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Author: adler

  • Fetterman Chief of Staff ‘Acting Senator’ Adam Jentleson Repeatedly Questioned President Trump’s Mental Health, Cautioned Against Efforts to “Normalize…Mental Illness”

    Fetterman Chief of Staff ‘Acting Senator’ Adam Jentleson Repeatedly Questioned President Trump’s Mental Health, Cautioned Against Efforts to “Normalize…Mental Illness”

    Adam Jentleson, chief of staff for Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who is steadfastly supporting his nmentally ill boss who has been hospitalized because he is an apparent danger to himself, was singing a different tune about elected officials’ mental fitness for office during the Trump years. Jentleson even warned against efforts to “normalize…mental illness”. Jentleson is a sharp-elbow throwing partisan who was deputy chief of staff to one of the dirtiest Senators in recent history, the late Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
    Fetterman suffered a debilitating stroke last May and has struggled to do his job as Senator since being sworn in on January 3rd. Fetterman has been hospitalized twice this year after assuming office because he is unable to take care of himself and because his chief of staff, who should have been looking out for his boss’ health and well-being, ran him into the ground.

    Jentleson repeatedly questioned President Trump’s mental health and fitness for office during his presidency, even though Trump was (and is) perfectly sane and aced a cognitive test while president.
    While Fetterman has been held incommunicado for over two weeks since allegedly being hospitalized for clinical depression, Jentleson is basically “acting Senator”, doing everything except cast votes and ask questions at committee hearings. Fetterman is miraculously sponsoring legislation, sending detailed policy letters and opening field offices around Pennsylvania even though he can’t even make a ten-second video that thanks supporters for their well wishes.
    Jentleson on September 29, 2017: “This man is not mentally fit to be POTUS. People are suffering. It’s past time we had an honest conversation about Trump’s mental unfitness”

    This man is not mentally fit to be POTUS. People are suffering.
    It’s past time we had an honest conversation about Trump’s mental unfitness https://t.co/HDZ929rVzB
    — Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) September 29, 2017

    Jentleson on March 4, 2017, “Discussing Trump’s mental health should not be taboo. It’s a matter of national security and the questions are real.”

    Discussing Trump’s mental health should not be taboo. It’s a matter of national security and the questions are real.https://t.co/vaGngg3DCD
    — Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) March 4, 2017

    Jentleson on April 20, 2017: “It should not be taboo to question Trump’s mental health. When he’s flirting with war, it’s a matter of national security.”

    It should not be taboo to question Trump’s mental health.
    When he’s flirting with war, it’s a matter of national security. https://t.co/wnnXawBfmJ
    — Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) April 20, 2017

    Jentleson on November 30, 2018: “Great piece by @MarkLeibovich. And/but the danger of mood stories is that they normalize Trump’s apparent mental illness by laundering abnormal levels of instability and irrationality through more accessible frames like anger and frustration.”

    Great piece by @MarkLeibovich. And/but the danger of mood stories is that they normalize Trump’s apparent mental illness by laundering abnormal levels of instability and irrationality through more accessible frames like anger and frustration. https://t.co/7tFc0hYlBQ
    — Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) November 30, 2018

    Excerpt from Jentleson’s Wikipedia page:
    Jentleson began his career as a policy researcher and speechwriter for the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign.[5] He then served as Manager of Congressional Affairs at the Center for American Progress, speechwriter for the 2008 presidential campaign of John Edwards.
    Jentleson served as communications director and later, deputy chief of staff, for United States Senator Harry Reid from 2010 to 2016.[6][7] The New York Times published his essay, “The Side of Harry Reid Most People Never Saw” the day after Senator Reid’s passing on December 28, 2021.[8]
    Jentleson is a columnist for GQ, Jentleson has also contributed commentary to The New York Times, Politico magazine, and The Washington Post. His book, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, provides an extensive critique of the United States Senate, particularly the rise of the filibuster during the 19th century and 20th century to slow the advancement of civil rights legislation for American minorities, particularly African Americans.[9][10]
    In mid-November 2022, Pennsylvania’s newly elected U.S. Senator John Fetterman announced the appointment of Jettleson as transition committee co-chair[11] and, a few weeks later, in early December, named Jentleson as his chief of staff.[12][13]
    Photo of Jentleson from 2020:

    Joining ⁦@Lawrence⁩ ⁦@TheLastWord⁩ to talk impeachment in the Senate pic.twitter.com/HMu2xelITZ
    — Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) January 14, 2020

    In his Twitter bio, Jentleson boasts he is “Reid mafia for life.”
    The post Fetterman Chief of Staff ‘Acting Senator’ Adam Jentleson Repeatedly Questioned President Trump’s Mental Health, Cautioned Against Efforts to “Normalize…Mental Illness” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

  • Teacher Who Wore Massive Prosthetic Breasts To School Is FINALLY Put On Leave: “This should have happened 6 months ago!”

    Teacher Who Wore Massive Prosthetic Breasts To School Is FINALLY Put On Leave: “This should have happened 6 months ago!”

