Did Oregon officials violate their duty to remain neutral on matters of religion when they ordered Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein to pay $135,000 for declining to create a custom same-sex wedding cake, a move that crushed the small, family-owned business?
That’s the question that the Oregon Court of Appeals will answer after having heard oral argument last week in the case of Melissa Klein v. Bureau of Labor and Industries.
Oregon courts are taking up the case once again, after being ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In June 2019, the Supreme Court threw out the original Oregon decision that upheld the crushing fine with orders to revisit the case in light of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.
That decision held that government officials should not be in the business of deciding whose faith is or is not acceptable. Instead, they must remain neutral on matters of religion.
In court last week, the Kleins’ attorneys argued that the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, led by then-Commissioner Brad Avakian, acted with unconstitutional hostility toward religion in its handling of the case. The Kleins are represented by attorneys from Boyden Gray & Associates and from First Liberty Institute.
They
argued that the Oregon bureau demonstrated anti-religious hostility in several
ways, including awarding “emotional damages” based upon the quotation of a
Bible verse, awarding an amount of damages that exceeds cases involving
physical violence or sexual harassment, and making public statements
demonstrating that the commissioner prejudged the case before hearing the
evidence.
The Bureau of Labor and Industries based its exceptionally large damage award on Aaron Klein’s quotation of the Bible. When a woman inquired about ordering a custom cake for her same-sex wedding, Klein informed her that he was sorry, but he would have to decline because of the family’s religious beliefs.
After she left the bakery, her mother returned to have a conversation with Klein about the morality of same-sex marriage. That’s when he quoted a Bible verse in support of his religious beliefs.
The woman then took offense to her mother’s recounting of the story, which also happened to misquote Klein.
In short, the Oregon bureau concluded that $135,000 was appropriate to compensate the complainants for their reaction to hearing that the Kleins quoted a Bible verse and would not create a custom cake for their wedding due to their religious beliefs.
The
Bureau of Labor and Industries justified the crushing amount of the damage
award with reference to some of its earlier cases. However, in three of those
cases, the victim was actually awarded less money for being subjected
to physical violence, such as being beaten by a baseball bat, or having to
endure sexual harassment at work that lasted for months.
A
Bible quote and the denial of a custom cake should not justify a greater “emotional
damage” award than what happened in those cases.
Finally,
the Kleins’ attorneys argued that the bureau’s commissioner, who was supposed
to be acting as a neutral judge in the case, made public statements indicating
that he prejudged the case before hearing any of the evidence.
For
instance, he made statements to a reporter doing a story about the Kleins’
case, including an assertion, “Everybody’s entitled to their own beliefs, but
that doesn’t mean that folks have the right to discriminate.”
Avakian’s statements, made before the case officially came before him, imply that he equated the Kleins’ religious beliefs with discrimination. Yet, as the Supreme Court clearly stated, people like the Kleins are “entitled to the neutral and respectful consideration of [their] claims in all the circumstances of the case.”
The
Kleins welcomed everyone into their bakery, but could not endorse messages that
conflicted with their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, Oregon officials forced
them into the difficult choice between their faith and their livelihood.
This
case will decide whether government officials in Oregon have the legal
authority to effectively force faithful business owners to close shop if they
decline to participate in a same-sex wedding or other events that conflict with
their beliefs.
Masterpiece Cakeshop concluded that government officials must remain neutral on issues of religion and cannot act with hostility toward religious believers.
Americans will be watching to see whether the Oregon Court of Appeals follows the Supreme Court’s instructions or if violating one’s own conscience is now the cost of doing business.
Criminal activity imposes huge costs on black residents in low-income neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and many others.
Thousands of black Americans were murdered in 2019. Over 90% of the time, the perpetrator was also black.
Leftists and social justice warriors charge that what blacks have to fear most is being shot and killed by police, but the numbers don’t add up.
For several years, The Washington Post has been documenting police shootings in America. Last year, 933 people were shot and killed by police. Twenty-three percent (212) of people shot and killed were black; 35% (331) were white; 16% (155) were Hispanic, and 201 were of other or unknown races. The high homicide rate within the black community doesn’t begin to tell the full tragedy.
Crime imposes a hefty tax on people who can least afford it. They are the law-abiding residents of black neighborhoods. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside of their neighborhoods. Supermarkets that are abundant in low-crime neighborhoods are absent or scarce in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods.
