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Leftist Tyranny in Academia Is Forcing Christians and Atheists to Join Forces

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror.  Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy ([1]). —George Orwell (non-Christian), 1984

Only one generation divides us from tyranny.  The fight against the new totalitarianism is the fight of our generation.  It is here. It is now.  And it cannot be avoided. —Rod Dreher (Christian)

“I don’t want to hear a [expletive] thing you’ve got to say.”  ”No, you shut the [expletive] up.”  ”[Expletive] you, you piece of [expletive]!  Resign!” Just a tiny sampling from two years of student vitriol spewed at close range into the faces of administrators and faculty members.  It all played out at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington as Lord of the Flies–like anarchy repeatedly engulfed the campus (view the disturbing documentary here).

Shut Up, Listen, Comply, or Go Away

Evergreen’s Equity Council designated May 17, 2017 the Day of Absence for White People — only “people of color” were welcome on campus that day. Staunchly opposed to racial segregation, Professor Brett Weinstein, in protest, refused to absent his white self.  Student-rioters rose up to hound and harass him.  Menacing mobs ranted and rampaged in attempts to remake their school in the image of an ascendant radical ideology and to destroy a dissenting professor’s livelihood.  The result?  Weinstein is no longer employed at Evergreen, but the enforcers of the Day of Absence are, and the Equity Council chugs happily along.

The radical ideology at work is Critical Race Theory ([2]). With Marxist roots and institutional backing, CRT flourishes on most university campuses in North America.  It divides the world between oppressors (white heterosexual males) and everybody else.  Oppressed groups include women, “people of color,” and myriad sexual identity groups (LBGTQIA+) communities.  Adherents are “woke,” and they play for keeps.

Resistance to the modern left often evokes a reflexive pushback — “shut up, listen, comply, or go away.”  Professor Weinstein found this out the hard way.

The evangelical founder of Sovereign Nations, Michael O’Fallon, and the atheist co-founders of New Discourses, Drs. Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, found each other through their shared horror at what transpired at Evergreen.  Lindsay and Boghossian are featured by the Southern Baptist Founders Ministries in their own efforts to expose and resist CRT and the woke influence that has penetrated the Southern Baptist Convention.  Other Southern Baptists have come together in the same cause in the recently formed Conservative Baptist Network.

1776, a non-partisan black-led response to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” marks the most recent high-profile repudiation of the left’s efforts to rewrite history through the lens of a woke imagination.  Signatories represent the full range of religious and political affiliation and lack thereof — from Carol Swain, a Christian, former Democrat turned Republican, all the way to atheist, Democrat-voting Coleman Hughes.  Refusal to bend the knee to the left leaves these signers forever labeled as Uncle Toms and Aunt Tammys.  Swain, a Southern Baptist and former professor hounded out of Vanderbilt University by the vicious left, recently lamented the infiltration of Marxist Critical Race Theory into the Southern Baptist Convention.

Alarmed at the tyrannical suppression of speech CRT enforces in higher education, Christian, Jewish, and atheist academics, including Jordan Peterson and Heather Mac Donald, are set to launch Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia.  ”We are determined to avoid the suffocating influence that political correctness, speech codes, and other coercive policies continue to have on most campuses.”  ”Students who seek to have their views and feelings unquestionably affirmed will not find Ralston congenial and should not apply.”

Power Redistribution

Christianity commands precisely no platform and zero positive curricular presence at Evergreen.  But the spirit of Marxist black liberation theologian James Cone, a favorite of assistant professor Walter Strickland at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, thrives there.  Cone articulated one goal of the social justice warrior boldly, unapologetically: “If you’re not talking about redistribution of power, you’re just joking around.”

Jimmy, a white student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, inspired by his black professor, Curtis Woods, expressed his desire that they plant a multi-ethnic church together.  Woods responded, “Have you ever sat under African-American leadership?”  ”No,” Jimmy admitted.  ”So why should black folk follow you as the leader?”  Critical Race Theory requires a Marxist power redistribution from oppressor groups to oppressed groups.  Get it, Jimmy?  In any church-plant with Woods, he, being black, shall be the boss of you, being white.

Yet Woods praises his white boss, Provost Matthew Hall — “I love Dr. Hall because he’s well-versed in Critical Race Theory and history.”  So Woods follows the leadership of a white man, contradicting his admonition to Jimmy?  And Hall, though well versed in CRT, seems content to retain his supervisory position over Woods.  What gives?

Voices Trump Faces

The full title of Shelby Steele’s seminal book of 2009 offers clues to the hypocrisy at work: White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.  With devastating clarity, Steele uncovers the duplicitous dynamics in play.  Elite whites seek to publicly dissociate from racism with the aid of blacks happy to benefit as the platformed absolution-dispensers the whites crave — “I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes … [of] racism lack moral authority and so act guiltily together whether they feel guilty or not.”  Compliant white elites are rewarded with retention of their power.  Cooperative blacks win jobs and the platforming of their approved woke black voices.

According to CRT, one’s black face privileges one’s black voice.  Skin color secures a privileged hearing.  But that’s not how things work out.  Listen to Jarvis Williams, black colleague of Woods at Southern Seminary: “[w]hen certain predominantly white churches talk about multi-ethnic churches, I think what many mean is that they want black and brown faces but not black and brown voices. … They don’t want the assertive and confident black and brown body, who will say what he thinks when racism arises in the congregation. … [T]hey don’t want W.E.B. Dubois, they want Booker T.”

See how it works?  Booker T.’s un-woke viewpoint renders his voice unwelcome.  Black or not, Booker T. Washington is persona non grata where CRT flourishes.  Meanwhile, Hall’s “well-versed in CRT” voice overcomes his white face, secures his position of power, and privileges his white woke voice over Booker T.’s un-woke black voice!

Ideology Trumps Skin Color

In practice, ideology, not skin color, is the real membership card, where CRT and woke credentialing are concerned.  As Squad member Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) put it so succinctly, “we don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.”

Voddie Baucham is an L.A. native, former Texas pastor, now dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia.  And he sports about as confident and assertive a black body and voice as one could hope to encounter.  Baucham was once a fixture among the platformed voices within the elite evangelical community.  But after his un-woke views emerged in public, the welcome mat disappeared.  Scoot over a tad if you would please, Booker T.  Kindly make room for Voddie B.

The message of the white platform-controlling elites to Baucham and of the mob at Evergreen to Professor Weinstein and of the tyrannical left wherever it gains control is the same: “shut-up, listen, comply, or go away.”

Not to Worry?

But why associate ostensibly conservative Baptist seminaries with the events at Evergreen?  Because the tyrannical left is ambitious and growing, and white elites tend to cave to their demands.  In congressional testimony, Professor Weinstein notes, “What I had not counted on was [the student rioters’] alliance with Evergreen’s new president who … partnered with the mob.”  On the day students took administration and faculty hostage, lead rioter Jamil responded “hold it” to President Bridges’s ever so cautious plea, “I need to pee.”  Weeks later, Bridges provided assurances to the now formally ensconced student watchdog council’s concerns regarding potentially resistant un-woke faculty.  We “bring ’em in, train ’em, and if it doesn’t take, we sanction ’em.”

Award-winning documentarian Mike Nayna asked Weinstein, “How has it gotten to this point?”  His response sounds a warning to complacent and Pollyannaish observers: “[i]n part it has gotten to this point because we let it fester.  These ideas were wrong when they first took hold in the academy.  And instead of shutting them down we created phony fields that act as a kind of analytical affirmative action that do not deserve to survive but are given sustenance.  These ideas are so toxic and so ill-conceived that, to the extent that they are allowed to hold sway … [they] actually jeopardize the ability of civilization to function.”

Mark DeVine teaches at the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama and is the author of Bonhoeffer Speaks Today and Shalom Yesterday, Today, and Forever.

[1] George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949), p. 24.

With those children, he thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror.  Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy ([1]). —George Orwell (non-Christian), 1984

Only one generation divides us from tyranny.  The fight against the new totalitarianism is the fight of our generation.  It is here. It is now.  And it cannot be avoided. —Rod Dreher (Christian)

“I don’t want to hear a [expletive] thing you’ve got to say.”  ”No, you shut the [expletive] up.”  ”[Expletive] you, you piece of [expletive]!  Resign!” Just a tiny sampling from two years of student vitriol spewed at close range into the faces of administrators and faculty members.  It all played out at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington as Lord of the Flies–like anarchy repeatedly engulfed the campus (view the disturbing documentary here).

Shut Up, Listen, Comply, or Go Away

Evergreen’s Equity Council designated May 17, 2017 the Day of Absence for White People — only “people of color” were welcome on campus that day. Staunchly opposed to racial segregation, Professor Brett Weinstein, in protest, refused to absent his white self.  Student-rioters rose up to hound and harass him.  Menacing mobs ranted and rampaged in attempts to remake their school in the image of an ascendant radical ideology and to destroy a dissenting professor’s livelihood.  The result?  Weinstein is no longer employed at Evergreen, but the enforcers of the Day of Absence are, and the Equity Council chugs happily along.

The radical ideology at work is Critical Race Theory ([2]). With Marxist roots and institutional backing, CRT flourishes on most university campuses in North America.  It divides the world between oppressors (white heterosexual males) and everybody else.  Oppressed groups include women, “people of color,” and myriad sexual identity groups (LBGTQIA+) communities.  Adherents are “woke,” and they play for keeps.

Resistance to the modern left often evokes a reflexive pushback — “shut up, listen, comply, or go away.”  Professor Weinstein found this out the hard way.

The evangelical founder of Sovereign Nations, Michael O’Fallon, and the atheist co-founders of New Discourses, Drs. Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, found each other through their shared horror at what transpired at Evergreen.  Lindsay and Boghossian are featured by the Southern Baptist Founders Ministries in their own efforts to expose and resist CRT and the woke influence that has penetrated the Southern Baptist Convention.  Other Southern Baptists have come together in the same cause in the recently formed Conservative Baptist Network.

1776, a non-partisan black-led response to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” marks the most recent high-profile repudiation of the left’s efforts to rewrite history through the lens of a woke imagination.  Signatories represent the full range of religious and political affiliation and lack thereof — from Carol Swain, a Christian, former Democrat turned Republican, all the way to atheist, Democrat-voting Coleman Hughes.  Refusal to bend the knee to the left leaves these signers forever labeled as Uncle Toms and Aunt Tammys.  Swain, a Southern Baptist and former professor hounded out of Vanderbilt University by the vicious left, recently lamented the infiltration of Marxist Critical Race Theory into the Southern Baptist Convention.

