Month: October 2020

Representative Bradley Byrne (R-AL) once was apprehensive about regulating tech giants, like Facebook and Twitter. However, the latest episode involving the suppression of a New York Post story has made the Alabama congressman rethink his standing on that issue.

During an appearance on Mobile, AL radio’s FM Talk 106.5, Byrne said Facebook and Twitter “crossed the line” with their actions, which he said meant a new understanding about what they are.

“You’ve asked me questions about all of this before, and I’ve always been very reticent to want to have any regulations,” he said. “I’m sort of a free market guy, free idea guy. They’ve crossed the line now, so they’ve lost me. I don’t support that sort of protection for them anymore.  I think we’re going to have to start regulation them as what they are. And I think everybody in society needs to understand these are not free and open platforms. These are censored platforms. And they’re censored to try and keep one set of ideas out and push another set of ideas. We ought to all understand that. I mean, I don’t personally get my information from either Twitter or Facebook. But I think anybody that is getting their information from either of those two platforms needs to start looking around for a better way to get information.”

“We have treated them since their inception as just platforms for various things to go in and out of,” Byrne continued. “But they’re not. They’re actually regulating what comes in and what goes out. They don’t have free and open use of it. So, at that point, we have to regulate them as something completely different than what they at least pretended to be up until this point. And like I say, I’m a free market, open [guy]. I don’t like a lot of regulations. And I don’t like regulation of ideas. But when they’re that big and they have that much control on things, I don’t think we have a choice but to get involved with them. So they have lost me. They probably have lost a lot of people like me who were always reticent before. Now, we’re no longer reticent. We’re ready to go get them.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) blasted Judge Amy Coney Barrett for saying “sexual preference” but refused Thursday to call on Joe Biden (D) to apologize after he used the term in May.

National Review’s Washington correspondent John McCormack spoke with Hirono in the Capitol this week and questioned her about the “apparent double standard,” the report continued:

National Review: Senator, last week at the hearing you mentioned that you thought it was “offensive and outdated” when Amy Barrett used the [term] “sexual preference.” It turns out that Joe Biden said it in May. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it in 2017. Some of your colleagues on the Judiciary Committee said it maybe in 2010, 2012. Do you stand by that criticism?

Mazie Hirono: Well, of course.

NR: Do you think Joe Biden should apologize for saying that in May?

Hirono: Well, look, it’s a lesson learned for all of us. But when you’re going on the Supreme Court and you’ve been a judge, as one of my judge friends said, you should know what these words mean.

NR: Should Joe Biden apologize, too, like Amy Coney Barrett did?

Hirono: Joe Biden is not up for the Supreme Court.

NR: He’s up for the presidency. So, he shouldn’t apologize?

Hirono: People will decide.

NR: You don’t want to call on him to apologize?

Hirono: Oh, stop it. The world is in flames.

The senator tweeted video footage on October 13 of the moment she scolded Barrett for using the term:

“And let me make clear: ‘Sexual preference’ is an offensive and outdated term,” Hirono said, adding, “It is used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice.”

However, Biden used the same phrase during a virtual roundtable discussion in May:

“I’m hopeful. I’m going to need you if we win. I’m going to need you to help this time rebuild the backbone of this country, the middle class, but this time bring everybody along regardless of color, sexual preference, their backgrounds, whether they have any … Just bring everybody along,” he said.

Barrett later apologized for using the term, according to Breitbart News.

“I certainly didn’t mean and would never mean to use a term that would cause any offense in the LGBTQ community. So if I did, I greatly apologize for that,” she said.

Saturday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a member of the House Judiciary Committee and participant in the House’s impeachment proceedings, reacts to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden claiming he did nothing unethical during Thursday night’s debate.

The New York congresswoman said Biden was “lying to the American people” about his son Hunter Biden’s conduct and his associations with it.