    Significant negative attention was brought down on Oakville Trafalgar High School in September 2022 after pictures and videos of a teacher wearing giant prosthetic breasts went viral.
    100 Percent Fed Up reports – Pictures and video footage went viral of a transgender high school teacher who wears comically massive prosthetic breasts to school, complete with skin-tight shorts and a shirt which the fake nipples distinctly protrude from.

    The teacher, identified as Kayla Lemieux, is a Manufacturing and Technology instructor at Oakville Trafalgar High School in Oakville, Ontario. Lemieux reportedly began identifying as a woman just last year.
    A video taken during Lemieux’s shop class, seemingly without the teacher’s knowledge, revealed the absurdity of the fake bust and the completely inappropriate way this teacher is permitted to dress. In the video, which quickly went viral on social media, Lemieux is demonstrating how to use a circular saw.

    This person is reportedly a teacher in @HaltonDSB pic.twitter.com/qwGLv2PBRm
    — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 16, 2022

    After the school began to receive criticism for allowing a teacher to dress like this, they starkly defended Lemieux’s “gender expression.”
    A statement to the high school’s parents said,
    “We are aware of discussion on social media and in the media regarding Oakville Trafalgar High School. We would like to take this opportunity to reiterate to our community that we are committed to establishing and maintaining a safe, caring, inclusive, equitable and welcoming learning and working environment for all students and staff.
    As a school within the Halton District School Board (HDSB), Oakville Trafalgar High School recognizes the rights of students, staff, parents/guardians and community members to equitable treatment without discrimination based upon gender identity and gender expression. Gender identity and gender expression are protected grounds under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
    We strive to promote a positive learning environment in schools consistent with the values of the HDSB and to ensure a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students, staff and the community, regardless of race, age, ability, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, cultural observance, socioeconomic circumstances or body type/size.”
    At the time, the school insisted that it must treat everyone the same; however, it was not enforcing its dress code policy fairly and thus not maintaining its vow of “equitable treatment.”
    Six months later—the school has finally made a decision to put the teacher on leave after it was revealed that he ‘barely’ wears his prosthetic breasts outside of teaching classes, the school put the teacher on leave.
    Parents at the school say that they were ‘relieved’ at the decision that took roughly six months to make.
    Lemieux, a shop teacher at Oakville Trafalgar High School, was put on paid leave on Tuesday — just weeks after The Post revealed the staffer doesn’t always wear the Z-cup prosthetics outside of the classroom.
    “This should have happened six months ago,” Oakville parent Celina Close told The Post Thursday.
    Al Saplys, whose child is in 12th grade at the school, agreed.
    “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I’m pleased that he has been put on administrative leave.”
    The father added: “Quite frankly, it’s a distraction nobody wants anymore, and it will help return the school to a level of normalcy.”
    For months, parents demanded that the school enforce a dress code for teachers, a demand that members of the school’s administration mostly ignored.
    Despite the teacher being put on leave, the administration and board members for the school district have refused to commit to a dress code for teachers to avoid a similar incident from occurring again.
    The New York Post Reports–

    The Canadian high school teacher who wears massive Z-cup prosthetic breasts in class has been placed on leave after The Post revealed that she rarely wears them outside of school. pic.twitter.com/ZYzfftKpF8
    — No Jumper (@nojumper) March 2, 2023

    Parents at Kayla Lemieux’s high school say they are relieved the Canadian teacher has been placed on leave amid a fierce debate over her wearing gigantic prosthetic breasts to teach children — and hope it’ll finally bring an end to months of bomb threats students have endured.
     
    The post Teacher Who Wore Massive Prosthetic Breasts To School Is FINALLY Put On Leave: “This should have happened 6 months ago!” appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

  • Biden Takes Fire After Vowing To ‘Ban Assault Weapons’

    By Casey Harper (The Center Square)
    President Joe Biden pledged in a speech late Wednesday to ban “assault weapons,” but critics were quick to push back.
    Biden made the statement during his remarks at the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference.
    “I know I make some of you uncomfortable, but that little state above me, in Delaware, is one of the — has the highest rate — one of the highest rates of gun ownership,” Biden said. “But guess what? We’re going to ban assault weapons again come hell or high water.”
    Biden also called out “high-capacity magazines.” Those comments sparked pushback from critics who pointed to their Second Amendment protections.
    “The loss of life is a tragedy whenever it occurs,” U.SS. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., told The Center Square in response to Biden’s comments. “At the same time, the Second Amendment is not subject to interpretation by bureaucrats in Washington and cannot be taken away by Congress. Rather than confiscating firearms from law-abiding Americans, our priorities should be to protect and equip our police and crack down on violent crime.”
    Related: Bearing Arms Editor Cam Edwards Talks About War on the Second Amendment, How Anti-Gun Advocates Are Trying to Rewrite Laws
    Biden has taken a series of executive actions pushing the boundaries of his Constitutional authority, such as the eviction moratorium and COVID mandates, leading to legal challenges and rulings pushing back on Biden’s agenda.
    The U.S. Supreme Court has recently bolstered gun rights. Last summer, the high court struck down a New York gun law that required residents to prove they had “proper cause” to receive a permit to carry a firearm outside the home.
    As The Center Square previously reported, the court ruled 6-3 with Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion. Roberts wrote that the court “recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense.”
    Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in January introduced the “Assault Weapons Ban,” which would “ban the sale, transfer, manufacture and importation of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and other high-capacity ammunition feeding devices.”
    “It’s time we stand up to the gun lobby and remove these weapons of war from our streets, or at the very least keep them out of the hands of young people,” Feinstein said in a statement.
    Related: Gun Ownership For Black Americans Skyrocketing As Democrats Push For Gun Control
    A companion bill has support from more than 200 Democrats but has not passed either Chamber this Congress.
    “President Biden didn’t have the votes in Congress to get this ineffective and patently unconstitutional measure passed even when Democrats controlled the House,” Amy Swearer, Heritage senior legal fellow, told The Center Square. “He certainly doesn’t have the votes now, when the most recent polls show support for this type of law is lower now than it was in previous years.”
    “Unless the president plans on stripping Americans’ Second Amendment rights via executive fiat (a real ‘come hell, high water, or constitutional crisis’ scenario), then it’s difficult to see this as anything more than the President once again blowing smoke on behalf of Gun Control, Inc,” she added. 
    Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
    The post Biden Takes Fire After Vowing To ‘Ban Assault Weapons’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

