Deplorable scumbag/liar-Clinton Slams ‘Gun Worshipers’
If there’s one thing the scumbag/liar-Clintons have always done well, it’s projection. They are masters of accusing their political opponents of doing the very thing they themselves are doing. Decrying the “politics of personal destruction,” for example, was a favorite refrain of the scumbag/liar-Clintons in the ‘90s — all while they personally attacked and destroyed people.
scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton made the latest entry in this wretched practice with her vitriol against gun owners and Second Amendment defenders.
In excerpts from a soon-to-be-released interview with her own former campaign spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, scumbag/liar-Clinton railed against Senator Ted Cruz and other Republicans who oppose restricting gun rights and banning guns.
“The opportunists on the other side, like Cruz and his ilk, they know better,” scumbag/liar-Clinton argued. “They are in the position of trying to keep people really riled up and scared that sensible gun legislation like we had in the '90s for 10 years will somehow undermine their rights.” She continued, “Well, what about the rights of all the rest of us? The rights of us to go to work, go shopping, go on dates to the movie theater, go to school, for heaven’s sakes. What about the rest of us?”
But she wasn’t done. “You know, democracy is the balancing of interests and rights,” she explained, “and unfortunately at this time, the gun worshipers have a huge advantage because of the filibuster and because of their shameless exploitation of people’s unwarranted fears.”
Where to begin?
We suppose, first of all, we should address the projection. It is Democrats who routinely stand on the caskets of innocents to push for “common sense” gun control — laws that ban, restrict, or even confiscate firearms and components from the law-abiding in the name of stopping criminals from … breaking the law. It is Democrats who exploit people’s unwarranted fears by inflating mass shooting numbers and “gun deaths” generally so that they can blame the tools (and by extension lawful owners of those tools) rather than the perpetrators. It is Democrats who express selective outrage over certain murders to “keep people riled up and scared” while ignoring the culturally depraved bloodbath in Democrat-controlled inner cities.
scumbag/liar-Clinton commits at least two other offenses that require rebuttal. The first is about our system of government and rights. Our nation is a republic, not a democracy. And our government’s job is not to “balance” interests and rights; it is to, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “secure these rights.” Moreover, securing the God-given right to self-defense does not deprive someone else of their “right” to go to a movie, as scumbag/liar-Clinton argues. Besides, if going to a movie is suddenly a right, what are all these Democrat governors doing closing movie theaters with pandemic restrictions? Never mind keeping kids out of schools.
Finally, scumbag/liar-Clinton has engaged in, well, the politics of personal destruction. The same woman who in 2016 dismissively rejected half the American population as a “basket of deplorables” now slanders the 100 million or so Americans who own firearms as “gun worshipers.” Substitute “abortion” for “guns” and see how Democrats like it. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama once derided us for “bitterly clinging to guns.” Other Democrats likewise mock and cajole responsible gun owners for some kind of dogmatic offense.
Perhaps instead of these mean-spirited personal attacks they might consider their constitutional oaths and the true meaning of rights. In the meantime, they should quit projecting their faults onto the rest of us. ~The Patriot Post
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden’s SOCOM Diversity Dupe Dumped
This week, we noted the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden/ lowlife/liar-Harris regime’s appointment of a new “Chief of Diversity and Inclusion” for the U.S. Special Operations Command. This absurdity is part of Biden’s plan to ensure our military forces are woke and full of social justice warriors.
According to SOCOM, Mr. Richard Torres-Estrada will be implementing the “USSOCOM Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, which will guide the enterprise-wide effort to institutionalize and sustain Diversity and Inclusion.”
At least that was the plan before it was discovered that Torres-Estrada’s social media pages are littered with partisan political propaganda, including a comparison of Donald Trump with Adolph Hitler. For that reason, he (if I can use that pronoun) has been “reassigned,” (a.k.a. “dumped on some other federal agency”).
You would think, given the defense secretary’s recent “stand-down order” for a “top to bottom” review of military personnel in order to purge “political extremists” (a.k.a. “Trump supporters”), that somebody would have noticed Torres-Estrada’s left-wing social media posts before his appointment to oversee “Diversity and Inclusion” in the ranks of our nation’s most highly trained operators carrying out highly classified operations.
