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MARCH 7,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT:

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE – FROM NATIONAL PULSE:    Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and her appointees have repeatedly met with and hosted leaders from a leading organization in the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front.  The United Front functions as China’s premier influence and propaganda organization, raising flags with the U.S. government’s Economic and Security Review Commission.  It seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and coerce American leaders “to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies.”  What’s more, the State Department has described the group as seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.  Despite these warnings, Bowser and her appointees repeatedly met with the United Front’s Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). The group, led by the daughter of a former Chinese Communist Party paramount leader, is the “public face” of the United Front and “avowedly an arm of the party-state.”  This is the mayor of our capital city, and, if the radical leftists get their way, our next state.  This association requires a major congressional investigation, but it will never happen. 

OUR ENEMIES ARE LAUGHING – FROM FOX:   Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has called for an investigation into a Baltimore High School after a local investigation found scores of students at the school are failing.  A senior at Augusta Fells Savage (AFS) Institute of Visual Arts failed all but three classes over four years and still graduated at the top half of his class with a 0.13 GPA, according to a Fox 45 Baltimore report published earlier this week.  "This is something I’m going to ask the inspector general to immediately look into. They have to get to the bottom of this and find out who’s responsible," Hogan told the outlet on Thursday.  He added that the report was "far worse than anything" he has "heard in the whole time" he has been governor.  Tiffany France, the mother of the failing student, thought her son would be receiving his diploma in June but was surprised to discover that he is being sent back to the ninth grade to start over.  Just the tip of the iceberg.  And don't think there'll be any real improvement.  The failures will be blamed on "racist" tests, and "consultants" will be brought in to paper over the real problems.  The losers:  black students.  The winners:  the education industry.

March 7, 2021       Permalink

TIME TO GO, BOYS – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:  Two Democratic governors are in deep trouble, and each day brings worse news.   It's such agony for us, isn't it?  From Fox: 

On Sunday, one of the most powerful Democrat lawmakers in New York issued a statement calling for Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been ensnared by two major scandals, to resign from office.

Cuomo is facing multiple allegations of sexual harassment and a federal probe into his administration’s tally on COVID-19 deaths tied to nursing homes.

State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a Democrat from Yonkers, said in a statement that the allegations are "drawing away from the business of government."

"New York is still in the midst of the pandemic and is still facing the societal, health and economic impacts of it [the virus]," she said. "We need to govern without daily distraction. For the good of the state Governor Cuomo must resign."

The Associated Press, citing an unnamed source, reported that Cuomo had a brief phone conversation with Stewart-Cousins and told her that he would not quit and that if they want him out of office, they would need to impeach him.

Since the statement from Stewart-Cousins, more lawmakers from the state have stepped forward and are calling for his resignation.

According to a tally from Fox News, a total of 37 lawmakers from either the Assembly or state Senate want him to resign, and 10 have called for impeachment.

To impeach the sitting governor, the Assembly needs a majority vote in the 150-member body, and the state Senate—where there would be a conviction—would need a two-thirds majority of court members that would consist of both senators and judges from the state’s court of appeals.

And on the other coast, also from Fox: 

The petition to recall California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has collected 1.95 million signatures just days ahead of the final deadline to qualify for a statewide ballot.

The announcement from Recall Gavin 2020 came on Sunday in Sacramento, across the street from the California State Capitol.

Orrin Heatlie, the founder of the California Patriot Coalition-Recall Gavin Newsom 2020, said the campaign is still aiming to get an additional number of signatures "in order to bridge that 2 million mark."

To qualify for a ballot, the campaign was required to collect 1.5 million signatures but wanted to collect upwards of 2 million to compensate for invalidated signatures.

Randy Economy, Senior Advisor to Recall Gavin Newsom 2020 told Fox News that the campaign has confirmed a validation rate of 82%.

The deadline for organizers to submit signatures is on March 17. If the effort succeeds, a recall election would likely occur later this year

"One thing we want to let everybody know here, especially to the politicians across the street and the lobbyists that have destroyed California’s dream for decades and generations is that your game’s over," Economy said. "From now on, the people are in charge of California."

COMMENT:  A recall election in California is quite likely, but the outcome is in doubt.  Many California political observers believe that Newsom could win the recall election.  The Democratic Party is heavily dominant in the state, and is made up of interest groups who know the Democrats will write the checks to them that the Republicans won't.  A tough climb for us, but political miracles do happen.

In New York, don't assume all those calling for Cuomo to resign are good-government types.  Many are from the extremist wing of the Democratic Party, and simply want a white, male governor out of office.  

The months leading up to the 2022 midterms will be packed with political action.

