Daily News Roundup
NOTABLE QUOTES
Bruce Thornton contributor to Frontpage Magazine: . . . the greatest insult to our intelligence is the claim that Musk and conservatives are threats to free speech. For years we’ve known that it’s not conservatives who want to “cancel” those whose Constitutionally protected speech they don’t like, or who organize mobs to uninvite or shout down speakers they deem politically incorrect, or invent crimes like “hate” speech to justify censorship. All the assaults on free speech come from the “woke” progressives, for whom uncensored free speech is a threat, for it exposes the lies and propaganda in which they trade, and offers alternatives to the progressive elite’s technocratic regime.
Brad Palumbo contributor to FEE: What is a tax, after all, other than a cost forcibly imposed on the citizenry to finance/enable government expenditures? And that also perfectly describes the inflation currently hitting Americans in the wallet. The government wanted to engage in reckless money-printing and spending without bearing the political brunt of directly raising peoples’ taxes. As a result, our savings were inflated away. That’s the textbook definition of a “stealth tax.
Robert Smith contributor to American Thinker: Gingrich, a 2012 GOP presidential candidate, also criticized McConnell for what he considers a leadership style of: “Don’t tell anybody what you’re going to do, and then I’ll go into a room and I’ll make all the decisions.”
Robert Spencer contributor to TownHall: The Republicans better take back the House in November 2022. If they don’t, and Nancy Pelosi (D-Smirnoff) opts to enjoy her freezer full of deluxe ice cream on a full-time basis, the next speaker of the House could be far, far more divisive, hateful, petty, and partisan than Pelosi ever dreamed of being: none other than Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Russia Hoax) is eyeing the speaker’s job for himself.
Kurt Schlichter contributor to TownHall: Stop pretending teachers are, as a group, people worthy of our special respect and deference. Everyone had some great teachers. I remember a couple who made a difference for me. Neither was a pinko with delusions of genderfluidity. But let’s face it – most teachers are undistinguished time-serving hacks who drone along awaiting their pension.
John Tierney contributor to City Journal: The CDC received some criticism for its junk science on masks, particularly for its false claims about the benefits of masking schoolchildren, but the press mostly promoted the agency’s narrative. Little attention was paid to more rigorous research, like a review of the literature that found little or no benefit from masks, or a study that compared infection rates with mask policies and with rates of mask use in all 50 states over the first year of the pandemic. The study concluded that “mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level Covid-19 spread during Covid-19 growth surges.” The media’s narrative about masks extended throughout the world.
Streiff contributor to RedState: Everyone, the public, the Biden White House, the Democrat party, and even the Beltway media, realize that Kamala Harris is way out of her depth and is a political liability. Most observers believe that 2022 and 2024 will be challenging years for the Democrats, and the last thing they need is Harris to start cackling while discussing abortion or genocide, or some other serious subject. The clincher is that the Biden team can’t put her on ice without creating a massive issue for themselves, so they have to find something for her to do. That something is to send her out on the road to places where she can’t screw anything up because the Democrats know they aren’t going to win those areas anyway.
TRANSHUMANISM: HUMANS 2.0
War Room: The Transhuman Wing Of Conservative, Inc
Transhumanism editor Joe Allen talks to host Steve Bannon about the current surge in pop;ularity among conservatives of Tesla owner Elon Musk. Why? Because Musk has offered to buy Twitter and restore free speech on the Internet social media platform. But not so fast, Allen cautions. Musk is no hero for freedom-loving Americans unless you want to turn your life over to the care of robots and the Chinerse!
Watch the 4 minute interview: https://warroom.org/2022/04/18/the-transhuman-wing-of-conservative-inc/
Read the Allen article: Elon Musk and the Transhuman Wing of Conservative, Inc https://joebot.substack.com/p/elon-musk-and-the-transhuman-wing?s=r
BIDEN’S VACCINE & MASK MANDATES
War Room: Naomi Wolf: The Continued Uncovering of the Pfizer Reports
Author Naomi Wolf talks to host Steve Bannon about the CDC, Pfizer and more. “Pfizer knew that a hundred microgram dose destroyed lymphocytes or suppressed lymphocytes … your helper cells, your white blood cells that protect your immune response… so this could explain why people who are vaccinated … are getting sick.”
