Free speech criticism has unlikely source: the press

The wacky left destroys everything it touches.

71 Chinese inmates on death row had their hearts or lungs removed during executions before being declared dead, new study says

This approaches in terribleness the gruesome western practice of harvesting aborted fetal parts.

Science professor job opening limited to only women, trans, non-binary or two-spirit folk

This is truly sciencey science by scientific scientists.

You can’t make it up!

How America Became La La Land

“…America these last 14 months resembles a dystopia. It is becoming partly the world of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and partly the poet Homer’s land of the Lotus-Eaters.

Nothing seems to be working. And no one in control seems to care.

The once secure border of 2020 vanished. Two-million people have crossed the southern border illegally in the last 12 months. Millions more are on the way.

The Biden Administration unilaterally and simply destroyed existing immigration law.

What followed was surreal. The administration claimed COVID was again on the horizon. So it justified forcing American citizens to keep wearing masks in public buildings and transportation. But at the same time, it waived all such requirements for illegal entrants.

Citizens who obeyed our laws had to mask up; foreign nationals who broke them did not need to take such precautions.

Biden blasted as near-criminals mounted border guards who used long reins to steady their horses. When investigations cleared them of wrongdoing, he went mute. This administration apparently sees its own American law enforcement at the border as criminals, and non-Americans who break our laws as their moral superiors.

Biden then concocted the perfect recipe for bringing back the inflation of the 1970s.

Print more money. Run up multitrillion-dollar annual deficits. Borrow trillions on top of a $30 trillion national debt. Send generous checks to workers for staying home. Shrug at historic disruptions of the supply chain.

When reminded that his deliberate policies are the classic roads to inflation, Biden went fetal and ignored the warnings. Or he lashed out and blamed anyone and anything for his own suicidal agendas.

First, we heard inflation was transitory. Then it was a mere concern of the elite. Then it was only a matter of exercise equipment being in short supply. Then it was solely because of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then, somehow, it was also the result of former President Donald Trump. Then it was an organic phenomenon that presidents had little power to stop.

America was energy independent until the arrival of the Biden Administration. On the orders of his Green New Deal masters, Biden immediately began canceling federal oil and gas leases. He stopped new pipelines. He jawboned against the private financing of fossil-fuel production.

Biden was hellbent on his way to fulfilling his campaign promises of eliminating the use of natural gas and oil on his watch.

Then prices soared and the public grew irate. In response, still more incoherence followed.

The administration would not reverse its destructive energy policies. But as it floundered in desperation, Biden begged American enemies Iran, Russia, and Venezuela to pump more oil on our behalf. In vain, it beseeched Saudi Arabia to produce more of the hated icky stuff that we had in abundance but would not fully produce ourselves.

Biden tapped the strategic petroleum reserve. Yet the existential peril was not war or natural catastrophe but Biden himself and his far more dangerous policies.

Abroad, we looked at the relatively manageable situation in Afghanistan and simply fled. The terrorist Taliban quickly took over and restored its medieval rule.

The administration abandoned a $1 billion embassy and dumped a $300 million refitted airbase at Bagram. Over $70 billion in military supplies and weapons were left for Taliban terrorists.

Thousands of refugees were airlifted, may not have been properly vetted, and were transported into the United States. Meanwhile, hundreds of known translators and helpers of the U.S. military were left behind.

As public outrage grew, in typical Biden fashion, he blamed the Afghanistan debacle on his generals. Then he blamed Trump. Then he denied that he had ever claimed the war was going well.

In the end, the public was told the humiliating flight was a near-perfect logistical evacuation, as if America should be proud of being better at running away than it is at fighting.

What explains an America that suddenly no longer works?

First, all of these problems are self-induced. They did not exist until Biden birthed them for ideological or political reasons. Apparently, his administration wanted a changing, more favorable electorate and demography at any cost.

Perhaps Biden was privately happy that cash-short commuters had to burn less gasoline. Maybe the more he printed money, the more he would be rewarded politically.

Second, Biden has no solutions to these self-created problems because of the ideological restraints the Left has imposed on him.

The administration fears the anger of the hard Left more than the furor of the American people. So it will not change, preferring to be politically correct and a failure than to be ideologically incorrect and successful.

Third, when people object, this administration answers either by blaming others for its self-created mess or by seeking distractions. Now it is faulting gun owners for the crime wave it fostered, supposed “white supremacists” for the racial tensions it fanned, and Putin, whom it appeased.

