Category: Politics

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is still strongly encouraging people to wear face masks, but he also says that counties, cities, or local governments throughout the state can’t make face masks mandatory.

The ban on more stringent mask edicts was contained in a 41-page executive order issued yesterday that extends various coronavirus-related guidelines throughout the state through July 31 that were due to expire under a previous executive order.

“[A]ny state, county, or municipal law, order, ordinance, rule, or regulation that requires persons to wear face coverings, masks, face shields, or any other Personal Protective Equipment while in places of public accommodation or on public property are suspended to the extent that they are more restrictive than this Executive Order,” the GOP governor wrote on page 32 of the document.

On page 2, he explains that “all residents and visitors of the State of Georgia are strongly encouraged to wear face coverings as practicable while outside their homes or places of residence, except when eating, drinking, or exercising outdoors.”

Businesses are still free to establish mask policies as a condition of entry.

Among other things, Georgia still bans gatherings larger than 50 attendees and continues to impose certain restrictions on business operations, as well as requiring nursing home residents and those with preexisting conditions to shelter in place.

Legal action that would challenge the governor’s override of local mandates is likely, and some cities under mostly Democrat mayors have already gone to court. Much of this is more about politics than public health, however.

According to Candice Broce, Kemp’s communications director, “Previous executive orders – and now this order – state no local action can be more or less restrictive than ours. We have explained that local mask mandates are unenforceable. The Governor continues to strongly encourage Georgians to wear masks in public,” as reported by Fox News.

Georgia reported 3,800 new COVID-19 cases yesterday, the second-highest tally to date, plus 37 deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, Georgia has experienced approximately 128,000 COVID-positive results, with about 3,000 deaths.

Georgia has been under a watchful eye, as it were, from the fear-mongering media since becoming one of the first states to reopen its economy.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, “Even though the new wave of COVID-19 patients tends to be younger and less sick, they are filling hospital beds at a rapid clip…Disease experts at Georgia Tech and elsewhere have warned that Georgia is running out of time to prevent surges of cases that have overwhelmed hospitals in Florida, Arizona and other states that eased restrictions.”

It was also revealed that some Florida labs are falsely or incorrectly reporting a drastic increase in COVID-positive test rates.

During an appearance with Trevor Noah on the Daily Show, Hillary Clinton warned the United States that we should be prepared for President Trump not to leave office should he lose the 2020 election.

“There have been so many academic studies and other analyses, which point out that it’s just an inaccurate, fraudulent claim,” Clinton said.

“There isn’t that problem. All the games that are played … to try and keep the vote down — that’s the real danger to the integrity of our election, that combined with disinformation and misinformation and all the online shenanigans we saw in 2016,” she added.

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appeared on Fox News, and was asked about the failed Democrat presidential nominee claiming President Trump won’t leave the White House if he loses.

“It’s quite comical to watch the Democrat Party talk about not accepting the results of the election,” McEnany said, “because the only people who haven’t accepted the results of elections are people in the Democrat Party, like Hillary Clinton who’s blamed her loss on, I think it was something like two dozen different entities, never blaming herself.”

McEnany was also discussing the need for students to return to school.

We leave it to localities as to exactly what guidelines will work because guidelines in a state like North Dakota need to look different than a locality like Miami,” McEnany said

“The CDC guidelines are out there as a best-case scenario of this is how a school should look … but several of the principles in there are not feasible and not possible—which even the CDC guidelines say,” McEnany explained, specifically referencing the guideline that suggests students bring their own lunch to school.

“We know that half of America’s students depend on school lunch,” she said. “From a poverty-level standpoint, they need that school lunch.”

Few hours ago, Joe Biden shared a video and tweeted:

“We can’t just build things back to the way they were — we’ve got to build America back better. Tune in as I deliver remarks on how we’re going to invest in infrastructure and clean energy and create millions of jobs in the process,” posted Biden on Twitter along with a video.

NY Times reported that Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced a new plan to spend $2 trillion over four years to significantly escalate the use of clean energy in the transportation, electricity and building sectors, part of a suite of sweeping proposals designed to create economic opportunities and build infrastructure while also tackling climate change.

In a speech in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden built on his plans, released last week, for reviving the economy in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, with a new focus on enhancing the nation’s infrastructure and emphasizing the importance of putting the United States on a path to significantly cut fossil fuel emissions.

“These are the most critical investments we can make for the long-term health and vitality of both the American economy and the physical health and safety of the American people,” Biden said, repeatedly criticizing Trump’s leadership on issues including climate and the pandemic. “When Donald Trump thinks about climate change, the only word he can muster is ‘hoax.’ When I think about climate change, the word I think of is ‘jobs.’”

