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itcamefromthetoybox · 3 years

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The Battling Busboy

“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” Marvel Studios’ latest super hero film, just hit theaters, and with it came some great new toys! And this being a toy review blog… I’m sure you can gather where I’m going with this. We’re gonna review some toys! Now, last week, we did something a little different and reviewed a two-pack instead of one toy. Well, we’re doing it again! So let’s take a look at the “Shang-Chi vs. Death Dealer” set.

As of this writing, I haven’t seen the movie yet. With the COVID Delta variant on shelves and my health held together by little more than coffee and a desire to own tiny plastic things, I don’t feel super-duper about going to theaters any time soon. This means I don’t know much about these characters from the movies, especially since I’m avoiding spoilers, and everything I do know is from the comics.

In the comics, Shang-Chi was originally the son of famous literary villain Fu Manchu, and was created back when Marvel had the rights to the Fu-Manchu books and was looking to cash in on the kung-fu craze of the 70’s. Hell, the comic that eventually became Shang-Chi was originally going to be an adaptation of a show called “Kung-Fu.” Despite his dad being so obviously evil that it was cartoonish, Shang-Chi didn’t realize his dad was the bad guy until he was sent to kill Fu Manchu’s enemies from the book, at which point, Shang-Chi realized, “oh crap, my dad’s evil!” Later books would retcon out Fu Manchu, because he was literally the original racist stereotype for Chinese master villains, and replace him with… pretty much the same thing but with a new name, because Marvel was fine with the racism but had lost the book rights and didn’t want to get sued. The movies, however, were like, “yeah, racism and borderline copy right violations might cut into our profit margins.” So they made Shang-Chi’s father an updated version of Iron Man’s comic book arch foe The Mandarin. Shang-Chi has popped up throughout the years as an Avenger, a recurring friend of Spider-Man, the dude everyone who needs to learn martial arts goes to, and whenever there’s a massive crowd shot of heroes. He’s also had several one-shots, short stories, and mini series, all of which is not bad for a guy who has no super powers.

His enemy in this two-pack, his father’s henchman Death Dealer, was someone who I initially knew nothing about. But, it’s 2021 and Wikipedia is a thing, so that got fixed fast. In the comics, Death Dealer was a former member of British intelligence agency MI-6, who was also a spy for Shang-Chi’s father. Upon being discovered, he fled and was given a pretty great costume and sent to fight Shang-Chi, who he actually managed to capture. Shang-Chi managed to eventually escape and later fought Death Dealer at his dad’s base in China, where he actually killed the villain by burning him to death. Because fire is usually the answer to whatever problems you may face.

Now that we all know who the hell these people are, let’s talk toys! For the Shang-Chi movie, Marvel’s released a bunch of toys. Shocking, I know. There’s the highly articulated Marvel Legends line, aimed at collectors, two figures for the Marvel Titan Heroes line of simplified 12-inch figures, and a small line of 6-inch figures with different features, in addition to toy accessories and a toy dragon that looks awesome. The set we’re looking at is from the main toy line, where most of the figures have different gimmicks. In this case, Shang-Chi has the power to roundhouse kick anyone who pisses him off, and Death Dealer has the ability to get roundhouse kicked in the face, because the toy budget meant only one figure in this set got to do something cool.

When Shang-Chi does it, it looks cool. When I do it, my pants rip.

Both figures in this set look really great. Excellent sculpting, wonderful detailing, they just look really good. Since it’s his movie, we’ll talk about Shang-Chi first, though. His articulation is all around his shoulders and legs. He’s also got a ball jointed head, but the sculpting means he can’t look up, so not entirely sure why they didn’t just use a swivel joint here. He’s got no knee or elbow articulation, which is a shame, but that’s because this figure is all about his gimmick, which we’ll get to in a second.

Finally, a toy for all my stock photo needs.

First, I do want to talk about an issue I have with this figure. His hair feels like a more rubbery plastic than the rest of his head, which makes for a weird sensation to touch. I know that’s a minor complaint, but it really bothers me, especially since I also grabbed the other Shang-Chi in this line, and he doesn’t have this issue. I don’t know if it’s a weird quirk of the plastic used for this toy’s head or if the hair’s a separate piece that was attached, or what, but it does bother me and might bug anyone with a sensory issue you might want to give this to, so keep that in mind.

The quality of this picture matches how I feel when I touch the toy’s hair.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the gimmick. The way it works is that there is a spring-loaded swivel in Shang-Chi’s right thigh, directly next to his crotch. You raise his left leg into a kick position, turn his body on the swivel, and let go. There’s a button on the back of his right leg that’s meant to hold him in place until you’re ready for him to kick, but it doesn’t do that great a job holding him and also requires you to constantly hold it in to make use of it.

You must grip the handsome man’s strong, powerful thighs.

As for Death Dealer, like I said before, he is very well-detailed. I was delighted by that. His articulation, on the other hand, isn’t exactly stellar. He has excellent shoulders and a ball joint head, but the sculpting prevents him from looking up and he has no elbows. His legs have articulation, but it is really limited by his costume’s robes, which block the legs from moving too much, and he has no knees. His right hand has a dagger molded into it and his left hand is sculpted into a grabbing gesture, so he also can’t hold anything. He’s definitely the weaker figure in the set and is clearly here just so Shang-Chi can kick him in the face.

Who needs good leg articulation when you have an outfit like this?

Who exactly is this set for? Well, clearly, it’s for the kids. It has a fun gimmick with simple figures that are fun for kids to play with and have no accessories that can be lost. The packaging also has no screens or windows, so the figures come in the open, meaning kids can touch them in the stores. The set goes for about $15, which does feel like a fair price. Just keep in mind what I said about Death Dealer’s articulation and Shang-Chi’s hair. That’s all I have to say, so I’m signing off and wishing you happy toy hunting!

#MCU #marvel cinematic universe #Shang-Chi #Death Dealer #Toy #Toys #toy reviews #toy review #review #reviews #marvel #shang-chi and the legend of the ten rings

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Is The Media Against Republicans

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-is-the-media-against-republicans/

Why Is The Media Against Republicans

Mcconnell And Co Are Playing As Dirty A Game As Possible In Their Quest To Fill Ginsburgs Seat Before The Election But You Wont Find That Story In Most News Coverage

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US Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell at a press conference at the US Capitol on September 22, 2020. McConnell said in a statement that the Senate would take up President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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The argument against confirming Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court before the inauguration is a Republican argument. They invented it, they enacted it, and they own it. That’s because it was Republicans, not Democrats, who changed the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to eight for 10 months in 2016, when a Democratic president was in the White House. It was Republicans who argued that no Supreme Court nominee should even be considered by the Senate in an election year. And it was Republicans who promised to block the confirmation of Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees in the event that she became president while Republicans retained control of the Senate.

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And that argument is simply untenable. We do not have a legitimate third branch of government if only one party gets to choose its members.

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Vaccine Advocacy From Hannity And Mcconnell Gets The Media Off Republicans’ Backs But Won’t Shift Public Sentiment

Sean Hannity, Mitch McConnell and Tucker Carlson

Amid a rising media furor over the steady stream of vaccine disparagement from GOP politicians and Fox News talking heads, a number of prominent Republicans spoke up in favor of vaccines early this week.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “shots need to get in everybody’s arm as rapidly as possible” and asked that people “ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.” House Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, got the vaccine after months of delay and then publicly said, “there shouldn’t be any hesitancy over whether or not it’s safe and effective.” And Fox News host Sean Hannity, in a widely shared video, declared, it “absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated.” This was treated in the press as an unequivocal endorsement, even though the use of the word “many” was clearly meant to let the Fox News viewers feel like he’s talking about other people getting vaccinated.

Is this an exciting pivot among the GOP elites? Are they abandoning the sociopathic strategy of sabotaging President Joe Biden’s anti-pandemic plan by encouraging their own followers to get sick? Are the millions of Republicans who keep telling pollsters they will never get that Democrat shot going to change their minds now?

Ha ha ha, no.

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— Matthew Gertz July 20, 2021

The Technology 202: New Report Calls Conservative Claims Of Social Media Censorship ‘a Form Of Disinformation’

with Aaron Schaffer

A new report concludes that social networks aren’t systematically biased against conservatives, directly contradicting Republican claims that social media companies are censoring them.

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Recent moves by Twitter and Facebook to suspend former president Donald Trump’s accounts in the wake of the violence at the Capitol are inflaming conservatives’ attacks on Silicon Valley. But New York University researchers today released a report stating claims of anti-conservative bias are “a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it.”

The report found there is no trustworthy large-scale data to support these claims, and even anecdotal examples that tech companies are biased against conservatives “crumble under close examination.” The report’s authors said, for instance, the companies’ suspensions of Trump were “reasonable” given his repeated violation of their terms of service — and if anything, the companies took a hands-off approach for a long time given Trump’s position.

The report also noted several data sets underscore the prominent place conservative influencers enjoy on social media. For instance, CrowdTangle data shows that right-leaning pages dominate the list of sources providing the most engaged-with posts containing links on Facebook. Conservative commentator Dan Bongino, for instance, far out-performed most major news organizations in the run-up to the 2020 election.

In The Past The Gop Would Be Rallying Their Voters Against This Bill Their Failure To Do So Now Is Ominous

Mitch ?McConnell, Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro

With surprising haste for the U.S. Senate, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, just after passing a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. And Democrats could not be more excited, as the blueprint covers a whole host of long-standing priorities, from fighting climate change to creating universal prekindergarten. The blueprint was largely written by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who released a statement calling it “the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s.”

Sanders isn’t putting that much spin on the ball.

While the bill fallls short of what is really needed to deal with climate change, it is still tremendously consequential legislation that will do a great deal not just to ameliorate economic inequalities, but, in doing so, likely reduce significant gender and racial inequality. It’s also a big political win for President Joe Biden. In other words, it is everything that Republicans hate. Worse for them, it’s packed full of benefits that boost the middle class, not just the working poor. Traditionally, such programs are much harder to claw back once Republicans gain power — as they’ve discovered in previous failed attempts to dismantle Social Security and Obamacare.

Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

But that’s not really happening here.

The Actual Reason Why Republicans And Their Media Are Discouraging People From Getting Vaccinated

Independent Media Institute

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN Medical Analyst, said last week, “A surprising amount of death will occur soon…” But why, when the deadly Delta variant is sweeping the world, are Republicans and their media warning people not to get vaccinated?

there’s always a reason

Dr. Anthony Fauci told Jake Tapper on CNN last Sunday, “I don’t have a really good reason why this is happening.”

But even if he can’t think of a reason why Republicans would trash talk vaccination and people would believe them, it’s definitely there.

Which is why it’s important to ask a couple of simple questions that all point to the actual reason why Republicans and their media are discouraging people from getting vaccinated:

1. Why did Trump get vaccinated in secret after Joe Biden won the election and his January 6th coup attempt failed?

2. Why are Fox “News” personalities discouraging people from getting vaccinated while refusing to say if they and the people they work with have been protected by vaccination?

3. Why was one of the biggest applause lines at CPAC: “They were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated and it isn’t happening!”

4. Why are Republican legislators in states around the country pushing laws that would “ban” private businesses from asking to see proof of vaccination status ?

Death is their electoral strategy.

Is there any other possible explanation?

So, what’s left?

Destroying Trust In The Media Science And Government Has Left America Vulnerable To Disaster

For America to minimize the damage from the current pandemic, the media must inform, science must innovate, and our government must administer like never before. Yet decades of politically-motivated attacks discrediting all three institutions, taken to a new level by President Trump, leave the American public in a vulnerable position.

jonmladd

Trump has consistently vilified the national media. When campaigning, he the media “absolute scum” and “totally dishonest people.” As president, he has news organizations “fake news” and “the enemy of the people” over and over. The examples are endless. Predictably, he has blamed the coronavirus crisis on the media, saying “We were very prepared. The only thing we weren’t prepared for was the media.”

Science has been another Trump target. He has gutted scientific expertise and administrative capacity in the executive branch, most notably failing to fill hundreds of vacancies in the Centers for Disease Control itself and disbanding the National Security Council’s taskforce on pandemics. During the coronavirus crisis, he has routinely disagreed with scientific experts, including, in the AP’s words, his “musing about injecting disinfectants into people .” This follows his earlier public advocacy for hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment, also against leading scientists’ advice. Coupled with his flip-flopping on when to lift stay-at-home orders, the president has created confusion and endangered people.

Media Bias Against Conservatives Is Real And Part Of The Reason No One Trusts The News Now

Members of the media were shocked as he was supposedly revealed as incredibly anti-woman presidential candidate, perhaps even the most ever nominated by a major political party in the modern era. He had admitted that he reduced women to objects and the Democrats pounced, seeking to make him lose him the support of women and, in turn, the presidency.

I’m not talking about the media coverage of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and the “Access Hollywood” tape, but his predecessor, Mitt Romney.

His sin? Saying that he had “binders full of women” that he was looking at appointing to key positions were he elected president. Sure, it was an awkward way of stating a fairly innocuous fact about how elected executives begin their transition efforts — with resumes of candidates for every position under the sun —- well before an election is held. Yet, the media and commentators came for Mitt Romney and they did so with guns blazing, as he was portrayed as an anti-woman extremist… for making a concerted effort to hire women to serve in his administration as governor of Massachusetts.

There Is No Liberal Media Bias In Which News Stories Political Journalists Choose To Cover

1Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

2University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22903, USA.

3Brigham Young University-Idaho, Rexburg, ID 83460, USA.

?*Corresponding author. Email: hans.hassellfsu.edu ; jh5akvirginia.edu

?† These authors contributed equally to this work.

