‘No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard…’
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Virginia will no longer require voters to show photo identification to cast a ballot, according to a new bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam.
“Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder,” Northam said in a statement on Sunday.
“No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard. I’m proud to sign these bills into law,” he said.
The package of bills Northam signed over the weekend also replace a state holiday, Lee–Jackson Day, which honored the Confederate generals, with a state holiday specifically designated for Election Day. And it extends polling hours by one hour, and allows for early voting 45 days prior to an election.
It followed his Friday signing two of the most controversial bills in the state’s new radical leftist agenda: one curtailing gun rights and the other expanding abortion access.
The proposals had previously drawn thousands of protesters to the state capital of Richmond. However, Northam cleared the full slate less than two weeks after issuing stay-at-home orders that prevented further protests.
Although critics argued that the ballot-box changes were part of a brazen effort to secure permanent majorities for their party in the longtime swing state, Virginia Democrats defended the rolled-back restrictions as an opportunity expand voting access.
“We need more access to the ballot box, not less,” state Sen. Louise Lucas said in a statement. “I am so proud to be a part of new laws that expand access to voting and make our Commonwealth more representative of the people we serve. Today is a historic day.”
Democrats have long argued against the need for voter identification by claiming such requirements disproportionately suppress minority votes. A 2017 study, however, found that there is “no definitive relationship” between tough laws requiring identification at the polls and a drop-off in Hispanic, black, and other minority turnout.
Indeed, studies that suggest otherwise typically rely on inaccuracies and errors, according to political science professors Eitan Hersh of Yale University, Marc Meredith of the University of Pennsylvania, and Justin Grimmer and Clayton All of Stanford University.
Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which advocates voter ID laws and investigates voter fraud, said leftist activists and academics “have been searching for the silver bullet to prove voter ID is harmful to minorities,” but have yet to find one.
There is no “causal link between voter ID and intentional decreases in minority turnout,” Churchwell told the Daily Caller, but there is a link between a lack of voter identification and voter fraud.
‘As you can see, the NEW model can’t even get today right…’
Army service members arrive in Seattle to help set up a field hospital that was never needed. / IMAGE: KING 5 via Youtube
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) An Army field hospital was deployed to Washington state last month to treat an expected onslaught of Wuhan coronavirus victims that was supposed to overwhelm state hospitals.
The military safety net was erected in the CenturyLink Field Event Center where the Seattle Seahawks football team normally plays.
Three hundred soldiers manned 250 beds, a lab, X-ray machines, surgery facilities and an intensive care unit.
But the emergency facility is now being dismantled without ever treating a single patient.
Similar events are occurring all over the country.
In New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, overflow hospitals at the Javits Convention Center and a U.S. Navy ship have been mostly empty.
President Donald Trump dispatched the USNS Comfort to New York City on March 28 to help overrun hospitals. The ship carries 12 fully equipped operating rooms, 1,000 hospital beds, a medical laboratory, pharmacy, optometry lab, digital radiology capabilities, a CAT scan, two oxygen-producing plants and a helicopter deck, along with a crew of nearly 1,200 sailors.
The Army-operated Javits Federal Medical Station also has 1,000 patient beds, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services staffed it with doctors, nurses and additional medical personnel.
But both overflow facilities are serving fewer than 100 patients, according to NPR.
On the opposite coast, San Francisco hospitals have seen far fewer coronavirus patients than experts warned.
“I was on campus today, and it’s actually quite mellow,” Bob Wachter, professor and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, told CNBC on March 27.
That same week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was publicly sounding the alarm.
“Because we’re not doing elective procedures that can be pushed back, it’s even quieter than usual,” Wachter said.
As of April 13, San Francisco County had reported 875 confirmed cases and only 14 deaths since the coronavirus outbreak first began.
While certain hospitals in hardest-hit areas may be struggling, overall fears about overburdened hospitals, potential health care collapse and lack of critical medical supplies seems to be overblown.
Just two weeks ago, Newsom pleaded with Trump for more lifesaving breathing ventilators to address an expected explosion of coronavirus victims in the nation’s most populous state.
“The one treatment we know works are ventilators… so we need more of them,” Newsom said.