Watch the 10:51 minute interview: https://warroom.org/2022/04/18/naomi-wolf-the-continued-uncovering-of-the-pfizer-reports/
Tierney: Maskaholics
The pandemic has eased, but not the compulsion of many Americans to cover their faces. Fully vaccinated adults are still wearing masks on their solitary walks outdoors, and officials have been enforcing mask mandates on airline passengers and on some city-dwellers and students. (Though today’s ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa, declaring the Biden administration’s mask mandate for public transportation unlawful, comes as welcome news.) Maskaholics in the press are calling for permanent masking on trains, planes, and buses. High school students in Seattle staged a protest demanding that a mask mandate be reinstated, and psychologists now deal with the anxieties of children who don’t want their classmates to see their faces. They’re suffering from “mask dependency,” as this psychological affliction is termed in Japan, where a long tradition of mask-wearing during flu season has left some individuals afraid at any time to expose their faces in public. It’s a difficult addiction to overcome, according to the Japanese therapists who specialize in treating it—but a simple remedy might help some maskaholics. It’s a graph that should be required viewing for everyone still wearing a mask and every public official or journalist who still insists that mask mandates “control the spread.” The graph tracks the results of a natural experiment that occurred nationwide during the pandemic. Eleven states never mandated masks, while the other 39 states enforced mandates. […] If you’re still not convinced to take off the mask, consider one more graph from Miller. It compares Germany with Sweden, the media’s Covid villain for refusing to lock down or mandate masks.
Read more/View the two graphs: https://www.city-journal.org/the-failed-covid-policy-of-mask-mandates
DURHAM INVESTIGATION
Turley: Durham: Five Witnesses Connected to the Clinton Campaign’s False Russian Claims Have Refused to Cooperate
Special Counsel John Durham continues to drop bombshells in filings in the prosecution of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann. Just last week, Durham defeated an effort by Sussmann to dismiss the charges. He is now moving to give immunity to a key witness while revealing that the claims made by the Clinton campaign were viewed by the CIA as “not technically plausible” and “user created.” He also revealed that at least five of the former Clinton campaign contractors/researchers have invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to cooperate in fear that they might incriminate themselves in criminal conduct. Finally, Durham offers further details on the involvement of Clinton campaign general counsel Marc Elias and former British spy Christopher Steele in the alleged false claims.
JANUARY 6
One America News: Court Documents Claim At Least 20 Agents From FBI, ATF Were Embedded In Crowd Around Capitol On Jan. 6
Newly released court documents claim that at least 20 agents from the FBI and ATF were embedded in the crowd of protesters around the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. One America’s Pearson Sharp has more.
Watch the 6:52 minute report: https://www.oann.com/court-documents-claim-at-least-20-agents-from-fbi-atf-were-embedded-in-crowd-around-capitol-on-jan-6/
Kelly: Mom of J6 Political Prisoner: ‘We Are Half Alive’
Ethan Nordean is entering his 13th month of captivity as a political prisoner in the United States of America. Arrested in his home state of Washington last February on nonviolent charges related to the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021, Nordean, 31, has spent the past year in jail, mostly in solitary confinement. He hasn’t held his young daughter or hugged his wife and parents for months. In the eyes of the Biden regime—on a destructive crusade to exact revenge against supporters of Donald Trump—Nordean is a threat to the country, an alleged “domestic violent extremist,” i.e., terrorist, as a member of the Proud Boys. That, of course, is not the group that burned, looted, and actually terrorized thousands of American communities throughout 2020, responsible for at least two dozen deaths and $2 billion in property damages. Nordean’s real crime in Joe Biden’s America was to support Donald Trump in the 2020 election. During an exchange last year at a congressional hearing between FBI Director Christopher Wray and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Wray suggested Nordean was among the “most dangerous, most serious” January 6 criminal cases.
