Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Cuba

Issues & Insights

Cuba: The Collapse Of Another Socialist Utopia? Let’s Hope So   . . . "Cubans weary of being treated like animals without rights took to the streets, shouting “Freedom!” “Down with the dictatorship,” and, most pointedly, “Down with communism!” In some cases, protesters carried American flags. This was not an isolated demonstration: According to the Spanish-language data site Inventario, some 63 cities and towns were roiled by demonstrations on Sunday through early Monday.

"Here in the U.S., some on the left initially tried to portray this as Cubans being upset over COVID-19 infections and a lack of vaccines. A State Department spokesperson styled it as Cubans “exercising their right to peaceful assembly … about rising COVID cases/deaths & medicine shortages.' ”

But please remember, Biden, as Barack Obama’s vice president, supported “normalization” with Cuba’s regime. How’d that work out?. . . 

Democrats’ Definition Of ‘Misinformation’ Is Whatever Hurts Them Politically Today

The Federalist

The Biden administration’s gross collusion with Big Tech to censor opposing viewpoints is not only blatant tyranny but also obvious hypocrisy.

"Facebook is killing people, misinformation is rampant, and the only people who can save us from ourselves are the all-wise executives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue whose judgment is infallible and whose motives are pure. That’s the message emanating from the White House and the corporate press.

"White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced last week that, due to 12 unnamed people on social media posting what the Biden administration considers to be misinformation, the White House is actively “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation” and “helping” to “boost trusted content.” Going even further, Psaki said nothing is “off the table” for using Big Tech to quiet opposing views.

"Not only is the Biden administration effectively deputizing Facebook to be an extension of the federal government’s communications office, but it also insists that if you’re banned from one Big Tech site for questioning conventional wisdom, you should be banned from all of them." . . .

. . . "This push for censorship is interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the same political stripe that ridiculously cried “fascism” for four years under Donald Trump is now taking concrete steps to suppress political opposition, one of the hallmarks of true fascism. It’s also interesting because information changes so rapidly, as Psaki herself admitted.". . . 

. . . "President Ronald Reagan was right when he said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” The Biden administration has gotten disturbingly more specific: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help Facebook silence you.” . . .

Citizen Patriots Are Fighting Back: Marxist Propaganda, Critical Race Theory And The Deterioration Of American Schools

 Noisy Room

This is the fourth article in this series on Critical Race Theory (CRT). The earlier three may be seen herehere, and here. Their intent was to document the deteriorating situation across America, and especially in our schools, where curricula increasingly focus on Marxist propaganda that teaches children to hate their own country and seeks to instigate racial divisiveness intended to foment civil strife and eventually, a communist revolution. . . .


. . . "The series began with an explanation of the purely Marxist origins of CRT, its ideological roots in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the transplant of the Frankfurt School to the U.S. in the 1930s, and the eventual spread of CRT narratives throughout American academia, faith communities, government, media, popular culture, and society in general.

"With the Biden administration, and specifically the Department of Education, openly pushing the teaching of CRT in U.S. public schools, the situation is raising alarm among educators, parents, legislators, and ordinary citizens. As embedding of CRT into Ethnic Studies programs in California and other states became widespread over the last several years, parents increasingly began to realize the malignant nature of what was being taught to their children. Tried and true pedagogical methodology that rewards academic achievement, focuses on fact-based education, and operates on meritocracy was being replaced with meaningless policies of “equity”. Everything was reduced to race. Instead of Marxist economic class divisions, CRT substituted ethnic and race labels that identify Americans as either “oppressed” or “oppressors”. Identity by intrinsic, immutable characteristics took the place of Martin Luther King’s “content of one’s character”. The Marxist rot that spread throughout American society with what seemed a startling rapidity took many by surprise. In fact, though, that ideology had long been nurtured carefully, methodically, but below the radar, following Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s blueprint for a “long march through the institutions”." . . .


Children Have Been Expelled From School After Parents Protested CRT
One parent expressed her regret because when people stand up and try to speak the truth, there really are individuals who wish to take revenge on you. In this situation, they reacted against our kids, who are blameless, Andrea Gross and Amy Gonzalez told Fox & Friends First.

 Hasbro Whistleblower Claims Company Is Injecting Critical Race Theory Through its Products

Isn't It about Time to Stop Lobbing Ridiculous Accusations at Trump?