As Breitbart reported, Biden’s plan has several similarities to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Green New Deal” but with a 2035 deadline instead of 2030.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez drew ridicule last year when she proposed moving the entire U.S. economy to 100% renewable energy sources — primarily solar and wind — by 2030. Biden’s policy does the same, but proposes a deadline of 2035 instead.

Currently, the most ambitious “green” energy plan on record in the U.S. is California’s law aiming at 100% renewable energy by 2045 — ten years later than Biden is proposing. Critics note that California has no idea how to reach its goal.

Moving to 100% renewable energy would mean putting the fossil fuel industry out of business — oil, natural gas, and coal.

Ocasio-Cortez also left hydroelectric power out of her plan, and said nothing about nuclear energy, which the led opposes but which provides the only practical alternative to fossil fuels as an energy source that is almost totally carbon-free.

Notably, Ocasio-Cortez chairs Biden’s climate change policy committee on the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee offered a similar plan when he ran for president, calling for requiring 100% carbon-neutral power by 2030, putting America on a path to having all clean, renewable and zero-emission energy in electricity generation by 2035. Observers noted that experts were “skeptical about the political plausibility of its execution.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated during a virtual town hall that the increase in crime in New York City could be because residents don’t have enough money to pay rent and are forced to shoplift.

AOC held a virtual town hall meeting Thursday that was broadcast from her official Facebook account and took questions from her constituents, which included inquiries about the recent spikes in crimes.

“Do we think this has to do with the fact that there’s record unemployment in the United States right now? The fact that people are at a level of economic desperation that we have not seen since the Great Recession?” the New York Democrat said.

“Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren’t paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent and so they go out, and they need to feed their child and they don’t have money so … they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”

Violent crimes in New York City, including shootings, have spiked in the weeks following the death of George Floyd, which sparked protests and riots across the country to denounce police brutality and systemic racism.

Just this weekend, 15 people were shot in a 15-hour period, more than triple the number of shootings that happened there this time last year. There have been 43 shootings in the last week, compared to 13 during the same time period in 2019. Over Independence Day weekend, there were 10 shootings and one person killed in a nine-hour span, as the Washington Examiner reported.

June saw more of the same, with law enforcement sources telling the New York Post that murders and shootings were much higher than in the same period last June. Thirteen murders and 40 shootings took place between June 1-7, compared to five murders and 24 shootings during the same time period in 2019.

The congresswoman also relayed during the town hall that the crime spikes are occurring when the force is operating with a $6 billion budget, as the $1 billion cut announced by Mayor Bill de Blasio hasn’t taken effect yet.

“Let me make something super clear for everyone,” AOCz said. “The New York City Police Department has not been defunded, even with these budgetary changes that were proposed in the city council. A.) They’re not fully enacted. B.) They aren’t a real $1 billion in cuts. C.) These cuts aren’t really real. And again, they haven’t even happened yet.”

Earlier this month, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz sent a letter to President Trump asking for money to pay for all the damage incurred by the George Floyd riots that Republicans say he and other Democrat officials in the state had allowed to happen.

On Saturday, a spokesperson for Walz’s office confirmed that the request has been denied.

“The governor is disappointed that the federal government declined his request for financial support. As we navigate one of the most difficult periods in our state’s history, we look for support from our federal government to help us through,” the spokesperson reportedly said.

“Nearly 1,500 businesses in the Twin Cities were damaged by vandalism, fire, or looting. The heaviest damage occurred along major corridors of commerce and public accommodation, including Lake Street in Minneapolis and in the Midway Area of Saint Paul,” he wrote.

“These corridors provide lifeline services like food, pharmaceuticals, health care, housing, and transportation to thousands of Minnesotans. Refined estimates of property damage are now upwards of $500,000,000, making this the second most destructive incident of civil unrest in United States history after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.”

While Walz continued by pointing out how he’d “ordered the full activation of the Minnesota National Guard,” he neglected to mention that this order came on May. 30, days after the riots had begun, and a day after the president had tweeted this:

Trump’s administration response to Walz this came a day after Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican, submitted his own letter to Trump urging him to launch an investigation into the state’s response to the riots.

“To date, there has been no federal analysis of the actions that were — or were not — taken by local and state officials to prevent one of the most destructive episodes of civil unrest in our nation’s history,” he wrote.

“Various news reports point to inexperience, miscommunication, and perfect storm of no-win scenarios as the culprit that allowed these events to spiral out of control. Absent a full and complete investigation accompanied by recommendations on how to appropriately respond, similar events are bound to occur in the future.”

