Tag Archive for: Biden

The Truth About Liberal Policies

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Many thanks to Laser List member Jeff Walyus for this fantastic rhetorical approach.  I have found it enormously helpful on many occasions.

The truth about liberal policies is that they hurt people.  Let’s look at just the latest examples.

The New York Times made an astounding admission in November. Democrats run the show in Illinois, California, and New York, and have for decades, but blue states are doing worse than red states in many key respects: lack of affordable housing, disparities in education funding, rising economic inequality – all things liberals and Democrats profess to care about and for which they claim to have all the answers.  The New York Times was brutal in its assessment of blue state results:

… blue states are the problem.  Blue states are where the housing crisis is located.  Blue states are where the disparities in education funding are the most dramatic.  Blue states are the places where tens of thousands of homeless people are living on the streets.  Blue states are the places where economic inequality is increasing most quickly in this country.  This is not a problem of not doing well enough.  It is a situation where blue states are the problem.

Let’s take a closer look at one of those blue states, Washington, out on the Left Coast.  America’s schools are following in the footsteps of Seattle to indoctrinate students on racial equity. But Seattle’s efforts to teach racial equity and ethnic studies have been marked by animus, lies, and worsening results.  Academic achievement as measured by state test scores went down after instruction on “power and oppression” was emphasized over math in 2018.  Pass rates for whites and blacks both dropped.  The response of the schools?  More ethnic studies and less math.  Despite having equity programs for decades, Seattle schools had one of the worst black-white student achievement gaps in the nation, as of 2017.  Liberal policies did not make things better.  They made them worse.

Another admission comes from a liberal book author who worked on progressive causes in San Francisco.  Like other west coast cities, San Francisco adopted policies that enabled homelessness, drug dealing, and crime.  All the problems he set about to solve got worse, instead.  He pins the blame on the liberal mindset that labels people victims and makes excuses for their destructive behavior.  San Francisco is where Walgreens closed 15 stores because shoplifting there is so bad and the penalties for it have been reduced.  Do you suppose the people who walked to those stores for their prescriptions are better off now?

Liberals have pushed Child Tax Credits, food stamps, and super-sized Obamacare subsidies, but a recent report shows people can make more from these programs than from work.  These programs disincentivize work and allow people to stay home and not return to the work force.  Maybe, if you’re a Democrat politician, you like the idea of making people more dependent on government and, thus, on you.  But any normal person can see this is not a healthy development and it’s unsustainable.

Democrats want to massively increase federal spending on transportation which they view as systemically racist.  But more mass transit and fewer cars will hurt the poor.  A study found that cars provide urban households with better access to jobs and economic opportunities than other forms of transportation.  Cars reduce neighborhood poverty exposure by 3 to 4 percent.

Liberals love the teachers unions, but collective bargaining agreements for teachers produce worse outcomes for students, especially minority students.  Liberals also love rent control, but it’s well-known rent control produces housing shortages because it destroys the incentive to build new housing.

Rising homelessness.  Out-of-control shoplifting.  Worse educational outcomes.  Fewer economic opportunities.  Not only do liberal policies not work, they actually hurt people.  In their impulse to make a perfect world and end all human suffering, liberals end up making things worse.  This is why you should not support them, no matter how good they make things sound.  They might be good at dazzling rhetoric, but they’re terrible at good governance.  Which would you rather have?

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©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Biden’s press conference panned by critics: ‘TOTAL DISASTER’

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One doesn’t know were to start. A total train wreck of a press conference. We saw exactly why President Biden is not allowed to do many press conferences. Watch below. Pray for America, and for the stability of the free world.

Biden’s press conference gets panned by critics: ‘Total disaster’

One commentator quipped, ‘Joe Biden didn’t do a press conference for months. We all understand the reason why.’

By Fox News, January 20, 2022

President Biden spent most of 2021 avoiding press conferences, but he held one on Wednesday, which was panned as being a “total disaster.”

The White House had high hopes for Biden’s press conference on Wednesday — hoping to paint the administration as a less-cloistered outfit that embraces the public and transparency. With Biden’s strikingly low popularity numbers, the president was expected to cast himself as a competent leader, who is in touch with the problems of everyday American voters.

But the debacle that took place behind the podium from the East Room of the White House on Wednesday did little to support that persona according to reaction to the press conference.

The president was criticized throughout his long remarks on issues related to Russian aggression towards Ukraine, his claim that he outperformed expectations, his outburst toward a reporter and more.

1. Russia-Ukraine ‘minor incursion’

Perhaps the most startling comment of the evening was Biden’s response to a question about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Biden said that while he believes an invasion is imminent, the United States is prepared to impose significant economic consequences should Russia move forward. But, he clarified, a “minor incursion” by the Russians would elicit a softer response from the U.S. than that of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Biden is attacking the legitimacy of American elections while signaling Putin to try a ‘minor incursion’ in Ukraine. None of this is normal. None of this is OK,” National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin responded.

“Biden just appeared to okay a ‘minor’ Russian incursion of Ukraine. So, invasion of an independent neighbor nation is bad. An incursion is OK with this president,” conservative commentator Andrew Malcolm agreed.

