Category: Opinion

In a press release, late Friday in Portland, Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler begged Portland residents to “unmask” and assist local law enforcement to identify members of the “self-described anarchist mob” that have rioted and looted the city nearly every night since last May. Wheeler extended the city-wide state of emergency that has been in effect for days.

A riot was declared just a few hours after the mayor pleaded with Portland residents by the Portland Police. Rioters caused a massive wave of destruction and chaos across the city’s northwest side, with only two “anarchist” protesters arrested.

“The Portland Police Bureau said the planned protest had been billed as an ‘autonomous demonstration,’” Fox News said. “It started around 9 p.m. PT with around 75 protesters dressed all in black who started vandalizing property around 15 minutes after they began marching from a park near the city’s downtown.”

Wheeler declared the state of emergency in the city last week due to being concerned that a “not guilty” verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial would set off a wave of destruction and violence. Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd, but even that hasn’t stopped the rising violence by protestors.

Wheeler declared a state of emergency in the city early last week, ahead of the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, concerned that a “not guilty” verdict might set off a wave of destruction. Chauvin was ultimately found guilty of killing George Floyd.

“The Democrat extended a state of emergency in Portland through Monday amid concerns about potential unrest following the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer found guilty on all charges for the death of George Floyd. The Portland mayor asked the public to come forward with any information on members of the anarchist group,” Fox News added on Sunday.

“The city is beginning to recover, but self-described anarchists who engage in regular criminal destruction don’t want things to open up, to recover,” Wheeler told Portland residents. “They want to prevent us from doing the work of making a better Portland for everyone. They want to burn, they want to bash.”

Wheeler who, back in June, pledged to divert millions from Portland law enforcement amid calls to “defund the police” (a position he reversed in March) said on Friday that he supports Portland police using all “legal strategies” to handle the riots, including the controversial “kettling” maneuver, which has police routing protesters into a small area, allowing them out one by one after being processed and searched.

Wheeler said that Black Lives Matter has already stepped forward to denounce the destruction, and he is now asking Portland residents to turn in friends and neighbors they believe might be part of the “self-described anarchist mob” to authorities.

“Our job is to unmask them, arrest them and prosecute them,” he said, ” asking the public to contact the police and provide them with information about the rioters, write down their license plate numbers or film them when they commit acts of vandalism,” per The Washington Post.

“Together we can make a stand,” Wheeler added. “We’re doing what we can today. I’m also asking for your help to make a stand and take our city back.”

“Our community needs to resume their lives, people need to go back to work, employers need to be able to reopen,” he said.

New photos have emerged over in a British tabloid that was published late on Saturday night. These photographs show Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell visiting then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, inside the White House during a VIP reception for those who contributed money toward refurbishing the Oval Office.

Epstein and Maxwell “toured Clinton toured Clinton’s residence and the East Room during a reception after Epstein gave £7,280 to the refurbishment of the Oval Office,” The Sun reported. “The White House reception — hosted by both Clinton and wife Hillary — was for people who contributed towards the £290,000 renovation via the White House Historical Association.”

https://twitter.com/ArthurSchwartz/status/1386287314951806977

A source told the publication that the photos “show just how close Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein got to one of the most powerful men in the world — in the most powerful building.”

Jeffrey Epstein has became known nationwide for being a convicted pedophile and being accused as an international sex trafficker. Epstein allegedly committed suicide in 2019 after being arrested by federal law enforcement officials on sex trafficking charges.

The Daily Beast reported in 2019 that Epstein and Clinton met on multiple occasions while Clinton was president, including one as early as 1993 when, according to records, Epstein donated $10,000 to the White House Historical Association and attended a donors’ reception hosted by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Around the same time, according to a source familiar with the connection, Epstein visited presidential aide Mark Middleton several times at the White House. Two years later, businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild wrote a personal letter to Clinton thanking him for their talk about the financier.

Clinton also failed to mention the intimate 1995 fundraising dinner at the Palm Beach home of Revlon mogul Ron Perelman, where Clinton hobnobbed with the likes of Epstein, Don Johnson, and Jimmy Buffett. (Nearby, at Epstein’s own Palm Beach mansion, the money man allegedly abused hundreds of underage girls.)