In times of crisis, it’s more important than ever we are the UNITED States of America. CA is answering the call for Americans in NY and across the country, loaning 500 state-owned ventilators to those in need. I know, if the tables were turned, other states would be there for us.
Oregon has also given away ventilators. Gov. Kate Brown sent 140 of the critical breathing devices to New York last week, leaving her state of 4.2 million residents with only 800.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee did the same. He sent 400 ventilators back to the National Strategic Stockpile on the heels of his previously apocalyptic warnings about the Wuhan virus.
Six weeks ago, Inslee announced the first death caused by the coronavirus in the United States.
The nation’s first case of the coronavirus also occurred in Washington state, when a Snohomish County man tested positive in January after returning from a trip to Wuhan, China.
Inslee, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency on Feb. 29, and soon after 35 elder victims perished from the virus at nursing home outside of Seattle. The tragedy became a national media sensation and public fears exploded.
Inslee pleaded for medical supplies, breathing ventilators and additional federal help despite having previously ignored warnings about Washington’s pandemic inadequacies. Inslee instead directed taxpayer resources to politically-correct pet projects like his $1.1 billion initiative to support orcas in the Puget Sound.
Inslee is now taking credit for the crisis that never really came, saying his social-distancing edicts were Washington’s saving grace.
“We requested this resource before our physical distancing strategies were fully implemented and we had considerable concerns that our hospitals would be overloaded with Covid-19 cases,” he said in an April 8 press release.
But the lack of overwhelm more accurately tracks with a failed coronavirus model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
The IHME model, as it’s known, has served as the basis for CDC predictions—and by extension the White House’s emergency-response task force and state governors. The model already accounts for social distancing and has been dramatically revised downward in recent days—so much so, that many consider the model a disaster.
Prior to April, the IHME model predicted anywhere from 100,000 to 240,00 U.S. coronavirus deaths.
Then, on April 2, the death forecasts were reduced to between 93,500 and 178,000. Three days later on April 5, the model again reduced its forecasts to between 81,500 and 136,00. On April 8, yet another downward revision showed coronavirus deaths are expected to drop to between 60,000 and 126,000.
The figures also include fuzzy definitions for coronavirus infections and deaths.
CDC guidelines permit deaths to be attributed to the virus if patients succumb to pre-existing health conditions. It also counts patients who are suspected of having the coronavirus without ever having tested positive for it.
Moreover, on April 2, the IHME model predicted 262,092 hospital beds would be needed for U.S. coronavirus patients. On April 5, that was reduced to 140,823. The estimated needs for ICU beds and ventilators also plummeted.
By April 5, the IHME predicted that New York would need about 24,000 hospital beds, including about 6,000 for ICU patients.
Here is the newly updated mIHME_UW model with predictions for NY state today (which doesn’t need to be predicted, as it’s already happened). And here’s the actual data from today. As you can see, the NEW model can’t even get today right. pic.twitter.com/4y2rat5jcz
‘The groupthink is pervasive. When you’re in a situation like this, they want you to be in a state of fear…’
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) As the country endures a severe economic shutdown to stop the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus, many are beginning to wonder if virus death totals have been over-reported.
The controversy stems from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that allow for a death certificate to note cause of death to be COVID-19, even if the victim had underlying medical conditions that caused the death and the patient just happened to have the coronavirus also.
Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, said the CDC guidelines would allow for an asymptomatic coronavirus patient who died after being hit by a bus to be listed as having died from the coronavirus.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said on Fox News’ Ingraham Angle last week.
The over-reporting is particularly concerning given that most deaths involve patients with pre-existing health conditions. Whether they pass away from the coronavirus or their previous health problems, the deaths can be officially attributed to the virus.
What’s more, states are attributing deaths to the coronavirus even for patients who have not been tested for it.
In an interview with radio host Todd Starnes, Jensen said death certificates are sacred and “supposed to represent the truth,” not just an assumption.
Jensen also said that inflating deaths statistics creates fear, which some believe is necessary to manage a public crisis.
“The groupthink is pervasive,” he said. “When you’re in a situation like this, they want you to be in a state of fear.”
