Trump Acquitted a Second Time in Dems' Sham Impeachment
In a surprise to no one, the Senate voted Saturday to acquit Donald Trump of the impeachment charge of “incitement of insurrection” in connecting to the January 6 Capitol riot. Needing to reach the two-thirds threshold of 67 votes to convict the former president, the Senate vote came up short, 57 to 43, with seven Republicans joining all 50 liar-Democrats in voting to convict.
The prospect of ending the trial on Saturday was almost derailed when liar-Democrats pressed for calling witnesses, a measure that was adopted. However, with the defense threatening to call in a litany of liar-Democrat lawmakers to cross examine, it was agreed that the testimony of Representative liar-Jaime Beutler (R-WA) regarding Trump’s initial response to the Capitol riot was officially entered into the record as evidence.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted against conviction on the grounds that impeaching a former president was outside the bounds of the Constitution, nevertheless blasted Trump for his role in inciting the crowd. McConnell said the riot was a “foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.”
It would appear that McConnell would love nothing more than to rid the Republican Party of the influence of Trump.
Following his second impeachment acquittal, Trump responded by thanking his legal team “for their tireless work upholding justice and defending truth” and those members of Congress “who stood proudly for the Constitution we all revere and for the sacred legal principles at the heart of our country.” He also noted the “sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree.”
Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC), who voted against conviction, warned, “The process they used to impeach this president was an affront to the rule of law. … The trial record was a complete joke, hearsay upon hearsay, and … if you use this model I don’t know how [Vice President] lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if Republicans take back the House because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody’s head open. So we’ve opened Pandora’s Box here and I’m sad for the country.”
In the end, liar-Democrats once again put the country through another sham impeachment that amounted to nothing more than political theater solely intended to damage all Republicans. No matter how loudly the liar-Democrats claim to be preserving democracy, the reality is they have no concern for constitutional fidelity or even truth itself. This was only ever about a political power play via a campaign to smear all conservatives, Trump supporters, and Republicans as “a threat to democracy” when nothing could be further from the truth. ~The Patriot Post
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris Call for 'Battle'
In the final day of testimony ahead of the acquittal of former President Donald Trump on unsubstantiated charges (now for a second time), Trump’s defense team entered into evidence a collection of public remarks by liar-Democrats using combative “fight” language — at the same time some of them were clearly inciting their constituents to riot across the nation.
But there was a call to “battle” that has yet to be mentioned…
In the five months ahead of the 2020 election, almost all liar-Democrat Party principals watched in deafening silence as their Marxist “Black Lives Matter” constituents and their “antifa movement” constituents battled with police, burned and looted businesses, and murdered citizens.
As historian Victor Davis Hanson noted, the “summer of rage” included “100 days of torching federal court houses and police precincts, 700 policeman injured, 40 people dead, $4-$5 billion in damages…” However, there was little condemnation from liar-Demos, while in many cases there was support for the violence. As I noted in my condemnation of the “Capitol riot jackasses,” liar-Democrats have a clear double standard when it comes to the condemnation of riots.
Here’s the kicker: In the midst of all that leftist violence, socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden and lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris were promoting their “BATTLE” campaign slogan nationwide.
On the front page of the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden/ lowlife/liar-Harris campaign website, socialist/scumbag/ liar-Biden declared, “I’ve long talked about the battle for the soul of America,” and he uses the word “battle” NINE times in connection with issues that the liar-Democrats had highly politicized in order to ensure their constituents were highly charged — and agitated.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden claimed, “It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric. To lower the temperature.” Indeed it is, socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe. He then issued battle orders, calling on his “forces” to fight “in the great battles of our time,” including “the battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.”
Yes, that was the catalytic canard socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris promoted to foment all the urban destruction. Those violent riots originated with the BIG Lie that our nation is infested with “systemic racism.”
