‘To his credit, and I wish we could do better, [Joe Biden] is doing very, very well …’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez/IMAGE: The Late Show with Stephen Colbert via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Reacting to Joe Biden’s primary wins on Tuesday night, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed Bernie Sanders’s string of losses on the “generational divide in the Democratic Party,” especially when it comes to policy.
“There’s no sugar-coating it. Tonight is a tough night,” she said during an Instagram Live video. “Tonight is a tough night electorally. Older voters, which we know are more reliable voters, which we know turn out, have decisively gone to former Vice President Biden.”
It’s hard to be a “young person” in the Democratic Party, Ocasio-Cortez added.
“There’s a generational divide within the Democratic Party on health care, on climate change, on foreign policy, pretty much every policy imaginable,” she said. “As a younger person in this movement, I take a lot of that as information for how we navigate the next decade.”
Ocasio-Cortez has long claimed that the youth vote would propel Sanders to victory, since he tends to be much more popular among younger Americans than older voters.
Young Americans, however, still don’t vote.
Voters under the age of 30 made up just 11% of the electorate in the past several primary elections, according to NPR, while 35% were between the ages of 45 and 64.
Even Sanders admitted that his campaign has failed to “bring young people into the process.”
“Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing young people in? The answer is no,” Sanders told reporters after his Super Tuesday losses. “I think that will change in the general election, but I will be honest with you, we have not done as well … It is not easy.”
Sanders then argued that his voter base is more likely to influence the future of the Democratic Party than Biden’s — even if Biden wins the Democratic nomination.
“To his credit, and I wish we could do better, [Joe Biden] is doing very, very well with people 65 or older. We’re not,” Sanders told MSNBC. “We’re doing phenomenally well with people 30 or under. Now, which group of people is there more potential to grow the base, to bring people in?”
‘If the government can misuse this system to spy on a presidential campaign, they can surely do it to any other American citizen…’
Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows/YouTube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) President Donald Trump’s congressional allies continued to reject the notion of renewing parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act without meaningful changes to the secretive court and its warrant process.
Despite recent overtures of bipartisan negotiation, the House Freedom Caucus on Wednesday released a statement saying it opposed any bill—even as a short-term solution—that failed to address the required reforms raised by a recent inspector general’s investigation.
“As Congress considers reauthorizing FISA, anything short of significant and substantive reforms would betray the trust of the American people,” said the Freedom Caucus statement, prior to Sunday’s renewal deadline.
FISA was updated following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to permit limited instances domestic surveillance when approved by the FISA court—amid widespread concern from privacy advocates on both sides.
The USA Freedom Act instead sought to empower intelligence agencies who claimed in the wake of the Al Qaeda sleeper-cell plot that they had been hamstrung by privacy restrictions afforded to U.S. citizens.
But the Department of Justice’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, highlighted in his December report 17 instances of abuse from partisan FBI “resistance” operatives who sought to undermine Trump, first as a candidate and then in the early days of his presidency.
Claiming Trump staffers had colluded with Russian operatives to throw the election, biased FBI agents manipulated a CIA email to say the opposite by removing the word “not,” in order to justify their case for spying on the Republican campaign.
With a March 15 sunset clause due to take effect, Trump supporters have questioned whether the FISA courts and the intelligence agencies are truly committed to the reform task, which would likely restrict their discretionary judgment in favor of additional oversight and checks.
“Recent revelations that FISA was severely and repeatedly used to spy on a presidential campaign are beyond the pale,” said Wednesday’s Freedom Caucus statement. “[I]f the government can misuse this system to spy on a presidential campaign, they can surely do it to any other American citizen.”
Two prominent Freedom Caucus leaders—Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Mark Meadows, R-NC, in January criticized the appointment of Obama administration official David Kris, a FISA apologist, to lead the reform process.
Jordan is soon to become the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees the FISA court, while Meadows was recently tapped to step in as Trump’s new chief of staff.
However, Attorney General William Barr has notably voiced his approval of the House bill as he seeks more time to oversee the reform measures that, presumably, are in the process being implemented.
Reaffirming his support for renewal, Barr said in a statement Wednesday that the new bill went far enough in addressing the concerns.
“The bill contains an array of new requirements and compliance provisions that will protect against abuse and misuse in the future while ensuring that this critical tool is available when appropriate to protect the safety of the American people,” he said.
Many of the proposals contained in the bill came directly from himself and FBI Director Christopher Wray, Barr said, while taking into account the recommendations Horowitz made in his December IG report.
“The IG’s analysis and recommendations have helped shape our proposals,” Barr said. “The Director and I will promulgate additional, implementing rules that advance these reforms.”