Jeffrey Epstein’s name shows up again in the Clinton Library archives in a letter dated April 27, 1995, from Lynn Forester to “President William T. Clinton.” Forester—who became Lynn Forester de Rothschild after her marriage in 2000 to Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild—served on Clinton’s National Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee and on the president’s Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. She and her husband also spent the first night of their honeymoon in the Lincoln Bedroom by invitation of the Clintons.

In the 1995 letter, Forester de Rothschild writes, “Dear Mr. President: It was a pleasure to see you recently at Senator Kennedy’s house. There was too much to discuss and too little time. Using my fifteen seconds of access to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and currency stabilization, I neglected to talk to you about a topic near and dear to my heart. Namely, affirmative action and the future.” She then goes on to note that she’s sending him a memo on the latter subject, which George Stephanopoulos had asked her to write, and signs off, “Sincerely, Lynn Forester.”

The founder of the most successful porn site, Pornhub, Feras Antoon’s unfinished $16 million megamansion burned to the ground in a massive fire late Sunday night in a suspected arson incident.

Police responded to a call of two men breaking into the grounds located on the northern side of Montreal about half an hour before midnight. The house was ablaze, and a group of 80 firefighters spent roughly three hours battling the fire before it was extinguished, according to the Daily Mail.

The mansion was utterly destroyed with only a few walls and badly burned structures left standing on Monday morning.

Antoon is the CEO of MindGeek, the parent company of the porn site Pornhub. The explicit website is facing potential ruin under allegations that the site was used to sex traffic minors.

Activist Laila Mickelwait outlined some of the allegations facing Antoon’s sex site in a February op-ed for The Washington Examiner:

In the last few months, there have been several shocking cases of sex trafficking and child rape films that were hosted on Pornhub. A 15-year-old girl who had been missing for a year was finally found after her mother was tipped off that her daughter was being featured in videos on the site — 58 such videos of her rape and sexual abuse were discovered on Pornhub.

Her trafficker, who was seen in the videos raping the child, was identified using surveillance footage of him at a 7-Eleven where he was spotted with his victim. He is now facing a felony charge.

Also in recent news was the case of 22 women who were deceived and coerced by Michael Pratt, owner of GirlsDoPorn, into performing sex acts on film that were subsequently uploaded to Pornhub. These women sued GirlsDoPorn and won a $12.7 million lawsuit against the company. According to a federal indictment, Pratt and his co-conspirators produced child pornography and trafficked a minor. Pratt reportedly fled the United States for New Zealand and is currently wanted on a federal warrant. But there are other individuals complicit in these crimes who should also be wanted by law enforcement — CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Marmorstein Tassillo of Mindgeek, the Canadian-based company (technically headquartered in Luxembourg for tax purposes) that owns Pornhub.

You see, Pornhub is complicit in the trafficking of these women and minors and probably thousands more like them.

Pornhub scrubbed an estimated 60% of its content, including millions of videos, in December after allegations of sex trafficking and rape videos on the site surfaced. The site has recently undergone massive changes to many of its policies like only allowing new uploads from verified users. The porn-based platform has been banned from making and receiving financial transactions from Mastercard and Visa.

“As part of our policy to ban unverified uploaders, we have now also suspended all previously uploaded content that was not created by content partners or members of the Model Program,” Pornhub said last year. “This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute.”

The Mayor of Elizabeth City, North Carolina declared a state of emergency before its police department released body camera footage of a fatal shooting involving a deputy and a 42-year-old black man that happened last week and sparked protests in the city over the weekend. For many, this is an admission of guilt by Bettie Parker who is the Mayor.

In the declaration, Parker said, “In order to ensure the safety of our citizens and their property, City officials realize there may potentially be a period of civil unrest within the City following the public release of that [body camera] footage.”

Parker directed “all departments and agencies of Elizabeth City to take whatever steps necessary to protect life and property, public infrastructure, and provide such emergency assistance deemed necessary to preserve public safety.”