Alarmed at the tyrannical suppression of speech CRT enforces in higher education, Christian, Jewish, and atheist academics, including Jordan Peterson and Heather Mac Donald, are set to launch Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia.  ”We are determined to avoid the suffocating influence that political correctness, speech codes, and other coercive policies continue to have on most campuses.”  ”Students who seek to have their views and feelings unquestionably affirmed will not find Ralston congenial and should not apply.”

Power Redistribution

Christianity commands precisely no platform and zero positive curricular presence at Evergreen.  But the spirit of Marxist black liberation theologian James Cone, a favorite of assistant professor Walter Strickland at Southeastern Baptist Seminary, thrives there.  Cone articulated one goal of the social justice warrior boldly, unapologetically: “If you’re not talking about redistribution of power, you’re just joking around.”

Jimmy, a white student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, inspired by his black professor, Curtis Woods, expressed his desire that they plant a multi-ethnic church together.  Woods responded, “Have you ever sat under African-American leadership?”  ”No,” Jimmy admitted.  ”So why should black folk follow you as the leader?”  Critical Race Theory requires a Marxist power redistribution from oppressor groups to oppressed groups.  Get it, Jimmy?  In any church-plant with Woods, he, being black, shall be the boss of you, being white.

Yet Woods praises his white boss, Provost Matthew Hall — “I love Dr. Hall because he’s well-versed in Critical Race Theory and history.”  So Woods follows the leadership of a white man, contradicting his admonition to Jimmy?  And Hall, though well versed in CRT, seems content to retain his supervisory position over Woods.  What gives?

Voices Trump Faces

The full title of Shelby Steele’s seminal book of 2009 offers clues to the hypocrisy at work: White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.  With devastating clarity, Steele uncovers the duplicitous dynamics in play.  Elite whites seek to publicly dissociate from racism with the aid of blacks happy to benefit as the platformed absolution-dispensers the whites crave — “I call this white guilt not because it is a guilt of conscience but because people stigmatized with moral crimes … [of] racism lack moral authority and so act guiltily together whether they feel guilty or not.”  Compliant white elites are rewarded with retention of their power.  Cooperative blacks win jobs and the platforming of their approved woke black voices.

According to CRT, one’s black face privileges one’s black voice.  Skin color secures a privileged hearing.  But that’s not how things work out.  Listen to Jarvis Williams, black colleague of Woods at Southern Seminary: “[w]hen certain predominantly white churches talk about multi-ethnic churches, I think what many mean is that they want black and brown faces but not black and brown voices. … They don’t want the assertive and confident black and brown body, who will say what he thinks when racism arises in the congregation. … [T]hey don’t want W.E.B. Dubois, they want Booker T.”

See how it works?  Booker T.’s un-woke viewpoint renders his voice unwelcome.  Black or not, Booker T. Washington is persona non grata where CRT flourishes.  Meanwhile, Hall’s “well-versed in CRT” voice overcomes his white face, secures his position of power, and privileges his white woke voice over Booker T.’s un-woke black voice!

Ideology Trumps Skin Color

In practice, ideology, not skin color, is the real membership card, where CRT and woke credentialing are concerned.  As Squad member Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) put it so succinctly, “we don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice.”

Voddie Baucham is an L.A. native, former Texas pastor, now dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia.  And he sports about as confident and assertive a black body and voice as one could hope to encounter.  Baucham was once a fixture among the platformed voices within the elite evangelical community.  But after his un-woke views emerged in public, the welcome mat disappeared.  Scoot over a tad if you would please, Booker T.  Kindly make room for Voddie B.

The message of the white platform-controlling elites to Baucham and of the mob at Evergreen to Professor Weinstein and of the tyrannical left wherever it gains control is the same: “shut-up, listen, comply, or go away.”

Not to Worry?

But why associate ostensibly conservative Baptist seminaries with the events at Evergreen?  Because the tyrannical left is ambitious and growing, and white elites tend to cave to their demands.  In congressional testimony, Professor Weinstein notes, “What I had not counted on was [the student rioters’] alliance with Evergreen’s new president who … partnered with the mob.”  On the day students took administration and faculty hostage, lead rioter Jamil responded “hold it” to President Bridges’s ever so cautious plea, “I need to pee.”  Weeks later, Bridges provided assurances to the now formally ensconced student watchdog council’s concerns regarding potentially resistant un-woke faculty.  We “bring ’em in, train ’em, and if it doesn’t take, we sanction ’em.”

Award-winning documentarian Mike Nayna asked Weinstein, “How has it gotten to this point?”  His response sounds a warning to complacent and Pollyannaish observers: “[i]n part it has gotten to this point because we let it fester.  These ideas were wrong when they first took hold in the academy.  And instead of shutting them down we created phony fields that act as a kind of analytical affirmative action that do not deserve to survive but are given sustenance.  These ideas are so toxic and so ill-conceived that, to the extent that they are allowed to hold sway … [they] actually jeopardize the ability of civilization to function.”

Mark DeVine teaches at the Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama and is the author of Bonhoeffer Speaks Today and Shalom Yesterday, Today, and Forever.

[1] George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1949), p. 24.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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More Reasons to Flee Blue States

For years Americans have been relocating from blue states to red states in search of jobs and affordable housing. The heavy-handed lockdown policies of governors in some blue states will no doubt accelerate this trend. Adding insult to injury is the disproportionately high death rate of COVID-19 patients in some of these states (See Graphs 1, and 2 below, and Table 1 below).

In all fairness, many blue states are more urbanized and population density plays a major role in spreading the virus, but this fails to explain why people already infected with coronavirus are dying at a higher rate in many of these states (Graph 2). It also fails to explain how some highly urbanized states like Utah and Florida manage to keep their death rates so much lower than death rates in comparably urbanized states like New York and Connecticut (Tables 2 and 3).

When states are sorted in order of deaths per 1,000 cases, an important pattern becomes evident (Table 3): Nursing homes in five of the seven worst affected states were ordered or paid to take in recovering COVID-19 patients. Massachusetts rescinded this requirement after objections from the medical community, but New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan doubled down and turned their nursing homes into slaughterhouses for the elderly.

Instead of owning up to this mistake, the state of New York is trying to minimize the evidence by excluding nursing home residents who died in hospitals from their tally of nursing home deaths.

Another pattern evident in Table 2 is that nearly all states with more than 60 deaths per 1,000 cases scored low on fiscal health in 2018. Four of them (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York) ranked among the 10 worst in this parameter (Table 3). These four state were also ranked by another source among the 10 worst for infrastructure.

Connecticut and Massachusetts did not force nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients, but lack of state funding may have compromised their ability to protect nursing homes. Louisiana’s fiscal health is not as poor as that of these two states, but 30% of its population is African-American and for various reasons people in this group are dying from COVID-19 at double the overall rate.

In sharp contrast to the nearly bankrupt states of New York and New Jersey, Florida focused its resources on protection of nursing homes with frequent testing and isolation of anyone testing positive. Consequently, even though Florida ranks first in percent of residents over 65, it currently ranks 25 out of 50 for death rate. Florida is also among the few states currently open despite blistering criticism from the media. The sunshine state already ranks fourth best in the nation for fiscal health. Re-opening for business (with necessary precautions) will no doubt keep Florida in a better position to continue providing resources for the elderly.

Budgetary mismanagement goes hand-in-hand with progressivism (Graph 3). This is why President Trump raised concerns about sending more federal aid to these states. Unsurprisingly, governors reluctant to open their states complain that this will undermine their ability to provide social services to the less fortunate.

William Simon, who served as Treasury secretary under President Ford got the same treatment from the media after he refused to bail out New York City. Simon called out their lack of self-awareness by pointing out that New York’s deficit spending was responsible for “the cruelest tax of all -inflation, under the guise of being compassionate.” Indeed. If these worst-affected states are cash-strapped because of their “compassion”, why were they losing so many residents as far back as 2016?

The blue state model has never been about empowering the most vulnerable. It has always been about empowering the ruling class by means of grievance-driven constituencies, utopian fantasies, bloated bureaucracies, and deficit spending. The procrustean lockdown policies of governors in most blue states puts on full display their dismissive attitude towards blue-collar jobs. Too bad it took a world pandemic and the near total destruction of the small business community to expose this mockery of America’s founding principles.

 

Table Credits: Data for political affiliation for 2015, 2016, and 2017 is from Gallup. Fiscal health scores comes from the Mercatus Center. Coronavirus data (accessed on May 14, 2020) is from USA Today.

Table 1: Data sorted in order of political affiliation. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 2: Data sorted in order of deaths per million state inhabitants. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 3: Data sorted in order of deaths per 1000 cases of coronavirus. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 4: Data sorted in order of fiscal health. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Graph 1: Mean death rates per million state inhabitants in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.005. Error bars represent standard error.

Graph 2: Mean death rates per thousand cases of coronavirus in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.0001. Error bars represent standard error.

Graph 3: Mean fiscal health scores in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.00001. Error bars represent standard error.

Antonio Chaves teaches biology at a local community college. His interest in economic and social issues stems from his experience teaching environmental science.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

For years Americans have been relocating from blue states to red states in search of jobs and affordable housing. The heavy-handed lockdown policies of governors in some blue states will no doubt accelerate this trend. Adding insult to injury is the disproportionately high death rate of COVID-19 patients in some of these states (See Graphs 1, and 2 below, and Table 1 below).

In all fairness, many blue states are more urbanized and population density plays a major role in spreading the virus, but this fails to explain why people already infected with coronavirus are dying at a higher rate in many of these states (Graph 2). It also fails to explain how some highly urbanized states like Utah and Florida manage to keep their death rates so much lower than death rates in comparably urbanized states like New York and Connecticut (Tables 2 and 3).

When states are sorted in order of deaths per 1,000 cases, an important pattern becomes evident (Table 3): Nursing homes in five of the seven worst affected states were ordered or paid to take in recovering COVID-19 patients. Massachusetts rescinded this requirement after objections from the medical community, but New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan doubled down and turned their nursing homes into slaughterhouses for the elderly.

Instead of owning up to this mistake, the state of New York is trying to minimize the evidence by excluding nursing home residents who died in hospitals from their tally of nursing home deaths.

Another pattern evident in Table 2 is that nearly all states with more than 60 deaths per 1,000 cases scored low on fiscal health in 2018. Four of them (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York) ranked among the 10 worst in this parameter (Table 3). These four state were also ranked by another source among the 10 worst for infrastructure.

Connecticut and Massachusetts did not force nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients, but lack of state funding may have compromised their ability to protect nursing homes. Louisiana’s fiscal health is not as poor as that of these two states, but 30% of its population is African-American and for various reasons people in this group are dying from COVID-19 at double the overall rate.