Despite the conservative opposition, the Associated Press reported that the bill was likely to clear the House with majority support from Democrats. However, its fate in the Senate—particularly prior to the deadline—remained uncertain.
‘There is a malaise that has spread across this country … and people can’t take one more day of this…’
Sen. Bernie Sanders / IMAGE: Screenshot via Yahoo News
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Socialist-leaning radicals seemed to acknowledge, following Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s defeat in Michigan and several other primaries, that his candidacy within the Democratic establishment was never a serious one.
Rather, mouthpieces like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and filmmaker Michael Moore have conceded that Sanders’s run to the extreme Left was intended to make pragmatic, establishment liberals like former Vice President Joe Biden, boasting a more fluid set of political convictions, shift leftward and still claim to be the “moderate” alternatives.
Many of Democrats’ left-wing media cohorts have subscribed to the semantic subterfuge, promoting the narrative that Biden’s inevitable ascension wasn’t baked into the primary cake but was a spontaneous, groundswell movement, of sorts, to pivot back to the newly realigned ‘center.’
“There’s no consensus over whether the former vice president‘s recent surge will translate to votes for incumbent Democrats trying to fend off progressive rivals,” opined the Associated Press. “But with last week’s Super Tuesday contests handing liberal challengers a series of defeats sprinkled with glimmers of hope, most remaining insurgents face long odds.”
The Democratic spin machine, nonetheless, sought to tacitly normalize the radical, progressive agendas that the incumbent Democratic candidates were up against.
The AP article, citing no conservative viewpoints, offered a false equivalency between the mainstream and radical-progressive branches of the Left as if Sanders and Biden were, in fact, competing in the general election.
“The voters spoke, and they do want moderates in the Congress,” claimed Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, an occasional moderate whom the AP labeled a “conservative.”
Meanwhile, despite the long-shot odds for the radicals, many of whom are financially backed by globalist oligarchs like George Soros, the challenge alone is often worth the gamble.
As Cuellar noted, “If I would have lost, that would have created a wave of momentum against all the other Democrats” facing challengers from the extreme left.
Yet Cuellar—one of many House Democrats who spent several months prioritizing the baseless impeachment of the president over any sort of legislative agenda—suggested that his victory on Tuesday was a popular mandate rather than voters in his party simply falling back on the only reasonable default option.
For his role in stemming the progressive tide, “I can tell you, I’ve never been given so many thanks,” he claimed.
The posturing is unlikely to relent, particularly with the recent impeachment and other leftist efforts to undermine President Donald Trump forming the backdrop of the general election.
“An incumbent’s record of service, how they impacted the community, what is the last thing they’ve done for the voter, is always going to be top of mind over ideology,” said Dan Sena, a campaign operative for the Democratic establishment.
Michael Moore / IMAGE: Late Night with Seth Meyers via Youtube
Michigan native Moore, who has long harped on the working-class roots of his hometown of Flint, took it upon himself to speak for the blue-collar laborers of the union-heavy state.
“They’re frightened, they’re demoralized,” Moore claimed.
Although Michigan proved to be one of Trump’s surprise victories in the 2016 election, Moore said voters were so dejected that they had settled for a sub-par but safe candidate in Biden, instead of risking Sanders, the one they wanted, who would radically transform everything about American life by turning the democratic, capitalist principles upside-down.
“There is a malaise that has spread across this country and certainly throughout Michigan and people can’t take one more day of this,” Moore claimed, channeling the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s.
Of course, since the radical Left has succeeded thus far in driving the debate, pushing Democrats to double-down on conservative attacks rather than seek compromise solutions, there is little incentive for them to abandon the effort, regardless of Sanders’s political fortunes.
“It means that we have a lot of work to do for infrastructure,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, the group that helped to elect Ocasio–Cortez in 2018. “I’m not going to pretend that it’s not going to be hard.”
‘I didn’t think I was going to have to apply for a job…’
Michael Bloomberg/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) When billionaire Michael Bloomberg hired staffers for his expensive, failed presidential campaign, he promised them that they would be employed through November no matter the trajectory of his bid for the nomination.
But the sweet deal has fallen through, as Bloomberg’s campaign begins to shed employees, Politico reported.
Employees were paid $6,000 per month, plus healthcare benefits, and a $5,000 moving stipend, Huffpost reported.
Staffers for the Bloomberg campaign said they received a call on Monday informing them that they were canned.
The campaign will terminate the majority of employees by the end of the month.
