Category: Opinion

The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, has died at Windsor Castle in the early hours of Friday. He was 99 and has been Queen Elizabeth II’s husband for the last 73 years.

Philip is the longest-serving royal consort in British history after he and then-Princess Elizabeth wed in 1947. He and the queen have four children, eight grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.

At the time of his death, Philip’s full title was His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, Knight of the Garter, Knight of the Thistle, Order of Merit, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire, Companion of the Order of Australia, Companion of the Queen’s Service Order, Privy Counselor.

The royal family confirmed Prince Philip’s death on Friday in a statement posted on social media.

“It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle,” the statement reads.

It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle. pic.twitter.com/XOIDQqlFPn

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) April 9, 2021

There has been no mention of the causes leading to the Duke’s death. It is expected he passed due to preexisting conditions. He had been staying at Windsor Castle with the queen during England’s coronavirus lockdown.

His health had been declining over the past few months after being admitted to a London hospital after feeling unwell in Feb. Philip then underwent a procedure for a pre-existing heart condition at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.

No matter what happened, the Duke of Edinburgh carried on. “Whatever happens, don’t give up and don’t despair,” he once said. “Results may not be immediately apparent, but you may have touched a receptive chord without knowing it.”

Queen Elizabeth II will now enter into an official mourning period of eight days as per tradition. During this time the reigning monarch will halt all royal duties, affairs of the state will be paused and no laws will be given royal assent.

There has been no answer from the Vice President on the border crisis for weeks as the number of migrant children has tripled while being detained at a facility in San Antonio, Texas. Multiple agencies at the state and at the federal level have received complaints of abuse.

From reports at the end of March, over 500 male children alone were taken to the Freeman Expo Center between the ages of 13 and 17. AS of earlier this week, that number had exploded to over 1,360 children.

“Right now we are facing a humanitarian crisis and I do use the word crisis.” Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, added, “Too many people coming in. Not enough people going out.”

Abbott has also called out Biden to SHUT down the facilities after the Department of Health and Human Services and the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services received complaints of child abuse taking place there. In Abbott’s claim, he included the allegations of sexual assault, children not eating, insufficient staff, and failure to separate children infected with COVID-19 from others.

“In short, this facility is a health and safety nightmare. The Biden administration is now presiding over the abuse of children,” Abbott told reporters.

The governor said the current crisis was a”byproduct of President Biden’s open border policies.” He also went on to point towards the current administration’s failure to plan for anything.

Children at the facility are supposed to be either released to a sponsor or transferred to one of the Department of Health and Human Services’ longer-term shelters.

Abbot called on the Texas Rangers and the Department of Public Safety to immediately open an investigation into the allegations surrounding child abuse.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is just the latest pathogen to “spillover” from an animal source to humans. The “spillover” caused a worldwide pandemic from which we are still feeling the effects. Whether it was man-made in a lab or spilled over by humans eating animals in the markets of China, thousands of people still are pronounced dead from this virus every single day.

There are hundreds of thousands of other viruses lurking in the animal kingdom that could pose a similar threat with just one mutated strain of the virus. A new online tool has been developed that ranks these known viruses by their potential to “spillover” from animals to people. And many of those viruses could be even deadlier than Covid-19.

SpillOver, a new online tool, creates a “blacklist” of animal viruses that have been recently discovered that pose the greatest threat to the human race.

“SARS-CoV-2 is just one example of many thousands of viruses out there that have the potential to spill over from animals to humans,” Zoë Grange, who led the development of SpillOver, said in a statement. “We need to not only identify but also prioritize, viral threats with the greatest spillover risk before another devastating pandemic happens.”

Researchers hope their creation can be used to prioritize viruses for further study in the hopes of developing vaccines before a disease spills over.

There have been an estimated 250 viruses that have already spilled from animals to people with a staggering half million-plus viruses that have spillover potential.

The top 12 viruses on the list were known zoonotic pathogens, with the Lassa virus ranking first, SARS-CoV-2 second and the Ebola virus third. (The main animal host for the Lassa virus is rats and the main host for the Ebola virus is believed to be bats. The main animal hosts for SARS-CoV-2 are unknown, but the virus has been found to infect minks, lions and tigers.)