No arrests were made during the protests over the weekend or any damages to any property

Andrew Brown, Jr., was reportedly killed following an incident with law enforcement authorities on Wednesday. Brown is a 42-year-old black man. In a statement released by the Pasquotank County Sheriff, it stated that

The WUNC North Carolina Public Radio reported in a release:

Recordings of scanner traffic compiled by broadcastify.com from the morning of the shooting include emergency personnel indicating that Brown was shot in the back. An eyewitness has said that deputies fired shots at Brown as he tried to drive away, and car authorities removed from the scene appeared to have multiple bullet holes and its back windshield shattered.

“Only a judge can release the video. That’s why I’ve asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation to confirm for me that the releasing of the video will not undermine their investigation. Once I get that confirmation, our county will file a motion in court, hopefully, Monday, to have the footage released,” Wooten said over the weekend amid the growing calls for the body camera footage to be released.

As reported by The Associated Press on Monday, new information has been revealed about the search warrant that is said to be the purpose for the deputies arriving at Brown’s house. The warrant “said that an investigator in nearby Dare County was told by the informant that the person had been purchasing crack cocaine and other drugs” for over a year from Brown. The warrant said that in March, local narcotics officers used the informant to conduct controlled purchases of methamphetamine and cocaine on two separate occasions. The warrant says both buys were recorded. Previously disclosed arrest warrants from Dare County included charges of possession with intent to sell and deliver cocaine and methamphetamine against Brown.”

One of the deadliest civilian disasters in the history of Israel occurred at Mount Meron on Friday. Israeli officials issued a statement that a stampede broke out during the festival of Lag BaOmer killing at least 40 and injuring over 100 more.

The Jewish religious festival attracted tens of thousands from the ultra-Orthodox community. The deadly stampede occurred when the attendees of the festival tripped on steps causing a huge domino effect that sent many people to fall over.

Police sources informed that there were over 100,000 people at the location during the incident while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu classified the incident as a “terrible disaster.”

לכבוד התנא: עשרות אלפים בהדלקה המרכזית של תולדות אהרן שמרעידה את הההר מצד לצד pic.twitter.com/b2pMQsXv1z

— משה ויסברג (@moshe_nayes) April 29, 2021

Eli Beer, director of the Hatzalah rescue service, said he was horrified by how crowded the event was, saying the site was equipped to handle perhaps a quarter of the number who were there.

One witness told the Army Radio station that “masses of people were pushed into the same corner and a vortex was created.”

He said the first row of people fell down, and then a second row, where he was standing, also began to fall down from the pressure of the stampede.

“I felt like I was about to die,” he said.

Even children were among the casualties. Rescuers reported that there were dozens of children whose parents were not answering the phone after the incident.

A professor at the Cypress College in Southern California ripped into a student for calling the police “heroes” during a Zoom online classroom.

Braden Ellis gave a presentation during a communications class on how “cancel culture” is “so destructive and tearing America apart.”

Ellis’s presentation on cancel culture mentioned how activists attempted to “cancel” the children’s show “Paw Patrol” during the Black Lives Matter movement anti-police agenda. These “woke” activists took to social media to explain how the children’s show was “bad” to reinforce the idea that police officers are there to protect and serve their communities.

As shown in the video, the professor took the designated time for questions and answer sessions for the students to scold Ellis for his American views that don’t adhere to the agendas that the radical left are pushing.

https://youtu.be/ex2gl3VvXfQ

“I was shocked to hear her comments about police, but I stood firm in my beliefs,” Ellis said. “We need to fight back against this liberal ideology spreading in our colleges and save America.”

Cypress College has not responded to requests for comment at the time of this publication.

On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted three men on hate crime charges in connection with the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Arbery was the 25-year-old man who was fatally shot last year in Georgia after the video of the incident went viral on social media.

The indictment from the Department of Justice accuses the three men of targeting Arbery while running on a public street because of his race. Each man, Travis McMichael, 35, William “Roddie” Bryan, 51, and Gregory McMichael, 65, has been charged with attempted kidnapping and interference of rights.

The father and son, Travis and Gregory McMichael have additionally been charged with using, carrying, and brandishing a firearm.

Travis McMichael’s attorney spoke out against the slew of new charges that his client has been indicted on.

“There is absolutely nothing in the indictment that identifies how this is a federal hate crime and it ignores without apology that Georgia law allows a citizen to detain a person who was committing burglaries until police arrive,” attorneys Bob Rubin and Jason Sheffield said in a statement Wednesday.