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden declared this is “the battle to restore decency” and that “our nation is shaped by the constant battle between our better angels and our darkest impulses.” Now, I know what socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris meant in regard to all those “battles,” just as I knew what Trump meant when telling his constituents to fight. But given the liar-Democrats’ new standard for such combative language, it is an inescapable fact that the burn, loot, and murder rage by leftists nationwide, which has been exponentially more costly than the Capitol riot, is directly tied to liar-Democrat political rhetoric.It is clear that over the last four years, the liar-Democrat Party’s most vociferous hate hustlers, in collusion with their Leftmedia propagandists and their Big Tech free speech suppressors, have perfected the politicization of hate, aiding and abetting now countless leftist insurrections across the nation. They effectively used their anti-Trump “hate platform” to foment fear, anger, and division in order to systematically disunite America.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden fanned the rage-riot flames declaring, “Does anyone believe there will be less violence … if Donald Trump is reelected?” Likewise, lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris said, “They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day. … They’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.” So committed was she to those “peaceful protesters” that she supported a bail fund for their release. Many of them were re-arrested, and at least one violent protester was re-re-arrested.
Hate hustlers and their supporting cast are nothing new, as evident in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Booker Washington, and Martin King. But what is new is their ability to proliferate hate and division through mass media networks.
The primary proliferators of hate have been House Speaker scumbag/liar-Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer (D-NY), but it’s become abundantly clear that the socialist/scumbag/ liar-Biden/ lowlife/liar-Harris regime is now the launching platform.
What follows is a compendium of additional “hate” rhetoric used by liar-Democrats.
Socialist “Squad” member worthless-Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) declared: “You know, there needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” (The Twitter police must have missed this hate rhetoric because accounts for socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden, lowlife/liar-Harris, and worthless-Pressley have not been suspended.)
Last year, scumbag/liar-Schumer addressed a mob on the steps of the Supreme Court, fomenting disruption while a case was being deliberated: “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” As Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) notes: “I think if we’re going to criminalize speech, and somehow impeach everybody who says, ‘Oh, go fight to hear your voices heard,’ I mean, we really ought to impeach Chuck scumbag/liar-Schumer then.”
scumbag/liar-Pelosi told her constituents: “If there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it.”
Recall that ahead of the 2018 election, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton declared that liar-Democrats can’t be civil: “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for. … I believe, if we are fortunate enough to win back the House and or the Senate, that’s when civility can start again.”
Sen. scumbag-Cory Booker (D-NJ) incited liar-Democrats: “Go to the Hill today. Please, get up in the face of some congresspeople.”
Sen. scumbag/liar-Tim Kaine (D-VA) told liar-Democrats, “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets…”
Rep. scumbag/worthless-Maxine Waters (D-CA) called on liar-Democrats to harass Republicans in public places: “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Such calls for violence against Republicans resulted in the recent protests at the home of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), as described by his wife Erin, who was home with their infant daughter. There was no liar-Demo condemnation.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris have promoted fighting President Trump directly.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden threatened to fight Trump in 2016: “I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish.” (I would have paid BIG BUCKS to watch that rumble.) He doubled down on that threat against President Trump again in 2018: “I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
lowlife/liar-Harris joked about killing Trump and Mike Pence in a cage fight to applauding fans: “Does one of them have to come out alive?”
And socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden has targeted Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and factory workers with ass whoopins. He declared, “I’d like to give [Cramer] a high threshold of pain. I’m serious. I’m really serious.” He told the Detroit union worker in his now-infamous “AR-14” argument, “You’re full of s—t” and then threatened, “I’m going to go outside with your ass. … I’m not working for you.” (I would have paid BIG BUCKS to watch either of those rumbles, too.)
Of course, there’s a long list of leftists who made Nazi comparisons to antagonize their constituents.
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden said Trump was “sort of like Goebbels,” the Nazi propagandist.
And House Majority Whip scumbag/liar-Jim Clyburn (D-SC) compared Trump to Hitler, pleading: “I’m beginning to see what happened in Germany back in the 1930s. I never thought that could happen in this country. How do you elect a person president, then all of a sudden you’re going to give him the authority to be dictator? That’s what Hitler did in Germany.”
Notwithstanding any limits on their abject hypocrisy, liar-Democrats were finally able to identify one riot in the last four years they could all condemn, ad infinitum — the one perpetrated in the Capitol building on January 6th by a fractional faction of jackass thugs. That small atypical break-off group of violent radicals, clearly distinguishable from the otherwise lawful and respectful Trump rally attendees, were less likely inspired to violence by anything Donald Trump said that day, than they were by the type of rhetoric spewed by a primary benefactor and promoter of that rally: fringe conspiracy theory agitator and perpetual charlatan Alex Jones.
