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Suspected Antifa Punk Charged with Stabbing Trump Supporter in Portland

There are two interesting strains of thought that seem to uneasily coexist in the liberal sphere of debate regarding antifa groups. a) “Antifa” is a contraction of “anti-fascist.” These groups may be aggressive in their tactics, but they’re targeting fascists. If you’re anti-anti-fascist, well — what does that make you? b) Also, “antifa” doesn’t really…

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SCHAEFFER: The Truth About The Black Lives Matter Organization

At present, no organization has more sway in the United States, not just in shaping opinion, but changing behaviors and lives, than Black Lives Matter. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 62% of likely voters now have a “favorable” opinion of BLM. This is almost a reverse of opinion only six months ago.

It is both fascinating and troubling to see this transformation. Fascinating in that, like so many political movements, its emergence usually is the reaction to some larger underlying shift in the national order that the existing parties have failed to address. The Republican Party, for example, was spawned from the growing abolitionist sentiment in the country — one the Southern Democrats vehemently resisted to the point of taking up arms.

But unlike the nascent GOP, Black Lives Matter, the organization that has co-opted the self-evident slogan, is based not just on deception, but outright, demonstrable lies. And even more troubling still is the willingness with which the American people, gutted of any proper historical understanding for generations by failed education, the activist media, and cowardly politicians of both mainstream parties are willing to carry water for this mendacious group.

Consider the genesis of the Black Lives Matter organization itself. On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin was intercepted by George Zimmerman, a man of mixed race, who was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his community. An altercation occurred, Zimmerman claimed Martin attacked him and in the scuffle Zimmerman fatally shot the boy.  A tragedy all around, no doubt. Zimmerman was acquitted; he was found to have indeed acted in self-defense. Bowing to national public outcry a federal investigation was launched as well — and it reached the same conclusion. But that did not matter. By then Trayvon Martin had become a household name — a martyr, a symbol of a false narrative laced in fallacious inductive reasoning that it was “open season” on young blacks by non-blacks. The 2013 acquittal inspired a Facebook posting that included the phrase “black lives matter” and the “Movement for Black Lives,” which eventually fell under the catch-all banner “Black Lives Matter,” was born.

The movement was spurred on by the shooting of Michael Brown by police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. It was widely reported that Wilson shot Brown while the man was helpless, with his hands raised in the air, and pleading “Don’t shoot!” That narrative took hold and spread like wildfire, and soon a terrible untruth began to spread among both the black community as well as white guilt-ridden leftists who are always happy to cheer them on from behind the walls of their all-white enclaves. The storyline went that Brown’s death was emblematic of a widespread problem that black people have confronted for years: brutality and injustice at the hands of systemically racist police. Soon even NFL players got into the act, many striding onto the field with their hands up in a gesture of solidarity.

Once again, the shooter was acquitted. But unlike the Martin case, where some doubts will always linger, the matter of Brown’s demise was a clear case of police self-defense. The Brown as sainted victim narrative was a lie. Brown was six-foot-five, 285 pounds. Al Sharpton, C.E.O. of Race Hustlers, Inc., eulogized him as a “gentle giant.”  His family said he didn’t have a violent bone in his body. This would come as a surprise to the store owner trying to prevent Brown from stealing a box of cigars the night he died. When confronted, the stoned (as the autopsy showed) Brown can be seen on surveillance video grabbing the diminutive store owner and slamming him into a shelf.

While walking down the middle of the street soon after, Brown was intercepted by Officer Wilson who pulled up next to him in his squad car. The “gentle giant” then proceeded to reach into the cruiser for Wilson’s gun. Wilson shot him in the hand and then pursued on foot. Brown then turned around and charged the policeman who shot the NFL linebacker-sized man coming straight at him, killing him. More than a half-dozen black onlookers witnessed the episode. Despite enormous pressure to affirm the lie, they agreed Brown never put his hands up, and never said “Don’t Shoot.” An FBI investigation and a Grand Jury each affirmed Officer Wilson’s story. No matter. Benjamin Crump, the Brown (and Martin) family lawyer declared “family and supporters will not be persuaded by the autopsy report or eye-witness statements.” A lawyer really said that. Is it any wonder then that Ferguson erupted in riots based on a lie? President Barack Obama could have dampened the rioters’ anger by making an address supporting the Ferguson police who did no wrong here. Instead he framed the incident as part of wider fears of being guilty of “walking while black.” Healer indeed.