“Biden’s comments suggesting that a ‘minor incursion’ of Ukraine might not draw as vigorous a response as a full-scale invasion will trigger a lot of angst in the region, particularly in Kyiv,” New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker wrote.

“Why was there no pushback to Biden saying ‘it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion’ re Russia going into Ukraine?” former White House press secretary and Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany weighed in.

“What kind of answer was that? No incursion is ok,” Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer echoed.

Where are the follow-ups from reporters?

Why was there no pushback to Biden saying “it’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion” re Russia going into Ukraine?

Where is the pushback on Biden claiming he “outperformed” expectations?

The list goes on

All pleasantries, no pushback!

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) January 19, 2022

2.  Overpromise or Outperform?

Social media quickly circulated a clip of Biden where he appeared to tell reporters that he did not overpromise what he could get done in his first year in office, but that he has, on the contrary, “outperformed” what people thought he was capable of.

“I’m not sure what planet he’s inhabiting but on planet earth his record is a record of failure,” Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson responded.

“Biden just claimed he has ‘outperformed what anybody thought would happen’ Sheer lunacy,” Buck Sexton said.

“Joe Biden says he’s outperformed what anyone thought was possible in his first year in office. Really. He just said this,” Outkick’s Clay Travis reacted.

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Biden’s press conference was an utter disaster

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Biden Slammed Over ‘Embarrassing’ Press Conference: ‘Let The 25th Amendment Discussions Begin’

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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New Year’s, New Fears over Biden Booster Mania

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While the rest of the country turns the page on 2021, Joe Biden seems absolutely determined to repeat last year’s mistakes. Barely three days in, the new year is not ushering in new confidence about the president’s leadership on COVID. On the contrary, Americans are more skeptical than ever that this administration has any idea what it’s doing. With Omicron cases piling up faster than D.C. snow totals, this president’s response is typical: shoveling more confusion onto a crisis that his decisions have only made worse.

With the federal government closed Monday for a major winter storm, most Americans probably hoped the agencies would take a day off from their overreach. They were wrong. Earlier today, against the advice of its own experts and without convening a single advisory panel, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unilaterally approved Pfizer’s vaccine booster for 12 to 15-year-olds. The news came as a shock to the medical community, who had been surprisingly unified in their concern over the rush. In fact, Biden’s push to open up the booster to children was so controversial that two of the FDA’s own top scientists (including the head of its vaccine efforts) quit over it last September, writing a scathing article about the dangers of forcing more shots on young people. It was such an unpopular idea that the last vote by the FDA’s advisors failed by a whopping margin, 16-2.

That didn’t stop this president, who decided that if he couldn’t persuade the experts, he’d sideline them. The minute the CDC and FDA scientists said it was a bad idea, the administration cut them out of the process. Forget following the science — this White House won’t even follow standard procedure! It’s “a slap in the face to science,” said Johns Hopkins’s Dr. Marty Makary, who’s warned about the cardiac fallout for younger children. A new study from Oxford, he points out, found plenty of reason for concern, as conditions like myocarditis, pericarditis and arrhythmias skyrocket in younger children with the Moderna vaccine. Could the booster make it worse? No one knows.

“This is unconscionable,” Makary tweeted, and “it undermines the integrity of the FDA’s standard process! Please require the FDA to put [this] before the [vaccine] advisory committee for a vote!” Back in November, even the New York Times questioned the decision to bypass the experts, quoting several scientists who said the American people deserved to hear that discussion. Last fall, physicians like Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, worried that even 16-year-olds were too young for the shot. “We’re being asked to approve this as a three-dose vaccine for people 16 years of age and older, without any clear evidence if the third dose for a younger person… is of value.” Or worse, dangerous.

Now, thanks to the administration’s rash and unilateral decision, parents will be under even more pressure to add a third shot to the mix — with zero scientific proof that it’s safe or necessary. Par, unfortunately, for Biden’s course.

At this point, the president’s virus failures have been so catastrophic that more people fear Biden’s policies than the virus itself. In a new Rasmussen survey, the pessimism about the pandemic across the country was palpable. Forty-six percent now believe “the worst is yet to come” with COVID, the second-highest level of despair since the vaccines were released. Another 47 percent said they are more worried about the government’s ridiculous restrictions than contracting COVID (43 percent).

And they have reason to be. As this new wave of Omicron overwhelms cities, local governments like D.C. are taking their vaccine tyranny to new levels — requiring proof of immunization just to participate in society. Starting January 15th, America’s capital will join Leftist hotbeds like Chicago, New York, and San Francisco in mandating that people aged 12 and up have at least one dose of the vaccine to step foot in a gym, restaurant, bar, and other businesses. With award-winning hypocrisy, Mayor Muriel Bowser is also inching toward a photo ID requirement for vaccine cards — a step the city refuses to take when it comes to voting.

