Author: J.P. Knowles

Right-wing politicians in Spain slammed President Joe Biden’s proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Monday and refused to apologize for the barbaric acts committed when the country colonized the Americas starting in 1492. Spain’s colonial expansion into the Americas was characterized as “the most important event in history after the Roman empire,” by Pablo Casado, leader of the conservative People’s Party, on the eve of the country’s holiday honoring Christopher Columbus.

“Does the kingdom of Spain have to apologize because five centuries ago it discovered the New World, respected those who were there, created universities, created prosperity, built entire cities?” Casado asked in a video posted to Twitter. “I don’t think so.”

Monday Biden proclaimed Columbus Day to simultaneously be Indigenous Peoples Day. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society,” the proclamation said.

Vice President Kamala Harris claimed Columbus’ arrival to the Americas led to “a wave of devastation” for Native Americans in remarks at the National Congress of American Indians 78th annual convention.

Columbus enslaved native people after finding the New World, and at least one member of his crew recorded the rape of an indigenous woman.

“He has just attacked the great masterpiece of the Spanish conquest: the evangelisation,” Santiago Abascal, leader of the conservative Vox party, said, BBC News reported. He also denounced Biden as “the lamentable president of the United States.”

“How proud we can feel about what our ancestors did,” he said, calling Spanish colonies “the empire of human rights.”

Spain continues to have close ties with Latin America, however many former colonies believe that Spain has not acknowledged the human rights atrocities it committed, BBC News reported. In September, Pope Francis spoke of the “personal and social sins” cultivated by the Catholic Church in Mexico during the conquest.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agreed with the pope’s message and has called on Spain to apologize for its past behavior as an imperial power, BBC News reported.

U.S. District Judge David Hurd granted a statewide preliminary injunction Tuesday in favor of 17 New York health care workers who had filed for religious exemptions to the state’s COVID-19 mandate.

The federal judge’s injunction will temporarily bar New York State from requiring employers to terminate medical workers who are seeking a religious exemption to the state’s mandate.

“The question presented by this case is not whether plaintiffs and other individuals are entitled to a religious exemption from the State’s workplace vaccination requirement,” Hurd wrote.

“Instead, the question is whether the State’s summary imposition of [the mandate] conflicts with plaintiffs’ and other individuals’ federally protected right to seek a religious accommodation from their individual employers,” he continued, adding, “The answer to this question is clearly yes.”

Hurd allowed room for an appeal, writing, “Because the issues in dispute are of exceptional importance to the health and the religious freedoms of our citizens, an appeal may very well be appropriate.”

On Aug. 27 the New York State Department of Health issued an emergency regulation mandating that most healthcare workers must have received the COVID-19 vaccination by Sept. 27 or face termination. On Sept. 14, lawyers from the Thomas More Society filed a suit on behalf of 17 Roman Catholic and Baptist medical workers, alleging discrimination and constitutional violation.

“With this decision the court rightly recognized that yesterday’s ‘front line heroes’ in dealing with COVID cannot suddenly be treated as disease-carrying villains and kicked to the curb by the command of a state health bureaucracy,” said Special Counsel Christopher Ferrera, representative for the plaintiffs in the case.

“Some of these plaintiffs contracted COVID while treating patients, recovered, and were allowed to return to work with the same protective measures that were good enough for the 18 months that they were the heroes in the battle against the virus. There is no ‘science’ to show that these same measures are suddenly inadequate – especially when they are allowed for those with medical exemptions,” he added.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., maintained her support of the mandate in a Tuesday statement about the order.

“My responsibility as Governor is to protect the people of this state, and requiring health care workers to get vaccinated accomplishes that,” she said. “I stand behind this mandate, and I will fight this decision in court to keep New Yorkers safe.”

President Joe Biden said Thursday he reached out himself to a hospital the night before to make sure the wife of his “good friend” received immediate care because the “waiting room was so crowded.”

“Last night, I was on the telephone with a person at an emergency hospital ward in Pennsylvania because a good friend had called, and he had rushed his significant other to the emergency room because this woman was having trouble breathing, had a high fever, and could not catch her breath,” Biden said during a speech in Illinois promoting COVID-19 vaccine mandates for businesses. “They got her into the hospital. The waiting room was so crowded, things were so backed up they couldn’t even get her to be seen initially. So, because I knew this person, I called. I called the desk receiving nurse and asked what the situation was.”

“To make a long story short, it took a while because all of the – not all – the vast majority of the emergency rooms and docs were occupied taking care of COVID patients,” Biden added. “I bet every one of you can name somebody who got sent to the hospital with something other than COVID and couldn’t get it taken care of.”

Biden claimed he “wasn’t complaining” when he made the call because doctors and nurses working in overcrowded hospitals are “getting the living hell kicked out of them, sometimes physically.”

Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there is finally a decline in daily COVID-19 deaths following a two-month increase to mid-September.