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‘it’s Time To End This Forever War’ Biden Says Forces To Leave Afghanistan By 9/11

The enormous national anger generated by those attacks was also channeled by the administration toward the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which was conceived to prevent any recurrence of attacks on such a massive scale. Arguments over that legislation consumed Congress through much of 2002 and became the fodder for campaign ads in that year’s midterms.

The same anger was also directed toward a resolution to use force, if needed, in dealing with security threats from the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That authorization passed Congress with bipartisan majorities in the fall of 2002, driven by administration claims that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction.” It became law weeks before the midterm elections.

Once those elections were over, the Republicans in control of both chambers finally agreed to create an independent commission to seek answers about 9/11. Bush signed the legislation on Nov. 27, 2002.

The beginning was hobbled when the first chairman, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and vice chairman, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine, decided not to continue. But a new chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, and vice chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, filled the breach and performed to generally laudatory reviews.

Long memories

Top House Republican Opposes Bipartisan Commission To Investigate Capitol Riot

But McCarthy replied by opposing Katko’s product, and more than 80% of the other House Republicans did too. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., initially said he was keeping an open mind but then announced that he too was opposed. This makes it highly unlikely that 10 of McConnell’s GOP colleagues will be willing to add their votes to the Democrats’ and defeat a filibuster of the bill.

Republicans have argued that two Senate committees are already looking at the events of Jan. 6, as House panels have done as well. The Justice Department is pursuing cases against hundreds of individuals who were involved. Former President Donald Trump and others have said any commission ought to also be tasked to look at street protests and violence that took place in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd.

But with all that on the table, several Republicans have alluded to their concern about a new commission “dragging on” into 2022, the year of the next midterm elections. “A lot of our members … want to be moving forward,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 2 Senate Republican toMcConnell. “Anything that gets us rehashing to 2020 elections is, I think, a day lost.”

Resistance even after 9/11

The Taliban were toppled but bin Laden escaped, and U.S. forces have been engaged there ever since. The troop numbers have declined in recent years, and President Biden has indicated that all combat troops will be out by this year’s anniversary of the 2001 attacks.

Opiniontrump And His Voters Are Drawn Together By A Shared Sense Of Defiance

Americans in general have begun to catch on: 66 percent of Americans believe that the media has a hard time separating fact from opinion and, according to a recent Gallup poll, 62 percent of the country believes that the press is biased one way or the other in their reporting.

So when CNN, NBC News, Fox News, or another outlet break a hard news story, there is a good chance that a large swathe of the public won’t view it as legitimate news.

And politicians, right and left, are taking advantage of this.

The entire ordeal is part of an ever-growing list of examples in which the media seemed to be biased, whether consciously or not, against Republicans.

Before Donald Trump, there was New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who in 2014 accused the media of “dividing us” because they asked him about some protesters who had chanted “NYPD is the KKK” and . He also accused the media of McCarthyism when they dug into the personal life of an aide of his, who reportedly had a relationship with a convicted murderer. The mayor also publicly and privately accused Bloomberg News of being biased against him, since it is owned by his predecessor. However, de Blasio is not terribly popular within his own party, so Democrats in New York did not buy what he was selling.

The Media Has Entered The Republicans Pounce Stage Of Critical Race Theory

Now that polls show a majority of Americans oppose Critical Race Theory, the Democratic Party and their scribes in the legacy media have launched a rearguard action against parents — by casting them as the aggressors. As is true every time the Left misfires or overreaches, the media ignore the offense and focus on the popular backlash in a tactic popularly known as “Republicans pounce.”

Media coverage proves that CRT has entered the “Republicans pounce” stage. Witness the words of one Politico writer, who said on Thursday, “he right is hoping to capitalize on the grassroots angst over critical race theory and excite its base voters in next year’s midterms.” Chris Hayes, who has the unenviable position of competing directly with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC, agreed Thursday night that all the Republican Party’s “rhetorical fire has moved away from the deficit and on to some random, school superintendent in Maine after his district dared to denounce white supremacy after the murder of George Floyd.”

But why are grassroots Americans so filled with “angst”? Because they are intellectually deficient and, of course, racist, according to Vox.com.

“Conservatives have launched a growing disinformation campaign around the academic concept” of CRT. “It’s an attempt to push back against progress,” wrote Vox.com reporter Fabiola Cineas. The problem is that “Republicans … want to ban anti-racist teachings and trainings in classrooms and workplaces across the country.”

Trump Continues To Push Election Falsehoods Here’s Why That Matters

Republican opposition to the commission

Rice was featured in one of the very few congressional commissions ever to receive this level of attention. Most are created and live out their mission with little notice. Indeed, Congress has created nearly 150 commissions of various kinds in just the last 30 years, roughly five a year.

Some have a highly specific purpose, such as a commemoration. Others are more administrative, such as the five-member commission overseeing the disbursement of business loans during the early months of pandemic lockdown in 2020. Others have been wide-ranging and controversial, such as the one created to investigate synthetic opioid trafficking.

In the initial weeks after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, the idea of an independent commission to probe the origins of the attack and the failures that let it happen seemed a no-brainer. It had broad support both in Congress and in public opinion polls. It still enjoys the latter, as about two-thirds of Americans indicate that they think an independent commission is needed. The idea has fared well — particularly when described as being “9/11 Commission style.”

Opiniona Guide For Frustrated Conservatives In The Age Of Trump

Conscious bias or not, such practices do not engender trust in the media amongst conservatives. They only reinforce the belief that the media seeks to defend their ideological allies on the left and persecute those on the right while claiming to be objective.

This idea that the media is made up of unselfconsciously liberal elites who don’t even recognize the biases they have against conservative policies and conservatives in general goes back decades, to when newsrooms were more or less homogenous in nearly every way. At first, conservatives fought back by founding their own magazines; after Watergate and in the midst of the Reagan administration and liberals’ contempt for him, organizations like the Media Research Center began cataloguing the myriad examples of biased coverage, both large and small.

And there was a lot to catalogue, from opinion pages heavily weighted in favor of liberals to reportage and analysis that looks a lot more like the opinion of the writers than unbiased coverage.

Despite Cries Of Censorship Conservatives Dominate Social Media

GOP-friendly voices far outweigh liberals in driving conversations on hot topics leading up to the election, a POLITICO analysis shows.

The Twitter app on a mobile phone | Matt Rourke/AP Photo

10/27/2020 01:38 PM EDT

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Republicans have turned alleged liberal bias in Silicon Valley into a major closing theme of the election cycle, hauling tech CEOs in for virtual grillings on Capitol Hill while President Donald Trump threatens legal punishment for companies that censor his supporters.

But a POLITICO analysis of millions of social media posts shows that conservatives still rule online.

Right-wing social media influencers, conservative media outlets and other GOP supporters dominate online discussions around two of the election’s hottest issues, the Black Lives Matter movement and voter fraud, according to the review of Facebook posts, Instagram feeds, Twitter messages and conversations on two popular message boards. And their lead isn’t close.

As racial protests engulfed the nation after George Floyd’s death, users shared the most-viral right-wing social media content more than 10 times as often as the most popular liberal posts, frequently associating the Black Lives Matter movement with violence and accusing Democrats like Joe Biden of supporting riots.

Politifact Va: No Republicans Didn’t Vote To Defund The Police

Rep. Bobby Scott speaks at a 2015 criminal justice forum.

Speaker: Bobby ScottStatement: “Every Republican in Congress voted to defund the police when they voted against the American Rescue Plan.”Date: July 12Setting: Twitter

In last fall’s campaigns, Republicans thundered often inaccurate charges that Democrats wanted to defund police departments.

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., is flipping the script and saying that all congressional Republicans voted to defund police this year when they opposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

“Every Republican in Congress voted to defund police when they voted against the American Rescue Plan,” Scott tweeted on July 12.

Scott represents Virginia’s 3rd congressional district, stretching from Norfolk and parts of Chesapeake north through Newport News and west through Franklin.

His claim, echoing a Democratic talking point, melts under scrutiny. Here’s why.

The Facts

The term “defunding police” arose after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Many advocates say it does not mean abolishing police, but rather reallocating some of the money and the duties that have traditionally been handled by police departments.

Scott’s explanation

Barbera sent an NBC article noting that communities in at least 10 congressional districts represented by Republicans who opposed the bill are using some of its relief funds to help their police departments.

Our ruling

We rate Scott’s statement False.

Opinion:no The Media Isnt Fair It Gives Republicans A Pass

The right-wing media, willfully ignoring the press investigations into Tara Reade’s accusations, insist that former vice president Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has not been treated similarly to accused conservative men . They have a point, but not the one they were trying to make.

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Let’s start with the big picture: Right-wing groups persistently engage in conduct for which Republicans are not held to account. The latter are allowed to remain silent after instances of conduct with a strong stench of white nationalism, but pay no penalty for their quietude. Right-wing demonstrators at Michigan’s statehouse this week — angrily shouting, not social distancing, misogynistic in their message, some carrying Confederate garb — were not engaged in peaceful protest. This was a mob endangering the health of police officers and others seeking to intimidate democratic government. Some protesters compared Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Adolf Hitler and displayed Nazi symbols. Newsweek reported:

The media has adopted the approach that a pattern of sexual harassment claims over decades is not relevant because Trump has denied them, yet they want investigated the single assault claim against Biden. Biden responded in an interview and in a lengthy ; the media insists these things have to be investigated further. They do not ask Trump’s campaign why the president does not respond to questions. They do not ask Republicans about Carroll, Zervos or others.

Social Media: Is It Really Biased Against Us Republicans

Wednesday promises to be another stressful day for Facebook, Google and Twitter.

Their chief executives will be grilled by senators about whether social media companies abuse their power.

For Republicans, this is the opportunity they’ve been waiting for.

Two weeks ago, Twitter prevented people posting links to a critical New York Post investigation into Joe Biden.

It then apologised for failing to explain its reasoning before ditching a rule it had used to justify the action.

For many Republicans, this was the final straw – incontrovertible evidence that social media is biased against conservatives.

The accusation is that Silicon Valley is at its core liberal and a bad arbiter of what’s acceptable on its platforms.

In this case, Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz believed Twitter would have acted differently if the story had been about President Donald Trump.

Sobering Report Shows Hardening Attitudes Against Media

NEW YORK — The distrust many Americans feel toward the news media, caught up like much of the nation’s problems in the partisan divide, only seems to be getting worse.

That was the conclusion of a “sobering” study of attitudes toward the press conducted by Knight Foundation and Gallup and released Tuesday.

Nearly half of all Americans describe the news media as “very biased,” the survey found.

“That’s a bad thing for democracy,” said John Sands, director of learning and impact at the Knight Foundation. “Our concern is that when half of Americans have some sort of doubt about the veracity of the news they consume, it’s going to be impossible for our democracy to function.”

The study was conducted before the coronavirus lockdown and nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd.

Eight percent of respondents — the preponderance of them politically conservative — think that news media that they distrust are trying to ruin the country.

– Deal gives Atlanta company control of Anchorage TV news

The study found that 71% of Republicans have a “very” or “somewhat” unfavorable opinion of the news media, while 22% of Democrats feel the same way. Switch it around, and 54% of Democrats have a very favorable view of the media, and only 13% of Republicans feel the same way.

That divide has been documented before but only seems to be deepening, particularly among conservatives, Sands said.

In The Age Of Trump Media Bias Comes Into The Spotlight

Almost 20 years ago, after my first book, “,” came out, I made a lot of speeches, some of them to conservative organizations. The book was about liberal bias in the mainstream media. I had been a journalist at CBS News for 28 years and, so, it was a behind-the-scenes exposé about how the sausage was made, about how bias made its way into the news.

I said that despite what many conservatives think, there was no conspiracy to slant the news in a liberal direction. I said that there were no secret meetings, no secret handshakes and salutes, that anchors such as CBS’s Dan Rather never went into a room with top lieutenants, locked the door, lowered the blinds, dimmed the lights and said, “OK, how are we going to screw those Republicans today?”

It didn’t work that way, I said. Instead, bias was the result of groupthink. Put too many like-minded liberals in a newsroom and you’re going to get a liberal slant on the news.

Liberal journalists, I said, live in a comfortable liberal bubble and don’t even necessarily believe their views are liberal. Instead, they believe they are moderate, mainstream and mainly reasonable views — unlike, of course, conservative views which, to them, are none of those things.

But what I wrote and spoke about then — mainly about how there was no conspiracy to inject bias into news stories — seems no longer to be true today.

Pandering, it seems, is good for business.

Bias shows itself not only in what’s reported, but also in what’s ignored.

Florida Republicans Move Against Social Media Companies

TALLAHASSEE — Concerned that social media companies were conspiring against conservatives, Florida Republicans sent a measure Thursday to Gov. Ron DeSantis that would punish online platforms that lawmakers assert discriminate against conservative thought.

The governor had urged lawmakers to deliver the legislation to his desk as part of a broader effort to regulate Big Tech companies — in how they collect and use information they harvest from consumers and in how social media platforms treat their users.

Republicans in Florida and elsewhere have accused the companies of censoring conservative thought on social media platforms by removing posts they consider inflammatory or using algorithms to reduce the visibility of posts that go against the grain of mainstream ideas.

With the ubiquity of social media, the sites have become modern-day public squares — where people share in the most trivial of matters but also in ideas and information that often are unvetted.

In recent years, social media companies have acted more aggressively in controlling the information posted on their platforms. In some cases, the companies have moved to delete posts over what they see as questionable veracity or their potential to stoke violence.

DeSantis is a strong ally of the former president, and the Republican governor is supporting hefty financial penalties against social media platforms that suspend the accounts of political candidates.