Is that even constitutional? We’ll find out. Right now, the courts are buried in challenges to Biden’s vaccine mandates — including the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to hear arguments on an emergency timeline as soon as Friday. Meanwhile, the court of public opinion has spoken. The American people don’t trust Biden, and they don’t trust his “experts.” And Mr. I-Am-Science, Dr. Anthony Fauci, hasn’t helped matters, kicking off 2022 the same way he ended 2021 — trying to dig himself out of a mountain of contradictions.

Biden’s agencies have made an utter fool of themselves, Andrew McCarthy agrees. “The government is now saying that the certifiably infected need to get back into the general population faster… If we were dealing with a real plague,” he insists, “the insanity of this would be so obvious even the media-Democrat complex would not be able to speak of it without snickering.” Instead, “we’ve lost our minds.” I hope and pray the rest of us have not lost our conviction — to fight for truth, transparency, and the freedoms this president has long forgotten.

COLUMN BY

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is Family Research Council’s fourth and longest-serving president, joining the organization in August of 2003. Described as a legislative pioneer by the national media, Tony has established himself as an innovative pro-life and pro-family policy and political leader since first being elected to office in 1996.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

THE CHOICE IS OURS: What will it be?

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A timeless paean for peace, written millennia ago by the Biblical Jewish prophet Isaiah, appears on a wall across the street from the entrance to the building in New York City ironically housing that most unholy and unjust organization: the United Nations. The delegates from every part of the world walk by it but most see and understand it not. The words include:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift-up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. Isaiah 2:4.

On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson once wrote:

Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not.

In a perfect world, Isaiah’s words should be paramount. But this is not a perfect world; it never has been. Jefferson knew it, and it may sadly be much delayed before it yet becomes such a world as envisioned by Isaiah. All we can do is strive mightily to bring the world to a better place than it is now.

But the first two decades of the 21st century do not augur well for humanity. It is, therefore, prudent to maintain personal and national defense against all who harbor ill will and genocidal ambitions against us.

There is suffocating hypocrisy in the United Nations where up is down, day is night, and a veritable Kafkaesque worldview exists. There is towering deceit and mendacity in the international corridors of power. Few nations can be trusted. Most act in their own best interests, despite agreements between them. Atrocities in Syria, Libya, the Sudan, Iraq, Nigeria, Iran, Somalia, to name a very few of the world’s benighted lands, make the very angels in heaven weep.

Liberals and the all-pervasive and pernicious Left would ban guns for personal and legitimate self-defense if they could; and they try mightily to do so. Similarly, the Left eviscerates national defense whenever it comes into power. In the 1930s, Britain let down its guard by slashing its military, despite all the clear and present warnings of German rearmament and the strident war cry spewing from the mouth of Adolf Hitler and his adoring German Nazi sycophants.

Winston Churchill, forced into the political wilderness, saw clearly what was coming and he, almost alone, pleaded in the House of Commons for the British nation to wake up before it was too late. For his efforts he was demonized as a war monger for far too long. And we all know how things turned out.

Do we all have to go forward into the past? Do we all have to decry and vilify those who today warn us against the coming new war; a Jihadist war that will transcend in human depravity even the horrors unleashed by Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. It is coming, and it is the same ultimate horrific combination of a religion wrapped in an ideology that the same Winston Churchill warned about many years before the rise of National Socialism (Nazis) and Communism.

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s crazed mullahs are so close now to producing a nuclear weapon in 2022 – and they will use it if they can.  

Churchill called it, Mohammedanism, and he wrote the following in his book, The River War:

“No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”

Atrocities committed in the name of Islam go hand in hand with a stealthy infiltration of Sharia law into every facet of life in the West. Vast sums of money befoul European and American universities, enslaving their ability to attain and maintain the moral high ground. Instead, insidious examples of moral equivalence abound in what Michael Savage once famously described as the “colleges of lower learning.

Anti-Semitism corrodes the very fabric of the halls of academia as beguiled and besmirched student bodies fall victim to the malignant lies and poison of the immensely well-funded Arab and Muslim student organizations whose limitless coffers are again enriched by the Biden presidency which turned us from being energy independent and the world’s leading exporter of energy to begging Saudi Arabia to produce more oil.

The students are the leaders of tomorrow. With few exceptions they are now infected, perhaps terminally, with an aberrant hatred of Jews and of Israel. Remember, the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine and whatever befalls them, eventually befalls all.

Everything points to a new dark age with the combined stench of Marxism along with Arab and Muslim oil suffocating all clarity of thought and, perhaps, finally ushering in the victory that the followers of Islam have sought over those they have impudently called “infidels” since the 7th century. Remember also, even for those who yet mock the Bible, Genesis 12:3 remains an everlasting reproach and warning to those who would curse embattled Israel and its people.

Churchill, Adams, Jefferson all understood the ever present and mortal Islamic threat. They spoke with conviction and knowledge in an age where the debilitating and impoverishing insanity of political correctness had not yet arrived to stifle free speech. There are those today who also warn us. But must we be fated yet again to ignore them and walk blindly into the darkest night of all?

©Victor Sharp. All rights reserved.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Strikes Down Mask Mandate

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Yet another blow to the totalitarian Democrat’s power play on the CCP virus, their partners in the take down of this great but teetering country.

