Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Randy and Vicki were married in 1971, and lived with their children until 30 years ago today, when federal agents murdered her as she held their infant daughter. pic.twitter.com/YghbPRSGKF
The day before, agents had murdered their 14 year old son Samuel.
They also shot Randy, smeared his name to the public and put him on trial.
Why did they do this?
Because ATF agent Kenneth Fadeley pressured Randy into selling him two sawed-off shotgun.
Their case was so bad that jurors exonerated Randy of everything but a failure to appear charge.
But the damage was already done.
This is a federal surveillance photo of Vicki shortly before she was murdered.
Snipers were ordered to kill any armed male who left the Weaver home.
When they killed Vicki, she was in her home, holding their infant daughter.
All of this over the length of a shotgun barrel.
The Weaver family did not deserve to be destroyed.
Sadly, they are just another casualty of the federal police state, and yet another example of why it must be dismantled.
Abolish the ATF, the FBI, and every other agency that government uses as weapons against peaceful people.
Rest in peace to Randy, Vicki and Samuel Weaver, and my condolences to the Weaver family.
*****
NOTE: if you advocate for gun control, you de facto advocate for many more families being destroyed by police and federal agents.
Many more children and mothers murdered.
Your advocacy for gun control is advocacy for massive amounts of gun violence against innocent people.
Garland says he requested the warrant be unsealed because of ‘substantial public interest’ in the matter.
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has asked a Florida judge to unseal the warrant FBI agents used to search former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home this week, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday, raising the prospect that details of the extraordinary search of the former president’s home could soon be public.
“I personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter,” Mr. Garland said in his first public remarks since Monday’s search. “The department does not take such a decision lightly.”
Mr. Garland said he filed the motion—which asks to unseal both the warrant and the receipt that lists the items seized—in light of Mr. Trump’s confirmation of the search and the “substantial public interest” in the matter.
Aides to Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have time to respond to the Justice Department’s request, including raising any objections to the unsealing, before the judge makes a decision. Mr. Trump was given a copy of the warrant and a list of items that were taken during the search.
Monday’s search of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and social club in Palm Beach, Fla. was a dramatic escalation of a monthslong investigation into the former president’s handling of classified information. The move, while Mr. Trump was in New York, stoked a political firestorm with Republican lawmakers demanding an explanation for the unprecedented search of a former president’s home.
Mr. Trump and his allies have criticized it as a politically motivated stunt by Justice Department officials.
“I will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” Mr. Garland said, adding that “the men and women of the FBI and the Justice Department are dedicated patriotic public servants every day.” He didn’t take questions...
When the FBI raided Donald Trump’s home on Monday, a key aspect of what made the United States of America great and free has been lost, and likely cannot be recovered. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson detested one another for years before their eventual reconciliation, but neither one used the agencies of the U.S. government to hound, persecute or discredit the other. Other bitter political opponents throughout the history of the republic have never before used the government’s own mechanisms of justice to do injustice to their foes. Joe Biden, Merrick Garland and their henchmen have brought America to a new phase of its history, and it is not likely to be one that is marked by respect for the rule of law or defense of the rights of individual citizens. Instead, we are entering an ugly age of authoritarianism, in which the brute force of the state is used to bend the people to the will of the tyrant.
Trump announced on Monday, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before. After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.”
The 45th president is not given to understatement, but the FBI raid on his home is much more than just unnecessary and inappropriate. It is criminal. The FBI that was heavily involved in trying to frame and destroy Trump in the Russian Collusion hoax is now trying once again to destroy him, apparently by claiming that he improperly took classified material from the White House. They never cared when Hillary Clinton misused classified material on a grand scale; what is the difference? They’re also likely trying to find something to link him more firmly to the January 6 “insurrection” that never was. The Left’s January 6 narrative has been full of holes from the beginning: Trump told the demonstrators to proceed peacefully, the people who entered the Capitol had no weapons, and no one had sketched out any kind of plan to do what the Left continues to claim that Trump was trying to do all along, overthrow the government and rule as a dictator.