America Hates The Republicans And They Dont Know Why

@jonathanchait

Americans harbor certain deep-rooted impressions of the two parties, which have held for generations. Democrats are compassionate and generous, but spendthrift, dovish, and indulgent of crime and prone to subsidize poor people who don’t want to work. Republicans are strong on defense and crime, but too friendly to business and the rich. What is striking about the Republican government is how little effort it has made to push against, or even steer around, the unflattering elements of its brand. President Trump and his legislative partners have leaned into every ingrained prejudice the voters hold against them. They have acted as if none of their liabilities even exist.

That is not the approach Democrats have taken in office. Bill Clinton famously fashioned himself as a “New Democrat,” angering his base on crime and welfare and declaring the era of big government over. Barack Obama did not position himself quite so overtly against his party’s brand — which had recovered in part because of Clinton’s success — but he did take care to avoid confirming political stereotypes. Obama frequently invoked the importance of parenting and personal responsibility. He did not slash the defense budget, and took pains to woo Republican support for criminal-justice reform. Obama tried repeatedly to get Republicans to compromise on a deal to reduce the budget deficit. Whatever the merits of these policies, they reflect a grasp of the party’s innate liabilities.

Placing Some News Sources On The Political Spectrum

Here are a few examples of major news sources and their so-called “bias” based on ratings from AllSides and the reported level of trust from partisan audiences from the Pew Research Center survey.

Note that much of these ratings are based on surveys of personal perceptions. Consider that these may be impacted by the hostile media effect, wherein “partisans perceive media coverage as unfairly biased against their side” . A three-decade retrospective on the hostile media effect. Mass Communication and Society, 18, 701-729. ).

The Capitol Siege: The Arrested And Their Stories

It would only be logical for that memory to inform the imagination of any Republican contemplating a similar independent commission to probe what happened on Jan. 6. The commission would likely look at various right-wing groups that were involved, including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, some members of which have already been charged. The commission might also delve into the social media presence and influence of various white supremacists.

Moreover, just as the 9/11 Commission was expected to interview the current and preceding presidents, so might a new commission pursue testimony from Trump and some of his advisers, both official and otherwise, regarding their roles in the protest that wound up chasing members of Congress from both chambers into safe holding rooms underground.

House Minority Leader McCarthy was asked last week whether he would testify if a commission were created and called on him to discuss his conversations with Trump on Jan. 6.

“Sure,” McCarthy replied. “Next question.”

All this may soon be moot. If Senate Democrats are unable to secure 60 votes to overcome an expected filibuster of the House-passed bill, the measure will die and the questions to be asked will fall to existing congressional committees, federal prosecutors and the media. To some degree, all can at least claim to have the same goals and intentions as an independent commission might have.

The difference is the level of acceptance their findings are likely to have with the public.

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giftofshewbread · 3 years

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It’s Over! ( Biblical Update )

By Daymond Duck Published on: August 15, 2021

“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come” (II Tim. 3:1).

Be aware that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (II Tim. 3:13).

The right of U.S. citizens to freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to buy and sell, etc., is being challenged by the shadow government’s desire to restrict and/or control American’s freedom of religion, speech, right to buy and sell, etc.

Covid is a global medical crisis that the godless shadow government created to justify the establishment of a world government, world religion, and worldwide tracking system to enslave everyone on earth.

The public is being told that proof of vaccination (passports, I.D. cards, or whatever) is needed to bring Covid-19 under control when the truth of the matter is that Covid-19 and the variants are a tool that the rich and powerful are using to bring all people under their control.

It is possible and perhaps likely that this proof of vaccination will eventually be followed by the lockdown and persecution of Christian groups and institutions based on their support for Bible teaching and lack of support for the globalist agenda (the godless world government, godless world religion, abortion, gay rights, etc.).

Before the persecution reaches its peak, Christians will be removed (Raptured) from this earth, and the door will be thrown wide open for the godless shadow government to select a leader to take dictatorial power on earth.

Following his appearance, their so-called proof of vaccination will probably evolve into a data system that will be used to determine who can buy and sell, who can live or die, etc. (Don’t overlook the fact that some of the leaders that want to force everyone to be vaccinated are the same people that want to reduce the population of the earth from almost 8 billion to about half a billion; many support abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia, etc.).

God will allow these godless globalists to select a leader to rule for seven years, but God will ultimately cause them to regret what they have done for all eternity.

A reader recently sent an e-mail to this writer containing part of a message that Dr. Franklin Graham delivered at a Baptist Church in Florida.

Dr. Graham said, “The American Dream has ended.”

Readers need to understand that the one who said “The American Dream has ended” is one of the most highly respected preachers in the world, not a fanatic and not a prophecy teacher, but America must decline if the globalists are going to meet their goal of a world government and a world religion by 2030 or before.

Here is a repeat from the article I wrote last week: On July 27, 2021, former Sec. of State Mike Pompeo said, “Collapse from within is possible… Immigration without assimilation, illicit drugs, human trafficking, disputed elections, inflationary risks have become the tools to disassemble our republic in what must surely be an attempt at national suicide.”

I want to close my opening remarks this way: We are not seeing the Mark of the Beast yet (people are not being jabbed in their right hand or forehead; people are not taking the name, number, or Mark of the Beast; unvaccinated people can still buy and sell in most places; etc.).

On the other hand, we are seeing the global development and advancement of technology and policies that many excellent Bible prophecy teachers believe will lead to the Mark of the Beast (forced compliance, loss of one’s job, development of passports or passes, a demand for government databases to track people, a demand to prevent the unvaccinated from entering stores to buy or sell, the spread of anti-Christian rhetoric, etc.).

Also, keep in mind the fact that the Church will be Raptured a minimum of 3 ½ years (and perhaps more) before the global development and advancement of the technology and policies goes into effect as the Mark of the Beast (the Gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church).

Here are other reasons to believe that history is approaching end of the age Bible predictions and the American Dream is over.

One, when Jesus was asked about the signs of His coming, He listed famines, pestilences, earthquakes, etc. (notice that the words are plural as in more than one famine, more than one pestilence, etc.; Matt. 24:7).

Today, the world is trying to deal with Covid-19, the Delta (India variant), Lambda (Peru variant), and Epsilon variant (pestilences plural).

Two, on Aug. 6, 2021, California announced that a low water level caused by drought has forced the shutdown of the state’s second largest hydroelectric plant for the first time since the dam was completed in 1977.

The state will be able to get electricity from other systems.

More: On Aug. 4, 2021, the Dixie wildfire destroyed Greenville, Cal., a gold rush town of about 1,200 people (5 days later, Fox News reported that about 600 buildings have burned and about 13,000 are in danger).

More: On Aug. 6, 2021, it was reported that Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border, the Great Salt Lake in Utah, and Lake Mead in Nevada have hit record lows this summer.

FYI: Drought is having a devastating impact on crops, cattle, hog, and sheep production in the U.S. (a very large part of America’s food supply).

FYI: Unprecedented wildfires are also taking place in Greece, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, and Russia.

Three, during the Tribulation Period, the world will be divided into two groups: those that take the Mark of the Beast and those that refuse to take the Mark of the Beast.

Today, the world is being divided into two groups: those that have been vaccinated and those that have not been vaccinated.

Four, on Aug. 9, 2021, World Net Daily posted an article by Wayne Allen Root that said:

Republicans asked for “papers” from migrants who had broken into our country. Criminals. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Republicans asked for “papers” once every two years for federal elections to prove you have a right to vote. Democrats said, “No, that’s racism.”

Now Democrats want American citizens, not illegal aliens, not criminals, but patriots born in this country to produce papers 24/7. We’ll need papers to enter restaurants, bars, nightclubs, concerts, casinos, conventions, and hotels and to board a train, plane, or bus. We’ll need papers to enter a supermarket, or we’ll starve to death—all for the crime of being unvaccinated.

Note: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said the U.S. is at a crossroads, and he is urging U.S. citizens to “resist the mandates, lockdowns, and the harmful policies of the petty tyrants and bureaucrats.”

Five, on Aug. 6, 2021, Natural News reported that the U.K. has admitted that it is building storage areas for bodies in the 32 boroughs of London and the city itself.

These storage areas are being built because the government expects an increase in deaths over the next five years due to their attempts to force people to be vaccinated (some people that are not allowed to buy and sell will go hungry, get sick, etc.).

Writer’s Comment: It is common for some people to ask how bad will God let it get before He Raptures His Church. No one knows the answer to this, but the situation is worsening, and Christians everywhere need to pray about it.

Six, on July 31, 2021, the Carnival Cruise Ship Vista left Galveston, TX with everyone or board vaccinated (every guest, every crew member, every staff member, everyone vaccinated; no unvaccinated people on board).

On Aug. 8, 2021, it was reported that a small number of people on the ship have tested positive for Covid.

Seven, God promised to bless those that bless Israel and to curse those that curse Israel (Gen. 12:3).

On Aug. 4, 2021, the Iranian-backed terrorist group that controls Lebanon, Hezbollah, fired three rockets into Israel.

On Aug. 5, 2021, Israeli jets struck terrorist targets in Lebanon for the first time in 15 years, and Pres. Biden announced that he will give the terrorist government $100 million dollars in economic aid (borrowed money that will add to inflation in the U.S.).

On Aug. 6, 2021, Hezbollah forces fired 19 rockets from Lebanon into Israel, and Israel responded with artillery fire.

On Aug. 8, 2021, new hardline Iranian Pres. Raisi met with leaders of the terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Houthis, and promised to support their terrorist activities until Israel is defeated.

Writer’s Comment: This could easily get out of hand and lead to the fulfillment of several prophecies (Psa. 83 if that is a war; the Destruction of Damascus as prophesied in Isa. 17; the Battle of Gog and Magog as prophesied in Ezek. 38-39; time will tell.).

Eight, violence is on the increase, and some politicians want to defund the police and take the guns away from law-abiding citizens, but the globalist goal is only partly to prevent citizens from defending themselves against criminals.

The globalist goal is primarily to prevent citizens from defending the U.S. against the shadow government’s takeover of the U.S.

For whatever it is worth, thousands of people have marched in Paris and other French cities four weeks in a row to protest the loss of their freedoms.

On Aug. 6, protests erupted in Turin, Italy.

Nine, on Aug. 6, 2021, a guest on Fox & Friends said the strongest outbreak of the Covid Delta Variant is in Texas and Florida, and those two states are where the Biden administration has taken the largest number of Covid-infected migrants.

Ten, concerning global pandemics and the Mark of the Beast, on July 25, 2021, The Times of Israel reported on a study that found that people vaccinated before Feb. 2021 are twice as likely to get Covid as those vaccinated in June 2021 for two reasons: 1) Their vaccine effectiveness decreases over time and is becoming less effective every day; and 2) The Delta Variant is more contagious than the original Covid-19, and therefore more able to overcome the resistance of their declining vaccination.

The doctor that headed up the study said, “We definitely need to think about a third vaccine.”

It is the opinion of this writer that the globalists will want people to take a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. vaccination until they bring in the Mark of the Beast.

Update: On Aug. 5, 2021, Moderna said data shows a noticeable drop in antibody levels 6-8 months after a vaccinated person’s second jab, so vaccinated people will need to get a booster shot this fall.

Writer’s Comment: Just a reminder to U.S. citizens that Pres. Biden said, “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccines.”

Eleven, concerning world government: it is widely known that the World Economic Forum (WEF) wants to establish a world government and eliminate private property ownership by 2030 or before.

The WEF even produced a video saying, “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”

My article “Developing Now,” posted two weeks ago, quoted Tony Koretz who said, “A global medical dictatorship is rising.”

I added that “It is hard to deny that the shadow government is using unelected individuals to dictate policies to nations all over the world.”

On Aug. 3, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) extended the U.S. government’s eviction moratorium, a document that allows renters in areas that have a high level of Covid to not pay their rent.

Put another way, property owners that have rented their house, apartment, etc., to someone else must make the mortgage payments (if the property owner has a mortgage payment), pay to keep the house, apartment, etc., repaired, and the property owner cannot evict the renter for not paying their rent (the renter can live in the house free, and the property owner must pay the bills).

The fact that the CDC (a medical group) can force private property owners to make the property payments and let renters live in the property free sure looks like a global medical dictatorship has taken over.

The real owners of the property are not happy with making the payments and receiving no rent.

Twelve, on Aug. 4, 2021, concerning a Mark on the forehead to buy and sell, it was reported that Amazon is now using palm scanners at 53 Amazon-owned stores, and it plans to expand the program to other stores in the U.S.

Customers can use a simple hand scan to pay, enter or I.D. themselves, and Amazon will give them a $10 promotional credit to sign up.

Before my final word, pastor Keith Watts asked me to include this paragraph in my article (something I can’t start doing for ministries all over the world): “I am asking all prayer warriors from around the world to join with us for a day of prayer, fasting, and repentance on August 16, 2021, for the sake of the Philippines and on behalf of over 110,950,213 precious souls. We will be fasting from the time we wake up until we go to bed, interceding on behalf of the lost souls in the Philippines.”

Finally, are you Rapture Ready?

