#cruz takeover event

[canine-teethed-sheets]

(just gonna make paper’d suffer)

hey guys what’s your opinion of each other?

[ * everyone gave a thumbs up. ]

[cletusthurstonbeauregard]

Five University of California campuses to get more military equipment

by: Rhea Caoile

Posted: Sep 23, 2024 / 12:11 PM PDT

Updated: Sep 23, 2024 / 12:11 PM PDT

SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The University of California board of regents Thursday approved the purchases of additional military equipment after receiving requests from five campuses.

Each year, the board of regents approves the funding, acquisition and use of military equipment by UC police departments in compliance with Assembly Bill 481 which passed in 2021.

These new requests followed after an eventful spring, when many campuses — including UCSD, UC Riverside and UCLA, among others — saw encampments and protests in response to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Inventory that fell under the protection of the statute included breaching rounds used to gain access to locked doors in the case of an emergency, which were used by police during a building takeover during the spring encampments, according to the board.

Accepted inventory also included a bomb robot used by UC Berkeley, distraction devices, a portable speaker called a “long range acoustic device,” and other tools including kinetic energy, pepper spray and tear gas.

According to the board, “all these tools are meant to provide officers with the ability to de-escalate or overcome self-destructive, dangerous or combative individuals without having to resort to deadly force.”

The equipment under the statute is meant to provide UCPD with “less lethal alternatives” to standard-issue firearms, the board said.

Additionally, the board said it recognizes that “the mere possession of any equipment does not warrant its use for every incident.”

The 2024 annual report presented to the board by UCPD revealed there were no complaints related to the use of military equipment nor violation with the policy.

Each year, the board also requires a report on how the specified equipment was used plus any complaints or violations of the use policy, cost, quantities and requests for additional equipment.

In the time period of the annual report, UC Davis was the only one out of the 10 UC campuses where university police did not use any military equipment.

Meanwhile, UC San Diego police used 330 40mm eXact iMpact munitions for annual training, according to the report.

The five campuses requesting new equipment were UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco and UC Merced.

Four campuses — UCB, UCLA, UCSC and UCSF — requested more drones. Currently, UCB has 4, UCLA and UCSF have 3, and UCSC has 2, according to the UCPD’s report.

Other requests include a kinetic breaching tool and a second hazardous devices robot for UCB, as well as launchers and more munitions for UCLA and UCM.

UCSD did not request any new military equipment for the upcoming fiscal year.

[creepingsharia]

Joe Biden’s Biggest Fundraisers are Tied to Islamic Terrorists

The Iran Lobby, the Pakistan Lobby, and the Muslim Brotherhood are funding Biden.

by Daniel Greenfield

Joe Biden had spent the entire election hiding the names of his bundlers, the big money fundraisers who fueled his campaign, until releasing them right before Election Day.

What did he have to hide?

The list of bundlers who managed to raise at least $100,000 for Biden includes some of the usual Democrat politicians and big party donors, along with some other names.

Like that of Jamal Abdi.

Abdi is the executive director of NIAC Action and the former policy director of the National Iranian American Council, often referred to as the Iran Lobby.

NIAC Action is the lobbying arm of NIAC and despite claiming to represent the Persian diaspora in America, Iranian-Americans have accused it of echoing the talking points of Iran’s regime. Members of the democratic opposition to the Islamist regime have even helped spread the #niaclobbies4mullahs hashtag across Twitter which was tweeted as much as 300,000 times.

“The NIAC pretends to support the interests of Iranians who reside in the US but, in practice, it aims to protect the interests of the Islamic Republic,” Shervan Fashandi, a member of the opposition to the regime, has said.

Earlier this year, Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Tom Cotton had sent a letter to the Justice Department urging an investigation of NIAC and NIAC Action for violating FARA by lobbying for a foreign country without officially registering as foreign agents. The letter noted that "NIAC's relationship with the Iranian regime and its role amplifying regime propaganda in the United States have been the subject of discussion in Washington D.C. for years."

Iran is an Islamic terror state responsible for the murder of Americans around the world.

Joe Biden is no stranger to the Iran Lobby. He had celebrated the Islamic takeover of Iran. During the Iran Hostage Crisis, opposed the rescue of American hostages, and called for an end to pro-democracy broadcasts into Iran and for admitting the terror state into the WTO.

Early in the century, he had also raised sizable amounts of money and headlined an event for the American Iranian Council whose founder had run for the presidency of Iran.

After September 11, Biden suggested, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran.”

In 2007, Biden warned that if President Bush took action to stop Iran, he would impeach him.

A year later, he told Israelis that they would have to accept Iran’s nuclear program.

A spokesman for the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran warned that Biden's campaigns "have been financed by Islamic charities of the Iranian regime based in California."

Now, as America struggled with the pandemic, Biden hurried to propose a plan, not to help Americans, but to help Iran, to “streamline channels for banking” and weaken US sanctions.

NIAC Action endorsed Biden and appears to have raised a lot of money for him. What does NIAC expect in return? In its official endorsement, NIAC claimed that Biden had made an "ironclad commitment" to return to the Iran Deal. That would allow Iran to continue developing its nuclear program and provide it with an ongoing cash flow for international terrorism.

An article co-written by Abdi, one of Biden's biggest fundraisers, warned that "the U.S. has less leverage to secure concessions from Tehran given its own diminished credibility and Iran’s increasing nuclear leverage".

All of this comes as the FBI noted that Iranian hackers were targeting government websites in “an intentional effort to influence and interfere with the 2020 U.S. presidential election.”

Its hackers also sent threatening fake "Pro-Trump" emails to voters in Florida, among other states, warning, "You will vote for Trump on Election Day or we will come after you."

The move was transparently meant by the Iranians to aid the Biden-Harris campaign.

Had President Trump been the beneficiary of $100,000 or more in cash, a turnout operation, hacking attacks, and other forms of election interference from the networks around an enemy state, we would be hearing about it. Since all this is benefiting Biden, the story is being buried.

But Abdi isn’t the only troubling name on the list of Biden’s biggest bundlers.

One of them is Ijaz Ahmad.

Ahmad is the head of the American-Pakistani Political Action Committee (APPAC) who had boasted of being recognized by Pakistan's foreign ministry as the "true face of Pakistan".

APPAC is militantly opposed to India's attempts to stop Pakistani terrorism and Biden has been happy to pander to it, attacking India and expressing support for Islamic claims to Kashmir.

“We warmly welcome Mr. Biden’s policy declaration in support of people in occupied Kashmir,” Ahmad declared.

“Never before we have had so many Muslims in a position of influence in a presidential campaign,” Biden said, and quoted a Hadith.

APPAC noted that it had raised $320,000 for Biden, including $120,000 from Ahmad.

Tahir Javed, a candidate endorsed by APPAC, is also listed as a Biden bundler. As is Asif Mahmood, who ran for lieutenant governor in California, raising $1 million for the race, then for state insurance commissioner, before being appointed by Newsom to the Medical Board.

Pakistan is an Islamic terror state and an enemy of the United States, which harbored Osama bin Laden. The Bin Laden raid that Biden opposed targeted a Pakistani military town.

It’s deeply troubling that Biden doesn’t seem to have learned anything from that experience.

Another Islamic lobby member in the six figure Biden fundraiser club is Wa’el Alzayat, the head of Emgage. It’s been noted that Emgage is part of a network of Muslim Brotherhood organizations, and various figures in Emgage have connections to Islamic terrorist groups.

Another Biden bundler is Amed Khan, a member of an advisory council for the International Crisis Group founded by George Soros. In an editorial for the Quincy Institute, an anti-war group funded by Soros, Khan blamed the refugee problem on America's attacks on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and on sanctions on the narcosocialist Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Another of the bundlers on the list is Hady Amr, Obama's Deputy Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, who has co-authored articles calling for a Hamas deal.

