http://donpolson.blogspot.com/ Bringing you the very best information, analysis and opinion from around the web. NOTE: For videos that don't start--go to article link to view. FAVORITE SITES FOR INFO: https://pjmedia.com , www.powerlineblog.com , https://rumble.com/c/Bongino , instapundit.com https://justthenews.com , https://Bonginoreport.com
Early Friday morning, I’m sitting with Stephen Kruiser at our CPAC condo when the news breaks that Joe Biden has made his decision for his affirmative action Supreme Court pick. There was very little shock that he selected Kentaji Brown Jackson; she was widely considered to be the frontrunner.
The announcement was expected to happen at the end of February or the first week of March, but still, the announcement stunned me.
Did anyone tell Joe Biden that there’s a war going on?
There has been much speculation that the Ukraine/Russia conflict, which is now a war, was Joe Biden’s “wag the dog” moment. His approval ratings have never recovered from his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and have even gotten worse. But, if Biden—or let’s face it, his advisors—thought that this Ukraine/Russia situation would get Biden out of his rut, there was a gross miscalculation. Putin has played Biden like a drum, and Biden’s past claims that Putin didn’t want him to be president sound like a bad joke.
“Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President,” Biden tweeted in Feb. 2020. “He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why — it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.”
Fast forward to the present, when Joe Biden went from thinking imposing sanctions on Russia would prevent Putin from invading Ukraine to backtracking after the invasion began because they clearly failed to accomplish what Biden said they would.
“If I were in Office, this deadly Ukraine situation would never have happened,” Trump said Thursday. And he’s right. Biden has proven himself to be the Putin puppet that the left claimed Trump would be, but Trump would have never allowed this to happen the way Biden has.
So now there’s a war going on, and Joe Biden decides that this is the time to name his Supreme Court pick?
Could he be more transparent?
So Biden’s foreign policy is an absolute dumpster fire. His ineffective leadership might lead us into World War III, and he’s trying to change the conversation to a Supreme Court nomination battle. Does he really think this will work? The end of the current Supreme Court term is months away, Biden should have put off this announcement to at least give the appearance of being focused on preventing WWIII, instead of trying to distract the public and galvanize his base with a Supreme Court nomination battle.
According to the Associated Press, the CDC is likely to strongly loosen their mask guidance tomorrow, dropping the recommendation that masks should be worn indoors. That said, I’m not sure how many places even have a mask wearing policy any longer.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will significantly loosen federal mask-wearing guidelines to protect against COVID-19 transmission on Friday, according to two people familiar with the matter, meaning most Americans will no longer be advised to wear masks in indoor public settings.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday will announce a change to the metrics it uses to determine whether to recommend face coverings, shifting from looking at COVID-19 case counts to a more holistic view of risk from the coronavirus to a community. Under current guidelines, masks are recommended for people residing in communities of substantial or high transmission — roughly 95% of U.S. counties, according to the latest data. (read more)
In the states and cities where immunity passports are still required, people have been told that they need to be “fully vaccinated” to be in compliance. For most people, that means two initial shots spaced three (for Pfizer) or four weeks (for Moderna) apart followed by a booster shot roughly six months later. Of course, those definitions have been changed by the CDC on a regular basis. They recently suggested that the boosters should be given as soon as four months after the initial injections because people’s immunity was fading too quickly. But now they’re even walking back the spacing of the initial two shots, at least for some people. The CDC “quietly” changed their recommendations yet again this week, suggesting that otherwise healthy patients under the age of 65 should wait up to two months between the first two shots. Would you care to make up our minds for us? (Associated Press)
Some people getting Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines should consider waiting up to eight weeks between the first and second doses, instead of the three or four weeks previously recommended, U.S. health officials said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday quietly changed its advice on spacing the shots.
CDC officials said they were reacting to research showing that the longer interval can provide more enduring protection against the coronavirus. Research suggests that 12- to 64-year-olds — especially males ages 12 to 39 — can benefit from the longer spacing, the CDC said.
