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US says Amazon running illegal monopoly in online retail
Image Credit: Unsplash
A top US antitrust regulator sued Amazon on Tuesday, accusing the online retail behemoth of running an illegal monopoly by strong-arming sellers and stifling potential rivals.
The highly anticipated lawsuit is another test for the Biden administration as it tries to curb the power of big tech in the face of pushback from US courtrooms.
“Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies,” said Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
The FTC, which was joined by 17 US states in the case, said Amazon broke antitrust laws in two ways, both involving its “marketplace” which links outside sellers to buyers through its platforms.
In the first instance, the case alleges Amazon punishes companies using its platform that sell items elsewhere at lower prices by downranking their products on the site.
It also coerces sellers into signing on to Amazon’s “costly” logistics service in order to be exposed to Prime customers that are the site’s biggest and most catered-to users, the FTC said.
“Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to hike prices on American shoppers and charge sky-high fees on hundreds of thousands of online sellers,” said John Newman, Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.
“Seldom in the history of US antitrust law has one case had the potential to do so much good for so many people,” he added.
Amazon said it firmly rejected the premise of the case.
“Today’s suit makes clear the FTC’s focus has radically departed from its mission of protecting consumers and competition,” said David Zapolsky, Amazon Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy.
“The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court,” he added.
Small business groups backing the case, hailed the lawsuit.
“Ecommerce should be a dynamic sector with numerous marketplaces vying to attract both sellers and shoppers. Instead, it’s utterly dominated by a single firm,” said Stacy Mitchell, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
The FTC has had Amazon in its sights for a few years.
Last June, the FTC filed a complaint against Amazon for “entrapping consumers” with its Prime subscription, which renews automatically and is complicated to cancel.
The FTC has also attacked the group over its respect for data confidentiality, and last May Amazon agreed to pay more than $30 million over allegations of snooping on its security camera Ring.
The case is hugely symbolic for Khan, who made her name in academia for questioning whether antitrust laws were fit for purpose in the digital age in a paper titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”.
Her celebrated paper was a retort to a seminal work by conservative scholar Robert Bork that said enforcers of fair competition should stand down unless a clear risk of higher prices and a threat to consumers could be proven.
Written in the 1970s, that philosophy guided the government’s attitudes and influenced the judges deciding the biggest cases today.
But US President Joe Biden in 2021 picked Khan to lead the agency in charge of safeguarding the interest of consumers and preserving a level playing field for businesses.
That year Amazon unsuccessfully submitted a complaint to the FTC, asking it to ensure that Khan did not deal with antitrust matters concerning it, criticizing her for a lack of impartiality.
Her track record since taking over the FTC has been checkered after a series of court defeats sowed doubt that she will put an end to decades of Washington’s light-touch approach to antitrust regulation.
In July, Khan was handed her latest loss when a federal court threw out her agency’s objection to Microsoft’s $69 billion buyout of video game giant Activision.
She had suffered an earlier defeat in the same San Francisco courtroom, when a judge said the FTC’s opposition to Facebook-owner Meta buying Within, a VR software company, was out of bounds.
-Insider Paper
California approves home insurance rate hikes to cover supposed risk of ‘climate change’
Image Credit: Shutterstock
California’s insurance regulator approved rate hikes on homeowners to cover the supposed increased risk of wildfires and other damage due to “climate change.”
California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara “will write new rules to let insurers look to the future when setting their rates,” according to the Associated Press.
“We are at a major crossroads on insurance after multiple years of wildfires and storms intensified by the threat of climate change. I am taking immediate action to implement lasting changes that will make Californians safer through a stronger, sustainable insurance market,” Lara stated. “The current system is not working for all Californians, and we must change course. I will continue to partner with all those who want to work toward real solutions.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom said that “climate change is directly threatening our communities and livelihoods.”
The announcement followed a September 21 executive order by Newsom that Lara “take prompt regulatory action to strengthen and stabilize California’s marketplace for homeowners insurance and commercial property insurance, and to consider whether the recent sudden deterioration of the private insurance market presents facts that support emergency regulatory action.”
The state said seven of the 12 largest insurers have “paused or restricted new business” in California, which the insurance department blamed at least partially on the risk of climate change.
Insurance companies can also reward property owners for taking action to mitigate the risk of wildfires.
The rate increase approval drew criticism from a consumer advocacy group – although it wants the state to take stronger action to crack down on the free use of oil, gas and coal.