Amr had been the founding director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. The Islamic terror state of Qatar has dominated Brookings and is a major backer of the Brotherhood and Hamas.

But the most striking bundler on the six figure list may be Mohamed Soltan.

Soltan is the son of Muslim Brotherhood cleric Salah Soltan. Salah had claimed in television appearances that people from all over the world “thirst for the blood of the Jews, and predicted, “One of these days, the U.S. will suffer more deaths than all those killed in this third Gaza holocaust. This will happen soon.”

Mohammed Soltan claimed that he was tortured by Egypt’s new government which had removed the brutal Muslim Brotherhood regime from power. While it's not certain that the Mohammed Soltan on the Biden bundler list is the same man, Soltan lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

While Soltan has denied that he’s affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, he served as president of the Muslim Student Association at Ohio State. The MSA was set up by Muslim Brotherhood members. He was also a speaker at an American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference. The AMP has been linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, a terror arm of the Brotherhood.

Soltan has posted messages praising the Brotherhood and Hamas, describing the "Ikhwan" or Brotherhood as the "school that breeds amazing freedom fighters" like a Hamas leader.

In a tweet to the IDF spokesperson, Soltan declared that the terrorists were lions that would "annihilate u Zionist pigs".

A video shows him leading the "Khaybar" chant calling for the murder of Jews.

Joe Biden had tweeted support for Soltan by name and the Islamist supporter had thanked him personally after the Obama administration helped him escape Egyptian justice.

It’s understandable why the Biden campaign didn’t want Americans seeing a list of its top bundlers until now. The list contains disturbing names, lobbyists, and figures linked to Islamic terrorist organizations and regimes from Iran to Pakistan to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The presence of so many Islamist bundlers testifies not only to their determination to buy influence in a Biden administration, but Biden’s eagerness to sell out America. These donations are the culmination of decades of Biden’s pandering to Iran, to Pakistan, and to the Muslim Brotherhood. These are the numbers in cold hard cash for which Biden is betraying America.

The bundler list shows that Biden will aid Iran, Pakistan, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Islamic terrorists will thrive and Americans, and free people around the world, will die at their hands.

The Biden campaign is funded by supporters of Islamic terrorism because it supports terror.

[theculturedmarxist]

Idiotic “Conspiracy Theory”: John Boyega was cast as one of the leads in Star Wars because The Jews want to normalize miscegenation in an effort to effiminize American men and replace the White race!

Legitimate theory of a conspiracy: The Democrats have repeatedly stated how unpopular Bernie Sanders is with the wealthy capitalists that make up and fund their party leadership in spite of his overwhelming public support, and considering the political and professional ties of those involved and the vested interest the wealthy have in not seeing a man that wants to increase their taxes and undo some of the harm they’ve caused to the working class, the events in Iowa are at least somewhat suspicious.

The bourgeoisie get so incredibly nervous whenever people question their narrative because they are literally conspiring against the working class all the fucking time. This is in spite of the fact that they themselves admit it, boldly and openly. It’s just that when they do, they don’t use the words “conspiracy.”

Behind a Key Anti-Labor Case, a Web of Conservative Donors

In the summer of 2016, government workers in Illinois received a mailing that offered them tips on how to leave their union. By paying a so-called fair-share fee instead of standard union dues, the mailing said, they would no longer be bound by union rules and could not be punished for refusing to strike.

“To put it simply,” the document concluded, “becoming a fair-share payer means you will have more freedom.”

The mailing, sent by a group called the Illinois Policy Institute, may have seemed like disinterested advice. In fact, it was one prong of a broader campaign against public-sector unions, backed by some of the biggest donors on the right. It is an effort that will reach its apex on Monday, when the Supreme Court hears a case that could cripple public-sector unions by allowing the workers they represent to avoid paying fees.

One of the institute’s largest donors is a foundation bankrolled by Richard Uihlein, an Illinois industrialist who has spent millions backing Republican candidates in recent years, including Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. Bruce Rauner of Illinois.

Tax filings show that Mr. Uihlein has also been the chief financial backer in recent years of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents Mark Janus, the Illinois child support specialist who is the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.

And Mr. Uihlein has donated well over $1 million over the years to groups like the Federalist Society that work to orient the judiciary in a more conservative direction. They have helped produce a Supreme Court that most experts expect to rule in Mr. Janus’s favor.

The case illustrates the cohesiveness with which conservative philanthropists have taken on unions in recent decades. “It’s a mistake to look at the Janus case and earlier litigation as isolated episodes,” said Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, a Columbia University political scientist who studies conservative groups. “It’s part of a multipronged, multitiered strategy.”

Today, MLB's Owners Decide How To Wage War

MLB's 30 owners will meet in Baltimore today to elect the first new commissioner since Bud Selig took the reins in 1992—unless there is enough discord and politicking to prevent any candidate from receiving the required 23 votes. Which there almost certainly is! Today will see the first open, public battle in a vicious power struggle that promises to define MLB's relationship with its players over the coming decades, and, more immediately, the likelihood of a work stoppage in 2016.

The three finalists named by the search committee last week are MLB COO Rob Manfred, MLB VP of business Tim Brosnan, and Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner.

As has been reported out over recent weeks and months by The New York Times, this is a two-horse race between Manfred, Selig's underboss and presumptive successor, and Werner, a dark-horse candidate backed by a coalition of maverick owners led by White Sox boss Jerry Reinsdorf.

The battle here is not between Manfred and Werner; it's between Selig and Reinsdorf, two of the last remnants of baseball's old guard from the biliously anti-labor power structure of the 1980s, when owners illegally colluded to fix the free agency market to keep salaries down. (As always, it's important to remember that the players' strike of 1994 was really about the owners' collusion in the 1980s.)

Koch Brothers’ Internal Strategy Memo on Selling Tax Cuts: Ignore The Deficit

The billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch spent much of the eight years of the Obama presidency stoking fears about the budget deficit. Their political network aired an unending cascade of campaign advertisements against Democratic politicians, sponsored several national bus tours, and paid organizers in communities across the country to mobilize public demonstrations, all focused on the dangers of increasing the deficit.

One such ad even warned that government debt would lead to a Chinese takeover of America — which, for many voters, is a concern linked to debt. Another effort, also quietly bankrolled by the Koch network, used Justin Bieber memes to try to reach millennials about too much government borrowing.

Now that Republicans control all levers of power in Washington and the Koch brothers are poised to reap a windfall of billions of dollars through tax cuts, they have a new message: Don’t worry about the deficit.

The Intercept obtained a messaging memo from the Koch brothers’ network on how to sell tax reform legislation. The memo went out to members of the network of likeminded Republican donors, which includes dozens of wealthy investors and business executives.

“Network,” “web,” “association,” “coalition,” “group,” “foundation.” When you strip away all the corporate newspeak, they are saying that these people are engaged in a conspiracy.

Historically, anti-labor conspiracies have themselves been big business. Just take the Mohawk Valley Formula for example:

The Mohawk Valley formula is a plan for strikebreaking purportedly written by the president of the Remington Rand company James Rand, Jr. around the time of the Remington Rand strike at Ilion, New York in 1936/37.

The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.[1][2]

The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the National Association of Manufacturers Labor Relations Bulletin, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.[3][non-primary source needed] Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used.  At least one source names the strikebreaker Pearl Bergoff and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.[4]  Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the Remington Rand strike.

Noam Chomsky has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on propaganda. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their patriotism.[5][6]

The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:

When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".

Raise high the banner of "law and order", thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.

Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.

Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.

Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.

When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.

Stage the "opening" theatrically by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.

Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.

Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a minority attempting to interfere with the right to work. With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.[2]

A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in The Nation in 1937.[1]

The louder the capitalists cry and whinge about “conspiracy theories” the more certain you can be that the capitalists are engaged in a fucking conspiracy.