The immediate reaction among many people will no doubt be to ask if getting the second shot too quickly is turning out to be dangerous. There may be an element of that in a small subset of people as we’ll get to in a moment, but it seems to be mostly related to efficacy. For reasons that aren’t made entirely clear, testing by Pfizer and Moderna has shown that patients who held off for two months retained their immunity for significantly longer than those who rushed out for the second dose after three or four weeks.
The CDC also made the startling admission that patients, particularly younger males, who wait two months “may diminish… a form of heart inflammation seen in some young men.” Anything that further reduces the risk of side effects is a good thing, I suppose. But if they have enough data pegging the odds and severity of heart inflammation in patients, it sounds like there’s been more of that showing up than we were previously led to believe.
And while we’re on the subject of insufficient data, how is it that we’re only now learning about immunity fading more quickly if the initial two shots are spaced more closely together? Didn’t they test for that during the initial trials? We’ve been listening to the CDC sound the alarm bells for the past year about how people’s immunity wasn’t lasting as long as originally predicted so perhaps we needed to shorten the time before people need a booster shot. Is it possible that the immunity levels are falling too quickly specifically because they were telling everyone to get the second shot too soon?
None of this sounds like an entirely fatal chain of errors (or at least hopefully not fatal to too many people), but it’s not going to do much to bolster confidence in either the vaccines of the CDC. At least Fauci’s approval levels can’t fall much further. We pushed the vaccines out at “warp speed” as soon as they could qualify for an emergency approval from the FDA. In the end, that will still probably turn out to be something that saved a lot of lives, particularly among the elderly and infirm. But as more and more data like this is collected, it’s equally clear that rushing a process like clinical trials comes at a price. Hopefully, there won’t be too many other unpleasant surprises waiting for us further down the road.
I assume Kamala Harris would claim to be opposed to rape. But during and after the George Floyd Riots, she not only contributed to but enthusiastically promoted a group called the Minnesota Freedom Fund. MFF pretended to exist for the benefit of “peaceful protesters,” but in fact it immediately bailed violent criminals of all kinds out of jail, most of whom had nothing to do with any sort of “protest” but were merely rapists, murderers, and so on.
Harris received plenty of criticism from us and others for her involvement with the pro-criminal Minnesota Freedom Fund, but she never denounced that group or disassociated herself from it. Harris is insulated from violent crime as she has been throughout her privileged life, but her perverse political ideology has damaged countless Minnesotans who are not so fortunate.
My colleague Jeffrey Van Nest documents the fact that Kamala is still at it, long after public attention has moved on:
The Minnesota Freedom Fund, which pays criminal bail for those who cannot afford it, is facing another instance where a client is rearrested shortly after release.
According to Crime Watch Minneapolis, Gregory Jones, 28, was in jail until February 8th on attempted rape changes when the Freedom Fund made the decision to have Jones released after covering his $40,000 bail. Jones was charged with the attempted rape of a woman in a downtown Minneapolis bathroom. The criminal complaint describes him as a “danger to public safety” who was “also under investigation for several other incidents of indecent exposure.”
Three days later, on February 11th, police were called to the FAIR Senior High School in downtown Minneapolis after receiving complaints of a man exposing himself to students and staff. Police learned that Jones was seen lying on the floor near the entrance to the school masturbating with his pants down and penis exposed. He spoke to students as they attempted to enter the school. When a staff member told him to stop, Jones became aggressive and started swearing at her. According to security officers at the school, he was previously removed for trespassing based on the same behavior.
Good going, Kamala! This is one of many instances of Harris’s loosing criminals on a helpless population. The Freedom Fund promised to change its ways, but it hasn’t followed through:
Previously, the Freedom Fund assured the community that its protocols would be revised after it bailed out George Howard, 48, who was facing domestic assault charges. Freedom Fund paid the $11,500 bond for Howard’s release on August 11, 2021. Less than a month later, on August 29th, Howard was charged with second-degree murder for killing Luis Martinez during a road rage incident on an interstate I-94 entrance ramp in Minneapolis. In a social media posting, Freedom Fund representatives assured the community that following the Martinez murder changes would be made.