March 7, 2021       Permalink

MARCH 6,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

AMERICA'S GOVERNOR – FROM FOX:    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s "rage & vindictiveness" have made former staffers "fearful to speak" about him as more accusations of sexual misconduct piled up against the Democrat, a reporter claimed Saturday night.  Shortly after two new bombshell stories about Cuomo appeared Saturday evening, a reporter who helped write one of them posted on Twitter that in a 10-year career she has never seen sources as frightened of potential retribution as former staffers of Cuomo appeared to be.  "I’ve been a reporter for a decade now, and I don’t think I have ever heard people as fearful to speak about someone as they are about Gov. Andrew Cuomo," Amy Brittain of The Washington Post wrote as she tweeted out the newspaper’s latest story on the embattled governor.  "Former staffers described his rage & vindictiveness & said they feared he would destroy their careers," she added.  In the Post story – for which Brittain shares a byline with journalists Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles and Tracy Jan (and three other contributors) – a former Cuomo press aide named Karen Hinton describes having been invited into a hotel room and embraced by the governor before she pulled away from him and left.  The same article adds that two male aides claimed Cuomo frequently berated them with harsh language and questioned their manhood.
All of the allegations in the article were denied by current Cuomo aides, with one referring to Hinton as a "known antagonist of the Governor’s" and the other saying he had "never" heard Cuomo use "coarse language."  The Post article also says former staffers contend Cuomo has a "Jekyll-and-Hyde" personality – charming at times and raging with anger at others.  And we're expected to believe that no liberal journalist knew anything about this man before women started coming forward.  But they naturally knew everything about Donald Trump.  Freedom of the press means nothing if we cannot trust the press.

SOME COURAGE MAYBE? – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Theodor Geisel’s works as Dr. Seuss are going down the memory hole, scorned by his own descendants, after a relatively short pressure campaign branding them racist.  But at least the otherwise progressive author hasn’t suffered the ultimate insult from an institution of higher education.  Dartmouth College has “no plans to revisit the use of the Geisel name on campus,” Diana Lawrence, associate vice president for communications, wrote in a campuswide email cited by Inside Higher Ed. “We continue to explore opportunities to contextualize and educate from this chapter of the Geisel legacy.”  Its Geisel School of Medicine is named for Geisel and his wife Audrey and will remain that way, at least for now. Lawrence shows the common sense that’s often missing in higher education – that a few views deemed objectionable decades later shouldn’t cancel a person’s lasting accomplishment.  Of course not.  And if Dartmouth caved and removed Geisel's name?  How would that help the education of one black child?  And why don't we hear that question asked more often?

March 6, 2021       Permalink

THE TRAGIC DIVIDE – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:  The trial of the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis starts Monday.  The Floyd death sparked the series of riots and "demonstrations" that we saw last year, and triggered the "national discussion on race" that accompanied it, a discussion in which almost everyone who is white was assumed to be a racist.  Not a great starting point.

Has the discussion led to greater racial understanding?  Are you kidding?  From USA Today:

Americans' trust in the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen and their faith in local law enforcement has risen since protests demanding social justice swept the nation last year, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll.

The debate over the intersection of racism and policing will be in the spotlight again as jury selection opens Monday in the Minneapolis trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide marches last year.

The survey finds complicated and shifting views about Chauvin's actions and broader questions of race. On many issues, there is a chasm in the perspective between Black people and white people.

Last June, 60% in a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll described Floyd's death as murder; that percentage has now dropped by double digits to 36%. Uncertainty has grown about how to characterize the incident, caught on video, when Chauvin held his knee on Floyd's neck and ignored his protests that he couldn't breathe. Last year, 4% said they didn't know how to describe it; that number has climbed to 17%.

"There were eight minutes that the officer could have made a different decision, and he willfully held a man," said Valda Pugh, a 67-year-old retiree from Louisville who is Black. She was among those surveyed. "It was a murder. It was willful – maybe not premeditated. Nonetheless, the young man died."

Kevin Hayworth, 66, of Garner, Iowa, who is white, disagreed. "I think it was a police officer doing his job," he said in a follow-up phone interview. "It was just a tragedy, but I think he was within the limits of his duty of jurisdiction." 

Reckless disregard for human life or tragic accident? Derek Chauvin goes on trial, charged with murder of George Floyd.

Primer:George Floyd's brutal death sparked a racial justice reckoning. One officer involved goes on trial this month. What you should know.

Nearly two-thirds of Black Americans, 64%, view Floyd's death as murder; fewer than one-third of white people, 28%, feel that way. White Americans are more likely to describe it instead as the police officer's "negligence," 33% compared with 16% of Black respondents.

That said, Americans who have heard at least something about Chauvin's trial say 4 to 1, or 60%-15%, that they hope Chauvin is convicted. That included 54% of white Americans and 76% of Black Americans.

The online poll of 1,165 adults, taken Monday and Tuesday, has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

COMMENT:  Now, through a trial, we may actually get some facts.  We certainly want a full autopsy report.  We certainly want to know why the officer's knee stayed where it was...and was it actually on the deceased man's neck?

There is police misconduct.  No one seriously denies that.  That's why police departments have internal affairs divisions.  But there are also false charges, rushes to judgment, and overheated "news" reports.

March 6, 2021       Permalink