[lisboabeat]

#ThisWeek

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[thebibliomancer]

25 Additional Days of Comics! 11/25: Future State: Green Lantern #1 (2021)

Hey, its Future State again!

I know its not the last Future State issue I have in my box of semi-mystery. I wonder if its just because it was a recent event. Apparently the version of the cover I have is a second printing so hey! Good job getting a second printing and then having spare issues for a box.

I’m not sure exactly when Future State: Green Lantern takes place. Definitely not in 4500. There’s a bunch of known human Green Lanterns in this that definitely won’t age so gracefully that they’d still be around.

My guess is that it takes place in 2050 because the focus character don’t look old enough for much later. And beause the 2040 Future State: Justice League has a Green Lantern with a functioning ring. Something not shared by the characters here.

The big hook of Future State: Green Lantern is that the Green Lantern rings and batteries have stopped working, leaving a lot of Lanterns powerless or stranded in hostile space.

There’s three different stories here but the issue is from this year so read more!

LAST LANTERNS

Feat. John Stewart having a very bad day.

Despite no rings, not-Lanterns John Stewart, G’Nort, and Salakk try to help organize an evacuation of Corex D’Shaar because a massive Khund army is invading to wipe the planet clean for the God in Red.

I wonder if he knows the King in Black.

Even the first wave of basically untrained Khund soldiers took a heavy toll against the much shrimpier Shaar. And the elite vanguard are coming next and plot their landing trajectories specifically to knock several evacuation ships out of the sky.

Dicks.

The vanguard arrive, led by silly name haver Firefist (a name shared by a Blue Beetle villain of all things), and the casualties in some cities quickly climb to 96%.

John’s best stopgap plan is to have the Shaar flee into the rail tunnels while he and the other non-Lanterns try to buy time. But its not long before they get overwhelmed by the vanguard and not-a-dog G’Nort gets personally backshanked by Firefist.

Things are looking bad on Corex D’Shaar.

THE TAKING OF SECTOR 0123

Feat. anxiety haver Jessica Cruz having a very trying day.

She was sent to man a Green Lantern space station watching over Sector 0123. And she’s been stuck there for thirteen months since the rings stopped working and she stopped receiving communication from the Green Lantern Corp.

As if trying to keep a station functioning when your do-anything ring stops doing-anything isn’t hard enough, three members of the Sinestro Corp show up to take over the station.

They’re taking over the Green Lanterns’ role of policing the universe so they may as well jack their infrastructure.

Hmm. Rule through fear. Policing. Anyway.

While Lyssa Drak, the leader of the little Sinestro Corp group, plugs the yellow power battery into the system computers to do the takeover, she sends her goons - blue monster man Low and woman with mouths where her eyes should be and an eye where her mouth should be Ugg-I - to find whoever is scurrying around the station.

But while Jessica Cruz has no ring to stand on their level, the station is her turf and she’s lived with fear (being an anxiety haver) for so long that she doesn’t let it control her. Also, she knows how to bait idiots and Low and Ugg-I are idiots.

She knocks them out, ties them up, takes their rings, and then hucks them at Lyssa as an intimidation tactic.

Lyssa is a much tougher cookie than her idiot goons but Jessica manages to wallop her in the head with the yellow power battery. Something she shouldn’t have been able to lift as a not-Sinestro Corp member.

Then one of the rings she took activates.

A shiny yellow ring: “Jessica Cruz of Earth. You possess the ability to instill great fear. Welcome to the Sinestro Corps.”

Jessica Cruz’s internal monologue: “Heart beating a mile a minute. More fear than I’ve ever felt in my life. More than I can overcome. But for the first time, I don’t need to. It’s all mine, overflowing like light. All I need to do is reach out... and take it.”

And in a neat touch, her internal monologue boxes fade from green to yellow.

So I guess the Sinestro Corp are getting Sector 0123 after all. If you can’t beat them, force them to join you?

Book of GUY

Feat. Guy “the crazy one” Gardner who makes the very best of a bad situation.

Green Lantern Guy Gardner is sent to planet Rerlin in Sector 0345 by the Green Lantern squirrel to deal with a religious war.

Guy being Guy, his solution to the people from Grerlin and Hrerlin fighting over some space garbage as a sacred relic is to yell at them for fighting over trash, take the ‘relic’, and proclaim that he was sent by the Wind Walker to be keeper of the relic.

Then his ring stops working with a BWOOP and he falls from the sky.

The mysterious stop working event strikes!

While suddenly losing your powers after presenting yourself as a messenger of the gods could work out very badly, Guy made a strong and intimidating enough an impression that even when Guy falls out of the sky and starts speaking nonsense (because he doesn’t have the ring to translate anymore) they’re still intimidated and listen to the gist of what he yells.

He has them build him a bar. Because Guy. And since he’s stranded anyway and viewed as a prophet he gets busy improving Grerlin and Hrerlin society.

Fun little touch, Guy’s religious prophet garment is cut like one but its religious iconograpy is two hands clinking beer mugs. Its a bar based religion but not the one Cerebus accidentally started.

Good god, Guy.

After being stranded TWENTY-FIVE YEARS Guy has introduced indoor plumbing, irrigation, and foosball. And he’s improved their society so much that both of the cities and/or countries, its unclear, are having bumper crops, no one is dying of hunger, thirst, or want, and there’s been no wars.

As the leaders of the separate city/nations say

“We cannot do anything together-together.”

“The only thing preventing us from killing each other is you.”

“If you die, or it was found that you weren’t a prophet, there would be genocide once more.”

“So keep any secrets you have, and please don’t die.”

Fun that they kinda suspect that Guy is full of crap but they’re in too deep now. And like the not genociding each other thing.

While the Grerlin and Hrerlin stick to opposite sides of the room and don’t really mingle, they’re at least politely sitting on opposite sides of the room without doing each other a murder.

I never would have suspected that Guy Gardner of all people could bring a golden age to a planet. Or region. But here we are.

But because Guy can’t have nice things I guess, Lobo shows up to drink at Guy’s bar prompting the Grerlin and Hrerlin to wonder if this is a new prophet and Guy to facepalm.

There goes the planet.

[olko71]

New Post has been published on All about business online

New Post has been published on http://yaroreviews.info/2021/01/some-ceos-fire-rioters-call-for-president-trumps-removal-from-office

Some CEOs Fire Rioters, Call for President Trump's Removal From Office

Trump supporters rioting at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

By

Chip Cutter

Close

Chip Cutter

and

Emily Glazer

Close

Emily Glazer

Jan. 7, 2021 8:46 pm ET

In the wake of the riot at the Capitol, companies moved to cut ties with President Trump and his supporters and fired workers who participated.

Facebook Inc. banned Mr. Trump indefinitely and Canada-based Shopify Inc. closed online stores associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign and businesses. Publisher Simon & Schuster said it would drop a coming book by Sen. Josh Hawley, a key backer of Mr. Trump’s election claims. Dozens more executives and trade groups denounced the takeover of the Capitol and called for the removal of the president.

A number of companies said they fired employees who participated in the riot at the Capitol after seeing employees in photos and videos posted to social media.

A congressional exercise in the peaceful transfer of power devolved into deadly chaos when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol. Hours after the riots, Congress reconvened and certified President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/Zuma Press

Goosehead Insurance said Thursday that Paul Davis, an associate general counsel, was no longer employed by the company. In an email to employees Thursday, Goosehead CEO Mark Jones said the company was “surprised and dismayed to learn that one of our employees, without our knowledge or support, participated in a violent demonstration at our nation’s capital yesterday.” A spokesman for Goosehead, a publicly traded company based in Westlake, Texas, said Mr. Davis had been hired in mid-2020.

On an Instagram account, a user identified as Paul M. Davis wrote that he was “peacefully demonstrating” Wednesday. The account, public earlier Thursday, is now private; Mr. Davis didn’t return a request for comment.