Pennsylvania high court throws out mask mandate for schools

By Mark Scolford, AP, December 10, 2021
First grade students at Dunmore Elementary Center in Dunmore, Pa., wear masks on their first day of classes on Aug. 27, 2020. The legality of an order by Pennsylvania’s acting state Health secretary requiring masks in K-12 schools and child care facilities is before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The two sides are set to argue their respective positions before the justices on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021 in Philadelphia. (Christopher Dolan/The Times-Tribune via AP)
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First grade students at Dunmore Elementary Center in Dunmore, Pa., wear masks on their first day of classes on Aug. 27, 2020. The legality of an order by Pennsylvania’s acting state Health secretary requiring masks in K-12 schools and child care facilities is before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The two sides are set to argue their respective positions before the justices on Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021 in Philadelphia. (Christopher Dolan/The Times-Tribune via AP)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A statewide mask mandate for Pennsylvania schoolchildren was thrown out by the state Supreme Court on Friday, raising the prospect that at least some students in the state may soon be allowed to attend classes without a face covering.

The justices announced their decision to invalidate the Wolf administration’s statewide mandate for masks inside K-12 school buildings and child care facilities but did not issue a written opinion that explains their reasoning.

They upheld a lower-court decision that the mandate was imposed by Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s acting health secretary without legal authorization. The practical impact of the decision will depend on what the justices say in the written opinion or opinions they will issue in the case and which schools and school districts impose their own masking requirements.

The court took action amid a statewide surge in new infections and hospitalizations. Pennsylvania is reporting an average of 7,571 infections per day, up over 20% in two weeks. Hospitalizations have risen 55% since mid-November, to an average of more than 4,000 per day, and acute-care facilities are becoming overwhelmed.
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Wolf press secretary Beth Rementer described the decision as “extremely disappointing.”

“The administration recognizes that many school districts want to ensure a safe and healthy learning environment for students and staff, and we are hopeful they will make appropriate mitigation decisions moving forward,” Rementer said.

She urged districts to prioritize health and safety, calling masks “a proven and simple way to keep kids in school without interruption and participate in sports and other extracurricular activities.”

The justices upheld a Commonwealth Court ruling that Alison Beam, the acting state health secretary, lacked authority to require masks, did not follow state laws about enacting regulations and acted without a required existing disaster emergency declared by the governor in place.

The lower court found Pennsylvania’s disease control law does not give health secretaries “the blanket authority to create new rules and regulations out of whole cloth, provided they are related in some way to the control of disease or can otherwise be characterized as disease control measures.”

“The decision will be left to the 500 school districts in Pennsylvania, with respect to what to do with the implications of this order,” said Thomas W. King III, a lawyer for the Republican lawmakers, school districts, schools and parents who sued to challenge it.

King, who has advised against mask mandates, said school boards will have to consult their own lawyers about what policy to now adopt. As of the end of July, 59 of 474 school districts submitted plans to the state Education Department that mandated masks for the current school year.

“This is a great day in Pennsylvania for the rule of law,” King said. “The Supreme Court has proved that no one is above the law, and that includes the secretary of health or the governor.”

The decision comes just two days after the high court heard oral arguments in the case.

The lawsuit was filed by Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre; state Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford; two religious schools; three public school districts; and several parents of schoolchildren.

Beam’s actions, the litigants argued, left the public unable to voice their opinions and the General Assembly unable to review the policy’s legality or necessity, and violated state law.

The attorney general’s office, representing Beam, told the court earlier this week there does not appear to be anything to prevent schools and school districts from issuing their own masking orders.

The mask mandate took effect in early September. Wolf announced in November he intends to return authority over masking decisions to local school districts in January, but will continue to require masks in child care centers and early learning programs.

AP writer Michael Rubinkam contributed from northeastern Pennsylvania.

RELATED ARTICLE: DEMOCRAT Governor Decides to Replace Terminated Healthcare Workers with Unqualified National Guard

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Rabbi Weissman: ‘How I Was Saved From the COVID Cult.’

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This new Glazov Gang episode features Rabbi Chananya Weissman, the author of hundreds of articles and seven books on a wide range of subjects. He is the director and producer of a documentary, Single Jewish Male, and a series of short films. His work can be found at ChananyaWeissman.com and rumble.com/c/c-782463. He can be contacted at endthemadness@gmail.com.

Rabbi Weissman discusses ‘How I Was Saved From the COVID Cult’, sharing Being played for a while . . . before breaking free.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Glazov Gang video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Imposes Travel Bans He Called Trump Racist for Imposing

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My latest in PJ Media:

We all know that travel bans are racist; Old Joe Biden told us so himself. He tweeted on February 1, 2020: “Trump further diminished the U.S. in the eyes of the world by expanding his travel ban. This new ‘African Ban,’ is designed to make it harder for black and brown people to immigrate to the United States. It’s a disgrace, and we cannot let him succeed.” Now that Biden’s handlers, possibly even including the wonk who actually composed that tweet, are in charge, all that systemic racism is being swept away, and for that we can all be grateful. Or at least we could be until Friday, when Biden’s handlers announced a plan to follow in Trump’s footsteps and ban travel from eight countries in Africa in order to fight what is being presented as a dangerous new variant of the coronavirus.

