Joe Biden’s State of the Union Previewed Dems’ Fake Attempt to Walk Back Their Culture War

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Joe Biden’s ”State of the Union” address clearly marked an attempt by his White House to make their culture war seem like an afterthought. It’s not, of course, as evidenced by the president’s description of abortion as “health care” and his demand that Congress pass the radical Equality Act. But the bulk of Biden’s speech focused on “meat and potatoes,” as Chris Hayes repeatedly claimed during MSNBC’s coverage.

It’s true, Biden dedicated much of his address to Ukraine, infrastructure, the economy, health care, and Covid-19. He earned a robust round of applause with a line that said, “We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police. It is to fund the police.” He touched on guns, immigration, and the environment, but they were hardly his focus. Notably, Joy Reid lamented the absence of Jan. 6 from Biden’s address, arguing it was characteristically devoid of “red meat.”

Reid was right to find that balance remarkable. Rather than signaling a shift away from Democrats’ scorched-earth culture war, Biden’s speech signaled a shift away from the party’s strategy of obsessing over identity politics. This comes with an enormous caveat: Democrats cannot and will not meaningfully make any such pivot beyond rhetoric.

Until they’re willing to drop truly radical policies like the Equality Act, it’s all smoke and mirrors meant to distract voters from what they’re actually doing to the culture. Democrats cannot simply pretend the summer of 2020 and the lockdowns never happened, no matter how much the media might help them try, because the party has now spent years committing to inflated definitions of bigotry that would condemn any moderation from their positions. (Read more from “Joe Biden’s State of the Union Previewed Dems’ Fake Attempt to Walk Back Their Culture War” HERE)

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‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’: Russian Tycoon Puts $1M Bounty on Putin’s Head

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A Russian businessman is offering $1 million to any military officer who apprehends Russian President Vladimir Putin “dead or alive” for committing war crimes in his invasion of Ukraine.

Alex Konanykhin, an entrepreneur and former banker, posted the bounty on social media as Russia enters a full week of military action against the neighboring country. Western governments and companies have responded to the invasion by seeking to economically punish Putin and Russia’s ruling elite. The bounty offered by Konanykhin, who is now based in the U.S., places an even more direct target on the Russian leader as backlash over the invasion continues to escalate.

Konanykhin said in a Facebook post Tuesday that he promised to pay the officer or officers the money for arresting “Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws.” (Read more from “‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’: Russian Tycoon Puts $1M Bounty on Putin’s Head” HERE)

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Irate Liberals Are Freaking Out Because Sam Elliott Doesn’t Like Their Gay Western

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Superstar Western actor Sam Elliott went viral Wednesday as irate liberals lost their minds over his personal opinion of the multi-award-losing movie “The Power of The Dog.”

“Can someone explain to Sam Elliott what The Power of the Dog is about — and what movies are?” one journalist from The Guardian wrote in an op-ed, where the opening line describes how Elliott has more than 100 screen credits (so probably knows at least a little bit about films).

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, who lives in the South, posted to her Twitter feed, “I mean most movies about the American West don’t know anything about the American West including the ones Sam Elliott has been a part of. They erase the presence of anyone who isn’t white or male when the west was mostly built by Indigenous, Black, Mexican & Chinese people.”

“They’re running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions of homosexuality throughout the f**king movie,” Elliott continued.

[Warning: tweet contains explicit language.]

Marc Maron: Did you see Power of the Dog, did you see that movie?
Sam Elliott: Yeah do you wanna talk about that piece of shit?
Marc: [ohh noo] You didn’t like that one?
Sam: Fuck no. pic.twitter.com/BGdOd6scwe

— Jonathan (@jonathanmb32) February 28, 2022

(Read more from “Irate Liberals Are Freaking Out Because Sam Elliott Doesn’t Like Their Gay Western” HERE)

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Biden SCOTUS Pick: Judicial System ‘Unfair’ to Sex Offenders

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President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, acknowledged in a Senate confirmation questionnaire that she was the author of a paper published anonymously that charged the American judicial system was “unfair” to sex offenders.

The paper, which said sex offenders’ punishments had been “excessive,” “unfair and unnecessarily burdensome,” was titled “Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders.”

It was published in 1996 in the Harvard Law Review as a “note.” Jackson did not disclose her authorship until the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to list published writings as part of her nomination, Just the News reported

She argued that courts had been “unable” to differentiate between “preventive” and “punitive” punishments for sex offenders. . .