E. Jeffrey Ludwig   "The Donald J. Trump–bashers have been saying for years, "Trump should go to jail!"  This hostile attitude is intended to retaliate for his saying to Hillary Clinton in one of their debates that if he were in office, she would be in jail.  So, hearing this public slurring of their village queen, the vengeful hearts of her loyal fans desired to turn the tables and actually put him in jail.

"One of the real Trump-haters who tried to turn his hate into cash was Michael Avenatti.  He was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, a leading pornicator, while she went on many TV shows claiming that Trump had committed fornication with her while married and that she had been paid off.  She even cast aspersions on his private parts.  Later, when Mr. Avenatti, her lawyer, tried to cheat her, she turned on him and publicly stated that she had lied about Mr. Trump.  She did not call it an extortion plot, but that is what it was.  Now Avenatti is going to jail for 30 months for trying to extort money from Nike.  It seems that cheating Nike gets you punished, but throwing some repulsive dirt on a sitting president does not.

"The Trump-bashers have been investigating DJT for years now — they keep throwing you know what at the wall.  Many of the Trump-haters are smart people who know how to research and how to produce reams of papers filled with lies.  Yet these same manipulators and scoundrels have not been able to pin one credible criminal offense on him.  Nevertheless, they continue to make it their life's work to keep trying." . . .



Sunday, July 18, 2021

Ten (Plus One) Signs that the Age of Biden is Upon Us

Herein lie some pull Quotes from Ms. Feldman's column

Clarice Feldman  2. Claiming that BLM cares about Blacks and police oppression of them

"Not only does the rebellion in Cuba reveal the shortcomings of this socialist hellhole, but it forces Black Lives Matter to reveal its Marxist sympathies. Despite ample evidence of police state brutality against the largely Brown and Black protestors, BLM has not raised a single objection. This prompts the satire site Babylon Bee to suggest the organization change its name to “Black and Brown Lives Matter Unless They are Protesting Communism.” Cuba’s leadership is after all lily White and, from the outset of the revolution, Castro and Che Guevara showed no sympathy to Cuban Blacks. The psychotic sadist Guevara, whose portrait adorns T-shirts and other gear worn by rich  Hollywood figures and American leftists everywhere, was clearest on the animus to Blacks.

After the Revolution's victory in 1959, he famously said, "We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing." . .

5. Minority Party Rights


"In order to prevent a quorum to vote on election reform, Texas Democrats, a minority in the state legislature, fled the state (unmasked) on a private plane to Washington, D.C.  (Three of them have now tested positive for Covid.)  The hypocrisy is clear to me even if they are missing hypocrisy detection filters. They say they came here to demand an end to the filibuster on the ground that it allows a minority to control the agenda. (Let me know if any reporter interviewing them, points out this irony.)

6. Global Warming and the Great Plastic Scare

Global warming, as always, is a ripe area for factual discrepancy from partisan hype.  

...a new report that shows greenhouse gas emissions are not an American or Western problem. They are primarily a Chinese problem. A study from Sun Yat-sen University in China found that more than half of the world’s urban
greenhouse gas emissions are generated in only 25 big cities, and 23 of them are located in China. . . .

. . . " 10. The Lies About January 6 Slowly Are Exposed

"This week, then-Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund debunked the claim that the evacuations of the Capitol Buildings were caused by the pro-Trump demonstrations. Instead , , , More...

 

Rich Terrell

George Floyd Mural Destroyed After Lightning Strike ...  "A mural honoring the late George Floyd collapsed after being hit by lightning, according to witnesses.
"   'Photos show the mural in Toledo, Ohio—which was painted following Floyd's death last year—reduced to rubble.
"According to local ABC-affiliate WTVG, Toledo Police said witnesses reported lightning had hit the building at approximately 4:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
"13abc reported that its Doppler radar, a device used in weather monitoring, detected a strike around the area at that time.
"A witness also told Toledo Fire and Rescue Department they had seen lightning hit the building before the collapse, according to WTOL11—which reported that the department confirmed this caused the wall to fall." . . .





CNN’s Brian Stelter Shredded by His Own Guest: ‘You Are One of the Reasons People Can’t Stand the Media’ (Video)

 Yahoo   "Michael Wolff, the author best known for the tell-all “Fire & Fury: Inside The Trump White House,” appeared on “Reliable Sources” this weekend to promote his newest book — but also took the opportunity to air some of his grievances with host Brian Stelter.