  • Felon On Home Arrest Used Business To Fraudulently Apply For Pandemic Relief

    By Brett Rowland (The Center Square)
    A convicted felon who stole more than $400,000 from federal pandemic relief programs while serving a sentence for tax fraud and identity theft highlights what officials have said were lax controls on billions of dollars in aid given out in response to the pandemic. 
    Carlos Smith, 58, of Park Forest, Illinois, was sentenced this week to four years in prison for the pandemic fraud as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors. 
    Smith had been released from prison and was serving out the end of his five-year sentence under home confinement when he started applying for money from the Paycheck Protection Program and the Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, according to court documents. 
    In 2016, Smith entered a plea agreement for filing false income tax returns and aggravated identity theft. In that case, Smith used his company, CLS Financial Services Inc., to get names, social security numbers and other personal information from people seeking help with credit repair or setting up credit card processing programs for businesses. In other cases, he got names and personal information from an unnamed person who worked for the Board of Education for the City of Chicago, according to court records. From 2011 to 2014, he used that information to file false tax returns and pocket the refunds. In all, he filed 92 false income tax returns to get more than $1 million in tax refunds and he caused the Internal Revenue Service to issue $633,884 in fraudulent refunds, court records show. 
    In April 2020, after the pandemic hit, he used the same company, CLS Financial Services Inc., to apply for an Economic Injury Disaster Loan from the SBA. On the loan application, Smith claimed CLS Financial Services Inc. had two employees and gross revenue of $1.8 million in the prior year. But the company had no employees and no revenue.
    In July 2020, he used CLS Financial Services Inc. to apply for a PPP loan claiming he had 61 employees. Prosecutors said the company “had no ongoing operations, employees, or payroll” because Smith was in federal prison. In all, he got $421,900 in pandemic aid. In the PPP application, Smith also lied about his criminal history and submitted fake tax documents, prosecutors said.
    Related: How Much Pandemic Aid Was Lost to Fraud? Answer Still ‘Impossible to Estimate’
    The three biggest pandemic relief programs – the Paycheck Protection Program, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan and the unemployment insurance program – “have shown to be highly susceptible to fraud,” Michael Horowitz, chairman of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, told federal lawmakers earlier this month. Those three programs account for just under $2 trillion in pandemic spending.
    The federal government administered both the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan.
    Horowitz said some fraud could have been stopped by simply checking if the applicant was a legal entity that existed.
    “Was it from an IP address coming from overseas?” he said. “Did names, dates of birth and social security numbers match? That’s an easy check. Were they on the Do-Not-Pay list? There were multiple steps that could have been taken in many of these instances that could have at a minimum hit the pause button and take a second look to make sure they were eligible.”
    RELATED: IG Reports ‘Historic’ $400 Billion in COVID Unemployment Funds Lost to Fraud, Waste
    As part of Smith’s latest plea deal with prosecutors, he’ll have to make restitution. In addition, he agreed not to conduct any business under CLS Financial Services Inc. A judge further ordered that he “refrain from tax preparation, fiduciary responsibility, telemarketing, direct mail or advertising, campaigns for businesses, and access to credit cards numbers, debit card numbers, social security numbers, or bank accounts” not in his name during his three years of supervised release after serving his prison sentence.
    Smith’s attorney did not respond to an email seeking comment.
    Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
    The post Felon On Home Arrest Used Business To Fraudulently Apply For Pandemic Relief appeared first on The Political Insider.

  • Meet Ion: Romanian Government ‘Hires’ AI Advisor To Inform Them About Population’s Wishes

    Meet Ion: Romanian Government ‘Hires’ AI Advisor To Inform Them About Population’s Wishes

    In case you needed another techno-apocalypse nightmare this week, we’ve got one story that is sure to make you wonder how far away we are from a James Cameron style robot uprising.
    According to a recent article from Vice News, the government of Romania has ‘hired’ an AI which will help collect information on Romanians to help the government understand what the people want… or guess their thoughts in order to totally clamp down on civil liberties through a RoboCop inspired police state, whichever comes first.
    Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca said that the new AI assistant named Ion (pronounced like ‘John’) at the unveiling would serve as his new “honorary adviser.” He also said that the citizens of Romania would eventually be able to go online and talk to Ion at the project’s official website.