“My response is Joe Biden is lying to the American people,” she said. “I was a member of Congress that asked every single witness in the impeachment hearing whether there was a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of a conflict of interest because of Hunter Biden serving on the board of Burisma. And every single witness said, ‘Yes, there was a conflict of interest,’ or the appearance of a conflict of interest to the point where even Ambassador [Marie] Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to the Ukraine when she was being prepared by the Obama administration for her Senate nomination, the Obama administration proactively brought this up as a conflict of interest. So this is Joe Biden running from his record and trying to wipe away this very clear conflict of interest.”

“This is not just a Hunter Biden scandal,” Stefanik added. “This is a Joe Biden scandal, and it’s not just Burisma. It’s also now the Chinese Communist government and the Chinese Communist Party. The American people deserve answers, and no amount of censorship from Big Tech should take away from the fact that Joe Biden needs to answer these questions for the American people.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Via Daily Mail:

Piers Morgan has slammed CNN for canceling his interview with the network after he said they and other American news outlets were being biased for not covering a story about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.

During an appearance on Fox & Friends on Friday morning, Morgan was played clips of journalists, including CNN’s Jake Tapper, dismissing the allegations as false.

In turn, the DailyMail.com editor-at-large said journalists in the US were being ‘hyper-partisan’ for failing to report on or investigate the story.

Keep reading…

By now, I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that yet another Muslim-majority nation is getting in line to make peace with Israel. When the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel, the only ones to complain were the Palestinians. The other Arab and Muslim nations began making little noises about getting on board the “peace train,” and Trump promised that more countries would normalize relations with Israel. On Friday, Trump made good on that promise, announcing that Sudan would normalize ties with Israel.

As he is wont to do, Trump announced the news via a text message:

You probably caught that Trump said that “more will follow.” He means it, too. According to Fox News:

The president said that at least five other countries wanted peace with Israel. “We have many lined up. They want to come in, get the deal done.”

[snip]

Trump said that even Iran would “someday” normalize relations with Israel.

“Iran ultimately will become a member of this whole thing. Look, someday I’d love to help Iran get back on track. They’ve gone from a rich country to a poor country in three years,” he said.

“But they can’t have nuclear weapons,” he continued. “It’s always death to Israel, that’s all they shout. So they can’t have nuclear weapons.”

The president also said that a deal between Israel and the Palestinian region may be on the horizon. “Palestinians, they’re wanting to do something. I’m sure that will get done, too.”

If Trump has a second term (as I’m beginning to believe is a possibility), there is good reason to think that he will achieve total diplomatic peace in the Middle East. What he and Jared Kushner, who’s been in the lead on this, have done is to shift the momentum away from the Palestinians.

For decades, the West catered to Palestinian demands. Every time they refused an offer, the West put more on the table: more land, more money, more pressure on Israel. Trump did the opposite. Every time the Palestinians said “no,” he took more off the table, whether from the Palestinians or their Iranian sponsor:

Trump ended decades of presidential timidity and promise-breaking by finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He withdrew the United States from the harrowing capitulation to evil that was the Obama-Biden nuclear accord with Iran and has slapped crippling sanctions on the mullocracy.

He decimated the Islamic State “caliphate” and decapitated Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani, both threats to Israel and Jews everywhere. He closed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington and defunded the Palestinian Authority itself due to its barbaric “pay-to-slay” subsidies.

Trump also cut funding or outright withdrew from three anti-Israel UN bodies: the (grossly misnamed) UN Human Rights Council, UNWRA and UNESCO.

And we’re just getting started. Team Trump has boldly stood up for Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria. The president formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and rolled out the most pro-Israel plan for peace with the Palestinian Arabs that a US president has ever endorsed.

Trump and Kushner created a new vision for the Muslim Middle East, one that involves modernity, liberty, and the enormous economic benefits of peace with Israel, the most productive nation in the region.

One of the things that’s helping this push for peace is the same thing that Biden wants to end: America’s energy independence and the fact that it is now a net energy importer. The Arab oil nations no longer have the whip hand because America can continue functioning just fine without them.