If you want to be rapture ready and go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Saturday, July 31, 2021

Biden to allow eviction moratorium to expire Saturday (AP) The Biden administration announced Thursday it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month. The White House said President Joe Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium due to spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Instead, Biden called on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Evacuation flight brings 200 Afghans to US (AP) The first flight evacuating Afghans who worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan brought more than 200 people, including scores of children and babies in arms, to resettlement in the United States on Friday, and President Joe Biden welcomed them home. The evacuation flights, bringing out former interpreters and others who fear retaliation from Afghanistan’s Taliban for having worked with American service members and civilians, highlight American uncertainty about how Afghanistan’s government and military will fare after the last U.S. combat forces leave that country in the coming weeks. Family members are accompanying the interpreters, translators and others on the flights out. The commercial airliner carrying the 221 Afghans in the special visa program, including 57 children and 15 babies, according to an internal U.S. government document obtained by The Associated Press, touched down in Dulles, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

Not in control (NYT) Consider these Covid-19 mysteries: In India—where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a huge outbreak—cases have plunged over the past two months. A similar drop may now be underway in Britain. There is no clear explanation for these declines. / In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes. / In March and April, the Alpha variant helped cause a sharp rise in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada. That outbreak seemed poised to spread to the rest of North America—but did not. / This spring, caseloads were not consistently higher in parts of the U.S. that had relaxed masking and social distancing measures (like Florida and Texas) than in regions that remained vigilant. / Large parts of Africa and Asia still have not experienced outbreaks as big as those in Europe, North America and South America. / How do we solve these mysteries? Michael Osterholm, who runs an infectious disease research center at the University of Minnesota, suggests that people keep in mind one overriding idea: humility. “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” he told me.

Diasporas at the Olympics (Foreign Policy) Cuban athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are evidence of the exodus from the island over the years. By the Cuban sports journalist Francys Romero’s count, more than 20 athletes at the Olympics were born in Cuba but became naturalized in and are now playing for other countries. That’s a group almost one-third the size of Cuba’s own delegation.

Peru’s politics (Foreign Policy) Peru’s new President Pedro Castillo chose Guido Bellido, a congressman and fellow member of his Marxist Free Peru party, as his prime minister as part of a cabinet announcement on Thursday, setting up a tense confirmation battle with the country’s opposition-led Congress. Bellido courted controversy in a local media interview in April when he expressed sympathy for members of Shining Path—a Maoist guerilla group who fought a bloody insurgency during the 1980s and 1990s.

Death toll in Turkish wildfires rises to four, blazes rage on (Reuters) The death toll from wildfires on Turkey’s southern coast has risen to four and firefighters were battling blazes for a third day on Friday after the evacuation of dozens of villages and some hotels. More than 60 wildfires have broken out across 17 provinces on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts this week, officials have said. Villages and some hotels have been evacuated in areas popular with tourists, and TV footage had shown people fleeing across fields as they watched fires close in on their homes.

Three Jehovah’s Witnesses sentenced to six or more years in Russian prison for their faith (RNS) Three Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia were convicted and sentenced to prison for practicing their faith on Thursday (July 29). Vilen Avanesov, 68, was sentenced to six years, and his son Arsen Avanesov, 37, along with a third defendant, Aleksandr Parkov, 53, were both sentenced to six-and-a-half years. All three men have already spent more than two years in pretrial detention. “These men should never, ever have had to spend a minute in prison, and yet they’ve been locked up for two years,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. The three Jehovah’s Witnesses were detained in Rostov-on-Don in May 2019 and accused of continuing the operations of a Jehovah’s Witness organization that had been liquidated. All three were charged with organizing extremist activities. In January 2020, Arsen Avanesov was also accused of “financing extremist activities” by collecting donations to rent a room to meet with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. Near the trial’s conclusion, Arsen Avanesov spoke of his devotion to God: “I dedicated my life to him and did it sincerely. … I don’t want, I can’t and will not give up my promise.” The sentences for the three men are considered particularly harsh in a country where rape is punishable by three years in prison and kidnapping by five. The sentencing follows a 2017 ruling that categorizes the religious group as “extremist.”

Myanmar leaders ‘weaponizing’ COVID-19, residents say (AP) With coronavirus deaths rising in Myanmar, allegations are growing from residents and human rights activists that the military government, which seized control in February, is using the pandemic to consolidate power and crush opposition. Supplies of medical oxygen are running low, and the government has restricted its private sale in many places, saying it is trying to prevent hoarding. But that has led to widespread allegations that the stocks are being directed to government supporters and military-run hospitals. At the same time, medical workers have been targeted after spearheading a civil disobedience movement that urged professionals and civil servants not to cooperate with the government, known as the State Administrative Council. “They have stopped distributing personal protection equipment and masks, and they will not let civilians who they suspect are supporting the democracy movement be treated in hospitals, and they’re arresting doctors who support the civil disobedience movement,” said Yanghee Lee, the U.N.’s former Myanmar human rights expert and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar. “With the oxygen, they have banned sales to civilians or people who are not supported by the SAC, so they’re using something that can save the people against the people,” she said. “The military is weaponizing COVID.”

North Korea began the summer in a food crisis. A heat wave and drought could make it worse. (Washington Post) At the beginning of the summer, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the country’s food situation as “tense” after border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic and crippling floods. By midsummer, a cycle of grinding heat and record-low rainfall could be a sign of a greater food crisis and hunger ahead. Temperatures in North Korea have climbed as high as 102 degrees in some areas this week—a shock in a country where temperatures do not often break 100 degrees. The heat wave has been compounded by a growing drought. North Korea had gotten 21.2 millimeters, or less than an inch, of rain as of mid-July. It is so hot that state media reports have been repeatedly warning residents about the dangers of dehydration and low sodium levels, especially for the elderly and those at risk of heart disease or stroke. They are urging residents to stay out of the sun, eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink more than two liters (about two quarts) of water per day, according to NK News, which monitors North Korea’s state media.

Hong Kong protester given 9-year term in 1st security case (AP) A pro-democracy protester was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison in the closely watched first prosecution under Hong Kong’s national security law as the ruling Communist Party tightens control over the territory. Tong Ying-kit, 24, was convicted of inciting secession and terrorism for driving his motorcycle into a group of police officers at a July 1, 2020, rally. He carried a flag bearing the banned slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Tong’s sentence was longer than the three years requested by the prosecution. He faced a possible maximum of life in prison. Tong’s sentence is a “hammer blow to free speech” and shows the law is “a tool to instill terror” in government critics, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director, Yamini Mishra, said in a statement. The law “lacks any exemption for legitimate expression or protest,” Mishra said. “The judgment at no point considered Tong’s rights to freedom of expression and protest.” Defense lawyers said Tong’s penalty should be light because the court hadn’t found the attack was deliberate, no one was injured, and the secession-related offense qualified as minor under the law.

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse (Guardian) New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study. The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused. A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said. To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

Ethiopian roadblock (NYT) Aid workers in Ethiopia claim that an unofficial Ethiopian government blockade has cut off the only road into the conflict-torn region where millions of Ethiopians face the threat of mass starvation. A relief convoy headed for Tigray came under fire on the road on July 18, forcing it to turn around. On Tuesday, the World Food Program said 170 trucks loaded with relief aid were stranded in Semera, the capital of the neighboring Afar region, waiting for Ethiopian permission to make the trek into Tigray. The blockade is intensifying what some call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a decade. The crisis comes during an intensifying war, which has deepened ethnic tensions and stoked fears that Ethiopia will collapse. The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people there are living in famine-like conditions, and another 4.8 million need urgent help. The Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, said last week that his government was providing “unfettered humanitarian access” and committed to “the safe delivery of critical supplies to its people in the Tigray region.” However, Mr. Abiy’s ministers have publicly accused aid workers of helping and even arming the Tigrayan fighters, leading to aid workers being attacked at airports, and even killed.

#headlines #news

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seniorcarehomes · 3 years

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Omicron Variant: Should you Cancel Your Holiday Travel?

Will Omicron Variant Affect Your Holiday Travel Plans?

The most wonderful time of the year is finally here! With the previous lockdowns and minimal social gatherings since the pandemic started, everyone’s been so eager to travel and reunite with friends and families this holiday season. However, with the new Covid variant known as the Omicron, holiday travel just got more complicated.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed that the Omicron Variant is already in the U.S. The Coronavirus cases has been increasing due to the Delta and Omicron variants. Just when we thought things are starting to go back to normal, new coronavirus variants keep emerging. This only shows that the pandemic is far from over.

What Do We Know About the New Covid Omicron Variant?

According to CDC, the newly identified Covid Variant, known as Omicron has been detected last November 11, 2021 in Botswana. It was then reported to the World Health Organization on November 24, 2021. The first known case in the U.S has been detected in California on November 30, 2021.

The Omicron variant is new and still needs a lot of research data. Due to the small number of reported cases, the severity of Omicron remains unclear. It will probably take another two weeks or so for the Government and health officials to provide more details about infection and spread.

One of the biggest questions right now for travelers is – With the new Omicron variant circulating worldwide, should you cancel your holiday travel plans or not? This is difficult to answer. The best thing to do for right now, is to stay updated with the latest news and health guidelines. Check CDC’s website regularly for any travel guidance and advice.

Here are important things to consider so you can make the best-informed decision for you and your family’s safety.

1. Your Destination

Where are you going? Be sure to check Domestic and International travel protocols. Entry and Exit requirements vary per country so be sure to check before making travel arrangements. Keep in mind too that if you are planning to travel outside of the U.S, you will now need to test negative for Covid within 24 hours before you can re-enter the U.S. This includes U.S Citizens and permanent residents. It would be wise to check the news, stats and any updates about covid cases in the areas you are planning to visit.

2. Vaccination Status

Have you and all the members of your travel party been fully vaccinated? Did you remember to get your booster shot before leaving? The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention strongly recommends getting fully vaccinated and booster shots before traveling internationally. Per health officials it is the best way to protect yourself and your family against all the Covid variants, including the Omicron.

3. Access to Covid Testing Sites

Do you have access to Covid Testing sites before and after your holiday travel? President Biden has announced: “Effective, December 6, all air travelers entering the United States regardless of citizenship or vaccination status, will be to be required to show a negative pre-departure COVID-19 viral test taken the day before they board their flight to the United States.” This means that if you travel internationally, there is no guarantee that you will be allowed back to the U.S unless you test negative for covid the day before you arrive. With the new Entry and Exit requirements, you need to make sure that you can get tested before and after your travel to avoid any travel delays.

4. Wearing a Mask and Social Distancing

Are you comfortable wearing a mask? Will it be possible to observe social distancing? Be sure to wear a mask in public areas especially when you’re indoors. It is important to continue social distancing from other people who are not in your travel party.

Deciding to continue with your holiday travel:

If you decide to continue with your travel plans this holiday season, make sure you are vaccinated and have gotten the booster shot. Always wear a mask and social distance. Most importantly, stay updated with any health advisories and follow all safety recommendations at your destination.

Health experts have predicted that Coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. It’s here to stay. Therefore, we must make the necessary adjustments and learn how to live with it. Have a safe holiday season and hope you can find meaningful ways to celebrate with your loved ones safely.

#memorycarefacility #seniorcommunitiesinarizona

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kayla1993-world · 3 years

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O'Toole vows to boost COVID-19 vaccination rates above 90%, pressed for clarity on the gun position

As he presented the Conservative Party's strategy to battle the fourth wave of COVID-19 today, Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole vowed to raise Canada's vaccination rate beyond 90% in months.

O'Toole's strategy focuses on encouraging more Canadians to get vaccinated through a public awareness campaign that would "appeal to Canadian patriotism" and incentives like as paid time off work and free transportation to vaccine appointments.

It also calls for a "booster shot plan" to combat declining immunity, increased quick testing in workplaces and schools, and accelerated vaccination approval for children under the age of 12, who are presently not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine.

At a campaign rally in Coquitlam, British Columbia, O'Toole reiterated his criticism of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's choice to hold an election at the same time as the delta variant causes a rise of cases and hospitalizations in some regions of the nation.

"This should not be the conversation we are having in the middle of an election," O'Toole told reporters. "But it is, and we need to work together."

"I will not do what is politically expedient, but what is right."

In the past, the Conservative leader has been chastised by his political opponents for refusing to endorse vaccination mandates for government employees and domestic travellers.

This proposal does not involve a vaccination requirement or a passport, but it does require unvaccinated government workers and domestic travellers to produce recent negative COVID-19 test results or undergo quick testing before boarding a bus, plane, train, or boat. It also offers to collaborate with provinces on the development of a national proof-of-vaccination system that can be used for foreign travel.

O'Toole tried to depict his approach to COVID-19 as fair, cooperative and focused on understanding why some individuals have not gotten vaccinated, rather than condemning them, as he claimed the Trudeau Liberals were doing on the campaign trail.

"You do not persuade people to change their minds by scaring them. Reaching out to them, talking to them, understanding their worries, and addressing their ways are all approaches to win them over "According to O'Toole. "We need to persuade every Canadian that vaccinations are safe and effective and that they are the best way out of this problem."

The Conservative proposal also includes the following measures:

Digital marketing, social media, and a mail-out to every home encouraging people to be vaccinated were all used to encourage people to get vaccinated.

A booster shot method that would first target the elderly and those who are immunocompromised by providing a third vaccination injection.

Increasing the speed with which Canadian-made vaccinations are developed and produced.

International travellers from hotspot nations where new variations have been discovered would be denied entry.

If provinces reinstate public health restrictions, current financial assistance programs for people and companies will be extended through the end of December 2021.

Any attempt by O'Toole to promote the COVID-19 plan was swamped by a torrent of questions about the Conservative position on weapons, as well as what opponents believe is a lack of openness in the wording O'Toole has used in recent public statements regarding that policy.

By promising to keep the prohibition on "assault weapons," but not "assault-style" weapons, O'Toole has created uncertainty.

The "assault weapons" ban refers to a 1977 legislative change that classified fully automatic weapons as "prohibited" firearms — but O'Toole would still raise the Liberal ban on 1,500 "assault-style" firearms models, including the AR-15 and the Ruger Mini-14 rifle, which were among those blacklisted by the Liberal government last year through an order-in-council.

The Conservative election program promises to repeal the order-in-council from May 2020 that prohibited a wide range of weapons and to rewrite the Firearms Act with consultation from police, gun owners, manufacturers, and the general public.