The indictment alleges that the McMichaels “armed themselves with firearms, got into a truck, and chased Arbery through the public streets of the neighborhood while yelling at Arbery, using their truck to cut off his route, and threatening him with firearms.” Bryan, according to the Department of Justice, “got into a truck and chased Arbery through the public streets of the neighborhood, and used his truck to cut off Arbery’s route.”

In addition to the interference with rights charges, each of the three men was charged with attempted kidnapping for trying to “restrain Arbery, restrict his free movement, corral and detain him against his will, and prevent his escape.”

Gregory McMichael told police at the time of the shooting that he and his son pursued a man he believed was a burglary suspect. The elder McMichael also told police that the two men followed Arbery after grabbing weapons and that neighbor William Bryan joined in the pursuit at some later point.

Arbery was fatally shot after an encounter with Gregory McMichael and Travis McMichael. Bryan was in a car behind Arbery shortly before his death and is the person who captured the video of the fatal altercation.

Wanda Jones, Arbery’s mother, has said that she believes her son was on a jog at the time of his death.

“The family of Ahmaud Arbery is grateful for the fed hate crime charges against the men responsible for his murder,” S. Lee Merritt, the Arbery family’s attorney, said in a statement Wednesday. “These charges will serve as a fail-safe to the state prosecution. Hate claimed Ahmaud’s life. Our justice system must combat intolerance.”

An attorney that represents the family of the fatally shot American Patriot Ashli Babbitt detailed their plans to sue Capitol Police on behalf of the Babbitt family, arguing against the “double standard” of the case.

Babbit, 35, was a veteran of the armed forces and an avid Trump supporter. She was unarmed when she was fatally shot by Capitol Police on Jan. 6 during the protests at the Capitol. She died from a gunshot wound to her left shoulder according to the local Medical Examiner’s office.

The Department of Justice announced earlier this month that the officer who fatally shot Babbitt will not be charged for alleged use of excessive force that resulted in the death of a true American, most likely due to the politics surrounding the case.

The officer’s name has never been made public.

Babbitt has not received the justice that she and her family deserve because of the politics of the case and her open support for former President Donald Trump. The attorney will be pursuing a civil action on behalf of the family alleging a violation of Babbitt’s constitutional rights, he said.

“I’m handling the civil action that will be filed, that’s my role,” Roberts said. “The family and I were disappointed in the Department of Justice’s decision on this, but my role is, really, to bring a civil action and in that way, vindicate her rights.”

“We think the evidence is ample and supports criminal charges against the officer,” Roberts argued, claiming the officer could see Babbitt was not armed and offered her no warning.

“This is a situation in which the officer could have easily arrested her, if he had grounds to arrest her, without using deadly force,” he said. “So, this was an egregious act of excessive force and he should have been charged.”

Roberts told Newsmax “that there is a double standard at work.”

“If you were to change the circumstances, change the location a little bit, it’s a certainty that there would be charges,” he argued. “Obviously, the political climate is such that charges are not favored here. It really bothers us that there is a double standard at work.”

If the circumstances were just changed by race then there would be protests & riots in the streets in front of the Capitol till this day in Babbitt’s name.

“Lets reward parenthood, marriage, and work.” – Sen. Josh Hawley

American working-class families are the heart and soul of America as a nation. Conservatives have long held the belief that family is the highest core value to hold onto. And that is the hard truth. But like many American institutions today, American families could use some savin’ as well.

Marriage rates are at historic lows, parents often say they have fewer children than they want, and working parents find raising kids more and more costly. While there has been nothing done to save those values of the American family in decades.

Government public policies should promote families, and give parents the power to raise their children as they see fit. Even though many parents say they would prefer to stay home to raise their young children, they simply can’t afford it. It’s time for a new approach that gives families the choice of how to raise their kids.

Start with the problem. Washington’s policies over the last few decades have contributed to the brittle condition of the American family. Our tax and trade policy has rewarded out-sourcing, off-shoring, and labor arbitrage.

Democrats, for their part, try to make family life more affordable by pushing both parents into the full-time workforce while subsidizing commercial childcare. Not surprisingly, this is the family policy of choice for the Democrats’ upper-income, college-educated voters. And many existing federal policies in fact require both parents to be in the workforce to receive childcare benefits.