In sharp contrast to the nearly bankrupt states of New York and New Jersey, Florida focused its resources on protection of nursing homes with frequent testing and isolation of anyone testing positive. Consequently, even though Florida ranks first in percent of residents over 65, it currently ranks 25 out of 50 for death rate. Florida is also among the few states currently open despite blistering criticism from the media. The sunshine state already ranks fourth best in the nation for fiscal health. Re-opening for business (with necessary precautions) will no doubt keep Florida in a better position to continue providing resources for the elderly.

Budgetary mismanagement goes hand-in-hand with progressivism (Graph 3). This is why President Trump raised concerns about sending more federal aid to these states. Unsurprisingly, governors reluctant to open their states complain that this will undermine their ability to provide social services to the less fortunate.

William Simon, who served as Treasury secretary under President Ford got the same treatment from the media after he refused to bail out New York City. Simon called out their lack of self-awareness by pointing out that New York’s deficit spending was responsible for “the cruelest tax of all -inflation, under the guise of being compassionate.” Indeed. If these worst-affected states are cash-strapped because of their “compassion”, why were they losing so many residents as far back as 2016?

The blue state model has never been about empowering the most vulnerable. It has always been about empowering the ruling class by means of grievance-driven constituencies, utopian fantasies, bloated bureaucracies, and deficit spending. The procrustean lockdown policies of governors in most blue states puts on full display their dismissive attitude towards blue-collar jobs. Too bad it took a world pandemic and the near total destruction of the small business community to expose this mockery of America’s founding principles.

 

Table Credits: Data for political affiliation for 2015, 2016, and 2017 is from Gallup. Fiscal health scores comes from the Mercatus Center. Coronavirus data (accessed on May 14, 2020) is from USA Today.

Table 1: Data sorted in order of political affiliation. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 2: Data sorted in order of deaths per million state inhabitants. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 3: Data sorted in order of deaths per 1000 cases of coronavirus. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Table 4: Data sorted in order of fiscal health. The 12 most progressive states are highlighted in blue. The 12 most conservative states are highlighted in red.

Graph 1: Mean death rates per million state inhabitants in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.005. Error bars represent standard error.

Graph 2: Mean death rates per thousand cases of coronavirus in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.0001. Error bars represent standard error.

Graph 3: Mean fiscal health scores in most progressive and conservative states. Based on a T-test, the difference is significant at p = 0.00001. Error bars represent standard error.

Antonio Chaves teaches biology at a local community college. His interest in economic and social issues stems from his experience teaching environmental science.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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Hydroxychloroquine, Me, and the Great Divide

I took hydroxychloroquine for two years.  A long time ago as a visiting cancer surgeon in Asia, in Thailand, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.  From 1987 to 1990.  Malaria is rife there.  I took it for prophylaxis, 400 milligrams once a week for two years.  Never had any trouble.  It was inexpensive and effective.  I started it two weeks before and was supposed to continue it through my stay and four weeks after returning.  But I stopped it after two years.  I was worried about potential side effects of which there are many, as with all drugs right down to Tylenol and aspirin.  These, however, are rare.  At a certain point, I was prepared to take my chances with mosquitoes and plasmodium, and so I stopped. 

Chloroquine, the precursor of HCQ, was invented by Bayer in 1934.  Hydroxychloroquine was developed during World War II as a safer, synthetic alternative and approved for medical use in the U.S. in 1955.  The World Health Organization considers it an essential medicine, among the safest and most effective medicines, a staple of any healthcare system.  In 2017, US doctors prescribed it 5 million times, the 128th most commonly prescribed drug in the country.  There have been hundreds of millions of prescriptions worldwide since its inception.  It is one of the cheapest and best drugs in the world and has saved millions of lives.  Doctors also prescribe it for Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis patients who may consume it for their lifetimes with few or no ill effects. 

Then something happened to this wonder drug.  From savior of the multitudes, redeemer and benefactor of hundreds of millions, it transformed into something else: a purveyor of doom, despair, and unspeakable carnage.  It began when President Trump discussed it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 on March 19, 2020.  The gates of hell burst forth on May 18 when Trump casually announced that he was taking it, prescribed by his physician.  Attacks on Trump and this otherwise harmless little molecule poured in.  The heretofore respected, commonly used, and highly effective medicinal became a major threat to life, a nefarious and wicked chemical that could alter critical heart rhythms, resulting in sudden cataclysmic death for unsuspecting innocents.  Trump, more than irresponsible, was evil incarnate for daring to even mention it.  While at it, the salivating media trotted out the canard about Trump’s nonrecommendation for injecting Clorox and Lysol or drinking fish-tank cleaner to combat COVID.  It was Charlottesville all over again. 

Before a nation of non-cardiologists, the media agonized over, of all things, the prolongation of the now infamous “QT interval,” and the risk of sudden cardiac death.  The FDA and NIH piled on, piously demanding randomized, controlled, double-blind studies before physicians prescribed HCQ.  No one mentioned that the risk of cardiac arrest was far higher from watching the Superbowl. Nor did the media declare that HCQ and chloroquine have been used throughout the world for half a century, making them among the most widely prescribed drugs in history with not a single reported case of “arrhythmic death” according to the sainted WHO and the American College of Cardiology.  Or that physicians in the field, on the frontlines, so to speak, based on empirical evidence, have found benefit in treating patients with a variety of agents including HCQ, Zinc, Azithromycin, Quercetin, Elderberry supplements, Vitamins D and C with few if any complications.  Or that while such regimens may not cure, they may help and carry little or no risk. 

And so, the world was aflame once again with a nonstory driven by the COVID media.  The HCQ divide within the nation is only a continuation of innumerable divides that have surfaced since the pandemic began — and before.  One will know the politics of an individual based on his position on any number of pandemic issues: lockdowns, sheltering in place, face masks, social distancing, “elective surgery,” and “essential businesses.”  The closing of schools and colleges.  Blue states and Red states.  Governor Cuomo or Governor DeSantis.  Nationwide injunctions or federalism.  The WHO and Red China.  Or, pre-pandemic, Brexit, open borders, DACA, and amnesty.  CBD oil, turmeric, and legalizing marijuana.  Russia Collusion, Trump’s taxes, the 25th amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine non-scandal, and impeachment. Or Obamagate. And now HCQ. 

HCQ is only another bellwether.  It represents the latest nonevent in a long string of fabricated media nonscandals.  If a nation can be divided over HCQ it can be divided over anything.  It shows neatly, as many of the other non-issues did, whether one embraces the U.S., our history, culture, and constitutional system, or rejects it.  Whether one believes in Americanism or despises it.  It is part of the ongoing civil war, thus far cold, but who knows?  The passions today are no less jarring than they were in 1860.  One would have thought that a man taking a medicine prescribed by his physician, even a President, would be a private matter.  But no.  Not today. 

We swim in an ocean of manufactured disinformation created by a radical COVID media, our fifth column.  They inflame the nation one way or another based on political whims.  The propaganda arm of the Left, they seek victory at all costs including dismantling the economy, culture, and our governing system.  Is there a curative for the COVID media and their Democrat allies who would destroy a nation to destroy Trump?  He is all that stands between us and them.  Is there an antiviral for this, the communist virus that has infected the nation, metastasized throughout its corpus, and now threatens the republic?

Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com.  Visit Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I took hydroxychloroquine for two years.  A long time ago as a visiting cancer surgeon in Asia, in Thailand, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh.  From 1987 to 1990.  Malaria is rife there.  I took it for prophylaxis, 400 milligrams once a week for two years.  Never had any trouble.  It was inexpensive and effective.  I started it two weeks before and was supposed to continue it through my stay and four weeks after returning.  But I stopped it after two years.  I was worried about potential side effects of which there are many, as with all drugs right down to Tylenol and aspirin.  These, however, are rare.  At a certain point, I was prepared to take my chances with mosquitoes and plasmodium, and so I stopped. 

Chloroquine, the precursor of HCQ, was invented by Bayer in 1934.  Hydroxychloroquine was developed during World War II as a safer, synthetic alternative and approved for medical use in the U.S. in 1955.  The World Health Organization considers it an essential medicine, among the safest and most effective medicines, a staple of any healthcare system.  In 2017, US doctors prescribed it 5 million times, the 128th most commonly prescribed drug in the country.  There have been hundreds of millions of prescriptions worldwide since its inception.  It is one of the cheapest and best drugs in the world and has saved millions of lives.  Doctors also prescribe it for Lupus and Rheumatoid arthritis patients who may consume it for their lifetimes with few or no ill effects. 

Then something happened to this wonder drug.  From savior of the multitudes, redeemer and benefactor of hundreds of millions, it transformed into something else: a purveyor of doom, despair, and unspeakable carnage.  It began when President Trump discussed it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 on March 19, 2020.  The gates of hell burst forth on May 18 when Trump casually announced that he was taking it, prescribed by his physician.  Attacks on Trump and this otherwise harmless little molecule poured in.  The heretofore respected, commonly used, and highly effective medicinal became a major threat to life, a nefarious and wicked chemical that could alter critical heart rhythms, resulting in sudden cataclysmic death for unsuspecting innocents.  Trump, more than irresponsible, was evil incarnate for daring to even mention it.  While at it, the salivating media trotted out the canard about Trump’s nonrecommendation for injecting Clorox and Lysol or drinking fish-tank cleaner to combat COVID.  It was Charlottesville all over again. 

Before a nation of non-cardiologists, the media agonized over, of all things, the prolongation of the now infamous “QT interval,” and the risk of sudden cardiac death.  The FDA and NIH piled on, piously demanding randomized, controlled, double-blind studies before physicians prescribed HCQ.  No one mentioned that the risk of cardiac arrest was far higher from watching the Superbowl. Nor did the media declare that HCQ and chloroquine have been used throughout the world for half a century, making them among the most widely prescribed drugs in history with not a single reported case of “arrhythmic death” according to the sainted WHO and the American College of Cardiology.  Or that physicians in the field, on the frontlines, so to speak, based on empirical evidence, have found benefit in treating patients with a variety of agents including HCQ, Zinc, Azithromycin, Quercetin, Elderberry supplements, Vitamins D and C with few if any complications.  Or that while such regimens may not cure, they may help and carry little or no risk. 

And so, the world was aflame once again with a nonstory driven by the COVID media.  The HCQ divide within the nation is only a continuation of innumerable divides that have surfaced since the pandemic began — and before.  One will know the politics of an individual based on his position on any number of pandemic issues: lockdowns, sheltering in place, face masks, social distancing, “elective surgery,” and “essential businesses.”  The closing of schools and colleges.  Blue states and Red states.  Governor Cuomo or Governor DeSantis.  Nationwide injunctions or federalism.  The WHO and Red China.  Or, pre-pandemic, Brexit, open borders, DACA, and amnesty.  CBD oil, turmeric, and legalizing marijuana.  Russia Collusion, Trump’s taxes, the 25th amendment, Stormy Daniels, the Ukraine non-scandal, and impeachment. Or Obamagate. And now HCQ. 