A seven-day moving average indicates a 12% decline over the last two weeks, from 1,630 on Sept. 21 to 1,428 on Oct. 5, according to the latest figures. Even still, the number of COVID-19 deaths passed surpassed 700,000.

Earlier this week Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. pled guilty to all six misdemeanor-level charges, including willfully defying a superior commissioned officer, dereliction in the performance of his job as well as his conduct being determined as unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

But what the media doesn’t want you to know is before this incident Scheller has a near-perfect record stretching back nearly 2 decades, something the judge took into consideration when delivering his sentencing.

The U.S. Marine who posted videos on social media criticizing military leadership and the Biden administration’s withdrawal of military assets from Afghanistan was issued a letter of reprimand and a forfeiture of $5,000 worth of pay for one month, after pleading guilty to all charges during his court-martial hearing this week.

“Did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up?’” Scheller had asked in a video. “I’m not saying we can take back what has been done. All I asked for was accountability, for people to comment on what I said and to say, ‘Yes. Mistakes were made.’ And had they done that I would’ve gone back into rank and file, submitted, and accomplished what I wanted.”

The judge, on Friday, said he would have given a two-month forfeiture of pay, had it not been for the nine days Scheller spent in pre-trial confinement. Scheller was freed from the brig last week where he was being held for violating an agreement to stop posting criticism on social media.

The judge said he does not condone Scheller’s offenses, but noted his 17 year USMC career, saying that prior to his social media incident, he was an officer with an outstanding record – a record, he said, he weighed heavily.

At the end of the day, Scheller being required to produce a letter of reprimand and charged a fine of $5,000 is a slap on the wrist compared to the typical penalty of 66% of a month’s salary for a year and a reprimand letter.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin questioning the Department of Defense’s vaccine mandate after getting reports that our military troops were receiving shots that were not licensed by the Food and Drug Administration.

Johnson said that “multiple sources” have told his office that “the Department of Defense’s (DoD) mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations may not be in accordance with Secretary of Defense Austin’s August 24, 2021 memorandum” because they have not yet received “full licensure” from the FDA.

Austin announced the military vaccine mandate in August, allowing active-duty troops until Dec. 15 and Reserve and National Guard service members until June 30 to be fully vaccinated with an FDA-approved vaccine.

Johnson pointed out that currently, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is the only one with non-emergency FDA approval, but multiple reports show that there currently is not a “sufficient approved vaccine available for distribution” to all of those eligible for the vaccine.

The Wisconsin Republican demanded to know how the DoD could comply with the mandatory vaccination program given the shortage of approved vaccines, and at the same time requested information on how many service members have been given non-FDA-approved vaccines by the DoD.

Johnson further requested the DoD provide him with all documents and guidelines regarding the vaccine mandate.

“The Senator’s concerns are twofold: that service members are mandated to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and regardless, service members may not be receiving the fully approved vaccine pursuant to the mandate,” a spokesperson for Johnson said.

The spokesperson said that vaccine mandates for service members and other professionals could cause “severe worker shortages,” to get worse, especially in health care settings.

“Vaccine mandates will increase these shortages and degrade our healthcare system,” the spokesperson said. “Reports on how mandates could weaken military readiness should concern every American, especially our commander-in-chief.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that President Joe Biden sees the opportunity of the country coming out of an economic rebound due to the pandemic as “exactly the time” to “make fundamental change.”

“The president wants to make fundamental change in our economy, and he feels coming out of the pandemic is exactly the time to do that,” Psaki said during Tuesday’s press briefing.

Psaki also said that Biden believes that if the government does not address the cost of childcare, the climate crisis, the universal pre-k, and other issues now, there will not be another opportunity.

The president has called for Democrats’ infighting, which has stalled both the $1.2 trillion infrastructure and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation packages, to be resolved.

“My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars,” Biden claimed, trying to sway moderate Democrats to support the larger package. “Instead of wasting money on tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy, we can make a once-in-a-generation investment in working America. And it adds zero dollars to the national debt.”

Biden also sent Vice President Kamala Harris, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, and House and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge to key swing districts on Oct. 6-8 to push the social spending package.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday that she often thinks about the policies she would put in place if she “ruled the world.”

Pelosi delivered a speech at the 67th Annual Session of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentary Assembly in Lisbon, Portugal, after being named the first recipient of the Women For Peace and Security Award.

“[P]eople ask me, ‘If you ruled the world, what one thing would you do?’ – I think about that a lot,” the House speaker said.

After which she said that it “would be easy” to choose one policy she would choose over everything else if she ran the world.

“It would be to prioritize the education of women and girls,” she said. “It would make the biggest difference not only in their lives, their families, their communities but to the world.”

“Because we truly do believe that when women succeed, America succeeds – or any country succeeds. But globally, we all succeed,” she added.

