Category: Opinion

Last month a gas station in Kings Beach, California, surveillance cameras recorded the strangest case of looting so far this year.

On August 12th the video shows a customer standing outside of the store as he slapped the rear end of a bear who then entered the store, the customer then quickly retreated.

A couple of days later the bear returned to the store. You can see the employee try to stop the animal from going any further but it snaps at the employee who decides to back off.

Paul Heigh, the employee in the video, said, “It was kind of scary, yeah, I’m not going to lie. It’s not in the job description, no, not at all. Fighting off bears was not in the job description.”

The bear returned the very next day and is seen on the store’s camera lying on the floor munching on candy bars and crackers.

This isn’t the only instance of a bear helping itself to some snacks. Shoppers at a Safeway grocery store in Kings Beach had a run-in with a bear on August 15th.

Cell phone footage shows that bear nosing around a little in the produce section then leaving the store with a bag of Tostitos chips. I have to admit, I’ve done the same thing.

Another shopper caught a video of the bear leaving the store after she almost walked right into it before another shopper stopped her.

You can hear Adina Baidoo, the woman behind the camera, saying, “This actual bear, right there, that I almost walked into has gone to Safeway and decided… that he is going to go shopping.”

Kings Beach, in Placer County, is located on the shore of Lake Tahoe. According to county officials, the community’s proximity to open land means that people can expect frequent encounters with wild animals such as bears and mountain lions.

The county strongly urges the public to take precautions like feeding their pets inside their homes and securing garbage cans with a snap-on lid or stored somewhere that animals can not get access to it. They also warn people against inadvertently feeding wild animals. Officials say bears are attracted to compost piles and fruit trees.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has had some pretty awkward and distasteful moments during his time on the campaign trail. There was the “you ain’t black” debacle, the many, many instances of sniffing and groping very young girls, and the sexual assault allegations.

Biden never fails to put his foot in his mouth when he is out in public especially when he is addressing a very sensitive topic.

Thursday afternoon while visiting Kenosha, Wisconson, Biden tried giving a speech addressing racial unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake but somehow ended up talking about inequities in taxes.

When he remembered why he was there he stopped himself from going into detail about his tax policy and said if he goes on any longer “they’ll shoot me.”

Joe Biden is Kenosha says that he can't lay out all his plans in more detail because if he goes on any longer "they'll shoot me." pic.twitter.com/N33k3wyuJl

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 3, 2020

While in Kenosha, Biden also visited the family of Jacob Blake who after being shot by the police last month sent Wisconson and other areas into another round of protests that ended up causing more riots and violence.

President Trump visited Wisconson earlier in the week and focused on supporting the police and rebuilding damaged businesses affected by out of control rioting.

Biden claims to be looking for that common ground that he says Trump is incapable of reaching with the “law and order” rhetoric.

“I can’t say if tomorrow God made me president, I can’t guarantee you everything gets solved in four years,” said Biden. But, he added, “it would be a whole better, we’d get a whole lot further down the road” if Trump is not re-elected.

“There’s certain things worth losing over,” he concluded, “and this is something worth losing over if you have to — but we’re not going to lose.”

Does this man think before he speaks? Or do his handlers keep him so sheltered that he really had no idea what is going on in that community?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that there will be a “safe and effective” coronavirus vaccine in the U.S. by the end of 2020.

The infectious disease expert told NBC’s “Today”, “I believe that by the time we get to the end of this calendar year that we will feel comfortable that we do have a safe and effective vaccine.”

Fauci is confident that a vaccine is on the way and remains hopeful that is will be here soon.

He noted that, for several of the vaccine trials, there is “enough data that you would really feel comfortable it was safe and effective for the American people.”

Fauci also addressed coronavirus outbreaks at universities telling school officials not to send students home if they test positive for the virus.

“Keep them at the university in a place that’s sequestered enough from the other students”, Fauci said. “But don’t have them go home because they could be spreading it in their home state.”

With Labor Day weekend coming up, Fauci urged Americans to remain cautious saying, “The holiday will determine if the U.S. is able to get running start in battling disease this fall.”

There was a spike in cases after the Fourth of July and Memorial Day so it is advised to still wear a mask and follow social distancing recommendations.

“What I’d really like to see is a full-court press to get us way down as a baseline, so that when you get these cases in the fall, they won’t surge up,” Fauci said.

The doctor added that he would not be comfortable pushing out a vaccine that had been rushed through trials but the head of the FDA stated that he is willing to put a vaccine on the fast-track to be available as soon as possible.

