Texas Dems Walk Out on Voter Integrity
As the Texas legislature neared the end of its session and was poised to pass a new voting integrity bill, SB 7, Democrat lawmakers snuck out of the building, preventing the quorum required for voting on legislation. It was a foregone conclusion that Texas’s Republican-controlled legislature would pass the bill, and Republican Governor Greg Abbott promised to sign it.
Democrats justified pulling the political stunt by falsely charging that the new voter integrity bill is an effort to suppress minority voting. However, as with the charges leveled against Georgia’s voter integrity law, the Texas bill is anything but suppressive. Instead, it works to close potential windows for fraud opened by accommodations during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
As the Wall Street Journal editorial board pointedly observes, “The 67-page bill would roll back Covid-19 innovations like Harris County’s drive-through voting and 24-hour voting. Those options were used disproportionately last year by black and Hispanic residents. But when did emergency procedures amid a 100-year pandemic suddenly become the new baseline? It’s hardly crazy to think polling-place shenanigans might be more likely at 3 a.m.”
Furthermore, the bill sets early voting at a generous two weeks, while creating a new ID number-based system for authenticating absentee ballots rather than the notoriously unreliable system of trying to match signatures.
While not going as far as to call the Texas voter integrity law “Jim Crow,” socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden did ridiculously assert that “democracy itself is in peril.” What may be in peril is the Democrat Party’s scheme to prevent commonsense protections against voter fraud like voter ID laws while expanding their strategy of bulk-mail balloting.
Moreover, as Ben Shapiro aptly noted, “TX Dems walked out to deny a quorum, and then called on the federal Dems to completely override the principles of federalism and take control of voting procedure. This is not, apparently, a threat to democracy. It seems ‘threat to democracy’ just means anything Democrats oppose.”
Fortunately, Texans have a tough, no-nonsense governor who quickly punched back at Democrat shenanigans by calling for a special emergency session. “I declare Election Integrity and Bail Reform to be a must-pass emergency for this legislative session,” Abbott declared. “It is deeply disappointing and concerning for Texans that neither will reach my desk. Ensuring the integrity of our elections and reforming a broken bail system remain emergencies in Texas. They will be added to the special session agenda.”
But Abbott didn’t stop there. He also warned Democrats, “I will veto Article 10 of the budget passed by the legislature. Article 10 funds the legislative branch. No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities.”
As with the Wuhan lab-leak theory, the mainstream media and Democrats have teamed up to declare that any suggestion of fraud in the 2020 election is tantamount to spreading misinformation. Ironically, Democrat lawmakers in Washington are the ones who have pushed their partisan election “reform” via HR 1, while at the same time insisting there was no election fraud. The question then obviously arises: If there was no election fraud, then why the insistence on passing their massive election reform bill? Keep in mind that HR 1 was created well before the 2020 election.
Republican-controlled states’ efforts to pass election integrity bills have everything to do with both reining in the sweeping COVID-induced election rule changes and preventing Democrats in Washington from turning the entire nation’s election system into California’s. This also explains why socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and others continue to disingenuously slander Republican election integrity bills as “voter suppression.” The real voter suppression is diluting the legitimate votes of honest citizens by preventing the enactment of sensible protections against voter fraud. That’s especially true given that socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden has opened the U.S. southern border to record numbers of illegal immigrants now flowing into the country. ~The Patriot Post
scumbag/liar- Kamala Harris’s Disgraceful Memorial Day
Were there any lingering doubt about Vice President scumbag/liar-Kamala Harris’s unfitness for office, she removed it on Saturday with a four-word abomination of a Memorial Day message.
“Enjoy the long weekend,” she tweeted above a dazzling profile picture of Hers Truly. And that was it. No mention of the reason for that long weekend, nor any acknowledgment of the awesome and deeply sobering sacrifice of the warriors, the American Patriots, who made it possible.
Her tone-deaf tweet speaks for itself, but New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, himself an Iraq War veteran, properly finished it for the rest of us: “…and pay tribute to the courageous men and women of our nation’s military who sacrificed their lives in defense of our freedoms and liberties.”