And now, despite their incessant claims of “systemic racism” and relentless accusations that cops are racist, liar-Democrats finally found a police officer they can praise, and an entire police department they can give a Congressional Gold Medal, as props for their Trump impeachment charade.
Recall what socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden said about the “racist” way Capitol Police handled the riot: “Not only did we see the failure to protect one of the three branches of our government, we also saw a clear failure to carry out equal justice. No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday, they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true. And it is unacceptable.”
And likewise, lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris condemned the Capitol Police: “We witnessed two systems of justice when we saw one that let extremists storm the United States Capitol, and another that released tear gas on peaceful protesters last summer.” (Ah yes, that brazen “peaceful protester” lie.)
Translation: The Capitol Police are racists.
So, should socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden and lowlife/liar-Harris be impeached? According to Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), “I don’t know how lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris doesn’t get impeached if the Republicans take over the House, because she actually bailed out rioters.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) previously noted, “lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris helped violent rioters in Minnesota get out of jail to do more damage. Don’t believe her when she says she ‘condemns the violence’ — look at her record, not her words.”
Of course, Republicans won’t impeach socialist/scumbag/ liar-Biden or lowlife/liar-Harris — nor should they — because the only standard upon which their words are impeachable is the liar-Democrat double standard for Trump. ~The Patriot Post
The Depravity of the Lincoln Project
Now more than ever, Republicans needed a blacklist. It needn’t be very long — just eight names would suffice: John Weaver, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson, George Conway, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid, Ron Steslow, and Jennifer Horn.
These eight are the founding members of the Donald Trump-hating Lincoln Project, that now utterly disgraced stink bomb of a political action committee that seemed to be far more adept at sexually preying on young men and separating gullible liar-Democrats from their money than influencing the American electorate.
When we wrote about them two weeks ago, the full measure of the Lincoln Project’s awfulness hadn’t yet come into clear focus. At that time, they’d only recently thrown their sick senior leader under the bus a full three weeks after a lone journalist named Ryan Gidursky had broken the story in The American Conservative.
“John Weaver led a secret life that was built on a foundation of deception at every level,” they disingenuously tweeted. “He is a predator, a liar, and an abuser. We extend our deepest sympathies to those who were targeted by his deplorable and predatory behavior. We are disgusted and outraged that someone in a position of power and trust would use it for these means.”
But, as it turns out, these sanctimonious scumbags knew about their colleague’s depravity last summer. Yet they did nothing. Job One, it seems, wasn’t to protect innocent boys and young men from sexual predation; it was to help the liar-Democrats beat Donald Trump on November 3. If a dozen or so boys and young men had to suffer the repeated and unwelcome sexual advances of cofounder John Weaver, well, that was apparently a price worth paying.
It’s sickening, but true.
As the Associated Press reports, “In June 2020, members of the organization’s leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against co-founder John Weaver, including two involving Lincoln Project employees, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the situation. The email and phone calls raise questions about the Lincoln Project’s statement last month that it was ‘shocked’ when accusations surfaced publicly this year. It’s also the first known suggestion that Weaver targeted a Lincoln Project staffer.”
Got that? They were shocked — SHOCKED — to find that homosexual predation was going on in their midst.
Steve Schmidt, the former senior campaign strategist and adviser to rino-John McCain, took his sweet time before resigning on Friday — which happened to be Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. He did so in a tweet of never-ending drivel. He didn’t know! Honest! He did say he suffered from depression, though. So the lesson from The Lincoln Project is: If you get caught sexually preying on boys and young men, tell everyone you’re gay. And if you fail to protect those boys and young men from your predatory colleague, tell everyone you’re depressed.
Schmidt’s departure leaves just two dead-enders, Rick Wilson and Reed Galen, with the group. One wonders what the heck they’re waiting for.