For the record, a quick check of Torres-Estrada’s work history indicates that he has the same military service record as the commander-in-chief who appointed him — none. But he does have a long bureaucratic history as a diversity officer. Given the fact socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden spent more than 45 years in the swamp doing nothing, I assume that Torres-Estrada looked “highly qualified.”
His reassignment not withstanding, socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden will announce some other woke Chief of Diversity and Inclusion to “institutionalize and sustain D&I” at SOCOM. Thus, I am including this note from my friend, Robert Schmidt, offering some timely perspective from a professional warfighter on the Demos’ “woke” military agenda:
My last assignment in the military, I was the Chief of Current Intelligence (the highest ranking naval officer in the Intelligence Directorate) of Special Operations Command South, the multi-service organization that oversaw the activities of all special operations forces in Central and South America, plus the Caribbean. By “special operations forces,” I am referring to naval special warfare operators (SEALs), Army Special Forces warriors (“green berets”), and other national assets. Though I am now retired from the Navy — which is why I am free to express my views publicly — I doubt that our special operators view the concept of “diversity and inclusion” and the Left’s “identity politics” differently now.
I have never been in any working environment that supported the concept of true “diversity and inclusion” more than the special operations world. The special operators I encountered were from many different races, ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, and they all worked together as one cohesive team, ignoring any identity factors that did not somehow affect the mission. For example, native Spanish speakers with dark complexions and hair blended in better in some Latin American operational environments than pale, red-haired, non-Spanish speakers. When I refer to “diversity and inclusion” in the spec ops world, I’m not referring to it as defined by the political Left. I’m referring to literal “diversity and inclusion,” not the “woke” nonsense.
To the Left, “diversity and inclusion” is based on the premise: “We believe minority groups cannot compete equally in this white-biased world, because it was intentionally built to be inherently unfair to minorities, so we’re changing the rules to give minority people advantages to help them succeed, even if they are not the most qualified from the standpoint of skills, education, or abilities.” In the spec ops world, the concept of “diversity and inclusion” is both more straightforward and more complex, because it’s not about “who wins,” it’s about “who qualifies.” Thus, in the universe of special operations, “diversity and inclusion” have nothing whatsoever to do with “minority status,” based on skin color, race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion.
For special operators, it’s all about the good of the team, and any person of any background, who has the operational skills and courage, the loyalty to the team’s code of conduct, and the physical ability required to carry out the mission, is respected for their abilities and achievements, and is welcome to be on the team. All others are not welcome, because they would adversely impact the team’s ability to successfully execute the mission.
So, what matters most is a person’s abilities and their courage to complete the mission, not their “diversity.” Special operators celebrate and admire achievement and success, not “identity.”
Taking all of the foregoing into consideration, the next “Chief of Diversity and Inclusion” at SOCOM will not improve the morale or the operational effectiveness of special ops teams. That Biden appointee is going to be a nuisance that command will demand be tolerated. The last thing SOCOM needs is to have its modus operandus undermined by a career bureaucrat — especially one who has never served our nation in uniform. Special operations is a very dangerous occupation, but “woke” politicians and their “social justice warriors” don’t care about military mission. All those leftist cadres care about is the warm, fuzzy feeling of smug self-satisfaction they get from virtue signaling — forcing their “morally superior” policies on the rest of us. They do so at great peril to our nation.
Finally, socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris probably missed this Harvard Business Review study, “Why Diversity Programs Fail.” The authors note: “In analyzing three decades’ worth of data from more than 800 U.S. firms, and interviewing hundreds of line managers and executives at length, we’ve seen that companies get better results when they ease up on the control tactics. … Companies do a better job of increasing diversity when they forgo the control tactics and frame their efforts more positively.”
I’m sure the same holds true in government bureaucracies, but “diversity and inclusion” are not the leftists’ underlying motives. They want to keep all their constituents divided up by innate attributes — and to do so they have to make those attributes more visible, not less.
~The Patriot Post
Cali Teachers Favor Illegal Immigrants
That video, by the way, was from her trip last week to West Haven Child Development Center in Connecticut. By now, she’s probably ROTFL, given the decision of San Diego schoolteachers to provide in-person instruction to unaccompanied immigrant children being housed at the San Diego Convention Center — despite the alarmingly high COVID-19 infection rate among those children.
