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Barkley slam-dunks Smollett: Why didn’t you just look up Liam Neeson?

Kamala Harris may be “sad, frustrated, and disappointed” by Jussie Smollett, but NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley finds the alleged hoax hilarious — for its incompetence. “America, let me just tell you something,” Barkley intoned during an NBA halftime on TNT, “do not commit crimes with checks.” Barkley had his partners on the set in stitches during this two-minute riff, which included this piece of advice  to Smollett from Barkley: The next time you want to stage a hate crime, go “up in Liam Neeson’s neighborhood.”

Dude!

It started with the host of TNT’s “Inside the NBA” asking which of their panelists’ predictions about the rest of the season had no chance of coming true. Before anyone else could get a word in, Charles Barkley offered a reply that had nothing to do with basketball and everything to do with the arrest of actor Jussie Smollett over allegations that he hired two Nigerian men to stage a racist attack on him.

“Two black guys beating a black guy up,” Barkley said late Thursday, sending co-host Shaquille O’Neal into a wheezing laugh that had him banging the desk. The baffled host, Ernie Johnson, could only shake his head and muster, “I can’t believe you, Chuck.”

Not everyone on the set was laughing, however:

As Barkley was still giggling from the joke, a member from the production staff could be heard yelling something at him, perhaps in an effort to end talk of a sensitive story that remains raw for those who initially backed Smollett. Some online suggested that the person off-camera yelled, “Stop!”

Charles Barkley doesn’t respond well to people telling him to stop talking. That won’t keep people from trying, including Esquire’s Justin Kirkland, who wanted him to stop too:

If you want an unfiltered opinion, just ask NBA legend Charles Barkley. If you don’t want an unfiltered opinion, then make sure that he is completely out of the room, because during Thursday night’s NBA Halftime Show on TNT, Barkley came out of left field to roast Jussie Smollett on the alleged staging on his own hate crime. In a word, it’s brutal. In a few more? It’s random, weird, and will make you uncomfortable. …

In a way, it’s the most predictable way to punctuate a week of disastrous news from the Smollett case. In a timeline of accounts that only seemed to drive the case further into the ground, Barkely happily picked up the shovel to dig in a little further.

Er, no, Smollett and the celebrities who used his hoax to beat up on their own bêtes noires did all the digging. Barkley’s just pointing out the holes and laughing. He’s one of the least politically correct celebrities in the business, known for his blunt style and sense of humor. Who cares if this “remains raw for those who initially backed Smollett”? Perhaps they should have exercised better judgment at that time rather than clucking tongues at Barkley last night for poking fun at what has been a ridiculous spectacle for a while. As Barkley demonstrates with his Neeson reference, he has an even-handed approach to ridicule.

I don’t usually patrol the late-night television shows, but it’s worth asking: Was Barkley the first late-night “comic” to skewer Jussie Smollett other than Trevor Noah at roughly the same time? I’d bet the answer is yes, and I’d further bet that they’ll be the only two for a while. I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised with examples preceding Sir Charles and Noah, but … I’m not holding my breath.

The post Barkley slam-dunks Smollett: Why didn’t you just look up Liam Neeson? appeared first on Hot Air.

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Kamala Harris Finally Gives Statement On Smollett Arrest, Guess What’s Missing?

Like most of you, I’ve seen the reports about Jussie Smollett, and I’m sad, frustrated, and disappointed. pic.twitter.com/91OHOymShi — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 21, 2019 Notice what’s missing? Any apology for jumping the gun, any condemnation or recognition that he committed a crime and any acknowledgment of the Trump supporters who were his targets. Via […]

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Off a Cliff: Democratic Virginia Scandals Evaporate from ABC, CBS, NBC

Despite the fact that there has been no resolution to any of the scandals surrounding the three Democrats who sit atop Virginia’s government, ABC, CBS and NBC have essentially dropped the stories from their flagship newscasts. From February 1-7,  ABC, CBS, and NBC combined for 116 minutes and 19 seconds and then 96 minutes and 12 seconds from February 8-14, but since then, there have only been eight minutes and eight seconds devoted to the Virginia officeholders between February 15’s CBS This Morning and February 19’s Good Morning America. 

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Trump to Use ‘Nuclear Option’ to Recover $2.5 Bn More from California’s Failed High-Speed Rail Project

The Trump administration announced this week that it was canceling nearly $1 billion in grant money for California’s now-defunct high-speed rail project — and President Donald Trump is coming for the other $2.5 billion.

The $2.5 billion has already been spent — but California has failed to deliver the high-speed rail (on time, or at all) as promised.

Therefore, the Trump administration argues, the state has to repay federal taxpayers.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Stanford law professor David Freeman Engstrom, a Stanford law professor, describing Trump’s effort as a “nuclear option.”

The practice of recovering money after a breach of contract, while common in the private sector, was virtually unheard of in government, he explained.

“There is a reluctance to penalize misspending by local government agencies. … Almost never do those violations result in terminations, in part because federal agencies are set up to distribute money, not take it back, and they also lack funding for strict grant enforcement,” the Times added.

Last week, newly-inaugurated California Governor Gavin Newsom announced in his “State of the State” address that the “bullet train” would no longer be built between Los Angeles and San Francisco because it “would cost too much and, respectfully, would take too long.”

Newsom said the state would still build a portion of the high-speed rail project in the Central Valley in an effort to hold onto the federal funds that President Barack Obama’s administration had allocated to the project: “I am not interested in sending $3.5 billion in federal funding that was allocated to this project back to Donald Trump, Newsom told legislators in the State Capitol in Sacramento.

But President Trump objected, demanding on Twitter: “California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars. They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a “green” disaster!” Newsom responded: “This is CA’s money, allocated by Congress for this project. We’re not giving it back.” He also taunted the president, accusing him of “desperately searching for some wall $$,” referring to Trump’s barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.

That did not impress the president. On Tuesday, the Federal Railroad Administration of the U.S. Department of Transportation wrote to California’s High-Speed Rail Authority, informing it that it had breached the terms of its contract with the federal government and that $928,620,000 would therefore no longer be available to the project.

Newsom objected, again: “This is California’s money.” He also claimed Trump was taking revenge for California’s leading role in filing a federal lawsuit against Trump’s national emergency declaration to build the “wall.”

But that may not matter.

The state had grown accustomed to leniency: the Obama administration modified the terms of the deal between the federal government and the state several times, because it was ideologically committed to high-speed rail.

For example, in “the final hours of the Obama administration” in January 2017, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, Obama extended the deadline for the high-speed rail project from 2018 to 2022, so that California might still access the nearly $1 billion in transportation funds that the Trump administration is now “de-obligating.”

Trump is somewhat indifferent to high-speed rail: he favors infrastructure spending, but wants to see the projects built.

And as a world-famous developer, he knows the rules of the game: deliver the project, or pay up.

Legally California may have no choice.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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UPDATE: UC Berkeley Police Believe They Have Identified Thug Who Sucker-Punched Conservative TPUSA Activist

As reported earlier by Cassandra Fairbanks…

A violent leftist attacked a Turning Point USA activist who was out recruiting for their chapter at UC Berkeley on Tuesday afternoon in Upper Sproul Plaza.

The assault was captured on video and posted to Twitter by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

The victim was passing out information about the conservative student group when he was approached by two angry men. After a verbal altercation ensued, he pulled out his phone to begin filming.

“One of the two men slapped the phone out of the victim’s hand and proceeded to knock over the table, the victim further alleged. While he and the suspect struggled for the phone, the suspect punched the victim several times, causing injury to the victim’s eye and nose, the alert said,” the Daily Californian reports.

Kirk confirmed to The Gateway Pundit that the student reported the assault to the police.

UC Berkeley Police believe they have identified a suspect.
The police say he is not a student???

NBC Bay Area reported:

On Friday, police said a possible suspect in the attack has been identified. Police said the suspect is not a student or affiliated with the university.

Police are asking anyone who has information about the case or the man in a photo released by the campus Police Department to call them at 510-642-6760.

The post UPDATE: UC Berkeley Police Believe They Have Identified Thug Who Sucker-Punched Conservative TPUSA Activist appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Thrice-Deported Illegal Immigrant Killed In Gunfight With Cop Was Repeatedly Arrested, Protected From ICE

Poster boy for Democrats immigration policy. Via Fox News: The illegal immigrant killed Sunday in a shootout with a California cop had been deported three times and arrested and released over ICE’s objection on several occasions — including cases involving the very department whose officer took him down in a dramatic exchange caught on her […]

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CONFIRMED… CHICAGO POLICE: Jussie Smollett Sent Himself the Racist Homophobic Letter (Video)

Chicago Police on Thursday held a press conference on the Jussie Smollett hate hoax and the actor’s arrest.

Jussie Smollett turned himself in around 5 AM on Thursday.
Here is his mugshot.

Chicago Police admitted Smollett sent himself the racist, homophobic letter to the “Empire” set.

The letter was hoax too!

The post CONFIRMED… CHICAGO POLICE: Jussie Smollett Sent Himself the Racist Homophobic Letter (Video) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Obama Administration’s Decision Exacerbated Opioid Crisis, Report Says

According to a new scientific paper, the Obama administration made a mistake that deepened the opioid crisis and triggered the skyrocketing of deadly hepatitis C infections.

As the authors of the paper “A Transitioning Epidemic: How The Opioid Crisis Is Driving The Rise In Hepatitis C” suggest, Hepatitis C kills more Americans every year than any other infectious disease. The Washington Free Beacon adds, “Once infected, the virus can take ten to forty years to fully induce its effects; the results, however, are eventually deadly unless treated.”

Although the number of acute cases of Hepatitis C declined in the years before 2003, when the number of cases stabilized, the number started rising in 2010, apparently after the Obama administration’s FDA permitted Purdue Pharma, the producers of Oxycontin, to reformulate the drug, which users had typically crushed in order to get the oxy needed for a more protracted high. The new version of the drug was offered in a version that left it useless after being crushed, which was thought an effective technique for reducing the deaths among people using it.

Instead, as the paper surmises, many of the former users of Oxyxcontin turned to injecting themselves with heroin, leaving them vulnerable to getting Hepatitis C from unsanitized needles.

The paper notes, “States with above-median OxyContin misuse before the reformulation experienced a 222 percent increase in hepatitis C infection rates in the post-reformulation period, while states with below-median misuse experienced only a 75 percent increase. These results suggest that interventions to deter opioid misuse can have unintended long-term public health consequences.”

The Beacon notes that the new paper “is a spiritual successor to a 2018 paper by economists William Evans, Ethan Lieber, and Patrick Power. ‘How the Reformulation of OxyContin Ignited the Heroin Epidemic,’ which stated, ‘The reformulation did not generate a reduction in combined heroin and opioid mortality. Each prevented opioid death was replaced with a heroin death.’”

NovusDetox explained why Oxycontin users moved to heroin, as it explained the difference in cost for users:

A hit of heroin is a fraction of the cost of the same high from OxyContin (or oxycodone). Prescription narcotics generally sell on the illicit street market at around $1 per milligram. A one-time high from an 80 milligram oxycodone pill for an experienced user would run roughly $80. Heroin, on the other hand, sells in many areas for around $100 a gram. Depending on a user’s tolerance level (long-time users need more per dose) a gram can deliver up to 20 doses, or highs. In other words, it’s vastly less expensive to get and stay stoned on heroin than OxyContin.

The Beacon concludes, “In other words, the new study further confirms that the prescription drug crackdown cannot really abate the opioid crisis. Recent research in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that controlling prescription opioids would only reduce drug deaths by 3 to 6 percent by 2025. Even if all prescription drug abuse stopped in 2016, the paper argued, almost 580,000 people would still die from opioid overdose over the subsequent nine years.”

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JUSSIE CRAY-CRAY… Chicago Police: Smollett Wrote the two Brothers a Personal Check — SCRATCHES WERE SELF-INFLICTED! (VIDEO)

Chicago Police on Thursday held a press conference on the Jussie Smollett hate hoax and the actor’s arrest.

Jussie Smollett turned himself in around 5 AM on Thursday.
Here is his mugshot.

Chicago Police Superintendent told reporters Jussie Smollett wrote the brothers a check!

And Jussie Smollett’s scratches and bruises were self-inflicted!

The post JUSSIE CRAY-CRAY… Chicago Police: Smollett Wrote the two Brothers a Personal Check — SCRATCHES WERE SELF-INFLICTED! (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Planned Parenthood Videos Will Be Shown in Court

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Judge Christopher Hite of the San Francisco Superior Court denied the requests of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and his abortion allies to seal and shield from public viewing the video evidence to be shown in the courtroom during Sandra Merritt’s upcoming preliminary hearing, scheduled for April 22 to May 3, 2019. However, Judge Hite will seal the video evidence after the hearing. He will also allow Merritt’s accusers to continue to press their charges anonymously, under “Doe” pseudonyms.

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