Category: US Politics

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM), President Joe Biden’s pick to head the agency in charge millions of acres of federal land and its energy infrastructure, defended on Tuesday joining protestors at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) questioned Haaland as a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. He told her his state is an “energy powerhouse for this nation” and second only to Texas in the production of oil.

“We’ve got to have transmission lines and pipelines to move energy to market,” Hoeven said. “We’ve got to have that infrastructure.”

“A very good example of that is the Dakota Access Pipeline, which has now been operating for three years safely moving over a half a million barrels of light, sweet crude oil a day to refineries,” Hoeven said, adding that if protestors had had their way it would make the U.S. more dependent on foreign sources like Saudi Arabia to meet American demand for oil.

“You were there and protested the pipeline,” Hoeven said.

“Senator, yes, I did go to stand with the water protectors during that — several years back,” Haaland said. “The reason I did that is because I agreed with the tribe that they felt they weren’t consulted in the best way. I know that tribal consultation is important, and that was the reason that I was there.”

Haaland’s Congressional website features an essay titled “Fierce” about her participation in the protest, which lasted for weeks until winter weather set in.

In 2016, Debra Haaland cooked green chili and tortillas at the Standing Rock Sioux camps pitched against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Bringing food was her traditional way of contributing to the fight against the $3.8 billion pipeline.

She stayed in the camps for four days that September, but the environmental cause she came to support has resounded not only within her, but around the world.

“I first saw it on Facebook, but more and more people were coming out here from New Mexico and posting their experiences on Facebook and I just realized that I should come,” Haaland said. She is now one of the first female Native Representatives for New Mexico.

“Are you still opposed to that pipeline?” Hoeven asked. “What is your position on the pipeline today?”
Haaland answered by repeating her support for Indian tribes being consulted on projects that she said impact their land and sacred sites, even if the Dakota Access Pipeline’s pathway is not on tribal land.

“Well, senator I know it’s an important issue for you and I understand that,” Haaland said. “I also agree that whenever these projects come up that we are absolutely sure that we are consulting with tribes.”

“I’m happy to get briefed on any of these issues if confirmed and of course senator I would listen to you, and consult with you, and work with you to the best of my ability,” Haaland said.

Hoeven ended his first round of questioning by asking Haaland if she is confirmed at Interior secretary if she would recuse herself from any decision regarding the pipeline to avoid any conflict of interest.

Haaland did not answer directly but said that she would leave that decision to people at the agency who cover legal issues.

The committee will resume questioning at Haaland’s second confirmation hearing, set at 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com

The two most prominent Democrat governors in the country, New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, may both be tossed out of office over their botched handling of the Covid panic. Both men had been considered presidential material, and because their states are populous media centers, both had high national profiles. Now, Cuomo is facing calls for impeachment and a reported criminal investigation over his coverup of nursing home deaths, while the recall petition for Newsom appears to be gathering the required number of signatures.

More broadly, the economic and social price paid by residents of states with lockdown hardline Democrat governors like Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, and California is starting to look way too high.  “Free states” like Florida are not doing medically worse than states where joblessness is stratospheric, restaurants and other small businesses have been killed, their employees jobless, and the families that owned them financially devastated… with no commensurate health benefit.

Stephen Moore writes that, thanks to their Covid lockdown overreach, blue states are now “the beggar states.”

Last week, I visited South Florida for four days, and what a shock: Everything was open. The beaches, the hotels, the restaurants (with some sensible safety and social distancing restrictions). The classrooms are full.

The other strange thing about being in Florida was that people were happy. They were playing tennis and golf. They were going to work and getting on with their lives. Florida is a Republican, can-do kind of place.

Then, there is New York. Manhattan is a morose and deserted place to be. It’s as if it’s boarded up. People are living their lives afraid. They are depressed, which makes the whole place depressing. In Southern California, I experienced the same dreariness. And it wasn’t the weather, which was warm and sunny. Restaurants were closed or highly restricted. Stores were sparsely attended, and people were generally grimacing and standoffish. They yelp in horror if you take off your mask, even for a moment.

Yet through it all, there is almost no evidence that lockdowns, business closures, stay-at-home orders and other strategies have reduced the infection rates or death rates from the virus. To take just one prominent example, open Florida has had a lower death rate (adjusted for the age distribution of the population) than closed-down California and New York. Even President Joe Biden’s crackerjack health officials can’t explain that one.

With the midterm election 19 months+ away, Democrats do not want their party identified as the one that needlessly screwed up the economy, limited personal freedoms, and basically panicked, while wiser leaders in places like Tallahassee, Florida and Pierre, South Dakota kept their heads on straight and guided their states to continued prosperity.

Democrats appear to be giving up on Cuomo, with the long knives unsheathed among his many New York State Democrat colleagues, who have endured years of arrogance, bullying, threats, and credit-grabbing by the entitled son of a former iconic governor and brother of a CNN anchor. His approval ratings have tanked. Now that the death toll of his practice of sending infected elders back to their nursing homes, to spread the disease and kill off thousands, can no longer be suppressed by their media allies, and that news of his politically motivated lies to federal authorities was leaked by a fellow Dem, it’s hard to find Dems willing to stand up for him. Dispatching him via impeachment beckons as a remedy before voters return to the polls.

Newsom is another case, entirely, because it is voters themselves who are likely to deliver the verdict. There, Dems are planning to change the rules on the recall, in hopes of blunting the momentum. Victoria Taft of PJ Media summarizes their reported plans.

• The Bee reports that Democrats are considering trying to change the date of the recall to the “next regularly scheduled primary election, when Democrats are more likely to vote,” instead of November of 2021. They played the calendar game with the recall of State Senator Josh Newman in 2018.
• They’re considering sending absentee ballots to every voter whether they’ve asked for one or not to swamp the system.
• They will attempt to convince people who signed the petition to remove their names in a 30 day period after the signatures are turned in.
• Their strategy is to “reduce signatures.” As many signatures as possible will be thrown out keep the recall from qualifying for the ballot.
• Already using COVID shut downs to slow down the signature gathering such that recall backers went to court to get more time.
• Believe they’ll use the extended lock downs to keep people from voting.
• They’ve begun spinning the recall as a “distraction.”
• Tried to convince Californians that with all the money being wasted by Democrats (see EDD scandal) spending more on a recall for a new governor is wasteful.

Democrats wouldn’t be contemplating measures like this unless they feared the consequences of letting the people speak.

Jordan Schachtel thinks that after a year of public hysteria and frequent changes to advice, voters may be “awakening from COVID psychosis.”

 Over the course of the past year, a coalition including the corporate media, international “health” institutions, a maniacal mega billionaire, Big Pharma oligarchs, and power drunk governments consumed massive amounts of power left and right, with little to no observed resistance in sight.

With COVID mania in full swing, they moved the goalposts as they pleased. Free of any science, data, or logical reasoning, the ruling class had the terrified masses completely under their thumb. Under the spell of a mass social psychosis, we willingly surrendered our liberties and even happily enforced draconian edicts on our own peers, despite the global trampling of our basic rights.

The ruling class moved seamlessly from “15 days to stop the spread” to “30 days to stop the spread” to “Zero COVID.”

From “everyone needs to wear a mask” to “everyone needs to wear two masks” to “maybe we should wear three masks.”

From “lockdown to preserve healthcare capacity” to “lockdown to slow/stop the spread” to “lockdown until we have a vaccine.”

All of these aforementioned restrictions and guidelines were abided by without resistance. Across the globe, citizens remained firmly trapped in perhaps the most self-destructive mass social psychosis in human history, convinced that a respiratory virus (that causes a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate) was responsible for their economic and societal devastation. The authoritarians did as they wished, without a hint of pushback. 

However, it seems we have finally reached one particular narrative that has been met with firm resistance. (snip)

We’re now being told that the vaccine is not in fact a ticket to normalcy. Instead, we’ve been told that even with the vaccine, people still need to wear a mask, social distance, and act as if fellow human beings are nothing more than mere vectors of disease.