"What started as a general complaint about all media and Wolff defending comments he’s made in the past quickly turned into the veteran writer tearing into Stelter directly.

"“I think you yourself, you know, while you’re a nice guy, you’re full of sanctimony. You become one of the parts of the problem of the media,” Wolff said bluntly. “You know, you come on here and you have a monopoly on truth, you know exactly how things are supposed to be done. You are one of the reasons why people can’t stand the media. Sorry! It’s your fault!”

"At that, Stelter outright started laughing, before asking what he could or should do differently to not be part of the problem, as Wolff suggested. In response, Wolff took a page straight out of Aaron Burr’s “Hamilton” playbook.

" 'Don’t talk so much,” Wolff replied. “Listen more.". . .  

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Sorry, Mr. President: The ‘fight’ for voter rights is nothing like the Civil War

Rich Lowry   "If this is Joe Biden when he’s forceful and passionate, the country is better off with the passive and detached version. 

"The president gave a thunderous address in Philadelphia on Tuesday denouncing alleged Republican voter suppression. Playing on the darkest fears of Democrats and layering on the adjectival overkill, Biden blatantly distorted Republican state-level election laws in a frankly demagogic speech.

"Biden rightly excoriated former President Donald Trump, if not by name, for his conduct since the election. But he also lashed the Republican election bills. The approach seems designed to mirror Trump’s effort to undermine his side’s faith in the electoral process with a countervailing effort to undermine Biden’s own side’s faith in the electoral process.

"Indeed, if Democrats lose in 2022 or 2024, Biden’s speech may be seen by Democrats as providing an equally corrosive excuse: It was Republican voter suppression.

"According to Biden, the GOP election rules are one of the most grievous affronts to our democratic rights ever. “The 21st-century Jim Crow assault is real,” he said. “It’s unrelenting, and we’re going to challenge it vigorously.”

"He called this push “the most serious test of our democracy since the Civil War,” making sure to note that the statement wasn’t hyperbole, even though it’s hard to imagine a more hyperbolic assertion." . . .  More

Sister of pilot killed on Sept. 11 absolutely excoriates leftists who liken Jan. 6 Capitol riot to 9/11 terror attack that claimed nearly 3,000 lives

 We know that Huffington Post senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte defended Will by saying the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was "1000 percent worse" than 9/11.

Dave Urbanske  . . . "She explained that her brother, Charles "Chic" Burlingame, was the pilot of American Airlines flight 77 and "was murdered in his cockpit at age 51 in a 6½-minute struggle for control of the airplane" — and then gave some facts to the fact-deprived."  More...

Why is Joe Biden still standing by his Earth First! nominee for Bureau of Land Management?

‘Not an innocent bystander’: Ex-agent disputes Biden nominee’s tree-spiking account


 Monica Showalter   "It's starting to look bad for Tracy Stone-Manning, Joe Biden's nominee to run the Bureau of Land Management.

"The latest news is that she lied to Congress about her involvement in eco-terrorism; an Earth First! tree-spiking incident in Idaho's Clearwater National Forest in 1989.  At the time, she wrote a profane threatening letter to "warn" loggers about the spikes and then told Congress she knew nothing about the whole thing and was merely an innocent college kid forced to do it to try to make sure nobody was "getting hurt."  It didn't happen that way, according to various sources.

"Normally, a person with any such involvement, lying or not, would be exceptionally unfit to run the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees 245 to 247 million acres of public land, and has 9,000 employees.  Putting her in charge of it would be like putting an embezzler in charge of the Federal Reserve. 

"Yet incredibly, Joe Biden continues to stand by her, even as one bad thing after another about her activity now rolls out. 

The Biden administration said Thursday it "stands by Tracy's statements and written submissions."  . . .  

Public documents obtained by the Journal tell the real story. According to that 1993 court transcript, Ms. Stone-Manning arrived in Missoula in 1988 and immediately moved into a house occupied by Earth First! members. This was the height of the wilderness wars, and Earth First! had by the mid-1980s defined itself as the tip of the fanatical spear. Its modus operandi was violence and terror, or what it called "monkeywrenching"—spectacular arsons, equipment destruction, and most notably the deadly practice of tree spiking.  (Emphasis added by TD)

All 10 Senate Energy Republicans urged Mr. Biden in a Wednesday letter to withdraw her nomination, noting that Bob Abbey, who led the agency under President Obama, pulled his support last month for Ms. Stone-Manning.