BLM now had its cause…any black man shot by police under any circumstance. It also had its villain: the nation’s 800,000 law enforcement officers. Other incidents followed. In Baltimore in 2015 Freddie Gray was arrested for carrying a knife. He suffered injuries while being transported in the van to central booking, fell into a coma, and died days later.  He was heard by witnesses banging the sides of the van and the officers had to restrain him with cuffs and leg shackles. Once again, the arresting officers were cleared by an Obama Justice Department investigation. Again, it did not matter and five days of violence and looting in Baltimore followed in protest of systemic police racism. So what if the arresting officers were black, the Baltimore City Council was almost all black, and the mayor was black?

In 2016 the BLM organization released a 24-page mission statement entitled “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands For Black Power, Freedom and Justice.” Lurking within its many pages, graphics and diagrams one can find its policy goals. Some are generalities like “End the war on black people.” (Given that the vast majority of homicides among black people are carried out by other black people, I’m not exactly sure for whom this message is intended.) But some demands are more substantive, and worrisome:

  • Reparations for past and continuing harms. (This includes property as well as cash).
  • A reconstruction of the economy to ensure our communities have collective ownership, not merely access.
  • Independent black political power and black self-determination in all areas of society. (As in re-segregation?)

And today, of course, this list also includes the very dangerous #DefundThePolice demand.

Martin, Brown, Gray. Although useful, none could be the face of such a movement given the murky circumstances of their deaths. Then came George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin. Anyone who has seen that video should agree that Floyd is a victim of police brutality. It is one thing to draw a gun and open fire in the heat of the moment, where a split-second hesitation could either prevent a tragedy if the target is benign, or send you into the next life if he means you harm.  But for over eight minutes, in full view of bystanders and fellow officers who criminally did not intervene, and for all the amateur videographers to get the evidence, Chauvin kneeled on the man’s neck well after he was no longer a threat, despite Floyd’s begging him to stop uttering the now ubiquitous rallying cry “I can’t breathe.” This was murder. Suddenly all the wokeness, the simmering neo-Marxism, the nihilism, and the racism that feeds the BLM movement exploded onto the streets. Enter like clockwork Al Sharpton, to give the man’s eulogy as our city streets burned. In George Floyd, BLM finally had a beatified face to go with the charges of police “open season” on blacks.

This is an inflammatory accusation. And worse, easily debunked with hard data. In fact, the numbers show that widespread, systemic police brutality against blacks, especially unarmed blacks, is a myth. Nevertheless, it is one that BLM, both political parties, the media, even the public seem more than willing to accept — or if they do not accept it, are unwilling to confront the lie.

But here are the facts. And, as John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.”

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Heather Mac Donald, author of The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe, sums up the data that is readily available to the curious:

In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans make up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.

The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015…In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.

So, there it is. The cause of the utter chaos in our streets. One-tenth of one percent of blacks murdered in the USA last year. Black lives matter, yes, but apparently some matter a lot more than others. Otherwise we’d know the names of all 7,407 black homicide victims, not just those with political expediency. But we don’t. To paraphrase an old cynical saying attributed to many figures from Erich LeMarque to Josef Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, 7,407 a statistic.”

Still, do these numbers mean the Minneapolis police department, or many others no doubt, is not in need of reform? Of course not. Chauvin had a history of violence both as a cop and his second job as a bouncer, and never should have been on the force. And he should do hard time. However, demanding police reform is a far cry from removing the police altogether. But this, through defunding, is precisely what the Black Lives Matter organization wants.

So how is it, with such a prima facie dangerous agenda, that this organization has become so strong? How has such a radical message become, on the surface at least, mainstream? Because a mob, when uncontested, becomes just more brazen. There is no concerted push-back. Politicians are cowering. The mainstream media, already slightly to the left of Che Guevara, gleefully push the narrative, as sowing racial disharmony has been for decades a technique the Democrat Party uses to retain power. And since the media is now but an arm of that Democrat Party, this serves both interests well. Taking a step further, BLM, too, is now an extension of that political party. So a cynical and nationally destructive symbiosis has emerged.