Politico reported Friday that the ban was announced “just hours after a new coronavirus variant was deemed a highly transmissible virus of concern,” and would go into effect Monday, banning travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi from entering the United States.” Politico noted that Biden’s handlers made this move on advice from none other than Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Left’s untarnished guru of Covid prevention.

And that makes it all right. We can learn from this that the problem with Trump’s travel bans was not that he imposed them, but why he imposed them. In February 2020, Biden lambasted Trump’s racism over the extension of the travel bans to Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania, as well as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This was after Trump had previously imposed travel bans upon Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf explained at the time that “the countries hit by the new measures failed to meet US security and information-sharing standards.” The countries from which Trump banned travel could not or would not provide adequate information to American officials about the people who wanted to enter the country. Trump reasoned that in light of that, the risk of admitting anyone from those countries was too great. His travel bans were motivated by concern for the safety of the American people.

Biden and the Democrats, however, knew better. They knew that Trump’s expressed concern for safety was just a ploy, a fig leaf to cover his racism. They knew, or claimed to know, that Trump’s travel bans were actually motivated by “Islamophobia,” and derided it as a “Muslim Ban,” even though Tanzania, Myanmar, North Korea and Venezuela aren’t exactly Islamic Republics. Biden promised during his campaign: “On day one, I’ll end Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban. My administration will look like America with Muslim Americans serving at every level.” As soon as he entered the Oval Office, Biden followed through on this promise, ending Trump’s travel bans in a flurry of executive orders on January 20, 2021.

There is more. Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

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Germany: Judge gives 10-year sentence to Muslim who stabbed woman 76 times; she had ‘insulted him’

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

INSANITY: Biden Releases ‘National Gender Strategy’

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There’s no end to Democrat madness and their war on G-d.

Biden released a ‘National Gender Strategy,’ and it is every bit as ridiculous as it sounds

By: Conn Carroll,  Washington Examiner, October 26, 2021:

If the Babylon Bee had been asked to write a “National Gender Strategy” to be posted on the White House’s website, it wouldn’t look any different than the document the Biden administration actually released last Friday.

The “fact sheet” contains every buzzword and policy that you would expect to hear from a progressive activist with a degree in gender studies

The four-page document begins by identifying “gender equity” as a “moral and strategic imperative.” Thanks to COVID-19, “we are at an inflection point,” the statement reads, as the pandemic has “magnified the challenges” that women and girls face — “especially women and girls of color.”

Given that the document asserts without any evidence that women of color have been hit hardest by COVID, it isn’t surprising that the document also promises “an intersectional approach” that “considers the barriers and challenges faced by those who experience intersecting and compounding forms of discrimination and bias related to gender, race, and other factors, including sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, disability, age, and socioeconomic status. This includes addressing discrimination and bias faced by Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American people, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, and other people of color.”

To improve “economic security,” the document calls for investments in “care infrastructure,” but nowhere is any real infrastructure ever mentioned.

The document promises to “dismantle the barriers to equal opportunity in education” so that women can “compete on a level playing field.” Never mind that women now make up 60% of all college students and are awarded two out of every three college degrees .

Abortion is, of course, absolutely essential for the “health care” of women, according to the document, which also promises to “defend the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion in the United States, established in Roe v. Wade.”

If there is one document that best encapsulates how out-of-touch the Biden White House is with everyday concerns of voters, this “National Gender Strategy” may be it.

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October 26th: Biden’s America and the Conservative Resistance

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

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Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Food Prices Hit Highest Level in a Decade Crushing Ordinary Americans

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Gas is at a level not seen since the disastrous Obama years. But not to worry, the Democrat elite are getting richer and richer on the backs of the American worker.

Food Prices Hit Highest Level in a Decade

Food prices across the world have risen to their highest levels in a decade on the back of tightening supply conditions coupled with robust demand, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

By:  The Epoch Times, October 11, 2021:

The FAO’s food price index, which measures world food commodity prices, has surged by 32.8 percent in the 12 months through September, coming in at a reading of 130 points, a level not seen since 2011. On a month-over-month basis, the index rose 1.2 percent.

Accounting for the bulk of the rise in the index were higher prices of most cereals and vegetable oils.

The FAO vegetable oil price index was up 60 percent in September from a year earlier, and 1.7 percent higher than in August. The cereal price measure was up 27.3 percent over the year last month, and 2 percent from August.

Dairy and sugar prices also rose in September by an over-the-year 15.2 percent and 53.5 percent, respectively, while the meat price index was up 26.3 percent above its year-earlier level.

While much of the inflation story has been focused on surging energy costs and products affected by the semiconductor chip shortage such as used cars, rising food cost signals are increasingly flashing red.

As the U.S. economy rebounds, packaged food companies are grappling with inflation, with Conagra Brands Inc. saying on Oct. 7 that it would increase prices again on its frozen meals and snacks.