Commissioner Stephen Hahn told the Financial Times that the FDA could authorize a vaccine before the end of Phase Three clinical trials “as long as officials believed the benefits outweighed the risks.”

“It is up to the sponsor [vaccine developer] to apply for authorization or approval, and we make an adjudication of their application,” Hahn said. “If they do that before the end of Phase Three, we may find that appropriate. We may find that inappropriate, we will make a determination.”

He added that the rush was not in any way linked to pressure from the Trump administration.

Hahn noted that the FDA could grant several emergency approvals for different groups “rather than a blanket approval.”

“Our emergency use authorization is not the same as a full approval,” Hahn explained. “The legal, medical, and scientific standard for that is that the benefit outweighs the risk in a public health emergency.”

Mike Tobin, Fox News senior correspondent, appeared on “The Fox News Rundown” this week to talk about what he witnessed during the rioting last week in Kenosha, Wisconson after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

“These things do start to fit a pattern when you see there will become a point where the line is drawn,” Tobin said to host Dave Anthony. “It started out in Minneapolis [after George Floyd’s death] at the 3rd Precinct, and then it moved out … But in Kenosha, it was that courthouse at the public safety building where the demonstrators were trying to get in every day and the police said, you know, ‘You’re not coming in here.’ That’s where the line is and that’s where the trouble starts.”

“And what we also saw there that we’ve seen in other places is once they move the demonstrators from that location, they go somewhere else and something else happens,” Tobin explained. “The first night, they moved the demonstrators away from the courthouse, a lot of them actually just left on their own volition. That’s when all the fires started around Kenosha. The second night, that Tuesday night, when they moved the demonstrators away from the courthouse, that’s when the gunfire happened.”

Tobin noted that the deadly shooting of two demonstrators “seemed to throw a wet blanket over things.”

“A lot of those kids who were out there at these demonstrations, it’s a big game for them,” he continued. “I’ve heard people say things like, ‘Looting is fun.’ And in Minneapolis [and] some other locations, I’ve watched them pre-party in the parking lot for hours and then come out for the big show of destruction. So for some of them, it’s a game. And things got real serious that Tuesday night in Kenosha, and it changed the parameters of it.”

Tobin discussed the presence of Antifa at the riots saying, “I think the strength of Antifa is that they are so nebulous, they’re without organization … if they stood for one thing, well, then people could disagree with what they stand for. But you get these Antifa protesters who fancy themselves somewhere between the [civil rights] marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and the rioters from the ‘Joker’ movie. And they can take their own motivation because there isn’t anything to disagree with, with Antifa.”

Tobin summed it up with, “So …they show up, they do their thing. They enjoy the destruction. They enjoy shaking their fist at the man. They enjoy pushing back at the societal structure, and they can be very efficient … You can work very fast if all you want to do is be destructive.”

Twitter called out Democrat Elizabeth Hernandes, who is facing off against GOP Rep.Kevin Brady for the Texas 8th Congressional District seat, stating a tweet from her campaign in August was in violation of its policies.

The official account for Hernandez’s campaign had been corresponding with a Twitter user who wished her luck and expressed disdain over the fact that her relatives in Texas were pro-Trump.

The Hernandez campaign account replied with, “Thank you! And remind all of your Trump supporting relatives to vote on Wednesday, November 4! (Since they’re Trump supporters, they might fall for it. Just saying…),” along with the laughing emoji.

Twitter stated that it forbids “posting or sharing content that may suppress participation or mislead people about when, where, or how to participate in a civic process.”

The tweet had been up for two full weeks before it was flagged and Twitter locked Hernandez’s campaign account preventing anyone from accessing it until the tweet was removed.

A staff member form the Democrat’s campaign said the comment was made in jest but agreed to take the tweet down.

Spokesperson Christopher Phipps said in an email, “In a jovial exchange with supporters on Twitter, one of our campaign staff was a little too loose with their words. The emoji at the end of the tweet indicates that the tweet was made in jest, not intended to actually mislead anyone. But when Twitter brought the tweet to our attention, we took action to take it down, out of an abundance of caution.”

This surprising move from Twitter goes against what Trump and other Republicans have said about the social media site favoring the Democrats and left-leaning policies.

In May the president signed an executive order that cuts federal funding for social media sites that censor its user’s political views which came just after Twitter called two of Trump’s posts “misleading” and slapped a warning label on them. The posts were about the risk of fraud with mail-in voting.

