifth Circuit’s decision. But Judge Englehardt also questioned the timing, and the hypocrisy. First of all, he wrote, OSHA had initially declined to use its ETS powers back in June 2020, declaring that it was “not necessary” to “protect working people from occupational exposure to infectious disease.” But once the Biden attorneys decided to use the agency’s ETS power to inflict its mandate on the people, it changed course.

And what hypocrisy. Wrote the judge:

The Mandate’s stated impetus — a purported “emergency” that the entire globe has now endured for nearly two years, and which OSHA itself spent nearly two months responding to — is unavailing as well.

“Unavailing” is a nice way the judge had of saying “empty,” “trivial,” and “worthless,” as well as completely unpersuasive.

Judge Engelhardt said that OSHA should have used its ETS power “delicately,” because it is an “extraordinary power” that Congress granted (illegally, but that’s another matter) to the agency back in 1971 under President Nixon.

But, no, wrote the judge:

But the Mandate at issue here is anything but a “delicate exercise” of this “extraordinary power.”

 

Quite the opposite, rather than a delicately handled scalpel, the Mandate is a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer that makes hardly any attempt to account for differences in workplaces (and workers) that have more than a little bearing on workers’ varying degrees of susceptibility to the supposedly “grave danger” the Mandate purports to address.

Ryan Bangert, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, one of many public-interest law firms bringing those 34 lawsuits, said, “The Biden administration’s decision to mandate vaccines through an OSHA emergency rule is unlawful and compels employers like our clients to intrude on their employees’ personal health decisions.”

Patrick Hughes, president and co-founder of Liberty Justice Center, which also has clients contesting the mandate, said:

This mandate represents the greatest overreach by the federal government in a generation. It is illegal and unconstitutional, and we are committed to ensuring that it never sees the light of day.

May the Sixth Circuit’s three-judge panel, its full court if necessary, and the Supreme Court upon appeal, all see the Biden vaccine mandate the same way.

Liz Cheney Suffers Final Indignity: Wyoming Republicans Disown Her, Want Their Money Back

Tuesday, 16 November 2021 12:30
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 16, 2021:

The Central Committee of the Wyoming Republican Party voted over the weekend to disown Liz Cheney, the state’s lone representative in Congress. For years she has masqueraded as a Republican, voting as a Constitutionalist about 65 percent of the time.

She suffered her first indignity in February when the Central Committee censured her for claiming that Trump incited the January 6 Capitol Hill incident and voted to impeach him as a result.

In May, House Republicans removed her from her leadership position as conference chair, the third-highest position in the Republican Party in Washington. She burned her bridges behind her by saying after her ouster that “I will do everything I can to ensure that the former president never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.” Wyoming voters voted for Trump over Biden, 70-27 in 2016.

The motion to no longer recognize Cheney as a Republican includes the promise that not only will the Wyoming Republican Party not support her reelection efforts financially, but demanded that she return monies she has already received from the party. 

That she had sold out to the dark side was revealed when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked Cheney to join the committee investigating Trump’s alleged role in the alleged insurrection on January 6. Said Pelosi at the time: “We are very honored and proud [that Cheney] has agreed to serve on the committee.” Cheney returned the favor by calling the January 6 incident “the most serious attack on our Capitol since 1814 [by the British].”

As noted by The New American back in August, Cheney’s polling numbers in Wyoming all but guarantee that she will lose the Republican primary next year. Those polls show that she would lose to her two closest Republican challengers resoundingly. As pollster John McLaughlin said, “It is very clear that Wyoming voters want … to hold Liz Cheney accountable for her bad vote on impeachment and her current attacks on President Trump on the January 6th committee. They want to see her defeated.”

This final indignity likely removes any chance that Cheney, once she is removed from office by Wyoming voters, might show up as a “conservative Republican” commentator at any of the mainstream media. Fully exposed as a Republican-In-Name-Only, and three times rebuffed by her party, her credentials as a legitimate voice in the liberal wilderness will have all but disappeared.