The common denominator? Biden knows that he inherited a stable, prosperous America and has nearly ruined it.

And he knows the American people know that too…”

DeSantis Understands the Best Defense Is a Good Offense

“…Some Republican thinkers insist that even this isn’t quite the hill to die on, there is no slippery slope, and we need to demonstrate our acceptance and goodwill to progressives. Why aren’t we focusing on economic issues? Besides, doesn’t Jessica look adorable in her sundress? The Florida GOP enacted the bill they wanted, beat Disney, so let’s move on. Punishing them by ending Reedy Creek is just churlish.

If Gov. DeSantis was satisfied with playing defense, this would be correct. Instead, he has chosen offense.

Defeating Woke, Inc., is the goal, not a single win on a small issue. He showed Disney that pro forma DEI press releases have a cost. When you wrongly call the governor, statehouse, and a majority of Florida voters anti-gay and transphobic, there will be a price to pay. When you promise to work to overturn the people’s will and defeat their representatives, pushback will follow. The horrible punishment? Being treated like any other company.

This message wasn’t only delivered to Disney. MLB can pull an all-star game from Georgia; do that south of the border and maybe you don’t get that new ballpark in Miami. Huge multinational corporations can ridicule red-state residents all they want, but they might want to diversify their stock portfolio first. Disney stock has fallen 30 percent in the past six months. The next would-be woke CEO might decide it’s wiser not to spout off…”

The Hatch Foundation sadly announces the passing of Senator Orrin G. Hatch—the former President Pro Tempore of the United States Senate and the longest-serving Senator in Utah history (1977-2019).

To learn more about his incredible life, click here:https://t.co/XFOMEYbe2l pic.twitter.com/dCGa7ew11f

— Orrin G. Hatch Foundation (@OrrinHatch) April 24, 2022

Orange County school board member harasses parent handing out info in carpool line

“…A school board member on the Orange County Board of Education North Carolina was caught on video harassing parents who were handing out information cards about issues in the district to parents in a carpool line.

Board member Hillary Mackenzie was videoed hurling insults at a parent for giving out cards to the website OCS Truth…

…Gretchen indicated Mackenzie had been videoing them from the moment she got out of her car. The video posted by the OCS parents only shows what happened after the parents also began taking video and said that Mackenzie “toned down her comments significantly” once she realized they were recording her.

Mackenzie also called out to parents driving by that what was being handed out was “propaganda” and called it “misinformation,” adding that parents should “call the school board if you have questions.”

Mackenzie can be seen videoing the parent with her cell phone as the parent hands out the cards.

While marching down the carpool line, Mackenzie yells out that “disinformation is fascism.”

Throughout the video, Mackenzie insults the parent, calling her a “fascist” and asking why the parent thinks being called that name is “insulting.” Later, the parent asks aloud why doing research for themselves and sharing information is a fascist act. Mackenzie didn’t answer.

At one point, Mackenzie yells out to the parent, “why are you a fascist, Gretchen?” The parent replies, “Why do you like to call names, Hillary? Is that what you teach your children?”

No law enforcement officer had been on-site at the carpool line prior to Mackenzie showing up, and the parents say that Mackenzie was the one who called one in but then “ran off as she saw him from a distance showing up.”…”

I love them.

Tho it’s not mandatory and it’s a pain, I’m masking it for my flight today. For myself, for others. pic.twitter.com/spbl2jySsc

— Ron Howard (@RealRonHoward) April 22, 2022

Related:

Took 14 months to go from “build back better” to “there will be food shortages.”

— Kevin Sorbo (@ksorbs) April 22, 2022

Disney Shares Are Cratering While They War With DeSantis; It Has Lost 31.5% Over the Year

“…Disney stock fell 2.79% on Friday, according to Google Finance. Company stock has fallen 31.25% in the past 6 months and trades for $118.27 per share as of press time.Disney stock prices dropped 5% on Wednesday, dropped further on Thursday, and have dropped 2.79% more so far today…”

Business run as a vehicle for liberal advocacy is a failure.

Regular people: Go woke, Go Broke

DeSantis and Florida Republicans: Go woke… **blows viking battle horn** and we shall burn your entire village to the ground and sing a song of victory so that any potential enemies in our future shall learn from your folly.

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) April 22, 2022

Dean Baquet, Joe Kahn, Racist Slurs, Twitter and Mao: on Passing the Torch at The New York Times

“…The Times has done everything short of admitting it erred. It still occasionally uses the very word that got me ousted, a word it was using in the same month in 2019 I uttered it in Peru. It didn’t punish Bret Stephens for his leaked column calling its decision hypocritical. It canceled the student trips program. It hired John McWhorter as a columnist even though he had trashed the decision to oust me and called it “contemptible.”