Because of the paucity of supermarkets and other big-box stores in these neighborhoods, some “experts” and academicians have labeled them as “food deserts.” That’s the ridiculous suggestion that white supermarket merchants and big-box store owners don’t like green dollars coming out of black hands. The true villains of the piece are the criminals who make some businesses unprofitable.
By the way, these are equal opportunity criminals. They will victimize a black-owned business just as they would victimize a white-owned business. The high crime rates in many black neighborhoods have the effect of outlawing economic growth and opportunities.
In low-crime neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS, and other delivery companies routinely leave packages containing valuable merchandise on a doorstep if no one is home. That saves the expense of redelivery and saves recipients the expense of having to go pick up the packages.
In high-crime neighborhoods, delivery companies leaving packages at the door or supermarkets leaving goods outside unattended would be equivalent to economic suicide.
Fearing robberies, taxi drivers, including black drivers, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups and frequently pass prospective black customers who hail them on the street. Plus, there’s the insult associated with not being able to receive pizzas or other deliveries on the same terms as people in other neighborhoods.
Another often-overlooked impact of crime is lower property values. Homes that wouldn’t fetch $10,000, $20,000, or $40,000 suddenly fetch hundreds of thousands when large numbers of middle- and upper-income people purchase formerly run-down properties and fix them up.
This is called gentrification, where wealthier, predominantly white, people bid higher rental prices, thus forcing out low-income residents. As a result of gentrification, there is greater police protection and other neighborhood amenities increase.
Many make the erroneous assumption that black people don’t care about crime. But black people strongly disapprove of the day-to-day violence that’s all too common in their communities.
What compounds that problem is a deep mistrust of police in poor black neighborhoods. This distrust, along with fear of reprisals by black criminals, causes an atmosphere of noncooperation with the police. It creates the “stop snitching” principle.
This principle of snitches being worse than criminals themselves only exacerbates the crime problem in black communities by giving aid and comfort to the true enemies of the community—those who prey on the community and have little fear of being brought to justice. In some cities, less than 10% of murderers are ever charged.
For decades, the problems of blacks could be laid at the feet of racial discrimination. Our ancestors started a civil rights struggle and won. Today, the most devastating problems of blacks are entirely self-inflicted such as high illegitimacy, family breakdown, and unsafe communities.
These problems have little to do with civil rights. But as long as blacks buy into the notion that white racism is the source of their problems, the solutions will be elusive forever.
Before I drifted off out of boredom, I caught the first part of Democratic debate seven, on foreign policy, health care, identity politics and other topics, and oh, what a revelation about these last six characters from the clown car still standing. These are the people who would occupy the White House and you wouldn’t want to be there if it happened.
5. The Warren-Sanders ‘woman president’ wrangle. Before the debate, Elizabeth Warren made waves by claiming Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the presidency. On the surface, it’s hard to believe, given that Bernie has been around the block and remembers Margaret Thatcher only too well. But more to the point, Warren is very fond of bringing up 1970s-style feminist tropes from the Gloria Steinem era – women teachers being fired for being pregnant, for example – that are old and out of date. Warren is famous for her lies – which include that of her being a Native American to claim victim status, her claim her dad was a ‘janitor‘ to claim down-and-out status, her claim her kids went to public schools when they also went to private, to claim working-class status again and union hearts, her claim she was too poor to afford college application fees to sound down and out yet again, when she would have had to have coughed one up for the scholarship she won. It’s all fake. The feminist lies are especially vivid. So now we had the showdown with Warren and Sanders in the same room, and reporters attempting to sort out who was telling the truth, and the one who asked Warren completely accepting her claim as fact. Both were ready – Sanders made several fierce denials and wouldn’t let them try to change the topic, Warren made an icky speech about the importance of women presidents.
PHILLIP: Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
(LAUGHTER)
WARREN: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But, look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it’s time for us to attack it head-on.
And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump?
Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
(LAUGHTER)
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women…
(APPLAUSE)
… Amy and me.
(Which, by the way, wasn’t true, as Bernie pointed out, citing an election he won 30 years ago).
Do you notice something? Warren didn’t stand by her story, she just tried to shift the topic. She should have stood up and told Sanders she knew very well what he said and she didn’t. She didn’t defend her claim at all. Sounds like another whopper.
4. Klobuchar on Iran negotiations. Amy Klobuchar pretty well came off as a boob by saying she was all in for Iran negotiations because Iran wasn’t following its agreements made in … negotiations:
Sen. Klobuchar, if you become president, it’s very possible there won’t be an Iran nuclear deal for the United States to rejoin. Given that, how would you prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon?
KLOBUCHAR: I would start negotiations again. And I won’t take that as a given, given that our European partners are still trying to hold the agreement together. My issue is that, because of the actions of Donald Trump, we are in a situation where they are now starting — Iran is starting to enrich uranium again in violation of the original agreement.
So what I would do is negotiate. I would bring people together, just as President Obama did years ago, and I think that we can get this done. But you have to have a president that sees this as a number-one goal.
And in answer to the original question you asked the mayor, I would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And then you have to get an agreement in place. I think there are changes you can make to the agreement that are sunset, some changes to the inspections, but overall, that is what we should do.
And I am the one person on this debate stage, on the first night of the very first debate, when we were asked what we saw as the biggest threat to our world, I said China on the economy, but I said Iran, because of Donald Trump. Because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies. We can bring them back, understanding this is a terrorist regime that we cannot allow to have a nuclear weapon.
O.K., so let’s get this straight. Iran was violating its treaty it negotiated so the solution is … more negotiations? The mullahs would roll this stupid woman like a Persian carpet if she ever made it into the White House. If Iran’s ignoring the agreements made in past negotiations and getting itself a nuclear weapon instead, why would “bringing people together” make them act any different? They’d negotiate with her, snicker up their sleeves, and go make a bomb. File under woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.
3. Joe Biden’s Mess of Answers on Foreign Policy: Joe’s the man for the status quo ante, the Obama era that somehow brought us Donald Trump, yet somehow was a paradise of sorts. Now it’s Paradise Lost. Three idiocies from this supposed foreign policy man stood out, starting with this North Korea exchange, reminding us all why we voted for Trump:
PHILLIP: Vice President Biden, I want to ask you about North Korea. President Trump has met with Kim Jong-un three times. President Obama once said he would meet with North Korea without any preconditions. Would you meet with North
Korea without any preconditions?
BIDEN: No, not now. I wouldn’t meet with them without any preconditions. Look, what — we gave him everything he’s looking for, legitimacy. The president showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him.
Need to know ahead of the caucuses:
I would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
Umm, Joe, you’ve got the phone line to Kim now. Cat’s out of the bag. Joe says pretend that never happened and he’d would rather work through China, trustworthy China, as his trusted intermediary. Talk about throwing away an advantage and outsourcing the matter to China’s good offices. Sound like a plan? The clown throws away an advantage in the name of Getting Trump.
Here’s another one:
BLITZER: So just to be clear, Vice President Biden, would you leave troops in the Middle East or would you pull them out?
BIDEN: I would leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the Gulf, where we have — where we are now, small numbers of troops, and I think it’s a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now to deal with ISIS.
So they can be target practice, Joe? Same as the good old pre-Trump days? As American Thinker’s brilliant contributor, Monty Donohew has noted in a must-read essay – Trump himself doesn’t do “small numbers of troops” because they only end up as target practice and tempting hostage prospects. Trump blew that decades-old approach out of the water by pulling out U.S. troops from Syria and since then, extremely bad times have followed for terrorists, not just al-Baghdadi but Iran’s notorious Quds Force chieftain, Qassem Soleimani himself, both of whom got blown to hell. Biden would rather they have some convenient targets to work on.
Here’s the real whopper:
BLITZER: Vice President Biden, is Sen. Warren right [about withdrawing all U.S. troops from the Middle East]?
BIDEN: Well, I tell you what, there’s a difference between combat troops and leaving special forces in a position. I was part of the coalition to put together 68 countries to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 other countries.
That’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate for ISIS. They’ll come back if we do not deal with them and we do not have someone who can bring together the rest of the world to go with us, with small numbers of special forces we have, to organize the effort to take them down.
You know, I have three brothers who were in the military, and I know how much our military families sacrifice. But I also know that we have to think about our defense in very different ways. We have to think about cyber. We have to think about climate. We also have to think about how we spend money.
We have a problem with a revolving door in Washington between the defense industry and the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. That is corruption, pure and simple. We need to block that revolving door, and we need to cut our defense budget. We need to depend on all of our tools — diplomatic, economic, working with our allies — and not let the defense industry call the shots.
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who wants a $3 trillion wealth tax to finance her government programs, which total up to $30 trillion in new government spending? The defense budget she wants to cut is a drop in the bucket compared to all that spending she’s planning to throw around on us, a mere $693 billion at last count, not even making the cut to one of her plan of $30 trillion. So that’s the one she wants to cut while flinging money around in the biggest drunkfest of spending of all time? Something tells us she doesn’t get it about numbers.
1. Bernie Sanders’s concern-trolling about all those administrative costs connected to medical care as it is and how he’s supposedly against them.
Sen. Sanders, your campaign proposals would double federal spending over the next decade, an unprecedented level of spending not seen since World War II. How would you keep your plans from bankrupting the country?
SANDERS: No, our plan wouldn’t bankrupt the country. And, in fact, it would much improve the well-being of working-class families and the middle class.
Let us be clear what Medicare for all does. It ends all premiums. It ends all copayments. It ends the absurdity of deductibles. It ends out-of-pocket expenses. It takes on the pharmaceutical industry, which in some cases charges us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs sold abroad as sold here.
What we will do through a Medicare for all single-payer program is substantially lower the cost of health care for employers and workers, because we end the $100 billion a year that the health care industry makes and the $500 billion a year we spend in administrative — the administrative nightmare of dealing with thousands of separate insurance plans.
Is this a joke? Since when does a Soviet-style health care plan such as Bernie proposes not include masses and masses of red tape? Soviet dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich wrote hilarious books about stupid, obtuse, time-serving “blotting paper bureaucrats” who covered the socialist Soviet system. Socialized medicine, like all huge government programs is going to be the Mother of all Bureaucracy, just to administer the nightmare. Since when do government programs not involve bureaucracy? And considering all the paperwork requirements President Obama saddled health insurance companies with in implementing Obamacare, where does Bernie think all that paperwork insurance companies are supposedly profiting off of, is going? That’s right, the government. Moving the bureaucracy to government from the private sector is not going to end any administrative costs. If anything, with nothing to check their costs, it’s going to create incentives for even more paperwork. A government takeover of an entire industry is going to solve red tape? Just ask the student loan industry which got federalized and sank deep into the red tape. Call this one the whopper of the evening.
Before I drifted off out of boredom, I caught the first part of Democratic debate seven, on foreign policy, health care, identity politics and other topics, and oh, what a revelation about these last six characters from the clown car still standing. These are the people who would occupy the White House and you wouldn’t want to be there if it happened.
5. The Warren-Sanders ‘woman president’ wrangle. Before the debate, Elizabeth Warren made waves by claiming Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the presidency. On the surface, it’s hard to believe, given that Bernie has been around the block and remembers Margaret Thatcher only too well. But more to the point, Warren is very fond of bringing up 1970s-style feminist tropes from the Gloria Steinem era – women teachers being fired for being pregnant, for example – that are old and out of date. Warren is famous for her lies – which include that of her being a Native American to claim victim status, her claim her dad was a ‘janitor‘ to claim down-and-out status, her claim her kids went to public schools when they also went to private, to claim working-class status again and union hearts, her claim she was too poor to afford college application fees to sound down and out yet again, when she would have had to have coughed one up for the scholarship she won. It’s all fake. The feminist lies are especially vivid. So now we had the showdown with Warren and Sanders in the same room, and reporters attempting to sort out who was telling the truth, and the one who asked Warren completely accepting her claim as fact. Both were ready – Sanders made several fierce denials and wouldn’t let them try to change the topic, Warren made an icky speech about the importance of women presidents.
PHILLIP: Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?
(LAUGHTER)
WARREN: I disagreed. Bernie is my friend, and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie. But, look, this question about whether or not a woman can be president has been raised, and it’s time for us to attack it head-on.
And I think the best way to talk about who can win is by looking at people’s winning record. So, can a woman beat Donald Trump?
Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections.
(LAUGHTER)
The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women…
(APPLAUSE)
… Amy and me.
(Which, by the way, wasn’t true, as Bernie pointed out, citing an election he won 30 years ago).
Do you notice something? Warren didn’t stand by her story, she just tried to shift the topic. She should have stood up and told Sanders she knew very well what he said and she didn’t. She didn’t defend her claim at all. Sounds like another whopper.
4. Klobuchar on Iran negotiations. Amy Klobuchar pretty well came off as a boob by saying she was all in for Iran negotiations because Iran wasn’t following its agreements made in … negotiations:
Sen. Klobuchar, if you become president, it’s very possible there won’t be an Iran nuclear deal for the United States to rejoin. Given that, how would you prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon?
KLOBUCHAR: I would start negotiations again. And I won’t take that as a given, given that our European partners are still trying to hold the agreement together. My issue is that, because of the actions of Donald Trump, we are in a situation where they are now starting — Iran is starting to enrich uranium again in violation of the original agreement.
So what I would do is negotiate. I would bring people together, just as President Obama did years ago, and I think that we can get this done. But you have to have a president that sees this as a number-one goal.
And in answer to the original question you asked the mayor, I would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And then you have to get an agreement in place. I think there are changes you can make to the agreement that are sunset, some changes to the inspections, but overall, that is what we should do.
And I am the one person on this debate stage, on the first night of the very first debate, when we were asked what we saw as the biggest threat to our world, I said China on the economy, but I said Iran, because of Donald Trump. Because I feared that exactly what happened would happen: enrichment of uranium, escalation of tensions, leaving frayed relations with our allies. We can bring them back, understanding this is a terrorist regime that we cannot allow to have a nuclear weapon.
O.K., so let’s get this straight. Iran was violating its treaty it negotiated so the solution is … more negotiations? The mullahs would roll this stupid woman like a Persian carpet if she ever made it into the White House. If Iran’s ignoring the agreements made in past negotiations and getting itself a nuclear weapon instead, why would “bringing people together” make them act any different? They’d negotiate with her, snicker up their sleeves, and go make a bomb. File under woman who has no idea what she’s talking about.
3. Joe Biden’s Mess of Answers on Foreign Policy: Joe’s the man for the status quo ante, the Obama era that somehow brought us Donald Trump, yet somehow was a paradise of sorts. Now it’s Paradise Lost. Three idiocies from this supposed foreign policy man stood out, starting with this North Korea exchange, reminding us all why we voted for Trump:
PHILLIP: Vice President Biden, I want to ask you about North Korea. President Trump has met with Kim Jong-un three times. President Obama once said he would meet with North Korea without any preconditions. Would you meet with North
Korea without any preconditions?
BIDEN: No, not now. I wouldn’t meet with them without any preconditions. Look, what — we gave him everything he’s looking for, legitimacy. The president showed up, met with him, gave him legitimacy, weakened the sanctions we have against him.
Need to know ahead of the caucuses:
I would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
would be putting what I did as vice president — I met with Xi Jinping more than anyone else. I would be putting pressure on China to put pressure on Korea, to cease and desist from their nuclear power, make — their efforts to deal with nuclear weapons. I would move forward as we did before — and you reported it extensively, Wolf — about moving forward the whole notion of defense against nuclear weapons, that we would — and when China said to me, when Xi Jinping said to me, that’s a threat to us, I said, we’re going to move and protect our interests unless you get involved and protect it.
Umm, Joe, you’ve got the phone line to Kim now. Cat’s out of the bag. Joe says pretend that never happened and he’d would rather work through China, trustworthy China, as his trusted intermediary. Talk about throwing away an advantage and outsourcing the matter to China’s good offices. Sound like a plan? The clown throws away an advantage in the name of Getting Trump.
Here’s another one:
BLITZER: So just to be clear, Vice President Biden, would you leave troops in the Middle East or would you pull them out?
BIDEN: I would leave troops in the Middle East in terms of patrolling the Gulf, where we have — where we are now, small numbers of troops, and I think it’s a mistake to pull out the small number of troops that are there now to deal with ISIS.
So they can be target practice, Joe? Same as the good old pre-Trump days? As American Thinker’s brilliant contributor, Monty Donohew has noted in a must-read essay – Trump himself doesn’t do “small numbers of troops” because they only end up as target practice and tempting hostage prospects. Trump blew that decades-old approach out of the water by pulling out U.S. troops from Syria and since then, extremely bad times have followed for terrorists, not just al-Baghdadi but Iran’s notorious Quds Force chieftain, Qassem Soleimani himself, both of whom got blown to hell. Biden would rather they have some convenient targets to work on.
Here’s the real whopper:
BLITZER: Vice President Biden, is Sen. Warren right [about withdrawing all U.S. troops from the Middle East]?
BIDEN: Well, I tell you what, there’s a difference between combat troops and leaving special forces in a position. I was part of the coalition to put together 68 countries to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 other countries.
That’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate for ISIS. They’ll come back if we do not deal with them and we do not have someone who can bring together the rest of the world to go with us, with small numbers of special forces we have, to organize the effort to take them down.
You know, I have three brothers who were in the military, and I know how much our military families sacrifice. But I also know that we have to think about our defense in very different ways. We have to think about cyber. We have to think about climate. We also have to think about how we spend money.
We have a problem with a revolving door in Washington between the defense industry and the Department of Defense and the Pentagon. That is corruption, pure and simple. We need to block that revolving door, and we need to cut our defense budget. We need to depend on all of our tools — diplomatic, economic, working with our allies — and not let the defense industry call the shots.
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who wants a $3 trillion wealth tax to finance her government programs, which total up to $30 trillion in new government spending? The defense budget she wants to cut is a drop in the bucket compared to all that spending she’s planning to throw around on us, a mere $693 billion at last count, not even making the cut to one of her plan of $30 trillion. So that’s the one she wants to cut while flinging money around in the biggest drunkfest of spending of all time? Something tells us she doesn’t get it about numbers.
1. Bernie Sanders’s concern-trolling about all those administrative costs connected to medical care as it is and how he’s supposedly against them.
Sen. Sanders, your campaign proposals would double federal spending over the next decade, an unprecedented level of spending not seen since World War II. How would you keep your plans from bankrupting the country?
SANDERS: No, our plan wouldn’t bankrupt the country. And, in fact, it would much improve the well-being of working-class families and the middle class.
Let us be clear what Medicare for all does. It ends all premiums. It ends all copayments. It ends the absurdity of deductibles. It ends out-of-pocket expenses. It takes on the pharmaceutical industry, which in some cases charges us 10 times more for the same prescription drugs sold abroad as sold here.
What we will do through a Medicare for all single-payer program is substantially lower the cost of health care for employers and workers, because we end the $100 billion a year that the health care industry makes and the $500 billion a year we spend in administrative — the administrative nightmare of dealing with thousands of separate insurance plans.
Is this a joke? Since when does a Soviet-style health care plan such as Bernie proposes not include masses and masses of red tape? Soviet dissident writers such as Vladimir Voinovich wrote hilarious books about stupid, obtuse, time-serving “blotting paper bureaucrats” who covered the socialist Soviet system. Socialized medicine, like all huge government programs is going to be the Mother of all Bureaucracy, just to administer the nightmare. Since when do government programs not involve bureaucracy? And considering all the paperwork requirements President Obama saddled health insurance companies with in implementing Obamacare, where does Bernie think all that paperwork insurance companies are supposedly profiting off of, is going? That’s right, the government. Moving the bureaucracy to government from the private sector is not going to end any administrative costs. If anything, with nothing to check their costs, it’s going to create incentives for even more paperwork. A government takeover of an entire industry is going to solve red tape? Just ask the student loan industry which got federalized and sank deep into the red tape. Call this one the whopper of the evening.
It’s difficult to imagine the death of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani and the subsequent shoot-down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 ever being blamed on the president of the United States if the president of the United States wasn’t Donald Trump.
Picture the situation in isolation, without any particulars: The United States makes a decision to take out an Iranian general who’s also a commander in the part of Iran’s military structure designated as a terrorist organization.
Said general is responsible for arming and funding plenty of Iranian proxies, including militias in Iraq that are responsible for over 600 American deaths.
Iran threatens retaliation.
The president of the United States threatens counter-retaliation.
At the same time, they don’t shut down their airspace to commercial aviation and mistake a 737 taking off for an American plane.
They shoot it down, killing 176 people — including 57 Canadians. Canada’s prime minister blames American “escalation” for the shoot-down.
Again, this adumbration of events sounds ludicrous until you pencil in the American president as being Donald Trump and the Canadian prime minister as being (sigh) Justin Trudeau.
Do you think Iran is solely responsible for the crash of the Ukrainian airliner they shot down?
0% (0 Votes)
0% (0 Votes)
Trudeau, ever eager to convince us all he really is the caricature of left-wing Canadians that American conservatives believe him to be, gave an interview to Canada’s Global News in which he placed the balance of the blame on the United States.
“I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” Trudeau said during the Monday sit-down.
“This is something that happens when you have conflict and war. Innocents bear the brunt of it and it is a reminder why all of us need to work so hard on de-escalation, moving forward to reduce tensions and find a pathway that doesn’t involve further conflict and killing,” he continued.
These are wonderful thoughts if you’re a 20-something “Democracy Now” viewer and considerably less charming if you’re the world leader in a major drama involving the death of a terrorist that a nation-state just happened to squeeze into a uniform.
In part due to the number of Canadian casualties on board Flight 752 — going through Kiev was often the cheapest option to return for members of the Iranian diaspora there — Canada will be chairing a meeting of the International Coordination and Response Group in London beginning Thursday.
That meeting, according to Global News, is “set to lay out [members’] next steps for pushing for credible answers and access to black box data.”
I totally understand Canada’s prerogative behind hosting the meeting. Does Trudeau?
“I think full admission, acknowledgment of responsibility and some form of compensation is going to have to come,” Trudeau said of the meeting.
All right. But from whom? If you follow Trudeau’s argument to its logical conclusion, then the U.S. should compensate the families, since he seems to believe America is responsible for the “escalation” that led to the tragedy.
In other parts of the interview, Trudeau seemed to tacitly acknowledge the plane crash was Iran’s fault. He talked about how it would be “weeks, perhaps even months” before the bodies of victims were repatriated.
“The grief they’re going through is not to be consoled right now. They want answers, they’ve expressed anger and outrage and also immeasurable pain,” Trudeau said of the victims’ families.
“I am hurt like all Canadians. I am angry like all Canadians. But unlike many people I have a job to do that will be able to help these families directly. Getting answers for them is my entire focus right now.”
The answers Global News was most interested in, however, seemed to involve the Trump administration.
For instance, had he spoken to Trump?
“I have spoken to him and I have talked about the need to de-escalate tensions,” Trudeau said.
“I’ve talked about the tremendous grief and loss that Canadians are feeling, and the need for clear answers on how this happened and how we’re going to make sure it never happens again.”
I have an ayatollah you can talk to if you want to complain about this.
A radical feminist group has claimed responsibility for recently vandalizing two churches in Germany and torching a pro-life journalist’s car.
The first attack reportedly occurred on December 27, when members of a group called the “Feminist Autonomous Cell” (FAC) vandalized an evangelical Christian church with spray pain in the southern German city of Tübingen. The group also set a minibus on fire outside the church, causing some 40,000 euro in damages, according to estimates by authorities.
Not long after, FAC posted a confession letter on the website indymedia, which accused the of fomenting “anti-feminist attitudes,” Catholic News Service reported.
Last week, FAC militants were at it again, throwing paint on Saint Elisabeth’s church in Berlin. The group posted an online letter claiming that the paint attack came in retaliation for the church having hosted participants in Germany’s annual March for Life, held last September.
In their letter, FAC members justified the attack, saying that the March for Life serves as a platform for “fundamentalist, anti-trans, homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynist, patriarchal, and right-wing conservative” speakers.
On New Year’s Eve, FAC members set fire to the SUV owned by pro-life German journalist and author Gunnar Schupelius, who writes for the newspaper BZ and has openly espoused pro-life views.
In FAC’s confession letter for the arson, they also doxxed Schupelius, publishing his home address “in a bid to provoke further violence,” Catholic News Service reported.
This marked the second time Schupelius’ car was torched because of his pro-life stance. Five years ago his car was set on fire and, as in the recent case, a confession taking credit for the arson was published online.
In an interview last week, Schupelius was asked if there wasn’t some contradiction in left-wing radicals — who supposedly defend freedom of speech — using violence to shut him up.
“It is really a paradoxical situation,” Schupelius said. “These are people who claim to be fighting for the right thing. This includes tolerance towards dissenters, but they don’t believe in that.”
Schupelius added that the discussion has changed and anyone dissenting from popular opinion on matters such as abortion or climate change must justify their positions, since they are seen as going against the morally superior stance.
Virginia Democrats withdrew an AR-15 confiscation bill Monday after thousands of NRA members showed up to oppose new gun controls.
The NRA asked members to flood the January 13, 2020, Virginia Senate meetings and ensure pro-Second Amendment voices drowned out those calling for gun control.
Video from hallways outside the meetings showed NRA members responded en masse:
The Washington Free Beacon reports the presence of thousands of NRA members “appeared to have an impact.” Democrats withdrew a bill aimed at AR-15 confiscation and moderated other gun control proposals.
But NRA-ILA Virginia state director Daniel Spiker made clear the changes, though good, were not enough.