Conagra said it was facing rising costs of ingredients including edible oils, proteins, and grains, forcing it to increase prices on frozen goods by 3.5 percent and on staple meals by 3.3 percent.

Food-makers General Mills, Campbell Soup, and J.M. Smucker also have raised wholesale prices in response to rising ingredient and freight costs.

Pork and beef prices have surged in the past few months, while the Labor Department’s August inflation report showed that meat, poultry, fish, and eggs were up 8 percent over the past year and 15.7 percent from prices in August 2019, before the pandemic. Beef prices jumped 12.2 percent over the past year, and bacon was up 17 percent during the same period.

Experts say increasing energy costs around the world could exacerbate the problem.

“It’s this combination of things that’s beginning to get very worrying,” Abdolreza Abbassian, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, told Bloomberg in a recent interview. “It’s not just the isolated food-price numbers, but all of them together. I don’t think anyone two or three months ago was expecting the energy prices to get this strong.”

Food price inflation is also driving up consumer expectations for future price increases.

The New York Fed’s August survey of consumer expectations showed that Americans anticipate food prices to rise by 7.9 percent in a year, higher than the overall inflation expectation of 5.2 percent.

Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly characterized the current bout of inflation as “transitory” though they have increasingly expressed concern about the risk of a de-anchoring of inflationary expectations. That’s where confidence in the “transitory” narrative falls and people start to believe and behave as if inflation will be far stickier than previously believed, impacting wage and price-setting behavior and potentially even sparking the kind of upward wage-price spiral that bedeviled the economy in the 1970s.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Prices Are Continuing to Surge: Here’s What’s Becoming the Most Expensive

Biden White House Warns American Consumers Of Empty Shelves Come Christmastime

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Biden Plan Would Sabotage U.S. Economic Competitiveness in One Huge Way, Analysis Finds

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That’s not ‘Building Back Better’—it’s shooting ourselves in the foot.  

President Biden has heralded his $4.5+ trillion spending proposals and accompanying tax hikes as an investment in “leading the world versus letting it pass us by.” Yet, paradoxically, a new analysis exposes one huge way Biden’s plans would make the US less competitive on the global stage.

Key to financing the spending plans is a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent. When factoring in state corporate taxes, the US’s average corporate tax rate would reach a whopping 30.9 percent. And according to a new Tax Foundation analysis, this punitive level of business taxation would be the third-highest corporate tax rate among developed countries, outstripped only by Colombia and Portugal.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE TAX FOUNDATION INFOGRAPHIC

Why is this a problem?

Well, the US would become a less attractive place for business investment, which is bad news for entrepreneurs, workers, and customers alike. Businesses would understandably be less likely to conduct business in the US when they could go to dozens of other developed countries with lower tax rates. As a result, our economic competitiveness would suffer.

“Returning to near the top of the OECD in corporate tax rates would… disincentivize investment and encourage firms to shift profits and locate elsewhere, resulting in fewer job opportunities for Americans and less tax revenue for the U.S. government,” the analysis explains.

Yikes.

Biden claims his tax-and-spend agenda is meant to reassert America’s dominance. But the costly tax hikes the president seeks would set our economic competitiveness back on the global stage. That’s not “Building Back Better”—it’s shooting ourselves in the foot.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

WATCH: New Biden Vax Mandate Doesn’t Make ANY Sense (Here’s Why)

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

‘A Giant Can of Worms’: Afghans Are Walking Off U.S. Bases, No One Knows Where They Are

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My latest in PJ Media:

“It’s a giant can of worms,” said a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who asked not to be named, and in these days of rapidly increasing Biden administration authoritarianism, it’s easy to see why. Grateful Afghan refugees are, according to Reuters, upsetting the establishment narrative in large numbers by engaging in “independent departures” from the U.S. military bases where the evacuees are being housed. That is, they’re getting up and walking away, and no one knows where they are. At least 700 Afghans have now left various military bases and are somewhere in the United States. Over 300 have vanished from Fort Bliss alone. No one knows where. What could possibly go wrong?

Remember: Biden’s handlers have no idea who most of these people are. Back on September 1, according to Politico, “a State Department official said in a private briefing to reporters that ‘the majority’ of special immigrant visa applicants were left in Afghanistan due in part to the complications of the evacuation, and that he and his team are ‘haunted’ by the evacuees the U.S. could not get out by the Aug. 31 deadline.” That is, the vast majority: Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on September 21, according to The Hill, that “of the 60,000 Afghans who have entered the U.S., nearly 8,000 are either U.S. citizens or residents, while about 1,800 are SIV holders, having obtained visas after assisting the U.S. military.”

That leaves around 50,200 Afghan refugees for whom we have no certain identification and no assurance whatsoever that they aren’t jihad terrorists. Nor is that all: The Hill states without a trace of irony that Biden’s handlers have “boasted” about having brought “more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan.” Who is among the other 74,000 who are apparently on their way here? No one knows.

Daniel Greenfield notes that there are three possibilities as to why these evacuees have disappeared from the military bases and left no forwarding address: “They’re not legally who they say they are and are worried that the authorities will find out”; or “they’re committing a crime such as trafficking young girls as had already been reported at Fort McCoy”; or “they’re terrorists here to infiltrate America.”