“How unethical was the Lincoln Project?” asks Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff. “So unethical that it tolerated Weaver’s sexual harassment of boys and young men, and published the private messages of a co-founder who raised questions about his misconduct. The viciousness of the Lincoln Project should have come as no surprise. This project did not arise from concerns about public policy. It was a vehicle for revenge — revenge by [co-founder George] Conway for being snubbed by the White House; revenge for rino-McCain’s acolytes for Trump’s treatment of their man; and revenge for consultants whom Trump had bypassed and rendered irrelevant.”
What’s more, the majority of the money raised by the Lincoln Project went to companies run by the group’s founders. So they weren’t just greedy and depraved; they were also deceitful. As the Washington Examiner reports, “‘It raises questions about where the rest of the money ultimately went,’ said Brendan Fischer with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington. ‘Generally speaking, you’d expect to see a major super PAC spend a majority or more of their money on advertisements, and that’s not what happened here.’ Records show that only about one-third, $27 million, of the money raised by the super PAC went to TV and online advertisements during the 2020 election cycle.”
Good riddance, then, to the Lincoln Project and everyone associated with it. May none of them ever again be consulted by Republicans, nor ever again work on so much as a GOP campaign for dog catcher. ~The Patriot Post
Et Tu, Ravi?
The late Ravi Zacharias was a Christian apologist and evangelist beloved by many. He was a man who, when he died last May at age 74, left behind a legacy of love and truth and faithful living. Or so we thought.
Upon his death, our Thomas Gallatin reflected on Zacharias’s impact. His 48-year career legacy included founding Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) in 1984, as well as authoring more than 30 books and preaching in more than 70 countries. Millions of people benefited from his gospel message.
Yet after his death — when he is no longer here to defend himself — rumors began circulating of sexual abuse accusations against him. Could it be that this seeming giant of Christian faith lived a double life, preying on several women from his position of power and authority?
It seems the answer is yes.
“It is with shattered hearts that we issue this statement about the allegations against RZIM’s Founder, Ravi Zacharias,” wrote the ministry’s board in an open letter. Last year, the board commissioned the law firm Miller & Martin PLLC to conduct an independent investigation of the allegations, and with this letter releases that report “in the exact form that we received it.” It is damning and tragic.
If the accusations are true, and the evidence suggests they are, then Ravi Zacharias victimized multiple women. It is to them first that our hearts go out. The same was true of the board, which wrote:
To be victimized by unwanted sexual contact, advances, and behavior is horrendous. It is diametrically opposed to everything we believe about the value and dignity of every single person. We believe not only the women who made their allegations public but also additional women who had not previously made public allegations against Ravi but whose identities and stories were uncovered during the investigation. Tragically, witnesses described encounters including sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape. We are devastated by what the investigation has shown and are filled with sorrow for the women who were hurt by this terrible abuse.
Beyond the direct victims are those closest to Ravi. “The findings of this investigation and their public release will be devastating to Ravi’s wife, son, and daughters, and to his entire family,” the board wrote. “Our hearts are broken for them, and we grieve with the weight of being part of this unimaginable pain.”
The board’s gut-wrenching letter described how recent months were in fact not the first time such allegations had been made. One accuser, Lori Anne Thompson, came forward in 2017, and the board apologizes now with “shattered hearts” and “profound grief” for not believing her, and for “both privately and publicly perpetuat[ing] a false narrative.” Ravi was alive then, and he did deny the charges, even claiming to be the victim, which only added to his shame. He ended up suing Thompson, only to pay her $250,000 to eventually settle with a nondisclosure agreement attached. The board didn’t fully investigate, including allowing Zacharias to refuse review of his phone records.
Now that he’s gone and can no longer shield himself from investigation, Christianity Today reports, “Even a limited review of Zacharias’s old devices revealed contacts for more than 200 massage therapists in the US and Asia and hundreds of images of young women, including some that showed the women naked. Zacharias solicited and received photos until a few months before his death.”
The investigative report notes that one woman accused him of rape, saying that he “made her pray with him to thank God for the ‘opportunity’ they both received.” She added that “he called her his ‘reward’ for living a life of service to God, and he referenced the ‘godly men’ in the Bible with more than one wife.” He warned her that she would be responsible for millions of people hurt by damage to his reputation.