The award will be displayed in the Speaker’s Office in the Capitol as a reminder of “the importance of parliaments in the work of security, the economy, governance,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi vowed to enact federal abortion legislation in early September after the Texas Heartbeat Act passed. She maintained that the law “delivers catastrophe to women in Texas, particularly women of color and women from low-income communities.”

CNN called out President Joe Biden’s plummeting approval ratings during the Friday morning segment of New Day. Host John Berman pointed out Biden’s poll numbers are “not good” adding that “for Democrats, there are even more troubling numbers underneath the surface.”

“The numbers here, they tell a clear story,” Berman said.

CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten echoed Berman’s opinion that the numbers were “not good” and were “going in the wrong direction.”

Berman said Biden is “clearly underwater at this point” and asked Enten what’s behind such low approval numbers

The president’s approval ratings fell ten points among Democrats, 12 points among Republicans, and 19 points among Independents, Enten explained.

“He was in positive territory August 1st at plus three,” he said. “He is now minus 16 points net approval rating with Independents. It’s the folks in the center of the electorate who are driving this.”

Enten further said that Independents were the reason Biden won in the 2021 election, so low approval numbers in that group is a “very bad sign.” People are looking at what the president has done while in office, he said.

“In late April, look at this, 51%, a bare majority but a majority nonetheless saying he accomplished a great or fair deal,” the data reporter told Berman. “Now look at late August … down to just 40%. Now, the clear majority of voters say look at this. 58% say he accomplished only some or very little. They don’t think Joe Biden has gotten in office and done very much.”

Enten said that actions such as passing the Build Back Better plan or infrastructure package which he said are fairly popular among Americans, might help Biden boost his approval ratings.

“Passing this legislation could boost his approval rating because it shows he’s doing something,” he said.

Former Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called out Democrats for lacking confidence in America during a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Tuesday night.

“As my great predecessor, U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick famously said, in Reagan’s time the left was happy to ‘blame America first,’” Haley said. “Today’s Democrats don’t even believe in America.”

“Anger toward America is now the bedrock belief of the American left,” she added. “We’ve reached a place where the President and Vice President of the United States routinely accuse America of ‘systemic racism.’”

Haley echoed her own belief that the U.S. is not a racist country and reflected her own experience as “a brown girl in a black-and-white world.” She admitted America had its flaws, however she said Democrats were remiss in thinking those faults were “more profound than its strengths.”

“They deny the massive progress we’ve made, and they punish anyone who disagrees,” she said, stating that Democrats had discarded the “unifying” message of former president Barack Obama and had “given up on America as a colorblind society.”

US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the Oval office of the White House on October 9, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

Haley quoted then-Senator Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he declared “there is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America and an Asian America. There’s the United States of America.”

“Can you imagine any prominent Democrat making that statement today?” she asked. “I can’t.”

The way is clear for Republicans to make the most of that unifying message, because “that message was our message first,” she said.

Haley also condemned Biden’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, saying that it has made America vunerable and that it “didn’t have to be this way.”

“Joe Biden pulled everything out with no conditions,” she said. “Our worst fears were realized within days. Everyone saw it coming, except the president, who promised it would never happen. Where I come from, that’s a fireable offense.”

The agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan was worked out by the Trump administration, and had an original deadline to leave on May 1, 2021, before the Biden administration pushed it to Sept. 11.

Even though the Taliban broke conditions of the agreement, the Biden administration continued to go forward with the withdrawal.

“America is in greater danger today than we were just three months ago,” Haley said. “Joe Biden thinks retreat is a sign of strength. He doesn’t even realize that his actions have told the world that America is too weak to stand up for itself.”

Pfizer and BioNTech have requested for the Food and Drug Administration to grant Emergency Use Authorization to its COVID-19 vaccine for kids between the ages of 5-11.

Last week Pfizer made the announcement that the FDA will meet in late October and a decision could be expected as soon as November.

If approved, 28 million Americans who are currently ineligible to get the vaccine would qualify to have it.

“With new cases in children in the U.S. continuing to be at a high level, this submission is an important step in our ongoing effort against COVID-19,” Pfizer tweeted Thursday. “We’re committed to working with the FDA with the ultimate goal of helping protect children against this serious public health threat.”

Of the more than 28 million American children in the 5-11 age bracket, 135 children have died from the virus in the past 19 months, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC). According to the American Academy of Pediatrics. (AAP), there have been nearly six million confirmed COVID-19 infections in Americans under the age of 18.

According to AAP, one in four new COVID-19 infections in the U.S. last month were in children, yet according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll, an estimated one-third of parents say they will “wait and see” before vaccinating their children between ages 5-11.

Regulators will determine whether the pediatric dosage should be lower than adults, they will also look at prevalent side effects more common in young people in Pfizer’s clinical trial data. Myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, has been a more concerning side effect in young people, particularly males, for the Moderna vaccine according to studies conducted in Sweden and Denmark prompting them to hold their recommendation for teens and young adults Wednesday.