HCQ is only another bellwether.  It represents the latest nonevent in a long string of fabricated media nonscandals.  If a nation can be divided over HCQ it can be divided over anything.  It shows neatly, as many of the other non-issues did, whether one embraces the U.S., our history, culture, and constitutional system, or rejects it.  Whether one believes in Americanism or despises it.  It is part of the ongoing civil war, thus far cold, but who knows?  The passions today are no less jarring than they were in 1860.  One would have thought that a man taking a medicine prescribed by his physician, even a President, would be a private matter.  But no.  Not today. 

We swim in an ocean of manufactured disinformation created by a radical COVID media, our fifth column.  They inflame the nation one way or another based on political whims.  The propaganda arm of the Left, they seek victory at all costs including dismantling the economy, culture, and our governing system.  Is there a curative for the COVID media and their Democrat allies who would destroy a nation to destroy Trump?  He is all that stands between us and them.  Is there an antiviral for this, the communist virus that has infected the nation, metastasized throughout its corpus, and now threatens the republic?

Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN.  He has written A Surgeon’s Odyssey and Matilda’s Triumph available on amazon.com.  Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com.  Visit Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

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Twitter censorship, voter suppression, and Democratic hypocrisy

Within moments, after both President Trump and his press secretary characterized Twitter’s “fact-checking” posts as “censorship,” a torrent of feeble-minded and semi-illiterate Democrats raised their voices in unison to proclaim, “It’s NOT censorship.”  Most just make the statement and added no additional analysis, while others fatuously added that the reader can still read the tweet.

Of course, Twitter is engaging in the dictionary definition of censorship.  A censor is defined as “an official who examines books, plays… etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds” (emphasis added).  Censorship, the act of a censor, or “…the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or “inconvenient.” Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

One form of suppression is prohibiting speech.  The other, more insidious forms of suppression include inhibiting, restricting, repressing, intimidating, or, especially as regards speech, preventing the dissemination of information.  Herein lies the offense, and the hypocrisy. 

There is little question that the “fact check” and linked alternate information, even if true, well-intentioned, and apolitical, is intended to, and has the effect of suppressing a speaker’s speech.  This is a conclusion that any child can reach from the explanations “why,” speech must be fact-checked.  The justification is that suppression is necessary because the speech is dangerous, harmful, misleading, immoral, etc.  How can one claim that suppression is not the aim, and then argue on the basis why the speech must be “suppressed?”  Clearly the intent is to prevent the dissemination of the targeted information; readers can be expected to refuse to forward or share the information. lest they be put in the Twitter corner with a similar technological “dunce” hat for the effort. 

Further, the effect is clearly suppression.  Met with blazing intellectual “danger” and “detour” signs, what intellectual traveler wants to be known as the fool who proceeded into the information ravine?  Add to that the fact that many readers are just lazy, one would expect that many would bypass reading the novel in order to freely surf to the Twitter assembled crib-notes of an issue. 

The hypocrisy is that Democrats are rabid dogs when it comes to opposing another kind of suppression: voter suppression.  Every minor additional effort imposed, even if de minimis, is unacceptable voter suppression.  A free ID that can be obtained almost anywhere, and in our complex society, is reasonable and necessary for a myriad of other purposes (suggesting that few, if any, are, in fact, without one), is suppression so heinous that it spurs talk of racism, a horrid history of poll taxes, and contrived qualifications once designed precisely to actually suppress the voting rights of minorities.  There is no possibility in the Democratic hive-mind that “protecting” the vote of all Americans, including minorities, is acceptably attained by even a minimal burden.

Any burden is acceptable when countering speech with which Democrats disagree. Contrary speech is simply too dangerous. It is impossible to reconcile the Democrats contradictory positions.  Indeed, censorship should be opposed with the same fervor as efforts to actually suppress voting rights.

Lest one think that compromising by allowing small burdens to both is acceptable, speech, and particularly government speech, is afforded special status, best explained by the law that has created the “government speech doctrine.”  Before proceeding,  the doctrine does not apply to the “case” of Twitter taking action to suppress speech, but the doctrine speaks to and demands special consideration of speech by the government and government officials. 

The “government speech doctrine” recognizes that a government entity “is entitled to say what it wishes” and to select the views that it wants to express. The government is not barred by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment from determining the content of what it says and can legally engage in viewpoint discrimination.

The reason is obvious; the government cannot function if it cannot not favor or disfavor points of view in enforcing or advocating on behalf of a program or policy.  So important is this necessity, that Supreme Court has accepted that it  applies even when the government receives private assistance in helping deliver a government controlled message.  The Supreme Court  has rejected First Amendment challenges to (1) regulations prohibiting recipients of government funds from advocating, counseling, or referring patients for abortion; (2) disciplinary actions taken as a result of statements made by public employees pursuant to their official duties; (3) mandatory assessments made against cattle merchants when used to fund advertisements whose message was controlled by the government; (4) a city’s decision to reject a monument for placement in a public park; and (5) a state’s decision to reject a design for a specialty license plate for an automobile. 

Our government, and its agents, public and private, are afforded special status under the law to speak without regard to opposing viewpoints in order to select, advocate, and implement policy choices and programs.  Government speech can be countered, opposed, and even vilified.  Suppression or burdening government speech, however, is and should be unacceptable.      

Twitter is a private corporation, and it, and its officers, directors, employees, and agents are free to speak in opposition to any other speaker, including the government.  So long as its efforts do not suppress the speech of others in a public space, it and they may speak as often and as vociferously as any speaker.  Perhaps Twitter can find a public platform that is not subjected to the whims and caprice of third parties suppressing their speech.     

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

Within moments, after both President Trump and his press secretary characterized Twitter’s “fact-checking” posts as “censorship,” a torrent of feeble-minded and semi-illiterate Democrats raised their voices in unison to proclaim, “It’s NOT censorship.”  Most just make the statement and added no additional analysis, while others fatuously added that the reader can still read the tweet.

Of course, Twitter is engaging in the dictionary definition of censorship.  A censor is defined as “an official who examines books, plays… etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds” (emphasis added).  Censorship, the act of a censor, or “…the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or “inconvenient.” Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

One form of suppression is prohibiting speech.  The other, more insidious forms of suppression include inhibiting, restricting, repressing, intimidating, or, especially as regards speech, preventing the dissemination of information.  Herein lies the offense, and the hypocrisy. 

There is little question that the “fact check” and linked alternate information, even if true, well-intentioned, and apolitical, is intended to, and has the effect of suppressing a speaker’s speech.  This is a conclusion that any child can reach from the explanations “why,” speech must be fact-checked.  The justification is that suppression is necessary because the speech is dangerous, harmful, misleading, immoral, etc.  How can one claim that suppression is not the aim, and then argue on the basis why the speech must be “suppressed?”  Clearly the intent is to prevent the dissemination of the targeted information; readers can be expected to refuse to forward or share the information. lest they be put in the Twitter corner with a similar technological “dunce” hat for the effort. 

Further, the effect is clearly suppression.  Met with blazing intellectual “danger” and “detour” signs, what intellectual traveler wants to be known as the fool who proceeded into the information ravine?  Add to that the fact that many readers are just lazy, one would expect that many would bypass reading the novel in order to freely surf to the Twitter assembled crib-notes of an issue. 

The hypocrisy is that Democrats are rabid dogs when it comes to opposing another kind of suppression: voter suppression.  Every minor additional effort imposed, even if de minimis, is unacceptable voter suppression.  A free ID that can be obtained almost anywhere, and in our complex society, is reasonable and necessary for a myriad of other purposes (suggesting that few, if any, are, in fact, without one), is suppression so heinous that it spurs talk of racism, a horrid history of poll taxes, and contrived qualifications once designed precisely to actually suppress the voting rights of minorities.  There is no possibility in the Democratic hive-mind that “protecting” the vote of all Americans, including minorities, is acceptably attained by even a minimal burden.

Any burden is acceptable when countering speech with which Democrats disagree. Contrary speech is simply too dangerous. It is impossible to reconcile the Democrats contradictory positions.  Indeed, censorship should be opposed with the same fervor as efforts to actually suppress voting rights.

Lest one think that compromising by allowing small burdens to both is acceptable, speech, and particularly government speech, is afforded special status, best explained by the law that has created the “government speech doctrine.”  Before proceeding,  the doctrine does not apply to the “case” of Twitter taking action to suppress speech, but the doctrine speaks to and demands special consideration of speech by the government and government officials. 

The “government speech doctrine” recognizes that a government entity “is entitled to say what it wishes” and to select the views that it wants to express. The government is not barred by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment from determining the content of what it says and can legally engage in viewpoint discrimination.

The reason is obvious; the government cannot function if it cannot not favor or disfavor points of view in enforcing or advocating on behalf of a program or policy.  So important is this necessity, that Supreme Court has accepted that it  applies even when the government receives private assistance in helping deliver a government controlled message.  The Supreme Court  has rejected First Amendment challenges to (1) regulations prohibiting recipients of government funds from advocating, counseling, or referring patients for abortion; (2) disciplinary actions taken as a result of statements made by public employees pursuant to their official duties; (3) mandatory assessments made against cattle merchants when used to fund advertisements whose message was controlled by the government; (4) a city’s decision to reject a monument for placement in a public park; and (5) a state’s decision to reject a design for a specialty license plate for an automobile. 

Our government, and its agents, public and private, are afforded special status under the law to speak without regard to opposing viewpoints in order to select, advocate, and implement policy choices and programs.  Government speech can be countered, opposed, and even vilified.  Suppression or burdening government speech, however, is and should be unacceptable.      

Twitter is a private corporation, and it, and its officers, directors, employees, and agents are free to speak in opposition to any other speaker, including the government.  So long as its efforts do not suppress the speech of others in a public space, it and they may speak as often and as vociferously as any speaker.  Perhaps Twitter can find a public platform that is not subjected to the whims and caprice of third parties suppressing their speech.     

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

 

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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The Kislyak-Flynn phone call transcripts are a national Rorschach Test

John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, followed through on work Ric Grenell did as acting DNI, releasing transcripts from several phone calls that General Michael Flynn had with Sergei Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador. The release shows how the political divide creates entirely different narratives, for conservatives claim (correctly, in my opinion), that the transcripts vindicate Flynn and show that the FBI, the DOJ, and Robert Mueller set him up, while leftists insist that the transcripts prove that Flynn was a traitor and a Putin stooge.