At the same time, the Arab nations know that their oil supplies may be finite. That’s one reason Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is trying to modernize his country. He needs to teach young Saudis, especially Saudi men, how to work before all the oil revenue vanishes. Israel is a great partner in this endeavor.

At the end of his first term as president, Trump will go down as one of the greatest presidents in American history. If he gets the second term he deserves, Trump may be remembered as one of the greatest leaders in world history, in no small part because he will have left, not just America, but the whole world as a safer and more prosperous place. Who would have thought that the tough-talking, wheeler-dealer from Queens would prove to be such a visionary?

Image: Trump announces peace deal between Israel and Sudan. YouTube screengrab.

By now, I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that yet another Muslim-majority nation is getting in line to make peace with Israel. When the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel, the only ones to complain were the Palestinians. The other Arab and Muslim nations began making little noises about getting on board the “peace train,” and Trump promised that more countries would normalize relations with Israel. On Friday, Trump made good on that promise, announcing that Sudan would normalize ties with Israel.

As he is wont to do, Trump announced the news via a text message:

You probably caught that Trump said that “more will follow.” He means it, too. According to Fox News:

The president said that at least five other countries wanted peace with Israel. “We have many lined up. They want to come in, get the deal done.”

[snip]

Trump said that even Iran would “someday” normalize relations with Israel.

“Iran ultimately will become a member of this whole thing. Look, someday I’d love to help Iran get back on track. They’ve gone from a rich country to a poor country in three years,” he said.

“But they can’t have nuclear weapons,” he continued. “It’s always death to Israel, that’s all they shout. So they can’t have nuclear weapons.”

The president also said that a deal between Israel and the Palestinian region may be on the horizon. “Palestinians, they’re wanting to do something. I’m sure that will get done, too.”

If Trump has a second term (as I’m beginning to believe is a possibility), there is good reason to think that he will achieve total diplomatic peace in the Middle East. What he and Jared Kushner, who’s been in the lead on this, have done is to shift the momentum away from the Palestinians.

For decades, the West catered to Palestinian demands. Every time they refused an offer, the West put more on the table: more land, more money, more pressure on Israel. Trump did the opposite. Every time the Palestinians said “no,” he took more off the table, whether from the Palestinians or their Iranian sponsor:

Trump ended decades of presidential timidity and promise-breaking by finally moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. He withdrew the United States from the harrowing capitulation to evil that was the Obama-Biden nuclear accord with Iran and has slapped crippling sanctions on the mullocracy.

He decimated the Islamic State “caliphate” and decapitated Iranian arch-terrorist Qassem Soleimani, both threats to Israel and Jews everywhere. He closed the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization’s mission in Washington and defunded the Palestinian Authority itself due to its barbaric “pay-to-slay” subsidies.

Trump also cut funding or outright withdrew from three anti-Israel UN bodies: the (grossly misnamed) UN Human Rights Council, UNWRA and UNESCO.

And we’re just getting started. Team Trump has boldly stood up for Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria. The president formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and rolled out the most pro-Israel plan for peace with the Palestinian Arabs that a US president has ever endorsed.

Trump and Kushner created a new vision for the Muslim Middle East, one that involves modernity, liberty, and the enormous economic benefits of peace with Israel, the most productive nation in the region.

One of the things that’s helping this push for peace is the same thing that Biden wants to end: America’s energy independence and the fact that it is now a net energy importer. The Arab oil nations no longer have the whip hand because America can continue functioning just fine without them.

At the same time, the Arab nations know that their oil supplies may be finite. That’s one reason Prince Mohamed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia is trying to modernize his country. He needs to teach young Saudis, especially Saudi men, how to work before all the oil revenue vanishes. Israel is a great partner in this endeavor.

