Got a flag to fly? Better check first!

 Secretary of State Antony Blinken Orders LGBT Flags Flown at U.S. Embassies, Will Name Special Envoy for Gay Rights   "During the hearing, Blinken also confirmed that he plans to appoint an envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTQ persons, a position created by Barack Obama in 2015 that wasn’t filled during the Trump presidency.

"Blinken claimed violence against that demographic increased while Trump was in office.

“ 'We’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase,” Blinken said. “And so, I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the department is going to take on and take on immediately. Raising the pride flag is one way to outright show LGBTQ solidarity.' ” . . .

Police Chief Bans Officers from Displaying 'Thin Blue Line' Flag "Police officers on the University of Wisconsin-Madison police force have been instructed not to display imagery of the thin-blue-line flag. Why? According to Police Chief Kristen Roman, the thin-blue-line flag has been "co-opted" by people with "hateful ideologies."

"Free speech and freedom of expression were once principles valued in America, particularly on college campuses. Nowadays, one can only speak and express themselves based on a dwindling list of approved items. For her officers, Police Chief Kristen Roman has removed the thin-blue-line flag from that list." . . .

UPDATED, 2/2: The Circle Woman: Jen Psaki Under Fire for Constant Pledges to ‘Circle Back’ on Tough Questions

 Breitbart  "White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday addressed growing social media mockery of her repeated promises to “circle back” on tough questions.

“ 'I often note I’m going to circle back. I hate to disappoint conservative Twitter but I’m going to circle back on a number of things as we often do directly,” she said, before following up on questions from last week on Hurricane Maria relief funds, the extended White House fence, and FEMA requesting troops.

"Last week, several media outlets noted Psaki’s repeated promises to “circle back” with reporters on questions for which she had no answers." . . .

Rent Free: Jen Psaki Gets Snarky After 'Circle Back' Video Goes Viral  "Jen Psaki let it be known today that conservative Twitter is really getting to her. Last week, someone put together a video making fun of how many times Psaki tells reporters that she’ll “circle back” on a question she doesn’t feel like answering. In reality, she’s just really bad at her job, clearly showing up unprepared while knowing the media will cover for her inability to give them straight answers." . . .

UPDATE: The Circle Woman: Report Shows Biden Staff Prescreening Psaki Press Briefing Questions  "Biden staffers have prescreened reporters ahead of Jen Psaki’s briefings to see what they plan to ask the White House press secretary, according to a report from the left-wing Daily Beast.

"The outlet cited “three sources with knowledge of the matter” and “written communications” that revealed that the Biden administration has “already on occasion probed reporters to see what questions they plan on asking new White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki when called upon during briefings” less than two weeks into the new administration.

"The report suggests that Psaki would have some idea of what reporters plan to ask prior to formally presenting their questions. Despite that, her “circle back” answers on tough questions have become a staple of her press briefings." . . . 

CLUELESS: Kamala Harris Tells Jobless Coal Miners They Should Work Reclaiming Abandoned ‘Land Mines’

Weasel Zippers

Did Harris mean just plain mines?

News Punch   "Vice President Kamala Harris recently shared her brilliant idea to “build back better” by reclaiming abandoned land mines in West Virginia.

“All of those skilled workers who are in the coal industry and transferring those skills to what we need to do in terms of dealing with reclaiming abandoned land mines.”

 Kamala 'Fweedom' Harris on re-skilling coal-miners to fix up abandoned land-mines.

Tony Branco

Iranian students are victims of the regime’s terrorism goals

Hassan Mahmoudi "The Iranian regime, which Trump's sanctions have pushed close to bankruptcy, is trying in various ways to cover its budget deficit by starving its people, both physically and mentally.  The regime robs them of food and energy and denies Iranian youths an education that will allow them to escape poverty.

"To raise money, the regime exports goods that are essential for its citizens' survival, such as eggs, poultry, vegetables, and other agricultural products.  It also exports gas and electricity at a discount to neighboring countries and converts the payments into foreign currency to use for meddling activities abroad.  Meanwhile, Iranians burn dirty, low-quality mazut at home, polluting the air for the country's citizens.

"The regime engages in further savings by cutting various public services and education budgets.  It uses the money it saves to increase its military and security budgets and to support its proxy forces in the region.  It recently increased the IRGC and Quds Force budgets by 58%.