Why do I equate BLM with the Democrat Party?  Because they are, literally, cyber-linked. Go to the Black Lives Matter website homepage and click “Donate.” That takes one to an organization called ActBlue, a registered 501 c3 non-profit Political Action Committee. So donations to BLM will go into ActBlue. Now, under terms and conditions, there is a fine print section which states that ActBlue adheres to Campaign Finance laws.

Question: If a donation goes to a cause to ostensibly support a social movement why are  the recipients of said funds required to comply with Campaign Finance restrictions?

Answer: Because the top 10 “causes” of Act Blue were either Democratic candidates (Bernie and Biden being first at over $300 million) or Democratic political committees.

It is said that movements for social justice, religion, and political reform — and this is all three rolled into one — start off as a cause, then become a business, and finally a racket. BLM has reached the racket stage.

So where, then, are the “law & order” Republicans in all this? Remember them? The voices of the great “silent majority”? They are doing what they do best. Offering conservative lip service to their constituents while protecting the established order, and their corporate donors, as much as any Democrat. Democrans and Republicrats. All have bent the knee to the BLM organization that is now a multi-billion dollar political fund-raising machine. Although Democrats still do it best. When my governor, Phil Murphy, who banned  graduation ceremonies, public funeral services, and even haircuts for fear of COVID outbreaks, came to our town’s recent BLM protest and spoke before a packed crowd of 1,500 people for whom “social distancing” was a quaint notion, I saw first-hand just what shameless pandering for political points looks like. The image of Murphy, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, taking a knee for “equality” and “social justice” was one until recently only the Onion or Babylon Bee could concoct. But we are down the rabbit hole now. And as such both parties acquiesce to the lie that is tearing our country apart.

Sadly, no group will suffer more for our leaders’ complete abdication of responsibility than the very black lives all involved profess to hold sacred.  In New York City, once lauded under GOP mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg as “America’s safest big city,” homicides are up 23% from the first six months of 2019. In the last week of June and first week in July, Chicago’s murders were up 39% compared to the same 2019 weeks. One week in May in Los Angeles saw murders up an astounding 250%. Atlanta, Washington D.C., New Orleans and others have seen similar surges in violent crime.

Adding to the agony, more and more victims are children. In Brooklyn over the July 4th weekend a one-year-old boy was killed by gunfire while resting in his stroller as his family picnicked. He was one of six children, all black, to die in a hail of bullets that weekend. In fact, most of the neighborhoods where the deadly violence has escalated, and those destroyed through arson, vandalism and looting, are minority neighborhoods. Clearly the lives of the 7,000+ black people murdered each year do not matter to these activists. What matters now is that the police have been compelled to all but abandon those who need their protections far more than the left-wing elitist interests feeding the BLM machine.

Brad Schaeffer’s is a commodities trader and author.  His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, and others. His acclaimed World War Two novel Of Another Time And Place [Post Hill/Simon & Schuster, 2018] is available for purchase or kindle/audible download.

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Intolerant Leftist Mob Tries to Bankrupt Long Island’s Patio Pizza Joint for Supporting Trump – But it Backfires Tremendously! (VIDEO)

Guy Caligiuri, the owner of Patio Pizza in St. James on Long Island, joined Stuart Varney on Thursday to tell how he was a victim of the intolerant leftist mob.

A radical leftist woman entered his restaurant last week to pick up an order and was stunned to see a Trump flag in the back of the restaurant. The intolerant and angry woman then promised to make life a living hell for the Trump supporting owner. She launched a Facebook campaign to ruin the restaurant.

But Guy told Stuart Varney today that the attempted boycott failed and that locals are supporting his restaurant.

This is another good news story on how to stand up against the demons on the left.

President Trump retweeted the video this morning.

Via Varney and Co.:

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REPORT: Members Of Team Biden Privately Trying To Derail Kamala Harris Veep Bid

Members of Joe Biden’s inner circle are reportedly trying to derail Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) appointment as the former vice president’s running mate in the 2020 election, even though the deal seems all but done.