At the end of his first term as president, Trump will go down as one of the greatest presidents in American history. If he gets the second term he deserves, Trump may be remembered as one of the greatest leaders in world history, in no small part because he will have left, not just America, but the whole world as a safer and more prosperous place. Who would have thought that the tough-talking, wheeler-dealer from Queens would prove to be such a visionary?

Image: Trump announces peace deal between Israel and Sudan. YouTube screengrab.

Grocery retailer Trader Joe’s, which refused to cave in to political correctness in its product names, is experiencing new problems with Black Lives Matter protestors in Seattle, according to Breitbart News:

Black Lives Matter protesters pushed their way into a Seattle Trader Joe’s demanding the company give “15 percent at least.” The group has repeated the tactic of harassing the store’s staff and customers over the past few months.

A video tweeted Thursday night shows a large group of BLM activists entering a Seattle Trader Joe’s store. They chanted and beat drums as they marched through the grocery chain location.

Seattle has five Trader Joe’s locations and Breitbart reports that three of them have been hit in this way. It shows that Trader Joe’s, which resisted the demands, remains a target, based on Seattle’s failure to send police to protect them.

No business of any kind can run a business with this kind of shakedown activity going on. The company is being held hostage to pirates, while the city stands by and does nothing.

As anyone familiar with hostage-takers knows, if Trader Joe’s caves on the 15% ransom demand, the next move will be a bigger ransom demand, all in the name of keeping the peace, and BLM, which is obviously descending into a money-making mafia racket, can move on to the next target, taking them down one by one. The big corporate shakedowns of the past month, which have yielded millions of dollars in revenue, it seems, have not been enough. They want more. Trader Joe’s is one of the few that resist, which makes it the holy grail for shakedown fanatics.

In Seattle, Trader Joe’s has in fact resisted on related matters, and not just in the package labeling. According to the Seattle Spectator, the company has been hit by march-in protests in early October over its refusal to permit employees to wear BLM gear on the job, plus boycotts to boot. The Trader Joe’s near the CHOP zone this past summer did shut its doors indefinitely, not just because of the chaos and disorder of CHOP, but also because of the wokesterism of many employees. Who’d want to do business with those kinds of employees in permanent opposition? They relented when 22,000 customers signed a petition asking them to stay. 

But don’t bet on them staying so long as the shakedowns are now a thing from BLM now that the riot thing has grown old, and some leftists have noted that it’s hurting Joe Biden’s bid to oust President Trump.Shakedowns are a horrid reality in places like Sicily, Latin America, Russia, and any place where people flee.

We see this way of doing business all over Latin America, for one.

To take one example, just because I am familiar with it, FARC’s Marxist narcoterrorists, who once terrorized Colombia and now Venezuela, also conduct business by shaking down business with no police protection as the police are occupied with arresting political prisoners.

The local shop owners and farmers in small towns were forced to pay what was known as ”a vaccination” to the terrorists to ensure that their businesses didn’t go up in flames, prompting vast numbers of them to just shut their doors. The example is not that farfetched for what’s going on in Seattle, either.

BLM of course, is led by “trained Marxists” who just happened to have learned their tactics at Hugo Chavez’s knee. Here’s a piece I did on their pilgrimages to Caracas, where these kinds of shakedowns are what goes on in that hellhole. And don’t think the Chavista agenda they embrace isn’t to harm the entire U.S. Here’s one I wrote from 2019. And Venezuelans have noticed the similarities.

Now their successors in the U.S. turning Seattle into a hellhole, too, complete with Venezuela-style shakedowns. 

Seattle is getting pretty comparable to Caracas without police to enforce rule of law, but Trader Joe’s is no battered Venezuelan storefront shop. They’re a huge national private corporation whose structure protects them from activist shareholders stirring up the pot and calling for woke acts, and they have always put the interests of their customers first. Instead of pay the danegeld, they’re in a position to walk out.

They’ve shown backbone in standing up to rioters, and who knows how many shakedowns they have fended off. But if it gets bad — and Breitbart notes that three stores in Seattle have been targeted, they may well decide that the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits and pull out of the city. 