But Joe Biden’s handlers are desperately afraid that Trump will return to the White House on January 20, 2025 and that things will go harder for them next time than they did during his first term. They’re afraid that a vengeful Trump will do a genuine and thorough housecleaning of the desperately corrupt and compromised Washington bureaucracy, and that many of them will, quite justly, end up out of power, and some of them will, even more justly, end up in prison. So they’ve determined to pre-emptively do the same to Trump. If they can’t actually find anything to prosecute him for (and Lord knows they’ve tried, this is the most investigated and poked and prodded and scrutinized man in American history, and still those who hate him have nothing), then at very least they hope to taint Trump so completely in the eyes of the distracted and indifferent public that they will have a fighting chance in 2024....
Many conservatives are saying that this ensures Trump’s victory in 2024. But what makes them think that this corrupt regime will allow the man whom they fear and hate above all others return to the White House? It’s clear now. They will stop at nothing.
This is no longer a republic, except of the banana variety. It may be a republic again someday, but for now, the great American experiment is over. Born July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, died August 8, 2022, in Mar-A-Lago, at the hands of Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and Christopher Wray.
The F.B.I.’s search of former President Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida on Monday continued to rock Washington and, more broadly, American politics, amid a swirl of questions about what led the Justice Department to take such a stunning step.
The search came after a visit this spring to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, Fla., by federal agents — including a Justice Department counterintelligence official — to discuss materials that the former president had improperly taken with him when he left the White House.
Mr. Trump was briefly present for that visit, as was at least one of his lawyers, according to people familiar with the situation.
Those materials contained many pages of classified documents, according to a person familiar with their contents. By law, presidential materials must be preserved and sent to the National Archives when a president leaves office. It remained unclear what specific materials agents might have been seeking on Monday or why the Justice Department and the F.B.I. decided to go ahead with the search now.
Mr. Trump had delayed returning 15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives for many months, doing so only in January, when the threat of action to retrieve them grew. The case was referred to the Justice Department by the archives early this year.
In carrying out the search, federal agents broke open a safe, the former president said.
The search was the latest remarkable turn in the long-running investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions before, during and after his presidency — and even as he weighs announcing another candidacy for the White House.
It came as the Justice Department has stepped up its separate inquiry into Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election and as he also faces an accelerating criminal inquiry in Georgia and civil actions in New York.
Mr. Trump has long cast the F.B.I. as a tool of Democrats who have been out to get him. The search set off a furious reaction among his supporters in the Republican Party and on the far right.
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader in the House, suggested that he intended to investigate Attorney General Merrick B. Garland if Republicans took control of the chamber in November. A delegation of House Republicans was scheduled to travel to Mr. Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., for a dinner with him on Tuesday night.
Aggressive language was pervasive on the right as Monday night turned into Tuesday morning.
“This. Means. War,” the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump outlet, wrote in an online post that was quickly amplified by a Telegram account connected to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s onetime political adviser.
The F.B.I. would have needed to persuade a judge that it had probable cause that a crime had been committed, and that agents might find evidence at Mar-a-Lago, to get a search warrant. Proceeding with a search on a former president’s home would almost surely have required sign-off from top officials at the bureau and at the Justice Department.
The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime...
He's running. Makes you nostalgic, even if you're sickened by January 6th (as I am).
He's going to announce before the midterms, I'm sure of it. It's been spectulation, but now after the FBI's raid it's almost a certainty. Even GOP non-supporters are expressing their outrage over the tyannical measures the Biden administration's using to take out his main rivil for the presidency in 2024. This is what banana republics do, I must concede, as so many folks on Twitter have suggested ad nauseum.
The court-authorized search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is another unmistakable signal that the Justice Department is trying to build a criminal case against him arising out of the Capitol riot.
Ostensibly, the search relates to a long simmering dispute between the former president and the government over Trump’s potentially illegal retention and mishandling of classified information. But don’t be deceived.
National Archives officials alerted the Justice Department months ago regarding missing records and possible classified information violations. That owes to the chaotic atmosphere in which the Trump family decamped to Florida from the White House following the Capitol riot – with impeachment proceedings and even talk of removing Trump from office under the 25th Amendment then underway.
Reportedly, about 15 boxes of records were removed from the White House and shipped to Mar-a-Lago. The National Archives subsequently explained that much of the material should have been kept in the government’s possession, pursuant to the Presidential Records Act. After extensive negotiations, Trump agreed to return some of the materials in January 2022. Upon receipt, National Archives officials advised the Justice Department that the returned materials included classified information.