"These policies have led to bitter poverty and misery in Iran.  A clear example is the misery that students experience.  On January 23, 2021, the Hamdeli newspaper wrote (my translation):

The suffering of Iranian students is a never-ending tale.  From the burning of classrooms to the collapse of school roofs to snake-infested classrooms made of bricks and mud and the challenges of schools made of huts and containers, etc., it is difficult to imagine a significant number of students in deprived areas of the country studying in dilapidated schools or schools made of huts or containers. But, these unsafe schools that do not have any educational standards, are the bitter realities of education in Iran, . . . 

AOC Attacks Home Owners, Squad Pushes Bill To Strip Property From Owners To Make Things ‘Fair’

News Thud

"Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked “homeowners” saying that they are hurting people that can’t afford to own land. Her rant comes as the crooked congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar proposed a bill that would strip property owners of their property if the federal government deems it necessary.

“ 'It makes no sense that we are squeezing people that already cannot afford to purchase their own home for more money than a person who already owns land and is a land-owning member or a home-owning member of our economy,” said a video posted

"Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota at the same time introduced a bill that would strip property rights from Americans; it’s called the Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act, which is a socialist dream.

"The bill would cancel all rent and mortgage payments regardless of income or employment throughout the duration of the pandemic.

“The bill would constitute a full payment forgiveness, with no accumulation of debt for renters or homeowners and no negative impact on their credit rating or rental history,” a news release from Omar’s office says.

"A fund would be created “to fully finance the purchase of private rental properties by non-profits, public housing authorities, cooperatives, community land trusts, and states or local governments — in order to increase the availability of affordable housing during this downturn.” 

"This means private property owners would be undermined and the power of government entities would be greatly increased." . . .

May 30, 2020: Black Lives Matter Rioters Attempt to Kill White Business Owner for Protecting his Business

Brian Stelter thinks Fox is ENEMY of the PEOPLE, wants them SILENCED, gets OWNED over it

 US News  via News Thud

No, this is not George Costanza

"CNN wants to drive Fox News off the air. That’s a business decision. Brian Stelter wants to sell books bashing Fox News. That’s a business decision. But it’s not JUST a business decision in either case.

"For one thing, it’s their little hurt baby feelings. When they get them hurt, they want you shut up.

"And it’s also rank stupidity. Stupid in the sense that they just don’t understand any of the most basic principles of a free and fair society, or the ethics of their profession in any way. Either willfully (the brass) or by dint of dimness (Stelter), it’s the most basic thing wrong with the corporate jokes we refer to as the American press." . . .

Bill Maher: Now that Trump is gone, 'We can't blame everything on him'

http://www.terrellaftermath.com/

Fox News  

The HBO star suggested 'we'll find out' in the next 100 days if Trump was really 'the bad guy' during COVID

. . . "That's because Democrats rely exclusively on the mass ignorance and stupidity of their constituency to get elected. The day their voters' knuckles clear the ground and voiceboxes articulate intelligent language is the day Democrats will experience their darkest hour and perhaps the beginning of the end. That day my be less than two years away." From the comments section in this article.

The ‘After Trump’ Era Begins by Victor Davis Hanson "The new AT age — “After Trump” — began on either Election Day, November 3, or on Inauguration Day, January 20. But either way, reality as we had known it for four years has been abruptly reinvented.

" Pfizer had hinted that a vaccine could be ready in late October. Then, mysteriously, it wasn’t. Then, stranger still, it appeared — a few days after Election Day.

"Suddenly, after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Illinois, Michigan, and other blue states eased some of their lockdown restrictions to get their economies back on track despite little change in COVID-19 rates. 

"During the Trump Age, the president was supposedly responsible for every death from COVID-19. Now, the media report that career scientists and health administrators in the federal government, especially at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were largely to blame for past slow testing, and were tardy and lax in apprising the nation of the infectious threat." 

"The Biden campaign’s widely reported promises of a new, superior COVID-19 plan turned out to be more of the same old, same old from the Trump Age." . . .

Goodwin: Biden brood already cashing in on Joe’s presidency

NY Post "They can’t quit the grift. No sooner had Joe Biden won the White House than his family went back to trying to make a buck off his name. 