“This tool is intended to start a global conversation that will allow us to go far beyond how we thought about ranking viruses in the past and allow real-time scientific collaboration to identify new threats early,” a professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine said in the statement. “SpillOver can help advance our understanding of viral health threats and enable us to act to reduce the risk of spillover before pandemics can catch fire.”

On Tuesday, United Airlines announced in its new training plan to have 5,000 new pilots by 2030. The airline in its announcement made it known that it wants at least half of the pilots to be women and people of color. United is the only major U.S. airline with its own flight school, United Aviate Academy.

United CEO Scott Kirby in an interview with CBS went on to explain why his company made this “woke” decision. Kirby went on to say that there is limited diversity among its pilots with only 13 percent of pilots not being white and only 7 percent of the airline’s pilots are female.

This decision from United was discussed on this Wednesday’s installment of Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson said, “Safety is no longer that airline’s top concern—identity politics is.”

“The way people look is totally irrelevant. How they perform is all you should care about. Once you forget that, airplanes tend to crash… Hiring on the basis of irrelevant criteria will, over time, get people killed, and it will,” he said. “We have to fight for the colorblind meritocracy for real. I mean, our lives depend on meritocracy.” And placing people who aren’t the best in these positions will cost people their lives in the act of just being “pc.”

Tucker went on to call United’s new initiative “a combination of a hyper-aggressive corporate HR department and a left-wing political action committee… big on moral pronouncements and mandatory social engineering.”

Carlson called United’s initiative “a combination of a hyper-aggressive corporate HR department and a left-wing political action committee… big on moral pronouncements and mandatory social engineering.”

United announced, “All the highly qualified candidates we accept into the academy, regardless of race or sex, will have met or exceeded the standards we set for admittance,” in the following statement over Twitter.

Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day. That’s why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color. Learn more and apply now: https://t.co/VbOFvFOksB pic.twitter.com/r0ScH6MQAJ

— United Airlines (@united) April 6, 2021

However, Carlson said that the company was lying.

“We know they’re lying and you know it too,” he said, “because in the airline business there is only one standard that matters, and it is not race, and it’s not gender. It’s competence.”

Finally, someone is trying to expose the truth about the origins of the coronavirus outbreak. An Arkansas Republican told “The Story” Wednesday that there should be skepticism regarding any origins of the coronavirus.

China has maintained that the coronavirus is believed to have originated in the markers of Wuhan. Senate Intelligence Committee member Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has always maintained skepticism on if the virus was leaked from a biochemical lab near the city.

“The mainstream media are largely apologists for Chinese communists, and they will accept Chinese communist propaganda,” Cotton said. “They immediately try to accuse anyone who raises these reasonable questions as conspiracy theorists that are accusing China of creating a biological weapon.”

“We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there,” the senator said in February. “But because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says, and China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all.”

Cotton highlighted in his statement that those labs in Wuhan have conducted research in bats and the coronavirus. Those labs are the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“The reason I have raised these questions from the very beginning is because of China’s statements and their actions,” he said. “After concealing the virus for many weeks in December and then minimizing its severity for most of January, they then peddle an origin story about the food market in Wuhan.

“Given their dishonesty and the proximity of these labs, which we know were working with coronaviruses, it is only reasonable and responsible for us to ask the question and demand the answers,” he added.

The coronavirus has changed the world since it was released in the early months of 2020. It spread across the world causing lockdowns, and ending millions of lives. As of Friday, COVID-19 infections are still rising in 71 countries. There have been at least 128,918,000 reported infections and 2,942,000 reported deaths caused by the coronavirus so far.

China’s reported cases make the country the fourth-largest outbreak as of Thursday, but U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that the country is covering up cases and deaths.

Cotton has also accused the mainstream media of acting as “apologists” for the Chinese government amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Ashley Marks, 25, has been accused of killing her 6-year-old son for life insurance money. Prosecutors stated on Thursday that they know that Marks took out two life insurance policies on her son before giving him lethal doses of medications and over-the-counter drugs leading to his death. The young boy experienced frightening hallucinations before he died.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office prosecutors have alleged that Marks repeatedly drugged her 6-year-old in June for the life insurance policy.