Managers at Navistar Direct Marketing, a printing company in Frederick, Md., saw on Twitter that a man wearing a company badge was among rioters inside the U.S. Capitol. After reviewing photos, the company said the employee had been “terminated for cause.”

Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion PLC, seen in 2013, said he supported a statement from the National Association of Manufacturers that suggested Vice President Mike Pence consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.

Photo: Richard Drew/Associated Press

“While we support all employees’ right to peaceful, lawful exercise of free speech, any employee demonstrating dangerous conduct that endangers the health and safety of others will no longer have an employment opportunity with Navistar Direct Marketing,” the company said. A spokesman for the company declined to name the employee.

In most states, employers have wide latitude to terminate employees, even for conduct outside the workplace.

Ron Shaich, former CEO of Panera Bread Co. and an investor in several other chains who’s involved in No Labels, a political group that supports centrist lawmakers, said executives have the right to fire workers believed to have engaged in illegal activities.

“There’s not unlimited freedom,” he said, adding that if one of his employees had illegally entered the U.S. Capitol, he would fire them. “I’m not going to tell you you shouldn’t go to a Trump demonstration and you shouldn’t be in our company if you vote for Trump, but that’s not the same,” he said. “We as a society have got to repudiate this. This is not OK.”

Dave Petratis, CEO of Allegion PLC, a security products manufacturer with U.S. headquarters in the Indianapolis area, said he supported a statement from the National Association of Manufacturers that suggested Vice President Mike Pence consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office.

“The middle, the saner part of America and the world’s got to step up and say: Enough,” he said, adding that this week’s events make him want to speak out more forcefully. “It just primes and motivates me for action.”

Ron Shaich, former CEO of Panera Bread Co., said executives have the right to fire workers believed to have engaged in illegal activities.

Photo: Panera Bread/Associated Press

Companies might also face a backlash. The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans and former Republicans, said it’s planning “a brutal corporate pressure campaign” targeting companies, trade associations, CEOs and others that “serve as the financiers of the Authoritarian movement that attacked the US Capitol,” Steve Schmidt, a political strategist and a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, said in a tweet.

In an interview Thursday evening, Mr. Schmidt said he wasn’t ready to list specific companies that will be in the crosshairs, but said the Lincoln Project thinks there are plenty worth scrutinizing.

“It’s a time for choosing: it’s America, or autocracy,” he said. “There’s going to be a public discussion around it.”

Rich Lesser, CEO of Boston Consulting Group, said the business community must be clear-eyed about President Trump’s behavior, as well as those members of Congress who acted as enablers. “If we look past these actions and treat them as an isolated event by engaging and supporting these individuals, then we also risk being complicit in encouraging future actions that destabilize our country,” he said. Mr. Lesser didn’t suggest specific actions businesses should take, but said companies have an important role to play.

More calls for removing the president came from groups as varied as National Nurses United, which represents 170,000 nurses in the U.S., and law firm Crowell & Moring LLP, which has about 1,100 employees. The Washington, D.C.-based law firm urged other firm leaders and lawyers to add their support to the firm’s letter. “The president has proven himself unfit for office, and a reckless and wanton threat to the Constitution that he pledged to preserve, protect, and defend,” the firm said.

Crowell & Moring Chairman Phil Inglima, a Democrat, said that since the firm shared the letter, he’s heard from several leaders of law firms of different sizes who want to participate. He said the firm, which has support from Republicans and Democrats internally, plans to send the letter to Mr. Pence this week.

One CEO who has been a major Trump donor said that he was frustrated by the violence and wished the president more forcefully disavowed the rioters’ actions, though he also said Mr. Trump had been maligned by opponents and the media throughout his term. The CEO said he no longer plans to financially support Mr. Trump’s future political ambitions.

Some other business leaders continue to stand with Mr. Trump and the Republican senators. John Lodge III, CEO of Lodge Lumber Co. in Houston, said he remains a supporter, personally and financially, of Mr. Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, who objected Wednesday night to ratifying Mr. Biden’s electoral college votes in Arizona.

Mr. Lodge said he thinks the violence was staged to make Trump supporters look bad.

“I support everyone who supports the president and Ted Cruz,” he said, adding that he has a list of people who don’t support the president and they won’t get money from him in the next election, whether Republican or Democrat.

—Khadeeja Safdar, Sharon Terlep and Kathryn Dill contributed to this article.

The Storming of the Capitol

Write to Chip Cutter at chip.cutter@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

Copyright ©2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the January 8, 2021, print edition as ‘CEOs Fire Rioters, Condemn Violence.’

[lawrencedienerthings]

How Colorado Republicans transformed from “Never Trump” to Donald Trump loyalists in four years

#republicannationalconvention🎨 🍺

more news https://northdenvernews.com

Colorado’s delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention led a last-minute insurrection designed to prevent Donald Trump from securing the party’s nomination.

They called themselves “Never Trumpers” and staged a walkout on the convention floor in Cleveland.

Now, four years later, many of those anti-Trump delegates are among his fiercest supporters. 

OUR UNDERWRITERS SUPPORT JOURNALISM.   BECOME ONE.

“We didn’t know how things would turn out four years ago,” said Andy Jones, a 2020 delegate for Trump who opposed his nomination in 2016. “This president has not disappointed. … I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

“I had it all wrong,” said Don Olmstead, another delegate from Colorado who vowed not to vote for the Republican nominee in 2016 because Trump didn’t have “any core principles.”

The turnabout in Colorado reflects the shift in national Republican sentiment after Trump’s takeover transformed the party into a one-man show and drew legions of unequivocal supporters. A series of recent polls show about 80% of Colorado Republicans approve of the president, an increase from 2016. And the change is evident at the top of the party. 

U.S. Rep. Ken Buck — who doubles as the Colorado Republican Party chairman — led the opposition in 2016 as a top supporter of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won all the state’s presidential delegates in the caucus. On the convention floor in Cleveland, Buck shouted “Objection!” in response to party rules that locked in Trump’s delegate support. Two days later, he told delegates to “suck it up” and support the party’s nominee.

At the scaled-back convention Monday in Charlotte, N.C., where Colorado sent six delegates, Buck cast the state’s 37 votes for Trump in a full-throated endorsement. “The past four years, President Trump and Vice President Pence have made America great again in the eyes of the world so now our friends respect us and our enemies fear us,” Buck said from the convention hall, reprising the campaign’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Like the state’s delegates from four years prior, Buck cited the president’s record of conservative judicial appointments, his response to the coronavirus pandemic, new trade deals and tax cuts as reasons to support his reelection.

The difference between Colorado’s delegates now and then didn’t register with him. “It didn’t feel weird to me this time because I’ve been supporting the president in Congress as much as I can, and I have been really supporting him as a state party chair as much as I can,” Buck said in an interview afterward.

A Colorado delegate credential from the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where Colorado’s delegates staged a walk out to protest the rules that helped lock the nomination for Donald Trump. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

The activist who led “Never Trump” camp is no longer a registered Republican

The leader of the “Never Trump” movement in Colorado never made the conversion. 

Kendal Unruh, a 2016 delegate from outside Castle Pines, emerged as a national leader behind the effort to change the party rules and unbind delegates to allow them to “vote their conscience” against Trump. 

Her “Free the Delegates” movement drew enough support to force the issue at the convention, but Trump’s allies quickly quelled the rebellion and the delegates didn’t get the roll call vote needed to oust him. The move spurred a shouting match on the floor between Trump supporters and others and the walkout. 

Kendal Unruh poses on her front porch at her Castle Pines area home with the dozens of political buttons she has attached to an American flag on Aug. 24, 2020. She led the “Never Trump” movement in Colorado in 2016 but says she’s no longer involved in politics. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

The moment defined the first day of the convention and stirred animosity that persisted throughout the four-day event. The Smithsonian even requested Colorado’s sign from the convention floor for its historical collection.

In the November election, Unruh didn’t vote for Trump and left the Republican Party to register as an unaffiliated voter. “If you’re wondering if I’m glad I challenged Trump at the convention, the more corrupt and evil he reveals himself to be, and the more complicit the GOP is, the more proud I am that I did it,” the 55-year-old former American government teacher said.

Earlier this year, rumors spread on social media that Unruh planned to organize against Trump again in 2020, but she said she’s no longer involved in politics. 

Looking back, she considers the 2016 convention a pivotal shift for the party. And the president’s first four years in office have only served to reinforce Unruh’s stance. “I predicted a lot of what would happen, but I had no idea it could literally get as bad as it did,” she added.

She suggests the party has become a cult and lost its moral high ground by defending him  amid the impeachment and the campaign’s ties to Russia. “Now to find out the Democrats are ones who actually upheld law and order, who actually pushed back against tyranny, who actually held people accountable … that one I still cannot get over,” she said.

“I mourn that most — that Republicans don’t have a platform of morality,” she added. “And I can honestly tell you they will never get it back. I don’t care who they run in the future.”

Colorado’s delegates from 2016 now tout Trump’s record in office

Buck, the party chairman, acknowledged that some people still are Never Trumpers in Colorado, but suggests it is an insignificant number. “When you have a purity test that is so pure that you would rather benefit a Joe Biden than get 80% of what you want with Donald Trump — that’s just not something I waste a lot of time thinking about,” he said.

Other Colorado delegates evolved to support Trump, some more quickly than others.

Regina Thomson, another prominent voice in the effort to challenge Trump in 2016, didn’t hesitate long. The Colorado Tea Party Patriots leader said her support for Trump “was an intellectual decision not an emotional one” because he was the “only one standing between us and socialism.

“I had no qualms about doing it,” she added.

At her home in Aurora, Regina Thomson watched the opening day of the Republican National Convention from Charlotte, N.C., on her computer Aug. 24, 2020. Thomson was a Colorado delegate in 2016 who supported Ted Cruz instead of Donald Trump. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Back then — and even now — she had misgivings about his personality and style, but not about how he would govern. “From the standpoint of what he’s done, I’m over-the-moon happy,” she said, citing his decision to locate an embassy in Jerusalem, his stance on the Second Amendment and his picks for the federal judicial bench.

She still shakes her head from time to time because “we all wish he wouldn’t say and do certain things, but that’s who he is.”

Four years ago, Jones, an alternate delegate for Cruz from Highlands Ranch, took pride in Colorado’s status as objectors to Trump at the convention. 

His daughter helped him design buttons that he distributed to other delegates emblazoned with the tagline “troublemakers.” At the time, he said the delegation represented “the conservative wing of the Republican Party that has come to save the party.”

Still, when he returned home, Jones said he voted for the president in 2016 and worked to get him elected. “There’s no other choice — I’m always a realist,” he said. 

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His initial concerns about Trump involved the then-candidate’s mixed messages on abortion, but his appearance at the March for Life rally — the first sitting president to do so — and his judicial appointments have resolved any doubts. “Of course, President Trump has completely shown that we didn’t need to be concerned about his politics moving forward, but we didn’t know that at the time,” Jones said.

This year, Jones is a delegate for Trump to the mostly-virtual convention. 

“I can’t stand the thought of Democrats gaining power or maintaining more power at the local level,” said Jones, who also is the Douglas County GOP vice chairman. “I don’t think our country can take it if we get our socialists in charge of our country.”

For Olmstead, a Colorado Springs delegate to the prior convention, it took a little longer for him to support Trump. Like Unruh, he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.

But his perspective began to change as the president came under attack from Democrats. “I watched … most of his first term but finally determined that the Russia stuff was a bunch of nonsense, as well as the impeachment,” Olmstead said. 

Then earlier this year, the opposition from Democrats to the president’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the violence in Portland and other cities moved him closer to Trump. 

Now, he said, “I’m strongly supporting President Trump.”

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from https://ift.tt/2EobCLw https://ift.tt/3aV91oj

[canine-teethed-sheets]

hell yeah, a tip! now i can buy more cat ears

if i gave rizz the cat ears would he wear them

:// no, but. we do have someone else in mind...

[ * everyone looked at mignon with a devilish smile. mignon groaned. ]

^^ guys, that was TWO MONTHS AGO.

×× yy..... youu.... ssstill ..... ll...oooosstt..

;// yeah, and you gotta own up to the bet, catfish

[scarletvampireofchaos]

Backstory

Remilia Scarlet was born to a land-owning family near the Black Forest of southern Germany in 1502. Her sister Flandre was born in 1507. That same year, Remilia was bitten by a vampire and turned herself. After turning, a fit of uncontrolled hunger caused her to attack Flandre. Her parents caught her in time before she could do more than convert Flandre instead of eviscerate her sister. However, this caused their parents to become her target instead. Mutilating them to the point of unrecognizability.

With no living male heirs, Remilia and Flandre inherited the mansion their family owned and the surrounding lands. However, Remilia quickly realized that as her sister was turned when she was much younger, she was much more feral, and so locked her away in the basement out of fear for her life.

The Scarlets continued to live a very reclusive life, trying to keep as much attention away from themselves to avoid the likes of vampire hunters… the worst among them being the Belmont family. Things were relatively uneventful until about 1983 when a vampire hunter named Sakuya Izayoi located their mansion. She was one of the various vampire hunters who took up the task of fighting the revival of Dracula after the disappearance of the Belmont family in the late 1800s, and had heard in her travels of the so-called ‘Scarlet Devil Mansion’ and the vampire who lived there.

Sakuya, who was still relatively inexperienced in vampire hunting was defeated by Remilia, but spared as the latter liked Sakuya’s courage and offered her a position to serve in the mansion. Sakuya accepted as a way to keep tabs on Remilia and because she could honestly sense no hostility from her. Sakuya quickly rose through the ranks of the staff, eventually becoming head maid, where she was then made aware of the existence of Remilia’s younger sister Flandre, who she became quick friends with.

The next major event in the lives of those in the mansion would occur in 1998. Upon hearing rumors that the vampire killer whip had returned to the hands of the Belmont family in the form of Julius Belmont and that he alongside Alucard, were planning a siege of Dracula’s castle with an international coalition, made Remilia scared for the lives of her and her sister. So with the aid of the mansion’s mage, Patchouli Knowledge, they sought a way to flee Earth before the prophecy of 1999 would come to pass, leading them to the shores of Gensokyo.

DAWN OF SORROW Several years after arriving in Gensokyo, Remilia wondered what became of the prophecy and asked Patchouli to look into the affairs of earth. She discovered Dracula's defeat at the hands of Julius Belmont and the sealing of his castle in a solar eclipse. Patchouli also informed her of the belief that Dracula's powers could be passed onto another. This motivated Remilia to try and become Dracula's successor by inheriting his powers, and somewhat validating her claim that they were relatives. With Patchouli's aid, Remilia was able to bypass the Hakurei barrier, with Flandre coming along out of a desire to do something fun, and arrive at the Hakuba shrine in 2035, entering the eclipse along with Soma Cruz and Mina Hakuba. The two had their appearances changed slightly to look like adults as to avoid suspicion amongst anyone there. The two spent most of their time isolated from the main cast except for an encounter with an amnesiac Julius whom Flandre wanted to kill, but was stopped by her sister who smelled that he had the blood of a Belmont. Eventually, after Soma's powers awakened and he and Julius had their encounter, the sisters settled on a plan. After Soma left, they attacked and killed the injured Julius to remove him as a threat. They then killed Soma before he entered Chaos's realm, with Remilia absorbing the power of dominion from his soul. Knowing that Dracula's power was linked to the life of Chaos, they wanted to make sure he was removed so that there was no restriction on their powers. After defeating Chaos, Flandre absorbed his powers. With the collapse of the castle, the two then set about killing all who had been there, to remove any witnesses, including Alucard. Victorious, the two returned to Gensokyo with their arsenal of new abilities, including an immunity to sunlight, to secretly plan the eventual takeover of Gensokyo.