Her promise that she “will do everything I can” to ensure that Trump is never reelected came from a megaphone that will be muted into silence next year.

Pressure Building on Arizona School Board President to Resign

Monday, 15 November 2021 14:40
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 15, 2021: 

Not only have Scottsdale police opened an investigation into Scottsdale Unified School District’s president, Jann-Michael Greenburg, over his “dossier” of parents opposed to the school district’s policies on masking and Critical Race Theory, but more than 1,200 parents have signed a petition demanding his resignation as well.

His resignation is expected shortly.

Since The New American first reported on the incident on Friday, additional damning evidence has surfaced. Aside from the police statement — “[We’re] aware of the allegations against Scottsdale Unified School District President Jann-Michael Greenburg. We are conducting an investigation into the matter and will report our findings once it is complete” — a petition to oust Greenburg is gathering considerable momentum.

From the petition:

On November 9, 2021, The Scottsdale Independent published an article “The Greenburg Files: Is there a file on you?” demonstrating the expansive and disturbing surveillance activities of Scottsdale Unified School District Governing Board President Jann-Michael Greenburg….

The “Greenburg Files” contain many disturbing documents, audio files, and video recordings of several individuals, including photos of SUSD students.

 

There is no legitimate purpose for any of these background checks, deeds, marital records, financial documents, professional certifications and more to be curated, stored, and shared in such a manner by Mr. Greenburg.

 

The files also contain unredacted SUSD emails and screenshots of open district email tabs — bringing even more concern that SUSD resources may have been shared or used outside of their intended or legally allowed purposes.

The Google drive contains 160 pages of information on parents unhappy with the school board’s policies related to COVID-19. The information appears to have been gleaned following extensive investigation by its author, which explains the surprising amount of detail the drive reveals. 

It was not only surprising, but unsettling as well. Targets included parents who were mounting an effort to recall Greenburg. Greenburg is single and lives with his father, Mark, who, it appears, spent the time and the money to build the “Greenburg Files.”

It remains unclear what purpose the Greenburgs had in gathering the information, but parents aren’t waiting: They want the president out, now.

Amy Carney, a mother of six and a candidate for the district’s governing board, told Fox News: “I’d call this retaliation … the list of parents targeted in the drive appears to be anyone who has spoken out about anything against our district publicly or online.”

The petition concludes:

His [Jann-Michael’s] actions have made it unequivocally clear that he is unfit for public office.… We stand together in requesting the immediate termination of Jann-Michael Greenburg as SUSD Governing Board President, and we further demand his resignation as an SUSD Governing Board Member.

SUSD is one of the largest suburban school districts in metro Phoenix, serving most of Scottsdale as well as parts of Phoenix, Paradise Valley, and Tempe. That explains why the national media is now following the case.

Even after he resigns, Greenburg, and his father Mark, are likely to face legal consequences. The New American noted that attorney Alexander Kolodin had grave concerns that the Google drive — the “Greenburg Files” — violated Arizona’s Parents’ Bill of Rights that recognizes a parent’s right to consent before the government makes a video or voice recording of the minor child.

But Mark Greenburg is a private citizen who did the recordings, and so sanctions might come from another source. As Kolodin explained:

Both Arizona and the federal government have laws prohibiting both intimidation generally and voter intimidation in particular….

If these allegations are true, Mr. Greenburg and his father might be liable to violating one or more of these laws.

In any event, Jann-Michael Greenburg’s tenure as president of SUSD is about to come to an end, but the legal consequences over his involvement with the “Greenburg Files” will continue to plague him into the future.

Mainstream Poll Showing Collapse in Approval of Biden, Democrats

Monday, 15 November 2021 14:35
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 15, 2021:  

The latest poll, produced by Langer Research for ABC News and the Washington Post, reveals what other more balanced polls have been reporting:

The Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points under water in job approval, and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans: 62 percent say so.