Ashley Marks, 25, has been charged with capital murder. She is currently being held without a bond.

The 6-year-old boy’s death was ruled a homicide during an autopsy after finding toxic amounts of methamphetamine and cocaine and various antihistamines, according to court records.

According to court documents in a statement made by the boy’s grandfather to Houston police, the boy started hallucinating after Marks had given her son medicine. The young boy “became scared of his hallucinations,” and “believed there were bugs on his clothing.”

Adam Marks, the boy’s grandfather, reported to police that Ashley Marks informed him to give her son more medicine after he told her of her son’s hallucinations. He told the police that he did not give him any more medicine.

During the investigation, investigators reported that they discovered that Ashley Marks had taken out two life insurance policies, each worth $50,000, for her son and she was the sole beneficiary, according to court documents. Police also have stated that Marks is a licensed insurance agent.

This past Tuesday morning the Republican governor from the great state of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced a ban on government-mandated vaccine passports.

The governor issued an executive order in response to the state of New York becoming the first state to implement a COVID-19 vaccine passport. This executive order blocks any entities or businesses receiving state funds from requiring vaccine documentation. More importantly, the order bans any regulation that would require Texans to show proof of vaccination before getting a product or service.

“Every day, Texans return to normalcy as more people get the COVID vaccine. In fact, this week, Texas will surpass 13 million doses administered,” Abbott says in the announcement in the clip below. “Those shots help slow the spread of COVID, reduce hospitalizations, and reduce fatalities.”

“But, as I have said all along, these vaccines are always voluntary and never forced. Government should not require any Texan to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives,” the governor continued. “That is why I issued an executive order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas. We will continue to vaccinate more Texans and protect public health and we will do so without treading on Texans’ personal freedoms.”

Texans shouldn't be required to show proof of vaccination & reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives.

I issued an Executive Order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas.

Don't tread on our personal freedoms. pic.twitter.com/weTbz4FKyH

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 6, 2021

The order does not apply to all entities though. Some places like nursing homes and long-term care facilities are exempt. This exemption is in to allow those facilities to require proof of vaccination as needed to protect their residents.

Texas hasn’t been the only state thinking of banning these ridiculous passports. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a similar order last week.

“It’s completely unacceptable for either the government or the private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply participate in normal society,” DeSantis said. “You want to go to a movie theater, should you have to show that? No. You want to go to a game, a theme park? No. So we’re not supportive of that.”

“We always said we wanted to provide it for all but mandate it for none,” he continued. “And that was something that, while it was advised to take particularly if you’re vulnerable, we were not going to force you to do it.”

DeSantis said that vaccine passports would be a significant threat to Americans’ privacy.

“You’re going to do this and, what, give all this information to some big corporation? You want the fox to guard the henhouse? I mean give me a break,” the governor said. “I think this is something that has huge privacy implications. It is not necessary to do.”

Pete Buttigieg had a lot to say about his boss’s pricey infrastructure being past due for modern American life but he had much more to say about his new job and his very first encounter with the Mayor.

The Transportation Secretary is promoting President Joe Biden’s future American Jobs Plan, a $2.3 trillion proposal that would cover roads and bridges all across the country as well as other things you might not consider traditional “infrastructure.”

Buttigieg wants people to know that the price for these improvements shouldn’t be too daunting since the definition of infrastructure for Americans this day in age has evolved and the details of this plan will show that.

It has also been reported that Buttigieg met with the president as well as other officials for their first cabinet meeting which he described as being beyond COVID-friendly.

Buttigieg also commented on President Biden’s younger German Shepard, Major who has had a couple of biting incidents. He claims to have had many friendly interactions with the pup and by his account, there is nothing to be afraid of.

It has been shocking how quickly Leftists and media outlets moved the discussion to gun control once they learned of the identity of the suspect in Friday’s attack on the U.S. Capitol Police since it didn’t fit into their narrative that “white supremacy” was the reason behind the attack.