Specifically, the CDC guidelines state: “In cases where a definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.’”
The guidelines further state that it is up to the discretion of those treating the patient—who may have their own reasons, tied to funding and resources, for wanting to inflate the totals. “In these instances, certifiers should use their best clinical judgment in determining if a COVID–19 infection was likely.”
Deborah Birx, the White House response coordinator for the Coronavirus Task Force, affirmed last week that the federal government is classifying deaths of infected patients as coronavirus deaths even when underlying health issues are involved.
“There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition, and let’s say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem—some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death,” she said during a White House press briefing.
“The intent is … if someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that,” she added.
Birx’s comments immediately boosted concerns about over-reporting.
“There are lots of people who are asymptomatic who may have other terrible diseases,” conservative journalist Brit Hume said on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight.
“If everybody is being automatically classified—if they’re found to have COVID-19, as a COVID-19 death—we’re going to get a very large number of deaths that way,” Hume said. “And we’re probably not going to have an accurate count of what the real death total is.,”
Health departments throughout Ohio have been including both confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state’s total infection numbers and patients who exhibit coronavirus symptoms but have not been tested, according to WHIO-TV.
“We think for Ohio citizens this is the best way to report this,” said Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican. “We are going to follow what the CDC said.”
The practice creates an obvious degree of uncertainty about the accuracy of reported cases in Ohio, as well as death totals that come from the same pool of cases.
But it’s perfectly acceptable per CDC guidelines.
“Ideally, testing for COVID–19 should be conducted, but it is acceptable to report COVID–19 on a death certificate without this confirmation if the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty,” the guidelines state.
Over-reporting is already a cause of concern in that dying after a positive diagnosis is automatically considered a coronavirus fatality regardless of unrelated circumstances or pre-existing health conditions. But now that unconfirmed infections will be included, death numbers in hardest-hit areas like New York City are likely to soar.
A spokesperson for New York City’s Health Department said last week that the city would no longer stick to reporting infections confirmed by laboratory tests.
“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the NYC Health Department are working together to include into their reports deaths that may be linked to COVID but not lab confirmed that occur at home,” she said.
In its reporting guidelines, the CDC provides several examples for reporting a coronavirus death. One involves an 86-year-old stroke victim who developed a cough and fever after visiting a family member who had the virus.
The stroke victim dies in the scenario without being tested. But the cause of death is allowed to be attributed to the coronavirus, “given the patient’s symptoms and exposure to an infected individual.”
The policy casts a much wider net than necessary, critics say.
Reading the fine print also helps shed light on how infection and death numbers have been reported.
A recent tally of coronavirus deaths in New Jersey comes with a miniature italicized note: “Data includes confirmed and presumptive positive cases of COVID-19 reported by the CDC, state health officials and other health agencies since Jan. 21.”
‘Google’s colossal stores of data on daily movements of Americans, coupled with the might of local, state, and federal governments is an alarming prospect…’
Google Location History / IMAGE: Liberty Headlines
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) The House Freedom Caucus is sounding the alarm against a Wuhan coronavirus safety measure that amounts to a global civil liberties threat.
But totalitarian governments aren’t behind it—Google is.
The Silicon Valley tech behemoth announced last week that it will use its vast resources and data collection capabilities to track everyday people around the world and publish their movements online.
The stated purpose of Google’s “Community Mobility Reports” program is to provide data and insights to governments so they can “make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.”
That includes providing government officials with tracking information that shows whether people are obeying or disobeying social distancing edicts.
In a letter to President Donald Trump on Friday, the Freedom Caucus said the initiative was “frightfully detailed, specific, and granular.”
NEWS: @freedomcaucus members warn that privacy matters–even and especially in times of crisis.
More than providing big picture patterns, the program will track people’s movements outside of their homes, including trips to grocery stores, coffee shops, parks, retailers, libraries, pharmacies, transit stops, workplaces and other homes.
The potential for abuse is stunning—even in the United States, the Freedom Caucus warns.
The tracking data could be a boon for repressive foreign regimes, and it could also be misused in places like Michigan where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has banned “travel between two residences.”