Not enough changes, apparently. Links are omitted:
It remains unclear what, if any, changes the Freedom Fund has made to further protect the community from dangerous criminals awaiting trial. This comes on the heels of Freedom Fund’s sponsoring bond payments for violent criminals such as a twice-convicted rapist, a man accused of sexually penetrating a young child, a man who curb stomped his victim, and several serial domestic abusers.
Does Kamala Harris care about the chaos that her advocacy for this corrupt organization has wrought? Evidently not: if she cared, she would at a minimum recant her support for the ill-named Minnesota Freedom Fund. But she hasn’t even done that, let alone express any sympathy for the Freedom Fund’s many victims of violent crime.
Does Kamala Harris actually want more murder, rape and assault? Or is she just so insulated from the world by her privileged status that she has no idea of the consequences of her actions? Your guess is as good as mine.
I guessed wrong on this one. I thought Putin would bluff and bluster, and then cash in his chips. I thought the weak Western powers would agree to a partition of Ukraine, with the largely Russian-speaking Eastern provinces going to Russia, along with other considerations, unrelated to Ukraine, that would be more or less secret. But Putin invaded instead, and seems bent on conquering all of Ukraine and perhaps more besides.
What made Putin so bold? A key factor no doubt was the weakness of Western leaders, pre-eminently the doddering Joe Biden. But the West’s weakness is not a function of a few individuals. You likely have seen tweets that contrast recruiting ads for the U.S. Army, featuring cartoons and lesbians, with recruiting ads for the Russian and Chinese armies. The contrast is painful.
Along the same lines, Russian generals no doubt have followed closely the introduction of Critical Race Theory into U.S. military training and have drawn appropriate conclusions about the cohesion of our armed forces. And of course there was the Afghanistan debacle.
Putin and his minions also witnessed the bizarre spectacle of the Biden administration suppressing production of American oil and gas, returning the U.S. to a state of energy dependence and driving up the global price of petroleum, thereby enriching Russia. How formidable can an enemy this stupid possibly be? And let’s not forget that the USSR bankrolled the American environmental movement for decades. Was that a good investment, or what?
And as for the United Nations–I believe Russia currently chairs the Security Council–this tweet by the Secretary General says it all:
All we are saying is give peace a chance. Right.
The natural cycle, it has been said, runs from tragedy to farce. So let’s move from the tragedy of a great nation “led” by a senile political hack to a farce that typifies the decline of American culture into sissification. This comes from an actress and “human rights advocate” of whom I had not heard until now, but it fits with the pathetic culture that we have created:
I thought Putin would respect the risk posed by American military prowess, however degraded it might be. I was wrong. With hindsight, that result was perhaps overdetermined.
On Tuesday, Joe Biden was an hour-and-a-half late to the remarks he was supposed to make about Russia further invading Ukraine. He slurred and stumbled his way through his speech. He seemed to have enormous difficulty just reading the teleprompter coherently, and it was only a 10-minute address.
You would think that – given what Biden was calling an invasion that could affect so much – that he might think the American people deserved some greater explanation of what the Administration was going to do in response — beyond reciting his 10-minute, canned speech.
But no such luck. At the end of the 10 minutes, Biden turned on his heel and beat it out of there.
How much is the media in Biden’s pocket? The response from ABC News’ David Muir on Biden’s action gives us some clue.
According to Muir, Biden took no questions “likely given the gravity of the moment the world is now facing.”