He added in a statement that given the “federal rights investigation into the circumstances surrounding” Floyd’s death, it’s only fair to perform a similar investigation into the riots that resulted because of his death.

Following the riots in May, Walz laid some of the blame on local officials like groveling Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Some felt the governor had a point.

“We all value our First Amendment right to protest, and rational people can certainly differentiate between genuine peaceful protestors and bad actors looking to take advantage of chaotic situations, but apparently Mayor Frey didn’t trust law enforcement to be able to make those distinctions when he instructed the police to treat the protests with a gentle hand,” local radio host Drew Lee wrote in an op-ed.

“It became abundantly clear by Wednesday night that there were scores of people who weren’t interested in fighting for justice for George Floyd but rather seemed intent on causing destruction and mayhem for reasons that are difficult to comprehend. Mayor Frey had a choice to make at that moment – enforce the laws while making every effort to protect the real protestors, or become an enabler to the destruction of his city.”

But others noted that, while local officials were certainly also to blame, so was Walz.

Like Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka wrote, “That leadership rests on Gov Walz’ shoulders. Walz cannot blame mayors of MPLS and St. Paul, they can take some responsibility, but it ultimately comes down to him.”

So the question remains whether the leaders who share responsibility for what happened deserve to have their self-made problems fixed by the feds. And well, the president has clearly given his answer.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, critical of President Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence, is now pushing for a new law that would restrict future president pardon power under certain conditions.

Pelosi appeared in an interview with CNN and called the president’s then-reported decision to commute the sentence of his long-time friend “appalling,” adding that “there oughta be a law” that prohibits such pardons.

Host Anderson Cooper said that although “the president continues to brand himself … a law and order president — though what that definition for him is frankly unclear — he would be going against the Justice Department’s wishes here if he did this, to say nothing of the jury and the federal judge. What do you think of that idea?”

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Pelosi began. “Just look at this administration, the president and his henchmen. So many of his friends, advisers, campaign chairmen, etcetera, are in jail.

“And for the president to be able to issue a pardon on the basis of a crime that the person committed assisting the president is ridiculous and we have to…there oughta be a law, and I’m recommending that we pass a law that presidents cannot issue a pardon if the crime that the person is in jail for is one that is caused by protecting the president, which this was,” she said, unchallenged by Cooper.

There are many issues and falsehoods regarding Pelosi’s comments.

First, Article II, Sect. 2 of the U.S. Constitution grants presidents nearly unlimited authority to “grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States,” with the only exception being in cases of impeachment.

So, no legislation that Congress passes to limit that authority would likely pass constitutional muster. The only way to alter a president’s pardon authority would be via constitutional amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states.

As for Pelosi’s assertions regarding Stone’s conviction:

— The lead juror in his case, one-time Tennessee Democrat congressional candidate Tomeka Hart, posted disparaging and biased remarks about President Trump to social media, which legal and constitutional experts said should have disqualified her from being on the jury, let alone its forewoman.

— One of those experts, Georgetown Law Prof. Jonathan Turley, believed in light of Hart’s remarks, that Stone’s conviction should have been “reevaluated.” “She was Juror No. 1261, and her examination by the federal court and counsel before the trial was anything but notable. And that is precisely the problem,” he wrote in a February op-ed.

— Former Judge Andrew Napolitano said that if Hart intentionally hid her bias from lawyers and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, she could be charged herself. “The purpose of the interrogation is to weed out people that have a bias prejudice, knowledge of the case or interest in the outcome,” he explained. “She obviously had a prejudice against Roger Stone — a bias in favor of his prosecution and an interest in seeing him convicted that should automatically disqualify her.”

— Under normal circumstances, revelations about a tainted juror/foreperson would have triggered a retrial, but that didn’t happen, despite Stone requesting one.

— Federal prosecutors recommended an unusually long nine-year prison term for Stone, which the Justice Department refuted, leading four federal prosecutors to withdraw from the case.

— Jackson also denied Stone’s request she withdraw from the case after she commented during his Feb. 20th sentencing hearing that “the jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared.” Her comments came after Hart’s posts were discovered.

— There is no evidence that Stone’s crimes were committed on behalf of the president.

Regarding the president’s ‘jailed’ associates:

— One-time 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort was arrested, tried, and convicted on unrelated alleged ‘crimes’ involving dealings with Ukraine that reached all the way up to then-President Obama and then-Vice President Biden, but no charges were filed against him then.

— Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was also convicted of unrelated financial crimes. Both he and Manafort were never in any legal trouble until Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel.

— Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn did indeed plead guilty to one count of lying to the FBI, but he did so to protect his son from Mueller. He sought to recant his guilty plea in January; since then, documents have been uncovered and released indicating that then-FBI Director James Comey, with Obama’s blessing, set Flynn up in a perjury trap. Flynn is a free man after a federal appeals court ordered a lower court to accept the Justice Department’s decision to drop its case against him.

On Saturday, President Trump reacted to a British court ruling against dossier author Christopher Steele.

President Trump tweeted: “This man should be extradited, tried, and thrown into jail. A sick lier who was paid by Crooked Hillary & the DNC!”

JusttheNews reported that a British judge ruled Wednesday that Christopher Steele violated a data privacy law by failing to check the accuracy of information in his infamous dossier, ordering the former spy’s firm to pay damages to two businessmen he wrongly accused of making illicit payments in Russia.

Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales ordered Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to pay a modest 18,000 English pounds – about $22,596 in American currency – each to Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman as compensation for a violation of Britain’s Data Protection Act 1998 .

Warby ruled that while Steele had a national security interest to share his intelligence with U.S. and British authorities, several of the allegations in Memo 112 of the Steele dossier were “inaccurate or misleading as a matter of fact.”

The judge ruled Steele violated the law by failing to aggressively check the accuracy of one claim accusing Aven and Fridman of making illicit payments to Russia President Vladimir Putin before distributing it to various U.S. and British figures, including the FBI.

“That is an allegation of serial criminal wrongdoing, over a prolonged period. Even in the limited and specific context of reporting intelligence for the purposes I have mentioned, and despite all the other factors I have listed, the steps taken to verify that proposition fell short of what would have been reasonable,” Warby ruled.

“The allegation clearly called for closer attention, a more enquiring approach, and more energetic checking,” the judge added.

The ruling involves a long-discredited claim in Steele’s dossier – repeatedly used by U.S. news media – that Russia’s Alfa Bank, connected to Aven and Fridman, was transmitting secret messages between Moscow and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

The FBI concluded the computer pings were not nefarious messages but rather routine behavior most likely connected to email spam. Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Congress last year he did not believe the allegations.

Fridman hailed the ruling in a statement.

“We are delighted with the outcome of this case and that Mr Justice Warby has determined what we have always known to be the case – that the contents of Memorandum 112 are inaccurate and misleading,” he said. “Ever since these odious allegations were first made public in January 2017, my partners and I have been resolute and unwavering in our determination to prove that they are untrue, and through this case, we have finally succeeded in doing so.”

Central to the Black Lives Matter movement is this premise that America was born for one purpose in mind: as a slave state. This rewriting of our national history comes from Nikole Hannah-Jones, a radical BLM activist who published a series of articles in the New York Times Magazine in 2019 titled: 1619 Project.

Hannah-Jones’ articles were so patently false that the Times had to issue an update saying there is really no evidence that the first Americans fought the Revolutionary War to “preserve slavery.”

However, the Times also said “we should be careful not to assume unanimity on the part of the colonists,” meaning there is a possibility some colonists fought to preserve slavery, but we just don’t have that in writing.

Historian and best-selling author Craig Shirley blasted Oprah and the 1619 Project: “Does it surprise anybody that after millions of words and hundreds of accounts and dozen of historians that not one said the Revolutionary War was about preserving slavery? Once again, the left lies about the past in order to control the future.”

“When the #1619Project came out almost a year ago, I stood in tearful applause for the profound offering that it was giving our culture and nation. Today, I am honored to be a part of @nhannahjones’ vision to bring her transformative work to a global audience. Stay tuned, y’all!” Winfrey tweeted.

Now, Oprah steps in to use the wealth and fame she gained—thanks to our American way of life and our Founding Fathers’ principles—to make a movie to malign their character and true motivations. She’s stomping on the graves of true revolutionaries for liberty like the Minutemen militia and George Washington’s Continental Army, who against all odds defeated the British, who were the most powerful military in the world.

Hannah-Jones called Oprah Winfrey “a trailblazer and beacon to so many Black journalists.” She added: “I am excited for this opportunity to extend the breadth and reach of ‘The 1619 Project’ and to introduce these stories of Black resistance and resilience to even more American households.”

This abomination, the 1619 Project, is also being implemented in public schools across the country so our kids will be indoctrinated with this bogus narrative of our nation’s founding.

“The 1619 Project—The New York Times Magazine’s much-vaunted series of essays about the introduction of African slavery to the Americas—will now be taught in K-12 schools around the country,” Reason Magazine reports.

“The series sparked almost instant controversy by claiming that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery. Several prominent historians, including one who consulted on the series, have disputed the claim and called out Nikole Hannah-Jones’ central essay for factual inaccuracies,” Breitbart reports.