Langer is no friend of conservatives. It boasts a long list of “research partners” supporting its work, including ABC News, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Bloomberg L.P., Cornell University, ESPN, and Facebook, among others. To have Langer Research declare that its most recent poll results present a “profound challenge” to the Democrats reveals the party’s accelerating race to irrelevancy in politics.

For once, the numbers coming from Langer and ABC News/Washington Post are believable:

  • 31 percent of registered voters surveyed say Biden is keeping most of his campaign promises;
  • 35 percent think he’s accomplished much overall;
  • 59 percent worry he’ll do too much to increase the size and role of government, up 6 points since spring;
  • 70 percent say [the economy] is in bad shape, up from 58 percent last spring;
  • His approval for handling the economy overall is down to 39 percent, off 6 points just since early September and 13 points from last spring.

His job approval has fallen off the charts:

In terms of Biden’s job performance overall, a new low of 41 percent approve, while 53 disapprove.… Biden [has] lost 11 points in approval since spring.

These dismal and accelerating numbers flow over to the midterms:

58 percent of all adults (and 59 percent of registered voters) are inclined to look around for someone new to vote for … [they] currently favor Republican over Democratic candidates by 20 points.

Langer sought clarity for the Senate races as well. It focused on eight states where Senate seats are open in November — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — and learned that “Biden’s overall job approval rating [among them] is 33 percent, compared with 43 percent elsewhere. On his handling of the pandemic, his approval is 11 points lower [there] than in the rest of the country.”

The bad news for Democrats affected every group and demographic, according to Langer, especially including independents:

 

Independents, often swing voters in national elections, favor GOP candidates by 50-32 percent; they voted +12 point Democratic in 2018.

Suburban voters now favor Republicans by 54-39 percent while rural voters support Republicans by 66-26 percent. And the advantage Democrats had in 2018 over Republicans among urban voters (65-32), is down 13 percentage points, to 52-38.

Among non-college educated white men and women, Republicans now hold an advantage over Democrats that is 20 percent wider than it was in 2018. Among Hispanics, who voted Democratic in 2018 by a 40-point margin, now favor Democrats by just 15 points — a collapse of a jaw-dropping 25 percent.

Langer summed up the results:

Republican congressional candidates [now] hold their largest lead in midterm election vote preferences [51 percent to 41 percent] … dating back 40 years.

For the record, in the 1982 midterm elections, the party holding the White House (Republicans) lost 26 seats in the House and broke even in the Senate.

School Board President Under Pressure to Resign Over His “Opposition Dossier” on Parents Protesting CRT

Friday, 12 November 2021 15:04
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 12, 2021:  

Jann-Michael Greenburg, the 28-year-old president of the Scottsdale (Arizona) Unified School District (SUSD), is under pressure to resign and may already have done so by the time visitors are reading this.

Greenburg claims he had nothing to do with the Google Drive that appeared on his laptop computer containing personal and confidential information on an estimated 47 people, including parents in his district opposed to the district’s policies on masking and CRT.

On Tuesday, Greenburg denied having anything to do with the information stored on his computer: “I categorically deny having anything to do with any of this,” he told Arizona’s Independent Newsmedia (IN).

Since then, much information has surfaced that indicts Greenburg. Listening in on that conversation with IN was Greenburg’s father, Mark. Forensics on the drive have shown the owner to be Mark Greenburg. Mark and Jann-Michael live together and both have access to the computer.

The URL to the Google Drive was inadvertently sent by Jann-Michael to a parent who apparently said some critical things about George Soros with which Jann-Michael disagreed. The parent downloaded the information from the drive and was surprised to see its contents: photographs of some children in the district; personal information on their parents, including portions of their Social Security numbers, home addresses, records of mortgage payments, a divorce decree, and some bankruptcy filings.

The drive also contained folders with headings such as “Press Conference Psychos,” “Anti-Mask Lunatics,” and “SUSD Wackos.” 