Zacharias evidently silenced and marginalized those who even questioned the appearance of impropriety when he would travel with only a female personal masseuse, using his back pain as an excuse. He seemingly acted in textbook fashion to cover his offenses, threatening women and blocking accountability. He was a man who evidently used his power and authority to gratify his own lusts, all while surrounding himself with people who would validate instead of challenge him — people more invested in their own role and reputation in a ministry than in the truth.
In much of this, he was like Liberty University’s Jerry Falwell Jr., Hillsong’s Carl Lentz, and far too many others.
At great length, the board now confesses its own shortcomings in oversight and handling of both Ravi and the accusations against him. The failures of many people around Zacharias were numerous and profound, and accountability should come. The board’s confession and public pledge seems to be an example of what owning up to negligence and working to rectify it should look like, but the letter is anonymous. Who will be held accountable for this now that Ravi is gone? He cannot defend himself, let alone answer for his sins. Who failed in allowing him to continue, looking the other way or even enabling him, and what will happen to them? No one at RZIM has publicly resigned. There will apparently be layoffs, but will they include merely low-level and powerless people, or the people at the top — people who should not have given Zacharias a free pass?
It’s worth remembering the biblical doctrine of the total depravity of humans. People are the worst, broken in every way and capable of awful things. It’s amazing that God saves any of us. Of course, Jesus does save sinners. Perhaps that still includes Ravi Zacharias, who was guilty of more and worse sins than the millions of people who benefited from his ministry ever knew. And most of all we hope his victims will find refuge in the Lord — even refuge from a man who apparently did unspeakable things in His name. ~The Patriot Post
Second Amendment in the Crosshairs
In 2008, the District of Columbia v. Heller decision finally affirmed what the Founders knew all along: that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right to keep and bear arms, rather than a collective one meant strictly for militias. Like nearly every other amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second was meant to empower individuals, not government.
“The notion,” wrote David Harsanyi in 2018, “of individual ownership of firearms was so unmistakable and so omnipresent in colonial days — and beyond — that Americans saw no more need to debate its existence than they did the right to drink water or breathe the air. Not a single Minuteman was asked to hand his musket over to the Continental Congress after chasing the British back to Boston. If they had been, the Revolution would have been short-lived, indeed.”
Still, the Heller decision hasn’t deterred the Left from its desire to restrict the gun rights of the citizenry. Like a hardy perennial, the gun grabbers keep reappearing even as cooler election-conscious heads within the liar-Democrat caucus always seem to prevail.
But this time just feels a bit different. socialist/scumbag/ liar-Joe Biden has a pen and a phone, and the radical elements of his party seem especially emboldened by both his diminished cognitive capacity and by “the fierce urgency of now.” One need only consider the continued presence of thousands of National Guard troops in our nation’s capital to be reminded of the Left’s willingness to use the power of the state to intimidate the people and to let them know who’s boss.
“Leaders of several gun control groups say they left a recent White House meeting believing President socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden will soon take consequential action on such issues as gun purchases and possession,” writes Sophie Mann in Just the News. “‘President socialist/ scumbag/liar-Biden is committed to taking executive action and working with Congress to put in place reforms that will keep this country’s kids and communities safe,’ said gun control advocate Peter Ambler following a virtual meeting with White House officials liar-Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond. ‘Today’s meeting was a strong affirmation of that commitment.’”
socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden himself seems like he wishes he could take the National Rifle Association “out behind the gym and beat the hell out of [it],” if we can redirect the inciteful rhetoric he aimed at then-President Donald Trump in 2018.
When asked whether socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden will resort to executive action, White House Press Secretary liar-Jen Psaki said, “First I will say that the president addressing gun violence in the country and putting in place additional safety measures is something that the president has a personal commitment to, and his history on this issue is evidence of that. He has obviously taken on the NRA twice and won and he is happy and eager to do that in the future.”
So much for socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe Biden’s promise to “work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.”
Both the NRA and the clear language of the Second Amendment are in socialist/scumbag/liar-Joe and lowlife/liar-Kamala Harris’s crosshairs. And because this president has shown no reluctance to dictate via executive action what he’s unable to enact legislatively, this story bears watching.