Despite Bloomberg’s broken promise, the campaign comforted the now-unemployed aides by telling them that they could keep the iPhones and MacBooks that they were given, as well as apply for positions in the battleground states of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
“Mike Bloomberg entered the race to defeat Donald Trump, and he will keep up the fight to remove Trump from office in November,” according to a statement from the campaign.
“As we’ve said over the course of the campaign, this election will come down to six battleground states,” it continued. “It’s imperative that we invest there with staff and infrastructure. Staff who were working in non-battleground states and would like to learn about future opportunities in the battleground states are being asked to let us know so we can consider them for jobs there.”
Some staffers were frustrated at Bloomberg’s deceitful hiring promise.
“I didn’t think I was going to have to apply for a job,” a Bloomberg aide said to POLITICO. “It was presented as being automatic. Field organizers were told during interviews that they had a guaranteed job through November.”
Bloomberg said he may spend $1 billion on the general election campaign to defeat Trump.
“I don’t know if I want a job with Bloomberg, anyway. There are going to be so many opportunities—everything under the sun will be guns blazing to take out Trump,” the aide said. “And I’m not sure what Bloomberg’s contribution is going to be to that fight.”
‘During 2019, we made meaningful changes across our business, which fueled our strongest annual comp sales gain since 2012 …’
Photo by JeepersMedia (CC)
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Dick’s Sporting Goods said Tuesday that about additional 440 stores will no longer carry hunting goods, including ammunition and firearms.
The announcement follows the company’s 2019 decisions to ban ArmaLite-style rifles, raise the minimum age for a firearm purchase to 21, and remove ammunition and firearms from 125 stores, Fox News reported.
Given the 726 Dick’s stores in the United States, the new policy will eliminate hunting departments at more than half of the nation’s stores.
Shares jumped sharply Tuesday morning after the statement, climbing more than 12 percent, from $34 per share to more than $38.
Since then, Dick’s stock has tumbled to about $31 per share.
Nevertheless, Dick’s chairman and CEO Edward W. Stack said evidence showed that the sporting-goods store was trending in the right direction.
“During 2019, we made meaningful changes across our business, which fueled our strongest annual comp sales gain since 2012 and a 14-percent increase in non-GAAP earnings per diluted share over 2018,” Stack said.
“I’d like to thank all our teammates for their hard work and commitment to Dick’s Sporting Goods, which made this performance possible,” he added.
Stack reported “strong fourth quarter results” from 2019 and “growth across each of our three primary categories of hardlines, apparel and footwear.”
Second Amendment supporters and gun manufactures distanced themselves from Dick’s Sporting Goods last year after the company announced that it had hired gun-control lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
In response, Mossberg & Sons, an American firearms manufacturer, said they would discontinue business with the company.
“It has come to our attention that Dick’s Sporting Goods recently hired lobbyists on Capitol Hill to promote additional gun control,” Mossberg & Sons CEO Iver Mossberg wrote last May.
“Make no mistake, Mossberg is a staunch supporter of the U.S. Constitution and our Second Amendment rights, and we fully disagree with Dick’s Sporting Goods’ recent anti-Second Amendment actions,” he said.
‘The Committee remains committed to holding the President accountable to the rule of law and preventing improper interference…’
Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler / IMAGE: CNN via John Cornyn, Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) With Ukraine allegations now in the rear-view mirror, partisan House Democrats have returned to a favorite old standby: Russian collusion.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ruled that the House was permitted to access secret grand-jury material from the Mueller investigation. It was redacted in the special counsel’s final report, which concluded a year ago this month.
Mueller’s extensive investigation, lasting approximately two years (not counting a year prior by the FBI) and costing an estimated $30 million, determined there was insufficient evidence to present charges against President Donald Trump related to conspiracy theories that he had colluded with the Kremlin to turn the election against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Many of the theories originated with Clinton, whose campaign commissioned the now-debunked Steele Dossier and helped steer its salacious rumors within the federal bureaucracy and left-wing media outlets.
Following Mueller’s disastrous testimony before the House last July, Democrats immediately scuttled their efforts to pursue the matter further, focusing instead on impeaching Trump by alleging he abused his power in Ukraine, a former Soviet satellite that is now at war with Russia.
But Trump’s recent Senate acquittal gave Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; Jerrold Nadler, D-NY; and other House Democratic leaders an abundance of time on their hands to revisit the dormant Russia probe.
“The Justice Department has consistently provided grand jury material to the Committee in past investigations involving Presidential misconduct—but Attorney General [William] Barr chose to break from that long-standing practice, and DOJ radically altered its position in an attempt to withhold this information,” Nadler claimed, according to CNN.