If true, that raises several issues. If Trump had not declassified these materials while he was president, then his continuing possession of them in a non-secure location was probably illegal. While presidents have unilateral authority to declassify intelligence, they only maintain that authority while in office – it may not be exercised in the post-presidency. The returned documents were thus potentially evidence of crimes. In addition, since it is believed Trump did not return everything that was shipped out of the White House in those hectic days of January 2021, there was significant reason to suspect he continued to retain classified information at Mar-a-Lago.
One of the potential law violations, under Section 2071 of the federal penal code, includes in its penalty provisions that, upon conviction, a defendant “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.” The ongoing proceedings implicating Trump – in particular, the Justice Department’s investigation and the House January 6 committee probe – seem geared toward undermining his capacity to seek the presidency again in 2024. Obviously, then, there is speculation that DOJ may be mobilizing now in order to trigger the Section 2071 disqualification.
I doubt that. The Justice Department well knows that the qualifications for a presidential candidate are set out in the Constitution. They may not be altered by statute, precisely because the Framers did not want the executive branch to be dominated by the legislature, as would happen if Congress could disqualify incumbent or potential presidents simply by passing a law. The Constitution’s qualifications for the presidency are minimal – one must be over 35 and a natural-born citizen. Being a felon is not a disqualification, so even crimes potentially far more serious than mishandling classified information are not a bar to seeking the presidency.
Moreover, the Constitution also prescribes the basis for disqualifying a person from seeking the presidency or other federal office: conviction by the Senate on an impeachment article voted by the House. Again, what is prescribed by the Constitution may not be altered by a mere statute. To trigger disqualification, Congress would have to impeach and convict Trump; it cannot be done by criminal prosecution.
The Justice Department obviously used the potential classified information as a pretext to obtain a warrant so it could search for what it is really looking for: evidence that would tie Trump to a Capitol riot offense – either a violent crime, such as seditious conspiracy to forcibly attack a government installation (which is highly unlikely), or a non-violent crime, such as conspiracy to obstruct the January 6 joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, or conspiracy to defraud the government.
As previously explained, I believe it would foolhardy for the Biden Justice Department to indict a former president on such debatable non-violent crime charges. That is especially so when it comes to a former president who could be the 2024 Republican nominee, since such charges would fuel the perception that Democrats are using the Justice Department as a political weapon...
Yeah, it's big. There was virtually unanimous outrage on Twitter last night (follow scroll down here). Even some Democrats see the threat to republican democracy.
WASHINGTON—The FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home rallied many prominent Republicans around the former president and could shift the political course of both the midterm elections for control of Congress and the 2024 presidential race.
While many details of the FBI’s investigation remain unknown, the developments both challenge and underscore Mr. Trump’s hold on the GOP, just as he is publicly considering a third run for the White House. Many Republicans, including potential presidential rivals, denounced the search, casting it as a politically driven action by the Biden administration, while others demanded more details from the Justice Department but stopped short of criticizing its motives.
“This is a brazen weaponization of the FBI by Biden’s DOJ against his political opponent,” tweeted Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.), a member of the GOP leadership, reflecting the stance of many House Republicans.
People familiar with the matter said the search was part of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information. Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, who was present during the search, said that federal agents “seized paper.”
The White House didn’t get any advance notice of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, an administration official said.
The Justice Department has been looking into the former president’s handling of official records and his actions around the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Monday’s search is separate from the Jan. 6 investigation, the people familiar with the probe said. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and casts the investigations as part of a long-running campaign by Democrats.
People close to Mr. Trump said the search could further motivate him to announce a run for president in 2024 before the midterm elections.
Shortly after midnight, Mr. Trump posted a campaign-style video on his TruthSocial account that teased a possible campaign. “We are a nation that has become a joke … but soon we will have greatness again.” It ends with an on-screen message: “The best is yet to come.”
Some GOP lawmakers, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) have been pushing Mr. Trump to hold off on any announcement until after the election, to not upset the party’s chances of taking back the House. While Mr. Trump remains a powerful motivator of Republican voters, he repels many swing voters, and party leaders have focused their midterms pitch on the economy and inflation. Republicans are seen as heavily favored to win back the House, while the Senate is seen as a tossup.