Rumors of a Biden-Harris ticket heated up this week after POLITICO accidentally published a placeholder article listing Harris as the winner of the “veep-stakes” — a story that included generic quotes attributed to the Biden campaign.

Although POLITICO insisted the article was mistakenly made live, some of Biden’s handwritten notes, visible in photographs from a weekend appearance, do seem to show “Kamala Harris” talking points, per CNN. The notes include apparent answers to questions about Harris, including “Do not hold grudges,” “Campaigned with me & Jill,” “Talented,” “Great help to campaign,” and “Great respect for her.”

But certain members of Joe Biden’s inner circle, CNBC says, are moving to halt Harris’s all-but-certain Veep bid, and have “taken their concerns directly to members of Biden’s VP search committee.”

“Some of Joe Biden’s allies are waging a campaign behind the scenes to stop Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., from becoming his vice president,” CNBC reports. “This disgruntled group of at least a dozen Biden backers, including a few of his top donors, initiated the move against Harris close to a month ago, just weeks before a decision is expected, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many who spoke to CNBC declined to be named as these efforts have been made in private.”

Their rationale isn’t clear, but CNBC speculates that some of Biden’s close friends are still reeling from attacks Harris made on the former vice president during the Democratic primary debates — attacks which included thinly veiled accusations of racism. Others seem to believe Harris would see the veep slot as a springboard to the presidency — that she would be campaigning for the top job from “day one,” bringing “into question her loyalty to the former vice president.”

Close friends and aides who spoke to CNBC used words like “opportunistic” to describe Harris.

There may be another faction pressing against Harris that isn’t as motivated by loyalty to Biden so much as it’s motivated by loyalty to former President Barack Obama, who has now raked in millions for Biden’s presidential campaign and likely feels entitled to make big asks of the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.

POLITICO reports that Obama’s team is pressing for Biden to choose former United Nations ambassador Susan Rice, even though Rice isn’t a politician, has never held an elected office, and remains an icon of one of the Obama administration’s worst moments, the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left the American ambassador and three others dead.

Senior White House aide Valerie Jarrett is said to be at the helm of the pro-Rice effort.

Biden is expected to make his vice presidential pick public sometime next week, ahead of the Democratic National Committee’s virtual convention.

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Ocasio-Cortez Could Deal A Fatal Blow To US Oil Pipelines

Ocasio-Cortez Could Deal A Fatal Blow To US Oil Pipelines

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/30/2020 – 13:25

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

The U.S. oil and gas pipelines industry has had a rough month, with court setbacks for two critical oil pipelines and a ditched plan for a new natural gas pipeline.

And July isn’t over yet, for on the horizon looms yet another potential blow to existing and future oil and gas pipelines. That blow could be delivered by AOC.

Democratic Congresswoman and prominent environmental activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now seeking an amendment to the text in the next budget to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from issuing permits to oil and gas infrastructure, HuffPost reports.

According to the proposed legislation, “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the Corps of Engineers to issue a permit under section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (33 U.S.C. 1344) for the discharge of dredged or fill material resulting from an activity to construct a pipeline for the transportation of oil or gas.”  

The proposed amendment was set for discussion at a hearing of the House Committee on Rules on Tuesday.

The amendment could basically prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from working on and building oil and gas pipelines crossing waterways, derailing not just future pipelines but also the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was ordered shut pending a new environmental review.

Ocasio-Cortez’s proposed amendment, however, is unlikely to pass even in the Democrat-majority House where Democrats are not at all on the same page about dropping oil and gas pipeline projects, not to speak of the Republican-majority Senate, which is unlikely to pass such a measure.

Still, the proposed legislation highlights the growing divide between environmental justice campaigners and the oil and gas industry, and the ever-growing opposition to pipelines in North America.

The Pipelines’ “Black July”

The anti-pipeline camp has scored several huge victories this month.

First, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy said on July 5 that it was canceling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline “due to ongoing delays and increasing cost uncertainty which threaten the economic viability of the project.”

Despite a major win on a right-of-way issue at the U.S. Supreme Court last month, the developers of the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline are definitively scrapping the project because of ongoing delays and significant cost overruns.