“The court today correctly rejected DOJ’s arguments and held that the Committee is entitled to these materials,” Nadeler, the House Judiciary chairman, added. “The Committee remains committed to holding the President accountable to the rule of law and preventing improper interference in law enforcement investigations,” Nadler added.
The latest fishing expedition is likely to pursue accusations—for which Mueller declined prosecution—that Trump obstructed justice in the probe.
However, the president’s supporters have contended that since there was no underlying crime in the partisan smear campaign, Trump was justified in refusing to cooperate with some aspects of it. Nonetheless, he submitted written responses.
Several Trump associates were ultimately ensnared in perjury traps by the biased FBI officials, including self-declared “resistance” operatives who went on to work for Mueller.
A report by the Justice Department inspector general last December found 17 examples of serious FBI misconduct in its pursuit of warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. A criminal investigation remains ongoing.
Nonetheless, Nadler and others sought to find inconsistencies in Trump’s written responses and the testimony of other witnesses, much of which was redacted in the final Mueller report.
Despite the divisive, failed effort to remove Trump on the Ukraine charges, House Democrats have indicated that they would be open to an impeachment do-over.
While CNN suggested that the grand-jury testimony would remain confidential—the primary concern of the Justice Department in blocking its release—granting access to Schiff, Nadler and others likely ensures that it will be leaked anonymously to CNN, The New York Times and others, regardless of what it yields.
Even so, the three-member circuit-court panel decided in the 2-1 vote to break with tradition of avoiding judicial intervention in other branches.
“As gatekeepers of grand jury information, we cannot sit this one out,” said the opinion.
“The House isn’t seeking our help in eliciting executive-branch testimony or documents,” it said. “Instead, it’s seeking access to grand jury records whose disclosure the district court, by both tradition and law, controls.”
‘These results show the difficulties of companies attempting to provide public goods, as potential customers are crowded out by non-paying members of the public…”
Photo by marcopako (CC)
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A recent scientific analysis of cell-phone data revealed that Starbucks‘ virtue-signaling decision to allow anyone to use its restrooms and loiter in its business without purchase had resulted in a 7.3 percent decline in patronage.
The paper noted that its methods had ruled out other mitigating factors, such as Starbucks’s public disclosures, by analyzing its store attendance relative to other coffee shops and restaurants that were not franchises.
Staggeringly, the decline was much larger for stores located near homeless shelters, including drops of up to 84 percent, it said. It also reduced the amount of time paying customers spent at the establishment.
Starbucks made the decision after weathering accusations of racism in May 2018 from two black men who were waiting on a friend before ordering.
In response to the negative publicity and threats of litigation, it closed its stores for a day of sensitivity training and reopened with its newly inclusive policy.
But despite the underlying claim of racism, the researchers found that the new policy effectively discouraged all customers.
“Wealthier customers reduced their visits more, but black and white customers were equally deterred,” it said.
There was, however, one positive benefit to the community: fewer homeless people using the streets as their personal toilet.
“The policy led to fewer citations for public urination near Starbucks locations, but had no effect on other similar public order crimes,” said the report.
“These results show the difficulties of companies attempting to provide public goods, as potential customers are crowded out by non-paying members of the public,” it concluded.
‘If you continue the price-gouging, we will introduce our product, which is superior to your product—and you don’t even have the floral bouquet…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Appearing to blur the lines between comedy and reality, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo held a press conference Tuesday to announce his plan for “New York state clean hand-sanitizer” which—perhaps appropriately, given the state’s notorious sanitation issues—will be made by prison convicts.
During the brief remarks, Cuomo boasted that the product contained 75 percent alcohol as opposed to its major competitor, Purell, which contains 70 percent.
Cuomo did not mention whether there would be any protocols in place for overseeing and regulating the prisoners’ handling of the alcohol, which could prove volatile and dangerous even if not consumable.
Although he said the state would be providing it to government agencies, schools and transit authorities, another question may be whether the prison-grade product could pose a risk of contamination during the production process.
However, he did tout the plan as a cost-saving technique, particularly given the recent panic over an outbreak of the coronavirus.
The Environmental Protection Agency said products like Lysol, Purell and Clorox had proven reasonably effective in eliminating the virus threat if present on household-type surfaces.
The result was a run on the germ-killing products along with some fears over price-gouging.
“You can’t get it on the market, and when you get it, it’s very, very expensive,” Cuomo said.
He issued a warning “to Purell and Mr. Amazon and Mr. Ebay: If you continue the price-gouging, we will introduce our product, which is superior to your product—and you don’t even have the floral bouquet.”
Cuomo’s proposal for a government–free-market hybrid was a step up from past proposals such as the state’s support for socialized health care options.