The Times has not publicly disputed even one of the 20,000 words I published March 1, 2021, describing what really happened in Peru and during the internal investigations.

Why? Because it knows they’re true. And because of corporate cowardice. The company instantly corrects its reporters’ errors, but it takes decades to admit blunders by its owners (such as ignoring the Holocaust.)

When I started in 1976, The Times was run by a former Marine who cared more about the mission — journalism — than about policing the personalities of his troops. Now it’s run by his grandson, a Brown graduate who believes in safe spaces and race-based capitalization. It once dealt calmly with criticism. Now it panics — even over a tabloid piece based on anonymous quotes from very naive teenagers. It hunts for someone to flog into the street, or uses threats to extract apologies it can issue with a groveling press release. (See below.)

To my mind, that shift began during the Jayson Blair/Judy Miller/Rick Bragg fiascos. The company became addicted to self-mortification. A weekly public editor column meant someone had to be hung out to dry every week, guilty or not.

The company has also hired more and more young elitists who sneer at average Americans. And who get their way by running to the teacher and weeping “I feel unsafe!” I found that tactic baffling when it was used against James Bennet in 2020. Who chooses journalism with an expectation of safety? It’s an incredibly exciting life; it’s not always a safe one — you may be sent to cover wars. I loved it…”

The man who wrote this Donald McNeil, described Americans as ‘selfish pigs’ in email to Fauci. The then-New York Times science writer compared us unfavorably to the average Chinese who ‘behaved incredibly heroically.’

Hat tip to Ed Driscoll

Fauci Says CDC Mandates ‘Should Not Be a Court Issue.’

Durham’s Investigation Is Finally Getting Interesting: Reading the Clinton tea leaves in the Sussmann prosecution

“…Let’sgive the Clintons their due: They’ve always had a sense of humor.

They’d have to. It would be impossible to survive without one given the messes they’ve gotten themselves into, and out of, lo these 30 years. And now, with yet another special counsel hovering, and apparently close to concluding that the Hillary Clinton campaign pulled off one of the great political dirty tricks of all time, it’s like we’re right back in the Nineties, wondering what the definition of is is.

The is of the moment is the attorney–client privilege….

…Durham and his staff are preparing to try heavyweight Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann in about three weeks. Plainly, their focus is broader than just the one alleged false statement to the FBI on which Sussmann has been indicted. Durham’s charging documents and court submissions strongly intimate that the Hillary campaign is the fons et origo of the Trump/Russia “collusion” farce that dizzied the country and hamstrung a presidency for two years.

The theory is straightforward: The Clinton campaign, working through its lawyers at Perkins Coie and its “oppo” gourmands at Fusion GPS, ginned up a smear that the Republican presidential nominee and his campaign were Vladimir Putin’s own little KGB cell attempting to take control of the United States government. The Clinton campaign not only peddled this narrative to the media-Democrat complex, which dutifully hyped it; Team Clinton also had operatives, such as Sussmann (a former Justice Department cybersecurity specialist and man-about-Washington), exploit their deep government ties to project the collusion story onto the radar of national-security agencies. This enabled the campaign to claim that concerns about Trump’s nefarious Russia relationship had blossomed into a criminal investigation.

When people are doing something sneaky and potentially illegal — and we should note that defrauding the government is a felony — they often take pains to conceal their connection to it. In miniature, that is what the Sussmann prosecution is about. His alleged lie was the claim that he was bringing derogatory Trump/Russia information to the government not on behalf of any client — just as a good, patriotic citizen and former U.S. national-security official who was trying to help the FBI protect Americans. In reality, Durham alleges, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe, a pro-Clinton tech executive who was hoping to score a cybersecurity gig in the anticipated Hillary administration.

But let’s widen the aperture, beyond Sussmann. The interesting question here is not whether Sussmann fibbed to the bureau. It is: Why did the Clinton campaign and Joffe think it necessary to conceal their roles in the scheme?

What does that have to do with the Clintons’ sense of humor?

Well, as is standard before a criminal trial, the parties are now arguing about what evidence the jury will be permitted to hear. On that score, Durham has subpoenaed lots of information from the Clinton campaign, but it has declined to produce it, citing — all together now! — the attorney–client privilege. That’s an amusing touch in a case where the central allegation is Sussmann’s insistence that he was not acting as an attorney for the Clinton campaign.