Read more: https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/18/mom-of-j6-political-prisoner-we-are-half-alive/
JUDICIARY
Daley: Why Is the Supreme Court Still Closed to the Public?
The Supreme Court remains sealed to visitors over two years into the pandemic even as the justices mix it up with the public. Only lawyers—screened first for COVID—select reporters, and essential staff are allowed in for arguments as of this writing, while opinions are released online. The High Court is one of the last entities in Washington enforcing lockdown procedures. The U.S. Capitol reopened for tours in March and the White House shed its lingering mask requirement on March 1. The Court’s distance from the public is especially jarring because it’s in the middle of one of the most consequential terms in its history. By June, the justices could overturn Roe v. Wade and recognize a constitutional right to carry guns in public. Those historic decisions could drop on a webpage while the justices start their annual summer break, beyond the public eye.
Read more: https://freebeacon.com/courts/why-is-the-supreme-court-still-closed-to-the-public/
Cohen: Challenge to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s candidacy can move forward, federal judge rules
A federal judge on Monday cleared the way for a coalition of liberal groups to move forward with their attempt to disqualify controversial GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for reelection, based on claims that she aided the January 6 insurrectionists. The ruling means a scheduled hearing in front of a Georgia state judge will take place as planned on Friday morning. That judge will hear arguments from both sides and will ultimately decide whether the Constitution’s “disqualification clause” applies to Greene. The Civil War-era provision says officeholders who support an insurrection are prohibited from serving again. “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import,” District Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia wrote in the ruling. “Upon a thorough analysis of each of the claims asserted in this case, the Court concludes that [Greene] has not carried her burden of persuasion with respect to this important and essential prerequisite to [Greene’s] demonstration of an entitlement to injunctive relief.”
Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/18/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-candidacy/index.html
Brown: Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden Admin’s Travel Mask Mandate
A United States District Court judge in Florida vacated the nationwide travel mask mandate on Monday in a ruling that found the mask requirement for travel via mass transit, planes, and trains violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The lengthy ruling explains how the Biden administration “improperly invoked the order and interpretive rule exceptions to notice and comment,” “improperly invoked the good cause exception” to such rulemaking in a manner that “was not harmless error” and how the mandate “is arbitrary and capricious because the CDC failed to adequately explain its reasoning.”
[NOTE: Following the ruling Biden administration responded “The agencies are reviewing the decision and assessing potential next steps.” ]
Watch the short clips: Bois: Airline Passengers Celebrate End of Travel Mask Mandate https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/18/airline-passengers-celebrate-end-travel-mask-mandates/
Husebro: ‘Such a Massive Mistake’: Radical Left Freaks After Judge Strikes Down Mask Mandate on Planes https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/18/such-massive-mistake-radical-left-freaks-judge-strikes-down-mask-mandate-planes
Hoft: Rated “Unqualified” by the American Bar Assoc. at Time of Her Appointment, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, President Trump’s Youngest Federal Judge, Set the Nation Free from Senseless Mask Mandates
But Judge Mizelle had one exceptional bullet on her resume: Mizelle, who is close to Justice Clarence Thomas, has expressed admiration for his legal philosophy and in January taught a course at the University of Florida alongside him. Tobias said the law school faculty there have spoken highly of her.
It appears to be a miracle that she was confirmed: . . .
PHYSICIAN, FIRST DO NO HARM
ThePricklyPear.org: Presentations to Hillsdale College pre-med students by John Ammon, M.D.