When pushed about his platform discussion on Thursday and Friday, O'Toole appeared to backtrack, stating the party will "keep the prohibition on assault weapons."

O'Toole does vow to remove the May 2020 order-in-council ban, but the restriction of full-fledged "assault weapons" — which are different from what the Liberals label "assault-style" guns, according to a party spokeswoman. This prohibition has been in effect since 1977.

During a campaign visit in Coquitlam, B.C., reporters frequently questioned O'Toole on the issue, asking if he would elevate the prohibition on particular weapons used in recent mass shootings.

"We'll keep the assault weapons prohibition in place, and we will have an open and public review of our classification system," O'Toole said, accusing the Liberals of divisive methods.

"That assessment will take place, with an emphasis on public safety and removing weapons from the hands of criminals brought in from the United States."

Former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, a Liberal candidate, slammed O'Toole's statement, accusing him of "pretending that he had not made a pledge" to keep the Liberal prohibition and of being subservient to the gun lobby.

"I believe that the vast majority of Canadians realize that these firearms have no place in our nation," Blair said during a press conference in Toronto. "Mr. O'Toole is having trouble telling Canadians about his unholy alliance with the gun lobby. He must be held accountable."

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elizabethcariasa · 3 years

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Don't fall for scary tax scams on Friday the 13th or any day

COVID-19 just won't let go. A tropical system is heading for the Gulf of Mexico. And it's Friday the 13th. Yep, today is a trifecta of the unwanted.

The bad news — of course I'm starting with it on this day! — is that every year has at least one Friday the 13th. The ominous, for some, day shows up one to three times a year. There were two in 2020.

The good news for 2021 is that today is the only Friday the 13th of the year. The last time that happened was Friday, May 13, 2016.

If you suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia, here's a tip so you'll know how many of these bad omen imbued Fridays you'll have to face each year.

Note the first day of each month. If it falls on a Sunday, like Aug. 1 this year, there will be a Friday the 13th in the month. The next time this will happen will be next May, when that month's unlucky day to close out the work week will be the lone Friday the 13th in 2022.

I hope this data discussion of this date has taken your mind off of the scary things that could happen today. For more diversions, check out CNN's piece on the cultural origins of this enduring superstitious tradition.

Need more distractions? Then here are some that are almost as frightening — 13 tax scams that shown up (or reappeared) this year.

COVID-19 false promises keep being made: We're entering the 18th month as a country (and world) dealing with the health and financial effects of the coronavirus. As lockdowns and business closures became commonplace, people lost their jobs. To help out, Congress passed a series of COVID relief measures, primarily as tax breaks and/or financial payments distributed by the Internal Revenue Service.

These Economic Impact Payments (EIPs), also referred to as stimulus payments, helped. They also offer a hook for crooks. By phone, email, text, or social media scams, the scammers say they can facilitate the EIP deliveries if you'll just give them your Social Security number or other personal and financial information.

While the IRS has sent out the bulk of the relief payments, don't be surprised to see con artists still trying to cash in on EIP schemes.

Unemployment scams increased: While the EIPs helped, millions who lost their jobs due to the pandemic also applied for unemployment benefits. Criminals quickly took advantage of the jobless application crunch, fraudulently applying for unemployment insurance (UI) benefits using personal information they've stolen.

In some cases, the stolen identity data belonged to people who indeed had lost their jobs. They had to explain to their state benefits offices that the payments they already approved went to crooks.

In other instances, individuals still had jobs and didn't learn that identity thieves had filed for the payments until they received IRS 1099-G forms for the unemployment insurance benefits they never claimed or received.

The 1099-G forms are issued because unemployment is taxable income, although for the 2020 tax year up to $10,200 in UI payments were excluded from tax. Still, the form recipients had to explain (and prove) to the IRS how they were unknowingly victimized.

Advance Child Tax Credit "help" that hurts: The latest piece of economic help for COVID-affected families is early payment of the Child Tax Credit, which was bumped up for the 2021 tax year.

So that taxpayers with qualifying dependent children could get some of the credit sooner, the IRS started distribution early payments, known as Advance Child Tax Credit (AdvCTC) payments, in July. The second AdvCTC is being delivered today, with the other payments going out the middle of each of the final four months of this year.

The IRS has its system in place and online options where credit recipients can make any changes they find necessary. But con artists still are using the AdvCTC as tax identity theft bait. The make unsolicited phone calls, emails, texts or social media contacts offering to help taxpayers get the early payments, get them sooner, or get more.

But all this so-called help actually only helps the crooks get your and your children's Social Security numbers and other personal data, including bank account information, so they can steal your identity and cash.

Teleworkers become tax scam targets: Many companies had hoped to have most of their employees finally back in the office by now. That's not going to happen, at least not soon, due to the Delta variant pandemic resurgence.

Even when we finally get past the pandemic (we will … won't we?!), some businesses have decided to continue to let personnel work from home, at least part of the time.

This is all good and well for companies' bottom lines (reduced office real estate costs) and productive home-based employees (no commuting, fewer child care expenses). It's also an opportunity for tax crooks.

Instead of having to hack secure company computer networks, criminals are focusing on all of us clicking away at computers in our homes. The IRS and Federal Bureau of Investigation have warned of increased activity by cyber criminals to use email auto-forwarding to successfully launch Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks.

By implementing auto-forwarding rules on victims' web-based email clients, the crooks can hide their activities. The web-based clients' forwarding rules often do not sync with the desktop client, making it more difficult for corporate cyber security administrators to see and catch the changes.

Tax scam oldies but baddies still around: The four just-discussed scams have appeared during COVID Times. That's what crooks do. They adapt their nefarious schemes to life's changing circumstances, in this case our pandemic frustrations and fiscal problems.

However, con artists still are using tried, and sadly still too often successful, older schemes that have long been in the tax scam and identity theft playbook.

A variety of email phishing schemes that target individual taxpayers, as well as tax professionals, are still hitting email boxes daily.

Persistent IRS impersonators continue to call, threatening those who answer their phones with jail time or deportation or loss of licenses or Social Security benefits if the victims don't promptly pay the concocted overdue tax bills.

And while older individuals still are targets of many tax scams, crooks are making demographic inroads. It turns out that young people are increasingly falling prey to scammers.

So stay alert and be on guard for these scams not just this Friday the 13th, but on every other day of the year.

You also might find these items of interest:

13 tax scams to watch out for on Friday the 13th

Labor Department joins IRS in offering online resources for unemployment fraud victims

IRS Dirty Dozen tax scam list for 2021, plus prevention and recovery options if you fell for any of them

Related links

Amid growing COVID concerns, L.A. County sees possible ‘leveling off’ of virus’ growth

Pasadena Unified to open without mandatory vaccinations for staff and students

LA Community College District mandates vaccinations, masks

COVID-19 ‘whiplash’ is messing with Southern California’s psyche

A new study shows survivors who ignored that advice were more than twice as likely to get reinfected. The study looked at hundreds of Kentucky residents previously infected through June 2021, finding that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the chances of being reinfected compared with people who are fully vaccinated.

Friday’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adds to growing laboratory evidence that people who had one bout of COVID-19 get a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells — and a bonus of broader protection against new mutants — when they’re vaccinated.

“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky in a statement Friday. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious delta variant spreads around the country.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

-on August 06, 2021 at 10:00PM by Ryan Carter

#riversidenews

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do The Republicans Back Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-the-republicans-back-trump/

Why Do The Republicans Back Trump

Republican Voters Turn Against Their Partys Elites

Why many Republicans are refusing to back Donald Trump

The Tea Party movement, which sprang into existence in the early years of the Obama administration, was many things. It was partly about opposing Obamas economic policies foreclosure relief, tax increases, and health reform. It was partly about opposing immigration when Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson;interviewed Tea Party activists across the nation, they found that “immigration was always a central, and sometimes the central, concern” those activists expressed.

But the Tea Party also was a challenge to the Republican Party establishment. Several times, these groups helped power little-known far-right primary contenders to shocking primary wins over establishment Republican politicians deemed to be sellouts. Those candidates didnt always win office, but their successful primary bids certainly struck fear into the hearts of many other GOP incumbents, and made many of them more deferential to the concerns of conservative voters.

Furthermore, many Republican voters also came to believe, sometimes fairly and sometimes unfairly, that their partys national leaders tended to sell them out at every turn.

Talk radio and other conservative media outlets helped stoke this perception, and by May 2015 Republican voters were far more likely to say that their partys politicians were doing a poor job representing their views than Democratic voters were.

He Didnt Sign The Paris Climate Accord

Speaking of Paris, Trump stood alone among politicians in realizing that a lot of the climate change rhetoric is designed to heavily tax American industry while it lets other countries slide and keep polluting. Hes not pro-pollution, but he doesnt want to sacrifice the American middle class in the process of fighting it.

Hes Not Politically Correct

We are living in an age where most people have to bite their lips to the point of bleeding for fear of offending some delicate soul who will scream bloody murder and call the cops and press if you dare to say anything that hurts their feelings. This is mind control and tyranny of the worst formrepression of thoughts. For all that the media and academics say they want diversity, dont you dare utter a contrary opinion or they will ruin your life. Then along comes Trump and says, fuck that.

Don’t Miss: Most Republican States 2018

‘combative Tribal Angry’: Newt Gingrich Set The Stage For Trump Journalist Says

All these factors combined to produce a windfall for Republicans all over the country in the midterms of 1994, but it was a watershed election in the South. For more than a century after Reconstruction, Democrats had held a majority of the governorships and of the Senate and House seats in the South. Even as the region became accustomed to voting Republican for president, this pattern had held at the statewide and congressional levels.

But in November 1994, in a single day, the majority of Southern governorships, Senate seats and House seats shifted to the Republicans. That majority has held ever since, with more legislative seats and local offices shifting to the GOP as well. The South is now the home base of the Republican Party.

The 2020 aftermath

No wonder that in contesting the results in six swing states he lost, Trump seems to have worked hardest on Georgia. If he had won there, he still would have lost the Electoral College decisively. But as the third most populous Southern state, and the only Southern state to change its choice from 2016, it clearly held special significance.

Trump Blasts Mcconnell And His Leadership In Lengthy Response To Recent Criticism

Where will the party turn in its hour of crisis? If the past is any guide, it will turn in two directions: to the right, and to the South. These have been the wellsprings of strength and support that have brought the party back from the brink in recent decades.

That was the strategy that led to Richard Nixon’s elections as president in 1968 and 1972, and it was still working for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

Solidifying the South and energizing conservatives were also crucial factors in the Republican tsunami of 1994, when the GOP surged to majorities in Congress and in statehouses. That hamstrung the remainder of Bill Clinton’s presidency and presaged the election of Republican George W. Bush in 2000.

It was a lesson not lost on Trump. While not even a Republican until late in life, he started his primary campaign billboarding the party’s most conservative positions on taxes, trade, immigration and abortion. And the first of his rallies to draw a crowd in the tens of thousands was in a football stadium in Mobile, Ala., two months after he declared his candidacy in the summer of 2015.

Whether the next standard-bearer for the GOP is Trump himself or someone else, there is little doubt the playbook will be the same.

Low points, then turnarounds

Perhaps the most discouraging of these for the GOP was Johnson’s tidal wave, which carried in the biggest majorities Democrats in Congress had enjoyed since the heyday of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.

Read Also: Trump People Magazine Quote 1998

The Tucker Carlson Fans Who Got Vaxxed

I asked vaccinated fans of the Fox News host what it will take to get more Republicans to get their shots.

Late last month, as the Delta variant of the coronavirus filled hospitals across the under-vaccinated South, Tucker Carlson took to his usual perch as the most-watched host on the most-watched cable-news network, just asking questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. Tonight, congressional Democrats have called for a vaccine mandate in Congress, Carlson said, as if flabbergasted by every word. Members and staffers would be required to get a shot that the CDC told us today doesnt work very well and, by the way, whose long-term effects cannot be known.

Carlsons Facebook followers commented eagerly on the video clip, spreading unfounded fears about vaccination among themselves. Completely disappointed in our government, dont believe a word they speak! Will not get the shot! one person wrote. Together, Carlson and his viewers are a placenta and embryo, gestating dangerous ideas and keeping the pandemic alive.

Its no secret that Carlsons audience, and Foxs, are overwhelmingly Republican and right-wing. And in poll after poll, Republicans are much less likely than Democrats to say they have been vaccinated and much more likely to say they definitely wont be vaccinated. The partisan gap in vaccinations has only grown over time.

The Republican Party Was Founded To Oppose The Slave Power

For the first half-century after the United States founding, slavery was only one of many issues in the countrys politics, and usually a relatively minor issue at that. The American South based its economy on the enslavement of millions, and the two major parties which by the 1850s were the Democrats and the Whigs were willing to let the Southern states be.

But when the US started admitting more and more Western states to the Union, the country had to decide whether those new states should allow slavery or not. And this was an enormously consequential question, because the more slave states there were, the easier it would be for the slaveholding states to get their way in the Senate and the Electoral College.

Now, the issue here wasnt that Northern politicians were desperate to abolish slavery in the South immediately, apart from a few radical crusaders. The real concern was that Northerners feared the “Slave Power” the South would become a cabal that would utterly dominate US politics, instituting slavery wherever they could and cutting off opportunity for free white laborers, as historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her book To Make Men Free.

Recommended Reading: Are There More Democrats Or Republicans In America

Republicans Fear Trump Will Lead To A Lost Generation Of Talent

The 45th president has brought new voices and voters to the party, but hes driven them out too. Insiders fear the repercussions.

06/01/2021 04:30 AM EDT

Link Copied

As Donald Trump ponders another presidential bid, top Republicans have grown fearful about what theyre calling the partys lost generation.

In conversations with more than 20 lawmakers, ex-lawmakers, top advisers and aides, a common concern has emerged that a host of national and statewide Republicans are either leaving office or may not choose to pursue it for fear that they cant survive politically in the current GOP. The worry, these Republicans say, is that the party is embracing personality over policy, and that it is short sighted to align with Trump, who lost the general election and continues to alienate a large swath of the voting public with his grievances and false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump has driven sitting GOP lawmakers and political aspirants into early retirements ever since he burst onto the scene. But there was hope that things would change after his election loss. Instead, his influence on the GOP appears to be as solid as ever and the impact of those early shockwaves remain visible. When asked, for instance, if he feared the 45th president was causing a talent drain from the GOP ranks, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush perhaps inadvertently offered a personal demonstration of the case.

Filed Under:

I Think He’s Wrong On This Issue One Republican Senator Said Of Trump

Black Republican women explain why they support President Donald Trump

Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell

It’s finally infrastructure week and Donald Trump is mad.

Trump tried but ultimately failed to stop Senate Republicans from supporting;the Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. His effort to shame Republicans out of voting in support of the measure was impotent, as the Senate passed the bipartisan bill on Tuesday.

The former president made his feelings known ahead of the vote when he ripped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as “overrated.”;

“Nobody will ever understand why Mitch McConnell allowed this non-infrastructure bill to be passed. He has given up all of his leverage for the big whopper of a bill that will follow,” Trump wrote in a statement.;

“I have quietly said for years that Mitch McConnell is the most overrated man in politicsnow I don’t have to be quiet anymore,” the former president said, adding: “He is working so hard to give Biden a victory, now they’ll go for the big one, including the biggest tax increases in the history of our Country.”

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, the Senate minority leader nevertheless remained steadfast in his support of the landmark measure, voting in support of the bill on Tuesday. Although he;made clear that he will not back any Democratic-led effort at budget reconciliation, which would allow the Democrats to pass an additional $3.5 trillion bill intended to target education, health, childcare, and climate action in the coming months.;

Don’t Miss: What Republicans Are Running Against Trump For President

The Partys Core Activists Dont Want To Shift Gears

This is the simplest and most obvious explanation: The GOP isnt changing directions because the people driving the car dont want to.;

When we think of Republicans, we tend to think of either rank-and-file GOP voters or the partys highest-profile elected officials, particularly its leaders in Congress. But in many ways, the partys direction is driven by a group between those two: conservative organizations like Club for Growth and the Heritage Foundation, GOP officials at the local and state level and right-wing media outlets. That segment of the party has been especially resistant to the GOP abandoning its current mix of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, opposition to expansions of programs that benefit the poor and an identity politics that centers white Americans and conservative Christians.

You could see the power and preferences of this group in the response to the Capitol insurrection.

In the days immediately following Jan. 6, many GOP elected officials, most notably McConnell, signaled that the party should make a permanent break from Trump. Pollsfound an increased number of rank-and-file GOP voters were dissatisfied with the outgoing president. But by the time the Senate held its trial over Trumps actions a month later, it was clear that the party was basically back in line with Trump.;

related:Why Being Anti-Media Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity Read more. »

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans Support The Civil Rights Act

How Republicans Made Common Cause With Southern Democrats On Economic Matters

Roosevelts reforms also brought tensions in the Democratic coalition to the surface, as the solidly Democratic South wasnt too thrilled with the expansion of unions or federal power generally. As the years went on, Southern Democrats increasingly made common cause with the Republican Party to try to block any further significant expansions of government or worker power.

“In 1947, confirming a new alliance that would recast American politics for the next two generations, Taft men began to work with wealthy southern Democrats who hated the New Deals civil rights legislation and taxes,” Cox Richardson writes. This new alliance was cemented with the Taft-Hartley bill, which permitted states to pass right-to-work laws preventing mandatory union membership among employees and many did.

Taft-Hartley “stopped labor dead in its tracks at a point where unions were large, growing, and confident in their economic and political power,” Rich Yeselson has written. You can see the eventual effects above pro-Democratic unions were effectively blocked from gaining a foothold in the South and interior West, and the absence of their power made those regions more promising for Republicans’ electoral prospects.

He Gives The Republicans Full Control Of Washington Again

For all you hear about how great Barack Obama was, do you realize that he had promised to cut the national debt in half but actually more than doubled it? Thats righthe saddled you and your descendants with a tax bill that you will likely never be able to pay off. Now, with Republicans in charge, we can roll back some of the excesses of the Obama era and encourage business growth rather than government growth.

Also Check: How Many Democrats Have Been President Vs Republicans

We Must Give Credit To Media And Technology

While the reason Trump voters believe Trumps lies in their psyche, we cant ignore that social media and cable news have created multiple realties in which people exist. According to Fox News, not once has Trump ever said something negative about; military service members .

Of course, Fox News is considered responsible;when compared to the even-more fringe outlets the way-the-f*ck-out-there mental prison camps like OAN and Americas News that are down-right propaganda channels devoted exclusively to milking angry republicans of their last dime, their last drop of empathy, and their last connection to a reality-based existence. They make Alex Jones look sane. Einstein was right just didnt realize at the time he was talking about political discourse.

Grand Jury Convened In Criminal Investigation Of Trump

Only one president, Grover Cleveland, has ever lost a re-election bid and come back to reclaim the White House. In modern times, one-term presidents have worried more about rehabilitating their legacies by taking on nonpartisan causes Democrat Jimmy Carter by building housing for the poor and George H.W. Bush by raising money for disaster aid, for example than about trying to shape national elections. But Trump retains a hold on the Republican electorate that is hard to overstate, and he has no intention of relinquishing it.

“There’s a reason why they’re called ‘Trump voters,'” Miller said. “They either don’t normally vote or don’t normally vote for Republicans.”

Trump lost the popular vote by more than 7 million last year and the Electoral College by the same 306-232 result by which he had won four years earlier but he got more votes than any other Republican nominee in history. And it would have taken fewer than 44,000 votes, spread across swing states Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin, to reverse the outcome.

Republicans, including Trump allies, say it’s too early to know what he will do, or what the political landscape will look like, in four years. A busload of Republican hopefuls are taking similar strides to position themselves. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, who is speaking to New Hampshire Republicans on Thursday, an event that the Concord Monitor called the kickoff of the 2024 race.

That’s basically what Trump is doing.

Don’t Miss: How Many Registered Republicans In Pa

Klobuchar: Trump’s Actions Are Like A ‘global Watergate’ Scandal

Today, as Democrats in the House of Representatives move toward bringing articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, with the next Judiciary Committee hearing of evidence set for Monday, few Democrats are still clinging to the hope that Republicans will reach a breaking point with Trump like they did with Nixon.

“I really don’t think there is any fact that would change their minds,” Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC News.

Why? Two key changes since Nixon: a massive divide in American political life we hate the other team more than ever before and a media climate that fuels and reinforces that chasm, powered by Fox News on the Republican side.

Himes said he was “a little stunned by the unanimity on the Republican side,” especially among retiring lawmakers who don’t have to worry about surviving a GOP primary had they gone against Trump. “We’re in a place right now where all that matters to my Republican colleagues is the defense of the president,” he added.

No Republican congressmen have said they support impeachment. In the Senate, the entire GOP voted to condemn the impeachment inquiry, except for three moderates: Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The three have stopped short of saying they support Trump’s impeachment, however, and it would take at least 20 Republican senators to vote to convict him in a Senate trial for removal to succeed.

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weekendwarriorblog · 3 years

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The Weekend Warrior 7/30/21 - JUNGLE CRUISE, THE GREEN KNIGHT, STILLWATER, NINE DAYS, THE BOY BEHIND THE DOOR and More!

Well, this is going to be the most interesting weekend of the summer. Don’t believe me?

What would you say if I told you we have three wide releases this week, one a mega-studio movie that cost hundreds of millions with two huge box office stars, taking on two smaller indies -- one with a big star, the other something more artsy with an actor who should be a bigger star? That’s what we’re looking at this week, since Disney has a movie, taking on two of the smaller studios with what are likely to be strong, well-reviewed movies that (fingers crossed) we’ll still be talking about at the end of the year when it comes to awards.

One thing that I feel I need to point out before continuing is that we’re starting to see a potential third or fourth wave of COVID, this time the Delta variant, slowly creeping up, and while I don’t think theaters will completely shut down as they did last March, I do wonder whether capacity will be lowered again to prevent the spread by allowing for more social distancing inside movie theaters.

Normally, I would start with the Disney movie -- which I really liked -- but I actually want to start with one of the smaller movies, because Thomas McCarthy’s STILLWATER (Focus Features), starring Matt Damon, is this week’s “Chosen One,” and honestly, it needs a lot more support and love than the other wide releases this week.

In the movie, Matt Damon plays Bill Baker, an out-of-work oil rig worker from Stillwater, Oklahoma, who flies to Marseilles, France where his estranged daughter Alison (Abigail Breslin) has been imprisoned for four years, accused of killing her roommate and lover. Once there, Bill learns from Alison that there might be more evidence that could prove her innocence, but when her legal team refuses to look into it, he instead tries to find anyone that can help him free his daughter. Along the way, he meets French actress Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her eight-year-old daughter Maya (Lilou Sauvaud), and they become fast friends and then roommates, helping Bill whenever they can.

I have to be honest that I went into Stillwater knowing very little about it, including the general plot, and I honestly didn’t even know that most of it took place in France -- 95% of it, in fact. Another thing I didn’t know in advance was that it was co-written by Thomas Bidegain, who has been working extensively with the brilliant Jacques Audiard in recent years on films like Rust and Bone, A Prophet and Dheepan. Just thinking of that combination of McCarthy with Bidegain is reason enough to give Stillwater the benefit of the doubt, but it also proves to be quite a sympatico combination of skills, since both writers have long had a proven knack for creating emotional character dramas.

As much as the overarching story involving Bill’s daughter and him trying to find the person who was really responsible for her roommate’s murder -- and yes, It’s hard not to think of the Amanda Knox case while watching the movie -- I ended up enjoying how Bill’s relationship with Virginie and especially Maya played out much more. That said, Damon’s performance is fantastic, and so is that of Abigail Breslin, who we really haven’t seen in this kind of dramatic adult role before, at least not that I have seen. Damon and Breslin’s scenes together are probably some of the film’s strongest, to the point where once it gets back into him catching the real killer, it certainly adds another layer but maybe one that maybe isn’t as interesting.

The one negative I have to say about Stillwater is about how the marketing spends so much time focusing on the thriller and crime aspects of the movie and fails to illustrate what makes the film so wonderful -- which is the character arc Bill goes through by spending time with Virginie and Maya, who bring so much to his life he would never have found in Oklahoma. That was really the biggest takeaway for me, and why I enjoyed the movie enough to make it “Chosen One.” Like so many of McCarthy’s great earlier films like The Station Agent and The Visitor, he has a way of creating compelling drama by bringing people from different backgrounds together.

On the other hand, if you’re unwilling to give a Red State working man like Damon’s character a chance, maybe Stillwater won’t be for you, but if you’re willing to learn about people that are different than yourself, put into situations in which you might never be, then it’s just the right cure for those who want something more grounded and authentic during the summer.

Personally, I’m convinced Stillwater will be one of the Top 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees this year, and I’ve already had people wanting to bet against me, thinking I’m wrong,, but I honestly think that once others see this film and allow themselves to appreciate the story and character-work done by McCarthy and his small cast, the film will find many fans. Maybe that won’t happen right away in theaters, but it’s likely to be on VOD in a month or so and then awards screeners later this year will help remind people and find new recruits.

As far as the box office prospects of McCarthy’s latest, I’m not really sure it can open with more than $5 million even with Matt Damon’s face plastered everywhere, because it just doesn’t seem like the type of movie that should get an immediate wide release vs. a slower roll-out.

The biggest movie of the weekend and by far the widest release into over 4,000 theaters is Disney’s JUNGLE CRUISE (Walt Disney Pictures), teaming Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt -- Blunt having led one of the second biggest female-led movies of 2021 so far after Black Widow -- and putting them into a fantasy-adventure based on the Disney World (or Land?) theme park ride. This is an idea that worked well for Disney’s 2003 action-adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and its sequels, but maybe not so well for movies like The Country Bears. The fact is that theme park rides based on hit movies work great, but trying to create a hit movie out of a theme park, it just isn’t done, and for a very good reason.

If nothing else, this one stars Dwayne Johnson, who has been absent from theaters for quite some time, having bailed on the “Fast Saga” franchise for his own 2019 spin-off with Jason Statham, Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs and Shaw. That made about $173 million domestically and another $586 million overseas, but Johnson’s last movie was 2019’s Jumanji: The Next Level, which made $300 million domestically and another $483.3 million overseas. Not all of Johnson’s movies have done so well -- Baywatch and Skyscaper both bombed domestically -- but Johnson is clearly an A-list star who just needs the right vehicle. Jungle Cruise may be just that, because it combines the type of action and humor that are Johnson’s strong suits with the family draw of something like the Jumanji movies but then also adds the Disney namebrand, which has led to many huge blockbusters.

It certainly won’t hurt that his on-screen foil Emily Blunt is coming off her hit A Quiet Place Part II, which continues to move her into the realm of beloved A-lister ala Julia Roberts and others. In between the Quiet Place sequel and the original movie in 2018 (which grossed $335 million worldwide), Blunt starred as the title character in Mary Poppins Returns for Disney, which made even more than the first Quiet Place worldwide, but it firmly placed her in the Disney realm that makes her a perfect co-star for Johnson. She previously starred in the Disney musical, Into the Woods, which also did very well, but it clearly has put Blunt into a category that should make a draw on a similar level as Johnson but more for women and girls.