He said, “While there were some improvements to some of these bills, overall, it’s still bad legislation. Putting in more regulations and making it more onerous on the law-abiding citizens of Virginia is not something we stand for.”
Richard Cosner, a Chester, Virginia, preacher, was present to oppose new gun controls.
He pointed out attempts to legislate gun control serve as a way to usurp the Constitution: “The Constitution is specific; it ‘shall not be infringed.’ If somebody wants to restrict those rights then they need to follow it by altering the Constitution, not by putting in place legislation that is in conflict with the Constitution.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe taunted Democrats on Sunday and revealed he will be releasing the ‘first bombshell tape’ of the 2020 election this week.
“You aren’t going to want to miss what we expose in 2020,” O’Keefe said reminding Americans that his undercover videos exposed “bird dogging” and other schemes cooked up by the Democrats to start fights at Trump’s rallies in 2016.
O’Keefe released a teaser of his first undercover bombshell video exposing 2020 Democrats and it looks like Bernie Sanders will be O’Keefe’s first target based on hints in his vignette.
James teased the new release with video of himself reading “The Gulag Archipelago” by Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solshenityn.
On Tuesday morning James O’Keefe and Project Veritas released their teaser video from the Bernie Sanders Campaign.
In the video you see Bernie’s Field Organizer Kyle Jurek suggesting that Trump supporters need re-education camps.
Jurek then says cities will burn if President Trump wins again.
BREAKING: "If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination or it goes to a second round at the @DNC Convention, f**king Milwaukee will burn" – @BernieSanders Field Organizer Kyle Jurek
As a Gateway Pundit reader, you know about the media’s anti-conservative bias. You’ve seen the media’s dishonesty, double standards and constant attacks on President Trump.
You know that as we get into 2020, the media’s hatred for Trump will grow stronger.
But a lot of your friends don’t see the bias. A lot of them don’t know what is really happening. A lot of them still get their news from cable channels, NPR and liberal newspapers.
It’s a one-stop place to see the stories the Liberal Media won’t touch.
Get your friends to read ProTrumpNews.com for some balance in how they view the world.
They’ll see that President Trump has:
Created a booming economy
Stopped wars
Made America Great Again
Plus, they’ll see how ridiculously biased the media really is…
And it looks great on a cell phone:
It used to be that we could get positive stories about President Trump to our friends via social media. Then Silicon Valley Liberals changed everything. Now you see on Facebook what Liberals want you to see, instead of what you want to see (for more on social media bias, see Gateway Pundit reporting).
Liberal billionaire and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg may have just one-upped fellow liberal billionaire Tom Steyer in anti-Trump spending by being willing to burn through an unheard-of amount of money to defeat President Donald Trump.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders released an ad Monday invoking the legacy of President John F. Kennedy. But in previous remarks, Sanders harshly criticized Kennedy and said the former president nauseated him.
The Sanders ad, set to air in Iowa ahead of the February caucus, opens with footage of Kennedy promising to put a man on the moon. "President Kennedy knew settling for half-measures wasn’t good enough," Sanders says. "So when candidates say we can’t guarantee health care for all, make college affordable for all, combat climate change, or create a world at peace, remember America is best when we strive to do big things, even when it’s hard."
The praise of Kennedy marks a radical departure from Sanders’s previous rhetoric about the president. In a 1987 interview with the University of Vermont student paper, The Gadfly, the socialist candidate remembered Kennedy as the start of his disillusion with mainstream liberalism. "President Kennedy was elected while I was at the University of Chicago, that was 1960. I remember being physically nauseated by his speech and that doesn’t happen very often," Sanders said.
Sanders told the student paper that he was particularly repulsed by Kennedy’s opposition to Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba. "Kennedy was young and appealing and ostensibly liberal, but I think at that point, seeing through Kennedy, and what liberalism was, was probably a significant step for me to understand that conventional politics or liberalism was not what was relevant," he said.
The then-independent Burlington mayor told the same story in a 1987 speech at the University of Vermont, setting the story during the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debate rather than a Kennedy speech.
"I was very excited and impressed by the Cuban Revolution, and there was Kennedy and Nixon talking about which particular method they should use about destroying the revolution," Sanders recalled. "Usually I’m sufficiently unemotional not to be sick, but I actually got up from the room and almost left to puke because, for the first time in my adult life, what I was seeing is the Democrats and Republicans, both of them … clearly there really wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the two."