These policies, like the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, also require children to be enrolled in commercial childcare.

“Starting a family and raising children should not be a privilege only reserved for the wealthy,” Hawley said in a statement. “Millions of working people want to start a family and would like to care for their children at home, but current policies do not respect these preferences. American families should be supported, no matter how they choose to care for their kids.”

“That is why I’m proposing a new approach, a Parent Tax Credit—one of the largest tax cuts for working families in American history,” Hawley added.

The Parent Tax Credit is a fully refundable per-parent tax credit available to households with children under the age of 13. The credit has an annual value of $6,000 for single parents and $12,000 for married parents. Unlike other proposals that send parents no-strings-attached cash, families MUST WORK to receive the Parent Tax Credit and must work consistently to qualify.

Households must report prior-year earnings equal to or greater than income from an average of 20 hours per week of work at the federal minimum wage to even qualify.

“This is not welfare.” – Sen. Josh Hawley

“It is a long past time for conservatives’ policy priorities to match their rhetoric. Conservatives have bemoaned the travails of the American family for years. Now it’s time to do something about it. By rewarding parenthood, marriage, and work, the Parent Tax Credit is a start,” Hawley said in closing.

The Department of Justice has filed charges against Obama White House adviser Seth Andrew for the theft of $218,000 from a charter school he founded. Andrew used the funds he stole to lower the interest rate on a luxury apartment in Manhattan.

In 2005, Andrew established “School Network-1,” a series of charter schools based in New York City. He began work for the Obama administration’s Department of Education back in 2013 and eventually became the senior adviser of the Office of Educational Technology at the White House.

Andrew allegedly continued to receive paychecks from School Network-1 between the spring of 2013 and January 2017. After leaving his post at the White House in November 2016, he quickly ended his relationship with School Network-1 the following January.

According to the Justice Department, Andrew pulled funds out of all three escrow accounts, without any preauthorization, in March of 2019. The escrow accounts were designed to only be emptied if School Network-1 dissolved.

When he cashed those escrow accounts, he was provided with two checks, prosecutors say. One was for the amount of $71,881.23, the other two for $70,642.98. The checks were made out to two different charter schools.

Andrew allegedly created a fraudulent business account at another bank, where he deposited the checks days apart. The bank that Andrew deposited the check was offering special incentives and interest rates for keeping a particular amount in their accounts. At this time Andrew was looking for a new mortgage rate according to prosecutors.

“Specifically, for every $250,000 on deposit, up to a total of $1 million, [the new bank] would lower that qualifying customer’s mortgage interest rate by 0.125%. Thus, in total, if a qualifying customer maintained $1 million or more of his/her funds in [the new bank] accounts that customer would receive a 0.5% interest rate deduction on a … mortgage,” a press release explained. “But to take advantage of the interest rate deduction promotion, [the new bank] required that the funds a customer deposited be funds owned by the customer or, in some instances, a business the customer-owned, controlled, or was lawfully associated with. [The new bank] did not permit a customer to utilize money owned by someone else to gain the benefit of the interest rate deduction promotion.”

The stolen funds, prosecutors claim, made a drastic difference in the interest rate. Without the more than $142,000 in stolen funds, Andrew’s interest rate would have been 0.375% higher. Because of the funds, the former Obama official was able to obtain a $1.77 million loan with an interest rate of 2.5%.

Andrew allegedly took the funds, along with more than $2,000 in interest, and rolled them into a deposit certificate, which was then transferred to a bank account under another organization’s name. The move, prosecutors state, was to “conceal the money’s association with School Network-1.”

“As alleged, Seth Andrew abused his position as a founder of a charter school network to steal from the very same schools he helped create,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said in a statement. “Andrew is not only alleged to have stolen the schools’ money but also to have used the stolen funds to obtain savings on a mortgage for a multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment. Thanks to the FBI’s diligent work, Andrew now faces federal charges for his alleged scheme.”

Andrew’s wife, who co-signed on the loan, is CBS News anchor Lana Zak.

Andrew is facing charges of wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to a financial institution. It is unclear if Andrew’s wife will also face charges.