Since the original Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl will be the benchmark for how Disney is hoping Jungle Cruise might perform -- keeping in mind that we’re still in the COVID pandemic and the fact that Jungle Cruise is available to buy for $29.99 on Disney+ Premier Access starting Friday -- we have to remember that the first “Pirates” was looked at rather cynically, so when it opened with $46.6 million in July 2003, that was thought of as a huge boon for the Disney property. It ended up grossing $300 million in the U.S. alone, which showed a huge amount of word-of-mouth and repeat viewing, which I personally feel Jungle Cruise

Unfortunately, we do have to take into account both COVID and the ability for families to see the movie on Disney+ for $30 vs. the $100+ it usually costs to take a small family to the movies, especially with kids under 12 still not being vaccinated. In normal times, I could maybe see Jungle Cruise opening with $40 to 50 million or more, but these aren’t normal times, and some of the factors mentioned above might keep it down around the $30 million mark, give or take.

I reviewed Jungle Cruise over at Below the Line, incidentally.

Next up is David Lowery’s THE GREEN KNIGHT (A24), starring Dev Patel, which is a fairly faithful adaptation of the “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” Arthurian legend poem written by “Anonymous,” and it’s a grand sweeping epic in the vein of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, although it’s a far more R-rated affair. It stars Dev Patel, Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, Barry Keoughan, and Joel Edgerton as well as others, and it’s a movie that’s likely to be talked about by many over the next couple weeks.

It’s an interesting new film from the filmmaker who has done small indies like Ain’t Them Body Saints and big studio movies like Pete’s Dragon (and the upcoming Peter Pan and Wendy), and mid-sized movies like A Ghost Story and The Old Man and the Gun in between. He’s reteaming with Ghost Story distributor A24 who knows the best way to attract the cinephile Millennial audience (aka #FilmTwitter) that would appreciate The Green Knight. They’ve done particularly well with horror and genre films from the likes of Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) and Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse). So far, A24’s top-grossing film is the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems with around $50 million. That starred Adam Sandler, who is a much bigger star than anyone in The Green Knight, but Heredity’s $13 million opening, or more likely, Midsommar’s $10.9 million five-day would be a better barometer for Lowery’s latest.

You can read my review of The Green Knight here, but I fully expect others reviews to be just as favorable and glowing, along with the excitement by #FilmTwitter to see this movie after it was delayed over a year. In many ways, A24 has created a niche for this type of film with Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, and this will probably be effective counter-programming against a mainstream studio movie like Jungle Cruise. The fact that this won’t be available on streaming or On Demand should help it bring in between $7 and 10 million this weekend, as the amazing visuals and marketing for the film should make it the first choice for those between 20 and 40 of both genders.

Essentially, this week’s Top 10 should look something like this...

1. Jungle Cruise (Walt Disney Pictures) - $32 million N/A

2. The Green Knight (A24) - $8.7 million N/A

3. Black Widow (Marvel/Disney) - $6.5 million -44%

4. Old (Universal) - $6 million -64%

5. Snake Eyes (Paramount/MGM/Skydance) - $6 million -56%

6. Stillwater (Focus Features) - $4.8 million N/A

7. Space Jam: A New Legacy (Warner Bros.) - $4.5 million -53%

8. F9: The Fast Saga (Universal) - $2.5 million -48%

9. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (Sony) - $1.6 million -54%

10. The Boss Baby: Family Business (Universal/DreamWorks Animation) - $1.6 million -44%

Opening in limited theaters in New York and L.A. on Friday before a wider release on August 6 is Edson Oda’s NINE DAYS (Sony Pictures Classics), a movie that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival way back in January 2020 to rave reviews across the board, but has to find a renewed push now that it’s finally coming out in theaters. It stars Winston Duke (US, Black Panther) as Will, an enigmatic individual who watches people’s lives on a wall of monitors but who also has the power to test individuals hoping to be the next to get a life. Yeah, it’s a pretty enigmatic and metaphysical idea for a film, but Edo’s script is great, and he’s put together quite an amazing ensemble cast around Duke, including Benedict Wong (from Doctor Strange) and Zazie Beetz, but we also see the likes of Tony Hale, Bill Skarsgard and Arianna Ortiz playing very different characters we’ve seen from them before.

I don’t want to go too deep into detail about what happens in this highly metaphysical existential film, but essentially Duke’s character is putting a group of “souls” (for lack of a better term) through their paces in order to be allowed to have a life. The different things they’re asked to do, including watching those aforementioned monitors, makes it hard to really stay completely absorbed in the story, mainly because you might not know what you’re watching. But Duke is great while Wong is very amusing, and Beetz’s character Emma is great as a nut that Will has a particularly difficulty cracking. (In some ways, the movie reminded me of a far more grown-up Soul.)

There’s also Will’s obsession with a violin prodigy whose life he has been observing for a number of decades that makes it hard to understand what we’re watching. But there are many nice moments, plus a few that just seem like an acting exercise, and that intriguing storytelling style is embellished by a beautiful score by Antonio Pinto, which beautifully complements the visuals created by Oda and his cinematographer, Wyatt Garfield.

Nine Days certainly won’t be for everyone -- it’s slow and kind of contemplative and deliberately enigmatic; I’m certainly not sure I fully got it -- but it’s still an intriguing movie because filmmaker Edson Oda has such a unique storytelling style, which in some ways, makes this feel more like a movie we might get from A24 or NEON than Sony Pictures Classics. (I’ll discuss the film’s box office prospects next week as Sony Classics gives another movie a far-too-wide expansion following a platform release.)

This week’s Shudder release is THE BOY BEHIND THE DOOR (Shudder), the second movie by filmmakers David Charbonier and Justin Powell after The Djinn, their first movie, which was released earlier this year. Got all that? (The Boy Behind the Door actually played Fantastic Fest last September but is just finally hitting Shudder on Thursday after playing a bunch of festivals, including, most recently, the Tribeca Film Festival.)

The movie stars Lonnie Chavis as 12-year-old Bobby, whose best friend Kevin (Ezra Dewey, who starred in The Djinn) has been kidnapped and locked up in a house, so Bobby tries to rescue him, having to fight off a couple adults (pedophiles, in fact) while hiding in the house and trying to escape himself.

I really wanted to like The Boy Behind the Door more, because I did enjoy what the duo did in The Djinn and Dewey pretty much carried that movie. I’m not sure that Chavis does as good a job carrying this one, which is odd since the filmmakers already had experience getting good performances from a younger actor.

What’s surprising is that this is debuting on Shudder, because it isn’t particularly scary. It does have a lot of violence, and it’s quite brutal and grueling at times, if that’s your sort of thing, but I don’t even think the writing is particularly good compared to The Djinn.

The Boy Behind the Door offers an interesting one-location thriller, but it’s very tough to watch kids being put into and through some of these situations, so it kept from being able to fully like or love the movie, let alone recommend it. But if you have Shudder, it’ll be on there, so there’s no reason not to watch it. I’ve certainly seen worse. (How’s that for a recommendation?)

Dan (Dirty Grandpa) Mazer’s THE EXCHANGE (Quiver Distribution), written by Tim Long (The Simpsons) stars Ed Oxenbould from The Visit, Justin Hartley from This Is Us, and Avan Jogia from Zombieland: Double Tap. Oxenbould plays Tim, a socially awkward teen who decides to order a “mail order best friend,” but instead of getting a sophisticated exchange from France, he gets Jogia’s chain-smoking sex-obssessed Stéphane, who becomes a hero of Tim’s community. Hartley plays the school’s gym teacher, Barry. This is a fairly bland high-concept indie comedy that treads on Napoleon Dynamite territory without really being particularly funny. I will give props to Music Supervisor Nick Angel, who managed to get some awesome period songs for the score, but otherwise, I really don't have much to say about this one.

Joshua Leonard and Jess Weizler co-wrote and star in Leonard's new movie, FULLY REALIZED HUMANS (Gravitas Ventures). They play Elliot and Jackie, a couple who have been trying to have a baby but don’t want to screw up their kids the way their parents screwed them up. In order to become the perfect parents, they’ll have to rediscover themselves.

Opening at the IFC Center in New York this Friday and at the Laemmle in L.A. on August 6 is THE EVENING HOUR (Strand Releasing), Braden King’s Appalachian drama based on Carter Sickels’ novel, which follows Cole Freeman (Philip Ettinger), who is caring for the old and infirm in the community while selling painkillers to local addicts. When his old friend Terry Rose (Cosmo Jarvis) returns to town with new plans that threatens to unbalance Cole’s lifestyle. Cole also has to deal with the return of his other (Lili Taylor) and conflict with a real drug dealer (Marc Menchaca). The film also stars Stacy Martin, Kerry Bishé… and my good friend, Susan McPhail (in a very small role, though).

Other movies I just didn’t have time to get to include:

A DARK FOE (Vertical) LORELEI (Vertical) MASQUERADE (Shout! Studios) MIDNIGHT IN THE SWITCHGRASS (Lionsgate) RIDE THE EAGLE (Decal) SABARA (MTV Documentary Films)TWIST (Lionsgate)

Next week, James Gunn’s THE SUICIDE SQUAD!

#The Weekend Warrior #Movies #Reviews #Jungle Cruise #Stillwater #The Green Knight #nine Days

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yeonchi · 3 years

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2021 Mid-Year Report

A lot of things can change in a year, but even more things can change in six months than you think. This is going to be a special post styled like my end-of-year reviews that focuses on the events of the past six months. I don’t know if I’ll be doing this again next year because I felt like making this post; in fact, I don’t know when I’ll stop posting my end-of-year reviews either.

Looking back at Sea Princesses

This time last year, I was in the midst of the second coronavirus lockdown in Melbourne, unemployed on double benefits without needing to look for work. At the same time, I was working on translating and reviewing the Princesas do Mar books, which I had brought from Amazon the month before. My original intention was to buy the books once I had saved up enough money from putting aside part of my paycheck, but looking back, I knew I made a better decision buying the books when I did.

At the same time, Fabio Yabu had also released the main series books as ebooks on Amazon Kindle and would begin releasing translated versions of the first four literacy series books on there as well. A year on, the last two literacy series books have still not been published as yet, though Ubook would publish them as audiobooks in Brazil (with the exception of Turtles in Danger for some reason). In our communications, Yabu had expressed interest in publishing translated versions of the main series books (based on my translations), but the last time we spoke in May, he stated that he had a lot going on, so that has been put on hold for the time being.

From time to time, I go on the wiki and make edits wherever I feel like. This isn’t something that I really needed to express, but I wanted to do so because I am planning on putting the translated episode names on their respective pages eventually. That information was originally posted on the International Entertainment Project Wiki before they planned to move the episode lists to Miraheze but never ended up doing so. Though the episode lists with the translated episode names have been taken down from the IEP Wiki, I have managed to save them and I will put them up on the Sea Princesses Wiki gradually and eventually. Keep in note that the only languages I have all the translated titles for are Brazilian Portuguese, Castilian Spanish and German; sources for other languages are always appreciated.

I’ve been thinking about this question time and time again over the years, but I’ve never brought myself to bring it up on Tumblr until now - Would I like to see a reboot, revival or continuation of Sea Princesses? My answer is both yes and no. I say yes because there is so much unexplored potential and unanswered questions in both the books and animated series with things like the Barracuda Kingdom saga, Marcello and Marcela, more interactions with other characters, more focus on other characters and so forth. However, I also say no because usual reboot criticism aside (character designs are shit, story is shit etc), I fear that the character designs of the Sea Princesses may not sit right with certain people and that they may be misconstrued as jailbait or something like that. While it would be nice to see something new in regards to Sea Princesses someday, that all depends on whether Fabio Yabu is interested in revisiting it like he did the Combo Rangers nearly a decade ago. And besides, if Yabu isn’t interested, then who needs him when I’ve made so much Sea Princesses content over the past few years, including my takes on the continuation of the series in Kisekae Insights? Which brings us to our next topic...

Kisekae Insights and my transition into adult life

In case you haven’t heard, I started at a new job at the end of May and it’s been quite full-on. Amidst all the distractions around me and my commitment to finish up my personal project by the end of this year, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make two instalments of Kisekae Insights per month as I promised in #21, but as I made clear from the very start, there is no set schedule for the series, so this isn’t necessarily the end of the second run. I decided to just take the rest of my personal project at my own pace and I will possibly do likewise with Kisekae Insights.

Coronavirus and vaccines

At the start of June, Melbourne went into a week-long circuit breaker lockdown that later became two weeks long. This was our fourth lockdown after a short third lockdown in February that lasted five days. And it just so happened that I had to start working from home because of it. It’s not that bad, I’m currently doing a mix of WFH and onsite working so I don’t have to wake up at 6 AM (play on my phone and wake up at like 6:30) and take two hours of public transport just to get to work five days a week.

Numerous variants of the coronavirus have been discovered in the past year. We have variants originating in the UK (Alpha/B.1.1.7), South Africa (Beta/B.1.351), Brazil (Gamma/P.1) and India (Delta/B.1.617.2) among others. The Indian (Delta) variant in particular has been the reason for the recent lockdowns in Australia.

In regards to the naming of the coronavirus and its variants, it’s absolutely funny how their timing came about. When the original coronavirus started in Wuhan, China and was declared to the WHO on 31 December 2019, the WHO named the resulting disease COVID-19 on 11 February 2020, keeping in mind that Asian crybabies were crying about “China Virus”, “Wuhan Virus” or “Kung Flu” back then and are probably still crying about it now. At the start of June, the WHO announced that they would use Greek letters to refer to the variants when the media have used “UK variant”, “Indian variant” etc for months, which is longer than it took mainstream media and society to adopt the name COVID-19. Though their motivation to do this is to prevent stigmatisation like with the original coronavirus, I have heard nothing about British, South African, Brazilian or even Indian people being discriminated over the variants. It’s almost like people have more problems with “China Virus” than “UK variant”, “Indian variant” etc because they somehow have a need to please China and make people realise that all Asians aren’t the same. On top of that, obscuring the variants will eventually lead to people being confused over their origins when more of them inevitably emerge.

Recently, investigations into the origin of the coronavirus have been ongoing, much to China’s ongoing outrage and condemnation. When the coronavirus started, there was a theory that it somehow leaked from a lab in Wuhan; back then, people were laughed for believing it (because Trump was the one who was talking about it), but now, the mainstream media is going with that story while covering the investigations (because Biden’s the one who is talking about it now). It’s almost like a big “I told you so” from the people who knew better.

I’ve said this in my Red Pill Year post and I’ll say it again; all this fuss over naming the coronavirus and its variants to prevent stigmatisation is just an act of political correctness for China’s sake. While I have started to warm to the term COVID-19 (in a humourous and ironic sense), I still stand by my current positions so far; while I don’t entirely agree with “China virus”, I still refer to it as the “Wuhan coronavirus” because it started in Wuhan until proven otherwise beyond all reasonable doubt, whether it leaked from the lab or whatever. I’ll admit, I wouldn’t have much of a problem with this if the virus didn’t start in China. I’m a person who doesn’t really mind or care about political correctness if it’s just a little bit here and there, but given the events of the past decade, I draw the line when it comes to China.

Let’s talk about vaccines now. Vaccines have been a big topic over the past six months - in Hong Kong, Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine has become a meme in the pro-democracy population because to May, there were 24 deaths recorded as a result of side effects compared to the alternate BioNTech vaccine with 6 deaths. Granted, the deaths were in people aged 50 and over (possibly with underlying health conditions), but it has given people a reason to hold off or even refrain from getting the vaccine. On a side note, the “you’re going to Brazil” meme has never felt realer because CoronaVac is one of the vaccines being offered in Brazil along with Argentina, Colombia and Peru. My thoughts and prayers go to them at this point in time.

Now, I am by no means an anti-vaxxer, but I stand by the belief that coronavirus vaccines should be voluntary and not mandatory (I wish I could say the same for other vaccines, but I’d be perpetuating a double standard because adults are in control of our lives before we reach the age of majority). There are some countries and places that are providing incentives to people who get vaccinated, with quite a few of them being offered in the form of prize draws. In all honesty, given the nature of these vaccines, I don’t see the point of prize draws as incentives because there is no other benefit for those who don’t win except for protection against coronavirus, its associated symptoms, or even a release from our agonising and pitiful existences.

My main fear is that vaccine stigmatisation and discrimination might become mainstream with the existence of things like vaccine passports, where people who haven’t taken the vaccine are disallowed from accessing basic services. I can live with wearing masks indoors and on public transport and without leaving the country or even the state, but if the slippery slope gets to a point where people aren’t allowed to shop at supermarkets, eat at restaurants, take public transport or even hold a job without getting vaccinated, that’s the point where I start to become an anti-vaxxer.

There are some industries where getting vaccinated is not only highly recommended, but essential, such as health and aged care. I (luckily) don’t work in those industries so my opinion probably won’t matter, but if you work around vulnerable people regularly, then you as an individual should be responsible for taking the necessary precautions to prevent coronavirus infections and deaths.

So here’s my personal stance on this whole vaccination debacle; I will personally not be getting vaccinated for the foreseeable future, but I am not against people getting vaccinated if they so choose. This is not only because of the potential side effects or even my fear of needles (anyone who points this out to me is missing the point because my reasoning would be the same regardless of it), but because of the potential for the stigmatisation and discrimination of people who choose not to get vaccinated, the erosion of human rights for said people and most of all, the way that China has been involved in all of this; the vaccines were made to combat a virus that originated in China and I am particularly wary of some things coming from China, whether the vaccine is Chinese-made or otherwise.

Hong Kong pessimism

Things in Hong Kong have gotten worse over the past six months and they’re only about to get worser, but in spite of this, I believe that it will be all for the greater good.

Of significance, Apple Daily published their last issue on Thursday 24 June, taking down their website, social media and YouTube accounts on the same day. I used to make shitposts on a separate Facebook page by sharing their posts with satirical captions, sometimes with slurs (particularly the n-word on articles relating to mainland China) until some bitch I was having a feud with kept reporting my posts and got my page unpublished (he would have nearly taken my account with it if I hadn’t called him out and told him to kill himself, at which point we agreed to end the feud). Now that the Apple Daily Facebook page is gone, a lot of the shitposts on my personal page have gone as well; if I hadn’t deleted my separate page following the feud, chances are that I would be making plans to delete it by now because posts from that page made up a majority of my shitposts.

Since its founding in 1995, Apple Daily has been part of the mainstream media in Hong Kong, but due to its pro-democracy (and pro-Hong Kong) stance, it has been pushed to the fringe while other mainstream media outlets (like TVB) expressed pro-government/pro-police/pro-Beijing stances. While other pro-democracy news pages have popped up, there is a chance that the government may crack down on them following the enactment of the National Security Law one year ago; in short, Apple Daily was just in their way and the government will come for them eventually.

RTHK isn’t faring any better; while they are still running as a public radio and television service, they’ve been reined in by the government after their coverage of the 21 July 2019 attacks in Yuen Long. You know, the one where KKK members (in white clothes) lynched black(-clothed) people publicly in a train station and two police were seen walking away as emergency calls were being rejected? Earlier this year, some of RTHK’s programs were removed from their YouTube channel, claiming that their policy was to make content available for one year only, which is obviously not an excuse to fix their apparent pro-democracy bias.

Just last week on 25 June, there was a government reshuffling that led to a former police officer becoming chief secretary, the current police chief being the secretary for security and the deputy police commissioner becoming the chief commissioner. This just reaffirms my belief that all cops are bastards and that from 1 July, my bios on Facebook and Tumblr will be changing to highlight this and the plight of Hongkongers under these turbulent times. I’ve been wary of the Hong Kong police since their actions in the 2014 Occupy Central protests, but I officially became an ACABer sometime in 2020.

Here’s the thing. The government has outright ignored or rejected our requests for change over the years, so pro-democracy supporters are calling for a revolution, which the Chinese government somehow sees as advocating for independence, so the supporters have no hope of achieving their demands unless Hong Kong becomes independent from China, but the Chinese government is obviously not going to allow it, so they naturally turn to the international community for help. While sanctions did have an effect on the officials looming over Hongkongers, we are at an impasse right now because the next eventual step would be war, but no country wants to be responsible for firing the first shot, so the international community resorts to diplomacy while the Chinese government turns to condemning international interference in their internal affairs time and time again.

If, someday, the revolution were somehow successful and Hong Kong were to be liberated the way the protesters wanted, you know the first thing I would like to see? A fucking holocaust. I’d like to see a fucking holocaust of all the government officials who caused us suffering, the police officers who were “just following orders” and all the braindead boomers, Mainland Chinese n-words and other n-word lovers who have nothing but hatred for real Hongkongers. But hey, we all know that’s not going to happen because anyone who advocates for it is no worse than Hitler. Oh wait, that means I’m worse than Hitler because I said all that. Well, I guess that’s what I get for being pissed off at everything that’s happened and venting about it on the internet lol.

After Apple Daily’s shutdown, I have essentially doubled down on all of my beliefs. I have no sympathy for anyone who won’t stand with Hongkongers, and by that I mean anyone who actively stands against Hongkongers or turns traitor by questioning our motives and standing against them (I don’t really have an opinion on anyone who decides to stay silent because I don’t know what their true motivations would be). In short, anyone who doesn’t support Hongkongers is an n-word or n-word lover.

I’m really sorry for sounding toxic or harsh in anything I said about Hong Kong in the past couple of years. I only say these things because I really fucking love Hong Kong and I only hope that I won’t have to fear being confronted by the police or saying anything wrong the next time I visit Hong Kong with my family. Until things get really better, I’ve decided that Hong Kong is off-limits for me, but for now, let the government keep accelerating and laam chauing Hong Kong by themselves. It shows just how scared of us they are when they blame us for its eventual destruction, because in the end, it’s for the greater good.

UPDATE - 3 July 2021: I heard about the guy who stabbed a police officer then killed himself on 1 July. To be honest, I don’t feel sorry for the cop nor do I condemn what the guy did, particularly now that I’m fully into ACAB. People should be thinking about what motivated the guy to martyr himself in a lone wolf attack, namely the actions of the government over the past 24 years and the police over the last 7 years. Yet another reminder that all cops are bastards.

The US and Palestine

I have to say, Joe Biden has subverted my expectations when it came to Hong Kong and China. A lot of us feared that his administration would undo the hard work Trump’s administration did, but at the very least, they are still wary of the current situation and things have stayed pretty much the same.

As for Palestine, I would like to state that I stand with the oppressed peoples of the world and that goes for the Palestinians (and on a side note, Myanmar) as well. Jewish people have become a meme with their stereotypes and while I am not antisemitic, I apply the ACAB logic to them because it’s the system (or Jewish beliefs and Israeli governance) that is the problem here (haha AJAB lol). Ironically, it’s like Eric Cartman’s Mel Gibson fan club in real life.

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Anyway, I think I’ve said enough. Despite all the harsh things I’ve said, I only hope that the world will become a better place one day, but until then, I wish you peace in these turbulent times.

沿途在　修理著熄了的曙光祝你在亂流下平安

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opedguy · 3 years

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G7′s Dog-and-Pony Show

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), June 11, 2021.--Meeting at the luxury resort at Carbis Bay, near St. Ivess in Corwall, the G7 [Group of Seven], including the U.K. [host], U.S., Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan and European Union, starts tonight with a posh dinner including Queen Elizabeth and members of the Royal Family. Despite all the pomp-and-circumstance, there are critical issues related to the novel coronavirus AKA SARS CoV02 or Covid-19 pandemic, especially vaccine availability, new Delta Indian variants ravaging the U.K. and, most importantly, the origin of the virus that G7 won’t address. U.K Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, Japanese Prime MinisterYoshihide Suga, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Union’s Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel must address the origin of the pandemic.

India and Australia were also invited to attend the meeting, with Russia and China, noticeably absent by design, since the G7 was established in 1975 to represents the world’s democracies, not authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. China is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, since the economies of all Western democracies are dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Russia was added to the G7 in 1997, under the reforms of the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Russian Federation was dropped from the G7 in 2014 after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. Biden is slated to meet Putin June 16 for a Geneva summit, where he hopes to put U.S,-Russian relations back on track after hitting post-Cold War lows since taking office Jan. 20. Biden’s been under pressure from the Democrats and Republicans to confront Putin on human rights abuses.

When the G7 gets down to business, the Covid-19 global pandemic will be one everyone’s minds, especially how to get industrialized and developing countries more vaccines. Before heading to Carbis Bay, Biden committed to delivering 500 million does of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson-Jansen vaccines. Vaccines rates in the U.K. are over 50% using primarily the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. But the U.K. has been dealing with the new Indian Delta variant, with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson considering more shutdowns to control the spread. Biden enters the G7 with about 54% of the 330 million U.S. population with at least one dose, hoping for 70% by the July 4 holiday. G7 ministers will focus on the pragmatics of vaccine delivery, especially now that the Delta variant is ravaging the U.K. and soon to spread to other countries, including the U.S.

G7 ministers should hear the best evidence available about he origin of the deadly virus that’s infected 175,829,827 and killed 3,795,331 worldwide, plunging the world economy into recession. While there are signs of global economic recovery, the industrialized and developing world deal with incalculable economic losses from the global pandemic. G7 ministers have a right to know whether the virus occurred naturally in Wuhan, China or was manufactured in a Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] bio-weapons lab. Wreaking so much death and destruction around the planet, the G7 deserves to know how another future infectious disease crisis can be avoided. If it turns out the Covid-19 global pandemic was man made, the world needs to know who’s responsible and what can be done to prevent a future disaster. It’s doubtful that the G7 ministers will spend any much time on the origin of the virus.

Biden has said correctly that there can be no real economic progress without defeating the deadly novel coronavirus and all its new variants. U.S. officials are prepared to deliver some 500 million vaccine does to slow the spread of the virus now devastating countries like India, Brazil and several African nations where vaccine availability has been sparse. U.S., U.K. and European Central bankers have to agree, despite whatever signs of temporary inflation, to keep monetary policy accommodating economic growth for the foreseeable future. G7 minister will no doubt revisit efforts at climate change, requiring the world’s most industrialized powers to redouble efforts to reduce carbon pollution. U.K.’s Boris Johnson hopes to resolve any remaining trade issues after leaving the EU Jan. 31, 2020. Biden spoke with Johnson about preserving the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

When it comes to the most pressing world problems, the G7 can pledge in their communiqué a commitment to get Covid-19 vaccines to as many world citizens as possible, while, at the same time, central banks committed to an accommodating monetary policy. When it comes to forcing multinational corporations to pay more tax, there’s little the G7 can do to enforce collections. G7 ministers want a statement on global health but must first find out, no matter how controversial, how the deadly pandemic started. If evidence points to illegal biological weapons experiments in Wuhan, China, the G7 must forcefully express their commitment to hold China accountable for the deadly consequences. It’s not enough to talk about the global health system. China must be held accountable for illegal experiments on bat coronaviruses throwing the world into a global health and economic crisis

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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Why Is The Media Against Republicans

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Why Is The Media Against Republicans

Mcconnell And Co Are Playing As Dirty A Game As Possible In Their Quest To Fill Ginsburgs Seat Before The Election But You Wont Find That Story In Most News Coverage

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