As The Washington Free Beacon reports, “The San Diego County Office of Education published a notice Monday asking for local teachers to participate in an ‘in-person educational program’ for unaccompanied migrant girls who are being held in a convention center.”
Remember: California’s six million public school kids have been consigned to virtual learning (read: non-learning) for more than a year thanks to the teachers unions and the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, whose own children have been back in school for months while reaping the benefits of an in-person, private-school education.
It’s good to be the king.
As for the high rate of coronavirus infection among those immigrant children: Wasn’t the risk of infection the entire point of locking down our schools and “educating” our children remotely? Isn’t that precisely why our nation’s lazy, greedy, and cowardly teachers unions have ignored the science and resisted the calls of everyone from Donald Trump to Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer to reopen the schools and rescue our children from the multifaceted failure of remote learning? Isn’t that what the unions’ members were afraid of — getting what for 99.7% of us has been the functional equivalent of a bad cold?
Shut up, San Diego County School Superintendent Paul Gothold explained.
“All children in California, regardless of immigration status, have a constitutional right to education,” said Gothold. “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children. School employees have already been asked to go above and beyond during the pandemic, and we are committed to ensuring every student has access to a quality education while they are in our region.” So why can’t these kids learn remotely like other California kids? Remotely from their home countries.
“A quality education” is certainly a noble goal. And we’re all in favor of following one’s “moral obligations.” But what about the obligation that our nation’s teachers have to the children of American citizens? Aren’t we incessantly told by the Left that everything it does is “for the children”?
Stanford University Professor of Medicine Jay Bhattacharya recently declared the COVID-19 lockdowns to be the country’s “single worst public health mistake” in the last 100 years.
“We will be counting the catastrophic health and psychological harms, imposed on nearly every poor person on the face of the earth, for a generation,” said Bhattacharya, who months ago coauthored the commonsensical Great Barrington Declaration.
And if our predominantly blue-state lockdowns were our worst public health mistake of the past century, then our predominantly blue-state school lockdowns have been the worst of the worst.
As County Supervisor Jim Desmond put it, “The San Diego County Board of Education will be sending teachers for in-person learning for the migrant children at the convention center. It’s great there’s in-person learning for them, I wish every child in San Diego County was allowed the same opportunity.”
Indeed, for every child in San Diego County, and for every child currently suffering under the abject failure of remote learning.
~The Patriot Post
In Wake of Pandemic, Homeschooling Explodes
One year ago, noting the increase in homeschooled children as a result of schools shutting down over the ChiCom Virus pandemic, it was impossible to predict just how drastic that shift would end up being.
Initially, the shift was a matter of necessity. As entire school systems remained closed for in-person learning, and virtual learning was shown to be largely ineffective, parents looked for ways to make sure their children didn’t fall behind. Unable to afford private schooling, many parents turned to homeschooling.
Other parents, whose children were doing school virtually, got to see firsthand their children being indoctrinated by the destructive Critical Race Theory and its call for “social justice,” which taught children to hate their country and anyone who is white. They were also immersed in “gender theory,” which teaches the lie that sex/gender is a social construct rather than a biological reality.
This is on top of the inherent and embedded flaws in America’s public school system, an anachronistic throwback to the dawn of the Industrial Age, when industrial barons sought to give rural men, women, and children just enough education to mold them into compliant workers.
As Frederick T. Gates, chairman of the General Education Board (founded and funded by industrialist John D. Rockefeller to push for mandatory schooling), declared, “In our dream … the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters.”
The results have been disastrous over time. In 2019, nearly 70% of America’s schoolchildren did not meet reading proficiency standards set by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and that was a decline from the previous year.
As poor as the state of education in America has become in recent decades, the quality plummeted even more over the last year as the number of hours students spent learning declined precipitously.
It’s hard to know which situation is worse — millions of children going to school to be poorly educated, or not going to school at all.