The Times mostly ignored the objections and Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize. Hannah-Jones made headlines last month after she said it’d be an “honor” if violent and deadly riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death were remembered as the “1619 Riots.”

Americans ripped Oprah’s new project on social media. Here are some of the tweets.

“The vision of many Black elites in this country is to have a relationship with the poor and disenfranchised like the one their white counterparts have. Suffering becomes entertainment. Truth is based on how well connected you are,” tweeted Gabriel Piemonte.

NYPost reported that Rudy Giuliani called the NYPD when “Borat” star Sacha Baron Cohen — wearing a spangly pink bikini — tried to prank him into a spoof interview.

President Trump’s personal attorney went to the Mark Hotel on Tuesday for what he thought was a serious interview about the administration’s response to COVID-19. He that said he was offered payment for the interview, and asked that the money be donated to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation.

A female interviewer began the conversation in a room fitted out with a professional set-up of lights and camera with a few softball questions before, as Giuliani tells us, “This guy comes running in, wearing a crazy, what I would say was a pink transgender outfit.”

“It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top, it looked absurd. He had the beard, bare legs, and wasn’t what I would call distractingly attractive.”

Giuliani said that he didn’t immediately recognize the gate-crasher as Cohen: “This person comes in yelling and screaming, and I thought this must be a scam or a shake-down, so I reported it to the police. He then ran away.”

Other sources said that Cohen was seen sprinting out of the swanky Upper East Side hotel — a favorite with celebrities and the scene of Meghan Markle’s starry 2019 baby shower — and down 77th Street wearing just a bathrobe but was not apprehended by cops, who did arrive to investigate. The NYPD made no comments.

Giuliani explained, “I only later realized it must have been Sacha Baron Cohen. I thought about all the people he previously fooled and I felt good about myself because he didn’t get me.” A rep for Cohen declined to comment.

However, the former New York City mayor added, “I am a fan of some of his movies, ‘Borat’ in particular, because I’ve been to Kazakhstan. [Adopting a Borat accent, Guiliani repeats a famous line from the movie:] ‘She is my sister. She is number four prostitute in all of Kazakhstan.’ That was pretty funny.”

Baron Cohen last week gatecrashed a right-wing event in Washington posing as a racist country singer — where he encouraged the crowd to chant along to lyrics about liberals getting “chopped up” or “injected with the Wuhan flu.”

On Tuesday, CNN host Don Lemon said that President Obama should be added to the Mount Rushmore sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Lemon was joined by Chris Cuomo who loves the idea of adding Barack Obama to Mount Rushmore. Lemon started the discussion by being upset about the married couple from Martinez, California who decided to fight back against Black Lives Matter. The Trump supporters painted over the words “Black Lives Matter” that had been painted on the street in huge yellow letters outside the courthouse.

The leftwing District Attorney arrested the couple and charged them with a “hate crime.”

While discussing the couple, who is being held without bail, Lemon said: “[The rightwing news] kicks in with Democratic cities are in chaos right now. Is this what you want from Joe Biden? And they are taking your country away and they are going to take down statues. Crime is rising. It’s so bad. Oh my, defund police. And the people who you saw there for the most part —not specifically, as a whole, fall for it. They fall for it. That’s why they do things like that.”

Lemon is mocking conservatives who support President Trump. But he was just getting started.

“They want to paint over signs and think it’s our country,” Lemon added. “This is the country that we built. Even though a rich diversity of people helped build the country, and many of us, meaning ancestors, for free — did not get paid for it, could not get an education, could not build wealth, are not on statues, Confederate or otherwise, are not on Mount Rushmore.”

“I think, listen … if they are going to put someone on Mount Rushmore, considering the history of the country, the first black president should be front and center,” the Trump-hating CNN host declared.

Folks on social media weren’t on board with Lemon’s proposal and didn’t wait long to blast him.

“@donlemon you’re an idiot! Obama the most corrupt president this country has ever seen! Brainless simpleton!” tweeted “Southwest Special Operations Group.”

“Personally Don, I think that would look funny. Not because Obozo is half white & half black. But because Obozo will be convicted of treason. None of the others on Mount Rushmore were hung. Then someone would throw a huge noose around his head,” tweeted “Dexter the Deplorable.”

Lemon went so far as to suggest Mount Rushmore’s name must be changed.

“The name shouldn’t be Mount Rushmore if you talk to Native Americans,” Lemon said. “It is stolen land. It was only Mount Rushmore 40 years before they started to carve presidents’ faces in it. No one got any money for that.”

Cuomo said, “You’re totally right. The premise is where we have to work toward, which is if we all decide. It’s about consensus and collective consciousness.”