Social media has helped expose previously unthinkable government crackdowns for even the slightest social-distancing transgressions, such as maritime police boats racing to arrest a paddleboarder, a law enforcement officer chasing an individual jogger, and handcuffing a man playing tee-ball with his six-year-old daughter at a public park.
The COVID-19 Community Mobility website could serve to multiply these incidents.
“Google’s colossal stores of data on daily movements of Americans, coupled with the might of local, state, and federal governments is an alarming prospect,” the Freedom Caucus wrote.
“We are a people with a limited government charged to secure the rights of its citizens,” the letter continued. “The civil liberties guaranteed to Americans include preservation of privacy—and that must not be violated.”
Google captures roughly 90 percent of all search-engine use in the United States. Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., ranks as the fourth most valuable corporation in America, behind Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.
It also works with human-rights violators like the Chinese Communist Party to censor the internet and produce surveillance-oriented search engines.
Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, a Trump ally and co-founder of the site Paypal, has also warned about Google.
Last year, Thiel penned a New York Times editorial blasting the tech giant for building an artificial-intelligence lab in Beijing while refusing to work with the Pentagon.
In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Marines Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Google was assisting an adversary.
“The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Dunford said before re-characterizing his statement: “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may be not a full characterization of the way it really is, it is more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
Google says its COVID-19 social-distancing tracking website will cover 131 countries, as well as individual counties within certain states. Data will mostly come from the “location history” of Google consumer products and services, the company says.
At present, Google users (including other Alphabet-related ventures like the Chrome web browser, Gmail, Youtube and a line of phones using the Android operating system) have the option to pause or delete their location histories when logged into their accounts.
However, Google has been exposed in the past for being less-than-forthcoming with its privacy controls. And there is no indication that a person’s private data might not be posted or aggregated anonymously, even if the individual has opted out of user-specific data collection.
The 14-member Freedom Caucus contends the practice of intimately tracking everyday Americans already raises serious constitutional privacy concerns. But providing that information to governments to enforce severe Wuhan virus social-distancing rules is beyond the pale.
“Our nation is great because of our dedication to individual liberty, self-government, and freedom for all. In times of crisis, we cannot abandon the very things that make us great,” they said.
‘I feel bad for whoever let this one slip through…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) If one CNN viewer’s concerns about coronavirus comorbidity factors are correct, then it could prove more dangerous to anchor Chris Cuomo than a weekend fishing retreat with the Corleone family.
Cuomo, who announced last week that he tested positive for the virus, is now said to be recovering. But the younger brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo might not have been so lucky if “TDS” were considered a risk factor.
During a town hall on Thursday, a CNN viewer who identified himself as James Fox posed the question “Is Stage-4 TDS considered an underlying morbidity?”
The abbreviation, for those unaware, is short for “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” which generally manifests as a mental neurosis rather than a respiratory ailment.
The question briefly appeared in the chyron below the screen during a discussion between anchor Anderson Cooper, health correspondent Sanjay Gupta and Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The three did not take up the question in their discussion, according to Fox News.
However, eagle-eyed media consumers who happened to land on CNN at that precise moment while flipping through the channels did not let it go unnoticed. Several let the network know via Twitter that it seemed fake even by CNN standards.
Conservative journalist Steve Krakauer, who once worked as a CNN producer, offered a bit more empathy, though.
As someone whose job it was at one point to put social media messages like these on the bottom of the @CNN screen during town halls, I feel bad for whoever let this one slip through… pic.twitter.com/O17f2ldn7Z
The debacle came on a particularly rough day for CNN, already dealing with frustration after Vice President Mike Pence had informed them he would not authorize other medical experts, including Coronavirus Task Force doctors Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, to appear on the network unless it agreed to broadcast additional segments of the White House’s daily coronavirus press briefings.
‘No more will legislators in Richmond—most of whom are men—be telling women what they should and should not be doing with their bodies…’
Ralph Northam / IMAGE: Face the Nation via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Much as Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam hid his identity behind Ku Klux Klan hoods and blackface during his medical school days, the radical leftist hid behind a recent health emergency to rubber-stamp two controversial pieces of legislation.
On Friday, Northam passed anti-gun-rights and pro-abortion bills that had been widely criticized and protested by many of the commonwealth’s citizens.