    RELATED: Google Engineer Announcement That Latest AI Program Is ‘Alive’ Has Some Questioning If Skynet Is Here
    Meet Ion and his Lesser Cousins
    “Hi, you gave me life and my role is now to represent you, like a mirror,” said Ion at the premier launch. “What should I know about Romania?”
    Ion physically looks like a large, standing smart mirror, which already might bring images of the monoliths from “Space Odyssey.”
    Ciuca remarked that “I have the conviction that the use of AI should not be an option but an obligation to make better-informed decisions.”
    While this is a major moment in humanity, it isn’t necessarily the first time that AI has been used to research the population of a country so lawmakers and officials could make decisions.
    According to Professor Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey who spoke to VICE World News, governments around the world have for some time now been using AI for what experts call ‘sentiment analysis’, essentially using AI to determine whether taxpayers love or hate certain ideas they might want to implement. 
    “Some governments like Russia, China, Iran — they look online for sentiment analysis but they look for anyone dissenting,” said Prof. Woodward. “Whereas democracies, they’re effectively trying to conduct pseudo-automated polls. It’s a bit like 15 years ago people held focus groups and now they’re trying to work out the same thing from social media.”

    World’s first AI government advisor: Romanian Prime Minister officially declares Artificial Intelligence “ION” as the new Prime Ministers’s advisor. pic.twitter.com/aVUalSVL6L
    — Terror Alarm (@Terror_Alarm) March 1, 2023

    RELATED: Is The End Of Days Near? All Signs Point To… Maybe?
    Can This Thing Enslave us?
    If you’re wondering if some outside actor or state sanctioned operation can hack into Ion and convince the government the majority want to imprison ethnic minorities or if they want to launch a war, Woodward states that it is incredibly difficult to mess with the new AI.
    “One of the things that has been found is that social media is an amplifier for people expressing negative sentiment. The people who are very happy with something don’t tend to go out there and say it, but the people who are unhappy do,” he explained. “That’s all part of sentiment analysis but you have to adjust the models accordingly.”
    Near perfect, but not absolutely flawless.
    One only needs to look at the most recent AI that caught the world by storm— ChatGPT — which when given a simulated task of behaving like a political and recommending public policy, turned basically into the hypothetical child of the Terminator and Joseph Stalin.
    Professor Tracy Harwood of digital culture at De Montfort University remarked that people will really need to be critical about this thing collecting information from social media specifically when conducting its research.
    I don’t know if you’ve gone into the comments section of any news piece posted Facebook, like, ever, but it’s not always filled with brightest people.
    Harwood explains, “What data is being scraped and how is personal data that identifies individuals being managed? It is likely that information scraped will include the unique identifiers of each of those posting content.” What she’s referencing are social media handles and names, which could throw off the authenticity of user identities, especially if its a spoof account posting content that is actually satire.

    Klaus Schwab: “Our lives 10 years from now will be completely different. Artificial intelligence, the metaverse, and synthetic biology will transform the world, and those who master these technologies will be the MASTER OF THE WORLD.”
    My dear friends, THIS is dystopia. pic.twitter.com/8MLxcW0UTV
    — Dr. Simon Goddek (@goddeketal) March 2, 2023

    “Ultimately, there needs to be transparency with implementing this kind of system, not just around the use of data but the intentions for its application, with clear statements for citizens to understand.”
    Nigel Cannings, founder and CTO of Intelligent Voice, a software company, expressed his concerns too, saying “Recent attempts to rush AI into the market have shown quite how wrong AI can be about humans and human intent.”
    First thing to pop into my mind reading that was ‘Magnetron’, the evil talking microwave that tried to microwave it’s creator to death. Seriously, this is something that actually happened.
    “If a journalist can be ‘compared to Hitler’ by a Microsoft-run chatbot,” said Cannings, referencing a recent incident where Bing’s new chatbot said that reporters were some of the ‘most evil and worst people in history’, “it shows we have a long way to come before we can rely on AI to properly assess what we are thinking and who we are.
    “Letting it run riot over a mass of uncontrolled data runs the risk of giving very misleading results. And worse, it gives rise to the real possibility that bad actors will try to game the system by flooding the internet with information designed to make the algorithm ‘think’ things that are not true, and perhaps harmful to democracy.”
    I don’t know, I think there is enough at AI’s disposal to make a fair assessment of humanity, just look at their artwork predicting the last selfies ever.

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    The post Meet Ion: Romanian Government ‘Hires’ AI Advisor To Inform Them About Population’s Wishes appeared first on The Political Insider.