Democrats are accusing President Trump of stirring up racial tensions in order to benefit his campaign when he praised supporters that clashed with protesters in Portland then announced his plans to travel to Kenosha

The day after a supporter of a right-wing group was shot and killed in Portland, Trump posted a series of tweets praising his supporters as “GREAT PATRIOTS!” and retweeted the deceased man’s name with the message, “Rest in peace.”

Trump also added that the city’s Democratic mayor was to blame for the man’s death.

Later, Trump tweeted, “The people of Portland, like all other cities & parts of our great Country, want Law & Order. The Radical Left Democrat Mayors, like the dummy running Portland, or the guy right now in his basement unwilling to lead or even speak out against crime, will never be able to do it!”

Throughout the summer, Trump has addressed the violence and lawlessness that has put American cities under siege. Democrats are using this to accuse the president of attempting to stoke further violence for political gain instead of trying to find a way to settle tensions.

In a statement responding to the shooting, Biden said, “He may think that was in our streets is good for his reelection chances, but that is not presidential leadership — or even basic human compassion.”

Biden added that he “unequivocally” condemned the violence and accused the president of “recklessly encouraging” it.

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, also a Democrat, blames Trump for tensions across the country.

Wheeler asked during a televised news conference, “Do you seriously wonder, Mr. President, why this is the first time in decades that America has seen this level of violence? It’s you who have created the hate and the division.”

Trump responded to these tweets by labeling Wheeler a “wacky Radical Left Do Nothing Democrat.”

It’s funny how the Democrats only acknowledge the violence when they want to blame it on the president, otherwise they only refer to it as “peaceful protest.”

Donald Trump Jr. shared a video last week that shows some big-name Democratic leaders and Hollywood stars encouraging and cheering on violence America has seen in major cities.

The video comes from conservative website Caldron Pool and is a compilation of threatening comments coming from the far left starting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking why there aren’t “uprisings all over the country.”

Donny Deutsch, a regular on “Morning Joe” declares that “people need to start taking to the streets.” Rep. Ayanna Pressley said, “There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.”

Chris Cuomo is shown asking where it says that protesters have to be polite and peaceful and Samantha Bee uses a derogatory term I can not repeat in this article to describe Ivanka Trump.

Nicolle Wallace from MSNBC and former Attorney General Eric Holder both condone violence along with Don Lemon and Robert De Niro.

Well known Hollywood actor Johnny Depp asks a threatening question, “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”

The infamous photoshoot of Kathy Griffin posing with the severed head of Trump is shown in the video as well as rapper Snoop Dogg using a prop gun to shoot a clown resembling the president.

Maxine Waters urges supporters to harass members of the Trump administration and Madonna threatens, “I have thought, an awful lot, about blowing up the White House.”

Dem leaders and their allies in the media cheered on the violent left every step of the way…pic.twitter.com/goInUrw6P8

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 31, 2020

While some of the clips in the video come from the early stages of Trump’s presidency, others are more recent and refer to the violent riots raging across the country right now.

Major cities have been devastated by these riots in recent weeks. Portland, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and Washington, D.C., just to name a few, have been terrorized by organizations made of the people that support every word from that video.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is defending his decision to minimize all in-person election security briefings to Congress in favor of written reports after he accused several members of Congress of leaking information “within minutes” of meeting.

On “Sunday Morning Futures” Ratcliff said he had been going into great detail in briefing “not just the oversight committees but every member of Congress” but that stops now.

Ratcliffe told host Maria Bartiromo, “Within minutes of one of those briefings ending, a number of members of Congress went to a number of different outlets and leaked classified information for political purposes. To create a narrative that simply isn’t true, that somehow Russia is a greater national security threat than China.”

“I don’t mean to minimize Russia,” he added. “They are a serious national security threat, but day in, day out, the threats that we face from China are significantly greater. Anyone who says otherwise is just politicizing intelligence for their own narrative.”

Ratcliffe informed lawmakers that his office “will primarily meet its obligation to keep Congress fully and currently informed leading into the Presidential election through written finished intelligence products.” He explained that it would better protect sources and methods while maintaining “the highest analytic standards.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff used this new method to accuse the Trump administration of pushing a false narrative to downplay interference from the Russians in the 2020 election.

Schiff told CNN’s “State of the Union”, “They’re going to put it in writing now instead of giving an oral briefing. That doesn’t make any sense unless the goal is not to allow members of Congress, the representatives of the American people, to ask questions.”