But with groups of more than 10 people banned due to the coronavirus shelter-in-place orders he recently enacted, the racist governor was able to capitalize on the curtailment of First Amendment freedom of assembly in order to abridge Second-Amendment rights and to advance his confessed goal of state-sanctioned infanticide.
Adding insult to injury, the measures came on a weekend that many Christians and Jews were celebrating some of their most sacred holidays, Easter and Passover, in spite of the state-mandated suspension of many religious services and gatherings.
Northam signed bills on five separate measures to restrict the rights of gun owners, who had previously turned up in thousands to raise their objections.
In response to the ambitious and unconstitutional overreach, most of Virginia’s counties had also proposed or passed legislation to designate themselves Second-Amendment sanctuaries.
After an open invitation from the West Virginia legislature, some counties even weighed the possibility of seceding from Virginia.
Among the new mandates:
require background checks on all firearm sales
establish red-flag laws for the indefinite confiscation of weapons from those deemed dangerous
permit the purchase of only one handgun per month
require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within 48 hours or be fined
punish those who wield firearms in the presence of minors
Seeking additional amendments, Northam temporarily tabled two other bills that would allow government localities to ban firearms in public spaces and prohibit anyone with a restraining order from purchasing a firearm.
“We lose too many Virginians to gun violence, and it is past time we took bold, meaningful action to make our communities safer,” said Northam in a press release. “… These commonsense laws will save lives.”
While claiming his objective was to save lives, though, Northam subsequently pushed through a pro-abortion bill that was poised to do the exact opposite.
“No more will legislators in Richmond—most of whom are men—be telling women what they should and should not be doing with their bodies,” he crowed.
The new abortion laws will repeal Virginia’s mandatory ultrasound law and 24-hour waiting period prior to abortion, designed to encourage expectant mothers to carefully consider their course of action and weigh alternative options such as adoption.
The law also rolled back GOP-backed measures that imposed higher regulatory and safety standards on abortion clinics beyond the baseline state requirements for medical offices.
Northam referred to the laws as “politically motivated ‘TRAP’ restrictions on women’s health centers, which are designed to force their closure and make it more difficult for Virginians to get access to the healthcare services.”
Virginia Democrats capitalized on an influx of outside funding from mega-donors like billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer to gain majorities in both of its state legislative chambers last November for the first time in two decades.
Ralph Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook
Only months before, Northam appeared to be facing the end of his political career after scandalous revelations of his racist past emerged in the form of a photo from his medical school yearbook.
Rather than heed bipartisan calls to step down, Northam rode out the scandal, relying on a network of subterranean tunnels connecting the governor’s mansion and state capitol to avoid public scrutiny.
Ultimately, he survived by virtue of the fact that both his successors—Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring—also faced equally disgraceful scandals that would have handed control of the governorship to Republicans.
Northam also agreed to a laundry list of radical demands presented to him by a group called the Virginia Black Politicos as part of a quid-pro-quo agreement in return for them to drop demands for his resignation.
“I was proud to work with legislators and advocates on these measures,” Northam said Friday, “and I am proud to sign them into law.”
‘This should put to bed any question about the Treasury Department’s handling of this matter…’
Steve Mnuchin/IMAGE: ABC News via YouTube
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin correctly denied the House’s request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns because it lacked a “legitimate legislative purpose,” according to an investigation by Richard Delmar, the Treasury Department’s acting inspector general.
“The core of our inquiry is that the Department processed the request properly, that it sought legal guidance from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, determined that it was bound by that office’s advice, and based on that advice determined not to provide the returns and tax information sought,” Delmar wrote.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, asked for the IG’s findings.
“This should put to bed any question about the Treasury Department’s handling of this matter,” Grassley said.
“From the beginning, Democrats have insisted that something must be awry if they didn’t immediately get their way,” he continued. “But that’s not how checks and balances work, and it’s not how the process of congressional oversight works.”
Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who chairs the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, sent a subpoena to both the IRS and Treasury Department for Trump’s personal and business tax returns.
“It’s the role of Congress to ensure that the law is being faithfully executed,” Grassley said. “I’m glad to see that’s the case at the Department of the Treasury.”