“[E]ven in the face of understandable public outrage over repeat sexual predators, a principled prevention/punishment analysis evaluates the effect of the challenged legislation in a manner that reinforces constitutional safeguards against unfair and unnecessarily burdensome legislative action,” she wrote. (Read more from “Biden SCOTUS Pick: Judicial System ‘Unfair’ to Sex Offenders” HERE)

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China Largely Ignores Biden’s State of the Union Speech

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President Joe Biden had very little to say about China in his first State of the Union (SOTU) address on Tuesday night, and Chinese media returned the favor by saying very little about Biden’s speech.

China’s state-run Global Times counted only two mentions of China in the speech, neither of them terribly confrontational (Biden added a third in the remarks as delivered). The Chinese paper dismissed Biden’s address as a weak imitation of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s famed “Iron Curtain” speech that unsuccessfully sought to use Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to rally the divided American political parties behind Biden’s presidency.

The Global Times quoted Fudan University professor Shen Yi mocking Biden’s claims of leadership against Russia:

“If the US has been prepared for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, why is Washington still discussing with other countries on how to sanction Russia on SWIFT? If US intelligence agencies can make correct early-warnings about Russia’s operation, but the White House failed to fully prepare for sanctions, the US’ capability and national strength are in trouble,” Shen said.

Biden said in his speech that “Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO Allies.” But Shen said this is another pointless line that shows Biden’s weakness. “This means the US will leave Ukraine alone even though Kiev pinned high hopes on Washington. To defend NATO? Did Russia say it wants to invade NATO?”

(Read more from “China Largely Ignores Biden’s State of the Union Speech” HERE)

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How The U.S. Federal Government Fuels Child Smuggling And Trafficking

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I was part of a large political team in the Trump administration that tried to stop cartel-driven human smuggling and trafficking into the United States. We learned federal agencies and bureaucrats were more interested in preserving a broken system than preventing the abuse of children, and they were using your tax dollars to do so. The Biden administration continues to fight for that broken system, which also continues to put Americans at risk of great harm.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is statutorily responsible for handling the housing and resettlement of dependent foreign nationals who enter the United States, including so-called unaccompanied alien children, or UACs. A UAC is a child whom employees of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encounter at a U.S. port of entry or along the border not in the custody of a verifiable parent or guardian.

Once DHS identifies a child as a UAC, that child is transferred to an appropriate private facility funded by HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). In theory, each child is then cared for by that ORR-funded facility until he or she can either be placed with an appropriate sponsor who is already in the United States (ideally, an actual family member with appropriate resources) or returned to his or her home country.

This is how the process is supposed to work, according to current federal law. What we found really happening was quite disturbing.

Mexican cartels have known for years that our southern border and immigration system could be manipulated for substantial profit. These cartels have developed an admittedly impressive business model that can get children and even adults from anywhere in the world into the United States by presenting them as children at our overwhelmed southern border. (Read more from “How The U.S. Federal Government Fuels Child Smuggling And Trafficking” HERE)

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It’s Now Clear How Misinformed the Public Has Been About the Risks of COVID-19

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Now that President Joe Biden has declared that Americans can begin to return to life as normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s possible to look back at the toll it wrought on the United States and how that compares to the perception of the American people.

After recent polling showed that a majority of Americans are ready to begin moving toward a society without COVID-19 restrictions, Democratic governors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began to lift mask mandates and relax mask guidance that Democratic voters have largely supported throughout the pandemic. There’s a sharp partisan divide still between Democrats who are more wary about moving on and Republicans who generally already have, and it can be explained by how misinformed the American people are about the risks of COVID-19.

Since January 21, 2020, there have been 78.8 million positive COVID-19 tests in the United States, according to the CDC, and according to any expert, at least tens of millions more undiagnosed cases. As of March 1, 947,882 Americans have died of the virus, the vast majority of them elderly or with serious comorbidities. (RELATED: Biden Takes Credit For Defeating COVID-19 In State Of The Union As Midterms Approach)

1,433 Americans under age 18 have died with COVID-19, making up about 0.1% of total deaths. Seventy-five percent of COVID-19 deaths have been in Americans aged 65 and older, and among the vaccinated, over 75% of COVID-19 deaths occurred in people with at least four comorbidities, such as obesity, diabetes or cancer.