“While insurance companies have blamed climate change for their demand for higher insurance premiums, raising rates won’t do anything to address the fact that builders have carte blanche to continue building in high-risk wildfire areas,” Consumer Watchdog stated in a news release.
“Consumer Watchdog has recommended establishment of a state land use commission to address this, and that insurance companies be required to insure all homeowners who harden their homes,” the group stated. “In addition, insurers should be required to stop their contributions to climate change through underwriting and investing in fossil fuel projects.”
“Insurers have to be held to task for contributing to climate change by insuring and investing in the fossil fuel industry,” the group’s executive director stated.
However, a conservative commentator pointed out that wildfire damage is more likely due to poor management of the forest and less likely connected to climate change.
“The real catastrophe will be when even more Californians flee the state on the quest for affordable housing,” Leslie Eastman wrote at Legal Insurrection. “The saddest part of this entire idiocy is that the root cause of wildfires is poor land management practices… many of which are based on flawed eco-activism theology.”
A Federalist article drew on academic studies and commentary from land use experts to show that wildfires are being fueled by a decrease in forest management and other basic precautionary measures. Gov. Newsom also signed legislation that cut funding for “wildfire prevention and resource management,” according to The Federalist.
-Matt Lamb, Life Site News
Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks and insurers while building real estate empire
Image Credit: FILE - Former President Donald Trump pauses before ending his remarks at a rally in Summerville, S.C., Sept. 25, 2023. A judge’s ruling that Trump committed fraud as he built his real-estate empire tarnishes the former president’s image as a business titan and could strip him of his authority to make major decisions about the future of his marquee properties in his home state. (AP Photo/Artie Walker Jr., File)
A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House, and he ordered some of the former president’s companies removed from his control and dissolved.
Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans.
Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee Trump Organization operations.
If not successfully appealed, the order would strip Trump of his authority to make strategic and financial decisions over some of his key properties in the state.
Trump, in a series of statements, railed against the decision, calling it “un-American” and part of an ongoing plot to damage his campaign to return to the White House.
“My Civil rights have been violated, and some Appellate Court, whether federal or state, must reverse this horrible, un-American decision,” he wrote on his Truth Social site. He insisted his company had “done a magnificent job for New York State” and “done business perfectly,” calling it “A very sad Day for the New York State System of Justice!”
Trump’s lawyer, Christopher Kise, said they would appeal, calling the decision “completely disconnected from the facts and governing law.”
Engoron’s ruling, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.
Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.
Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.
“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the same conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that aim to disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business.
Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’ lawsuit, but several others remain. He’ll decide on those claims and James’ request for $250 million in penalties at a trial starting Oct. 2. Trump’s lawyers have asked an appeals court for a delay.
“Today, a judge ruled in our favor and found that Donald Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in years of financial fraud,” James said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting the rest of our case at trial.”
Trump’s lawyers, in their own summary judgment bid, had asked the judge to throw out the case, arguing that there wasn’t any evidence the public was harmed by Trump’s actions. They also argued that many of the allegations in the lawsuit were barred by the statute of limitations.
Engoron, noting that he had rejected those arguments earlier in the case, equated them to the plot of the film “Groundhog Day.” He fined five defense lawyers $7,500 each as punishment for “engaging in repetitive, frivolous” arguments, but denied James’ request to sanction Trump and other defendants.
James, a Democrat, sued Trump and the Trump Organization a year ago, accusing them of routinely inflating the value of assets like skyscrapers, golf courses and his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, padding his bottom line by billions.
Engoron found that Trump consistently overvalued Mar-a-Lago, inflating its value on one financial statement by as much as 2,300%. The judge also rebuked Trump for lying about the size of his Manhattan apartment. Trump claimed his three-story Trump Tower penthouse was nearly three times its actual size, valuing it at $327 million.
“A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud,” Engoron wrote.
On X in the wake of the ruling, Eric Trump insisted his father’s claims about Mar-a-Lago were correct, writing that the Palm Beach estate is “speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars making it arguably the most valuable residential property in the country.” He called the ruling and the lawsuit “an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York.”
Under the ruling, limited liability companies that control some of Trump’s key properties, such as 40 Wall Street, will be dissolved and authority over how to run them handed over to a receiver. Trump would lose his authority over whom to hire or fire, whom to rent office space to, and other key decisions.
“The decision seeks to nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property all while acknowledging there is zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm,” Kise said after the decision.
James’ lawsuit is one of several legal headaches for Trump, the Republican front-runner in next year’s election. He has been indicted four times in the last six months — accused in Georgia and Washington, D.C., of plotting to overturn his 2020 election loss, in Florida of hoarding classified documents, and in Manhattan of falsifying business records related to hush money paid on his behalf.
The Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud last year in an unrelated criminal case for helping executives dodge taxes on perks such as apartments and cars. The company was fined $1.6 million. One executive, Trump’s longtime finance chief Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty and served five months in jail.
James’ office previously sued Trump for misusing his charitable foundation to further his political and business interests. Trump was ordered to give $2 million to charity as a fine while his own charity, the Trump Foundation, was shut down.
-Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press
UK BLM co-founder pleads guilty to stealing £30,000 after launching statue of slave trader Edward Colston into Bristol River Frome
23-year-old Xahra Saleem, who co-founded UK BLM group All Black Lives Bristol, pleaded guilty to stealing £30,000 of donations to the group on September 19th, The Times reports.
The group was founded in 2020 to organize a protest surrounding George Floyd, with the statue of 17th-century merchant and slave trader Edward Colston being toppled and rolled into the River Frome on June 7, 2020.
Saleem started a GoFundMe prior to the protest to “cover the costs of the demonstration and pay for PPE to be handed out to protesters amid the Covid-19 pandemic.”She had initially agreed to give the remaining money from the fundraiser to Changing Your Mindset, a youth organization that planned to use the funds to send young underprivileged people on a trip to Africa.
After repeatedly attempting to get the promised funds transferred, the group called the police, who opened an investigation into the BristBLM GoFundMe page.
After being arrested, Saleem initially pleaded not guilty to two counts of fraud, but changed her plea on one charge last week ahead of her trial which was set to take place in December.
Police found two separate online fundraising pages from which money had vanished at the hands of Saleem. The second was called “Bristol Protesters Legal Fees.”
The first charge read that Saleem committed fraud “while occupying a position, namely organiser, in which you were expected to safeguard or not act against the financial interests of ABL Bristol… You dishonestly abused that position intending to make a gain, namely used the funds raised for yourself.”
The second charge alleged that Saleem failed to “safeguard or not act against the financial interests of” Changing Your Mindset, adding that she abused her director position to “make a gain” and that she “namely used the funds raised for yourself.”
-Jessica Barshis, Human Events
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Fury as Republican Rep. Paul Gosar calls for Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley to be 'HUNG' because he is a 'traitor' and 'sodomy-promoting'
Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar is coming in for withering criticism after he called for retiring Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley to be 'hung' after blaming him for the response to January 6 and terming him 'sodomy-promoting.'
Gosar, who was censured and stripped of his committee seats in 2021 after posting a violent animated meme about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but then got them restored when Republicans took back control of the House, issued the attack in a newsletter titled 'This Week with Gosar' that he posted on his official House account.
Gosar made the attack after stringing together bits of information on the days before January 6, including early warnings that 'bad actors were planning to cause problems,' and then blaming Milley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the prolonged mayhem at the Capitol. He accused them without evidence of conspiring to delay a security response.
'After the riot was in full swing, the Chief's request for National Guard was finally approved. But even after approval was given, General Milley, the homosexual-promoting-BLM-activist Chairman of the military joint chiefs, delayed,' Gosar claimed, using the acronym for Black Lives Matter.
Image Credit: Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) posted that in a 'better society,' people like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley 'would be hung' (Getty Images)
He accused Milley, who steps down Sept. 30 after a long military career, of 'coordinating' with Pelosi to 'hurt' Trump, and calls his conduct 'deviant' and 'treasonous.'
'In a better society, quislings like the strange sodomy-promoting General Milley would be hung,' he writes in his newsletter for constituents.
His attacks come after a report in the Atlantic that when Trump offered Milley the job in 2019, he told him former Defense Secretary James Mattis 'says your soft on transgenders.'
Trump announced a ban on transgender military service that President Biden reversed.
The profile, headlined 'The Patriot,' tells 'How General Mark Milley protected the Constitution from Donald Trump.'
Gosar appeared to be echoing a post by Trump on Friday that also referenced Milley's execution.
Image Credit: Milley is set to step down from his post at the end of the week at a formal ceremony. (AFP via Getty Images)
Image Credit: Milley apologized after he attended a photo-op with former President Trump in his military uniform amid protests over the death of George Floyd. (AFP via Getty Images)
Image Credit: President Donald Trump shakes hands with Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley before addressing the troops at Bagram Air Field during a surprise Thanksgiving day visit, on November 28, 2019 in Afghanistan. (AFP via Getty Images)
Image Credit: Gosar blamed Milley for the response to January 6. (AP)
Trump referenced the Atlantic profile, which also described Milley's efforts to reassure China following the attack on the Capitol.