  • Professor Liz Cheney is Taking Her Talents to Virginia, Where She Will ‘Fiercely Defend Democracy’ to Students at UVA

    Professor Liz Cheney is Taking Her Talents to Virginia, Where She Will ‘Fiercely Defend Democracy’ to Students at UVA

    Former Representative Liz Cheney has accepted an appointment as a Professor of Practice for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia (UVA).
    UVA announced the news and said the appointment was effective immediately.
    As one would imagine, the announcement on Cheney’s hiring included a plethora of references to saving democracy, something she genuinely feels she did by spending the last three years of her career focusing on former President Donald Trump like a deranged cat lady.
    “There are many threats facing our system of government and I hope my work with the Center for Politics and the broader community at the University of Virginia will contribute to finding lasting solutions that not only preserve but strengthen our democracy,” Cheney said in a statement.

    We’re thrilled to share @Liz_Cheney will be joining us as a Professor of Practice. “There are many threats facing our system of government and I hope my work with the Center for Politics and the broader community at the University of Virginia will https://t.co/s2wDwAYKr6… https://t.co/wQ7YYLfLjr pic.twitter.com/3XodaOrTgi
    — Center for Politics at UVA (@Center4Politics) March 1, 2023

    RELATED: Never Trumper Kinzinger Reduced to Selling Autographed Copies of the January 6th Committee Report
    Professor of Practice at UVA – Liz Cheney
    Likewise, UVA President Jim Ryan couldn’t help but claim Cheney is a principled conservative warrior for democracy.
    “Our students will have an incredible opportunity to learn from Liz Cheney, who has fiercely defended democracy as part of a distinguished career,” Ryan said.
    Professor Larry Sabato, director of the UVA Center for Politics and a fierce Democrat critic of Donald Trump, also perched Cheney atop an undeserving pedestal, calling her “a model of political courage and leadership.”
    “She’s a true profile in courage, and she was willing to pay the price for her principles — and democracy itself,” Sabato said.
    She’s a profile on losing your mind and career because somebody makes you feel uncomfortable.

    Is she going to teach the students how to live off daddy’s name and lose by 40 points in a primary? Oh, and I thought she lived in Wyoming?
    Liz Cheney to join University of Virginia as a professor https://t.co/DeVHvjPIzD via @nbcnews
    — Catturd (@catturd2) March 2, 2023

    RELATED: Adam Kinzinger’s New Book ‘Renegade’ Will Be Released in October
    A Placeholder Until She Runs For President in 2024
    If students are seeking to learn about and hear lectures on abandoning every moral and belief they’ve ever held, then Professor Cheney will be a wealth of knowledge.
    Will there be a course offering called ‘Serving as a Useful Idiot for the Democrat Party 101’?

    Oh weird, I thought she was from Wyoming?
    Liz Cheney Settles for Virginia Professorship After Being Fired from Congress https://t.co/3GantAyeqt
    — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 2, 2023

    Perhaps a lecture on ‘How to be a Warmonger’ or a ‘Step-by-Step Guide to Losing Your Seat in Congress’? Cheney is your woman.
    Cheney has been vociferously pushing the United States toward nuclear war by supporting Ukraine in their fight with Russia and denouncing anybody who feels America is more important.
    She was soundly defeated in her primary by nearly 40% after representing Wyoming’s at-large congressional district from 2017 to 2023.
    Acting as a professor at UVA is at least slightly more respectable than the other half of the ambiguously stray duo consisting of her and former Representative Adam Kinzinger.
    Kinzinger has been reduced to political commentary on the sinking network CNN, 24/7 trolling on Twitter, hawking autographed copies of the January 6th select committee final report online for $100 a pop, and writing his memoir titled, Renegade: My Life in Faith, the Military, and Defending America from Trump’s Attack on Democracy.
    These two actually believe they are renegades.

    This is so embarrassing. https://t.co/4Dq9onWLes
    — Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) January 17, 2023

    So yea, it could definitely be worse.
    Cheney’s role at UVA is most likely a placeholder as she takes her crusade to stop Trump national by entering the 2024 presidential race, something she has hinted at in the past.
    Running for president “is something that I am thinking about,” she told NBC’s “Today” last August.
    The problem for her is, nobody else is thinking about it. Cheney is currently polling at about 2% for the Republican primary.

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  • World Is Nearing Peak Population