“This announcement reflects the increasing legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States. Until these issues are resolved, the ability to satisfy the country’s energy needs will be significantly challenged,” said Thomas F. Farrell II, Dominion Energy chairman, president, and chief executive officer, and Lynn J. Good, Duke Energy chair, president, and CEO.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette said that “The well-funded, obstructionist environmental lobby has successfully killed the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.”

On the next day came the highest-profile setback for oil pipelines – a federal judge ruled on July 6 that the Dakota Access Pipeline, in operation since 2017, must be emptied and shut down within 30 days, by August 5, until a new comprehensive environmental review is completed.

A U.S. Appeals Court ruled a week later that Dakota Access can continue to operate while the court considers whether the pipeline should be shut down as ordered by the lower court’s ruling. 

Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from issuing permits to oil and gas pipelines crossing waterways could directly impact a new permit for Dakota Access should courts order the already operational pipeline to obtain one.  

In the third major blow to oil pipelines in just two days, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered on July 6 that construction of the long-delayed and once-resurrected Keystone XL project cannot begin. The justices at the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Keystone XL cannot use the so-called Nationwide Permit 12 that allowed pipelines to cross rivers with minimal review if they meet certain criteria. The Supreme Court, however, allowed other pipeline projects to return to use that permit aimed at fast-tracking construction of vital oil and gas infrastructure.

“This is a significant step toward restoring more certainty for energy companies, but declining to revive the permit for Keystone XL is short-sighted as the project has already been thoroughly reviewed for well over a decade,” the American Petroleum Institute (API) commented on the Supreme Court’s decision. 

Court Battles

Dakota Access, Keystone XL, and any other new pipeline project will continue to face challenges to their construction, completion, and operation, potentially delaying in-service dates for new pipelines and adding more costs to already costly projects.

The court order for Dakota Access to shut down shows that even already operational pipelines are not safe from disruptions to their operations.

Regardless of how the proposed amendment from Ocasio-Cortez will pan out in the House committee, the House, and the Senate, Dakota Access and other pipeline projects will continue to face legal challenges for the foreseeable future – to the delight of environmentalists and to the frustration of the oil and gas industry.

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Senators Demand DoJ Probe Zoom, TikTok Over Allegations They Shared Private Data With CCP

Senators Demand DoJ Probe Zoom, TikTok Over Allegations They Shared Private Data With CCP

Tyler Durden

Thu, 07/30/2020 – 13:24

Josh Hawley and Dick Blumenthal, a bipartisan pair of Senators who have struck up a valuable alliance by jointly backing efforts to antagonize big tech, an effort that culminated with yesterday’s anti-trust hearing – have added Zoom to the growing list of companies they are seeking to hold accountable for their too-cozy relationship with Beijing.

Using their typical process, the writing of a sternly-worded letter to the DoJ, the pair argued on Thursday that a probe should be launched into the video technology company Zoom and social media company, TikTok.

The letter renews pressure on Zoom, which had seemingly overcome speculation that it was vulnerable to infiltration by Beijing, after the company repeatedly kowtowed to CCP officials.

The two lawmakers said they were asking for the investigation because of reports of violations of Americans’ civil liberties by sharing private info with the CCP.

"Based on numerous reports, we are extremely concerned that Zoom and TikTok have disclosed private information about Americans to the PRC and engaged in censorship on behalf of the Chinese government," the letter read.

The news sent shares of Zoom spiraling lower in afternoon trade.

Zoom shares fell more than 5% at one point.

Unfortunately, Blumenthal has been preoccupied by President Trump’s suggestion that the election be delayed. We doubt we’ll hear much else from the Connecticut Senator today.

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More Tech Targeting: Wikipedia Labels Herman Cain “Peepee poopoo” on His Entry Following His Death

Republican presidential candidate and radio host Herman Cain died from coronavirus on Thursday.
Herman was 74-years-old.

Herman Cain battled colon cancer years ago and was in a high-risk group due to his age and medical history.

Herman Cain attended the Trump Tulsa rally in June with thousands of supporters.

Following his death today Ryan Seven noted that Wikipedia labels Herman Cain “Peepee poopoo” in his entry

Herman Cain’s entry has since been corrected.

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