When parent Amanda Wray discovered information about herself and her family on the drive, she went ballistic:

 

When I first saw the contents of the Google Drive and I saw my 8- and 10-year-olds’ photos, that was terrifying. I’m like, what’s he doing?

 

He has pictures of my vacation home, property records. I’m not a political opponent. I’m an involved parent and that is threatening to me and it makes me wonder why and what he was planning to do with those photos.

Wray is working with other parents in an effort to recall Greenburg over the district’s COVID policies. Said Wray, “We’re not anti-mask, we’re not anti-vaccines. [Our opponents, presumably including Greenburg] have painted us this way because it fits their inflammatory narrative. We’ll all for parent choice and really, transparency.”

She added:

Jann sent the screenshot [containing the URL to the Google Drive]. He has access to this drive, so I’m really interested to understand how he’s going to say he doesn’t know about it because he had the drive open on his computer.

 

You’ve got the school district saying, “Sorry. He’s elected. He’s allowed to abuse the community? He’s allowed to use student information and dox parents? Sorry?”

The school district sent out an e-mail to parents on Wednesday, claiming that it knew about the Google Drive situation but “such activities are not within the purview of the [SUSD’s] control.”

The letter further declared “in no uncertain terms that personal student information and educational records are private and protected … to which neither Board members nor the public have access.”

This is pure whitewash and distraction. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was whether the president of the district had access to private information on his opponents.

The letter ended, “SUSD is committed to conducting its mission of educating your students with the highest level of integrity and transparency, and will not be deterred from that focus.”

Right.

Amy Carney is a candidate for the board in upcoming elections and is calling for Greenburg’s immediate resignation:

I am calling for the immediate resignation of our board president Jann-Michael Greenburg.

 

We cannot allow anyone in a leadership position to secretly compile personal documents and information on moms and dads who have dared speak out publicly or on social media about their grievances with the district.

 

We request President Greenburg’s resignation from the Governing Board effective immediately for this and other recent embarrassments to our district.

If he resigns, which is highly likely as the pressure to do so continues to build, he may still face legal consequences. According to Alexander Kolodin of the Davillier Law Group, “These allegations are deeply troubling, especially as concerns the photography of a minor child without parental consent and the taking down of license plate numbers of parents who Mr. Greenburg supposedly perceived as political opponents.”

The story is gaining national attention. The New American will stay close to it and keep its readers informed.

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney Concedes to Truck Driver in Upset Victory

Thursday, 11 November 2021 12:54
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, November 11, 2021:  

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Democrat, conceded on Wednesday that he lost his reelection bid to truck driver and political novice Edward Durr. It was an upset victory that made headlines across the land and likely sets the stage for a dramatic Republican victory in the midterm elections in November.

Sweeney blamed his loss on a “red wave” that cost him the election. What really cost him the election was the 12,000 new voters who made their voices heard last Tuesday, erasing Sweeney’s lead and providing Durr with the additional 2,298 votes he needed to win.

Sweeney’s delayed concession, more than a week after the election and nearly a week after the Associated Press called the race for Durr, caused many to wonder if election fraud was afoot in New Jersey — that a recount would somehow miraculously rescue Sweeney from defeat.

But the four-percent margin was too much to overcome, and Sweeney, a long-time politician dating back 20 years and considered a major “power broker” in the state, finally conceded on Wednesday: “I, of course, accept the results. I want to congratulate Mr. Durr and wish him the best of luck.”

It wasn’t luck, unless luck is defined as the providential conjunction of the right man recognizing the right time and seizing the opportunity.

Durr says of himself:

I believe in God. I am hard working, trusting and very loyal. I believe in fiscal responsibility, transparency, and lower taxes … We have taxed the people to the verge of death….

 

I also support the Second Amendment.

That second point is important. Back in 2015, an effort from Second Amendment supporters to remove Sweeney from office over his infringement of their rights failed. But his anti-gun record remained resonant with New Jersey gun owners.