While Team Clinton’s gambit is at Durham’s expense, the prosecutor is trying to make sure the joke is on Sussmann. For purposes of the trial, Durham has told the court, he may not need the underlying information he has subpoenaed; he just wants to show the jury that Sussmann’s collaborators have tried to withhold it based on the exact attorney–client relationship that Sussmann told the FBI he didn’t have with them.

It’s a tight spot for Sussmann: Unless the court finds some reason to rule in his favor, his only way around this evidence would be to stipulate that he was working for the Clinton campaign when he told the FBI he wasn’t working for the Clinton campaign. That would make for an awfully quick false-statements trial.

The more intriguing thing is the continuing effort by the Clinton camp to conceal relevant communications — hundreds of which, Durham reports, do not even involve a lawyer, much less pertain to confidential legal advice or preparation for litigation. Why the secrecy?

If they really believed Trump was Putin’s puppet, you’d think they’d be anxious for people to see those discussions. They could then say they were just trying to help the FBI with the Alfa Bank story and the Steele dossier — you know, like Sussmann was just trying to help the FBI.

A last thing to think about. Sussmann’s defense counsel say they would like to call Joffe as a witness. But Joffe won’t testify unless he has immunity, and Durham has represented to the court that he will not immunize Joffe because Joffe remains the subject of a criminal investigation…”

NOW – Biden: "In the US military, every vehicle is going to be climate-friendly. We're spending billions of dollars to do it."pic.twitter.com/3T16NHebY6

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) April 22, 2022

I can’t express my utter disdain for this nonsense. It is one crackpot, cult-like cause after another.

What a loser. Everything he touches turns to shit.

Biden Surpasses Jimmy Carter As Most Incompetent Steward Of US Economy

Here’s another cockamamie idiot:

‘You’ve Got 6 Years’: Kerry Threatens Natural Gas Industry

Liberals Lecture Americans On Earth Day While Jet-Setting On Private Flights

As Mortgage Rates Begin to Bite, Home Sales Fall to Lowest since June 2020, Supply Rises for Second Month

“…The spike in mortgage rates – a result of the Fed’s widely telegraphed future crackdown on inflation – would sooner or later have to impact the crazy housing bubble. We knew that. Now the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has spiked to well above 5%.

For example, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported this morning that its weekly measure of the 30-year fixed rate jumped to 5.2%, the highest since April 2010, two full percentage points higher than two years ago, “causing a pullback or delay in home purchase demand,” the MBA said. “Home purchase activity has been volatile in recent weeks and has yet to see the typical pick up for this time of the year.”…

…today, the National Association of Realtors reported that sales of previously-owned homes – houses, condos, and townhouses – fell to the lowest since June 2020, down 4.5% from a year ago, the eighth month in a row of year-over-year declines, even as supply of homes listed for sale rose.

The NAR expects home sales “to contract 10%” this year, it said, and it blamed mortgage rates and inflation: “The housing market is starting to feel the impact of sharply rising mortgage rates and higher inflation taking a hit on purchasing power.”…”

House Republicans Demand Twitter Board Preserve All Records Related To Musk Buyout Bid

“…18 House Republicans have demanded that Twitter’s board preserve all records related to Elon Musk’s buyout offer – suggesting that they will conduct a congressional probe if their party regains control of the chamber this fall…”

DEMOCRAT-LINKED ORGANIZATION TIED TO FUNDING OFFER FOR NORTH CAROLINA ABSENTEE BALLOT PORTAL

“…In 2020, N.C. State Board of Elections Director Karen Brinson Bell made a successful push for the state to establish an online absentee ballot portal during COVID-19, however, emails show such a portal was already in the works long before the pandemic began.

Emails obtained by North State Journal show discussions between the N.C. State Board of Elections (NCSBE) and Democracy Live about adding an online absentee ballot portal happening as early as June of 2019; almost nine months prior to the emergence of COVID-19 in the state.

Democracy Live’s system utilizes “OmniBallot,” an online ballot replication system. The online absentee ballot portal powered by Democracy Live was first publicly named by the NCSBE in September of 2020.

According to a 2020 security analysis of OmniBallot conducted by Michael Specter of MIT and J. Alex Halderman of the University of Michigan, “OmniBallot uses a simplistic approach to Internet voting that is vulnerable to vote manipulation by malware on the voter’s device and by insiders or other attackers who can compromise Democracy Live, Amazon, Google, or CloudFlare.”…”