We wonder, in all seriousness: Where’s the apology? Because this was profoundly insulting to every American who understands what Memorial Day means. Remarkably, as we went to press, the tweet is still up there, visible for all to see.
Said another veteran, a Marine named Joey Jones, a Fox News contributor and a former bomb technician who left two legs in Afghanistan, “Just remember, it’s not ‘the Republicans’ who make the argument that Republicans are the only pro-military pro-patriotism culture party.”
“This is my Uncle Walter, Madame scumbag/liar-Vice President,” wrote another Twitter respondent. “He won’t be enjoying the ‘long weekend’ because he was KIA at Peleliu in September 1944, advancing with his fellow Marines to take the island’s airfield. Obliterated by an enemy artillery shell. He had just turned 18.”
But, yeah, Madame scumbag/liar-Vice President, enjoy the long weekend.
On Sunday, scumbag/liar-Harris and her handlers tried to do some damage control: “Throughout our history our service men and women have risked everything to defend our freedoms and our country,” she said in a sorry do-over. “As we prepare to honor them on Memorial Day, we remember their service and their sacrifice.”
As a politician, scumbag/liar-Harris checks a lot of demographic boxes: female, black, Asian, and the like. But as a potential commander-in-chief, she’s a walking, talking how-not-to course. More evidence of that was on display Friday during a commencement address she gave to the U.S. Naval Academy. Here’s an excerpt:
You are ocean engineers who will help navigate ships through thinning ice. You are mechanical engineers who will help reinforce sinking bases. You are electrical engineers who will soon help convert solar and wind energy into power, convert solar and wind energy into combat power. And just ask any Marine today, would she rather carry 20 pounds of batteries or a rolled-up solar panel? And I am positive she will tell you about a solar panel, and so would he.
As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York noted, “Left almost entirely undiscussed was the more basic mission of the Navy and the Marines. They fight wars. Heavily armed, they protect U.S. interests and shipping and project America’s power at sea and around the world. They have done it, with great valor and sometimes at enormous personal sacrifice for sailors and Marines, for more than 200 years.”
York also contrasted scumbag/liar-Harris’s address with one given four years ago to that year’s graduating class of Midshipmen. The contrast couldn’t have been more stark. Nor could their performance as vice presidents of the United States, nor could their respective Memorial Day messages.
“Today is Memorial Day in America,” tweeted Mike Pence, “the day that we honor all those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Their duty was to serve, our duty is to remember, and their memory will live in our hearts forever. God Bless our fallen heroes and their families.”
Exactly that. God bless our fallen heroes and their families.
Either that, or just enjoy the long weekend. ~The Patriot Post
Does Pandemic Economic Recovery Show Two Americas?
John Edwards may not have coined the idea of “two Americas,” but he did bring the phrase to prominence in the 2004 presidential race, resurrecting it for his second bid in 2008. His message was that there’s one America for the powerful and one for the rest, and his intent was to show that Democrats are always the ones to fix it. The truth is, to the extent his bromide is true, the division is largely because of Democrats.
New statistics on the two recoveries from the pandemic-induced economic crisis brought this phrase back to mind.
Comparing the April unemployment rates on a state-by-state basis reveals that there has been a Republican recovery and a Democrat, well, non-recovery. In fact, say Allysia Finley and Esther Plecy in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “It’s rare to see differences that are so stark based on party control in states. But the current partisan differences reflect different policy choices over the length and severity of pandemic lockdowns and now government benefits such as jobless insurance.”
Before “15 days to flatten the curve” became “15 months” in some quarters, the nation largely shut down in an attempt to prevent the rampant spread of COVID from overwhelming our hospitals and healthcare workers. The economic devastation was quick and abysmal.
Unfortunately, the goal shifted from the reasonable to the unattainable — eliminating the spread of the coronavirus entirely. At least that’s what Democrat governors and mayors across the nation seemed to convey as they kept their states and economies shuttered for months on end. Their real aim was the acquisition of power, and most of them used it to handicap the economy to defeat Donald Trump and make more Americans dependent on the government. High unemployment is literally being subsidized — except in GOP-controlled states that have eliminated “enhanced” benefits.