Teachers unions have fought tooth and nail to prevent schools from reopening, even as they demand higher pay, more resources, and fewer hours worked. In Chicago, teachers were told not to reveal they had been vaccinated because it would undermine the union’s efforts to keep teachers working from home. As of last month, less than half of America’s elementary schools were open for full-time classroom instruction, doing irreparable damage to the children’s long-term learning and lifetime earnings prospects.
And that’s not even factoring in the incredible emotional damage being done to children who have been kept in a constant state of fear and isolated from their friends and peer groups. Rates of depression and suicide among children and teens have jumped as government-enforced lockdowns dragged on.
If one thing has become abundantly clear, it’s that with Democrat politicians and teachers unions, the welfare of America’s children is the absolute last thing on their mind.
But as these politicians and unions abdicate their duty to America’s children, parents are finally waking up and taking responsibility for their children’s education.
According to a recent report by the Census Bureau, there has been an explosion in the number of parents opting to homeschool their children. It should be noted that the enrollment question was written in such a way as to verify true homeschooling rather than virtual learning through a public or private school.
Between 1999 and 2012, homeschooling rates roughly doubled, and since then held steady at about 3.3% of all American schoolchildren. By April 2020, that had increased to 5.4%, only to see an even bigger jump by the first week of October to 11.1%.
Maybe the most striking thing about the surge in homeschooling is where it is occurring. By far the largest jump in homeschooling has come in black households, where rates jumped from 3.3% before the pandemic to 16.1% by the fall, a nearly five-fold increase. The rate for Hispanic households nearly doubled, from 6.2% to 12.1%, with a jump from 4.9% to 8.8% in Asian households. White households nearly doubled as well, from 5.7% to 9.7%.
When the pandemic is finally in the rearview, we will be hard-pressed to find anything positive about the period dominated by government lockdowns, mask mandates, widespread fear, millions of jobs lost, and freedoms infringed upon or stripped away under the guise of combating the virus.
Yet one bright silver lining may just be that we reached a critical mass of parents who finally realized not only how inadequate was the “education” delivered by our national public school system but how much anti-religious, anti-science indoctrination had been occurring.
We may find that we now have millions more children educated by the parents who love them and are deeply invested in their success. Parents who taught their children not only reading, writing, and arithmetic but taught them to love God, love their country, love themselves, and love their fellow man. ~The Patriot Post
A Small Win in the Pronoun War
A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled last Friday in favor of former Shawnee State University professor Nicholas Meriwether, overturning a lower court’s decision that had dismissed the professor’s lawsuit against the university for violating his First Amendment rights. Meriwether contends that SSU violated his rights by dismissing him after he refused on religious grounds to address a gender-dysphoric student by his preferred feminine pronouns.
Back in 2018, a male student in Meriwether’s philosophy class approached the professor requesting that he be referred to by feminine pronouns due to his gender “identity.” When Meriwether refused, on the grounds that doing so would compromise his deeply held Christian beliefs, the student became irate and vulgar, promising to get the professor fired and taking the matter to the dean, claiming a Title IX violation.
Initially, the school accepted a compromise from Meriwether wherein he would only use the student’s last name without any gendered titles, such as “Mr.” or “Miss.” However, administrators soon changed their minds after the student objected and threatened to hire a lawyer. Meriwether was subsequently fired for refusal “to recognize” a student’s gender identity and for “disparate treatment” that created “a hostile environment.”
In issuing his decision, Judge Amul Thapar, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote, “[Meriwether’s] sincerely held religious beliefs prevented him from communicating messages about gender identity that he believes are false.” Even in a private university, he added, “the First Amendment protects the academic speech of university professors.”
Thapar further observed, “Traditionally, American universities have been beacons of intellectual diversity and academic freedom. They have prided themselves on being forums where controversial ideas are discussed and debated. And they have tried not to stifle debate by picking sides. But Shawnee State chose a different route: It punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue. And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment. The district court dismissed the professor’s free-speech and free-exercise claims. We see things differently and reverse.”
While this is indeed a win for Prof. Meriwether, it is far from decisive, as it simply allows him to proceed with his wrongful dismissal lawsuit against SSU. He has no guarantee of succeeding. Regarding the larger culture war issue — free speech versus compelled speech — this decision is certainly welcome, though it still isn’t anywhere near as decisive as what’s needed. However, it does push back against the assertion often advanced by the Left: that constitutional protections like the First Amendment can only be applied when directly involving government authority. Free speech is a cultural value, not just a right for Congress to protect.
