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FEBRUARY 16,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

DEM WOES – FROM FOX:   An end-of-the-year report filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) revealed that the federal arm of the Florida Democratic Party is more than $868,000 in debt following November's election season.  The reports of receipts and disbursement also showed that the Democratic Executive Committee of Florida had less than $61,000 in cash on hand at the time of filing on Sunday.  Florida Democrats are no strangers to financing issues.  In 2018, the Naples Daily News reported that the party would be questioned by the FEC over how it had failed to explain why a federal account used for federal campaigns ended up $159,333 in the red.  An important story because Florida is a must-have state for the Democrats.  If they can't run an effective campaign because of brokeness, rather than wokeness, they may suffer greater than usual losses in 2022.

LARA RISING? – FROM EPOCH TIMES:    The chairman of the Republican Party in North Carolina believes Lara Trump would be the candidate to beat if she decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) in 2022.  “She would have immediate attention and interest from across the state. She did a fantastic job representing the president when she was down here as a surrogate throughout the last four years, and campaigned very hard for him in ‘16 and ‘20. She’s very beloved here down in North Carolina,” the state’s Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley told The Epoch Times.  “Everybody at this point is just waiting to see what she’s going to do.”  Rumors of Trump’s potential run for the Senate in the Tar Heel State percolated as recently as last year. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) reignited the conversation over the weekend, touting her as a replacement for Burr, who had voted to impeach President Donald Trump, Lara Trump’s father-in-law. Graham said Lara Trump is the “future of the Republican Party” and preemptively threw his support behind a hypothetical run.  This could be exciting.  As I've said before, I've seen and heard her in person.  She's dynamite, and she's not afraid of the media. 

February 16, 2021       Permalink

HERE WE GO; HE WHO CONTROLS THE VOCABULARY CONTROLS THE COUNTRY –  OVERNIGHT:  The Biden crowd seems awfully familiar in its thinking.  Think Barack Hussein Obama Jr.  From Fox: 

The Biden administration is urging officials at the Department of Homeland Security to stop using phrases like "illegal alien" in favor of what it says are more "inclusive" terms -- part of a broader effort by the administration to change language use on immigration.

Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) Director Tracy Renaud recently signed a memo that a USCIS spokesman said "aligns our language practices with the administration’s guidance on the federal government’s use of immigration terminology."

Axios first reported that the Feb. 12 memo urges officials to stop referring to people as "alien," in favor of "noncitizen." It also tells officials to refer to "undocumented individual" or "undocumented noncitizen" rather than "illegal alien." It also recommends "integration" rather than "assimilation."

"This change is designed to encourage more inclusive language in the agency’s outreach efforts, internal documents and in overall communication with stakeholders, partners, and the general public," USCIS spokesman Joe Sowers said in a statement. "The guidance does not affect legal, policy or other operational documents, including forms, where using terms (such as applicant, petitioner, etc.) as defined by the Immigration and Nationality Act would be the most appropriate."

The shift is part of a broader move by the administration to change language on immigration and illegal immigration.

BuzzFeed News reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have shifted from using "illegal alien" to "noncitizen"in comments to reporters, while then-acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske used the term "noncitizen" to refer to illegal immigrants who could be targeted by ICE.

COMMENT:  The goal is to get millions of undocumented immigrants into this country, and eventually give them the right to vote.  The Democrats are pursuing one-party rule, and, if they can get D.C. and Puerto Rico admitted as states, they may just get it.  A sad day for freedom.

February 16, 2021       Permalink

KAMI, KAMI, NOT SO FAST, KAMI.  YOU JUST GOT THERE – AT 10:54 P.M. ET:  Look, I mean, really, we knew that Joe Biden was just a cutout run by the Dem establishment because they needed a guy who could get elected and hold the Oval Office for someone more woke. 

And we knew that Kami, who went nowhere in her own run for the White House, was hot for the job and would slide behind the desk as soon as Joe developed a cough. 

But, appearances, Kami, appearances.  Did you have to push in this fast?  From Fox: 

Vice President Kamala Harris is proving that she will play an important role in the White House as she hosts calls with foreign leaders without President Biden.

A readout from the White House published on Monday showed that Harris took a call with French President Emannuel Macron, where she "expressed her commitment to strengthening bilateral ties."

"Vice President Harris and President Macron agreed on the need for close bilateral and multilateral cooperation to address COVID-19, climate change, and support democracy at home and around the world," the statement read. "They also discussed numerous regional challenges, including those in theMiddle East and Africa, and the need to confront them together."