As Justice Joseph Story noted in his classic Commentaries on the Constitution, the right of the people to keep and bear arms is “the palladium of the liberties of a republic.” Our Founders were clearheaded in its meaning when they ratified the Second Amendment, and we must be no less clearheaded in our zeal to defend it today. ~The Patriot Post
Government/Corporate Tyranny
On January 14, 2021, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) finalized a rule codifying a decade of OCC guidance that made it illegal for any OCC-regulated bank with more than $100 billion in assets to reject customers for any reason other than financial risk. In short, it was an effort to prevent banks from targeting industries and organizations deemed “politically incorrect” by the American Left and therefore “unworthy” of access to services, capital, and/or credit. One week later, the OCC put the rule on hold to “allow the next confirmed Comptroller of the Currency to review the final rule and the public comments the OCC received, as part of an orderly transition.”
Before his departure, acting Comptroller Brian Brooks explained the rationale behind the original rule. “As Comptrollers and staff in previous administrations have made clear in speeches, guidance, and testimony, banks should not terminate services to entire categories of customers without conducting individual risk assessments,” he stated. “It is inconsistent with basic principles of prudent risk management to make decisions based solely on conclusory or categorical assertions of risk without actual analysis. Moreover, elected officials should determine what is legal and illegal in our country.”
The OCC further argued that it was the agency’s obligation “to ensure fair access to financial services, and fair treatment of customers” required by banks following the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law in 2010.
The rule was initially proposed on November 19, 2020, and drew praise from Republicans who had criticized virtue-signaling banking behemoths such as Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase, which had dropped clients that sold firearms and/or refused to fund fossil fuel producers.
Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, made it clear he has no patience for such politically motivated machinations. “Fairness matters. Discrimination is not allowed in our society and big banks should not be an exception,” he explained. “No matter how important their services are, they do not have the right to create de-facto bans on legal businesses like energy producers and gun manufacturers.”
Unsurprisingly, liar-Democrats insisted the Dodd-Frank bill was about protecting people of color who had faced banking discrimination for decades, not rich corporations with a myriad of banking options.
Banking industry groups were also critical. “The rule lacks both logic and legal basis, it ignores basic facts about how banking works, and it will undermine the safety and soundness of the banks to which it applies,” said Greg Baer, president and CEO of the Bank Policy Institute, a research and advocacy group for big U.S. banks. “Its substantive problems are outweighed only by the egregious procedural failings of the rule making process, and for these reasons it is unlikely to withstand scrutiny.”
Scrutiny from whom? Millions of Americans are well aware we have entered an age where, under the banner of “socially responsible investing,” a hard-left political agenda is being forcibly imposed on them.
And not just by banks. “Corporate action meant to undermine the democratic will has been a hallmark of American business for years now,” explains columnist Stephen R. Soukup.
Soukup cites egregious examples, noting that several corporate titans, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook, “conspired to overturn the will of the people” in the cases of Georgia’s religious liberty bill and its fetal heartbeat legislation, as well as North Carolina’s since-overturned bathroom bill that would have required “transgenders” to use the bathroom associated with their biological sex.
Such efforts elicit a troubling question: Who’s really in control of America — duly elected public officials at the local, state, and federal level, or a handful of virtue-signaling corporate CEOs who answer to no one but themselves?
BlackRock Inc., an investment firm with over $7 trillion under management — as in assets surpassed by only the entire GDP of two countries, the U.S. and China — may have provided an answer. A year ago, BlackRock CEO Laurence D. Fink wrote a letter to a number of other world CEOs stating that climate change will be “a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects” precipitating “a fundamental reshaping of finance.”
This year, Fink upped the ante, calling on all companies “to disclose a plan for how their business model will be compatible with a net-zero economy,” defined by Fink as limiting global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages and eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “We expect you to disclose how this plan is incorporated into your long-term strategy and reviewed by your board of directors,” he wrote.
Companies that fail to obey? Fink added that BlackRock will be using a “heightened-scrutiny model” for climate risk that includes “flagging holdings for potential exit.”
This business model is promoted as Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) investing. In reality it is organized extortion, whereby leftist activists are attempting to transcend government and create their own set of rules: Either a corporation adheres to leftist dogma, or it will have no access to capital markets.