[feelingbluepolitics]

"When Perry accepted the offer to join [t]rump's Cabinet as energy secretary, he was said to have misunderstood the duties of the role, wrongly assuming he would oversee oil and gas regulation. In fact, the department is primarily concerned with maintaining US nuclear weapons.

"When he made an unsuccessful run for president in 2011, he famously could not recall during a primary debate the name of the Energy Department, which he had pledged to eliminate along with two others. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Oops.'

That's not an example of a guy who thinks well under pressure. Or at all.

But how about this one?

This one is very interesting in current context.

"Perry said his criticism of federal immigration policy precedes the Obama administration, noting that he has sent requests for more federal border security to the White House for the past decade. However, his recent comments have taken on a more personal tone, suggesting that Obama is willfully allowing the current immigration crisis to unfold.

"After Raddatz asked if Perry was engaging in 'conspiracy' talk, Perry stood by his views and said the number of undocumented children currently being housed in facilities along the border could hurt American citizens in case of a natural disaster or other unforeseen crisis.

"'If we have a major event, a hurricane, that comes into the Gulf Coast, I don’t have a place to be housing people who have been displaced because this administration is housing them,' Perry said."

Perhaps, though, Texas conservatives are simply unusually prone to conspiracy theories and hoaxes.

Here's an edifying collection featuring Ted Cruz:

Probably nothing tops that time Abbott actually called up the Texas State Guard because Obama was president, and American troops were coming to Texas to conduct routine military training exercises.

How does all this tie to conservative gullibility online? That could be a particularly interesting connection.

"Abbott's decision may have spurred the Russians to attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. election, Hayden said.

"'At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big time,’' he said. 'At that point, I think they made the decision, ‘We’re going to play in the electoral process.’'"

[lukemalkin]

What’s going on here? I’m ranking my experiences in the 20 countries I’ve been to so far. Nostalgia is going to drive these explanations a bit further than #20 – 11. From there on, each country gets its own mini expose starting with. I did #10 – France and now it’s…

#9 – Brazil

Visited: Sao Paulo

Brazil at #9 is the first of two quick-fire short trips that completely smashed expectations. I was only there for a weekend, but it made a huge impression.

Sao Paulo was a sort of pilgrimage for me. I’m a lifelong F1 fan, and I grew up watching the old season review tapes and playing the video games. My favourite circuit? Interlagos.

Sao Paulo Brazil is nothing like Santa Cruz Bolivia, so this was the first big city in South American city I visited. Everything was new and unexplored, then I rocked up at the circuit in a country I’d been in for less than 24 hours and I knew exactly. where. I. was. It was such a weird and wonderful feeling. I’d driven this track virtually hundreds of times. It was a weird homecoming, and it was the first F1 race I was watching live. Interlagos is a great circuit to visit for F1 because you get to see pretty much the entire track (F1 fans, I was on the grandstand on the long straight after the Senna Ss). Well worth it.

But Brazil doesn’t take #9 just because a multi-national event visits every year. No, it takes #9 for the series of fortunate events that took place as soon as I arrived.

I posted on facebook asking for Sao Paulo recommendations before I flew, and to my surprise, an American friend I’d met in Tanzania happened to be traveling and couchsurfing at that moment. Did I want her to ask if I can stay with the same hosts if there’s a problem with my hostel? Well, yes I did. Especially when upon landing I found my hostel had indeed canceled my reservation last minute. Brazil basically tore apart my novice-level plans and rewrote my holiday better than I could have imagined it.

I made my way through the concrete jungle to their location and found myself in a cool arty flat with three Brazilians who could not have done more to make me feel welcome. “Oh cool you’re here for the race, yeah come stay with us. We’re catering a party tomorrow night after the race- want to meet us there?”. Yes. Yes, I did. That party turned out the be a hipster takeover of 3..or was it 4 floors of an old flat. Redecorated like an antique shop, roof terrace, my hosts catering up great food for everyone, and everyone inexplicably spoke English. I didn’t get much chance to see the city, but I had some landmarks pointed out to me from the rooftop. I couldn’t have planned it better.

Brazilian friendliness didn’t just run in this crowd either. A local on the metro wanted to make sure that I knew where I was going when I really didn’t think I was giving off a distressed look. The taxi driver to the airport may have weaved all over the road and I have a strong suspicion he was half-blind, but he kept conversation going all the way. The taxi driver in the city, even though we couldn’t speak a word in common, got me where I wanted to go smiling.

I haven’t yet been back, and part of me thinks that it’s because a new holiday would have to do a lot to match this first one. When you consider how massive Brazil is and how it borders the country I live in, it can’t be long until I start thinking about it again.

I’m doing a 30 before 30 challenge. One of the targets was to take my country count up to 20 and I thought I’d mark that with this list of my experiences in the places I’ve traveled to. Here’s the whole list if you’re interested.

Ranking my experiences in 20 countries – #9 Brazil What's going on here? I'm ranking my experiences in the 20 countries I've been to so far.

[navek15]

Comics are Awesome! 4/19 week

More often than not, I have seen people who do nothing but complain about comics. They seem to take one example of a comic they don’t like and then proceed to paint the entire medium with broad strokes, saying stuff like; ‘Comics haven’t been good since this era.” “This comic ruined my childhood!” “I’m going to boycott this company because they printed I comic I don’t like.” Now don’t misinterpret this into me being a blind optimist. I’m well aware that DC and Marvel do make crap. Sometimes they bank on crap. But I like to think that those are the exception rather than the rule. So, from now on, I figured I might as well start a weekly blog explaining some of the most awesome stuff I’ve seen in the comics I pick up each week, why I think they’re awesome, and any comic-related news that has me excited. Let’s start with Secret Empire #0, the first shot fired in Marvel’s newest summer blockbuster event (and if the statement in a previous interview is to be believed, their last big event for at least 18 months after its finished). And I can sum up this issue in two words; HOLY SHIT!!!!! This book shows how much more impactful a big event can be when you actually bother to set stuff up. It’s the accumulation of everything Nick Spencer’s been setting up since Captain America: Sam Wilson #1. To summarize what happens in this book, evil Kobik brain-washed Steve Rogers has cut off the Ultimates, the Guardians of the Galaxy and Alpha Flight from Earth and left them at the mercy of a seemingly endless Chitauri invasion, all of the street-level heroes in Manhattan have been cut off from the world thanks to a mystically-charged Blackout (I love the callback and expansion to one of my favorite Avengers stories of all time), and now he has full-control of SHIELD, the US Military, and all of Hydra! My god, we haven’t seen such an effective takeover of the Earth since the fucking Kang Dynasty! And keep in mind, this was all in Issue 0. Consider me hyped! Speaking of the Chitauri Wave, the heroes of Earth were not the first ones to encounter it. No, the first Earth Heroes to face the wave was the Inhuman cast of Royals in their second issue. Really, this issue exists just to show how awesome the Inhumans and Noh-Vahr are. We got Marvel Boy being usually awesome and cocky self with wicked cool Grant Morrison tech, Crystal, Captain Swain, and Gorgon showing off their own skills in space combat, Medusa leading the team even after dropping the bombshell about her dying condition, and to top it all off, Flint uses PLUTO AS A BATTERING RAM TO WIPE OUT AN ENTIRE SWARM OF CHITAURI!!!! Top it all off with a twist I never saw coming (and resolved my confusion on the premise of the new Black Bolt comic), and we have yet another example of why Al Ewing is my favorite writer in modern comics. Stay the course, you mad englishman! And while we’re on the subject of Al Ewing, U.S.Avengers #5 came out as one of the three Opening Salvo tie-ins to Secret Empire. This issue is light on action aside from two side-missions Cannonball, Red Hulk and Squirrel Girl are taking part in and was more character focused. From a tense conversation between Bobby and Steve Rogers (which made me worried considering the cover for issue 6), Sam contemplating his family’s future, and a nice little moment between Toni and Aikku (these two are adorable). While not the most headlining book, I still enjoy it each month. Now we move from Marvel to DC for Green Lanterns #21 and the conclusion of the three-part Polarity story. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m a fan of Sam Humphries and that Green Lanterns was the DC Rebirth book I was the most excited for back when Rebirth was announced. And it has been my favorite DC Rebirth book! Seeing Jessica Cruz rise past her anxiety to be a hero and her interaction with her partner Simon Baz has been one of the greatest ongoing stories each month. And this week, we got into Simon’s head and how seeing someone you love can make the entire world feel silent, a look into the psyche of Dr. Polaris (who I hope makes more appearances in later issues), and had Simon and Jessica using their rings to stop the Justice League Watchtower from crashing into a city! Superwoman got a new writer in the form of Kate Perkins with Issue 9. I’ve never read anything she’s written, but from what I’ve seen, she’s got a good grasp on Lana Lang. And I’ve been following Lana’s story since her reintroduction in Greg Pak’s Action Comics run, so I’ll continue to follow on as long I can. So good luck, Ms. Perkins. But probably the biggest news coming out of DC this week is something that was just announced this morning. Earlier today, DC has revealed a series of books spinning out of the fall event (since the actually comic starts in August) Dark Nights: Metal. This line, called Dark Matter, will be comics that are fully in-canon with the DCU. But the really cool thing about these books is that (aside from two titles named after a previous DC character and team) these are all brand-new characters and concepts not based on anything ever seen before in the DC Universe with top talented writers and artists behind the wheel. In case anyone is wonder which book I’m adding to my monthly pull list (I’ve budgeted myself for only 10 comics from DC, 10 comics from Marvel and anything that catches my attention at Valiant with events being the exception), The Immortal Men by James Tynion IV and Jim Lee is what I’m picking up, although all of these books sound awesome. That’s all for this week! Until next time, remember the words of Bill & Ted and be excellent to each other. Comics are Awesome and so are you guys!

[wethepeoplesnews]

What is C.A.I.R? The Short answer is they are an arm of Hamas and The Muslim Brotherhood. “Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and many other governments, indirectly created CAIR and the two groups remain tight. Examples: In 1994, CAIRhead Nihad Awad publicly declared his support for Hamas; the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a Hamas front group, contributed $5,000 to CAIR; in turn, CAIR exploited the 9/11 attacks to raise money for HLF”

The Muslim Students Association (MSA), another MB front, recently joined BLM in a Chicago protest to disrupt a Donald Trump campaign rally. The M.O. for demonstrations id uncanny. Te Demands by these groups are similar.

The Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC)is another jihad ally. They are the largest international organization in the world next to the United Nations, but nobody has ever heard of them. Yet their goal is to make criticism of Islam a criminal offense, thus making the Bill of Rights and all other American rights subordinate to Sharia Law. Criminalizing “Islamophobia” would make America defenseless against infiltration and subversion. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already let them get their foot in our back door. That will pave the way for Muslim Brotherhood takeover of the U.S. using allies like BLM. Do the American people have the will to stop it?

We are at a crossroads in America. Soon we will lose our Allies in Europe, London has fallen to the barbarians. This is a Real Life Game of Thrones. Our last “President” was way too cozy with these Islamic Jihadist. Here is a list of Jihadist Obama had a closed door meeting in the White House with and tried to keep secret!!

After stonewalling for days about the names of participants at the almost two-hour meeting with the president and his national security advisers — a meeting that was granted at the request of Muslim Advocates, an Islamist group that’s demanded a stop to NYPD surveillance of radical mosques, anti-terrorist drone strikes and Gitmo detentions — the White House quietly attached the list of attendees to the back of its daily press briefing transcript Thursday evening, according to the Washington Times.

Among the 14 lucky Muslim luminaries were:

• Imam Mohamed Magid, who preaches at a fundamentalist Northern Virginia mosque that has listed a number of trustees and major donors whose offices and homes were raided after 9/11 by federal agents on suspicion of funding terrorists.

• Azhar Azeez, president of the Islamic Society of North America, a known radical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas front group that remains on the Justice Department’s list of unindicted terrorist co-conspirators.

• Sherman Jackson, who as the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought at USC, once gave a lecture at a conference in Toronto that has been described by “Campus Watch” as a “call to battle” between Muslims and the West.

• Hoda Hawa, national policy adviser of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which was founded by known members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement.

The group’s former president, Salam al-Marayati, was once kicked off the National Commission on Terrorism after his defense of terrorist acts and the groups who carry them out was revealed.

It’s noteworthy that no representatives of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, a terror-tied group the FBI has banned from outreach events, were invited to the White House. The FBI says CAIR is a “front” for the Hamas terrorist group.

Reported by The national review in Obama Invited Leader Of Terror Co-Conspirator Group To Meeting

This is after the Arab Spring which was funded by We The People!!! We are working hard on bringing you that story and the connection to the Clinton Foundation.

Our so-called “president” met with known terrorists. He purged the word radical Islam from our government:

“We cannot combat and defeat radical Islamic terrorism without acknowledging it exists and directing our resources to stopping it,” Cruz said in his opening remarks. “And an Orwellian doublethink that seeks to excerpt any reference to it, as the Administration did to the president of France, or erase pledges of allegiance to ISIS, as the administration did with the Orlando terrorist, is counterproductive to keeping this country safe.”

The White House’s decision to redact the Orlando 911 transcript so there was no mention of ISIS was an action that would especially “make George Orwell proud,” he said at the hearing.

In another example of the administration’s ability to make keywords disappear, a 2013 Judicial Watch report revealed that the FBI scrubbed its law enforcement training material of any language that might be deemed “offensive” to Muslims. Per those guidelines, hundreds of references to “Muslim,” “Islam” or “jihad” were removed from the 2004 9/11 commission report.

The witnesses provided more evidence to corroborate these findings. Mr. Philip Haney, a retired Customs and Border Protection Officer for the Department of Homeland Security, revealed that the CIA has scrubbed more than 800 law enforcement records that were almost all connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The first “great purge,” he said, was in 2009. Yet, in 2012 they didn’t just modify the records, they eliminated them out of the system, which, he noted, bypasses security protocol in Homeland Security. Why does it matter? Because of San Bernardino. If the department hadn’t edited its records, perhaps they could have caught the San Bernardino terrorist who killed 14 people at a Department of Public Health training event, Haney insinuated.” Reported by Ted Cruz in Cruz Hearing Exposes the Obama Admin’s History of Purging References to Islamic Terror

Our “media” with very few exceptions claim “Islam is Peaceful” even though all the evidence points to the contrary. Why? Why the propaganda and lies? There is a real easy way to judge the truth. Jesus told us how!! “You know a tree by the fruit it bears” Islam does not bear peaceful fruit!! They have their sights set at our law enforcement and are trying to bring lawlessness into America and cripple her from within. They will then claim to have the answer in Islam and many foolish Americans ( the ones defending them and calling truth speakers name for exposing them) will follow right along!!

Here is a Report on Shariah law and how it is a threat to America: Shariah A Threat To America This should be on every news media outlet in America. Once again President Donald Trump was right!! The thanks he gets from our “media” name calling and ridicule!! We need to show President Trump that he has the will of the people. The media tries to keep you ignorant of all this by not reporting on it.