 

It also helped that, after serving more than 10 years as president of the New Jersey Senate, he had accrued to himself a mantle of superiority. Said Durr:

 

It was the combination of a governor [Phil Murphy] who acts like a king, and a senate president who acts like a court jester and does nothing.

 

That made it very easy to convince people they were not being paid attention to. And when they got ignored, they got angry.

Money didn’t matter. Durr spent $153 in winning the primary. In total, he spent between $8,000 and $9,000, compared to Sweeney’s campaign spending more than $600,000.

Because of his job as a truck driver for a local furniture company, he could only go door-to-door on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. On Saturdays and Sundays he walked six to eight hours — so much so that his feet hurt. Said Durr: “Trust me, plenty of days I did not feel like walking. It was too hot, my ankles and my feet hurt — I’m not a young man anymore [he is 58], and I have gout, and plantar fasciitis — it was a hard thing.”

But it was worth it:

It allowed me the opportunity to talk to every person I could possibly talk to, and understand what they were feeling, and get the pulse.

Durr takes positions that warm the hearts of conservatives. He calls himself a “constitutional conservative” and advocates for cutting taxes — income, corporate, state, and property. He says that “abortion is wrong and should be stopped” and is a supporter of Texas-style “heartbeat” laws.

He’s also a fan of conservative media: “I watch a lot of Greg Gutfeld, Newsmax and One America.” He listens to Dan Bongino and Steven Crowder. He watches Mark Levin’s Life, Liberty and Levin on Sunday nights.

The main issue in the campaign was rights, said Durr:

The main issue was rights. People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on.

 

But the bottom line is rights. It’s family.

 

When someone is messing with your family, you’ll do anything. The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.

Durr tapped into the growing discontent among voters over what Democrats are doing to the country. With Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s near-death experience thanks to an unknown Republican challenger, analysts, pollsters, and commentators are considering Durr’s victory a harbinger for Republicans and a bad omen for Democrats a year from now.

As Durr himself noted:

It didn’t happen because of me. I’m nobody. I’m absolutely nobody. I’m just a simple guy.

 

It was the people. It was a repudiation of the policies that have been forced down their throats.

Former Democrat Pollster: Biden Needs “Course Correction” to Avoid Catastrophe Next November

Wednesday, 10 November 2021 13:57
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 10, 2021:  

Mark Penn, the chief political strategist for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2008 run for the presidency, later became a defender of Donald Trump. Now a pariah, his op-ed in the New York Times on Monday will likely fall on deaf ears.

He said that the New Jersey and Virginia elections last week “just sent a resounding wake-up call to the Biden administration: if Democrats remain on their current course and keep coddling and catering to progressives, they could lose as many as 50 seats and control of the House in the 2022 midterm elections.”

He wrote that “only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022 and a shot at holding on to the presidency in 2024.”

Currently, polls are going against the administration. Wrote Penn: “According to our October Harvard CAPS/Harris poll, only 35 percent of registered voters approve of the administration’s immigration policies … [while] nearly nine in 10 voters express concern about inflation … 61 percent of voters blame the Biden administration for the increase in gas prices.”

That “wake-up call” in Virginia and New Jersey last week wasn’t a fluke, he said: “It’s important to be cleareyed about those election results.… Taxes mattered far more than cultural issues.”

This is the “wake-up call” that Democrats are missing, he wrote:

You can’t dismiss a clear electoral trend: the flight from the Democrats was disproportionately in the suburbs, and the idea that these home-owning, child-rearing, taxpaying voters just want more progressive candidates is not a sustainable one.

What the Biden administration must do, according to Penn, is to return to the political center by ending the flow of illegals flooding the country, slowing the push to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar, let the supply chain fiasco fix itself without government interference, and cut the social/welfare spending buried in Build Back Better.

Penn is a realist, and he admits that this is not likely to happen: “Of course, this may require some Houdini-like leadership … but this is the best strategy to protect Democratic candidates in 2022.”