It will be telling to see if Meriwether’s lawsuit is successful now that he’s won the right to continue pursuing it. ~The Patriot Post
Guns, Race, and Culture
“Shootings never stopped during the pandemic,” blared the Washington Post headline. “2020 was the deadliest gun violence year in decades.”
The numbers bear it out: According to the article, there were 3,600 more shooting deaths in 2020 than in 2017, the next-deadliest recent year. This marks the highest one-year increase in homicides since such record-keeping began, and much of it occurred in our nation’s big cities, which saw a 30% spike.
The Post then goes on to decry this awful increase of deaths, noting that the majority of “gun violence” occurs “in Black and Brown communities” and pointing the finger at the scourge of COVID-19. The spread of the virus, the article tells us, hurt anti-crime efforts; the shutdowns increased unemployment and shuttered schools and other community programs; and all this generally jacked up our stress levels.
True enough. It stands to reason that folks are more on edge during a pandemic. But then the Post points the finger at police brutality: “The police killing of George Floyd,” the authors write, “caused the collapse of public confidence in law enforcement.”
Ah, yes. Nothing turns our nation’s “Black and Brown communities” into urban O.K. Corrals like a single rogue cop in South Minneapolis.
And yet, buried 11 paragraphs deep within the article is this telling statistic: “An analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found Black males between the ages of 15 and 34 accounted for 37 percent of gun homicides, even though they made up 2 percent of the U.S. population — a rate 20 times that of White males of the same age.”
So, young black men are gunning each other down at a rate 20 times that of young white men. But the Post’s Reis Thebault and Danielle Rindler don’t seem the least bit interested in drilling down into this awful statistic. Nor do any of the researchers, social scientists, and urban studies professors they interviewed for the piece.
Why, it’s as if they’re worried they’ll be branded as racists for suggesting that culture might have something to do with it. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama had eight years to address this issue, but he pretty much squandered the bully pulpit. Even today, he seems utterly uninterested in asking the tough questions.
“It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so,” scumbag/liar-nObama wrote last week. “It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence. But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war. We can overcome opposition by cowardly politicians and the pressure of a gun lobby that opposes any limit on the ability of anyone to assemble an arsenal. We can, and we must.”
scumbag/liar-nObama, though, like others on the Left, is missing the key points about violence entirely.
First, while deaths caused by firearms are indeed up, mass shootings of the kind that compelled him to write the above piece are down considerably. According to the Post’s own database, “There was one mass shooting every 73 days in 2020, compared with one every 36 days in 2019 and one every 45 days in 2017 and 2018.” (And that’s with a pretty generous definition of “mass shooting.” Very few of those are Atlantas or Boulders.)
Second, most intentional deaths inflicted with guns in this country aren’t committed by “those with hate in their hearts” turning their “weapons of war” on one another. No, most of them are self-inflicted. Last year, gun suicides outnumbered gun homicides roughly 24,000 to 20,000.
Third, regarding those “weapons of war,” scumbag/liar-nObama is no doubt referring to the Left’s favorite Second Amendment bogeyman — the so-called assault rifle. And yet, according to FBI crime reports, of the more than 100,000 gun homicides in the U.S. between 2007 and 2017, only 253 were victims of an AR-type rifle. That’s about one-fourth of 1% — or one death for every 400 inflicted by guns. So let’s stop talking about “assault weapons” as if they’re really part of the problem.
And finally, let’s start talking about the cultural crime scene whereby one race of Americans slaughters each other at a far, far higher rate than any other race or ethnic group. Let’s see if we can get scumbag/liar-nObama and others to stop obsessing about the 14 unarmed blacks who were fatally shot by police in 2019, and instead start talking about the 6,500-or-so blacks being murdered each year by other blacks. Unless and until we do, our nation’s black-on-black genocide will continue unchecked. ~The Patriot Post
COVID Vaccine Passports?
Will Americans need COVID-19 vaccine passports in order to travel? The socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden- lowlife/liar-Harris administration is reportedly looking into creating such vaccine-related credentials for travel, most specifically regarding airline travel. According to reports, the airline industry has been lobbying the White House to come up with some kind of health form verification in order to end both traveler confusion and lift current travel restrictions.
Working with technology and travel companies, the Department of Health and Human Services has taken the lead in “coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients.” Zients explained, “Our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy.”
The obvious problem with a vaccine passport is that it creates yet more government intrusion into our private lives. Furthermore, it opens up a Pandora’s box for potential legalized medical-based discrimination.
While the White House is actively considering some form of vaccine passport program, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to do just the opposite, promising on Monday to take executive action to prohibit vaccine passports.
DeSantis explained his position: “We’ve always said we want to provide [the COVID vaccine] for all but mandate it for none. Now, with something that while it was advised to take, particularly if you’re vulnerable, we were not going to force you to do it. So, there was never under discussion any mandates to take vaccines. … The flip side of that, though, with these vaccine passports, it’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be able to participate in normal society. … So, we’re not supportive of that. I think it’s something that people have certain freedoms and individual liberties to make decisions for themselves.”
DeSantis also signed into law legislation that protects business from being held liable for COVID-19. “We don’t want to be in a situation where people are scared of being sued, just for doing normal things,” he contended. “And so, we worked very early on to look at to see ways that we could provide some certainty for both businesses, and healthcare providers. This was obviously a top priority for many of us up here. And I think that the legislature has been able to deliver today.”
The simple fact is the loss of privacy leads directly to a loss of individual freedom. The excuse being made today for needing a vaccine travel passport for COVID is to ensure safety, but it will quite likely be expanded to include other medical conditions. As more folks are vaccinated and as our country and the world gets closer to herd immunity, the current travel restrictions can naturally be relaxed and eliminated. If other countries make demands for entry, they are more than free to do so. But in the U.S., we prize Liberty and protect individual freedom. This attitude should be expressed in our reaction to COVID. ~The Patriot Post
HANS VON SPAKOVSKY
The Left’s ‘Jim Crow’ Rhetoric Is Absurd, Insulting, and Dishonest
The obnoxious — and patently false — attacks on Georgia’s new election reform bill, which compare it to the hideous Jim Crow laws of the long-gone “Old South,” are absurd. They are also insulting to those who actually were kept from registering and voting decades ago.
The polemical taunts are directed toward two of the bill’s provisions, one that extends the state’s decade-old ID requirement to absentee ballots and another that attempts to prevent campaigns and party activists from trying to corruptly influence voters by providing them with money, gifts, food, and water in polling places.
The critics don’t seem to have actually read the bill or understand that similar provisions already exist in federal law.
Let’s take a look at the first provision, which requires voters to provide an ID to receive an absentee ballot.
Georgia has had a law in place since the 2008 presidential election that requires a voter to show a government-issued photo ID when he or she votes in person.
When a federal judge threw out the lawsuit against the law in 2007 (amid similar “Jim Crow” comparisons), he specifically noted that in two years of litigation, the challengers could not produce a single resident of the state who would be unable to vote because of the new ID requirement.
Georgia provides a free photo ID to anyone who doesn’t already have one. We have more than a decade’s worth of Georgia’s turnout data in election after election that graphically shows that the ID provision does not prevent anyone — including minorities — from voting. Simply extending the ID requirement to absentee ballots is a much-needed, commonsense reform that voters support.
But what does the provision actually say? Section 25 of the bill doesn’t even require voters to provide a photocopy of their ID. Instead, the voter can simply write “the number of his or her Georgia driver’s license or identification card” on the application for the absentee ballot.
Moreover, if the voter doesn’t have such a Georgia ID card, she can “provide a copy of a form of identification listed” in another code section of Georgia law (§ 21-2-417(c)).
And what does that code section say? That you can satisfy the ID requirement with a “copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of such elector.”
Now, where do you think the Georgia Legislature got that language? It got it from federal law, the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
Section 303(b) of this law (codified at 52 U.S.C. § 21083) requires an individual who registered to vote by mail and who is voting for the first time in a federal election (whether in person or by mail) to instead provide “a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that show the name and address of the voter” if he doesn’t have a “current and valid photo identification.”