By then, the city may become a food desert. Self-inflicted, of course, based on the majority’s voting choices.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain

Grocery retailer Trader Joe’s, which refused to cave in to political correctness in its product names, is experiencing new problems with Black Lives Matter protestors in Seattle, according to Breitbart News:

Black Lives Matter protesters pushed their way into a Seattle Trader Joe’s demanding the company give “15 percent at least.” The group has repeated the tactic of harassing the store’s staff and customers over the past few months.

A video tweeted Thursday night shows a large group of BLM activists entering a Seattle Trader Joe’s store. They chanted and beat drums as they marched through the grocery chain location.

Seattle has five Trader Joe’s locations and Breitbart reports that three of them have been hit in this way. It shows that Trader Joe’s, which resisted the demands, remains a target, based on Seattle’s failure to send police to protect them.

No business of any kind can run a business with this kind of shakedown activity going on. The company is being held hostage to pirates, while the city stands by and does nothing.

As anyone familiar with hostage-takers knows, if Trader Joe’s caves on the 15% ransom demand, the next move will be a bigger ransom demand, all in the name of keeping the peace, and BLM, which is obviously descending into a money-making mafia racket, can move on to the next target, taking them down one by one. The big corporate shakedowns of the past month, which have yielded millions of dollars in revenue, it seems, have not been enough. They want more. Trader Joe’s is one of the few that resist, which makes it the holy grail for shakedown fanatics.

In Seattle, Trader Joe’s has in fact resisted on related matters, and not just in the package labeling. According to the Seattle Spectator, the company has been hit by march-in protests in early October over its refusal to permit employees to wear BLM gear on the job, plus boycotts to boot. The Trader Joe’s near the CHOP zone this past summer did shut its doors indefinitely, not just because of the chaos and disorder of CHOP, but also because of the wokesterism of many employees. Who’d want to do business with those kinds of employees in permanent opposition? They relented when 22,000 customers signed a petition asking them to stay. 

But don’t bet on them staying so long as the shakedowns are now a thing from BLM now that the riot thing has grown old, and some leftists have noted that it’s hurting Joe Biden’s bid to oust President Trump.Shakedowns are a horrid reality in places like Sicily, Latin America, Russia, and any place where people flee.

We see this way of doing business all over Latin America, for one.

To take one example, just because I am familiar with it, FARC’s Marxist narcoterrorists, who once terrorized Colombia and now Venezuela, also conduct business by shaking down business with no police protection as the police are occupied with arresting political prisoners.

The local shop owners and farmers in small towns were forced to pay what was known as ”a vaccination” to the terrorists to ensure that their businesses didn’t go up in flames, prompting vast numbers of them to just shut their doors. The example is not that farfetched for what’s going on in Seattle, either.

BLM of course, is led by “trained Marxists” who just happened to have learned their tactics at Hugo Chavez’s knee. Here’s a piece I did on their pilgrimages to Caracas, where these kinds of shakedowns are what goes on in that hellhole. And don’t think the Chavista agenda they embrace isn’t to harm the entire U.S. Here’s one I wrote from 2019. And Venezuelans have noticed the similarities.

Now their successors in the U.S. turning Seattle into a hellhole, too, complete with Venezuela-style shakedowns. 

Seattle is getting pretty comparable to Caracas without police to enforce rule of law, but Trader Joe’s is no battered Venezuelan storefront shop. They’re a huge national private corporation whose structure protects them from activist shareholders stirring up the pot and calling for woke acts, and they have always put the interests of their customers first. Instead of pay the danegeld, they’re in a position to walk out.

They’ve shown backbone in standing up to rioters, and who knows how many shakedowns they have fended off. But if it gets bad — and Breitbart notes that three stores in Seattle have been targeted, they may well decide that the cost of doing business outweighs the benefits and pull out of the city. 

By then, the city may become a food desert. Self-inflicted, of course, based on the majority’s voting choices.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain