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VIDEO: Glenn Beck surprises business owners hurt by COVID lockdowns after GoFundMe raises more than $250K

A fundraiser set up by BlazeTV host Glenn Beck to support small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic raised more than $250,000 since its launch last month — and on Friday, Beck surprised them with amazing gifts.

"We launched a GoFundMe in December to fight for a few small businesses abandoned by government during Covid-19 lockdowns," Beck said in a post on Twitter. "Today we surprised 3 owners with your generous giving. Here are their stories."

The first recipient, Catherine Hill, is the owner of Miss Kitty’s Lounge, a neighborhood bar in Clovis, California. After making her rent payment on time every month since her bar opened in 2013, Hill fell on harder times once the pandemic struck and her bar was shut down by executive order. On top of that, she had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer — now stage 4. Without income due to the lockdowns and the costs of chemotherapy and other medical treatment, Hill was unable to make rent payments for the first time. Her landlords decided to take her to court and are threatening to take away her business and everything else, including life insurance for her kids.

However, when presented with the monetary gift, Hill decided not to save her business but rather to redirect the funds to a charity that specializes in stage 4 cancer research, METAvivor.

Small business owners fighting for survival get MASSIVE surprise from Glenn Beck audience youtu.be

The second recipient, Joe Crowley, owns Breakaway, a community building 20 miles north of Boston which plays host to local and national bands. But after the pandemic led to shutdowns in Massachusetts, Crowley’s business was forced to temporarily close down. Adding to the stress of trying to survive the pandemic, last September, Crowley suffered a massive heart attack.

The third recipient, Dave Foldes, is a co-owner of Cronies Sports Grill in California. Foldes became a target of the state government last month when he refused to close down and lay off his employees during the Christmas season despite government orders to do so. Since then, Foldes has been fined $500 a day and now owes the state more than $20,000 for refusing to abide by the lockdown restrictions. In December, Foldes assured Beck that his defiance isn’t a political statement, rather he just wants his employees to be able to earn a living and doesn’t intend to break his commitment to them.

Then Beck spoke about one additional beneficiary of the fundraiser: A 39-year-old mother of two who tragically took her own life in October after coronavirus restrictions forced her business, Boat Barn Bagels in Cañon City, Colorado, to shut down. The woman’s mother said her daughter was a casualty of COVID-19. Now, money from the fundraiser is going to help cover the family’s debt.

In an address to the City Council following her daughter’s death, the mother pleaded with her community to help small business and business owners struggling to stay afloat.

"She tried to do it, but she couldn’t do it and she killed herself," the mother said. "She was strong, she was smart, she was developing the business mind and doing well. I just feel like dollars are more important than just about anything, and then testing so that when the community freaks out, [business owners] can test themselves and their employees."

TheBlaze has refrained from publishing the business owner’s name out of respect to her family.

In addition to the selfless giving from so many listeners, Beck also donated proceeds collected last month from Glennbeckart.com to help small business owners.

via Conservative Review

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Barstool’s Portnoy on Robinhood: Pausing Trading ‘Flat-Out Criminal’


Barstool Sports founder and President Dave Portnoy on Friday ripped trading app Robinhood as “flat-out criminal” for restricting purchases of GameStop shares on its platform.

Portnoy said on Fox Business Network’s “Varney & Company” that Robinhood “basically stole money from their own clients.”

“[T]hey intentionally cratered a bunch of stocks … by not letting people buy it — only selling it,” Portnoy told host Stuart Varney. “There was only one outcome — crater the stock. They basically stole money from their own clients. They knew that was going to happen to help the hedge funds basically cover. Is there proof of that? If they do the investigation right, I’m sure there will be. But, you know, it’s one to say we’re worried and you freeze the market and you can’t buy or sell and the people liquidate what it is, fine. But to intentionally crater the stock at the expense of your customers, well, that’s criminal in my mind. Flat-out criminal.”

Varney suggested Robinhood could have had a liquidity issue, so the company could have been looking out for the interest of its investors.

Portnoy pointed out that CEO Vladimir Tenev recently said in an interview that the company had no liquidity issues.

“How many criminals and crooks have raised their hand and said, ‘We committed a crime and did something.’ In the history of crimes, none, until they get caught. So then, what is it? His answer is basically he was protecting his own clients, but not because of a liquidity issue. He didn’t want them to get hurt. That is essentially what he’s saying. And that’s full of crap,” Portnoy declared.

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent

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Is The Establishment Still Terrified Of Trump?

Is The Establishment Still Terrified Of Trump?

Authored by Pat Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

As soon as the Senate received the lone article of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of “incitement of insurrection” in the Jan. 6 mob assault on the Capitol, Rand Paul rose to object.

The Senate, he said, has no right to try a private citizen, which Trump now is. Thus, what we are about to do is flatly unconstitutional.

Forty-five of 50 Republican members agreed with Paul’s motion.

“This vote indicates it’s over. The trial is all over,” said Paul.

“If you voted that (the Senate trial is) … unconstitutional, how in the world would you ever vote to convict somebody for this?”

Consistency says you would not.

Susan Collins of Maine, one of five Republicans who voted against Paul’s motion, agreed that the vote portends the final vote on conviction.

“Do the math,” Collins said. “It’s extraordinarily unlikely the president will be convicted.”

Rand Paul may have just derailed the second impeachment of Donald Trump.

Chief Justice John Roberts, the constitutional officer designated to preside over Senate impeachment trials, has said he will not preside over this latest trial of the ex-president. With Roberts seeing no constitutional duty, and declining the honor, his replacement as the presiding officer will be Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the longest-serving Democrat and the president pro tempore of the Senate.

But Leahy is viscerally hostile to Trump and one of a Democratic bloc that voted twice last January to convict Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors. How will it look to the world if this partisan is installed as both judge and juror at the trial of his political enemy?

Welcome to Zimbabwe.

Does the liberal establishment, now back in power and controlling the House, Senate and presidency, not see how this is all going to look in the history books, generations hence?

Blinded by hatred of Trump, enraged by the mob that stormed the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi’s House, in a rush to judgment, without hearing a single Trump witness and without letting his lawyer offer a defense, impeached, i.e., indicted, Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection.”

But how could Trump have incited the riot and the attack on the Capitol when the mob swept up the stairs before Trump finished speaking a mile away?

And he would end his rally remarks by urging the crowd to march to the Hill “peacefully and patriotically.”

We have subsequently learned that plans and plots were being hatched days before the assault on the Capitol began.

Was the Trump White House, or Trump, privy to those plots?

In August 1974, it was a near certainty that the House would vote to impeach Richard Nixon. But after the president resigned, the House did not impeach, and Ford pardoned Nixon so the country could move on.

The rage of the establishment at being deprived of its revenge against Nixon who had turned the Silent Majority against it, not unlike today, knew no bounds. And, though history has vindicated Ford, his pardon of Nixon precipitated a plunge in his poll numbers.

Half a century on, however, history says Ford did the right thing.

Why then are the Democrats continuing with this exercise in vengeance?

They want Trump convicted so that he will be prohibited from ever again holding public office. The establishment fears that Trump could make a comeback, win the Republican primaries in 2024, become the nominee, and return in triumph as president.

They are determined to abort that possibility. Many openly admit it.

What does that say about the liberal establishment’s love of democracy when they would disqualify, in advance, the largest vote-getter their opposition party ever had, out of fear he might come back to win the presidency as he did in 2016?

“Trust the people!” was a campaign slogan made famous by George Wallace. Our national establishment prattles endlessly on about its devotion to democracy, but it does not trust the people.

But the establishment is going to pay a price for trying to squeeze the last ounces of juice out of this rotting fruit. President Joe Biden’s call to unity are being drowned out by Democratic howls for a trial, conviction and banishment.

This effort to convict and disqualify Trump from running again tells us more about the people behind it than it does about Trump.

For the odds are slim at best that Trump would or could, at 78, win the nomination and the presidency a second time, as Grover Cleveland did in 1892.

Yet, a fearful establishment does not want to take the chance.

For all the babbling about “democracy” we have heard in recent days, the establishment wants to eliminate the possibility that the people could rise up, and, horror of horrors, elect Trump once more.

You can smell the fear.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/29/2021 – 18:00

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Cruz Calls For Scrutiny of Platforms That Halted GameStop Trading

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) called for congressional hearings to determine what role, if any, federal regulators played in pressuring online brokers like Robinhood to suspend the buying of buzzy stocks that skyrocketed following discussions on Internet platforms for retail investors.

Cruz’s call marks a surprisingly bipartisan moment, as legislators on both sides of the aisle call for hearings to investigate whether those retail investors were unfairly disadvantaged by the halt in trades.

Referring to the trading halt of GameStop, AMC, Nokia, and other stocks yesterday, Cruz said, "On the face of it, it seems to favor a handful of rich influential players at the expense of ordinary citizens and ordinary traders."

"I expect there will be considerable scrutiny directed to any platforms that halted trading as to why they did it, who asked them to do it, and what did the regulators say," Cruz told the Washington Free Beacon. "I hope it’s not the case that government regulators were somehow encouraging this step."