The president himself did put a call into Macron last month, on Jan. 24.

Though Biden knows many of the world leaders he will be dealing with from his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, he likely has not dealt extensively with Macron since he was elected in 2017.

A spokesperson for the White House did not return Fox News’ request for comment.

As noted by the Council on Foreign Relations, the vice president’s role in foreign policy has grown since the mid-20th century. Dick Cheney is credited for shaping President George W. Bush’s foreign policy priorities and Biden managed relations under President Barack Obama with several key countries.

However, conservatives have repeated concerns about Biden’s ability to carry out his four years in office as the oldest president ever elected at the age of 78.

COMMENT:  Oh please.  It is such baloney.  Calls like that are always made by the president, never the vice president.  It's considered insulting for a vice president to take the place of the president in calling a foreign head of state.  I wonder what the French government thinks about this.  The president was off playing a video game with  his grandchild.  I guess the game featured an international crisis.

Look for Kamala to be rushing into the Oval Office each morning to take Biden's temperature.  She just can't wait.

February 16, 2021       Permalink

FEBRUARY 15,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

WHAT A TRIBUTE – FROM THE NEW YORK POST:   About half of New York Times employees said in a recent internal survey that they don’t believe they can speak freely at the paper.  In response to the statement, “There is a free exchange of views in this company; people are not afraid to say what they really think,” only 51% of Times employees responded in the affirmative.  In company comments that accompanied the December poll’s findings, which were viewed by The Post, the 51 percent was noted as being 10% lower than the “benchmark.” One insider said the benchmark likely refers to the average among similar companies surveyed on that statement.  “Although the majority of us feel well-informed, many indicated that differing viewpoints aren’t sought or valued in our work,” read the Times’s internal assessment of the data. “Relatedly, we saw some negative responses on whether there’s a free exchange of views in the company, and scored below the benchmark on this question.”  Once a great newspaper, but it decided to go woke, and this is the result.

REMEMBER WHEN WE REVERED OUR TEACHERS? – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  The crown teachers once put on Shakespeare now lies uneasy upon his head as the English playwright comes under assault from teachers who fault his un-woke attitudes regarding race, sexuality, gender and class.
For the new breed of teachers, William Shakespeare is seen less as an icon of literature and more as a tool of imperial oppression, an author who should be dissected in class or banished from the curriculum entirely.
“This is about White supremacy and colonization,” declared the teachers who founded #DisruptTexts, a group that wants staples of Western literature removed or subjected to withering criticism.  The anti-Shakespeare teachers say fans of the plays ignore the author’s problematic worldview. They say readers of Shakespeare should be required to address the “Whiteness” of their thinking.  If Shakespeare must be taught, these educators say, then it should be presented with watered-down versions of the original or supplemental texts focused on equality issues.  Elizabeth Nelson, who teaches English at Twin Cities Academy in St. Paul, Minnesota, told School Library Journal she gives her students Marxist theory when reading Shakespeare’s tragedy “Coriolanus” about the Roman leader.  Soon our children will be reading,  "To be, or should I change my gender?"  The only redeeming factor would be that they'd be so illiterate they wouldn't be able to read it at all.  What a sad state we're in.

February 15, 2021       Permalink

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN – OVERNIGHT:   Remember the Keystone Pipeline?  President Biden, in one of his first acts, canceled it to satisfy the climate-change religionists, even though there was no evidence that the pipeline would have a significant impact on climate change.  Hey, you gotta feel good about yourself, right? 

Well, it turns out that the decision to drop the pipeline is immensely unpopular, is costing thousands of jobs, and is placing a target on many Democratic members of Congress who are up in 2022 and would like to keep their jobs.  And some are taking action.  Number one on the list is Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a moderate Democrat who's made it clear he will sometimes vote against the president.  From Fox: 

Sen. Joe Manchin wrote a letter to President Biden Tuesday asking him to rethink his executive order revoking the Keystone XL pipeline permit.

"Pipelines continue to be the safest mode to transport our oil and natural gas resources and they support thousands of high-paying, American union jobs," the West Virginia Democrat wrote.

On his first day in office, the president canceled the pipeline’s permit, which Donald Trump had reinstated. The long-disputed project was meant to deliver about 800,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil to the U.S.

"In the absence of access to pipelines, crude oil will continue to find its way to market through increased reliance on other modes of transport, like truck and rail, which have a higher number of reported releases of crude oil per ton-mile than pipelines," Manchin noted.