Polls show Mr. Trump as the top GOP candidate in a hypothetical 2024 presidential field, and he easily won a straw poll at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference. “We may have to do it again,” he said in a speech Saturday at the gathering.
Mr. McCarthy said late Monday that “the Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization” and pledged to investigate Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department if Republicans take power.
Democrats have defended the raid. “No person is above the law, not even a former president of the United States,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on NBC’s “Today Show.”
House Republican leaders will have a chance to take the temperature of the conference at a previously scheduled members-only call on Tuesday that was set up to discuss the Senate-passed climate and health bill. Members of the Republican Study Committee, made up of House conservatives, are scheduled to have dinner with Mr. Trump on Tuesday night at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club.
The members-only call is shaping as a proving ground for Mr. McCarthy, who is in line for the House speakership next year if Republicans regain control. Mr. McCarthy needs to show that he can be tough on the issue to respond to the restive conservative wing of his base, a House Republican said. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) suggested this week on “The War Room” podcast, broadcast by Trump ally Stephen Bannon, that Mr. McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker.
A Republican takeover of the House in the November midterm elections would give them subpoena powers in 2023 and the ability to create committees and lead investigations. Many Republicans were already planning to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and said following the search of Mr. Trump’s home that they would hold hearings on the FBI’s actions as well.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is increasingly seen by many Republicans nationally as a potential Trump alternative, joined in the condemnation. The raid “is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the regime’s political opponents,” he said.
While some rivals were quick to defend Mr. Trump, the developments also underscored what they see as his vulnerability as a deeply divisive figure in American politics. He drew a record number of votes for an incumbent U.S. president in 2020, but lost by about seven million votes to President Biden.
“Other Republican leaders will see him as vulnerable,” said GOP donor Dan Eberhart. “There is now blood in the water.” He said that could give added reason for potential 2024 candidates, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, to look at the race...
Candace Owens @RealCandaceO reacts to the New York Times asking her why she spread the idea that Ukraine is a corrupt country, even though she got the information from their publication. pic.twitter.com/kjj6k5zMRf
After President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed that action against Ukraine was taken in self-defense, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the conservative commentator Candace Owens repeated the assertion. When Mr. Putin insisted he was trying to “denazify” Ukraine, Joe Oltmann, a far-right podcaster, and Lara Logan, another right-wing commentator, mirrored the idea.
The echoing went the other way, too. Some far-right American news sites, like Infowars, stoked a longtime, unfounded Russian claim that the United States funded biological weapons labs in Ukraine. Russian officials seized on the chatter, with the Kremlin contending it had documentation of bioweapons programs that justified its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
As war has raged, the Kremlin’s talking points and some right-wing discourse in the United States — fueled by those on the far right — have coalesced. On social media, podcasts and television, falsehoods about the invasion of Ukraine have flowed both ways, with Americans amplifying lies from Russians and the Kremlin spreading fabrications that festered in American forums online.
By reinforcing and feeding each other’s messaging, some right-wing Americans have given credibility to Russia’s assertions and vice versa. Together, they have created an alternate reality, recasting the Western bloc of allies as provokers, blunderers and liars, which has bolstered Mr. Putin.
The war initially threw some conservatives — who had insisted no invasion would happen — for a loop. Many criticized Mr. Putin and Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Some have since gone on to urge more support for Ukraine.
But in recent days, several far-right commentators have again gravitated to narratives favorable to Mr. Putin’s cause. The main one has been the bioweapons conspiracy theory, which has provided a way to talk about the war while focusing criticism on President Biden and the U.S. government instead of Mr. Putin and the Kremlin.
“People are asking if the far right in the U.S. is influencing Russia or if Russia is influencing the far right, but the truth is they are influencing each other,” said Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies Russian information warfare. “They are pushing the same narratives.”
Their intersecting comments could have far-reaching implications, potentially exacerbating polarization in the United States and influencing the midterm elections in November. They could also create a wedge among the right, with those who are pro-Russia at odds with the Republicans who have become vocal champions for the United States to ramp up its military response in Ukraine.