All of this leads to one overarching question: Can a nation so badly divided about reality be saved?

For those who haven’t been paying attention, here’s a super-quick Flynn rundown. Obama hated Flynn because Flynn opposed Obama’s Iran deal. Trump nevertheless appointed Flynn as the National Security Advisor for Trump’s new administration.

On December 29, only 22 days before leaving office, Obama cited Russian interference with the 2016 election to impose sanctions on Russia and expel numerous Russian diplomats. This created an instant and serious problem for the incoming Trump administration. Dan Bongino also believes that Obama took these steps to set up Flynn:

  • He had authorized spying on Kislyak;

  • He knew Kislyak would call Flynn about the sanctions and expulsions;

  • He knew Flynn would be in the Dominican Republican for the calls; and

  • He knew that calls to the Dominican Republican would create a unique “phone print” that would allow his administration to view the phone calls without unmasking Flynn.

On January 24, 2017, the FBI did an ambush interview of Flynn, during which they asked him about the December 29 telephone call with Kislyak, focusing on the expulsions. Flynn knew the call had been recorded and answered to the best of his recollection. The interviewing agents concluded he was telling the truth.

Robert Mueller, although he always knew there was no collusion, referred Flynn for criminal prosecution. The charge stated that Flynn lied to the FBI when he denied pushing Kislyak (1) not to escalate on sanctions and (2) to help defeat a UN anti-Israel resolution.

Flynn pleaded guilty to this charge, both because he was acting on advice from attorneys whom the DOJ was essentially blackmailing and to protect his son. Thanks to Flynn’s intrepid new counsel, and with a new DOJ reviewing its predecessor’s corrupt work, the DOJ moved to dismiss his case. Judge Sullivan is currently refusing to rubber-stamp that motion.

It’s against this background that conservatives and leftists are reviewing the declassified phone transcripts. You can see the transcripts here and here.

On the conservative side, Sean Davis wrote a comprehensive article explaining why the transcripts vindicate Flynn. Here’s the short version:

The December 29 transcript, as Bongino guessed, makes no mention of sanctions. It discusses only expulsions, and that’s what he talked to the FBI about. On the subject of expulsions, Flynn was concerned lest Russia escalate matters, forcing the Trump administration instantly to meet one escalation with another. He asked for a tempered, reciprocal response.

The two men also discussed their shared interest in ending Middle Eastern terrorism. Regarding Israel, the men spoke of it on December 23rd, not the 29th, so Flynn could not have lied about it vis-à-vis the call on the 29th (which was the subject of the FBI interview). In any event, American policy under Obama was to be neutral, meaning any discussions could not have violated the policy.

Ultimate, the December 29 transcript shows Flynn trying to prevent a dangerous tit-for-tat scenario so as to protect American interests.

But that’s not how leftists see it. In their alternate reality, the transcripts confirm that Flynn is a traitor. It’s impossible for these two realities to exist in a unified country.

To leftists, the key takeaways were Flynn’s request to Kislyak that, “Do not, do not uh, allow this administration to box us in, right now, okay?” and “What we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where, where we’re gonna go.” Fundamentally, anything Trump and his team did that ran counter to Obama was treason. 

Just look at Politico’s headline: “Flynn urged Russian ambassador to take ‘reciprocal’ actions, transcripts show.” That implies that Russia was going to be passive in the face of Obama’s wisdom and power and that it was Flynn pushing treasonous action. Of course, the opposite was true, for Flynn was trying to de-escalate. 

This tweet also shows an upside-down view of things:

Margot Cleveland saw this same spin and was outraged. I’ll end this post with her tweets explaining how frustrating it is to see leftists warp reality to give a pass to a disreputable, treasonous departing president who tried to plant a national-security landmine for the incoming president:

John Ratcliffe, the Director of National Intelligence, followed through on work Ric Grenell did as acting DNI, releasing transcripts from several phone calls that General Michael Flynn had with Sergei Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador. The release shows how the political divide creates entirely different narratives, for conservatives claim (correctly, in my opinion), that the transcripts vindicate Flynn and show that the FBI, the DOJ, and Robert Mueller set him up, while leftists insist that the transcripts prove that Flynn was a traitor and a Putin stooge.

All of this leads to one overarching question: Can a nation so badly divided about reality be saved?

For those who haven’t been paying attention, here’s a super-quick Flynn rundown. Obama hated Flynn because Flynn opposed Obama’s Iran deal. Trump nevertheless appointed Flynn as the National Security Advisor for Trump’s new administration.

On December 29, only 22 days before leaving office, Obama cited Russian interference with the 2016 election to impose sanctions on Russia and expel numerous Russian diplomats. This created an instant and serious problem for the incoming Trump administration. Dan Bongino also believes that Obama took these steps to set up Flynn:

  • He had authorized spying on Kislyak;

  • He knew Kislyak would call Flynn about the sanctions and expulsions;

  • He knew Flynn would be in the Dominican Republican for the calls; and

  • He knew that calls to the Dominican Republican would create a unique “phone print” that would allow his administration to view the phone calls without unmasking Flynn.

On January 24, 2017, the FBI did an ambush interview of Flynn, during which they asked him about the December 29 telephone call with Kislyak, focusing on the expulsions. Flynn knew the call had been recorded and answered to the best of his recollection. The interviewing agents concluded he was telling the truth.

Robert Mueller, although he always knew there was no collusion, referred Flynn for criminal prosecution. The charge stated that Flynn lied to the FBI when he denied pushing Kislyak (1) not to escalate on sanctions and (2) to help defeat a UN anti-Israel resolution.

Flynn pleaded guilty to this charge, both because he was acting on advice from attorneys whom the DOJ was essentially blackmailing and to protect his son. Thanks to Flynn’s intrepid new counsel, and with a new DOJ reviewing its predecessor’s corrupt work, the DOJ moved to dismiss his case. Judge Sullivan is currently refusing to rubber-stamp that motion.

It’s against this background that conservatives and leftists are reviewing the declassified phone transcripts. You can see the transcripts here and here.

On the conservative side, Sean Davis wrote a comprehensive article explaining why the transcripts vindicate Flynn. Here’s the short version:

The December 29 transcript, as Bongino guessed, makes no mention of sanctions. It discusses only expulsions, and that’s what he talked to the FBI about. On the subject of expulsions, Flynn was concerned lest Russia escalate matters, forcing the Trump administration instantly to meet one escalation with another. He asked for a tempered, reciprocal response.

The two men also discussed their shared interest in ending Middle Eastern terrorism. Regarding Israel, the men spoke of it on December 23rd, not the 29th, so Flynn could not have lied about it vis-à-vis the call on the 29th (which was the subject of the FBI interview). In any event, American policy under Obama was to be neutral, meaning any discussions could not have violated the policy.

Ultimate, the December 29 transcript shows Flynn trying to prevent a dangerous tit-for-tat scenario so as to protect American interests.

But that’s not how leftists see it. In their alternate reality, the transcripts confirm that Flynn is a traitor. It’s impossible for these two realities to exist in a unified country.

To leftists, the key takeaways were Flynn’s request to Kislyak that, “Do not, do not uh, allow this administration to box us in, right now, okay?” and “What we can do is, when we come in, we can then have a better conversation about where, where we’re gonna go.” Fundamentally, anything Trump and his team did that ran counter to Obama was treason. 

Just look at Politico’s headline: “Flynn urged Russian ambassador to take ‘reciprocal’ actions, transcripts show.” That implies that Russia was going to be passive in the face of Obama’s wisdom and power and that it was Flynn pushing treasonous action. Of course, the opposite was true, for Flynn was trying to de-escalate. 

This tweet also shows an upside-down view of things:

Margot Cleveland saw this same spin and was outraged. I’ll end this post with her tweets explaining how frustrating it is to see leftists warp reality to give a pass to a disreputable, treasonous departing president who tried to plant a national-security landmine for the incoming president:

via American Thinker Blog

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The violence exploding across America reveals a previously invisible divide

George Floyd’s death has allowed the media, Black Lives Matter, and other leftists to trumpet their favorite issue — racism. The American left, true to its Democrat heritage, is as obsessed with race as it was during all the years of slavery and Jim Crow.

Leftists continue to use racial politics as a way to control minorities (witness Joe Biden’s inadvertent Democrat-party honesty when he said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”) and as a way to attack President Trump. That Trump was a darling of the black establishment in the 1990s and that, before the current virus madness, his policies were spectacularly good for minorities is irrelevant. Race is a cudgel and they’re going to beat him with it.

However, the focus on “systemic racism” hides a couple of things that are even deeper fissures in American society. Tucker Carlson points both out in a powerful monologue. First, he says, the real divide in America is between makers and takers. He describes America’s good citizens, the hard workers and law-abiding people of all races who keep this country functioning, and its bad citizens, the ones who see criminal anarchy as the answer. And then he gets to the second point, which is that we have a political class in America that is siding with the criminals:

On the subject of makers versus takers, and the irrelevance of race, this black business owner in Minneapolis in 2020 is suffering the same anguish as the black business owner from Los Angeles in 1992 whom Carlson highlighted:

Carlson is correct that every society will have its makers and takers. The horror in modern America is that the political class – at least, the Democrat political class – is now siding with the criminals and anarchists. The Democrats do so in part because they are also criminal (e.g., the Clintons, and every one of the Russia hoaxers) and in part because they draw their power from maintaining a perpetually inflamed underclass.

To that second point, the one about the Democrats’ power base, Democrat-run cities across America rely on policies that systematically foment class and racial divides. Rather than encouraging a solid middle class to stabilize their cities and create a financial base that benefits all citizens, they raise taxes on and over-regulate the producers, while encouraging lawlessness and welfare dependency amongst those they view as the easiest to control: The poor, the substance abusers, the criminals, and those minorities who buy into the canard that, in 21st century America, their race is still the only thing that matters.

In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, explicitly sided with the rioters, showering them with sympathy and urging them to stay safe. This is just one example of what those “safe” rioters were doing:

In Democrat-run Atlanta, hard-left CNN suddenly discovered that you reap what you sow. After years of encouraging Trump hatred, racial obsessions, and sympathy for violence, it must have come as quite the surprise to CNN to discover that the rioters wanted its corporate blood:

There are riots in Democrat-run New York City:

There are riots in Democrat-run San Jose:

There are riots in Democrat-run Dallas:

There are riots in Democrat-run Houston:

There are riots in Democrat-run Washington, D.C. These riots actively threaten the president of the United States and that’s not surprising. The leftist establishment, from politicians to Hollywood stars to the media (including CNN), has told its foot soldiers for the last three years that Trump was not duly elected, that he’s a traitor, and that he’s a race hater, all of which makes him fair game:

In the war between people who have a stake in society and those who don’t, race is a tool the power brokers wield to weaken the stakeholders. It’s anarchy versus civilization, and our American political class, whether in the offices of tech titans, or in the halls of Congress, is supporting the anarchists. That should terrify those of us who believe in the rule of law and in the benefits of hard work and good citizenship. If we wish to end this situation without escalating violence, our only option is to turn out in record numbers in November.