From the report:  The Contemporary Threat “Today, the United States faces what is, if anything, an even more insidious ideological threat: the totalitarian socio-political doctrine that Islam calls shariah. Translated as “the path,” shariah is a comprehensive legal and political framework. Though it certainly has spiritual elements, it would be a mistake to think of shariah as a “religious” code in the Western sense because it seeks to regulate all manner of behavior in the secular sphere – economic, social, military, legal and political.  Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates – figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and the leader of the world’s largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama – whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms.  On this side of the divide, shariah is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society.  By contrast, the other side of the divide is dominated by Muslim supremacists, often called Islamists.  Like erstwhile proponents of Communism and Nazism, these supremacists – some terrorists, others employing stealthier means – seek to impose a totalitarian regime: a global totalitarian system cloaked as an Islamic state and called a caliphate. On that side of the divide, which is the focus of the present study, shariah is an immutable, compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to install and the world required to adopt, the failure to do so is deemed a damnable offense against Allah. For these ideologues, shariah is not a private matter. Adherents see the West as an obstacle to be overcome, not as a culture and civilization to be embraced, or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of governments peacefully to coexist with the end-state they seek.”

So why would Obama meet with groups like this? Did he have The National Security of America in mind? If so why the secrecy of the meeting?  That and the purging of official records of words that make Islam look bad are both suspicious in nature and an offense to We The People!!

Here is another report on the connection of the BLM, Islam, and Revolution in the USA by Crisis magazine Islam, Revolution, and Black Lives Matter  

They report: “In a speech delivered to the Annual MAS-ICNA (Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America) Convention in December 2015, Nihad Awad, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), urged Muslim Americans to take up the cause of Black Lives Matter. “Black Lives Matter is our matter,” he said; “Black Lives Matter is our campaign.”

HERE IS THE SPEECH:

Untiting with all non whites aganist who, whites? Wake up my Brothers and Sisters there is a war being waged on the White race and our values. If you cherish your freedoms it is time to take a stand!! They want revolution in America. What does that mean? Who do they want a victory over? We Had out Reveloution in 1776!!! It is our Duty to gaurd the Freedom granted to us in the Constitution!!

 Here is a protest march where a muslim spreads peace through threats!!

If they cared so much about Blacks why are they selling Nigerian refuges on the Open Market in Lybia?

Please, Share and spread the word!!~RJH

For more on this subject see also:

Low Birth Rates Historically Destroy A Race And Culture!!!

Why Is The World Silent About Modern Day Slavery?

Islam Is Going To Dominate The World If Trends Continue!!

Is Obama a Terrorist? He Aided Hezbollah to Get His Iranian Nuclear “Deal”!!

          C.A.I.R Claiming The Black Lives Matter Movement Is Their Movement. They Call For Revolution in America!! What is C.A.I.R? The Short answer is they are an arm of Hamas and The Muslim Brotherhood.

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

The Great Biden Consolidation

How the PleaseNotSanders movement achieved what NeverTrump never could.

Ross Douthat

By Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

March 4, 2020, 3:11 p.m. ET

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Joe Biden with supporters on Super Tuesday.

Joe Biden with supporters on Super Tuesday.Credit...Josh Haner/The New York Times

Eleven days and an eternity in political time ago, I offered some advice for Democrats seeking to stop Bernie Sanders, drawn from the failed experience of #NeverTrump. Losing candidates need to drop out, I suggested, unconventional alliances need to be considered and hanging around hoping for a brokered convention is a fool’s game if you’re ceding a plurality of delegates to the insurgent candidate you want to stop.

The tone of my column, like the evidence of the polls, suggested that the stop-Sanders effort would meet the same fate as the stop-Trump movement and that the Vermont socialist would complete his takeover against a divided opposition.

But instead, in a whirlwind few days, the Democrats took my advice, and it worked. Instead of a divided field of moderates headed into Super Tuesday, there was a rapid consolidation. Instead of defeated candidates limping off to lick their wounds, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg were on a stage with Joe Biden within a day of their decisions to drop out. And now, instead of sticking around John Kasich-style and playing for the convention, Michael Bloomberg has thrown in with the Biden team as well.

This combination of events has not guaranteed a Biden nomination, but it has made it very likely, and it suggests that the Democratic Party still has some institutional potency, some ballast as a political organization, some capacity to make decisions as a party that the Republicans in 2016 lacked. And while obvious credit for the anti-Sanders consolidation goes to individual political actors, to Buttigieg and Klobuchar especially, it’s worth considering three other reasons it was possible for Biden to consolidate support more easily and quickly than any of the non-Trump Republicans in 2016.

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The first reason is that the Republican base’s relationship to the G.O.P. leadership in 2016 was more toxic, hostile and disillusioned, relative to the relationship between Democrats and their establishment in 2020. This difference has many sources, but a crucial one is the divergent legacies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The Bush presidency ended in failure, unpopularity and crisis, which meant that even among Republicans who still liked Bush personally, there was a palpable sense — or a latent sense, waiting to be activated by Trump — that the official establishment of the party didn’t really have any idea what they were doing and needed to be ignored or rejected or thrown out.

Obama’s presidency, on the other hand, is regarded as a failure by only a small faction of left-wing activists and writers. A somewhat larger constituency, the core of Sanders’s youth support, think of the Obama era as a mild disappointment, a missed opportunity for bold progressive change — but in the broader Democratic electorate even this is a distinctly minority position.

So there was always an opportunity for a campaign like Biden’s to consolidate a lot of Democratic voters with a message of restoration and continuity, in a way that simply wasn’t true for a literal Bush relative like Jeb Bush — or even a figure like Marco Rubio, who was positioned, in certain ways, as W.’s ideological heir. It’s not that Democrats love their party’s elite, or that there isn’t strong anti-establishment discontent on the left as much as on the right. But there is clearly more Democratic support for Obama-ism than there was support for a Bush restoration in the 2016 Republican Party, and in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday that made a big difference.

But so did simple political contingency. Bloomberg’s campaign, for instance, looked like it was helping Sanders by dividing moderates and siphoning away Biden’s African-American support. But in hindsight what it actually did was draw attention and fire away from Biden across two critical debates, so that the former vice president could lurk as the fallback choice and then get a rush of returning voters when Bloomberg’s onstage performances disappointed (and made Biden look charismatic by comparison). The outcome over the last four days might have been different if, say, Elizabeth Warren had felt an incentive to attack Biden instead of demolishing the billionaire mayor; instead, Biden went from being an afterthought to a big winner without absorbing any significant attacks.

[Listen to “The Argument” podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt.]

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Likewise, as much as Biden was hurt by having extremely white states like Iowa and New Hampshire go first, the combination of favorable demographics and pre-Super Tuesday timing made South Carolina perfect for his anti-Sanders consolidation. Ted Cruz won a similarly thumping victory over Trump in Wisconsin in 2016, but it came much later, after Trump had built a big lead and there was no chance of denying him a plurality of delegate support. Give Cruz that kind of victory earlier, and maybe there would have been a rush to his side, maybe Marco Rubio would have accepted a role in a unity ticket, maybe Trump could have been defeated.

Or maybe not, because alongside the shape of party opinion and the role of luck there’s a third factor that helped Biden do what NeverTrump could not: His fellow Democrats and especially his fellow politicians clearly just like him more than Republicans liked any of the NeverTrump candidates. Jebworld and Chris Christie loathed Rubio as an upstart, Kasich offered a cuddly persona but had alienated colleagues for years, and almost every powerful Republican in Washington simply hated Cruz. So the idea of rallying around any one of them for the greater good was a tough ask, in a way that it simply isn’t that tough for most Democratic politicians to sign on with Uncle Joe.

It’s in this sense that Biden himself deserves particular credit for yesterday’s consolidation. He wasn’t just in the right place at the right time; he was the right-enough person, because across years and decades he succeeded in building up good will among both his allies and rivals — a political resource worth husbanding, and one that on Super Tuesday definitely proved its worth.