"The latest sordid example involves one of Joe’s younger brothers, Frank Biden, appearing in a Florida law firm’s ad — on Inauguration Day no less. The ad used the president’s name to draw attention to the Berman Law Group’s class-action suit against sugar cane growers.

" 'The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,” says the ad. “The president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.”

"The ad, first reported by CNBC, appeared in the Daily Business Review and carried a picture of Frank Biden and quotes him saying, “My brother is a model for how to go about doing this work.”

"How touching. And shameless. 

"After the enormous political trouble Hunter Biden’s shady business ties caused during the campaign, Frank’s bid to piggy-back on Joe’s election sounds especially reckless. But here’s another way to look at it.

"Biden family members are oblivious to conflicts and criticism because they’ve been swimming in swamp corruption for decades. The two brothers, Frank and Jim, and Hunter have made millions and millions based on selling the perception of access to Joe’s power." . . . 

WaPo: Two Pinocchios For Kerry’s Wind-And-Solar Jobs Claims

But first: John Kerry's Family Sure Polluted the Earth a lot Last Year

Hot Air  "Two? Well, it’s a start, anyway. If you missed John Kerry’s remarks on the job-destruction impact from Joe Biden’s executive orders on climate change, let’s refresh memories first. Reporters asked Kerry how the new administration would explain to hundreds of thousands of energy workers about the necessity of making them unemployed, Kerry suggested that they could “make better choices,” and told reporters that they should learn to build solar panels instead.

Kerry also made some claims about the dynamism of employment in the wind and solar energy fields, claims that got the attention of Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler:" ...

. . . "— John F. Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, in remarks at the White House, Jan. 27, 2021

“Before covid, the fastest-growing job in the United States of America was solar panel technician, and the second-fastest-growing job was wind turbine technician.”

— Kerry, remarks on MSNBC, Jan. 28

"This metric is so elastic that it might as well be meaningless anyway. What does “fastest growing” mean, anyway? If a category goes from 500 to 2000 jobs, for example, that’s a 400% increase. If six million people get their jobs cut in another category, however, hearing about that 400% increase in another job category won’t do much to cheer them up.

"Those hypothetical numbers are a reductio ad absurdum, but as Kessler discovered, the reality of Kerry’s claims match up pretty well to the hypothetical. Coal mining, for instance, employs 50,000 people, Kessler discovered. Will the wind and solar energy sectors grow enough to employ those workers? Those categories won’t grow enough to employ even a quarter of them, not even after ten years at the rates Kerry was hailing in his remarks:

Wind turbine jobs are projected to go up by 4,300, from 7,000 to 11,300 in 10 years. The solar installer jobs are projected to go up 6,100, from 12,000 to 18,100. That’s a total increase of just 10,400 jobs — leaving 40,000 coal workers still toiling in the mines.

More...

 

 

American Thinker has many thoughts about Joe Biden

Biden's LGBT Agenda: Pedophilia Coming Down the Pike? "

The Biden regime's January 20 executive order demanding "equal treatment under the law, no matter [one's] gender identity or sexual orientation" is just the first salvo in the next wave pushing "LGBT rights."  The order will soon be backed by federal law, via the pending LGBT "Equality Act." . . .

 . . . "The far-left Human Rights Campaign has an equally absurd definition:

Gender identity: One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither — how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves.  One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

"Already, we've seen this nonsense allow for glaring abuses in language, schools, sports, public accommodations, health care, insurance, and businesses.  Children are being confused and indoctrinated; some are having their bodies destroyed and sterilized by puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical mutilations.

 Is Joe Biden's presidency the reincarnation of Jimmy Carter's?  . . . "A day ago, I saw this article by Daniel Gallington, and it makes a lot of sense:

The reason Mr. Biden will fail so soon is that many more millions than voted for him will realize — and quickly — that they made a mistake.  In some ways, it will be a similar reaction ... to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, when many of his voters quickly realized they had screwed up.

So why/how did we elect the wrong person — both in 1976 and again in 2020?  The exact reason for this was/is the focused public voter reaction on a single and very specific set of circumstances, rather than as an endorsement of a generalized political agenda. . . .