So, because it is so serious, he should not talk about it? What kind of sense does that make? If it’s so important, isn’t that more of a reason to take questions on it, to explain what your response will be? He just said it’s going to affect and hurt Americans, too. Don’t we deserve more of an answer than “I have a plan” — the same thing he claimed about COVID and campaigned on? Then he got into office, and we found out he had no plan. Not that anyone truly following along didn’t know that already.
Or is Muir saying it’s best that Biden not take questions or talk more about it because it is so important, and Biden is likely to blow it big time (more than he already had) with further comments? The bottom line is Biden is barely able to get through just reading the teleprompter; they don’t want him to go beyond that because it might blow up even more than just stumbling over reading. Can he even answer questions, if they haven’t set him up with scripted answers beforehand?
Of course, the media should be asking why he isn’t taking questions, not providing him with excuses and covering for him. That’s supposed to be their job. But instead, they’ve long since abandoned that job for the job of spinning for Biden and the Democrats.
A majority of likely Democratic voters support Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of emergency powers to crack down on Freedom Convoy protesters last week.
A new poll from Trafalgar Group and Convention of States Action and provided exclusively to The Daily Wire shows that 55% of likely general election voters disapprove of Trudeau’s handling of the protesters. Thirty-five percent approve of Trudeau’s heavy-handed tactics and 10% said they were unaware of what was happening north of the U.S. border.
Trafalgar Group surveyed 1080 likely general election voters from February 18-20 after Trudeau brought federal, provincial, and local law enforcement into Ottawa to forcibly clear out hundreds of protesters and dozens of vehicles from Parliament Hill and surrounding areas. The poll’s margin of error is 3%.
Democrats overwhelmingly favored Trudeau’s response with 65% approval to 17% disapproval. Republican responses were weighted even more heavily against Trudeau, however, with 87% of likely GOP voters disapproving to just 8% approving. Respondents who said they did not belong to either one of the two main parties cut against Trudeau’s crackdown with 74% disapproving versus 21% approving.
Aside from Democrats, the only other demographic areas identified in the poll that cut in Trudeau’s favor are the ages 65 and older category and among blacks and Hispanics. Every other demographic – men, women, Asian, white, younger age groups – disapproved of Trudeau’s handling of the protesters.
The largest difference in approval versus disapproval took place among 25 to 34-year-olds. In that age group, 100% of respondents disapproved of Trudeau’s tactics.
Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14 in what he called a “last resort” to break a group of protesters that had held ground outside of Canada’s Parliament since late January. The group of protesters, which began as the trucker-led Freedom Convoy, demonstrated against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other regulations and restrictions.
Under the Emergencies Act, federal authorities went after the bank accounts and other financial assets of anybody even tangentially involved in the protest. Trudeau’s government threatened that any vehicle involved in the protest could lose its insurance. The bank accounts of protesters or anyone suspected of aiding the protesters could be frozen without a court order or due process.
On Friday, hundreds of law enforcement officials swarmed downtown Ottawa where the Freedom Convoy had set up. Police came equipped in riot gear and wielding tear gas, some riding horses, to methodically push the protesters out of the area and tow away vehicles. Law enforcement made hundreds of arrests and towed away dozens of vehicles.
“I want to be very clear, the scope of these measures will be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address. The emergencies act will be used to strengthen and support law enforcement agencies at all levels across the country,” Trudeau said last week announcing the emergency measures. “In addition, financial institutions will be authorized and directed to render essential services to help address the situation including by regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades.”
This weekend, a group of anti-Trump Republicans will gather in Washington, D.C. to plot strategy for 2024 and support those Republicans at the local and national level who oppose Donald Trump.
The gathering — “Principles First: The Summit” — will be “counterprogramming” to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), scheduled in Orlando this week. Republican attorney Heath Mayo, the founder of Principles First for America, will be hosting the summit.
The two most prominent anti-Trump Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) will be featured speakers at the event. Both members have joined the partisan Democratic hearings on the events of Jan. 6.
Both are scheduled to speak Saturday — the same day that Donald Trump will make his CPAC appearance.