The epidemic fears have caused the governor—one of President Donald Trump’s most obstreperous critics—to dial down his attacks recently in the spirit of cooperation.
After having accused Trump of “punishing” New York’s resistance against federal immigration and other policies only recently, Cuomo agreed with Trump last week that there was no need to panic about a coronavirus epidemic.
“The bottom line realization that 80 percent of the people will self-cure, self-resolve the virus and the target problem,” Cuomo said. “The 1.2% mortality is senior citizens and people who have compromised immune systems.”
He sought to reassure the public that the two sides could be trusted to work together on a solution.
“I think part of it is people don’t know who to believe,” he said. “You have Democrats blaming Republicans for not doing enough. Republicans say Democrats are hyping it. And it’s that political filter that says to people, ‘I don’t know who to believe and I don’t even know how bad this is.’ And that’s what generates fear, it’s the unknown.”
‘Women’s soccer outside of the United States doesn’t have the same degree of respect…’
Megan Rapinoe / IMAGE: coconut juice x via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Even after U.S. Soccer offered to increase the salaries of its female players, U.S. Women’s National Team soccer star Megan Rapinoe said she and her teammates would not accept the number until they receive “an actual offer for equal pay, and some considerable damages as well.”
“We’re trying to prepare for the Olympics and win this tournament, and be as good as we can be,” Rapinoe said. “Now we have to put effort towards this. You know, pull the media team, the lawyers and everybody out on Saturday.”
Rapinoe even admitted that her effort to achieve “equality” hadn’t “really achieved what it was intended to. I don’t know,” she told CNN.
U.S. Soccer has argued that its female players actually out-earned their male counterparts last year because the women receive salaries as well as game and tournament bonuses, while the men do not “receive any guaranteed money or benefits within their pay-for-play structure,” the federation said in a statement.
The little gap that still remains is necessary because filling it “would seriously impair our ability to support our mission and invest in these other critical developmental areas,” U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro explained in an open letter.
Molly Levinson, a spokeswoman for the female soccer players, claimed Cordeiro’s explanation was “riddled with falsehoods.”
Cordeiro, however, said that the women’s real grievance is a “lack of opportunity.”
“I felt then and I still feel to a degree, that the lack of opportunity for our female players was really what was at the root of some of their issues,” Cordeiro said in January.
“The fact that the Women’s World Cup generates a fraction of revenue and a fraction of what the men get paid is a reflection, frankly, of lack of opportunity,” he continued. “… Women’s soccer outside of the United States doesn’t have the same degree of respect.”
‘He turns everything into what he thinks is a political benefit for himself, and he’s actually imploding in the process…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Joe Biden said President Donald Trump should “just be quiet” and let his health officials handle the coronavirus outbreak.
“I wish he would just be quiet, I really mean it,” Biden said during an interview with MSNBC Monday night. “That’s an awful thing to say about a president, but be quiet, just let the experts speak and acknowledge whatever they suggest to him is what we should be doing.”
In an exclusive interview with @Lawrence, former Vice President @JoeBiden reacts to Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus and the market turmoil. Watch the full interview Monday at 10pm ET on @MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/IUOiUWPDKW
Biden also claimed Trump isn’t taking the coronavirus seriously because he doesn’t want the economy to crash. The stock market likely would have dropped with or without Trump’s help, but it “wouldn’t collapse,” Biden added.
“I think there’s no confidence in the president in anything he says or does,” Biden said. “He turns everything into what he thinks is a political benefit for himself, and he’s actually imploding in the process. But there’s a lot of innocent bystanders being badly hurt.”
While the closures of global markets—particularly those in China—has caused the market to fluctuate dramatically due to the health concerns, the spread has yet to live up to its media hype.
Travelers wear masks to protect against the coronavirus. / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube
There currently are around 120 confirmed cases in the U.S.—more than two-thirds of which were travel-related—with another 500-plus cases under investigation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been 25 U.S. deaths reported from the virus.
Nonetheless, it invited comparisons to several outbreak fears during the Obama administration, particularly the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
Administration officials at the time, likewise, downplayed as a containable threat, despite its symptoms—and mortality rate—being far more alarming. While the lower range of Ebola’s death rate was estimated to be around 50 percent, the coronavirus’s rate is estimated at 2.1 percent.
The Obama administration also faced a multitude of other health crises, including 2009’s swine flu and the mosquito-borne West Nile and Zika viruses, with varying transmission and mortality rates but similarly downplayed concerns.
Trump has accused the Democrats of trying to intentionally stoke panic, assuring Americans that despite the virus’s spread, “nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.”
The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American.”
“So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year,” Trump tweeted. “At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