Thus, here we are, 15 months after the shutdowns began, looking at starkly different unemployment numbers. Finley and Plecy lay it out:
With some exceptions, those run by Democrats such as California (8.3%) and New York (8.2%) continued to suffer significantly higher unemployment than those led by Republicans such as South Dakota (2.8%) and Montana (3.7%). …
Nine of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates are led by Republicans. The exception is Wisconsin whose Supreme Court last May invalidated Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s lockdown. The unemployment rate in Wisconsin is 3.9% — the same as Indiana — compared to 7.1% in Illinois whose Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been slow to reopen.
Well, at least Democrat governors saved lives, right? Not exactly. Power Line’s John Hinderaker does the math and it’s not good. “I added up the coronavirus deaths per 100,000 of population, according to the CDC, for the ten states in the Journal’s chart with the highest unemployment rates, and averaged them,” Hinderaker writes. “I found that the ten states with highest unemployment averaged 202.6 deaths per 100,000. I then did the same thing for the ten states (all but Wisconsin with Republican governors) with the lowest unemployment. Their average deaths per 100,000 was much lower, at 134.5.”
Now, as Hinderaker and his Power Line colleagues admit, it’s certainly not entirely fair to compare the death rate of a densely populated place like New York City with that of a rural state like South Dakota. And there’s enough data to at least make it arguable that lockdowns (and mask mandates) did reduce deaths, even if they were far less effective than proponents would have us believe.
Ultimately, this is not a black-and-white argument, or even a red-and-blue one. That, actually, is the real point, and it’s something politicians of any stripe rarely admit: There are tradeoffs with policy choices. Lockdowns, for example, did one thing at the cost of another. The job of a leader is to speak honestly about the choices we face, not to pretend that they are our saviors and their policies have no downside. ~The Patriot Post
Slippery socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe’s BIG Lie
It’s probably pure coincidence that liar-Hunter Biden’s money-for-nothing Burisma salary got cut by a third in early 2017, just two months after his dad left office. And then halved the following year. Pure coincidence.
Only the most jaded of observers could think it had anything to do with the fact that his dad was no longer setting U.S. policy in Ukraine. After all, liar-Hunter still brought plenty to the table: his encyclopedic knowledge of the energy industry, his familiarity with the country and its customs, his fluency in his native tongue, and, of course, his sterling reputation for decency and clean living.
One wonders what our crackerjack FBI has been doing all this time with Hunter’s laptop, because it sure seems to have plenty of incriminating information on it. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has been sifting through emails and invoices and the like, and putting together a book due out in September titled Laptop from Hell: liar-Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide. We can’t wait.
As Devine reports, “The Ukrainian energy company that was paying President socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s son liar-Hunter, $1 million a year, cut his monthly compensation in half [beginning] two months after his father ceased to be vice president. … In 2016, liar-Hunter’s total income from Burisma was $999,996. In [May] 2017 it dropped to $665,000, and then $498,000 in 2018.”
Still, according to an email from Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi, the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy company was eager to retain whatever influence-peddling services liar-Hunter could provide. “We are very much interested in working closely together,” Pozharskyi said, “and the remuneration is still the highest in the company and higher than the standard director’s monthly fees. I am sure you will find it both fair and reasonable.”
Yep, pure coincidence. Just like it was pure coincidence that Michelle scumbag/liar-nObama nearly tripled her “community affairs” salary at the University of Chicago Hospital — from $121,910 in 2004, just before scumbag/liar-Barack was elected to the Senate, to a cool $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office.
Anyway, nice work if you can get it. But you can only get it if you’re a connected Democrat.
“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden snarled back on September 19, 2020, at a campaign event in Iowa — the state that got to know him best, and the state that relegated him to a telling fourth-place finish in its caucuses. “Here’s what I know: Trump should be investigated,” he added. “Ask the right questions!”
Ask the right questions, eh? liar-Hunter’s former business associate, Tony Bobulinski, gave the corrupt mainstream media all sorts of great questions back in October, just before the election, but reporters weren’t interested.
Still, we’ll give the president one more chance to come clean: If you never spoke to your son about his overseas business dealings, then what did you and liar-Hunter talk about at that secret dinner on April 16, 2015, at Café Milano in Georgetown? You remember — the dinner he arranged so he could introduce you to his Ukrainian, Russian, and Kazakhstani business associates.
“The reason for the dinner is ostensibly to discuss food security,” liar-Hunter told one of the attendees via email. “Dad will be there but keep that between us for now.”
Yeah, better keep that under wraps. We wouldn’t want the American people to think that a future U.S. president lied to the American people about his sleazy son’s business dealings. Or worse, that a sitting U.S. vice president was working a side hustle with that same son, trading on the family name instead of tending to the affairs of state. ~The Patriot Post
Facebook’s ‘Fact-Check’ Flip-Flop
One of the top reasons Facebook gives for justifying its censoring of users’ posts is to stop the spread of misinformation. It’s a disingenuous rationale no matter the earnestly declared “righteous” intentions of the Big Tech giant, as absolutely no person or organization has a corner on the truth. It was this reality, in fact, that led America’s Founding Fathers to wisely erect protection for the freedom of speech via the First Amendment. While that governs Congress’s conduct, it’s clear that Americans should cherish a prevailing culture of free speech.
It is pure hubris to suggest that an organization or entity can fairly and justly police thought. Yet it is this hubris that has led Facebook to believe it’s in a position to determine what information Americans should and should not be allowed to promulgate on its platform. It’s also an unsurprising irony that those running Facebook are often the most guilty when it comes to spreading misinformation via their media “fact-checkers” — partisans whose “facts” are more often than not better defined as opinions.
Case in point is Facebook’s recent about-face on the Wuhan lab-leak theory for the origin of COVID-19. When first broached back in March of last year, the mainstream media, out of its aggressive anti-Trump resistance, quickly derided early evidence and suggestions that the coronavirus may have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology rather than a Wuhan wet market. The lab-leak theory was the stuff of tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracists, The Journalists™ declared, and therefore even asking questions about it was classified by Facebook’s “fact-check” army as “misinformation.”
Fast-forward to a year later, and evidence continues to grow in support of the lab-leak theory, while at the same time the validity behind the wet market claims are fading. Even mainstream media outlets have suddenly become interested in the possibility that the ChiCom Virus pandemic actually did originate in a ChiCom lab. Facebook too has flipped.
Now that the one-time “crackpot theory” that Facebook censored and prevented from being posted on its platform has become the leading explanation for COVID-19’s origin, the social media giant has shifted its stance. Facebook says it “will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”
While it’s true that an increasing number of public health experts have begun favoring this theory — the excuse Facebook gives for its sudden change — the reality is that political considerations were the actual motivating factors behind the censorship in the first place. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board observes, “While a political or scientific claim is disfavored by government authorities, Facebook will limit its reach. When the government reduces its hostility toward an idea, so will Facebook.”
Just two years ago, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed, “I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.” However, when his own political interests were threatened, Zuckerberg clearly had little hesitation engaging in censorship for the sake of Democrats. This is yet another reason why Section 230 needs to be changed to prevent this kind of politically calculated abuse of free speech rights. ~The Patriot Post
Three Reasons to Vote Republican
My conversations with Democrats and Independents always circle back to the inception of the Republican Party, with President Abraham Lincoln being the first president to come from the newly established party. But why was it established at all? The very core value of the party is abolition.
Contrary to Leftmedia lemmings, the party did not use abolition as a strategic crutch to help the North win the Civil War. In fact, on July 6, 1854, an anti-slavery gathering called the Oaks Convention would be the inaugural political stage for the first Republican Party members. (The party itself was founded in Wisconsin in March of that year.) This new abolitionist party would facilitate freedom from tyranny for all enslaved peoples, while holding fast to the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The GOP still carries these values to this day, despite progressives insisting that the party “switched” somehow with the Democrat Party — the same party supported by slave owners and hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
Second, I continue to vote Red as the Republican Party is our last stronghold for freedom of speech. Social media is the epicenter for public discourse, yet platforms like Facebook and Twitter have taken their liberties too far to be considered “platforms.” Rather, the Big Tech entities behave as publishers, adding as many “fact-checking” stickers as possible on “incendiary” posts, while going as far as to ban a sitting president of the United States in Donald Trump.
Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hopes to turn the tables in favor of Floridians who embrace freedom of speech with SB 7072, which would require platforms like Facebook and Twitter to not only allow user posts but consistently apply their terms of service or face lawsuits. A model Republican leader, DeSantis has further emboldened my faith in the party. My hope is that his motion encourages more states to do the same.
Finally, I remain with the Republican Party due to its consistent commitment to free markets. Small businesses were among our biggest casualties during the COVID `pandemic,” leaving companies to survive on bread crumbs while power-hungry politicians forced many to fully shut down operations (with many closing their doors forever). In order to rebound, companies must be open to customers regardless of whether they wear a mask.
With the survival of the Texas economy in mind, Republican Governor Greg Abbott took the first step with his recent executive order prohibiting government entities from mandating masks in the Lone Star state. Only a true Republican could have made this decision that keeps freedom from medical discrimination at bay. After all, freedom is why the Republican Party was founded.
It’s not just Democrats and the politically illiterate that could use a history refresher. Republicans, too, can and should learn the roots of the party. And when more minorities come to understand what Republicans stand for, they’ll return home to the side of the aisle that fought for them in the first place. ~The Patriot Post
CAL THOMAS
The Commission We Really Need
Senate Republicans refused to go along with the House and establish a commission to investigate the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead, and more than 100 police officers injured. By a vote of 54 to 35, the bill to form the “bipartisan” commission failed. But who really believes that it would have been truly bipartisan? In Washington, virtually everything is partisan.
Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib attempted to make the case for a commission, even while acknowledging that trials, investigations by journalists and other information about the incident will eventually be known. He seems to think a commission made up of politicians will find credibility with most Americans. Probably the opposite will be true.
How about a commission to examine the source of the anger that produced the attack? The sources aren’t conservative talk radio or cable TV. They are merely conduits for many Americans who are fed up with their government and want it to return to the boundaries established by the Founders.
While violence and destruction were not justified on January 6, or at any other time, the riot might go a long way toward heading off future incidents if our leaders understood the depth of feeling held by those rioters who believe their country is being taken away from them without their consent.
We are told we must pay more taxes to a government that has misspent our money for years on programs that don’t work and to help politicians stay in office. We must live within our means, but the government is spending us into unsustainable debt.
We must obey all laws or suffer civil or criminal penalties, yet we see on news channels (but not all, which is another issue) countless people breaking the law to illegally cross our southern border. The IRS estimates that only 50 percent to 75 percent of those here without authority pay federal, state or local taxes. Who foots the remainder of the bill? If we crossed illegally into other countries, especially Mexico, we would surely wind up in a jail cell.
We watch as public schools teach critical race theory as part of what some consider historical revisionism and invite drag queens to middle-school Career Day.
The Pentagon demolished the Trump-era ban on transgender people in the military. They can now freely serve. I have yet to hear how this will promote unit cohesion, help us win wars and compete with the militaries of Russia and China, whose priorities are much different.
We spend record amounts of money on public education and yet American kids are behind Russia and China and many other countries in important subjects, such as math and science.
Notice there are no proposals for a commission to investigate Black Lives Matter, or the large amounts of dark money used by both parties flooding in to influence our elections. No, it is only people viewed as the “extreme right” who should be subject to investigations.
There are numerous quotes, even books, about nations that have crumbled under the weight of their own self-indulgence. None surpass the statement by our 16th president. Abraham Lincoln said: “From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”
If a commission looking into what fueled the January 6 riot is established, that quote would explain our suicidal tendencies. It might also explain the anger many feel. ~The Patriot Post
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