 

He concludes that only about a quarter of the electorate calls itself “liberal,” while “the rest of the electorate nationally is moderate or conservative.” Consequently, “the message from last Tuesday is that the Democrats have gone too far to the left.… Even Bergen County in New Jersey, a socially liberal bedroom community outside New York City, almost swung into the Republican column.”

The swing voters will rule in 2022, wrote Penn:

[Without them] the party will be left with … too small of a base of urban voters and coastal elites.… The risk is that the Democratic Party … will follow its greatest success with an extended period in the desert.

The polling continues to prove that Penn’s recommendations are likely to fall on deaf ears. The Emerson College and the USA Today/Suffolk University polls taken after the New Jersey and Virginia elections showed Biden’s approval dropping to record lows. They showed an increasing number of voters, including Democrats, not wanting Biden to run for reelection in 2024.

In 2010, Democrats took an historic shellacking in the midterms, losing a total of 69 House and Senate seats. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that could happen again in 2022. In an interview with Judge Jeanine, he said, “My guess is that [Republicans] will pick up between 40-70 seats in the House and at least four seats in the Senate.”

Judge Jeanine asked him if the Democrats’ push to pass Build Back Better will help their chances in 2022. Replied Gingrich, “I think it will be a disaster. The reason is basic: the American people don’t want big government socialism. They want control over their own lives. And the resent having Washington try to dictate everything from masks to vaccinations. I think it will get worse, not better, for the Democrats.”

 

Biden Nominee Wants to Starve, Bankrupt America’s Oil and Gas Industry

Wednesday, 10 November 2021 13:54
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, November 10, 2021:  

Saule Omarova, the communist Cornell law professor whom Biden has nominated as Comptroller of the Currency, has big plans not only for banks and private bank accounts but for oil and gas companies as well.

Thanks to research done by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative group that does deep research into nominees such as Omarova, Democrat senators on the bubble over her nomination now have additional proof of her disqualifications for the position.

The AAF found a virtual seminar that occurred in March where Omarova held forth on the topic of America’s oil and gas industry. Speaking at the Jain Family Institute’s “Social Wealth Seminar” in March, she said:

Here’s what I’m thinking about … primarily the coal and oil and gas industry. A lot of smaller players in that industry are going to probably go bankrupt in short order.

 

At least, we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change, right?

Presumably there was abundant applause from her audience supporting the institute. It bills itself as “an applied research organization in the social sciences … including research in … guaranteed income.”

AAF found another treasure: In speaking at another Jain Family function in May, Omarova said, “So, the way we basically get rid of those carbon financiers is, we starve them of their sources of capital.”

 

Under her plan for the banks, all capital would be controlled, allocated, and dispersed according to a national plan. The plan, of course, would eliminate financing for any industry that doesn’t fit into the green agenda. Viola! The U.S. would have completely clean air, and become a complete financial communist dictatorship in the process.

 

The Wall Street Journal dismembered her nomination: “Omarova thinks … prices, pay scales [and] capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government.” The Journal excoriated her positions, which would “effectively end banking as we know it,” putting every checking and savings account held privately in the country into the Federal Reserve. After all, it would avoid all the messiness of having to deal with that friendly but highly inefficient bank around the corner.

That’s the communist premise: The federal government runs everything, for the good of everybody, based on decisions made by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Thomas Jones, the co-founder of the AAF, said the evidence now available proves that she is an outright communist: “Saule Omarova has a classical Marxist view [she graduated from Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship; her thesis is entitled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution”] where she wants the government to run all sectors of the economy and part of that is implementing the Green New Deal. And you can only do that by destroying the oil and gas industry.”

Democrat senators on the Senate Banking Committee are having second thoughts. Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Krysten Simena (D-Ariz.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) each have major constituencies in the energy industry in their state. It will take just one of them to deep-six Omarova’s nomination, as not a single Republican supports it.

Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann