Daily News Roundup
NOTABLE QUOTES
Auguste Meyrat contributor to the American Mind wrote: To justify love’s bizarre transformation into a tool of compliance and coercion, our new absolutists depict their actions as necessities of public health. The logic of “love” over mere tolerance has been central to the official response to the COVID-19 virus. Rather than suggest that vulnerable people take protective measures against the virus, in the name of collective responsibility the government overrules personal autonomy in all cases. Everyone must self-quarantine. Everyone must wear a mask (or two, or three). Everyone must distance. And, of course, everyone will need to be vaccinated. These measures are justified with assurances of love.
Julie Kelly contributor to American Greatness describes the extent of the ruling class’ depravity in its handling of the COVID pandemic: More horrifying, however, is that no one in power shows the slightest hint of regret. They are, by all indications, actually enjoying it. They are sadists.
Polly Price, professor of law and global health at Emory University supports Biden regime interest in an interstate travel ban to mitigate spread of COVID-19: In a pandemic, if any state fails, all states fail. I do think the authority is there for imposing some kind of federal domestic travel restrictions based on whether one state threatens to spread contagious disease into another state..
Jen Psaki White House Press Secretary when asked how schools are to handle disputes between trans girls and cis (God created females: I would just say that the president’s belief is that trans rights are human rights, and that’s why he signed that executive order. In terms of the determinations by universities and colleges, I’d certainly defer to them.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requested that DHS to explain why the rule for U.S. schools to disclose ties with Chinese propaganda Confucius Institutes was rescinded: Withdrawing the rule is cause for serious concern and weakens our ability to detect and deter foreign influence efforts by the communist Chinese government. DHS must explain whether it will re-submit the rule and what steps it has taken to detect and deter communist Chinese government influence activity within our academic environment.
THE FIGHT FOR ELECTION INTEGRITY
Pisaturo: Abolish the Electoral College… or Abolish the Popular Vote?
Instead of the United States abandoning the Electoral College, state legislatures should take us in exactly the opposite direction. From now on, they should abandon a statewide popular vote for president, and instead either appoint electors directly or implement an Electoral College–type system within each state. The recent charges against the integrity of our elections have brought to the fore the following passage (Article II, Section 1, clause 2) from the U.S. Constitution: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress… At present, the “Manner” directed by the legislature of each state is a popular vote. But it has not always been that way. For example, in 1800, only six states held any kind of popular vote for electors. In the other ten states, including current battleground states Georgia and Pennsylvania, the electors were chosen by the legislature.
Read more at The Imaginative Conservative.
Arama: Raphael Warnock Now Under Investigation In Voter Case
Warnock’s win helped to shift the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats giving them control of two branches of government, We reported on a lot of the problems with his candidacy. Now it looks like one of those problems may be catching up to him. According to Yahoo, Warnock is now under investigation by the Georgia State Election Board for violating state election rules while chairman of the New Georgia Project in 2019, a group that was founded by Stacy Abrams. The State Election Board has referred the matter to the Attorney General’s Office in Georgia. Apparently the problem includes allegedly illegally submitting 1,268 applications to the Gwinnett County elections office past the required the ten-day deadline in 2019.
Read more at RedState.
GOP
Adam Kinzinger Threatens to Target Matt Gaetz With DeceptiCon Superpac, Gaetz Says “F’ing Bring It”
If you have read CTH you know Adam Kinzinger is a House member of the DeceptiCon caucus. A McCain minded, war-mongering, lover of all things deep state. He rides the uniparty like a bird of prey, and is one of the more visible CNN republicans because he loves to crap on anyone who would fight back against his insufferable duplicity. Kinzinger sees himself as better than all those who prefer to focus on America First priorities. He is an elitist-minded politician who views the MAGA community of Trump supporters with utmost contempt. We need a “Big Ugly” battle against these creatures who reside comfortably in the cocktail party circuit purchased by Wall Street.
Read more at Conservative Treehouse.
Skurkis: What will CPAC 2021 reveal about the Republican Party’s direction?
Conservative activists will gather at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) annual convention on February 25–28. This year’s event will be held in Orlando, Florida. This is the first time in 50 years that CPAC’s annual meeting was not in the Washington, D.C. area. This is because of strict coronavirus guidelines in Maryland and D.C. Here is a list of CPAC speakers to date. At this point, neither Donald Trump nor Mike Pence is scheduled to speak, but it is hard to think they won’t be there. One shouldn’t count Eric Trump out, either. This year’s meeting will be an important indication of which way the Republican Party is headed. Will it be a MAGA party or one in the Bush/McCain/Romney mold?