“The question is how much the far-right figures are going to impact the broader media discussion, or push their party,” said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a Washington nonprofit. “It serves them, and Russia, to muddy the waters and confuse Americans.”
Many of their misleading war narratives, which are sometimes indirect and contradictory, have reached millions. While Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other platforms limited the reach of Russian state media online after the war began, a variety of far-right Telegram channels, blogs and podcasts took up the task of spreading the Kremlin’s claims. Inside Russia, state media has in turn reflected what some far-right Americans have said.
Mentions of bioweapons labs related to war in Ukraine, for example, have more than doubled — to more than 1,000 a day — since early March on both Russian- and English-language social media, cable TV, and print and online outlets, according to the media tracking company Zignal Labs.
The unsubstantiated idea began trending in English-language media late last month, according to Zignal’s analysis. Interest faded by early March as images of injured Ukrainians and bombed cities spread across the internet.
It would perhaps be too glorious an irony if it were Vladimir Putin who finally buzz-killed the American and European right’s infatuation with post-liberalism. But, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine staggers shambolically and criminally forward, it’s no longer unthinkable. The icon of the West’s new right is in serious trouble now — and it might tarnish all of those who only yesterday were idolizing his reactionary zeal.
It’s not so much Putin’s trashing of international law, his unhinged rehashing of post-Soviet grievances, his next-level Covid paranoia, the foul murders of his opponents, or his brazen embrace of shelling hospitals that has so deepened the damage to the Putin brand among the West’s new Russophiles. These atrocities and madnesses they have long found ways to live with. No, it’s Putin’s failure — thus far — to actually win the war he started that’s so damning. It’s one thing for a dictator to be deemed cruel; and quite another — and far more dangerous — thing for him to be seen as incompetent.
And it’s happened so fast. The love letters had been flowing for years now before this unfortunate interruption. “Russia is like, I mean they’re really hot stuff,” Donald Trump chortled in April 2014, adding that “now you have people in the Ukraine — who knows, set up or not — but it can’t all be set up, I mean they’re marching in favor of joining Russia.” Two weeks ago, in the face of Putin’s pre-invasion posturing over the Donbas region, Trump marveled:
How smart is that? I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful … And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. … There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re gonna keep peace all right. … Here’s a guy who’s very savvy… I know him very well. Very, very well.
“They’re gonna keep peace all right.” Think of the depth of the cynical callousness that has to lie behind such a smirk. Notice that for Trump, Putin is not just a thug but a smart one, and the possibility of his brutal incursion into a sovereign neighbor state was, in Trump’s mind, “wonderful.” And cheap: “He’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” With Trump, evil is always better when it’s also a bargain.
Even those on the far right who had long had to acknowledge that, yes, well, Putin was a bit of a sociopath, nonetheless professed to admire his skill, if not his motives. Nigel Farage, the well-nicotined Brexit pioneer, called Putin one of the world leaders he most admired, hurriedly hedging with “as an operator, particularly the way he managed to stop the West from getting militarily involved in Syria.” He later reiterated: “He’s a very canny, very sharp, very clever political operator.” Eric Zemmour, the dynamic far-right leader in France, also spoke highly of Putin, calling him “the last bastion against the hurricane of the politically correct which, starting in America, has destroyed all the traditional structures of family, religion and nation.” He later added, “I dream of a French Putin emerging, but there is none.”
Putin’s Russia, like Orban’s Hungary, appealed to many post-liberal conservatives in the West for obvious reasons. Part of it was the shamelessness of the strongmen’s ethnically-homogeneous nationalism, compared with what was seen as the simpering, multicultural globalism of EU types; part was hatred of Obama, who was always deemed weak in contrast with, er, anyone; and part was a more amorphous but nonetheless profound view of Putin and Orban as cultural traditionalists, standing up to Western decadence, as it staggers into its Drag Queen Story Hour hellscape. For besieged social conservatives and Christianists in America, Putin loomed like some phantasm of strange hope.
Steve Bannon summed it up: “Putin ain’t woke. He’s anti-woke.” Congressman Madison Cawthorn took it further: “Remember that the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt, and it is incredibly evil, and it has been pushing woke ideologies.” That plucky little Zelensky, speaking live to the British House of Commons as bombs rained down on his country’s cities? An “incredibly evil” “thug.” Our old friend Dinesh D’Souza, in his usual temperate style, sees the Democrats as posing “a far greater threat to our freedom and safety than Putin.” And Bannon is still urging his minions to give “zero dollars to Ukraine,” even as the corpses of children lie on the streets. There’s an alt-right edginess to this moral perversity.
And over the years, this drumbeat of love for the Russian dictator shifted the views of many grassroots Republicans. In the wake of Trump’s personal infatuation with Putin, the murderer’s favorability among Republicans jumped from 10 percent in 2014 to 37 percent by December 2016. Until as recently as January this year, “62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents considered Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.” That’s the primrose path down which the GOP led its supporters — seeing Putin as a more legitimate president than Biden.
The last two weeks, to put it mildly, have pummeled this narrative...
This is from Megan Murphy, the righteous Canadian anti-trans feminist who was kicked off Twitter a couple of years back for violating Jack's politically incorrect diktats. She's in Mexico now, it turns out, in exile and flying under the radar. I miss her voice --- a voice of sanity in a world of madness.
Ottawa’s new emergency law enlists a huge range of financial players in a bid to cut off funds to protesters tied to the trucker blockades, but questions remain about who will be targeted and whether it will even work. A new order and regulations under the Emergencies Act, which the federal government invoked on Monday, requires a long list of entities — this includes banks, insurance companies, credit unions, trust and loan companies, payment processors and online fundraising platforms — to continuously determine whether they should freeze accounts and halt services for individuals or companies tied to illegal assemblies and blockades that have gripped the country for weeks...
The radical left in power is crushing dissent? Burying the working-class, the alleged dialectical-historic force now driving the world's workers toward the proletarian utopia?
The workers of the world are literally uniting. And yet these truckers have not been embraced by the left. Instead they have been tagged as fascists and racists by progressive pundits, activists, and politicians—those who tweeted “Stay Home! Slow the Spread!” while truckers delivered their Amazon Prime packages.This spectacle—of workers fulfilling Marx’s fantasy, only to be smeared by the very people who claim to prioritize the working class—captures in stark relief the split emerging between the working class and the left that used to represent them...
Well, everything's upside down, so what the fuck? The populist-nationalists are gaining the upper hand, and idiot left-progressives are basically propelling the "far right" that they so much hate straight into power.
The invocation of the Emergencies Act confers enormous, if temporary, power on the federal government.
It allows the authorities to move aggressively to restore public order, including banning public assembly and restricting travel to and from specific areas. But Mr. Trudeau and members of his cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.”
It has been half a century since emergency powers were last invoked in Canada. Mr. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, imposed them during a terrorism crisis in Quebec. Monday was the first time that the 1988 Emergencies Act has been used.
The response by the police and all levels of government to the crisis, which included an almost weeklong blockade of an economically critical border crossing with the United States, has been widely criticized as inadequate. Mr. Trudeau, some critics contend, should have intervened earlier and perhaps even deployed troops to break up the protest.
On Monday, Mr. Trudeau said he would not use his authority under the declaration, which will last for 30 days, to bring in the military, reiterating his previous position against intervention by the armed forces...
OTTAWA—In a highly unusual move, the Canadian government on Monday invoked a series of emergency powers that include limits on public gatherings in a bid to end disruptive demonstrations in the capital city and along the Canada-U.S. border.
The measures, announced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, represent one of the most striking responses by a Western government against protests by those opposing Covid-19 vaccine mandates and social restrictions in response to the pandemic, and immediately drew fire from some Canadian leaders and civil-liberties groups.
The government also said Monday the country was extending laws targeting money laundering to capture transactions, including cryptocurrencies, on crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe.
“It is now clear that there are serious challenges to law-enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law,” Mr. Trudeau said at a news conference. “We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.”
Mr. Trudeau’s move to invoke emergency powers comes after police on Sunday reopened access to the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit with the city of Windsor, Ontario. Up until late Sunday night, demonstrators had blocked incoming U.S. vehicles from entering Canada for roughly a week.
Officials said these extraordinary measures were necessary because of the damage done to the economy with the blocking of U.S.-Canada trade. Further, “we’ve seen intimidation, harassment and expressions of hate,” said Canada’s Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, adding scenes in Ottawa have at times represented lawlessness. “That is one of the reasons why we’ve had to take [this] very careful and deliberate step.”
The prime minister’s decision to invoke the special powers faced sharp criticism Monday from both rights groups and some provincial leaders.
Quebec Premier François Legault said he can understand the sentiment that “enough is enough” in Ottawa but believes the planned measures aren’t needed in his province and could be damaging.
“We really need not to put oil on the fire,” Mr. Legault said.
An earlier and much more restrictive version of the legislation, called the War Measures Act, was invoked three times in Canadian history. Its most controversial use was in 1970, when Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, used the act when he was prime minister to squelch a militant separatist group in Quebec, known as the FLQ.
The government said its invocation of the act doesn’t undermine Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which came into force in 1982 and protects rights considered essential to preserving a free and democratic society. However, there is a debate about whether the government is overstepping in applying the act to those participating in protests and blockades.
Leah West, a national-security expert at Carleton University in Ottawa, said it is unclear that the current protests—in the capital, Ottawa, and at two border crossings in western Canada—meet the legal threshold of a national emergency. Invoking the Emergencies Act if that threshold isn’t met, she said, “sets a precedent that unpopular dissent against the government is enough for the government to take these extraordinary powers into its own hands.”
Prof. West said Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects civil liberties, but protection isn’t absolute. She said that means rights can be limited and still comply with the Charter.
The measures come into effect immediately but Mr. Trudeau must present his reasoning for using the act to parliament and hold a vote within seven days. The leader of the New Democratic Party, Jagmeet Singh, said he would support the move, thereby giving the incumbent Liberals enough votes to ensure passage.
Mr. Trudeau said the military wasn’t being deployed against the protesters, and the government wasn’t suspending rights guaranteed under the country’s constitution. He added the measures, which local police forces would enforce, are meant to target specific regions in the country where protests are judged to pose a threat. Mr. Trudeau described the demonstration in Ottawa, now in its 18th day, as “an illegal occupation.”
City of Ottawa officials say the local police force doesn’t have the necessary resources to quell the demonstration, and have asked the federal government for an additional 1,800 officers.
Despite the government’s hard line, protesters believe their message is resonating.
“Any government that’s ever taken freedoms away from people never gives them back,” said Tyler Chiliak, a farmer from western Canada who has been in Ottawa since the Covid-19 protests began.
When he isn’t out commiserating with fellow protesters, he is keeping warm inside his cargo trailer, where he cooks food, keeps bottled water and sleeps.
“It may take a while before we accomplish our goals so to speak. But whether they like it or not things are happening because we are here,” Mr. Chiliak said.
Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland also said the country was extending laws targeting money laundering. All crowdfunding platforms and the payment-service provider they use must register with Canada’s financial-intelligence agency, and report what they deem as large, suspicious donations. The recent protests had success in raising money on GoFundMe...
At the video up top, check out this masked Canadian Karen, at 1:57 minutes, who's ashamed of the truckers' exercise of freedom and natural rights: "I just feel I'm living in another country, like I'm in the states ...," one of the most embarrassing things she's ever seen.
She's embarrassed. At her fellow countrymen. For standing up against the despotism of the Canadian state.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate for all private employers in New York City on Monday morning to combat the spread of the Omicron variant.
Mr. de Blasio said the aggressive measure, which takes effect Dec. 27 and which he described as the first of its kind in the nation, was needed as a “pre-emptive strike” to stall another wave of coronavirus cases and help reduce transmission during the winter months and holiday gatherings.
“Omicron is here, and it looks like it’s very transmissible,” he said in an interview on MSNBC. “The timing is horrible with the winter months.”
New York City has already put vaccine mandates in place for city workers and for employees and customers at indoor dining, entertainment and gyms. Nearly 90 percent of adult New York City residents now have at least one dose of the vaccine.
But Mr. de Blasio said the city must go further to combat another wave of the virus in New York City, once the center of the pandemic. Some private employers have required employees to get vaccinated, but many others have not.