'This guy turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!' Trump posted.
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling blasted the attack in an appearance on CNN, calling the comments 'disgusting' and saying it 'shows how deeply disturbed both of these individuals are.'
'It just shows the extent to which these kinds of things have become commonplace and not condemned in our divided country,' he said.
The Washington Post reported that Milley phoned the Chinese to provide reassurances of the stability of the government during the transition and that it was 'authorized by Trump administration officials at the time.'
Also going after Trump for the comments was former solicitor general during the Obama administration Neal Katyal.
'I don't think that Mr. Bone Spurs is in any position to criticize any member of our military, let alone a war hero like Gen. Milley,' Katyal told MSNBC, in a reference to Trump's deferrals from the military draft during the Vietnam era.
Trump's attack comes as federal judge Tanya Chutkan is weighing prosecutors' request for a partial gag order on Trump after attacks on potential witnesses. Milley is a potential witness both in Trump's January 6 case in Washington and a separate classified documents case in Georgia.
Author Jeffrey Goldberg in the profile writes that: 'Milley has told friends that he expects that if Trump returns to the White House, the newly elected president will come after him. "He'll start throwing people in jail, and I'd be on the top of the list," he has said.'
Milley is the highest-ranking U.S. military officer. He received his commission from Army ROTC after attending Princeton University, and deployed to Afghanistan as commanding general of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command and Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Forces Afghanistan.
-Geoff Earle, Daily Mail
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Hunter Biden received $250K wires originating in Beijing with beneficiary address listed as Joe Biden's home
EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden received wires that originated in Beijing for more than $250,000 from Chinese business partners during the summer of 2019 — wires that listed the Delaware home of Joe Biden as the beneficiary address for the funds, Fox News Digital has learned from a congressional committee.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has been investigating the Biden family business dealings and President Biden’s alleged involvement in those ventures.
As part of the investigation, Comer subpoenaed financial records related to a specific bank account and received records of two wires originating from Beijing and linked to BHR Partners.
BHR Partners is a joint-venture between Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital. BHR Partners is a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited. Hunter Biden reportedly sat on the board of directors of BHR Partners.
Image Credit: Joe and Hunter Biden (AP Photo / Andrew Harnik / File)
The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.
The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.
The beneficiary for the wires is listed as Robert Hunter Biden with the address "1209 Barley Mill Rd." in Wilmington, Delaware. That address is the main residence for President Biden.
Comer and the House Oversight Committee have obtained bank records as part of their investigation, alleging that the Biden family and their business associates received millions of dollars from oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Kazakhstan during the Obama administration.
Fox News Digital has also learned that the committee has records that allegedly reveal that from 2014 to 2019 the Biden family and their associates received $24 million in foreign payments — $15 million to the Bidens and $9 million for their business associates, $4 million more than previously known.
Committee aides told Fox News Digital that beneficiary addresses are either the address listed to the recipient account or listed by the individual sending the wire. It is unclear, based on the wire records, who listed the address.
Image Credit: President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden (Drew Angerer / Getty Images / File)
Hunter Biden spent time in 2017, 2018 and 2019 living at the Biden family home in Wilmington. It is unclear if he was living at the home at the time of the wire transfers in July and August 2019.
The wires were sent just several months after then-Vice President Joe Biden announced his 2020 presidential campaign. Joe Biden, in August 2019, said he "never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their business, period."
As for Jonathan Li, according to testimony from Hunter Biden’s former business associate, Devon Archer, as part of the House Oversight Committee’s investigation, Joe Biden sat down for coffee in Beijing with the CEO of BHR. Archer also testified that Biden wrote a college recommendation letter for Li’s daughter to Georgetown. Archer said Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone for at least one call with Li in addition to meeting for coffee.
Separately, Fox News Digital first reported in 2022 that Biden wrote a college recommendation letter for Li's son to Brown University.
Image Credit: Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., arrives for a House Oversight Committee hearing, Sept. 13, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images)
"Bank records don’t lie, but President Joe Biden does," Comer told Fox News Digital.
"In 2020, Joe Biden told Americans that his family never received money from China. We’ve already proved that to be a lie earlier this year, and now we know that two wires originating from Beijing listed Joe Biden’s Wilmington home as the beneficiary address when he was running for president of the United States. When Joe Biden was vice president, he spoke on the phone and had coffee with Jonathan Li in Beijing and later wrote a college letter of recommendation for his children," Comer said.