In a Thursday statement, Robinhood insisted the halt was due to SEC-imposed financial requirements that were triggered by market volatility. Public, another trading app that stopped trading for three hours on Thursday, blamed its clearing firm, Apex Holdings, for halting purchases of certain stocks.

Bloomberg reported that Robinhood "tapped at least several hundred million dollars" in bank credit lines on Thursday, which many commentators interpreted as a move to meet SEC liquidity requirements to continue offering trades. The broker opened trading on the hot stocks today but only allowed purchases of full shares of GameStop, which at the time of writing trades at $278 a share. Robinhood allows purchasing fractional shares of other stocks.

Certain to be under congressional scrutiny is the hedge fund Citadel, which has adamantly denied allegations of market meddling but which purchases a large percentage of Robinhood’s order flow. Rather than sending orders directly to the stock exchange, Robinhood sends them to market makers, firms that stand ready to buy or sell stock at quoted prices. Those market makers pay for the order flow as they make a fractional profit on every trade.

Citadel and its partners also poured $2 billion into Melvin Capital, the hedge fund whose short positions on GameStop suffered most from the trading frenzy on Monday. On Wednesday, Melvin announced that it had closed out its position on GameStop and was no longer shorting the stock.

Politicians as far apart as Sens. Mike Lee (R., Utah) and Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), and Patrick McHenry (R., Va.), the ranking member of the House Banking Committee, joined in calls for congressional hearings.

In a sign of the strangely bipartisan moment, AOC hosted an online Twitch stream and nodded along as a caller railed against the government regulations that restrict individuals with less than $25,000 in their accounts from certain kinds of trading.

By contrast, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) released a letter to the SEC, asking it to explain whether "social media amplification" violated existing securities laws.

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Google Deletes Nearly 100,000 One-Star Robinhood Reviews Amid GME Scandal

Google Deletes Nearly 100,000 One-Star Robinhood Reviews Amid GME Scandal

Google has been actively removing a flood of negative reviews for the Robinhood app from the Google Play Store, according to The Verge, which reports that "Robinhood users organized campaigns to give the app a one-star review on Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store," and were able to ‘review-bomb’ it down to a one-star rating over the company’s decision to restrict purchases of GameStop, AMC and other stocks amid a crowdsourced campaign to trigger short squeezes.

Robinhood’s restrictions were widely seen as a handout to billionaire short-sellers that threw retail traders under the bus.

Robinhood came under intense scrutiny on Thursday, after the stock trading app announced it would block purchases of GameStop, AMC, and other stocks made popular by the r/WallStreetBets subreddit, and some users have already replaced their deleted one-star reviews with new ones to make their anger heard. –The Verge

The website 9TO5Google captured the carnage when the app had just under 275,000:

And here’s what it looks like now, per The Verge:

Robinhood’s Play Store rating later on Thursday.

According to the report, the mass censorship is within Google’s ‘purview,’ as their policies "explicitly prohibit reviews intended to manipulate an app’s rating."

How do they know this is an organized campaign and not 100,000 individually pissed off retail customers? Google claims to have a system which "combines human intelligence with machine learning to detect and enforce policy violations in ratings and reviews."

Google says it specifically took action on reviews that it felt confident violated those policies, the company tells The Verge. Google says companies do not have the ability to delete reviews themselves.

On Apple’s App Store, Robinhood has a 4.7 rating, and we didn’t see any reviews newer than Wednesday. However, popular apps like TikTok, Uno, and Genshin Impact also didn’t have reviews from any later than Wednesday when we checked. –The Verge

Meanwhile, Robinhood is only allowing "limited buys" of various stocks, while at least one lawsuit has been filed against the company for "removing Gamestop from its trading platform" earlier this week.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 01/29/2021 – 18:20

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GOP Lawmakers Hit Back with Wave of Pro-Life Bills as Biden Pushes Abortion at Home and Abroad

Republican lawmakers unleashed a wave of pro-life bills into Congress this week as President Joe Biden set in motion his pro-abortion agenda. On Thursday, Biden took executive action to allow taxpayer dollars to fund abortions abroad. Days earlier, he marked the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade by promising to enshrine the ruling in law.…

The post GOP Lawmakers Hit Back with Wave of Pro-Life Bills as Biden Pushes Abortion at Home and Abroad appeared first on The Western Journal.

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Op-Ed: When Leftists in Venezuela Packed the Courts, Absolute Disaster Followed

In 1948, Winston Churchill warned that if we do not learn from history, we are condemned to repeat it. The United States has had a nine-member Supreme Court for almost 150 years, so I urge you to consider the potential impact of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which is insisting the first order…

The post Op-Ed: When Leftists in Venezuela Packed the Courts, Absolute Disaster Followed appeared first on The Western Journal.

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