Read more at American Thinker.
AN AMERICA IN DECLINE
Barron: What is “Our” Democracy?
When the Left claims something is theirs, they mean it. A curious turn of phrase has slipped into discourse over the last few years. References to “our democracy” turn up all the time lately, and even though a computer search shows that the phrase has popped up now and then since at least the 1920s, its usage has increased a lot recently. It’s something that many people probably haven’t noticed, and it’s certainly innocuous enough. “Our democracy” hardly seems fraught with controversy. After all, we all have a stake in the political system, and it sounds like a nice way to describe the republic—the “common thing”—we share. On the other hand, it’s striking to notice who uses the phrase. It is said, almost exclusively, by Democrats. […] When we hear “our democracy,” then, we should hear it as a description of possession. They aren’t saying that it belongs to all of us. It is theirs, and they will do anything they can to defend it.
Read more at American Mind.
Bedford: Decades Before The Civil War, Lincoln Saw An Approaching Storm. Every American Should Read His Warning
As he looked around him, at both slave states and their northern neighbors, he saw and feared the evil of swelling mobs not merely for their unfortunate victims, but for our national tolerance of their violence and misrule — and the effect this shrugging of shoulders and murmuring of approval or disapproval would have on patriotic and unpatriotic men alike. The incidents weren’t always seemingly connected by cause. A group of gamblers hanged; a mixed-race murderer burned alive; black men suspected of planning insurrection, and then white men suspected of sympathizing, and then simply out-of-state strangers caught in the middle of swelling hates. But beyond their brutality, the young lawyer feared these mobs were connected for the lawlessness they embodied — and the idle familiarity with which his fellow Americans seemed to accept these incidents. While the 1830s mobs “hang gamblers, or burn murders,” he cautioned, tomorrow’s mobs would hang and burn the innocent — “and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded.” While after January 2021’s Capitol riot we’ve all seen the ruthless efficiency with which our government is capable of cracking down on lawlessness, we too saw the summer before, when months of attacks on federal officers, politicians, police, private homes, courthouses, and innocent bystanders met calculated indifference and shrugged excuses for “historic racial injustices.”
Read more at The Federalist.
Kramer: Think the ‘Equality Act’ Will Spare Churches and Religious Schools? Think Again
You might expect churches and religious schools, of all places, to remain safe from the government’s meddling hands. Our Constitution does guarantee religious freedom, after all. But if the “Equality Act” is passed—which President Biden has promised to push for in the first 100 days of his administration—not even churches and religious schools will be safe from the government’s reach. […] And while its name may sound nice to some, the “Equality Act” actually poses devastating and unprecedented threats to religious freedom. We’ve already seen examples of these threats where similar legislation has been passed at the state and local levels. Now, let’s take a look at what the “Equality Act” would mean for churches and religious schools. Forcing churches to abandon biblical teaching on human sexuality In Massachusetts, state officials declared that churches are subject to state public accommodation laws. That meant if churches host public activities – something as simple as a spaghetti supper – they would be forced to open women’s private changing areas and restrooms to biological men. If a church refused, it would face crippling fines and even jail time.
Read more at CNS News.
Hill: Another Member of the Equity Squad Joins the Biden Administration
Inside the twisted world of Marcia Fudge. Marcia Fudge, the Ohio Congresswoman, and now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development appointed by President Joe Biden, is an unabashed advocate of equity. […] And there you have it. Equality means treating everyone regardless of ethnic or racial affiliation the same. Equity demands legislating equal results from unequal causes. It is a nefarious and evil idea that must be explained properly so people can reject it outright. Those who uphold the principle of equity are attempting to reverse the laws of identity and causality by introducing metaphysical egalitarianism: the idea that all men are actually born with or acquire talents, skills, and capabilities of equal proportion in intelligence, strength, discipline, perseverance, frugality, temperance, tenacity, exercise of our rational faculty, wisdom, moral sensibility and a plethora of other dispositions that determine outcomes. Fudge and the equity squad attempt to pass over on society the following idea: if such talents, capabilities, and dispositions were not equally allocated among the races and among individuals, then the state would need to artificially interfere and ensure that equality of outcomes and results preceded equality of opportunity. That is, she is mandating equal results from unequal causes. Equal rewards for unequal performance. This idea which was truly launched during President . . .
Read more at FrontPage Magazine.
WUHAN FLU: IT’S POLITICAL
Kelly: The Callous COVID Cruelty of Our Ruling Class
The cruelty, Donald Trump’s foes often claimed, is the point. Whether in response to a mean tweet or childish name-calling or the infamous “kids in cages” episode, the president’s critics collectively wailed in performative grief about Trump’s self-gratifying “cruelty” toward others. But Trump’s outbursts pale in comparison to the level of cruelty inflicted on the country’s most vulnerable by those in power. As I wrote in April, coronavirus hysteria has unleashed the inner tyrant in anyone with a modicum of authority, from fame-seeking aged bureaucrats down to the local homeowners’ association president. The only upside, if one can be found in an otherwise catastrophic period of unnecessary human misery, is that the ruling class’ depravity now is fully exposed; the face mask, so to speak, has slipped, and slipped for good. More horrifying, however, is that no one in power shows the slightest hint of regret. They are, by all indications, actually enjoying it. They are sadists.
Read more at American Greatness.
Koskinen: Politicians Seem Loath to Let COVID End
Two weeks to “slow the spread” proved to be a lie as state government stay-at-home orders stretched on and on, being taken away and reintroduced at the whims of governors rather than by acts of the various legislatures. Even when we were permitted out of our homes, they imposed rules on who we could visit, how long we could visit, and what we could do while we visited. Then they told us that once a vaccine was ready, life would get back to normal. Then it moved to once the vaccine is distributed, normal life will resume. Now not only one, but multiple vaccines have arrived and are being distributed across the United States and the rest of world. Yet the goalposts continue to move as those who enjoy the largesse of government and the control it gives them over the populace scramble to come up with new conditions they claim must be met before the fight against COVID-19 is over and we can be allowed to live lives free of microbial terror. Six authors, all of whom “served on the covid-19 advisory board for the Biden presidential transition” argue in a Washington Post opinion piece that there are three other milestones that must be reached before the pandemic is “solve[d].” “First, . . .
Read more at Intellectual Takeout.
Conservative News Daily: WATCH: DeSantis Warns Biden Administration After Report Says They Might Target Florida: ‘We Will Respond Very Swiftly’
Speaking in Port Charlotte, Florida, on Thursday, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis reacted harshly to speculation that the Biden administration might institute travel restrictions on the state. McClatchy reported on Thursday, “The Biden administration is considering whether to impose domestic travel restrictions, including on Florida, fearful that coronavirus mutations are threatening to reverse hard-fought progress on the pandemic.” DeSantis fired: “I think it would be unconstitutional, it would be unwise, and it would be unjust,” adding that “restricting the right of Americans to travel freely throughout our country while allowing illegal aliens to pour across the southern border unmolested would be a ridiculous, but very damaging farce.” He continued: “We will not back down, and if anyone tries to harm Floridians or target us, we will respond very swiftly.”
Read more/Watch the DeSantis presser at Conservative News Daily.
Daily Wire News: ‘Mask Up, America’: Biden Suggests That Wearing Masks May Be Required ‘Through The Next Year’
“I had a little discussion with my friends behind me, Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci, about whether or not I should take my mask off,” Biden said. “And the truth is, although we’re more than 10 feet away, I think it’s important that I not. It’s critically important the message — and I realize I’m speaking to a vast majority — at least, I hope I am — of the folks out here at NIH. You know that wearing this mask through the next year here can save lives — a significant numbers of lives.”
Read more/Watch the 21 second Biden video at Daily Wire.
CLIMATE CRISIS: IT’S POLITICAL
Orr: Wind Turbines Don’t Even Last 20 Years
Editors Note: As some at the Arizona Corporation Commission want to take us down the “green” rat hole of subsidies and expensive electricity, we need to learn what has happened in other states, in this case, Minnesota. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), wind turbines are supposed to have a useful lifetime of 20 years, but real-life evidence shows that wind turbines don’t even last this long before they are torn down and repowered so wind companies can soak up more of your tax dollars. This is why Xcel Energy is spending $750 million on repowering wind projects built between 2008 and 2015.
Read more at The Prickly Pear.