"Joe Biden’s abuse of public office for his family’s financial gain threatens our national security. What did the Bidens do with this money from Beijing? Americans demand and deserve accountability for President Biden and the first family’s corruption. The Oversight Committee, along with the Judiciary and Ways and Means committees, will continue to follow the evidence and money to provide transparency and accountability."
Despite Hunter Biden receiving more than a quarter of a million dollars in the summer of 2019 from BHR-linked individuals, in October 2019, then-attorney for Hunter Biden, George Mesires, explained Hunter’s role at the company by saying he "served only as a member of the board of directors, which he joined based on his interest in seeking ways to bring Chinese capital to international markets."
"It was an unpaid position," Mesires said on Oct. 13, 2019. "In October 2017, Hunter committed to invest approximately $420,000 USD (as of 10/12/2019) to acquire a 10% equity position in BHR, which he still holds. To date, Hunter has not received any compensation for being on BHR’s board of directors. He has not received any return on his investment; there have been no distributions to BHR shareholders since Hunter obtained his equity interest."
Hunter resigned from the board of BHR at the end of October 2019.
The White House, attorneys for Hunter Biden and Mesires did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. The White House maintains that the president was "never in business with his son."
The subpoenaed financial records come amid House Republicans' impeachment inquiry investigation against President Biden.
-Brooke Singman, Fox News
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Ted Cruz: "The Odds Are Very Significant" That Michelle Obama Will Replace Biden
Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
GOP Senator Ted Cruz has speculated that Joe Biden will not be chosen as the Democratic nominee for 2024 and that the distinction will go to none other than Michelle Obama in a last minute Democratic National Convention decision.
“I think the odds are very significant that next summer at the Democrat national convention that the Democrat party will jettison Joe Biden and will throw him off the ticket, and they will parachute in instead, Michelle Obama to be their candidate,” Cruz told Sean Hannity.
“I think they’re gonna look to Michelle Obama as the savior to come in,” Cruz continued, adding “I think if that happens, that would be very, very dangerous.”
“And every time I see a Democrat or one of their puppets in the press beginning to point out the problems with Joe Biden – every time that happens, the chances of that go up and up and up,” Cruz added.
When Hannity asked if Michelle Obama even wants to run, Cruz reasoned that there are no other candidates that wouldn’t alienate certain Democratic voters.
Referring to Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom, and Pete Buttigieg, Cruz noted that “If the Democrats pick any of those four, you tick off the other three and risk alienating their supporters.”
He continued, “I think Michelle Obama brings the Obama pedigree. She parachutes in with also the suit of armor of a First Lady with high positives and relatively low negatives. And I think they can justify to everyone who gets snubbed, ‘Well, look, we went with Michelle Obama instead.’”
“I don’t know if she wants it. But I do think it would be much more attractive to her to come in next summer and just campaign a couple of months to the general rather than having to spend two years campaigning vigorously on the ground,” the Senator further suggested.
Cruz floated the idea on his podcast last week:
-Tyler Durden, Zerohedge
Maxine Waters: Republicans Are Not Patriots; They Want to ‘Destroy America!’
Unhinged California Democrat Maxine Waters claimed during a recent appearance on MSNBC that Republicans are not patriots and that they want to “destroy America.”
As inflation soars under Biden, causing economic suffering to many Americans as the border remains wide open, Waters appeared oblivious to these facts, and instead blamed Republicans.
Has Waters looked at her district lately?
As Red State reported:
Few — if any — lawmakers on Capitol Hill are as wack as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). Not only does the far-left Democrat spin absurd, hateful yarns, intentionally dripping with divisive language, but I’m also convinced that she actually believes every distortion that comes out of her mouth.
During an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart,” Mad Max was at her ‘best.” In response to Capehart’s faux attempt to catastrophize a budget proposal from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to cut federal spending by “as much as 23 percent,” Waters reacted angrily.
“Oh, absolutely. When you take a look at what they’re doing, it shows, you know, that the Republicans have claimed patriotism — claimed that they love this country,” Waters said.
“They don’t care. If they will allow seniors and veterans not to be able to get their disability check [sic], for example, they don’t care…”
RedState’s Mike Miller had a couple of questions, Congresswoman:
“Please explain to me how taking money from hardworking Americans and giving it to people who didn’t earn it is patriotic.
And while you’re at it, please explain what the heck you’re talking about with respect to the Republican Party planning to deny seniors and veterans their social security checks.”