April 2021 – A Viral Pandemic: A Doctor First, A Citizen Always https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJJayTahQ60
April 2022: Your Physician Trajectory to 2030 – How Will You Land?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf0rjnzu5k0
Theis: Group Launches to Combat ‘Woke Healthcare,’ ‘Race-Based Formulas for Rationing’ Medicine
Do No Harm, a new group launched to help medical professionals fight “radical progressive ideology” in healthcare, says “woke ideology has infected our healthcare system” and this threat is “not based on quality, but on race.” On a press call, representatives from the group said the left has purposefully fostered a mistrust among black patients of medical treatment, along with the idea that any disparities in medical care are based on systemic racism. Pointing to many hospitals and medical schools developing diversity, inclusion, and equity offices, University of Pennsylvania Dr. Stan Goldfarb told reporters, “Make no mistake: anti-racism means discrimination.” He also references the fact that in some areas, distribution of coronavirus treatments was based on race as opposed to need. Goldfarb said Do No Harm wants to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. In addition, the Biden administration offers higher Medicare reimbursement rates to healthcare providers that “create and implement an anti-racism plan.” […] Facilities have already started implementing discriminatory practices for healthcare. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, offers “preferential care based on race,” and a University of Pittsburgh cardiologist was reportedly demoted and banned from having contact with students after advocating race-neutral hiring policies at hospitals.
Sims: Study: U.S. Life Expectancy Declines for This Surprising Group, So Where’s the Leftist Outrage?
While it’s startling that U.S. life expectancy has continued its decrease, the biggest surprise in the study was which group declined the most: “the non-Hispanic White population” — and, more specifically, white men. Isn’t it interesting that, for all the left’s incessant bleating about so-called healthcare “inequity” and vaccine “inequity,” it turns out it’s actually (at least according to this study) the life of the left’s favorite punching bag — the evil white male — who has been the most negatively impacted by the effects of their pandemic hysteria? When will the left rage-tweet about this factual inequity? And when will the left celebrate the gains of the Hispanic and black populations? Don’t worry, I know the answer to these hypothetical questions; read on.
2022 ELECTION
Yount: First Ever Republican County Executive Elected in Kenosha County
It’s being seen as one of the biggest upsets in Wisconsin and possibly a bellwether for the rest of the state. Voters in Kenosha County on Tuesday elected their first-ever Republican County chairman in the first local election since the 2020 riots that burned parts of the city of Kenosha to the ground.
Samantha Kerkman beat Clerk of Courts Rebecca Matoska-Mentink by nearly 800 votes.“Liberals and Tony Evers let Kenosha burn,” Republican candidate for governor Rebecca Kleefisch said on Twitter Tuesday night. “Now voters are taking back control and putting the county in a capable set of hands.”
Wisconsin’s Republican Party said Republicans flipped the county board in Kenosha as well.
Read more: https://pricklypear.news/first-ever-republican-county-executive-elected-in-kenosha-county/
THE DEMOCRAT LED WAR ON CHILDREN
Schlichter: Defending American Democracy Requires We Start by Crushing the Public School Weirdos
If you think pierced mutants with blue hair and gender confusion have some sort of right to leverage their position as public school teachers to groom your kids with racist Marxism and sexual confusion, you hate democracy. Schools were not established so that narcissistic stange-os with galaxy-sized daddy issues could work out their personal psychodramas using our children’s minds as props. They were established to teach our kids to read, write, do some math, and be useful citizens. And that’s what we, the People, want. And we, the People, get to make the decision about what gets taught in our classrooms. The emphasis is on “our classrooms,” as in “not the government employees we hire to instruct classes” classrooms. I know where these people got the idea that the classrooms are their domain and we mere citizens are mere interlopers. They got it in their college education course classrooms, where they were taught that they are entering some sort of special caste by being teachers and have some sort of special claim on what goes on inside the schools that mere parents may not interfere with. Baloney. The kids are ours. The schools are ours. And the curriculum is ours. […] Step One: . . . As a group, “educators” are not smarter than us, and their track record of actually educating is a trainwreck. Do you think kids today are better educated than they were 40 or even 20 years ago? Maybe in terms of pronouns and privilege, but not in anything that’s not nonsense. For too long we gave teachers the benefit of the doubt. No longer. Now we need to give them orders and ultimatums. Step Two: Ban teachers’ unions. Public employee unions are a disaster anyway, but teachers’ unions are the worst. One lib teacher whining is insufferable. Hundreds of thousands banding together and funding the Democrats in return for influence is an apocalypse. It gives the worst people . .. […] Step Three: . . .Step 4 . . .[…] Step 5 . . .