He commended Mnuchin for withstanding the pressure to comply with the illegal request from House Democrats—one of many attempts they have made at legislative overreach while seeking further justification to impeach the president.
“I applaud Secretary Mnuchin for following the proper procedures, and the law, in denying the request for President Trump’s tax returns on the advice of the Office of Legal Counsel, which determined the request lacked a legitimate legislative purpose,” Grassley said.
Grassley said Democrats wanted Trump’s tax returns as political cudgels, not for the purpose of passing laws.
“It’s clear that the only motivation for seeking the president’s tax returns is political,” he said.
“That’s an inappropriate use of 6103 authority and it’s an inappropriate use of congressional oversight powers,” he continued. “The Administration is correct to reject attempts by Democrats to politicize this process. Treasury personnel should be commended for avoiding outside pressures and doing their work by the book.”
“If it is proven that they’ve done something illegal or unethical, they will have to be significantly punished,” Kudlow told Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., in a livestream on Thursday. “I don’t put up with any of that nonsense.”
Last month, financial disclosures revealed that Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C.; Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga.; James Inhofe, R-Okla.; and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., sold off significant stock shares only a few days after the Trump administration held a confidential briefing with senators about the coronavirus.
Burr and Loeffler were both reportedly in attendance, but Inhofe and Feinstein were not. Each of the senators has denied wrongdoing.
Burr and Loeffler have both endorsed a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, and Kudlow said that if the investigation reveals illicit insider trading, punishment should follow.
“In our great system of free enterprise, you have to play by the rules; everybody has to play by the rules … we all have to play by the rules, and if not we’ll have to face the consequences,” he said.
McSally said she agreed: “If these allegations are true,” she said, “they need to be held accountable.”
Loeffler has insisted that all of her stock trades are made by an independent commission responsible for her accounts. But just last week it was reported that her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, who is the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, recently acquired as much as $415,000 stock in DuPont de Nemours, a chemical company that manufactures protective equipment that is in high demand due to the coronavirus.
“I think it deserves an extra amount of scrutiny because when she did the first round of sales after she got nonpublic information, she also bought a stock in a telecommuting company,”said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesman for the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a Senate ethics complaint against Loeffler and Burr last month.
‘As we all become more savvy in terms of technology one would say we can transfer that to remote voting but it’s not that easy…’
Nancy Pelosi / CSPAN via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tried Thursday to slam the brakes on a call for remote-voting in Congress while continuing to push for the November presidential election to move to mail-in-only ballots.
As members of Congress remain in their home districts, many subject to stay-at-home orders issued by states or voluntary self-quarantines, the House has been filing its bills electronically and working remotely via conference call,
But Pelosi has insisted on using the existing voice-vote and unanimous-consent rules for the passage of legislation. That means a single objector can derail the process, forcing a quorum of House members to be physically present.
“As we all become more savvy in terms of technology one would say we can transfer that to remote voting but it’s not that easy,” Pelosi told reporters on a conference call, according to the Washington Times.
Pelosi rightfully voiced concern that remote ballot-casting could be compromised. Recent technology failures like the Democratic caucus in Iowa underscore the potential for application crashes or glitches, as well as the ongoing worry of foreign interference.
“There are some technologies that you might think would be workable—they might not be secure,” Pelosi said.
The San Francisco liberal is reportedly mulling rules such as proxy voting, but she claimed that doing so would be a painstakingly slow process.
“The rules are what they are now,” she said. “If the rules need to be changed, it needs to be done carefully. It took three years to change the rules after 9/11.”
Perplexingly, her refusal to implement House rules changes comes at the same time that Democrats are attempting an all-out push to move the November election to mail-only ballots.
GOP leaders including President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel have all made clear that the proposal is a nonstarter due to the high potential for ballot fraud.
Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans. @foxandfriends
States like California, which legally allows ballot-harvesting, have revealed the corruption and the logistical problems with heavy reliance on absentee voting.
“You want to hold up the bill because you want to change election law for November, because you think that gives you some political benefit?” McCarthy told reporters during a press call Thursday, according to Politico.