Watch
The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart
Earlier this year, Maxine Waters was more broad in her attack on Republicans, claiming right-wing conservatives in the House of Representatives are “domestic terrorists.”
“These people are extremists, so I am not optimistic that that is the way that it is going to happen until the people of this country really decide that they do not want it, and they are not going to elect people who act in the way that they act,” Waters said.
On Monday, Water also said she doesn’t have any plans to “save” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) if Republicans opt to vote to oust him.
“I cannot speak up at the leadership. And I think Chairman Jeffries has said, let’s see what happens,” Waters began.
“But I for one, I’m not prepared to save him. Not at all. Not with the cuts that they’re proposing,” Waters said.
“They are devastating this country. They are undermining children veterans, and seniors with the kind of cuts that they’re proposing. And they’re literally almost eliminating education in this country,” she said.
Waters’s remarks came amid the GOP sparring over government spending, which is set to run out by the end of the month if Congress does not pass a spending bill.
“No, he’s pathetic to the fact that we know that not only is he begging on his knees, the other day he cursed and said, you know, to his people, ‘All right,” she said.
“If you’re not going to support me, put a motion up to get rid of me,'” Waters said.
“Vacate the chair. What are you going to do?’ He doesn’t know what he’s doing. It is more than pathetic.”
“And for those who are following the Republican Party, those who belong to the Republican Party, they should be very concerned about what the Republican Party is doing to this country and to this government.”
-Jason Walsh, The Daily Fetched
Korea on ‘brink of nuclear war,’ North warns UN
Image Credit: Pixabay
North Korea told the United Nations on Tuesday that the peninsula was at risk of nuclear war, as it blamed what it called hostility by the United States.
Speaking on the same day that UN chief Antonio Guterres warned of a new nuclear arms race, North Korea said that US actions over the past year have driven the peninsula “closer to the brink of a nuclear war.”
Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the United Nations, denounced South Korea’s actions under President Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative who has worked to build tighter cooperation with Washington as well as historic rival Japan.
“Due to its sycophantic and humiliating policy of depending on outside forces,” Kim said in a speech to the General Assembly, “the Korean peninsula is in a hair-trigger situation with imminent danger of nuclear war breakout.”
He pointed to the recent formation of the Nuclear Consultative Group, through which the United States hopes to integrate its nuclear capacity better with South Korea’s conventional forces, with the two allies increasing information sharing and contingency planning.
Kim said the group was “committed to the planning, operation and execution of a preemptive nuclear strike against the DPRK,” the official name of the North, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“The US is now moving on to the practical stage of realizing its sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war by frequently dispatching strategic nuclear submarines and strategic nuclear bombers carrying nuclear weapons in and around the Korean peninsula for the first time in decades,” he said.
North Korea has triggered condemnation from the United States, Japan and South Korea through a series of defiant missile tests.
President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly said that it is open to dialogue with North Korea without preconditions, but Pyongyang has shown no interest to working-level talks.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump held three historic in-person meetings with the totalitarian state’s leader Kim Jong Un, succeeding in reducing tensions but not producing any lasting agreement.
-Insider Paper
The US Military Is Laying the Groundwork to Reinstitute the Draft
The most recent edition of the US Army War College’s academic journal includes a highly disturbing essay on what lessons the US military should take away from the continuing war in Ukraine. By far the most concerning and most relevant section for the average American citizen is a subsection entitled “Casualties, Replacements, and Reconstitutions” which, to cut right to the chase, directly states, “Large-scale combat operations troop requirements may well require a reconceptualization of the 1970s and 1980s volunteer force and a move toward partial conscription.”
An Industrial War of Attrition Would Require Vast Numbers of Troops
The context for this supposed need to reinstate conscription is the estimate that were the US to enter into a large-scale conflict, every day it would likely suffer thirty-six hundred casualties and require eight hundred replacements, again per day. The report notes that over the course of twenty years in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US suffered fifty thousand casualties, a number which would likely be reached in merely two weeks of large-scale intensive combat.
The military is already facing an enormous recruiting shortfall. Last year the army alone fell short of its goal by fifteen thousand soldiers and is on track to be short an additional twenty thousand this year. On top of that, the report notes that the Individual Ready Reserve, which is composed of former service personnel who do not actively train and drill but may be called back into active service in the event they are needed, has dropped from seven hundred thousand in 1973 to seventy-six thousand now.
Prior to the Ukraine war, the fad theory in military planning was the idea of “hybrid warfare,” where the idea of giant state armies clashing on the battlefield requiring and consuming vast amounts of men and material was viewed as out of date as massed cavalry charges. Instead, these theorists argued that even when states did fight, it would be via proxies and special operations and would look more like the past twenty years of battling nonstate actors in the hills of Afghanistan. In a recent essay in the Journal of Security Studies, realist scholar Patrick Porter documents the rise of this theory and the fact that it is obviously garbage given the return of industrial wars of attrition.
As military planners have woken up from the fevered dream of imagining that modern war consisted of chasing the Taliban through the hills with complete and overwhelming airpower, they have similarly started to wake up to the idea that industrial war has vast manpower requirements and that seemingly the only way to fill these requirements is by forcing young people into the ranks. That has certainly been the only way Ukraine has been able to maintain its forces, although it has required increasingly draconian measures to do so as conscripts face attrition rates of 80 to 90 percent by Ukraine’s own admission.
Obviously, the reintroduction of conscription is an extremely disturbing prospect given America’s propensity for getting involved in meaningless wars that accomplish nothing other than empowering our enemies, killing and maiming our soldiers, and wasting vast resources.
This is especially true given the unstated assumptions implicit in this paper. Who is the enemy that would be inflicting thirty-six hundred casualties a day? A war in the Pacific against China would primarily be a naval and airpower war with an extremely limited role for the army (even the current inept regime seems unlikely to be stupid enough to try and wage a land war against China) which obviously leaves Russia as the main adversary that would require the US Army to round up conscripts to feed into the attritional meat grinder.
There Is No American National Interest That Requires a Standing Army
However, while these manpower shortages may be a valid concern for someplace like Russia, Ukraine, or Poland, we here in the US are quite fortunate that we have no compelling national interest that would require us to engage in an industrial war of attrition in Eastern Europe.
To the extent we are at risk of becoming involved in such a disastrous mess, it is entirely of our own doing via the entangling alliance known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and our leader’s own messianic gnostic crusades for democracy or whatever pseudo religious ideology is presently in vogue.
The US is blessed as being the most secure power in history. We are the hegemon of the western hemisphere, with vast moats in the form of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans that no other state has the capability to project military force across, and all our neighbors are weak and relatively friendly. We are not at any risk of being forced to fight an industrial land war on the home front. Any war the army would be used in would be as an expeditionary force fighting in the eastern hemisphere, where we have no compelling defensive need to do so.
From the beginning of the US, there have been warnings against the dangers of both entangling alliances and standing armies. The best solution to the military recruitment crisis is to simply abolish the standing army and not plan to wage a costly and pointless war on the other side of the planet that would result in trillions of dollars down the drain and who knows how many tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans being killed, maimed, and psychologically scarred.
-Zachary Yost, Infowars
Ukraine’s new US-made tanks will burn – Kremlin
The American M1 Abrams tanks recently delivered to Kiev will hardly make a difference on the front lines, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. The newly arrived armor will merely suffer the same fate as the rest of the Western equipment delivered to Ukraine, he added.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky confirmed on Monday the first delivery of Abrams tanks, citing the nation’s Defense Ministry. Washington pledged back in January to hand over a total of 31 such tanks to Kiev.
“The Abrams tanks are some serious weapons,” Peskov admitted, while talking to journalists. He then cited President Vladimir Putin, who, according to his spokesman, said that other Western-made tanks were “readily burning.” “These will burn too,” Peskov added.
In July, roughly a month after the start of Kiev’s much touted counteroffensive, Putin told the Russian media that the Western tanks were burning even more quickly than Soviet-made ones, making the Ukrainian crews reluctant to use them.
The tanks supplied to Ukraine at that time mostly consisted of German-made Leopards, but also British-made Challengers and French light AMX 10 wheeled tanks. Such vehicles were “a top priority target for our guys and are being destroyed first on the battlefield,” Putin said in July, adding that “they burn like the rest – probably even better than… the Soviet-made ones like T-72.”
Since the start of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in early June, the Russian military has repeatedly published photos and videos of destroyed Ukrainian military equipment, including Western-made hardware. Clips showing the destruction and capture of German-made Leopard tanks and at least two British Challengers have since been made public.
According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s latest estimates, Ukraine has lost more than 17,000 soldiers and over 2,700 pieces of hardware in its counteroffensive in September alone. The operation has failed to bring about any major changes to the front lines in four months since being launched despite the heavy casualties suffered by Ukrainian forces.
On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian officials themselves know that the Abrams tanks will not be a game changer on the battlefield.
-RT News
Watch here:
Death toll soars to 125 in Nagorno-Karabakh blast
At least 125 people were killed in Monday’s explosion at a fuel depot in Nagorno-Karabakh, according to Armenian media reports on Tuesday. The blast took place as tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians fled the region ahead of its takeover by Azerbaijan.
The remains of 125 people were transported to Armenia on Monday, Pan Armenian News reported, citing Health Minister Anahit Avanesian. Initial reports following the blast put the death toll at 29, with almost 300 injured and an unknown number missing.
Located on a highway near the self-declared regional capital of Stepanakert (known as Khankendi in Azerbaijan), the fuel depot exploded on Monday as crowds of people queued to fill their vehicles. Video footage from the scene showed widespread devastation, with a thick plume of oily black smoke towering into the sky over the destroyed facility.
The blast came almost a week after secessionist leaders in Nagorno-Karabakh surrendered to the Azerbaijani military following a day-long assault characterized by Baku as “counter-terrorism measures.” Under the terms of the surrender, Nagorno-Karabakh will be returned to Azerbaijani control, almost three decades after the enclave won quasi-independence following a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan in 1994.
Fearing ethnic cleansing under Baku’s control, tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians have fled the region following the ceasefire. As of Tuesday evening, 28,120 of Nagorno-Karabakh’s 120,000 Armenians – or almost a quarter of the province’s population – had entered Armenia, according to authorities in Yerevan.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to ensure that the human rights of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian population are protected under his rule. Aliyev has promised to do so, but has previously referred to Aremenians as “not even worthy of being servants,” and is considered a human rights abuser by Western observers.
-RT News
Watch here:
OUTRAGE: Maine high school slips antidepressant ZOLOFT into student’s secret take-home baggie, then calls CPS on dad for finding out and complaining about it
A taxpayer-funded health clinic operating within Lawrence High School in Fairfield, Me., is reportedly secretly drugging its students with antidepressants without telling their parents about it – and if you say anything about it, the school might call Child Protective Services (CPS) on you.
This is what allegedly happened to Eric Sack, the father of a girl who attends Lawrence High School. The child was reportedly sent home with a secret baggy filled with prescription antidepressant drugs like Zoloft that came from the school's Bulldog Health Center, which is a federally funded School Based Health Center (SBHC).
When Sack discovered the pills, he immediately addressed this affront to his parental rights by contacting Lawrence High School Principal Dan Bowers to complain about the undisclosed drug treatment protocol the school prescribed to his daughter without his consent.
Bowers told Sack that he is not responsible for what happened because the SBHC is a separate entity from the school that is not under his control, even though it operates on school property and provides health care services for the school's students.
(Related: Did you know that CPS has kidnapped children whose parents refused to vaccinate them in accordance with the government's official childhood vaccine schedule?)
Refusing to allow strangers to drug your children is now considered "child abuse"
Representatives from the Bulldog Health Center, which is operated by the Waterville-based HealthReach Community Health Centers, told Sack that they are legally allowed to prescribe whatever they want to Lawrence High School students, and that they do not have to tell parents about it.
Sack was further told by the rep that the Bulldog Health Center is also not responsible for not putting a proper safety label on the drug baggie, which was taken home to a household with two other young children who could have found it and taken the drugs, potentially poisoning or killing them.
In response to all this, Sack decided to pull his daughter out of the public school and get her in to see a doctor and a therapist.
"I'm looking out for the best interests of my daughter," Sack said. "That's why I pulled her out of school. Because I don't think she really ought to be there if they're going to start giving her pills, you know? Until I sit down with a doctor that I pick for my daughter, not through the school."
As punishment for Sack doing this, someone from either the school or the health clinic contacted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Child and Family Services (CFS), which is part of the division of Maine's state government tasked with investigating allegations of child abuse.
An agent from Child Protective Services (CPS) also ended up calling Sack as well to inform him that an agent would soon be arriving for a "surprise" visit to conduct a child welfare investigation.
"They called and said it was an emergency situation at my house, that I was pretty near holding my daughter hostage, is what the gentleman that came yesterday told me," Sack said. "He had information that only the school and Bulldog Health Center had."
As promised, CPS Agent Dylan Wood showed up at Sack's home and grilled him and his family for three hours, including asking them if there were any firearms inside the home. In the end, Wood realized that Sack had done nothing wrong, and that someone had simply called CPS and CFS as retribution from him exercising his parental rights.
Parents: If you love your children, then get them out of government-run schools immediately. Learn more at Homeschooling.news.
-Ethan Huff, News Target