Olohan: Kansas Governor Vetoes Bills Banning Biological Males From Women’s Sports, Protecting Parental Education Rights
The Democratic governor of Kansas has vetoed a bill banning biological males from women’s sports and another protecting parents’ rights in education. SB 160, the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, would have required “interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports that are sponsored by public educational institutions to be designated based on biological sex.” SB 58 would have established a “Parents’ Bill Of Rights” stating that “all parents have a right to direct the upbringing, education, care, and mental health of their child” and the right to “direct the education and care of the parent’s child and the right to direct the upbringing and moral or religious training of the parent’s child.”
BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA REGIME: TRANSFORMING AMERICA
Gomez & Gittleson: Vice President Kamala Harris announces US ban on anti-satellite missile tests
Vice President Kamala Harris announced Monday night that the Biden administration is setting a self-imposed ban on anti-satellite missile testing with the goal of making it an “international norm for responsible behavior in space.” The U.S., China, India and Russia have all carried out such tests, which generate dangerous space debris. The U.S. is the first to impose such a ban. “Simply put, these tests are dangerous, and we will not conduct them,” Harris said during remarks at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The vice president said the U.S. hopes other nations will follow suit.
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vice-president-kamala-harris-announce-us-ban-anti/story?id=84152287
(America Last) Durden: Oil From Biden’s Emergency SPR Release Is Heading For Europe
Joe Biden’s decision to release 180 million barrels of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve – one million barrels per day for 180 days, ending just before the midterm elections which the Democrats will lose in an avalanche – was meant to help lower US gasoline prices “because Putin price hike.” Instead, it is heading for Europe. According to Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, the Suezmax ship Advantage Spring – sailing for Rotterdam, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg – received emergency SPR sweet crude from Energy Transfer’s Nederland oil facility around April 1 for export
Read more: https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/oil-bidens-emergency-spr-release-heading-europe
Palumbo: ‘Inflation Tax’ Will Cost Families This Many Thousands This Year, Bloomberg Analysis Warns
There goes $433 a month from your family’s budget… Another day, another alarming inflation metric. We just got the numbers for the Personal Consumption Expenditures index (PCE), the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation metric, and they’re jaw-dropping. The PCE hit a 40-year high in February, with the measured prices rising 6.4% year-over-year. What does this mean in real life? A new Bloomberg analysis sheds some light on this key question. It finds that this year, inflation will cost the typical US household an additional $5,200 just to afford the same goods as last year. That’s $433 a month taken out of the average family’s budget. Why is this happening?
Duggan: Biden’s DHS Prioritizes Gender Ideology As The Border Implodes
President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) introduced various measures to accommodate transgender and nonbinary individuals in its security processes as migrants continued to pour through the southern border.The DHS Equity Action Plan calls binary gender a “construct” and strives to remove gender from the screening processes used in airports, border security and citizenship and naturalization processes. Meanwhile, Border Patrol saw around 41,000 migrants cross the southern border in March alone. […] Under the new plan, the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) PreCheck program will allow . . .
Read more: https://dailycaller.com/2022/04/18/department-of-homeland-security-equity-action-plan/
Colton: Massive increase in Black Americans murdered was result of defund police movement: experts
Support of Black Lives Matter and calls to defund the police reverberated across America in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, igniting social justice protests and riots at a time when the coronavirus and lockdowns upended society in unprecedented ways. What was left in 2020’s wake was a massive increase in the number of murders, dealing a disproportionate blow to Black Americans. […] Murders across the board spiked by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to the year prior, according to FBI data, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes. Among Black Americans, the number of deaths spiked by more than 32% compared to 2019.
Read more: https://www.foxnews.com/us/black-americans-paid-enormous-price-for-defund-the-police-movement
WOKE? NOT YET!