That third possibility becomes more likely in light of the unpleasant fact that Business Insider reported on August 15:

Thousands of inmates, including former Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters, were released from a prison on the outskirts of Kabul as the Taliban called for a “peaceful transition” of power. Afghan government troops surrendered Bagram airbase to the Taliban early on Sunday. The base houses Pul-e-Charki prison, which has around 5,000 prisoners. It is the largest in Afghanistan and notorious for its poor conditions. A maximum-security cellblock held members of al Qaeda and Taliban, said reports. Footage published by an independent Afghan news agency, which supports the Taliban, appears to show militants letting the inmates out.

Did any of these al-Qaeda and Islamic State jihadis get on planes bound for America? No one knows.

There is more. Read the rest here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘It was a slap in the face’: Top brass forced Marines to erase taunts of ISIS and the Taliban before leaving Afghanistan

Canada: Muslim information technology specialist became narrator of Islamic State jihad recruitment videos

France: Muslim plotted attack on synagogue with Kalashnikov

Canada: Jihadi Muslima denied parole, would ‘likely kill or injure if released,’ insists she doesn’t need medication

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

TYRANNY: Biden To Create a Vaccine Mandate For Interstate Travel Within United States

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To stop freedom of movement between free states (red) and slave states (blue).

Get Ready For Vaccine Mandates If You Want To Drive Across State Lines

By: Net Breaking, October 2, 2021:

The Biden administration is constantly re-inventing ways to force the unvaccinated to take the Covid jab.

First, it was free burgers, donuts, and money.

Then, just three weeks ago, Biden forced vaccine mandates on businesses with over 100 employees.

Now, instead of respecting Americans’ freedom of choice, Biden plans to create a vaccine mandate for interstate travel within the United States.

What happened to Biden’s promise to never require federal vaccine mandates?

I guess it was just another empty promise from the failing Biden administration.

RELATED VIDEO: Jen Psaki Admits Big Vaccine Push Is An Effort to Bring Biden’s Poll Numbers Up.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.

Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.

Follow me on Gettr. I am there, click here. It’s open and free.

Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.

Inflation Hits 30-Year High According to This Key Metric

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It’s the biggest annual surge recorded since January 1991—roughly three decades ago.

Left-leaning media coverage has in recent weeks pushed the narrative that inflation is fading. But shocking new inflation numbers released today blow that media spin to smithereens.

The Labor Department just released the latest Personal Consumption Expenditures index (PCE), which is the Federal Reserve’s preferred metric for monitoring inflation. It shows a 4.3 percent rise in consumer prices from August 2020 to August 2021, with prices rising 0.4 percent last month alone. That’s the biggest annual surge recorded since January 1991—roughly three decades ago.

Even when factoring out volatile food and energy prices, the PCE still shows a 0.3 percent monthly rise in consumer prices and a 3.6 percent year-over-year increase. That’s the highest on that metric since May 1991!

This all may sound like abstract economic data, but it translates to a real erosion of everyday Americans’ living standards and purchasing power. As economist and FEE fellow Peter Jacobsen has previously explained, rising inflation means “the average consumer making the same salary this year has taken a pay cut when you consider what their paycheck can actually buy.”

Even the Federal Reserve is starting to acknowledge, much belatedly, that these persistent levels of inflation are not just a “temporary” problem.

“It’s also frustrating to see the bottlenecks and supply chain problems not getting better — in fact at the margins apparently getting a little bit worse,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said earlier this week. “We see that continuing into next year probably, and holding up inflation longer than we had thought.”

“It’s very difficult to say how big those effects will be in the meantime or how long they will last,” he added.

Of course, Powell and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve have every incentive to downplay the inflation problem hurting Americans. After all, it is, in part, driven by the Fed’s own policy decisions.

As Jacobsen noted when the concerning inflation metrics first arose in May 2021, the Fed has created trillions of new dollars out of thin air during the pandemic to date. The natural consequence of this money-supply expansion, he explains, is that “If more dollars chase the exact same goods, prices will rise.”

But even the Fed’s preferred inflation metric, the PCE, is now recording the highest levels of consumer price increases measured in 30 years. This problem is becoming impossible for even the most obstinate observers to deny. And until policymakers change course, American families will continue to pay the price.

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Does Biden’s $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Include a Mileage Tax?

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Here’s a dismaying prospect: Paying 6, 8, or 10 cents in new taxes for every mile you drive. It may sound small, but at an 8 cent rate, that would be $1,144 in new annual taxes for the average American, who drives about 14,300 miles a year. Yikes!

Some on social media are claiming that this punitive tax scheme has been slipped into President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending legislation—which, after all, is nearly 3,000 pages and is chock full of unrelated waste and partisan pet projects. But are they right to be concerned about a mileage tax soon becoming reality?

No. At least, not yet.

The infrastructure legislation does not include a mileage tax or another form of driving tax. What it does include is a pilot program to study and test the idea. The legislation authorizes $125 million in taxpayer funding for this test initiative. (A lot of taxpayer money for an experiment, no?)