. . . " Mr. Merkley described her as an influential member who “played an active role in the Earth First! hierarchy.” He also said that he decided to retire early after 28 years with the Forest Service in part over harassment and death threats from Earth First!" 

'Squad' member Cori Bush, a 'defund the police' advocate, recently spent $70,000 on private security

Bush recently praised a vote to defund the St. Louis police

 Fox News

. . . "As Bush's campaign dished out tens of thousands on private security, a luxury most Americans can't afford, the Missouri Democrat was simultaneously a major critic of law enforcement and one of the most ardent advocates in favor of defunding the police. Bush has said that defunding the police is not a "radical" idea, and she praised St. Louis in April for its "historic" vote to defund police. 

" 'Today's decision to defund the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department is historic," Bush said in a statement at the time. "It marks a new future for our city. For decades, our city funneled more and more money into our police department under the guise of public safety, while massively underinvesting in the resources that will truly keep our communities safe."

"Bush's campaign did not respond to a request for comment on the payments. 

"The most recent payments are not the first time Bush's campaign has spent on security this year. During the first three months of the year, her committee pumped $35,000 into such services with RS&T, Davis and Whole Armor Executive Protection, a Maryland-based firm.

"Bush has also funneled taxpayer cash toward security detail. In June, the Daily Caller reported that Bush's congressional office had spent $880 on a day of protection with RS&T as the firm was collecting checks from her campaign." . . .

I’m A Middle School Teacher And See How Critical Race Curriculum Is Creating Racial Hostility In School

Providence, RI: Some Students Have Started Calling Me “America” Because I’m White, and Colleagues Accuse Me of Having “White Privilege.”

Ramona Bessinger at Legal Insurrection


"I have been a public school teacher for the past 22 years, with the past seven in Providence, Rhode Island.  I have had the honor of serving public school children and their families as an English teacher first at the high school level, and currently at the middle school level.

"During my career I have always tried to provide the best education for my students. I am designated by the Rhode Island Department of Education a ‘Highly Qualified’ teacher, meaning, I have tenure and experience in my certifications.  I was awarded the English Speaking Union Shakespeare Scholarship for excellence in teaching Shakespeare. I helped implement curriculum and I have hosted multiple student clubs, literary magazines, youth groups and community outreach programs.

"I love being a teacher and I care a great deal about my students, almost all of whom are non-white.  This past 2020/21 school year was a sad and worrisome turning point for me as an educator. Providence K-8 teachers were introduced to one of the most racially divisive, hateful, and in large part, historically inaccurate curriculums I have ever seen in my teaching career.

"Yes, I am speaking about the controversial critical race theory that has infiltrated our public schools here in Rhode Island under the umbrella of Cuturally Responsive learning and teaching, which includes a focus on identities. You won’t see the words “critical race theory” on the materials, but those are the concepts taught. The new, racialized curriculum and materials focuses almost exclusively on an oppressor-oppressed narrative, and have created racial tensions among students and staff where none existed before.

"During fall 2020 semester, we were given our curriculum timeline on the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War. I noticed the stories and books seemed to focus almost exclusively on slavery and racism." . . .

Providence Teachers Union Confirms Affinity Group Segregation, Historical Books Destroyed, Holocaust Education Ended (Ramona Bessinger Update)

Missing from our curriculum during the 2020/ 21 school year was the diversity, perspective, truth, and rigor that previously were taught. Previously vetted books were removed from our classroom and sent to recycling.  Gone was the diverse collection of American and World Literature: House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin Go Tell It On The Mountain, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, essays by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., poetry by Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, Anne Frank, NightThe Boy In The Striped PajamasMacbeth, Walt Whitman, The Salem Witch Trials, The Crucible , Holocaust studies, world genocide, world art, universal themes, universal characters and any book or short story from the literary cannon.

"What saddened me most was that I would not be teaching the Holocaust any longer. The Holocaust unit included one of the following: either Anne FrankThe Boy In The Striped Pajamas, and depending on reading level, Elie Weisel’s Night When I asked the school reading coach where all the Holocaust books were, she said “we do not teach the Holocaust because kids can’t relate to the story.” . . .

Tony Branco