Thorne: Baskin-Robbins’ Shocking New Re-Branding Campaign
In a shocking move, mega-ice cream seller Baskin-Robbins has re-branded itself for 2022 — and neglected to include any obnoxious, in-your-face woke themes in its new marketing! No parade of rainbow creatures, no pant-suited feminist mascots, no underdogs bravely standing up to America’s racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, xenophobic system. There’s nary a victim nor a woke hero to be seen. It’s almost eerie. Almost as inexcusably, the re-launched branding is relentlessly positive. The new campaign — the first in 20 years for the 77-year-old company — is called “Seize the Yay.” It focuses on celebrating the myriad joys of ordinary life. In a press release, Baskin-Robbins explains: . . .[…] Now, before you get all excited and imagine there is still at least one mainstream, venerable American institution that hasn’t been infected with wokeness, you should know that Baskin-Robbins’ parent company, Dunkin’ Brands, has demonstrated its queer bona fides by scoring a perfect 100% for the past three years in a row on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index. Fast food industry news site QSRweb reports: . . .[…] So, yes, the rot is definitely afoot at ol’ 31 Flavors, and it remains to be seen whether the corporation will be able to save itself. But so far, both Baskin-Robbins and Dunkin’ have done a decent job of remaining mostly sufferable, as far as I’ve seen. […] So when we see a company do the right thing — market its product in a way that respects and represents us normals — we can encourage more such behavior by buying its product.
THE CORRUPT & DANGEROUS DEMOCRAT PARTY’S MEDIA INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Saavedra: Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Claims He Witnessed Incident Where CNN Tried To Falsify News
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on Monday evening that he knows that CNN promotes false news reporting because he witnessed the far-left network try to cause conflict during the Ferguson, Missouri riots back in 2014. Dorsey made the revelation in a response to a tweet from Miss Universe Iraq 2017 Sarah Abdali Idan who said, “Even @CNN sometimes sell false news. I know this from covering Iraq events in 2019. People need to understand every media is prone to either mistakes or deliberate corruption. Do your own investigation before believing what they’re selling you.” Dorsey responded, . . .
DEMOCRAT LED WAR ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT
Mayer: Free speech warning sign displayed on Indiana campus
A free speech warning sign has been photographed, reportedly on display on campus at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis. The sign warns students reading “ATTENTION FREE SPEECH BEING EXERCISED AHEAD[.] Topics could be upsetting to some.” […] The sign also informs students of options to combat: “engage in a civil manner, decline respectfully and continue on, [or] alter your route now.”
Read more: https://www.campusreform.org/article?id=19297
OTHER NEWS
Nitzberg: Rep. Maxine Waters accuses Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey of ‘plain racist ignorance’ after Ivey says that people will have to ‘learn Spanish’ if Biden keeps sending illegal immigrants into states
Ivey, who is currently seeking re-election, issued a campaign ad in which she said that if President Joe Biden continues sending “illegal immigrants into our states” everyone will need to “learn Spanish.” “My message to Biden: No way Jose,” Ivey declares in the ad. […] There’s nothing racist with telling the truth about the disaster Joe Biden is causing with illegals invading our country. I’m not going to be lectured by a liberal Congresswoman from California. We’ll handle our business in Alabama.
Read more/Watch the ad: https://www.theblaze.com/news/kay-ivey-responds-after-maxine-waters-accuses-kay-ivey-of-racism
Saavedra: Musk Drops Possible Hint On Next Move In Bid To Take Over Twitter, Reveals What Would Happen To Board
Musk tweeted, “Love Me Tender” along with musical note emojis on Saturday, leading to speculation that the word “tender” could be “a likely wink-and-nod reference to a potential tender offer to Twitter Inc. shareholders for control of the company,” Bloomberg News reported. “If Twitter directors ultimately reject him, the world could learn whether Musk was truly threatening a direct appeal to shareholders or had just added the 1956 Elvis Presley hit ‘Love Me Tender’ to his playlist.”