“We want to come together in a visual show of support for people who have taken stands for ideas when it hasn’t been comfortable,” Mayo said to CBS. “You don’t see those folks, yet, in rooms that are energized. But I think the energy is there. We’ll see how many folks show up.”
Mayo added, “I believe there is a lane here for 2024. The party is completely stuck in a rut talking about if the last election is legitimate and if Liz Cheney, [Maryland Governor Larry] Hogan, or someone else is compelling and wants to run, I think a lot of people would listen.”
Actually, not a lot of Republicans would be willing to listen to what Liz Cheney or Larry Hogan have to say about anything. Even fewer would be willing to vote for them.
Hogan, a Trump critic who recently passed on running for a U.S. Senate seat, has said he would consider a possible run in 2024. Cheney has been feeling out donors and avenues of support for a possible run for president, but like Kinzinger who dropped out of his reelection race, Cheney has no real base of support.
Mayo said a prominent member of the Republican National Committee, Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, was a recent addition to Saturday’s conference schedule. Palatucci’s decision to appear follows tensions inside the RNC about its fervent political and financial support for Trump, who is facing several legal challenges and investigations.
Palatucci, a longtime confidant of Chris Christie, the former GOP governor of New Jersey, opposed the RNC earlier this month for passing a resolution at its winter meeting in Salt Lake City that censured Cheney and Kinzinger for their roles on the House select committee.
“They invited me to speak after what happened at the RNC and I’m happy to do it,” Palatucci said in an interview. “It’s important to have these conversations out in the open.”
Are these people delusional? Even those Republicans predisposed to vote for someone besides Donald Trump for president would be unwilling to blow up the party for … who? Liz Cheney? Larry Hogan? Not very likely.
All these anti-Trump Republicans are doing is assuring another Democratic win in 2024. And if they haven’t been disabused of the notion that Biden is some kind of “moderate,” they must have fallen asleep over the last year. Biden is a full-throated radical left-wing nut, and another four years with him or some other radical Democrat as president wouldn’t just “transform” America. It would destroy it.
Mail-in primary election ballots are processed at the Chester County Voter Services office in West Chester, Pa., on May 28, 2020. (Matt Rourke/AP Photo)
Fraudulent mail-in ballots and dirty voter rolls could spawn a series of messy elections around the country, experts fear, saying their threat to election integrity can’t be underestimated.
When a person dies or fails to provide notification of change of address, a “dirty voter roll” is often the result, because the resident essentially remains eligible to vote until the state removes them from their roll. This opens the avenue for fraudulent votes, which is exacerbated by the rise of mail-in voting around the country. Eight states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington—allow all elections to be conducted by mail.
On the heels of the 2020 presidential election, several lawsuits were filed to take on a range of claims relating to voter fraud and electoral abuses. Former President Donald Trump and his supporters alleged the presence of numerous irregularities in the voting process. They alleged that taken together, these instances of fraud ensured a win for then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
But concerned citizens will never know the credibility of any of those claims, because almost all of the lawsuits were dismissed on procedural grounds by the courts, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation and a former member of the Federal Election Commission.
“We never got to the substantive stage of trial where witnesses could testify and courts could examine their stories, their claims, and determine their credibility,” Spakovsky told The Epoch Times.
Los Angeles Registrars Office personnel process mail-in voting ballots in Pomona, Calif., on Aug. 31, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Fraudulent Absentee Ballots
According to Spakovsky, fraudulent absentee ballots became a concerning issue in the 2020 election, and their effect must be reigned in prior to the midterm elections in 2022 and the next presidential election in 2024. The fraudulent use of absentee ballots involves requesting “absentee ballots and voting without the knowledge of the actual voter; or obtaining the absentee ballot from a voter and either filling it in directly and forging the voter’s signature or illegally telling the voter who to vote for,” according to the Heritage Foundation.