Mr. de Blasio said the new measure would apply to about 184,000 businesses. Employees who work in-person at private companies must have one dose of the vaccine by Dec. 27; remote workers will not be required to get the vaccine. There is no testing option as an alternative.
The city plans to offer exemptions for valid medical or religious reasons, Mr. de Blasio said. City officials will release detailed guidelines about issues like enforcement by Dec. 15 after consulting with business leaders.
The mayor also announced that the rules for dining and entertainment would apply to children ages 5 to 11, who must have one dose to enter restaurants and theaters starting on Dec. 14, and that the requirement for adults would increase from one dose of a vaccine to two starting on Dec. 27, except for those who initially received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Mr. de Blasio and Gov. Kathy Hochul held a news conference last Thursday to announce New York State’s first five cases of the Omicron variant, and several more have been announced in New York City since then. The number of coronavirus cases in the city has increased rapidly in recent weeks; daily case counts have increased more than 75 percent since Nov. 1.
Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat with less than a month left in office, said he was confident the new mandate would survive any legal challenges and he noted that past city mandates had been upheld.
“They have won in court — state court, federal court — every single time,” the mayor said on MSNBC. “And it’s because they’re universal and consistent.”
Eric Adams, the mayor-elect who takes office on Jan. 1, is on vacation in Ghana this week. His spokesman, Evan Thies, said in a statement that Mr. Adams would evaluate the measure once he is mayor...
More than 100,000 people took to the streets across France over the weekend to protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s tough new vaccination strategy, which will restrict access to restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, long-distance trains and more for the unvaccinated.
Demonstrators in Paris and elsewhere vented against what some called Mr. Macron’s “dictatorship” after he announced that a “health pass” — official proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or recent Covid-19 recovery — would be required for many to attend or enter most public events and venues.
At the same time, however, his policy seemed to have the desired effect: Record numbers of people flocked to vaccination centers in advance of the new rules coming into effect next month.
It made for a striking split-screen image as millions lined up for vaccines — so desperately sought in much of the world suffering outbreaks but with little access to doses — as an increasingly strident group from both the far left and far right decried Mr. Macron’s policies as government overreach...
We gather today to mourn the 150-year-old restaurant that served up platters of fried chicken and creamed corn to Abilene, Kan. To bid farewell to the New Orleans cafe that was a destination for huge crab omelets and endless conversation. To raise one last glass to the tavern in Cambridge, Mass., where the regulars arrived at 8 a.m. and the Austin diner where Janis Joplin nearly sang the neon lights off the walls.
They were local landmarks — watering holes, shops and haunts that weathered recessions and gentrification, world wars and the Great Depression, only to succumb this year to the economic ravages of the coronavirus. This is their obituary.
Thousands of businesses have closed during the pandemic, but the demise of so many beloved hangouts cuts especially deep. They were woven into the identity of big cities and small towns, their walls lined with celebrity photos and Best Of awards. Some had been around a century. Others, like the Ma’am Sir Filipino restaurant in Los Angeles, needed just a few years to win the hearts of their neighborhoods.
Their closures have left blank spaces across the country as owners liquidate their memorabilia and wistful customers leave social-media tributes recalling first dates and marriage proposals. And there are new worries: If these institutions could not survive, what can? And who will be left standing, to hold our memories and knit our communities together, when this pandemic is over?
I picked up breakfast at our diner today, caught up with the owner like always, and asked how she’s doing. She shook her head as her eyes welled above her mask. I knew what that meant. She turned her back to her staff saying she didn’t want to cry in front of her employees.
She, like millions of others, is desperate for help from the federal government. She said the first round of PPP saved her business, but that was a long time ago and she’s on the brink again. She has followed the rules & spent money to build outdoor dining, but winter is here.
We all have done our best to support small businesses this year, but it’s not enough. It is infuriating that it took Congress this long to get a relief bill and unconscionable that the President sits on it while our friends and neighbors fight for their lives. Shame.
Everyone --- and I mean, amazingly, everyone --- is outraged by this video.
Leftist government politicians the world over are saying the lad had it coming, of course. But the rest of us see the curtain of "compassionate" progressivism coming down.
They kicked him out of the pub for being "too loud." Right. So he climbed the fence, strolled back in to join his friends, and poured himself another. Then gurgle, gurgle whack!
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