George Floyd’s death has allowed the media, Black Lives Matter, and other leftists to trumpet their favorite issue — racism. The American left, true to its Democrat heritage, is as obsessed with race as it was during all the years of slavery and Jim Crow.

Leftists continue to use racial politics as a way to control minorities (witness Joe Biden’s inadvertent Democrat-party honesty when he said, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black”) and as a way to attack President Trump. That Trump was a darling of the black establishment in the 1990s and that, before the current virus madness, his policies were spectacularly good for minorities is irrelevant. Race is a cudgel and they’re going to beat him with it.

However, the focus on “systemic racism” hides a couple of things that are even deeper fissures in American society. Tucker Carlson points both out in a powerful monologue. First, he says, the real divide in America is between makers and takers. He describes America’s good citizens, the hard workers and law-abiding people of all races who keep this country functioning, and its bad citizens, the ones who see criminal anarchy as the answer. And then he gets to the second point, which is that we have a political class in America that is siding with the criminals:

On the subject of makers versus takers, and the irrelevance of race, this black business owner in Minneapolis in 2020 is suffering the same anguish as the black business owner from Los Angeles in 1992 whom Carlson highlighted:

Carlson is correct that every society will have its makers and takers. The horror in modern America is that the political class – at least, the Democrat political class – is now siding with the criminals and anarchists. The Democrats do so in part because they are also criminal (e.g., the Clintons, and every one of the Russia hoaxers) and in part because they draw their power from maintaining a perpetually inflamed underclass.

To that second point, the one about the Democrats’ power base, Democrat-run cities across America rely on policies that systematically foment class and racial divides. Rather than encouraging a solid middle class to stabilize their cities and create a financial base that benefits all citizens, they raise taxes on and over-regulate the producers, while encouraging lawlessness and welfare dependency amongst those they view as the easiest to control: The poor, the substance abusers, the criminals, and those minorities who buy into the canard that, in 21st century America, their race is still the only thing that matters.

In Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, explicitly sided with the rioters, showering them with sympathy and urging them to stay safe. This is just one example of what those “safe” rioters were doing:

In Democrat-run Atlanta, hard-left CNN suddenly discovered that you reap what you sow. After years of encouraging Trump hatred, racial obsessions, and sympathy for violence, it must have come as quite the surprise to CNN to discover that the rioters wanted its corporate blood:

There are riots in Democrat-run New York City:

There are riots in Democrat-run San Jose:

There are riots in Democrat-run Dallas:

There are riots in Democrat-run Houston:

There are riots in Democrat-run Washington, D.C. These riots actively threaten the president of the United States and that’s not surprising. The leftist establishment, from politicians to Hollywood stars to the media (including CNN), has told its foot soldiers for the last three years that Trump was not duly elected, that he’s a traitor, and that he’s a race hater, all of which makes him fair game:

In the war between people who have a stake in society and those who don’t, race is a tool the power brokers wield to weaken the stakeholders. It’s anarchy versus civilization, and our American political class, whether in the offices of tech titans, or in the halls of Congress, is supporting the anarchists. That should terrify those of us who believe in the rule of law and in the benefits of hard work and good citizenship. If we wish to end this situation without escalating violence, our only option is to turn out in record numbers in November.

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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Twitter again censors Trump and, again, Trump was in the right

On Thursday, Twitter interfered with President Trump’s feed by claiming that he had made false statements about the risks of using the Wuhan virus to justify voting by mail. Twitter was factually wrong, but that wasn’t the real scandal. The real scandal was that Twitter aggressively censored political speech and it did this in an election year against a candidate whom Twitter employees openly despise.

President Trump responded by issuing an executive order mandating that government agencies interpret § 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act as Congress intended. This means that social media and search engines that censor or alter third-party content have immunity from lawsuits only if the content is illegal or imminently dangerous (terrorist threats, sex trafficking, etc.). Otherwise, if the tech titans interfere with third-party content, they are acting as publishers and can be held liable for whatever torts creative attorneys can devise.

On Friday, Twitter responded to Trump’s Executive Order by doubling down against the president. This time, Twitter claimed that a Trump tweet was “glorifying violence.”

Twitter’s actions cannot stand. The government can act – but so should we.

Trump put out two tweets in the wee hours of the morning on Friday. This is the first tweet:

This is the second tweet:

What you see in that second tweet is bad because Twitter should not be commenting on Trump’s content, especially because it never says anything about Biden’s lies and racist remarks. What’s worse is what users saw when they opened their twitter feed, for this showed them complete censorship, hiding content and inflaming people’s imaginations:

Twitter’s grandstanding aside, it takes a moron or an ardent leftist partisan to read Trump’s second tweet as a statement “glorifying violence.” Instead, he is stating a simple truth: Once the looting begins, people end up getting shot. While Target will not shoot people because it can rely on its insurance and deep pockets to absorb the looting, small business owners, watching ravening mobs destroy their life’s work and savings, are not as forbearing. Indeed, in Minneapolis, the owner of Cadillac Jewelry shot a looter to death.

Trump explained this point in the tweets he made responding to Twitter’s censorship:

Leftists, of course, instantly latched onto Trump’s use of the word “thug,” claiming it was code for black people (language warning):

What we’re seeing Twitter create in real-time (with a boost from its censoring Trump but not the people pushing the lie) is another “fine people” hoax. That was the hoax the media devised in 2017, when Trump said that there were “fine people” protesting tearing down historic statues in Charlottesville, at which point he immediately added that he was not referring to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The media left out the second part to create a false racist narrative that has stuck like glue to the president.

Any sentient, fair-minded being understands that Trump used the word thug to refer to conduct, not race. That is, he was talking about any people, regardless of race, shooting guns and destroying property.

At Powerline, you can see an endlessly long list of wantonly destroyed businesses. There’s also been gunfire:

The bottom line is that Trump was correct, Trump was not inciting violence, Trump is not a racist, and Twitter is censoring a presidential candidate during an election year.

Trump is trying to stop the social media giants’ outsized power through his Executive Order. However, real change must come from us.

Twitter has power because people use it. Conservatives have been complaining about Twitter for years, but they’re still on the site. (I know that I use it to see what leftists are saying and as a holding place for my writing ideas.) It’s time for all principled people who believe in free speech and fear technocratic control over that speech (i.e., everyone from President Trump on down) to leave Twitter. Parler promises to be a forum that does not censor ideas. 

Remember, without us, Twitter loses at least half its content and becomes nothing more than a leftist swamp. At that point, it almost certainly dies, killed by its bad decisions and the free market.

On Thursday, Twitter interfered with President Trump’s feed by claiming that he had made false statements about the risks of using the Wuhan virus to justify voting by mail. Twitter was factually wrong, but that wasn’t the real scandal. The real scandal was that Twitter aggressively censored political speech and it did this in an election year against a candidate whom Twitter employees openly despise.

President Trump responded by issuing an executive order mandating that government agencies interpret § 230(c) of the Communications Decency Act as Congress intended. This means that social media and search engines that censor or alter third-party content have immunity from lawsuits only if the content is illegal or imminently dangerous (terrorist threats, sex trafficking, etc.). Otherwise, if the tech titans interfere with third-party content, they are acting as publishers and can be held liable for whatever torts creative attorneys can devise.

On Friday, Twitter responded to Trump’s Executive Order by doubling down against the president. This time, Twitter claimed that a Trump tweet was “glorifying violence.”

Twitter’s actions cannot stand. The government can act – but so should we.

Trump put out two tweets in the wee hours of the morning on Friday. This is the first tweet:

This is the second tweet:

What you see in that second tweet is bad because Twitter should not be commenting on Trump’s content, especially because it never says anything about Biden’s lies and racist remarks. What’s worse is what users saw when they opened their twitter feed, for this showed them complete censorship, hiding content and inflaming people’s imaginations:

Twitter’s grandstanding aside, it takes a moron or an ardent leftist partisan to read Trump’s second tweet as a statement “glorifying violence.” Instead, he is stating a simple truth: Once the looting begins, people end up getting shot. While Target will not shoot people because it can rely on its insurance and deep pockets to absorb the looting, small business owners, watching ravening mobs destroy their life’s work and savings, are not as forbearing. Indeed, in Minneapolis, the owner of Cadillac Jewelry shot a looter to death.

Trump explained this point in the tweets he made responding to Twitter’s censorship:

Leftists, of course, instantly latched onto Trump’s use of the word “thug,” claiming it was code for black people (language warning):

What we’re seeing Twitter create in real-time (with a boost from its censoring Trump but not the people pushing the lie) is another “fine people” hoax. That was the hoax the media devised in 2017, when Trump said that there were “fine people” protesting tearing down historic statues in Charlottesville, at which point he immediately added that he was not referring to white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The media left out the second part to create a false racist narrative that has stuck like glue to the president.

Any sentient, fair-minded being understands that Trump used the word thug to refer to conduct, not race. That is, he was talking about any people, regardless of race, shooting guns and destroying property.

At Powerline, you can see an endlessly long list of wantonly destroyed businesses. There’s also been gunfire:

The bottom line is that Trump was correct, Trump was not inciting violence, Trump is not a racist, and Twitter is censoring a presidential candidate during an election year.

Trump is trying to stop the social media giants’ outsized power through his Executive Order. However, real change must come from us.

Twitter has power because people use it. Conservatives have been complaining about Twitter for years, but they’re still on the site. (I know that I use it to see what leftists are saying and as a holding place for my writing ideas.) It’s time for all principled people who believe in free speech and fear technocratic control over that speech (i.e., everyone from President Trump on down) to leave Twitter. Parler promises to be a forum that does not censor ideas. 

Remember, without us, Twitter loses at least half its content and becomes nothing more than a leftist swamp. At that point, it almost certainly dies, killed by its bad decisions and the free market.

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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Twitter and other media outlets are always willing to spread lies to gin up racial hate and violence to get Democrats more votes

Twitter is again intentionally misleading its hundreds of millions of users by telling them that President Trump is glorifying violence. The intent of their flagging Trump is to incite hate and division while further seeking to defeat Trump. It is purely political. What Trump said in his tweets was the truth.

The looting and shooting began before Trump sent out his tweets, so clearly someone else other than Trump incited the violence.

