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‘South Park’ Now Banned In China After Latest Episode Pokes Fun At Censorship

The cartoon, “South Park,” known for its irreverent — and often pointed — political humor, has been banned in China and mentions of it removed from the internet after the show poked fun at Chinese censors in its latest episode.

The episode, appropriately titled “Band in China,” mocked American submission to Chinese government demands, and for that, Business Insider reports, “South Park’s” creators got precisely what they predicted (and, arguably, asked for).

The Hollywood Reporter adds that “South Park” has been “scrubbed from the internet” in the Asian powerhouse country, and Chinese authorities have deleted “all clips, episodes, and discussions of the Comedy Central show” from the government-run social network, Weibo, and from the Chinese YouTube clone, Youku.

“A cursory perusal through China’s highly regulated Internet landscape shows the show conspicuously absent everywhere it recently had a presence. A search of the Twitter-like social media service Weibo turns up not a single mention of South Park among the billions of past posts. On streaming service Youku, owned by Internet giant Alibaba, all links to clips, episodes and even full seasons of the show are now dead,” according to the Hollywood reporter.

Other Chinese networks were clear that viewers were banned by the government from accessing “South Park” by design. “If users manually type in the URL for what was formerly the South Park thread [on China’s discussion forum, Baidu], a message appears saying that, ‘According to the relevant law and regulation, this section is temporarily not open.’”

The episode was a one-two punch at China over both its strict censorship of American media and its use of concentration camps to hold political prisoners, including more than one million ethnic Chinese Muslims. In it, Randy is sent to a Chinese indoctrination camp, “similar to those Beijing has been using in Xinjiang Provence to hold as many as a million Chinese Muslims for political indoctrination” after he’s caught selling marijuana while on vacation.

The show’s main characters, Stan, Jimmy, Kenny and Butters, form a metal band that becomes intensely popular in China and inspires a documentary, which, subsequently, has to be edited over and over (including by Chinese government officials) to meet censorship requirements for Chinese distribution. The boys eventually begin a new band and vow not to support anyone who changes their art for China. Randy ends up fully indoctrinated (and then some).

The episode even poked fun at China’s ban on Winnie the Pooh, which they instituted after Chinese citizens were reportedly using the Disney character to mock Chinese president-for-life Xi Jinping, and skewered both Disney and Marvel for repeatedly bowing to Chinese censors.

The episode was very timely, as the Hollywood Reporter points out. On Sunday, the NBA and the Houston Rockets basketball team was forced to issue a groveling apology to China after Rockets general manager Daryl Morey dared to express support for pro-democracy protests currently taking place in Hong Kong in a single Tweet.

The move met with anger from both sides of the aisle, and both the NBA and Morey were deeply criticized for trying to “save” the NBA’s presence in China by begging for Chinese forgiveness.

via The Daily Wire

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Trump Proclamation Bars Immigrants Who Cannot Afford Health Insurance

The Trump administration will require many future immigrant applicants to prove they can afford health insurance, marking the White House’s latest move to restrict immigration from those who could become a financial burden on the government.

President Donald Trump, invoking his executive authority, issued a proclamation Friday evening that will prohibit the entry of immigrants applying for visas unless they prove they can obtain health insurance within 30 days of entering the U.S. or otherwise indicate they can afford their own medical care.

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“The United States has a long history of welcoming immigrants who come lawfully in search of brighter futures. We must continue that tradition while also addressing the challenges facing our healthcare system, including protecting both it and the American taxpayer from the burdens of uncompensated care,” Trump said in the proclamation. “Continuing to allow entry into the United States of certain immigrants who lack health insurance or the demonstrated ability to pay for their healthcare would be detrimental to these interests.”

The directive, published on the White House’s website, will go into effect on Nov. 3.

Notably, the subsidized health care plans found on Obamacare exchanges will not qualify as eligible forms of insurance under the new rule.

“While lawful immigrants qualify for [Affordable Care Act] subsidies, they’ll be stuck in a catch-22 because subsidized coverage does not qualify as insurance under the proclamation,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said Friday on Twitter.

The order will apply to any foreign national who applies for an immigrant visa abroad and cannot obtain health insurance within 30 days of entering the U.S. or does not have the financial ability to cover their own medical care. Those with ties to family members in the U.S. are not exempt from the rule. However, asylees and refugees will not be impacted, and neither will noncitizen children of U.S. citizens. Those who have already obtained immigrant visas also will not have worry.

The health care proclamation is Trump’s latest move to restrict immigration from those who are likely to become dependent on U.S. government benefits.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services acting Director Ken Cuccinelli, for example, rolled out a directive in August that takes into account an immigrant’s use of government benefits when deciding whether or not to grant them permanent status.

Known as the “public charge” rule, the directive makes it more difficult for immigrants to obtain permanent status if they have used any number of public benefits, such as Medicaid, food stamps, Section 8 housing, cash assistance, or other programs.

“Immigrants who enter this country should not further saddle our healthcare system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs,” Trump wrote in his proclamation.

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The post Trump Proclamation Bars Immigrants Who Cannot Afford Health Insurance appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Ukraine’s President: ‘I Was Never Pressured’ by Trump, ‘No Conditions’ Were Imposed

Volodymyr Zelensky has been Ukraine’s president since May. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)

(CNSNews.com) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday again denied having been put under any pressure by President Trump, during a July phone conversation, to investigate Joe Biden or his son’s business dealings in Ukraine – an allegation at the center of the Democratic impeachment inquiry.

In what was billed as his first major interview by non-Ukrainian media since the row erupted, Zelensky was quoted as telling Japan’s Kyodo News agency that neither his invitation to the White House nor the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine were made conditional on his willingness to cooperate in the Biden matter.

“I was never pressured and there were no conditions being imposed” to secure an Oval Office meeting with Trump or the weaponry, he said.

Zelensky said he had had no discussions with Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, about investigations into Biden, as a condition for being invited to visit Washington. Neither would he have accepted such a condition, he said.

According to a memo on the July 25 phone call, released by the White House last month, after Trump raised concerns about the Biden issue Zelensky told him that Ukraine’s new prosecutor general will “look into the situation.”

Zelensky told Kyodo News he was merely stating that if U.S. investigators want help on the matter and take the necessary steps, then Ukraine could oblige by setting up a joint investigative committee.

He pointed out that under Ukraine’s Constitution the country’s president does not have the power to compel the prosecutor-general or investigative authorities to look into a particular case.

Zelensky said he told Trump that if U.S. prosecutors asked for Ukrainian cooperation in an investigation based on international law, then – in line with Ukraine’s domestic laws – it could set up a joint investigative committee to probe the issue at hand.

In 2014 Vice President Biden’s son, Hunter, joined the board of Ukraine’s largest independent gas producer, Burisma Holdings, whose owner, an oligarch and former government minister named Mykola Zlochevsky, was under suspicion of corrupt practices.

At a time of escalating tensions with Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine, President Obama had given his vice president the task of overseeing U.S.-Ukraine relations.

In the course of his dealings with Ukraine – he visited the country six times as vice president – Biden in 2016 threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees for Kyiv unless then-President Petro Poroshenko fired his prosecutor-general, Viktor Shokin.

Shokin, who was widely viewed as ineffective in combating endemic corruption in Ukraine, was soon thereafter removed from his post. But the fact he had been in the process of investigating Burisma’s oligarch owner Zlochevsky prompted suspicion in some quarters that Biden’s threat to withhold the loan guarantees had been improper.

‘Self-interest’

Armed with a complaint by an anonymous whistleblower, Trump’s Democratic critics are accusing him of abusing his power as president to pressure Zelensky to provide damaging information on Biden, who is campaigning for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

They claim that his decision to hold up military aid for Ukraine that Congress had appropriated was part of this supposed pressure; Trump denies that, asserting that he withheld the aid because of concerns of corruption in Ukraine, and out of frustration that Ukraine’s European neighbors were not doing more to help.

Zelensky told the Japanese news outlet that he believes different parties and camps are releasing information in their own self-interest ahead of the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.

Ukraine’s Interfax news agency on Friday quoted the country’s current prosecutor-general, Ruslan Riaboshapka, as saying his office was conducting an audit of previous investigations relating to Burisma Holdings.

“We are now reviewing all the cases which were closed, fragmented or investigated earlier in order to make a decision on cases where illegal procedural decisions were taken,” he said.

Hunter Biden reportedly stood down from the Burisma board in April this year.

 

 

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After Trump, We’re Next

The Democrats in 2016 graciously gave Americans the opportunity to do as we were told and vote for Hillary Clinton.  And just as we so many times disappointed Barack Obama, we failed them as well, proving our illegitimacy as a citizenry.

Electing Trump was the last straw for them – plastic, of course, paper is for us rabble.  They used to want only our money, but since we elected Trump, they’ve decided to come for everything else we enjoy as free citizens of the Republic.

Trump is all that stands between the America we cherish and the left’s policies for “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  They know that for us, 2020 is a “Flight 93” election and impeaching Trump on what is the thinnest of gruel, and arguably the finest example of projection today, is a last-ditch effort to either depose him or damage him enough politically to make him unelectable come next November.

With the media, their unctuous allies in scurrility, the left knows every specious allegation will be portrayed as fact in every article, on every news panel, and in every talking-head utterance.  It used to be the “big lie.”  Now it is a million little lies told by a camarilla of politicians and skirling media that they hope will rid the left of their Orange Man bane. 

The left must make sure that someone like Trump never happens again, should they succeed at deposing Trump, or better yet, damaging him to the point where he loses in 2020, for defeating him at the polls can be trumpeted as the “will of the people.” 

They will take our citizenship.  Citizens have the right to vote and that is something they can’t fully rig until they accumulate enough power to implement democracy as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan understands democracy: “One election, once.”  Instead, they are honing the art of cheating and weakening election integrity efforts while flooding the country with enough illegal aliens to negate our vote and guarantee eternal leftist primacy.  In short, they will replace us with a more compliant citizenry. 

Note: Living in the Bronx, it is now illegal for me to use the “derogation” “illegal aliens.”  Should I be afraid?  Am I Spartacus like Cory or like Kirk? 

They will take our guns.  A well-armed, regnant populace believing the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” cannot so easily be forced to give up their liberty to an all-knowing clerisy intent on saving us even if it kills us.  It won’t affect them; they will keep their armed guards and walled estates.  And if blood must be spilled to disarm us, they won’t mind.  It won’t be their blood — or so they think.  As my mother used to say, “They have another ‘think’ coming.”

They will take our cars, our large homes, inexpensive fuel for heating, and our affordable electricity.  A mobile population is a free population, and a citizenry warm in their homes with electricity cheap enough to afford is too comfortable to need their “solutions” and too free to be constrained at their whim. 

They’ve decided that no one needs more than 300 square feet per person; large private residences are wasteful, and we are selfish and greedy for working hard to buy them.  Our avaricious self-interest must be eliminated, not only to save the planet but to build a better world for all.  We must be forced to live within “stacked” cities in tiny apartments, cantilevered around mass transit hubs close to our jobs with no hope of escape.  No hope in general. 

“Try to say, ‘No,’ now, you deplorable bastards.”

People think the Green New Deal is about saving the planet — it’s not; it’s about control; it’s about socialism.  Saikat Chakrabarti, Sandy O’s pappy-puppeteer, admitted as much.  We’re not supposed to notice our elite will keep their cars, and their 5,000-plus square feet multiple mansions.  Our ruling elite will be able to afford fuel and electricity at 10x today’s price while enjoying the added benefit of no traffic to impede the progress of their limousines.  Ala Al Gore, the porcine prophet of climate doom, they’ll buy carbon offsets to maintain their Thunberg purity.

They will take away our right to say what we want when we want without fear of government reprisal.  Because a people allowed to speak freely can “stand athwart history and yell, ‘Stop!’”  Folks allowed to have their own opinions will eventually disagree, however minor the deviation.  And they can’t have that.

They will take our children, something they’ve been trying to do for generations.  Despots have always known that controlling youth creates controlled adults.  Any freedom from an anti-American curriculum we now enjoy will be eliminated, including home-schooling, private schools, and magnet schools.  When you start them young, they’re yours forever.

Impeaching Trump is their way of telling us to get in line, or else.  If you think of Trump, not as Trump, but as one of us, it becomes clear.  Destroying him is a way of telling us, “You’re next.”

Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert

The Democrats in 2016 graciously gave Americans the opportunity to do as we were told and vote for Hillary Clinton.  And just as we so many times disappointed Barack Obama, we failed them as well, proving our illegitimacy as a citizenry.

Electing Trump was the last straw for them – plastic, of course, paper is for us rabble.  They used to want only our money, but since we elected Trump, they’ve decided to come for everything else we enjoy as free citizens of the Republic.

Trump is all that stands between the America we cherish and the left’s policies for “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  They know that for us, 2020 is a “Flight 93” election and impeaching Trump on what is the thinnest of gruel, and arguably the finest example of projection today, is a last-ditch effort to either depose him or damage him enough politically to make him unelectable come next November.

With the media, their unctuous allies in scurrility, the left knows every specious allegation will be portrayed as fact in every article, on every news panel, and in every talking-head utterance.  It used to be the “big lie.”  Now it is a million little lies told by a camarilla of politicians and skirling media that they hope will rid the left of their Orange Man bane. 

The left must make sure that someone like Trump never happens again, should they succeed at deposing Trump, or better yet, damaging him to the point where he loses in 2020, for defeating him at the polls can be trumpeted as the “will of the people.” 

They will take our citizenship.  Citizens have the right to vote and that is something they can’t fully rig until they accumulate enough power to implement democracy as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan understands democracy: “One election, once.”  Instead, they are honing the art of cheating and weakening election integrity efforts while flooding the country with enough illegal aliens to negate our vote and guarantee eternal leftist primacy.  In short, they will replace us with a more compliant citizenry. 

Note: Living in the Bronx, it is now illegal for me to use the “derogation” “illegal aliens.”  Should I be afraid?  Am I Spartacus like Cory or like Kirk? 

They will take our guns.  A well-armed, regnant populace believing the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” cannot so easily be forced to give up their liberty to an all-knowing clerisy intent on saving us even if it kills us.  It won’t affect them; they will keep their armed guards and walled estates.  And if blood must be spilled to disarm us, they won’t mind.  It won’t be their blood — or so they think.  As my mother used to say, “They have another ‘think’ coming.”

They will take our cars, our large homes, inexpensive fuel for heating, and our affordable electricity.  A mobile population is a free population, and a citizenry warm in their homes with electricity cheap enough to afford is too comfortable to need their “solutions” and too free to be constrained at their whim. 

They’ve decided that no one needs more than 300 square feet per person; large private residences are wasteful, and we are selfish and greedy for working hard to buy them.  Our avaricious self-interest must be eliminated, not only to save the planet but to build a better world for all.  We must be forced to live within “stacked” cities in tiny apartments, cantilevered around mass transit hubs close to our jobs with no hope of escape.  No hope in general. 

“Try to say, ‘No,’ now, you deplorable bastards.”

People think the Green New Deal is about saving the planet — it’s not; it’s about control; it’s about socialism.  Saikat Chakrabarti, Sandy O’s pappy-puppeteer, admitted as much.  We’re not supposed to notice our elite will keep their cars, and their 5,000-plus square feet multiple mansions.  Our ruling elite will be able to afford fuel and electricity at 10x today’s price while enjoying the added benefit of no traffic to impede the progress of their limousines.  Ala Al Gore, the porcine prophet of climate doom, they’ll buy carbon offsets to maintain their Thunberg purity.

They will take away our right to say what we want when we want without fear of government reprisal.  Because a people allowed to speak freely can “stand athwart history and yell, ‘Stop!’”  Folks allowed to have their own opinions will eventually disagree, however minor the deviation.  And they can’t have that.

They will take our children, something they’ve been trying to do for generations.  Despots have always known that controlling youth creates controlled adults.  Any freedom from an anti-American curriculum we now enjoy will be eliminated, including home-schooling, private schools, and magnet schools.  When you start them young, they’re yours forever.

Impeaching Trump is their way of telling us to get in line, or else.  If you think of Trump, not as Trump, but as one of us, it becomes clear.  Destroying him is a way of telling us, “You’re next.”

Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert

via American Thinker

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Telemundo Reports, Univision Omit Record Hispanic Employment Numbers

The nation’s leading Spanish-language network newscasts offered differing versions of the latest jobs report: one positive, the other negative. One network covers the jobs report fairly and objectively. The other, blinded by its anti-Trump animus, tells only half the story and finds a way to spin the report negatively.

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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Actress Sues After Bible Verse Post On Facebook Costs Her A Role

Seyi Omooba landed a dream role as Celie in The Color Purple earlier this year. The musical was to be performed in Birmingham and Leicester in England.

But The Daily Mail reported that the day after Omooba was cast, an actor from the West End production of Hamilton sent her a tweet with screenshot of a September 2014 Facebook post. From the Mail:

In a discussion about homosexuality, she had written: ‘It is clearly evident in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 what the Bible says on this matter. I do not believe you can be born gay and I do not believe homosexuality is right…’

The sender was Aaron Lee Lambert, who stars in the West End production of Hamilton.

He particularly objected to her views because the character of Celie is seen by some readers as being gay.

He asked in his tweet: ‘Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately.’

Omooba told the Mail that her agent called her the next day and told her “not to speak to the media and to keep [her] head down.”

“Later, I was urged by the theatre and my agency to not only retract my post but apologise for what it said,” she added.

When Omooba refused to go against her faith — “to lie just to keep a job” — she lost the role and was dropped by her agent. She contacted six other agents who previously expressed interest in signing her, but only one responded, calling her “talented but misguided.”

Omooba is now looking to sue the Curve Theatre in Leicester and her former agents for break of contract.

As the Mail reported, England’s Court of Appeal ruled last summer that a university could not force a student out for their religious views, as had happened to Felix Ngole.

Omooba told the outlet she is not homophobic and was merely quoting the bible’s views on homosexuality.

“I just quoted what the Bible says about homosexuality, the need for repentance, but ultimately God’s love for all humanity. I stand by what I wrote, but had I known that it would have come to this, I would have set my account to the privacy mode,” she said.

She also told the outlet that she has received support from former costars, some of whom are homosexual.

“I have support from actors that I’ve worked with, including those in same-sex relationships, who say that even though they don’t agree with my views, they know that I’m not hateful or malicious,” she said.

The Christian Legal Centre has also lent its support to Omooba, saying the Curve’s action “sends a chilling message that if you express mainstream biblical views, you will be punished and lose your career if you do not immediately renounce your beliefs.”

The Curve told the outlet it stood by its earlier statement that Omooba was let go because her comments “caused significant and widely expressed concerns both on social media and in the wider press.”

via The Daily Wire

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She Accused Him Of Rape. She Then Sent Herself Threatening Messages To Frame Him.

Shannon Maley had a seeming vendetta against a 20-year-old man with learning disabilities who was dating her sister. She barely knew him, yet claimed he sexually assaulted her and her friends. Maley then created multiple social media accounts under the young man’s name and sent herself disturbing and threatening messages in order to frame him.

She has since pleaded guilty to “perverting the course of justice and also to harassing witnesses,” The Daily Record reported.

The young man, who will not be named by The Daily Wire because he is the victim and will instead be referred to as John Doe, told the Record he was on the brink of suicide until he was acquitted last November on five charges of sexual assault. The outlet reported that he “sat on the ledge of his 14th-storey flat window seriously contemplating whether life was worth living because of the vicious lies that had ‘destroyed’ him.”

Maley’s messages to herself included threats “to set you on fire and watch you burn alive” and claims that John was “not going to stop causig [sic] you pain.”

Maley had apparently intimidated her friends into making accusations against John as well. One of those friends eventually admitted that the young man had not sexually assaulted her and that Maley had harassed her and tried to influence their testimony at John’s trial.

John was also accused of sexually assaulting two 15-year-old girls who were also allegedly friends of Maley. A witness explained that John didn’t do what he was accused of doing, leading to acquittal on those charges.

Maley’s story unraveled after she accused John of sending a threatening message while he was in prison without access to the Internet.

No reason has been given for Maley’s vendetta against John, and the young man still fears for his safety.

“It feels like Shannon Maley has destroyed my life. I still can’t walk down Coatbridge Main Street without people shouting abuse at me,” John told the outlet. “I’ve had voicemails from people I don’t even know saying they’re going to blow up my house.”

“Unfortunately, people believe what they see online and it’s a very dangerous situation. I walked free from court and now she’s admitted making up all these messages and telling witnesses what to say,” he added. “She’s an absolute monster.”

John also told the Record that he tried to slit his wrist while he was on remand, which is what led to him being relocated. But he was relocated to an apartment on the 14th floor, and he sat on the ledge and contemplated jumping.

“But I didn’t want to die because of someone else’s lies,” he told the outlet. “I’m happy I didn’t, because now I will hopefully see her punished for ruining my life.”

He said he would like to thank the woman who came forward to admit Maley was lying, but that he still doesn’t “feel safe to walk the streets because of what Maley has made people think about me.”

His mother said that she received angry messages from around the world, including in America, where any accusation made by a woman is supposed to be believed.

“She saw [John] as an easy victim because even though he’s 20, his difficulties mean he has a mind more like a young teenager,” his mother told the Record. “Like [John], I want to see her punished for the devastation she has caused.”

via The Daily Wire

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President Trump Orders Massive Cuts to National Security Staff After Deep State CIA Whistleblower Hit

President Trump ordered massive cuts to the National Security Council staff following a hit from a Deep State CIA snitch who filed a whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Former CIA Chief John Brennan called on an unlimited number of Deep State snitches to file whistleblower complaints against President Trump and surprise, surprise, a second ‘whistleblower’ is weighing whether to file a complaint against Trump.

President Trump responded to this madness by ordering massive cuts to the NatSec Council staff.

Bloomberg reported:

President Donald Trump has ordered a substantial reduction in the staff of the National Security Council, according to five people familiar with the plans, as the White House confronts an impeachment inquiry touched off by a whistle-blower complaint related to the agency’s work.

Some of the people described the staff cuts as part of a White House effort to make its foreign policy arm leaner under new National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.

The request to limit the size of the NSC staff was conveyed to senior agency officials by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and O’Brien this week. The whistle-blower complaint, focused on Trump’s conduct in a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been followed by damaging reports on the president’s private conversations with other world leaders.

The CIA officer who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Trump used second-hand knowledge and gossip to allege President Trump engaged in quid pro quo to pressure Zelensky to investigate the Biden crime family.

The CIA officer, who is a registered Democrat, ran to House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff’s staffers with the allegations without alerting the Intel Community’s Inspector General.

Furthermore, Schiff broke the House rules by withholding the classified information from the Minority members of the Intel Panel (such as Devin Nunes).

The President released the transcript of his phone call to Zelensky and it shows there was no threat and no pressure using quid pro quo.

Testimony from Ukrainian special envoy Kurt Volker also blew massive holes in Schiff’s narrative that Trump committed an impeachable offense.

The so-called ‘whistleblower’ may have also perjured himself because Sean Davis of The Federalist confirmed that the ‘whistleblower’ signed the complaint form under penalty of perjury without disclosing prior contact with House Democrats regarding his allegations.

The post President Trump Orders Massive Cuts to National Security Staff After Deep State CIA Whistleblower Hit appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Trump Tears into Mitt Romney: ‘Pompous A**’ Who ‘Never Knew How To Win’

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Trump Tears into Mitt Romney: ‘Pompous A**’ Who ‘Never Knew How To Win’

President-elect Donald Trump and Mitt Romney leave the clubhouse after their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, Nov. 19, 2016, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey.Drew Angerer / Getty ImagesPresident-elect Donald Trump and Mitt Romney leave the clubhouse after their meeting at Trump International Golf Club, Nov. 19, 2016, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump went on the offensive against Republican Sen. Mitt Romney for criticizing his appeals for Ukrainian and Chinese officials to look into potentially illegal improprieties in the past of political opponent Joe Biden.

And Trump did not mince words, referring to the Utah senator as a “pompous a–” and accusing him of fair-weather loyalty to his Republican allies.

“Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning.

The president would go on to attack the senator for weakness, wanting to know where Romney’s offense-oriented political strategy had been when he faced President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

TRENDING: Rep. Raskin’s Impeachment Media Conference Was So Bad Even CNN Analyst Called It a ‘Hot Mess’

“If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won,” Trump wrote. “Sadly, he choked!”

“Mitt Romney never knew how to win,” he tweeted. “He is a pompous ‘a–’ who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him).”

“He is so bad for [Republicans]!” Trump added.