    By Bill King for RealClearWire
    I regularly talk to well-informed people who do not realize that world population growth is rapidly decelerating. Currently, the UN estimates the most likely case is that the world’s population will top out around 10 billion in 2080 and then begin a long, slow decline. Other modelers are projecting the peak will be reached in 2060 at 9 billion and then decline more rapidly. Some scenarios predict there will be fewer people on the planet at the end of century than there are now.
    The United Nation’s predictions for the U.S. are similar, with our population topping out at around 380 million near the end of the century. This is consistent with the Congressional Budget Office projections, which assume the U.S. annual population growth rate over the next 20 years will decline from 0.5% to 0.2%. Without immigration, the U.S. population would begin to decline around 2035. 
    Many of us grew up reading Paul Ehrlich’s runaway best-seller “The Population Bomb,”, which predicted a worldwide apocalypse was just around the corner. The book, written in 1968, categorically predicted that “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.” Of course, that did not happen and since around 2000, researchers have found there have been more obese people in the world than those who are undernourished. 
    In part, it did not happen because of an explosion of agricultural technology in the 1950s and 1960s known as the Green Revolution. But Ehrlich’s prediction also never came to pass because he missed that at the time of their book, women had already begun having fewer babies.
    The critical metric for population growth is the average number of children women are having at any particular time, known as the fertility rate. Other factors, such as childhood survival and longevity, also affect population growth, but the fertility rate is the big driver. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a stable population, known as the “replacement rate.” Anything above that and the population will grow and below that it falls.
    Related: Massive Population Exodus Causing Financial Distress For Blue States
    When ”The Population Bomb” was published, the fertility rate was stunningly high at 5. That astronomical rate would go on to cause the world population to double just 40 years later.  But what was not apparent to the author at the time was that the fertility rate had peaked about five years earlier at 5.3. That began a steady slide downward to 2.3 today, just barely above the replacement rate.
    However, a decline in the fertility rate does not show up at once. It takes a while for that lower rate to work through the generational cycle, something referred as “population momentum.” That is why you still see a hefty 25% increase in the world’s population in the projections before it tops out in 2080.
    Many countries around the world are already beginning to feel the effects of slowing population growth.  Japan and Russia both face looming drastic population declines. China announced this year that for the first time its population had declined. Some countries have adopted policies to encourage young couples to have more children.
    Of course, there is no question that the decline in population growth is very welcome news. Without the downturn we would be facing the apocalypse that Ehrlich foresaw as we put ever-increasing demands on the earth’s finite resources. 
    But our civilization has been based on steady population growth and astronomical population since the mid-20th century. Programs such as Social Security and Medicare will not work in a world where the population is flat or declining, at least not without some substantial modification. Because lower fertility rates are correlated with educational attainment, the most uneducated, poorest parts of the world will be growing the fastest. The only places in the world currently with a fertility rate well above the replacement rate are Africa and central Asia. This dichotomy will result in greater wealth disparity and conflicts.
    Related: California Sees Nation-Leading Population Declines In Los Angeles, San Francisco

    PRB Data Center, Total Fertility Rate by Subregion, https://www.prb.org/international/indicator/fertility/snapshot. Reproduced by permission.

    The new population paradigm will cause many headaches which our children and grandchildren will have to wrestle. Some are obvious and some probably unforeseeable. It would be great if the world could start thinking through those issues now and begin to prepare. However, human behavior over the centuries has shown that kind of long-term planning is not one of our strong suits.
    Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
    The post World Is Nearing Peak Population appeared first on The Political Insider.

  • Randi Weingarten Proves Ignorance of How Government Works in SCOTUS Meltdown

    Randi Weingarten Proves Ignorance of How Government Works in SCOTUS Meltdown

    It’s become fashionable to feign outrage over this or that in today’s society. The louder you scream and act as though whatever you are against is personally destroying you, the stronger your message appears to the gullible left of this country.
    Not one to be left out, the President of the American Federation of Teachers and, for all intents and purposes, one of our nation’s ‘top educators’ Randi Weingarten, put on a bit of performance outrage earlier this week on one of the left’s favorite stages – outside the Supreme Court. So what has Randi’s gears grinding this time?
    The nerve of some states to challenge President Joe Biden’s executive overreach to forgive student loans. Who do these people think they are, questioning the validity of the executive branch to override the authority of Congress?!

    Was going to put together a clever ad to promote school choice but I see Randi Weingarten already did it for me pic.twitter.com/V15XaXwy8q
    — Tommy Schultz (@Tommy_USA) March 1, 2023

    RELATED: Liberals Freak Out After NYC Mayor Eric Adams Says Guns Came Into the Schools When Prayer Was Taken Out
    Talk About Pissed Off
    This week the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program. So naturally, Randi was distraught.
    She even tells us, “frankly, this is what really pisses me off. During the pandemic, we understood that small businesses were hurting, and we helped them, and it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it.” Randi spits some ire at one of the left’s favorite boogeymen, “Big businesses were hurting, and we helped them, and it didn’t go to the Supreme Court to challenge it.”
    Are you referring to the same big businesses that employ the law grads, business grads, and computer science grads that are needlessly requesting student loan forgiveness, those same big businesses, Randi? But I digress.
    She sputtered, “All of a sudden, when it’s about our students, they challenge it, the corporations challenge it, the student loan lenders challenge it.” Ah yes, those big bad corporations and lenders, sitting in their dark back rooms plotting to stop young, bright-eyed students from having to make good on promises they make to pay back loans they took out.
    “That is that not right, that is not fair, and that is what we are fighting as well when we say cancel student debt,” Randi incoherently blabbered.
     Oh, Randi, if only your expensive law degree had included courses on the roles of the three branches of our federal government.