However, the average American, even the young and healthy, vastly overestimates how at-risk they are of a negative outcome from the virus. (Read more from “It’s Now Clear How Misinformed the Public Has Been About the Risks of COVID-19” HERE)

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More Than a Third of Children Who Started School During Coronavirus Have Problem Reading

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More than one-in-three students who started school during coronavirus pandemic restrictions are reading far below grade level and have little chance of recovering by the end of the school year.

According to a study by Amplify, a curriculum and assessment group, students in kindergarten through third grade are struggling with reading to such a degree that many require “intensive” intervention in order to recover from losses due to the pandemic.

The study used data derived from Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) assessments, a common diagnostic test that looks for indicators such as phonemic awareness, comprehension, alphabetic principle, and fluency. It compiled data from more than 1,300 schools in 37 states from 2019 to 2022.

While there has been some improvement from the 2020-2021 school year, the 2021-2022 school year, students are still well below pre-pandemic reading readiness. The results also show that earlier grade levels have the students least prepared relative to their grade level’s benchmark standards.

Only 47 percent of kindergartners are reading at grade level now compared to 55 percent pre-pandemic. That number can be coupled with the fact that 37 percent of kindergartners are considered “at-risk readers” who read well below their grade level, compared to only 29 percent pre-pandemic. “At-risk readers” are considered to only have a 20 percent chance of making up the gap by the end of the school year. (Read more from “More Than a Third of Children Who Started School During Coronavirus Have Problem Reading” HERE)

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Russia’s Ultimatum: No Western Troops, Nukes in Ex-Soviet Countries; ‘He Has No Idea What’s Coming’: Biden Sends Message to Putin

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By Washington Examiner. Following calls from apprehensive neighbors of Russia for an increased U.S. military presence, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that his country opposes any Western military activity in the former Soviet bloc.

Lavrov told the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday amid his country’s invasion of Ukraine that Western powers, especially America, must not operate in Eastern Europe and should remove nuclear weapons from the region.

“The Western countries need to abandon creating military sites on the territories of countries previously constituting the Soviet Union and not members of the alliance, including using their infrastructure to conduct any military activity,” Lavrov said.

Lavrov centered his demands on U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, saying it is “unacceptable for us that U.S. nuclear weapons still remain in a number of European states in contradiction to the basic points of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.” (Read more from “Russia’s Ultimatum: No Western Troops, Nukes in Ex-Soviet Countries” HERE)

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‘He Has No Idea What’s Coming’: Biden Sends Message to Putin

By Reuters. U.S. President Joe Biden assailed Russian President Vladimir Putin, barred Russian flights from American airspace and led Democratic and Republican lawmakers in a rare display of unity on Tuesday in a State of the Union speech dominated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Let each of us if you’re able to stand, stand and send an unmistakable signal to Ukraine and to the world,” Biden urged Democrats and Republicans. . .

In a deviation from his prepared remarks, Biden said of Putin: “He has no idea what’s coming.” (Read more from “‘He Has No Idea What’s Coming’: Biden Sends Message to Putin” HERE)

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Elon Musk Hits Joe Biden Hard After State of the Union

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk blasted President Joe Biden following his State of the Union address, noting his decision to ignore Tesla in favor of Ford and GM’s new electric vehicle ventures.

During his speech on Tuesday evening, President Biden nodded to Ford and its manufacturing in the United States. While the White House has frequently lauded the efforts of Ford and GM, Tesla — the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer — has often been omitted. The snubbing may lie in the fact that Tesla is not unionized, as White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki hinted last year when she was asked why Tesla was not invited to an electric vehicle summit in which Ford and GM participated.

On Twitter, Musk again pointed out the White House’s willingness to ignore Tesla’s role in promoting electric vehicles.

“Ford is investing $11B to build electric vehicles — creating 11,000 jobs across the country,” read a post from Biden’s Twitter account as the State of the Union speech concluded. “GM is making the largest investment in its history — $7B to build electric vehicles, creating 4,000 jobs in Michigan.”

“Tesla has created over 50,000 US jobs building electric vehicles & is investing more than double GM + Ford combined,” the billionaire entrepreneur responded as an “fyi to person controlling this twitter.” (Read more from “Elon Musk Hits Joe Biden Hard After State of the Union” HERE)

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