Twitter Censors Trump Minneapolis Tweet, Accuses Him of ‘Glorifying Violence’

Donald Trump: I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership, Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.

These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

Twitter: This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.

The President is right to call out the weak mayor. While the protestors are looting, shooting and burning down businesses Mayor Frey is worried that they aren’t wearing masks and social distancing. There is a politician who seems to lack a brain. Does anyone think that looters going into Target are worried that they don’t have their mask on and are six feet away from other looters while they are stealing TV’s and other stuff?

It reminds me of Mayor Lightfoot from Chicago. While there were a huge number of shootings and killings in Chicago last weekend (and every week), including many minorities killed by other minorities,  she and governor Pritzker were focused on making sure businesses didn’t reopen in defiance of dictatorial government edicts, along with making sure no more than ten people gathered inside churches. The priorities are clearly screwed up.

Most of the media, especially social media, along with Hollywood and other media, have intentionally ginned up racial hate, violence and division for years.  One of the best (or worst examples) of this is how they, including Obama, ginned up racial hate and violence by intentionally lying about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The fictional narrative of “Hands up don’t shoot” was peddled endlessly. It was used to gin up racial hate and violence. Looting, shootings and arson occurred. Businesses were destroyed. Al Sharpton showed up. This occurred years before Trump took office.

People were also called racists if they said “all lives mattered” instead of using the politically correct term of “black lives mattered”

How many police officers were targeted because the media participated in spreading the known lie of ‘Hands up don’t shoot” and have not made any significant effort to correct the record?

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Never Happened, But Networks Keep Using It

●        Media Helped Spread  ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Theme: Broadcast networks used the phrase, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” 140 times in protest coverage discussing the Ferguson case from Aug. 9, 2014, through March 4, 2015, the date of the Justice Department report. 

●        Networks Perpetuate False Claim: Despite the DOJ ruling the left’s “fact” a “myth,” the networks have continued to use the meme an additional 16 times since release of the Ferguson report. 

●        ABC, NBC Never Admit Expression Wasn’t True: CBS called out the “Hands up, don’t shoot” falsehood in a March 4 report saying, “Despite protests” the report found there was “no credible evidence Brown had his hands up attempting to surrender.” So have CNN, The Washington Post and even The New York Times. ABC and NBC haven’t dared to address it.

●        Pop-Culture Support: The false narrative has even made its way into pop culture in television shows, professional sports and music awards shows. Entertainment media have helped promote “Hands up, don’t shoot” — from the hit show Scandal to a Pharrell Grammy performance. 

Joe Biden and many others continually repeat the lie that Trump called white supremacists’ good people and yet there are no fact checks by Twitter highlighting those lies.

The reason the lie that Trump likes white supremacists continues to be regurgitated is specifically to gin up racial hate and division against Trump in order to defeat him. The intentional bias and lies are appalling from people who pretend they are journalists giving the public facts. 

Trump’s Charlottesville comments twisted by Joe Biden and the media

The media also set out to gin up racial hate and hate against Trump when they intentionally lied about Nick Sandmann and accompanying white Christian boys by calling them racists for wearing MAGA hats.  They clearly had access to the other video showing Black Hebrew Israelites using disparaging language and shouting racial slurs against the white teenagers when they spread those lies. 

CNN settles lawsuit with Nick Sandmann stemming from viral video controversy

 In a video that gained national attention, Sandmann was in an encounter with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips, who was beating a hand-held drum and singing at the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial on the same day.

Another video that surfaced days later provided additional context for the encounter, but the first video had gone viral, touching off widespread controversy as photos of the teenager and the red Make America Great Again hat he was wearing spread across social media.

In the second video, a group of black men who identified as members of the Black Hebrew Israelites were seen taunting the students from Covington Catholic High School with disparaging language and shouting racist slurs at participants in the Indigenous Peoples Rally and other passersby.

Sandmann at the time strongly denied accusations against him, saying he had been trying to “defuse the situation” by “remaining motionless and calm.”

Major news outlets, including the Washington Post, the Associated Press and CNN, covered the aftermath of the incident.

If we had an honest media instead of one seeking to destroy Trump they would have done stories on the radical, racist blacks but that doesn’t fit the agenda.

The media, along with other Democrats also sought to take out Judge Kavanaugh with no evidence. 

How many people are media puppets willing to destroy and how much racial division, hate, violence and division are they willing to cause because they only care about one thing: power for Democrats?

The media, especially social media, was also willing to spread the Jussie Smollett lie to gin up racial hate and violence against Trump. They were especially excited when Smollett lied that the people he hired to stage the attack were wearing MAGA hats. That was perfect for the agenda.

Social media provides fuel for Jussie Smollett story 

The story Jussie Smollett told police had it all: racism, homophobia, politics, celebrity — all tied up with a hangman’s noose. There was no question the news coverage was going to be massive.

In many ways, that coverage is an object lesson in the foibles of modern reporting. The story showed where news outlets teeter on the line between driving social media and being driven by it, between healthy skepticism and cautious credulity.

“We have the combination of social media and a polarized country converging here,” said Charles Whitaker, interim dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Everyone is seeing events “from their political lens. No one is really good at distancing themselves.”

The story began as an account of a hate crime that went viral instantly.

He also claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

National media soon got wind of the story. Social media poured rocket fuel on it and set it ablaze.

The media and other Democrats also continually use the racist dog whistles “white privilege” and “persons of color” to gin up racial hate and division while they pretend they are trying to unite the country. 

We can see from Biden’s statement last week that he believes Democrats are entitled to black votes. It is a shame that so many minorities just vote for Democrats automatically even though their policies seek to keep blacks dependent on government, essentially slaves to the government, instead of doing what Trump wants, which is to give them opportunities to move up the economic ladder and to participate in the joys of capitalism.

Social media outlets, along with other media outlets gladly spread lies to incite racial hate and violence because those actions mislead the public into voting for Democrats who care for minority votes only to get more power for themselves. 

Graphic credit: Flickr

Twitter is again intentionally misleading its hundreds of millions of users by telling them that President Trump is glorifying violence. The intent of their flagging Trump is to incite hate and division while further seeking to defeat Trump. It is purely political. What Trump said in his tweets was the truth.

The looting and shooting began before Trump sent out his tweets, so clearly someone else other than Trump incited the violence.

Twitter Censors Trump Minneapolis Tweet, Accuses Him of ‘Glorifying Violence’

Donald Trump: I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership, Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right.

These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!

Twitter: This tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.

The President is right to call out the weak mayor. While the protestors are looting, shooting and burning down businesses Mayor Frey is worried that they aren’t wearing masks and social distancing. There is a politician who seems to lack a brain. Does anyone think that looters going into Target are worried that they don’t have their mask on and are six feet away from other looters while they are stealing TV’s and other stuff?

It reminds me of Mayor Lightfoot from Chicago. While there were a huge number of shootings and killings in Chicago last weekend (and every week), including many minorities killed by other minorities,  she and governor Pritzker were focused on making sure businesses didn’t reopen in defiance of dictatorial government edicts, along with making sure no more than ten people gathered inside churches. The priorities are clearly screwed up.

Most of the media, especially social media, along with Hollywood and other media, have intentionally ginned up racial hate, violence and division for years.  One of the best (or worst examples) of this is how they, including Obama, ginned up racial hate and violence by intentionally lying about what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. The fictional narrative of “Hands up don’t shoot” was peddled endlessly. It was used to gin up racial hate and violence. Looting, shootings and arson occurred. Businesses were destroyed. Al Sharpton showed up. This occurred years before Trump took office.

People were also called racists if they said “all lives mattered” instead of using the politically correct term of “black lives mattered”

How many police officers were targeted because the media participated in spreading the known lie of ‘Hands up don’t shoot” and have not made any significant effort to correct the record?

Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Never Happened, But Networks Keep Using It

●        Media Helped Spread  ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’ Theme: Broadcast networks used the phrase, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” 140 times in protest coverage discussing the Ferguson case from Aug. 9, 2014, through March 4, 2015, the date of the Justice Department report. 

●        Networks Perpetuate False Claim: Despite the DOJ ruling the left’s “fact” a “myth,” the networks have continued to use the meme an additional 16 times since release of the Ferguson report. 

●        ABC, NBC Never Admit Expression Wasn’t True: CBS called out the “Hands up, don’t shoot” falsehood in a March 4 report saying, “Despite protests” the report found there was “no credible evidence Brown had his hands up attempting to surrender.” So have CNN, The Washington Post and even The New York Times. ABC and NBC haven’t dared to address it.

●        Pop-Culture Support: The false narrative has even made its way into pop culture in television shows, professional sports and music awards shows. Entertainment media have helped promote “Hands up, don’t shoot” — from the hit show Scandal to a Pharrell Grammy performance. 

Joe Biden and many others continually repeat the lie that Trump called white supremacists’ good people and yet there are no fact checks by Twitter highlighting those lies.

The reason the lie that Trump likes white supremacists continues to be regurgitated is specifically to gin up racial hate and division against Trump in order to defeat him. The intentional bias and lies are appalling from people who pretend they are journalists giving the public facts. 

Trump’s Charlottesville comments twisted by Joe Biden and the media

The media also set out to gin up racial hate and hate against Trump when they intentionally lied about Nick Sandmann and accompanying white Christian boys by calling them racists for wearing MAGA hats.  They clearly had access to the other video showing Black Hebrew Israelites using disparaging language and shouting racial slurs against the white teenagers when they spread those lies. 

CNN settles lawsuit with Nick Sandmann stemming from viral video controversy

 In a video that gained national attention, Sandmann was in an encounter with Omaha tribe elder Nathan Phillips, who was beating a hand-held drum and singing at the Indigenous Peoples March at the Lincoln Memorial on the same day.

Another video that surfaced days later provided additional context for the encounter, but the first video had gone viral, touching off widespread controversy as photos of the teenager and the red Make America Great Again hat he was wearing spread across social media.

In the second video, a group of black men who identified as members of the Black Hebrew Israelites were seen taunting the students from Covington Catholic High School with disparaging language and shouting racist slurs at participants in the Indigenous Peoples Rally and other passersby.

Sandmann at the time strongly denied accusations against him, saying he had been trying to “defuse the situation” by “remaining motionless and calm.”

Major news outlets, including the Washington Post, the Associated Press and CNN, covered the aftermath of the incident.

If we had an honest media instead of one seeking to destroy Trump they would have done stories on the radical, racist blacks but that doesn’t fit the agenda.

The media, along with other Democrats also sought to take out Judge Kavanaugh with no evidence. 

How many people are media puppets willing to destroy and how much racial division, hate, violence and division are they willing to cause because they only care about one thing: power for Democrats?