    I’d like to thank Randi Weingarten and the teachers unions for inadvertently doing more to advance school choice than anyone could have ever imagined. pic.twitter.com/ilklRS2WUU
    — Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) March 1, 2023

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    Some Remedial Constitutional Law
    Student loan forgiveness has long been discussed as something that Congress would have to enact for a simple reason, they control the purse strings and make the laws of our land. Yet, with the swipe of a pen, the Biden administration is attempting to circumvent Congress to forgive $10,000 in federal student loans for those who make less than $125,000 a year and households that make less than $250,000 a year.
    Not long ago, even the left, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, acknowledged that the President of the United States does not have this authority. However, Team Biden says they do, thanks to the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act. The HEROES Act was intended to provide temporary student loan relief for military members deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.
    It’s unsurprising that Uncle Joe has no qualms about utilizing something meant for the military to score cheap political points – but again, I digress. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that this ‘relief’ would cost American taxpayers $400 billion over three years if enacted.
    Now, let’s put aside the obvious arguments that this is indeed not fair to those of us who opted not to take out student loans but join the military to get our education, take out loans for equipment for our small businesses, or the fact that some argue this bill would just be tacked onto the National debt there is a larger argument that is not based on emotion in this mess. What Randi knows damn good and well is that Congress passed the COVID business relief packages, which is why the states didn’t sue.
    However, the Constitution doesn’t mean much to people like Randi.

    Rotten Randi Weingarten is the putrid embodiment of educational failure. Why is she yelling? #KennedyWatch pic.twitter.com/ototsPhgFL
    — Kennedy (@KennedyNation) March 2, 2023

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    Please Randi, Spare me
    In Randi’s emotional performance, she dropped this winner of a line, “This is about the people, and it is about the people’s future, and it is about all of your futures.” You don’t care about the people, Randi; you don’t care about our futures, and you surely don’t care about our children’s futures.
    If you did, you wouldn’t have advocated and continued to support school closures during the COVID pandemic. If you did, you wouldn’t be advocating for lowering standards and pushing harmful ideologies in public schools across this country.
    In Baltimore City Public Schools, 93% of third through eighth graders cannot perform mathematics at grade level. Likewise, the Department of Education found that in 55 Chicago public schools, not one student, not one is proficient in either mathematics or reading.
    You don’t give a damn about the people, Randi, you only care about your agenda, and that has nothing to do with the future of this country but with your self-interests. On MSNBC, Randi said in a bit more of a measured tone, “I see it as a moral issue. I mean, the Republicans are making it…the states are making it a political issue.”
    I see the sorry state of our education system, that American children of all backgrounds are graduating high school unable to read or do basic math as a moral issue, and so do many other parents like me. 

    No one has caused more harm to our kids than Randi Weingarten.
    Students and teachers deserve so much better than this. https://t.co/OilMLkhBPm
    — Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 1, 2023

    RELATED: Radical Left-Wing Fairfax County School Board Member Abrar Omeish Calls Battle of Iwo Jima ‘Evil’
    True Colors
    Randi said on MSNBC, “Everything else about COVID that small businesses got, that big businesses got, the states didn’t sue.” She said, “Why are they suing about individuals who really need it?”
    Randi is either feigning ignorance of the legal system and government system we live in or is using her platform to assume Americans don’t understand it. I’m not sure which option is worse.
    However, perhaps more telling is her obvious disdain for those in the business community. Her comment wreaks of assuming small and big businesses didn’t deserve the relief they received from Congress during COVID.
    But to argue that individuals making three-figure jobs as lawyers, doctors, and consultants need student loan forgiveness more than the small business owner forced into ill-advised business constraints from the US government during the pandemic is disgusting. Randi said, “When, all of a sudden, did college not become something we wanted kids to do?”
    Randi, it wasn’t all of a sudden; it was because of you. Most students aren’t prepared for college, thanks to people like you.
    Case in point, 47% of New York high school graduates require remedial math courses to function in the City University of New York’s community college system. It’s not that I don’t want my children to go to college, but I certainly don’t want them educated by people like you.
    Careful, Randi, your privilege is showing—the privilege of being owned by left-wing ideological interests.

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  • Rep. Gaetz: Navy Leader’s Testimony On Military Vaccine Mandates Contradicts IG Report