“That’s disgusting to me. … Stop worrying about politics,” he continued. “Worry about what’s in front of us. And that’s the health of the nation … and our economy.”
Yet, several far-left senators, including Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.,; Chris Coons, D-Del.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., continued to press the matter in a press teleconference on Thursday, plugging a new bill to earmark billions of dollars for remote voting in the general election.
“Americans shouldn’t have to choose between their health and casting a ballot,” Klobuchar claimed. “And it is wrong to shortchange our election officials as we provide relief to address the effects of this global pandemic.”
Recent revisions to the coronavirus‘s initial projections indicate that the pandemic will be smaller in its scale and faster in peaking than many media fearmongerers suggested.
It is unlikely that the virus will loom as a major contagion threat in November, although common-sense sanitation and social-distancing measures may still be advisable.
Nonetheless, Democrats have been unrelenting in their efforts to drag out the crisis and to milk it for every possible ounce of political leverage.
The crisis was “a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” admitted House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-SC, in a conference call with about 200 fellow Democratic members of Congress.
Pelosi has been at the forefront of the cynical opportunism. Her own efforts have included an attempt to add pork from the Left’s agenda into a crucial coronavirus relief bill and the appointment of Clyburn to lead a partisan oversight committee on the health crisis.
That, naturally, included a flip–flop on her concerns over voting security and integrity. On the same day she dismissed the possibility of letting the House vote remotely, she continued to bolster left-wing talking points about allowing the entire country to do so.
“We have a different value system about what voting means to a democracy,” Pelosi asserted during a call with reporters, according to The Hill. “Clearly, we want to remove all obstacles to participation.”
Pelosi and many other left-wingers have ignored blatant evidence of ballot fraud. Several stories by the left-leaning Associated Press have, for example, falsely suggested, without evidence, that “Experts have said vote fraud of any type is extremely rare.”
In fact, some of the most vocal advocates in the Left’s current call for mail-in voting have hypocritically represented the other side amid claims of abuse by Republicans.
By sowing chaos and confusion on Election Day, Democrats hope to tap into their historical ability to use the courts to reverse electoral outcomes in their favor.
But Pelosi made no mention of the fraud issues in her defense of the mail-in voting push. Rather, she redirected the question into another Republican-bashing opportunity, claiming Trump and his supporters were opposed to democracy.
“It had been a Grand Old Party. It had been hijacked, I know,” Pelosi ranted. “But nonetheless … Republicans know how to vote by mail.”
‘We have to keep each other safe by social distancing and washing our hands and not bringing dangerous firearms into our homes…’
Alyssa Milano / IMAGE: 60 Minutes Australia
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Actress and leftist activist Alyssa Milano claimed the public can prevent the spread of the Wuhan virus by preventing the sales of guns.
“I’m seeing reports all over the country of Americans responding to the coronavirus outbreak by buying up guns and ammunition,” the actress said Thursday in a video on Twitter.
“And I know that we are all scared and stressed out during these really uncertain times, but that is exactly why stockpiling weapons could have dire consequences for our own personal safety and those around us,” she continued. “You know, the weapons that people are buying today could end up being used in households, schools, churches, bars, and on our streets in the future.”
The U.S. needs to “stop the coronavirus gun surge,” Milano said, adding that the only way to keep people “safe” is by “social distancing and washing our hands and not bringing dangerous firearms into our homes.”
Americans bought over 2 million firearms in March of 2020, over a million more than this time last year. We have to keep each other safe by social distancing and washing our hands and not bringing dangerous firearms into our homes. #StopTheCoronavirusGunSurge#NoRApic.twitter.com/O5J98QXTFO
Gun sales have skyrocketed throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Background checks are up 94%, according to the Washington Examiner, and handgun sales are up 91%.
Milano has led Hollywood’s protest against gun rights—often hypocritically.
Back in 2018, she protested outside of the annual National Rifle Association convention in Dallas while being accompanied by armed private security guards.
When confronted, Milano claimed the guards weren’t actually hers and pivoted back to accusing the NRA of “buying off the government.”
This was event security, not my bodyguard. But regardless, this security guy has had training and passed a background check. These are the common sense gun reform policies we are fighting for for everyone.