In the 2020 presidential election, Pew Research Center determined that 46 percent of voters voted by absentee or mail-in ballot and that nearly twice as many Biden voters voted by mail as compared to Trump voters. Data by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission shows that voters have increasingly voted by absentee or mail-in ballots for at least a decade.
An online database containing proven cases of election fraud by The Heritage Foundation lists more than a dozen cases of absentee ballot fraud in the past two years.
“The whole problem with mail-in ballots or absentee ballots is that they are the only kind of ballots that are voted outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers,” Spakovsky said.
Ballots thus become susceptible to theft and can be altered, Spakovsky said. Voters can also be “pressured and coerced in their homes” to vote a particular way. Election officials inside a polling location help prevent this kind of fraudulent action from taking place.
“No one can intercept ballots between the time voters mark them and put them in the ballot box—but all that changes with mail-in or absentee ballots,” he said.
Spakovsky acknowledged the need for absentee ballots for people who might be disabled, sick, or out of town on Election Day.
He referred to four previous instances of election fraud—a school board election, a mayoral election, a Democratic mayoral primary election, and a congressional election. Those cases involved fraud committed through absentee and mail-in voting, resulting in a “stolen election,” he said.
According to Spakovsky, another election vulnerability comes in the form of “vote trafficking”—when “third-party strangers” are allowed to go to voters’ homes to pick up ballots and deliver them. This is commonly referred to as “vote harvesting.” This practice “gives the ability of candidates and paid political operatives who have a stake in the outcome of the election to handle something very valuable—the ballot,” he said.
One example is the 2018 election in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District.
“A hired political consultant and his staff went out collecting absentee ballots from voters, forging signatures, and changing and altering ballots,” Spakovsky said.
As a result of this illegal ballot harvesting and ballot tampering operation, the election was overturned.
“For those who can, I encourage every person to vote in-person to having a ballot stolen, forged or altered, or being coerced to vote a certain way,” Spakovsky said, noting that many states don’t have basic security measures in place to prevent these kinds of activities. “A state ought to require an ID for anyone voting with an absentee ballot.”
When a voter requests an absentee ballot, a photocopy of their ID document should also be sent, he said. A driver’s license or a free state ID would be sufficient to verify a person’s identity. Alabama and Kansas require IDs for both in-person and absentee voting.
Other states, such as California and New York, have no ID requirement of any kind.
“Without a requirement for proper identification and witness signatures, absentee ballots will always be extremely vulnerable,” Spakovsky said.
A man uses a dropbox in Milwaukee on Oct. 20, 2020. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Dirty Voter Rolls
The Epoch Times also spoke to J. Christian Adams, president and general counsel of Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), the nation’s only nonprofit law firm dedicated to election integrity.
“Voter rolls have also been in a mess in a lot of states for a long time; ballots are sent to bad addresses,” Adams said.
Duplicate and unlawful voter registrations can have an effect on elections, he noted.
For instance, in a testimony (pdf) before the House Judiciary Committee in June 2020, Adams identified a voter named Rashawn Slade from Swissvale, Pennsylvania, who had registered to vote seven times.
With the prevalence of “dirty voter rolls,” Adams said, “ballots have been sent to abandoned lots, mines, liquor stores, casinos, and many other places.”
In October 2020, PILF released a video that documented visits to nonresidential addresses that were claimed by registered voters in Nevada.
In January, PILF shared a report (pdf) examining Arizona’s voter registration rolls. It found that in 2020, there were 31,641 Arizona voter registrants who had registered for a second time in a new state upon moving.
There were also 863 residents of Arizona who registered twice under variations of their names. Small differences in the way a potential voter spells his or her name can create duplicate registrations, according to Adams.
“A person has the ability, for example, to register to vote using his or her middle name, while also getting registered a second time by using a full middle name,” he said.
People have even transposed their date of birth, essentially creating two different people.
“For the future of the nation’s election integrity, there must be an effort to clean up dirty voter rolls, including those where dead people still remain on the roll,” Adams said.