Friend of the American Worker

 The Biden administration is supercharging federal regulations  . . . "We can now expect a level of regulation similar to that in the European Union. That bureaucratic monstrosity regulates every aspect of life, from the balloons children may play with to the size of kiwis. Indeed, some of you may remember that, in 2008, a British grocer was blocked from selling 5,000 kiwis that were one millimeter smaller than the regulations allowed.

"Welcome to Biden’s America. You’re going to hate it here."

Corrupti-looza: Biden family wastes no time profiting from public office

Biden Claims He’ll Deliver Vaccinations Better Than Trump Did, But Will He?  . . . "The fact is that Trump’s regulatory changes helped get a vaccine to market in record time and his federalist approach helped get those vaccines to people in need in equally record time. Joe Biden can build on this and do better, or he can lie about what the Trump administration did and then, building on this law, congratulate himself for meeting the same metrics as the Trump administration." . . .

My Pillow Announces Delays in Shipments Following “Overwhelming Support” for Company and Its Founder Mike Lindell

 The Gateway Pundit  . . . "CEO Mike Lindell with a letter dated December 23, 2020, from defamation lawyers. In the letter, Dominion lawyer Thomas A. Clare called Lindell’s attacks on the voting company used in all six contested states “implausible,” adding they have “no basis in reality.”

"100 Percent Fed Up later reported – Mike Lindell is not the only person who received a threatening letter from Dominion—at least one GOP poll challenger in Michigan (who never even mentioned Dominion in her affidavit) received a threatening letter from Dominion.

"Mike Lindell, a devout Christian, is not worried about a letter from Dominion lawyers threatening defamation. Like President Trump, Lindell is a fighter and is vowing to fight back, telling Axios that he’s looking forward to Dominion’s lawsuit. “I want Dominion to put up their lawsuit because we have 100% evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election.”

"Also last week Bed, Bath and Beyond issued a statement saying the company will no longer sell “My Pillow” products after Mike Lindell challenged the election results.

"You are no longer allowed to question election fraud in the United States of America."

"This did not stop Mike Lindell from speaking out.  Mike Lindell now has social media accounts on Gab and Telegram. 

"But Mike Lindell’s company is doing well.

"If you ordered products from My Pillow this week you may have received this email.

"They are looking at two-week delays in orders due to the volume of orders at the company.

"Americans support Mike Lindell.  Americans support good men who speak the truth." . . .

Corrupti-looza: Biden family wastes no time profiting from public office

As with Obama

Monica Showalter  "In one-party states such as the old PRI-ruled Mexico, the stealing tended to start late. Before a Mexican president was escorted out for the next, he and his would sweep the presidential palace for everything not nailed down -- the lightbulbs, the toilet seats, the doorknobs and more. There were exceptions, but it was generally the known narrative. In more than one Latin American country, the last-minute asset grab on the way out actually had a name -- "La Pinata." After all, as former PRI mayor of Mexico City, Carlos Hank Gonzalez, used to say: "A politician who's poor is a poor politician." 

"Which brings us to Joe Biden, and his family's unusually fast scramble to profit from his public office right out the gate.

"Son Hunter still has his 10% China equity fund stake, contrary to what had been reported, and a new art gig just perfect for bringing in money from non-transparent sources, as the New York Post, in this excellent report notes, all because his blow-pipe 'art' done as his personal art therapy is somehow so very valuable. 

"Brother Frank, meanwhile, is advertising his connections to old Joe for Florida law firm he's connected with, using Joe's name in a bid to drum up business. As New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin reported:

The latest sordid example involves one of Joe’s younger brothers, Frank Biden, appearing in a Florida law firm’s ad — on Inauguration Day no less. The ad used the president’s name to draw attention to the Berman Law Group’s class-action suit against sugar cane growers.

“The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront,” says the ad. “The president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets.” . . .

Politico:  “For Christ’s sake, watch yourself,” Biden said of his brother’s potential business dealings, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

. . . "Though nothing was in place, word of the discussions between Morgan and Frank Biden have bounced around Biden's orbit after he won the presidential election. One person in Bidenworld took calls from senior Biden campaign officials, Florida lobbyists and Washington insiders who had all gotten wind of the conversations. Most expressed shock that Frank Biden was so quickly engaged in talks about new business opportunities, given the uproar his professional dealings caused during his brother’s presidential campaign, the person said." . . .

I'm sure the ladies of "The View" will handle all this discretely. TD