This “rug pull attempt,” as Schachtel terms it, may indeed be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, to mix metaphors. Vaccines have been touted as THE hope for getting life back to normal. Taking hope away after first raising it, is a very dangerous thing to do, because it causes lots and lots of resentment.

The Democrats have a serious dilemma. Authoritarians (which is what the Dems have become) don’t want to give up “emergency” powers once the emergency ends, as Naomi Wolf told Tucker Carlson 2 days ago. So, people like Fauci are telling us that the emergency will never end, basically. But with free states proving that not only has the emergency ended, it may never have really existed to the extent that people like Newsom, Cuomo, Whitmer, Walz, Pritzker, and others believed, this leaves Republicans as the party of hope and prosperity, with Dems the party of doom and poverty.

It is almost inevitable that Democrats will use their media/social media dominance to suppress and demonize the success story of Florida and other red states. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, regarded as a 2024 presidential contender, is already seeing a stream of negative stories and personal demonization. But, reality bats last, and people now trust the mainstream media less than they do used car salesmen.

Panic rarely yields successful strategies.

Caricatyure by Donley Hotey (cropped) CC BY-2.0 license

Remember when Kamala Harris said it was a “human rights abuse” for the United States (under President Trump) to detain children crossing the border? But with President Biden in office, and illegal border crossings skyrocketing thanks to a welcome mat being put out for illegal border crossers, it’s become necessary to reactivate a detention facility where kids can be safely held, separated from adults who may or may not be family members.

Given the hysteria under Trump over children purportedly being ripped from their families’ loving arms (never mind the predatory coyotes who often accompany them), this is a bit awkward. Even AOC notices:

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the Biden administration on Tuesday for reopening a Texas facility to hold migrant children.

The Bronx Democrat was reacting to a report that the emergency facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas was being reopened to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17.

“This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay — no matter the administration or party,” she tweeted.

Question by Peter Doocy yesterday, Jen Psaki did a lot of verbal tap dancing:

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has recast the reopening of one of ex-president Trump’s infamous migrant detention centers as a temporary fix for the pandemic, arguing that not locking kids up would be “inhumane.”

Psaki was skewered by reporters on Tuesday after the Biden administration reopened a migrant detention facility that had been closed in 2019 under former president Donald Trump.
The press secretary floundered as she attempted to defend Biden’s stated policy “not to expel unaccompanied children who arrive at the border” by putting those children back in the “cages” – actually shipping containers – he had so vociferously denounced when they were used by his predecessor.

“This is not kids being kept in cages,” Psaki insisted, arguing “this is a facility that was reopened that is going to follow the same standards as other [Department of Health and Human Services] facilities.”

It is not a replication. Certainly not.

Psaki then emphasized that “That’s never our intention – of replicating immigration policies of the past administration. But we are in a circumstance where we are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border. That would be inhumane.”

The Bezos propaganda organ seems to have been leading the way in redefining “cages,” as Joseph Curl discovered:

Throughout former President Donald Trump’s four years in the White House, the mainstream media, like the Post, repeatedly cited “kids in cages,” claiming foreigners entering the U.S. illegally had their children ruthlessly snatched from them and shoved into cages (it was actually former President Barack Obama who started the practice).

But all that’s changed now. “First migrant facility for children opens under Biden,” said the Post headline on Monday. But in another twist, the facility was actually opened by the Trump administration. (snip)

Out with “kids in cages,” in with “migrant facility for children.”

Forget the Post’s 2018 headlines, “The American tradition of caging children,” and “The real reason we’re locking children in cages.” And don’t even think about the 2019 piece headline, “Viewing US border cells derided as ‘cages,’ Central American officials pledge more immigration cooperation.”

In 2020, the Post’s editorial board wrote, “The tableaux of caged migrant children, torn from their parents’ arms, should be among the most enduring images produced by the president’s policies” in a piece warning about what Trump’s immigration agenda in a second term would look like.

People on Twitter also noticed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hat tip: Ace

Graphic credit: Twitter