The language on voter IDs for absentee ballots in the new Georgia law is thus identical to the language in federal law, promulgated through the Help America Vote Act.
And guess who voted to approve this federal law in 2002? Why, then-Sen. socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden of Delaware. In fact, the vote was 92 to 2, and included in the “yes” votes were Sens. Dianne Fein-stein, D-Calif.; scumbag/liar-Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; dinly-Harry Reid, D-Nev.; and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Were they all imposing “Jim Crow” on American voters? I don’t seem to recall the Major League Baseball Players Association boycotting any of the states of these senators — or any of the other senators who voted in favor of the Help America Vote Act. Or boycotting its own stadiums, which require IDs to pick up will call tickets.
The second provision in question prevents food and water to be given to voters waiting at the polls.
Like almost every state, Georgia prohibits electioneering inside or within 150 feet of a polling place or within 25 feet of any voters waiting in line to vote. The prior law prohibited the solicitation of “votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material” within such distances.
Section 33 of the new bill simply added “nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gift, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to any elector” within such distances.
In other words, a candidate and his campaign staffers can’t show up at a polling place with a truckload of pizzas and sodas and start giving them to voters standing in line. The clear intent here is to prevent campaigns, candidates, and political operatives from unduly influencing or bribing voters with money or gifts, including food and drink.
Similarly, federal law (52 U.S.C. § 10307) also prohibits paying or offering to pay anyone to register to vote or to vote. In fact, this ban was part of the original Voting Rights Act of 1965.
According to the U.S. Justice Department’s handbook on “Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses,” this statute has been broadly interpreted to apply to “anything having monetary value, including cash, liquor, lottery chances, and welfare benefits such as food stamps.”
The idea that Georgia is somehow doing something nefarious by preventing gift-giving at the polls is bizarre and ignores the unfortunate, long history we have of this type of corruption and undue influence being used in our elections.
By the way, unmentioned in the hysterical criticisms is new language making it OK for poll officials to make “self-service water from an unattended receptacle” available to “an elector waiting in line.”
The Georgia bill that was just signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp has many provisions intended to protect the security and integrity of the election process, not prevent eligible individuals from voting or from succumbing to thirst while waiting in line to vote.
You have to have both access and security in elections and the criticisms of Georgia are intentionally misleading, shortsighted, and show remarkable ignorance of how voting and elections are actually conducted. ~The Patriot Post
GARY BAUER
COVID Passports?
Have you heard of the COVID passport? If not, you will soon. It’s a form of ID proving that you have had the COVID vaccine.
According to The Washington Post, the initiative is being spearheaded by the Department of Health and Human Services. But the Post adds, “The White House this month took on a bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work.”
Without your COVID passport, you may not be able to travel, send your kids to school, go to a sporting event, or perhaps even go to work. This is not an exaggeration, my friends.
Cruise lines have already announced they won’t accept passengers without proof of vaccinations. Rutgers University just announced that the vaccine will be mandatory for students to return to campus. And the European Union has already done it.
This is an outrageous idea that may well be illegal or unconstitutional. Kudos to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for quickly rejecting it.
To be clear: I am not anti-vaccine, but I know some with good reasons are. I also believe in freedom. I do not believe vaccines should be mandatory or that Americans should be required to produce their medical histories on demand wherever they may be.
The overwhelming majority of Americans are getting vaccinated. We have nothing to fear from others who choose not to. The evidence shows that the vaccines are highly effective, both in terms of preventing infection and preventing transmission of COVID.
There is something else very wrong about this. And it is hypocrisy.
The left furiously opposes requiring an ID to vote. President socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden is allowing thousands of illegal immigrants to enter our country with no IDs. Many are not even being tested for COVID. But Big Brother may try to force average Americans who want to participate in normal life to have a digital passport ID.
We’ve already made a lot of mistakes during the pandemic, including closing our schools which terribly hurt our children. We must not make another mistake like this crazy COVID passport ID.
Gloom & Doom
As we are vaccinating massive numbers of people and COVID-related deaths are declining, President socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky tried their best to frighten the country Monday, warning that horror waits just around the corner.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden blasted states for irresponsibly lifting mask mandates, and he requested that governors and mayors reimpose them. There’s just one problem: In the states that have lifted the mandates, COVID cases are going down. In states that still have mask mandates, cases are going up.
And what about Dr. Walensky, who went off script to warn us of her sense of “impending doom”? Well, who knows. Maybe counseling would be in order for her. That said, I, too, feel a sense of doom, but for very different reasons.
My concern is driven by the fact that radical progressives control the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden- lowlife/liar-Harris administration, and they need to spread fear to justify the control and power that the pandemic emergency has given them. They are trying to eliminate any possibility that any conservative will occupy the Oval Office again or that a conservative majority will ever govern Congress again.
In fact, I think if they could get away with it, no conservative group would ever gather to protest again. No conservative church would ever open again. No border would ever be secure again. No baby would ever be safe from abortion again.
So, yes, I understand what a sense of doom is, and Dr. Walensky works for the administration that is causing my sense of doom!
Illegal Immigrants First
Donald Trump’s platform was succinctly summed up by the phrase “America First.” The left’s agenda could be summed up by the phrase “Illegal Aliens First.” For example, the San Diego Unified School District is going to offer in-person learning to unaccompanied migrant children.
A spokesperson for the county education office said, “All children in California, regardless of immigration status, have a constitutional right to education. We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children.”
Does that include the 130,000 children of San Diego taxpayers who are still being denied in-person learning?
This isn’t “white America” demanding special treatment, although some left coast lunatics seem to think that is the case. The children being denied in-person education are Americans of all races — white, black, Asian, Hispanic — and they’re all suffering.
By the way, what exactly are they going to teach these migrant children? Are we going to teach them that the country they just risked their lives to come to is horribly racist and hates children like them?
Are we going to teach them critical race theory, which claims that the most important thing about them is the color of their skin?
If the San Diego School District does that, and I fear it will, that’s a witch’s brew, a poison that will only pollute their minds and turn them against this country.
It is the exact opposite of what we did to make America such a successful nation of immigrants for so much of our history. We used to educate immigrants to love America. Most of them did anyway, which is why they came here.
But now immigrant children and our native-born children are taught that they are growing up in a country built on genocide and slavery, a country the president claims has never lived up to its promise and values.
It’s insane. No serious nation would ever do that. But now it’s increasingly difficult to tell the difference between the woke left and our enemies around the world. I wonder why!
The Day the World Dodged a Bullet
Forty years ago yesterday, the United States came very close to losing the greatest president of the 20th century.
That morning I had just finished briefing members of Congress on the goals of the still-new Reagan Administration. As my car returned to the White House, a bevy of DC police cruisers with sirens blazing rushed up 17th Street. Moments later more headed in the same direction.
Suddenly, I recalled that President Reagan was speaking that morning at the Washington Hilton, located in the direction the police were headed.
Entering the Old Executive Office Building, I was shocked to see men with automatic weapons positioned outside the office of the vice president. Seconds later, I heard the news — Ronald Reagan had been shot by a would-be assassin.
For hours the president’s staff gathered in various offices, huddled around TV sets, calling colleagues, doing everything we could to get accurate, up-to-date information. There was a lot of praying.
We had walked into office with a victorious Reagan only a little more than two months before, filled with dreams on how we would turn the country around after the disastrous Carter “malaise.” Thankfully, Ronald Reagan survived. But as we now know, he came incredibly close to death on that fateful day.
A few weeks later, a radical Muslim, Mehmet Ali Agca, attempted to kill Pope John Paul II, who also barely survived the attempt on his life. The pontiff and the president, with the able collaboration of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (who survived an assassination attempt in 1984), went on to lead the struggle against Soviet communism.
They ultimately prevailed. Both men believed that God thwarted the assassination attempts because He had important things for them to accomplish. They were right.
Today is a good day to remind ourselves that God is in control. Our country faces massive challenges. The headlines are chilling. There is incompetence or worse in high places.
But the God of Abraham, who hung the stars in the sky and knows when a sparrow falls to the ground, has promised He will not forsake us. For us it remains to be of good cheer and to fight the good fight! ~The Patriot Post
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