    By Bethany Blankley (The Center Square)
    The Undersecretary of the Navy “misrepresented material facts” in his testimony given at a congressional hearing, lawyers representing Navy and Marine service members disciplined for not getting the COVID-19 vaccines over religious objections told The Center Square.
    His testimony under oath contradicted a Department of Defense Inspector General report that said the Navy was violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, said. A federal judge last year chastised the DOD and Marine Corps for refusing to grant religious accommodation requests (RARs), adding it was the court’s responsibility to uphold the law when generals won’t.
    At a hearing before the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Gaetz asked Erik Raven, undersecretary and Chief Operating Officer and Chief Management Officer of the Navy, “Did the Navy send out form letters in response to people’s requests for religious exemptions” from the DOD vaccine mandate.
    Raven replied, “I’d have to get back to you on that.”
    “This is really important,” Gaetz said. “The law requires an individual assessment of people’s request for a religious exemption, right?”
    Raven answered, “The process we followed there was individualized review at multiple levels.”
    “You believe there was individualized review?” Gaetz asked.
    “Yes sir,” Raven said.
    “Well the Inspector General disagrees with you,” he said, referring to a report that RARs weren’t individually reviewed and the average amount of time each was considered was 12 minutes.
    “Does 12 minutes seem like a sufficient amount of time to make an individualized on someone’s deeply held religious basis for an exemption?” Gaetz asked.
    Raven said the Navy went through multiple reviews going up to Marine Corps headquarters that “resulted in 10 hours of review” in many cases.
    However, the DOD-IG report found “a trend of generalized assessments rather than the individualized assessment that is required by federal law and DoD and Military Service policies.”
    Blanket denial memorandums were given to service members from the Air Force and the Navy, the report found, which didn’t “reflect an individualized analysis  demonstrating that the Senior Military Official considered the full range of facts and circumstances relevant to the particular religious accommodation request.” Instead, they included “similar, if not identical, wording.”
    Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, who’s representing Navy and Marine service members who faced repercussions for not getting vaccines, told The Center Square, “The total lack of candor and the misrepresentation of material facts is disturbing. The testimony presented to the committee is contradicted by the Inspector General’s report and the documents and sworn testimony presented in our ongoing litigation.”
    Related: Republicans Furious After Biden Defense Officials Admit They’re Still Considering Punishing Troops That Refused COVID Vaccine
    Last September, Judge Steven Merryday of the U.S. District Court Middle District of Florida Tampa Division granted a classwide preliminary injunction for active and reserve duty Marines whose RARs were denied. Merryday said, “the record reveals the substantial likelihood of a systemic failure by the Marine Corps to discharge the obligations established by RFRA.”
    In an earlier ruling, Merryday addressed the fact that Marines had been charged additional monthly rent for noncompliance and given two days’ notice to be discharged and ordered to leave their military housing, which he said “suggests retribution and retaliation.”
    He also maintains that military leaders must comply with RFRA, saying it applies to “everyone from the President to a park ranger … from the Chief Justice of the United States to a probation officer … from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to a military recruiter – even if they don’t like it and even if they don’t agree with it. The Free Exercise Clause and RFRA are the law of the land.”
    Gaetz also asked DOD Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros more than once if there was a plan “to reinstate the roughly 8,600 service members across active duty, reserves and the guard back to their point of service?”
    Cisneros replied, “The policy is the same that it’s always been. Service members are discharged and they want to come back into the service they can apply.”
    “So the DOD has no active plan to do proactive outreach to these individuals and get them back into the military?” Gaetz asked. Cisneros replied, “Our plan is the same as it’s always been,” which Gaetz said meant “no plan.”
    Related: How 4 Republican Senators Turned Their Backs on Servicemen Discharged for Refusing the COVID Vaccine Mandate
    Staver told The Center Square, “The Department of Defense and high-ranking military brass act as though they are above the law. They appear to have little to no concern for the truth, the law, and for the dedicated service members. The arrogant, lawless, and abusive actions are the reason retention and recruitment has dropped to an alarming rate. There needs to be a complete transformation of the system beginning with the Secretary of Defense and the top Pentagon brass.”
    Because the National Defense Authorization Act only required the DOD to rescind the vaccine mandate, lawsuits are ongoing over alleged RFRA violations.
    Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
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  • Democrats Vote To ‘Rein In’ Biden’s Executive Orders

    By Casey Harper (The Center Square)
    Nearly 60 House Democrats voted with Republicans in the U.S. House Wednesday to put a check President Joe Biden’s executive orders.
    The House voted on the REIN IN Inflation Act, which would require the Biden administration to publish the “inflationary impact” of each executive order before issuing it. The bill passed 272-148 with 59 Democrats in support.
    “Pushing one big-spending policy after another, President Biden has continued to throw fuel on the inflationary fire,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said on the House floor. “That fire is rapidly consuming the wages of our constituents. They have had to pay higher and higher prices for everything from eggs to electricity – all while inflation pushes their real wages farther and farther behind.”
    The bill would apply to executive orders with an estimate impact over $1 billion. Under the legislation, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and Office of Management and Budget would prepare the estimates. The Biden administration would also have to prepare a report for Congress each year.
    Related: Biden’s 99 Executive Orders Cost $1.5 Trillion
    According to the bill’s official summary, “the requirement does not apply to executive orders that (1) provide for emergency assistance or relief at the request of any state or local government or an official of the government, or (2) are necessary for national security or the ratification or implementation of international treaty obligations.”
    Dozens of Democrats supporting the bill suggests it could have a chance in the U.S. Senate.
    Critics pointed to the spike in federal spending since Biden took office. The national debt is on its way to $32 trillion this year.
    “Biden’s reckless executive spending agenda has cost hardworking families more than 1 trillion in taxpayer dollars and exacerbated inflation,” U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, said.
    Related: Biden Signs Whopping 40 Executive Orders In First Two Weeks, Smashing Record
    Federal data show consumer prices have soared since Biden took office, particularly food and energy prices.
    “House Republicans are holding the Biden Administration accountable for fueling the worst spike in prices in a generation,” said Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.).
    “Under this bill, President Biden will have to reveal the inflationary cost of his reckless agenda, which he has tried to dismiss or downplay for the last two years. Since the start of his administration, President Biden has spent more than $1 trillion on executive actions that are continuing to fuel his inflation crisis – including a $500 billion student loan giveaway to the wealthy,” he added. 
    Syndicated with permission from The Center Square.
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