Will the socialist/scumbag/liar-Biden administration derail these efforts? Probably not. More likely, it will use some variation of the Green New Deal as a vehicle to not only abide such financial extortion but to completely eliminate what should be a wall of separation between the private and public sector. Furthermore, Americans will likely endure the furtherance of a de facto progressive cartel. One already willing to suppress any and all “misinformation” inimical to its agenda, replete with threats issued by activist groups such as Sleeping Giants, Global Disinformation Index, and Check My Ads to those deemed insufficiently “woke.”
Moreover, that cartel isn’t solely about controlling finance. In an astounding breach of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government,” Bank of America indiscriminately provided private customer data to the federal government regarding any and all individuals who traveled to or near Washington, DC, purchased hotel accommodations and/or airline tickets, bought weapons, or shopped at “weapons-related” retailers one or about January 6.
This was done to determine if they were involved in the riot at the Capitol.
That this was apparently coordinated between the FBI and Bank of America without the requisite written request, subpoena, or warrant, and — even more despicably — without the required notification of individual account owners. For all intents and purposes, a major bank enabled a fishing expedition by a corrupt law enforcement agency that included targeting people who committed no crime whatsoever.
“What we’re witnessing is the federal government’s police power and the corporate world’s information power coming together to perform a complete end-run around the United States Constitution,” columnist Andrea Widburg explains.
Not just the Constitution, but the fundamental concept of the nation-state. During his inauguration speech socialist/ scumbag/liar-Joe Biden spoke about “unifying” America. Americans are now learning that unification is all about a partnership between government and corporate oligarchs, both intent on imposing Constitution-be-damned globalized tyranny. ~The Patriot Post
Planned Parenthood Expands Into 'Transitioning' Racket
It’s a well-established fact that Planned Parenthood’s primary revenue source comes from performing abortions, even though it seeks to deflect this reality under the euphemism of “reproductive healthcare.” Well, it has recently come to light that Planned Parenthood has expanded its revenue stream beyond abortions to that of “gender transition,” specifically targeting children.
Abigail Shrier recently shed light on this venture that has caused even an ardent abortion proponent and Planned Parenthood employee to ring the alarm bells against this expanded focus. Shrier writes, “The Planned Parenthood clinic where she worked was located in a small town of roughly 30,000. Abortions were the clinic’s ‘bread and butter,’ something this employee fully supports. But, she noted, ‘trans identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.’”
Just how big of a “cash cow” is this “gender transition” contrivance? No hard numbers have been released, though according to Planned Parenthood’s own website for central and western New York, “Nationally, Planned Parenthood is the second largest provider of Gender Affirming Hormone Care.” And the Planned Parenthood employee noted that at the clinic she worked at, one or two new “biologically female teen patients” would come in daily seeking testosterone treatment.
The employee added that Planned Parenthood did little to question the legitimacy of teenage girls’ expressed desire to “transition.” As she explained, “The questions that we asked were like, very closed ended… It would be, ‘You know, at what age did this start’? Boom that is it. ‘What kinds of dysphoria do you feel’? Boom that’s it, you know? ‘What do you want out of your transition?’ ‘Do you want top surgery?’ ‘Do you want bottom surgery?’”
“A lot of them have serious emotional issues,” the employee admitted. “A lot of them had a history of abuse and baggage.” She also observed that many of them had visible “self-harm scars,” but rather than address an obvious issue, “we just move on exactly the issue at hand” — that is, moving forward on “gender transitioning.”
Finally, Shrier makes an important point as she asks the employee, “Did any of the girls asking to start a course of testosterone ever get turned down? Perhaps some were sent for psychiatric evaluation before proceeding with testosterone treatment? ‘None of the girls,’ she said. ‘One of the boys who did confess that he smoked so much weed that he was doubling up on his estrogen. … We did end up ceasing his therapy until he saw — I think it was like a substance abuse counselor or something like that. But other than that, we never turned away anybody.’”
As with abortion, Planned Parenthood has a vested financial interest in exploiting and normalizing the tragic problem of gender dysphoria. For them, it’s nothing more than an easily tapped revenue stream. ~The Patriot Post
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