The media, especially social media, was also willing to spread the Jussie Smollett lie to gin up racial hate and violence against Trump. They were especially excited when Smollett lied that the people he hired to stage the attack were wearing MAGA hats. That was perfect for the agenda.

Social media provides fuel for Jussie Smollett story 

The story Jussie Smollett told police had it all: racism, homophobia, politics, celebrity — all tied up with a hangman’s noose. There was no question the news coverage was going to be massive.

In many ways, that coverage is an object lesson in the foibles of modern reporting. The story showed where news outlets teeter on the line between driving social media and being driven by it, between healthy skepticism and cautious credulity.

“We have the combination of social media and a polarized country converging here,” said Charles Whitaker, interim dean of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. Everyone is seeing events “from their political lens. No one is really good at distancing themselves.”

The story began as an account of a hate crime that went viral instantly.

He also claimed they shouted, “This is MAGA country” — a reference to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

National media soon got wind of the story. Social media poured rocket fuel on it and set it ablaze.

The media and other Democrats also continually use the racist dog whistles “white privilege” and “persons of color” to gin up racial hate and division while they pretend they are trying to unite the country. 

We can see from Biden’s statement last week that he believes Democrats are entitled to black votes. It is a shame that so many minorities just vote for Democrats automatically even though their policies seek to keep blacks dependent on government, essentially slaves to the government, instead of doing what Trump wants, which is to give them opportunities to move up the economic ladder and to participate in the joys of capitalism.

Social media outlets, along with other media outlets gladly spread lies to incite racial hate and violence because those actions mislead the public into voting for Democrats who care for minority votes only to get more power for themselves. 

Graphic credit: Flickr

via American Thinker Blog

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/

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George Floyd’s preliminary autopsy raises the question: Was this another rush to judgement?

Almost totally absent from the mainstream news Friday, as the violent insurrection in the wake of George Floyd’s death spread to cities nationwide, were the preliminary results of his autopsy. The report was part of the arrest warrant for Derek Michael Chauvin, the disgraced former Minneapolis police officer who was taken into custody on Friday afternoon and charged with the third-degree murder of Floyd while he was in police custody last Monday evening. The brief mention of the autopsy suggests that the case against Chauvin, and possibly his three colleagues assuming they too will eventually be charged, for being totally responsible for the death of Floyd may not be as cut and dried as previously thought.

The Washington Times headlined its story Friday afternoon “Asphyxiation not the cause of George Floyd’s death: Autopsy.” An examination of the official complaint (arrest warrant) for Chauvin includes this sentence from a paragraph about Floyd’s cause of death on page 3:

The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.

Screen shot of paragraph from State of Minnesota vs. Derek Michael Chauvin

The eight-minute cell phone video showing Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck after the latter’s arrest for allegedly trying to pass a $20 counterfeit bill, has become one of the most viewed videos of a police action of all time. Reporters, analysts, and almost everyone else in the country from left, right, and center have immediately jumped to the conclusion that Chauvin is clearly guilty of the murder of Floyd. The full autopsy, when it is finally made public, may render that popular conclusion before the wheels of justice have had a chance to turn another rush to judgement – not unlike what happened in the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray after additional evidence came to light in determining the responsibility for their deaths. “Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” after all, is a high standard to achieve in the American judicial system.

Also on Friday, as reported by Fox News:

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Floyd’s family, said Friday that talk of a heart condition or asthma was irrelevant because Floyd was walking and breathing before his contact with police.

Crump further stated, according to newsfeeds dot media:

Former New York City chief medical examiner Michael Baden will conduct an independent autopsy on George Floyd following his death after being pinned by a Minneapolis police officer.

Dr. Michael Baden, who previously conducted an independent autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein, will do the examination after the family takes Floyd’s body back from the state, their lawyer said Friday.

“We’re going to take custody back of his body, and we’re bringing in Dr. Michael Baden to perform an independent autopsy,” the attorney, Ben Crump, said at a news conference, 1010 WINS reported.

“The family does not trust anything coming from the Minneapolis Police Department. How can they?” Crump added.

Almost totally absent from the mainstream news Friday, as the violent insurrection in the wake of George Floyd’s death spread to cities nationwide, were the preliminary results of his autopsy. The report was part of the arrest warrant for Derek Michael Chauvin, the disgraced former Minneapolis police officer who was taken into custody on Friday afternoon and charged with the third-degree murder of Floyd while he was in police custody last Monday evening. The brief mention of the autopsy suggests that the case against Chauvin, and possibly his three colleagues assuming they too will eventually be charged, for being totally responsible for the death of Floyd may not be as cut and dried as previously thought.

The Washington Times headlined its story Friday afternoon “Asphyxiation not the cause of George Floyd’s death: Autopsy.” An examination of the official complaint (arrest warrant) for Chauvin includes this sentence from a paragraph about Floyd’s cause of death on page 3:

The combined effects of Mr. Floyd being restrained by police, his underlying health conditions and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.

Screen shot of paragraph from State of Minnesota vs. Derek Michael Chauvin

The eight-minute cell phone video showing Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s neck after the latter’s arrest for allegedly trying to pass a $20 counterfeit bill, has become one of the most viewed videos of a police action of all time. Reporters, analysts, and almost everyone else in the country from left, right, and center have immediately jumped to the conclusion that Chauvin is clearly guilty of the murder of Floyd. The full autopsy, when it is finally made public, may render that popular conclusion before the wheels of justice have had a chance to turn another rush to judgement – not unlike what happened in the cases of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray after additional evidence came to light in determining the responsibility for their deaths. “Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” after all, is a high standard to achieve in the American judicial system.

Also on Friday, as reported by Fox News:

Attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Floyd’s family, said Friday that talk of a heart condition or asthma was irrelevant because Floyd was walking and breathing before his contact with police.

Crump further stated, according to newsfeeds dot media:

Former New York City chief medical examiner Michael Baden will conduct an independent autopsy on George Floyd following his death after being pinned by a Minneapolis police officer.

Dr. Michael Baden, who previously conducted an independent autopsy of Jeffrey Epstein, will do the examination after the family takes Floyd’s body back from the state, their lawyer said Friday.

“We’re going to take custody back of his body, and we’re bringing in Dr. Michael Baden to perform an independent autopsy,” the attorney, Ben Crump, said at a news conference, 1010 WINS reported.

“The family does not trust anything coming from the Minneapolis Police Department. How can they?” Crump added.

via American Thinker Blog

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TOTO: Fake News Takes A Personal Toll On Us

Getting hung up on is never fun, but this time it felt even worse.

This wasn’t an old squeeze or potential employer abruptly ending a call. It was one of my closest friends, someone I’ve known for north of 20 years.

And, of course, it was about politics.

It didn’t start that way. My conversation with “Steve” eventually steered toward COVID-19, the Dumbo in any room at this point. We both agreed it’s not a great idea to finger point at the moment. It’s still too new, too raw, and that would be counter productive.

Later? Of course.

Still, I was curious what he thought about the media’s coverage of the pandemic. Specifically, how journalists predicted the Republican Governors of Georgia and Florida would have “blood on their hands” for cautiously reopening their states while ignoring the significant miscues made by Team New York – specifically Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Steve had previously set his anti-Trump rage aside to say the media had been behaving badly in the Age of Trump. I suspected we had more common ground to tread.

Not even close.

Steve extolled Cuomo’s leadership, comparing the governor’s press conferences to what he called President Donald Trump’s meandering, counter-productive pressers.

Yeah, I saw several shades of red. I actually appreciated Cuomo’s tone and tenor at first. And, as an ex-New Yorker, his accent and moxie struck something tribal within me.

Then I learned from untraditional media outlets how he allowed infected patients into New York nursing homes, dooming hundreds, if not thousands, of elderly Americans. Later, he began sanitizing subway cars many weeks after the virus hit the Big Apple hard.

I wasn’t ready, or eager, to defend some of the president’s clumsier comments. Still, it’s clear the media framed reality in such a monstrously one-sided fashion it was worth noting. Surely Steve knew about the nursing homes scandal surrounding Cuomo’s leadership, the one reporters have dragged their feet on for weeks, but that found legs on social media?

A corrupt press helps no one, even if it temporarily boosts “your side” for a spell. When half the country doesn’t trust the media, that’s a big, dangerous deal.

Instead, Steve stood by Cuomo like Tammy Wynette clinging to her beau. This wasn’t some clueless bumpkin. I’d guess Steve is smarter than I am, with plenty of real-world experience at his back.

What other false narratives did he believe?

I pushed further, bringing up the Russian collusion hoax, another example of extreme press malfeasance.

“Oh, I believe Trump colluded with Russia,” Steve said.

Whaaat?

At this point the conversation got more heated, but we weren’t shouting or hurling epithets at each other. We were having a debate, even though I’d rather be quizzing him about TV shows he’s been watching or memories of our favorite pizza joints.

Then he hung up on me.

Was that the end of our friendship? It’s doubtful, but why would he treat a longtime friend this way? Our bond deserved better than a move reserved for pesky telemarketers.

He could have just said, “Let’s change the subject.” I’m OK with that. I’ve done it before when a conversation turned up the heat. Looking back, I should have done so myself.

Then I gave it some thought.

Pre-Trump, Steve would probably fit as a center-right voter with some socially liberal views. Trump changed much of that. I’m guessing he began feasting on the media’s insane anti-Trump narratives from Inauguration day onward.

Day after day, pseudo scandal after pseudo scandal, the media messages likely took hold.

Remember, “The walls are closing in…?”

It didn’t help that Bad Trump often appeared on the scene, sharing toxic Tweets or getting in the gutter when attacked.

I certainly share some of the blame for our dustup. I’ve gotten better about bailing on heated political debates before they go too far.

Not this time. That’s on me.

I’m not really angry with Steve. Most people assume the media is mostly fair and balanced well enough. They don’t have time to seek out smart alternate news sites. They have jobs to do, meals to make, and wee ones to tuck in for a safe goodnight.

Extreme media bias is getting worse as we speak. Think the Covington Kids, the Jussie Smollett case or, more recently, the ballad of Tara Reade.

CNN anchors might literally wave pom poms to promote Joe Biden’s White House bid come October, assuming the media’s attempt to hide his sad decline holds fast. Other reporters may act in lock step, with or without the theatrics.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson recently blasted the media’s distortions regarding the pandemic.

“So, no, CNN and MSNBC aren’t bringing you science. They’re peddling panic and reckless moral judgement. It’s hurting the country,” he said.

President Trump famously said “Fake News” is the enemy of the people, then expanded the phrase to include the press in toto.

Sadly, the latter is increasingly right. It’s also partially to blame for pushing old friendships to the breaking point.

The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

via The Daily Wire

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