"I encourage you to reconsider your decision to revoke the cross-border permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and take into account the potential impacts of any further action to safety, jobs, and energy security," he added.

Manchin, alongside fellow Democrat Sen. Jon Tester, Mont., joined Republicans in a budget resolution supporting the pipeline.

Biden immediately drew the ire of Republicans in revoking the permit but more recently has drawn criticisms from allies.

"I wish he hadn't done that on the first day," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told "Axios on HBO."  

COMMENT:  This will fall on deaf ears.  The Biden administration, really Barack Obama's third term, is indifferent to Americans who don't work at computers.  It cares little for America's energy independence, as it believes us to be simply another nation, conceived in sin.  The decision deeply offended Canada, which is heavily invested in the pipeline.

The pipeline will be a campaign issue, and good for Republicans.  We hope a Republican president in 2025 reverses the Biden mistake.

February 15, 2021       Permalink

IN THE WAKE OF IMPEACHMENT – AT 7:52 P.M. ET:  It's President's Day.  It's also the first Monday after the farcical Senate trial of a private citizen who used to be president.  And what do we find?

We find a Democratic Party so removed from reality that it wants to continue pursuing Trump.  They'll find a way, and leave the governing to a president surrounded by the failed emissaries of Barack Obama. 

But on the Republican side, despite some bitter disagreements, I actually see a new energy, a determination to drive the party to victory in 2022.  Republicans have been divided and contentious at other times, leading Ronald Reagan, even before becoming president, to enunciate the "11th Commandment" for the party – thou shalt not speak ill of any other Republican.  The party got it together and put Reagan in the White House in 1980. 

Republicans in Congress are now demanding an accounting from Nancy Pelosi about what she knew, and when she knew, of the impending violence that struck Washington on January 6th.  This will not go away.  It's time we started questioning the self-righteous Democrats about their role in the upheavals that have struck this country in the last year, the Washington episode being only one. 

And in New York, we have a fascinating situation.  The man recently crowned "American's governor" by a fawning press is now revealed for what he really is – a deceitful two-face, a monumental incompetent in the battle against a raging pandemic.  This will grow.  Even Democrats are now getting on the anti-Andy bandwagon.  From Fox: 

Embattled Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admitted Monday that he should have moved sooner to release relevant data related to COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes amid mounting criticism of his administration’s handling of the scandal.

In his first press conference since reports surfaced that his office underreported or withheld critical information on nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic, Cuomo said all relevant information was "fully, publicly and accurately reported." When asked if he felt the need to apologize, the New York governor said his team’s failure to publicly address concerns created a "void" that allowed the spread of "conspiracy theories."

"We made a mistake in creating the void," Cuomo said. "We made a mistake in creating the void when we didn't provide information, it allowed press people, cynics, politicians to fill a void."

Cuomo has faced calls to resign since the Associated Press reported his administration had significantly underreported the number of recovering COVID-19 patients who were sent back to nursing homes to recover under a controversial order he implemented last March. The Associated Press found that nearly 15,000 long-term care patients died of COVID-19 at nursing homes, up from the roughly 8,500 deaths previously disclosed.

Criticism intensified after Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admitted during a private call that the administration withheld data requested by New York State legislatures because they worried it could be "used against us" by the Justice Department under then-President Donald Trump.

Revelations regarding the withheld data triggered a bipartisan outcry, with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio among the local lawmakers who have called for Cuomo to be stripped of his emergency powers. Lawmakers granted Cuomo sweeping authority to enact orders and alter laws without legislative approval at the pandemic’s onset last March.

When asked about the push to remove his emergency powers, Cuomo noted the state legislature could overrule any of his executive actions by vote, but had yet to do so since the pandemic began.
Cuomo argued a "toxic political environment" has contributed to the backlash against his administration in recent days. The governor said his team "paused" a state request for data in order to focus on fulfilling the Justice Department’s request.

COMMENT:  The evolving scandal is becoming a press scandal as well, with observers asking how the press could have not realized something very bad was going on.  Press bias is showing its ugly face, and demonstrating how damaging it really is.

There is talk among Republicans of removing Cuomo from office.  I doubt it will happen, but I doubt Cuomo has much of a future in politics.  He loved basking in the sun of favorable TV coverage.  Now he faces the darkness of political abandonment.  He will not be president.  Presiding over needless death is not a qualification for office.

February 15, 2021       Permalink