“Concealing the truth is concealing Russians are again intervening to help the president in his reelection,” he added.

Joe Biden was also quick to criticize the Trump administration, “President Trump is hoping Vladimir Putin will once more boost his candidacy and cover his horrific failures to lead our country through the multiple crises we are facing. And he does not want the American people to know the steps Vladimir Putin is taking to help Trump get re-elected.”

Only after his campaign “misjudged how important it was to the American people” did Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden finally condemn the ongoing violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and many other cities across the country.

President of Maslansky & Partners, Lee Carter, told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday, “I think it’s important that we take note of this shift on the violence, because it’s really really important to the American people, and I think that his campaign might have misjudged how important it was to the American people and what it meant.”

Outrage over the violence and a storm of headlines forced Biden and other Democrats to address the issue.

The former vice president shared a video message on Twitter denying all responsibility for the violence but still expressed his support for the peaceful protests.

Biden said, “You know, as I said after George Floyd’s murder, protesting brutality is a right and absolutely necessary. But burning down communities is not protest- it’s needless violence, violence that endangers lives, violence that guts businesses and shutters businesses that serve the community. That’s wrong.”

Once again, a Black man — Jacob Blake — was shot by the police. In front of his children. It makes me sick.

Is this the country we want to be?

Needless violence won’t heal us. We need to end the violence — and peacefully come together to demand justice. pic.twitter.com/WdNqrxA3PK

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 26, 2020

Up until this point, the Democrats’ attitude toward the matter was “if you were concerned about violence if you’re concerned about law and order, that also meant that you did not support Black Lives Matter.”

Carter said, “I think that they’re not mutually exclusive and that’s something he’s [Biden] realized and recognized.”

She added that the issue of violence has become an “absolute essential” part of the presidential bid and said, “He has to address the concern of the American people, which is absolutely about individual personal safety.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told former Vice President Joe Biden that he should cancel his scheduled debates with President Trump because she believes the commander-in-chief would “belittle” the forum.

It’s unclear if Pelosi is actually trying to help Biden by trying to stop him from making a fool of himself in front of the cameras.

Out of the blue at a news conference at the Capitol, Pelosi said, “I don’t think that there should be any debates,” adding that she doesn’t want the debates to be “an exercise in skullduggery.”

“I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States,” she continued. “Now I know that the Biden campaign thinks in a different way about this.”

However, Biden informed MSNBC that he still plans on showing up to the highly anticipated faceoffs with the president saying, “As long as the [debate] commission continues down the straight and narrow as they have, I’m going to debate him,” adding that he would call out Trump’s lies in real-time.

“I’m going to be a fact-checker on the floor as I’m debating him,” he said.

Pelosi is just the latest in the list of high-profile Democrats to offer Biden some advice on the campaign trail. Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton told Biden not to concede the race under any circumstances.

Republicans believe Pelosi’s warnings are a sign that Democrats are trying to hide Biden.

Communication director for the Republican National Committee, Michael Ahrens, suggested in a tweet that the Democratic leaders are giving Biden some very specific orders.

https://twitter.com/michaelahrens/status/1299017637867986945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1299017637867986945%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2Fpelosi-says-biden-shouldnt-debate-trump-i-wouldnt-legitimize-a-conversation-with-him

Pelosi’s comment came completely unprompted during her weekly news conference and was not at all a response to a question about the debates. She called Trump’s performance at the 2016 debate “disgraceful” and claimed he was “stalking” Clinton on stage. This is just one reason why she thinks Biden should break tradition and sit out the debates.

“So I think that he’ll probably act in a way that is beneath the dignity of the presidency; he does that every day,” Pelosi said of Trump. “But I think it will also belittle what the debates are supposed to be about. And they’re not to be about skullduggery on the part of somebody who has no respect for the office he holds, much less the democratic process.”

Pelosi continued, “Why else would he try to undermine the elections in the manner in which he is doing? So, if Joe Biden asked me what I thought about it, [I’d say] I don’t think that he should dignity that conversation with Donald Trump.”

Biden’s campaign responded to Pelosi’s comments saying that while they agree with her characterization of the president, Biden will still be going through with the debates.

Andrew Bates, Biden’s campaign spokesperson, said, “We certainly agree with Speaker Pelosi on her views of the President’s behavior. But just as she has powerfully confronted that behavior in the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, Joe Biden looks forward to doing the same on the debate stage.”