It was reported that 25-year-old Noah Green rammed two U.S.Capitol Police officers before getting out of his vehicle with a knife. He was then shot and killed by police. Green was an African-American man who was a follower of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. A police officer, Billy Evans, lost their lives in this attack.

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1378034373941940228

Noah Green’s Facebook page described himself as a “follower of Farrakhan.” The page has been deleted since.  From The Daily Wire from their report:

Long posts detailed Green’s life struggles and religious views, which include his belief that Farrakhan is Jesus. “I am currently now unemployed after I left my job partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey,” he wrote in part.

“I haven’t had much to lean on in the past few months,” Green continued. “I’ve been faced with fear, hunger, loss of wealth, and diminution of fruit. My faith is one of the only things that has been able to carry me through these times and my faith is centered on the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst.”

Green went on to describe Farrakhan as his “spiritual father,” without whose guidance he would have “been unable to continue.”

He signed his post as Noah X.

Numerous Twitter keyboard warriors rushed to blame the attack on a white supporter of former President Donald Trump.

https://twitter.com/tinykinseyscale/status/1378060179678359553

Once the suspect’s identity was released, many high-profile figures pivoted from their initial posts on Twitter. They then rebranded Green’s attack on the U.S. Capitol Police officers in support of gun control or the existence of alleged systemic racism.

“Heartbroken to learn another CP was killed while protecting the Capitol,” tweeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). “My thoughts and prayers go out to the officer’s family and the entire Capitol Police force.”

“The death toll would have been worse if the assailant had an AR-15 instead of a knife,” she added in a bizarre attempt to push for gun control.

Heartbroken to learn another CP was killed while protecting the Capitol. My thoughts and prayers go out to the officer’s family and the entire Capitol Police force. The death toll would have been worse if the assailant had an AR-15 instead of a knife.

— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) April 2, 2021

Talbert Swan tweeted, “I see the white supremacists are overjoyed to report that the suspect in the Capitol incident was a Black man, Noah Green.”

“Green, allegedly armed with a knife, was shot dead,” he continued, “By contrast, Robert Aaron Long, the Atlanta spa murderer, was armed with a AR 15. He’s alive and well.”

I see the white supremacists are overjoyed to report that the suspect in the Capitol incident was a Black man, Noah Green.

Green, allegedly armed with a knife, was shot dead.

By contrast, Robert Aaron Long, the Atlanta spa murderer, was armed with an AR 15. He’s alive and well.

— Bishop Talbert Swan (@TalbertSwan) April 2, 2021

The promise of America has always been freedom. One of the governing premises of America has been freedom from censorship. America has been depending on that freedom for decades. Now Big Tech has determined that they can censor anyone’s voice at any moment. If these companies can ban a former President of the United States from speaking on their platform, how much information does it really allow to be put on their platform?

Hopefully that will change with the latest leak by sources close to Former President Donald Trump who have told Fox News that Trump’s team are “moving forward” with plans to start their own social media platform. These announcements have come shortly after Facebook removed the video of an interview with former President Trump conducted by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, saying any content “in the voice of Donald Trump” would be scrubbed from the social media platform.

Facebook announced publicly that they have banned the former President from speaking on their platform back in January.

“We are reaching out to let you know that we removed content from Lara Trump’s Facebook Page that featured President Trump speaking,” the Facebook employee wrote. “In line with the block we placed on Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, further content posted in the voice of Donald Trump will be removed and result in additional limitations on the accounts.”

“We’re moving forward,” one source said Tuesday. “And President Trump will have his voice back one way or another.”

The source said they are “taking the time to do it right.”

“You have one shot at it,” the source said. “We’re dotting our Is and crossing our Ts— we’ll be out with something.”

Earlier this month it was teased by Trump’s senior adviser Jason Miller that the plans for Trump to create his own form of social media was well underway after meeting with multiple companies to work with.

“What they did to Lara was disgraceful,” a source close to Trump told Fox News. “They’re shutting down our voices, anything to do with Trump.”

“It’s not good what’s going on. They are trying to completely silence us,” the source continued.

The source added: “It’s not going to work out all too well though, because we’re firing away and starting up our own stuff right now.”