The two Republicans have long been at odds, according to Fox News, feuding off and on since the 2016 presidential election when Romney held a news conference lambasting Trump’s behavior on the campaign trail and calling on the party to protest his nomination.

Tensions settled between the two shortly after the election when Trump interviewed Romney for Secretary of State, and once again in 2018 when he endorsed Romney for senator of Utah.

But the president has never refrained from referring to Romney while discussing shortfalls and perceived weakness of the Republican party in the face of Democratic assault this century.

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And the Utah senator has, in turn, been dismissive of Trump, frequently speaking out against his rhetoric and even penning a Washington Post Op-Ed earlier this year claiming that the president has not “risen to the mantle of the office.”

Romney reignited the feud in a Friday tweet accusing the president of engaging Chinese and Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Biden for purely political purposes.

RELATED: Trump Suspends Entry of Immigrants Who Cannot Afford Health Care

“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation is his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney wrote.

“By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

via The Western Journal

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Teacher Fires Back, Files Lawsuit After Being Terminated for Calling Transgender Student ‘Wrong’ Pronoun

A teacher who was fired for calling one of his students by the “wrong” pronoun during the heat of the moment is suing the school district that dismissed him, claiming the termination violated his religious rights.

Peter Vlaming, a French teacher at West Point High School in Virginia, was fired in December of 2018 after misgendering a female student who had begun identifying as male, according to CNN.

Vlaming had told the district that he couldn’t “in good conscience” call the student by he/him/his pronouns because of his religious beliefs, he claims in his suit.

“Mr. Vlaming’s conscience and religious practice prohibits him from intentionally lying, and he sincerely believes that referring to a female as a male by using an objectively male pronoun is telling a lie,” the suit reads.

However, he says that he used the student’s male name and avoided all pronouns. That wasn’t good enough for the school, which the suit claims tried to force him to use the pronouns.

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Eventually, the situation came to a head during a virtual reality exercise in the classroom; as the student in question was walking in one direction, Vlaming exclaimed, “Don’t let her hit the wall!”

According to the suit, the student waited until class was out to confront him.

“Mr. Vlaming, you may have your religion,” the student allegedly said, “but you need to respect who I am!”

He was fired by the school board in a unanimous 5-0 vote last December.

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During the board meeting in which he was fired, Vlaming insisted that he didn’t mean to offend the student.

“My religious faith dictates that I am to love and respect everyone, whether I agree with them or not. Because we are all made in God’s image,” he said.

That didn’t manage to sway the board, which said he was fired because of intolerance — a rather cheeky reason given the freedom of religion aspect.

“We do not and cannot tolerate discrimination in any form, or actions that create a hostile environment for any member of our school family,” the board said.

In the wake of the lawsuit, the district maintained that it had done nothing wrong.

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“West Point Public Schools’ primary focus is on students, staff, and instruction,” it said in a statement.

“We will continue to direct our energy toward maintaining a high-quality learning environment in our schools.”

Now, it appears the case is going to court.

“The former teacher is now suing the school district officials, saying they breached his contract and discriminated against him, violating his right to speak freely and his religious freedom,” CNN reported.

“He is seeking $500,000 in lost wages and benefits, plus $500,000 for loss of reputation, pain, suffering and emotional distress. He is asking to get his job back or another position at equal or higher pay.”

CBS News reported the lawsuit claims breach of contract as well as violations of Vlaming’s rights under both commonwealth law and Virginia’s constitution.

“This isn’t just about a pronoun, it’s about what that pronoun means,” Tyson Langhofer, director of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Academic Freedom, said.

“This was never about anything Peter said or did; only about what the school was demanding he say. Nobody should be forced to contradict his core beliefs just to keep a job.”

And, if Vlaming’s complaint is accurate, he didn’t even mean to misgender the student. When they were about to hit the wall, reality kicked in.

In an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show late last year, Vlaming said he tried to meet the school and the student in the middle.

“I used the new name, I avoided feminine pronouns, but male pronouns were a bridge too far,” he said.

“But I did everything in my power to accommodate and show respect towards this student and this student’s choices.”

That wasn’t enough for the school or the student. Now we’ll see what a court has to say about whether religious convictions are moot when it comes to gender pronouns.

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via The Western Journal

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