“People would volunteer to be part of the test,” fact-checkers at local New York news outlet WGRZ-TV report. “The test would require volunteers to record their miles, pay the fees, and then be reimbursed by the government. This pilot program would go through the year 2026 and at that point, if Congress and the president like it, they would have to pass another bill making it into law. This infrastructure bill simply creates the program.”

We can certainly question the wisdom of this endeavor. But rest assured that if the infrastructure legislation ultimately passes—a likely if not certain outcome—you won’t get a new per-mile bill from the IRS. However, this move does represent a shift toward mainstreaming and advancing the idea of a per-mile driving tax.

Such a tax would be highly regressive, meaning that it would disproportionately burden low-income Americans. So, too, the costs would fall harder on rural Americans who drive more than their city-dwelling counterparts. That said, proponents argue it simply funds highway infrastructure by taxing those who use it. They also note that it could replace the gas tax, which currently attempts to do the same yet fails to capture usage by electric vehicles.

Still, the prospect of sizable new taxes levied on working-class Americans solely for the privilege of being allowed to drive your own car isn’t an attractive one. Luckily, we aren’t actually facing this as an immediate reality, even if it is slowly being advanced into the mainstream.

WATCH: New Biden Vax Mandate Doesn’t Make ANY Sense (Here’s Why)

COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Like this story? Click here to sign up for the FEE Daily and get free-market news and analysis like this from Policy Correspondent Brad Polumbo in your inbox every weekday.

VIDEO: Biden Isn’t Joe-King with Mandate

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Attorneys general in 24 states sent a letter to President Biden yesterday, threatening legal action if he follows through on his threat to mandate private companies with more than 100 employees to require their employees either take the coronavirus vaccine, submit to weekly testing, or be fired. One of those attorneys general, Dave Yost of Ohio, explained further on “Washington Watch.”

“What the president said he wanted to do,” said Yost, “seems clearly beyond his authority.” President Biden plans to define coronavirus as an occupational safety hazard to be enforced by the Department of Labor, a step clearly outside the intended purpose of the law, the letter argued.

“Congress writes the laws, not the president. He doesn’t get to govern by dictate,” said Yost. “The difference between a democracy and a monarchy or a dictatorship is that in a democracy laws have to be written by a representative body, a congress or a parliament. In a monarchy or a dictatorship, one executive decides what the rules are and they enforce them. That is just fundamentally opposite our constitutional order.”

Not only is President Biden circumventing Congress’ authority to write laws, said Yost, but he is interfering with health issues which are properly considered “part of the police power that belongs to the states.” (Thus, to date, the CDC has issued only recommended guidelines, which state health departments have adopted, modified, or rejected. Mask mandates and lockdowns were widely issued by state governors, but the federal government only issued a mask mandate covering areas of federal jurisdiction, like federal property and air travel.)

Everyone, even the Biden administration, understands the president lacks the authority for such a mandate. “They know they don’t have the legal authority,” Yost explained, “but they do it knowing it’ll be in the courts forever.” President Biden’s strategy seems strikingly similar to one he employed only weeks ago, when he unilaterally extended an illegal moratorium on evictions, in direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling. Then, Biden admitted his action was illegal, but he was simply buying time for his policies. He said he sought the “ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month at least. I hope longer.”

In striking down Biden’s eviction moratorium, the Supreme Court stated clearly that the Constitution “does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.” They added, “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of ‘vast economic and political significance.'” It seems President Biden is simply calculating he can force many businesses to comply with his diktat before the Supreme Court obliterates it.

Yost said the attorneys general would likely ask for a temporary restraining order — when the administration actually produces a regulation. “Right now, it’s not in effect.” (Some private companies have begun requiring vaccination as a condition of employment, but that is their own decision.)

The silver lining of President Biden’s brazen lawlessness is that it serves to highlight the checks and balances of America’s federal system. When you don’t live in a monarchy ruled by King Joseph the First. When 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue overreaches, it triggers a reaction across town at the Supreme Court. But it also triggers a larger wave of resistance from those governments outside the Washington beltway that actually listen to the American people.

COLUMN BY

Joshua Arnold

Media Coordinator. As media coordinator, Joshua serves under the Vice President of Communications in a number of ways, including coordinating interview requests, editing op-eds and press releases, and assisting in various capacities with the Washington Watch radio show.

Joshua hails from Clemson, South Carolina, where he was homeschooled with his five siblings. He graduated from Patrick Henry College with a B.A. in Government and a special emphasis in American Politics and Policy. He later attended the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and graduated as valedictorian with a Master’s in Public Policy, emphasizing Economics and American Policy. Before joining Family Research Council, Joshua also worked for the National Pro-Life Alliance and parentalrights.org, as well as interning in the White House Office of Speechwriting.

Joshua is passionate about policy research and analysis, specifically about developing innovative solutions to the day’s greatest policy challenges from a biblical perspective. He enjoys participating in the life of his local church and exploring a variety of nerdy hobbies ranging from strategy board games to sci-fi television and book series.

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action video and column are republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.