Here’s a prediction from John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist about what the result would be if the act were passed:
Anyone who owns a small business related to the wedding industry — photographers, bakers, website designers, venue owners, caterers, florists — will be sued into oblivion if they refuse services to same-sex couples. Religious colleges and universities will lose their tax-exempt status. Religious institutions of every kind, if they hold to their teachings and traditions about marriage, will face an onslaught from the Department of Justice and the federal bureaucracy…
No, the bill won’t provide religious institutions with meaningful protections. Yes, the bill could certainly be used as a basis for the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax-exempt status to religious organizations that don’t toe the line on gay marriage. Yes, it could also be used to deny grants, licenses, or contracts. No, weak language about preserving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is not enough to prevent harm to religious liberty.
I will add that the Democrats see this act as “win/win.” That’s because it’s either passed (win!) or not passed because of Republican opposition (win! because then the GOP members of Congress who voted against it are labeled homophobe bigots).
Davidson goes on to mention that the left has been trying to merge those who oppose gay marriage with advocates of anti-miscegenation laws, drumming up a notion that the latter are numerous and powerful. I suppose there are some random neo-Nazis who would love to pass such laws, but they have zero place in the GOP and zero power, and the Democrats of course know that. But it suits the left to pretend otherwise.
[NOTE: In this post from 2010 I discussed the history of anti-miscegenation laws in the US.]
[ADDENDUM: The bill does not contain language that would fix some of its problems concerning religious liberty. That seems to be a purposeful omission. For example:
The marriage bill’s sponsors easily could add a clause saying: “No federal, state, or local taxing authority shall revoke any tax-exempt status or tax benefit of any nonprofit organization because it believes or acts on the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.” This simple protection would take the tax issue entirely off the table, which is precisely why the bill’s sponsors steadfastly refuse to adopt it…
Although the bill may provide some explicitly religious nonprofits additional clarity outside of the house-of-worship context, few if any religious social service organizations would benefit, including adoption agencies and marriage counseling organizations. That’s because they don’t have anything at all to do with wedding solemnization itself (the only thing ostensibly protected by the bill).
This explains why controversies and lawsuits over same-sex marriage celebrations have focused on bakers, photographers, web designers, printers, meeting halls, bed and breakfasts, and florists—with decidedly mixed success for people of faith.
These documented and repeated examples of people of faith being harassed and driven out of business today over forced same-sex marriage celebrations get no protection at all under Democrats’ bill.]
Musk, who has made sweeping changes within his newly purchased $44 billion company, responded to a report shared by Twitter user EvaFoxU, which features a human trafficking survivor about how the company “has begun addressing the issue of posting child sexual exploitation content on Twitter after years of the platform’s inactivity on the subject under past management.”
“Priority #1,” Musk said in response to the EvaFoxU tweet.
It wasn’t that past management was 100% inactive on the problem, but it apparently wasn’t all that effective, in part because the exploitators are good at somewhat veiled messages. At any rate, Musk has already done a lot more than his predecessors to make it difficult for those pushing child pornography to find a haven on Twitter.
I’ve said many times that I don’t use Twitter and don’t read there much. Every now and then, though, I post someone’s tweet here in order to make some point or other. But Twitter is big news because it helps to shape opinions for a lot of people. Obviously, the banning of certain ideas and certain people has had a huge effect on election results, and Musk’s commitment to more freedom of speech in that regard on the platform is laudable.
Child pornography and other types of sexual exploitation of children are different – very different – from political freedom of speech, or criticism of certain official medical recommendations on COVID. Child pornography and sexual trafficking are crimes, and rightly so. They need to be stopped on Twitter, and apparently prior to Musk’s acquisition those running Twitter were doing a poor job. He’s determined to do a better one.
As an example of what Musk is doing that the previous Twitter authorities weren’t doing, see this. Some of it involves getting rid of certain hashtags and some involves making it easier and more effective to report instances of child exploitation. New hashtags will spring up, of course. But now that more attention is being paid, the hope is that it will become far more difficult to use the platform for such ends.
Democrats often speak of voting security laws as leading to “voter suppression,” particularly of minorities, although evidence is lacking. It’s a fine rhetorical spin, though, because it fits nicely into their “Republicans are racists” message and encourages some people to be against once-commonplace and common sense voting security rules that almost every country in the world except the US practices.
However, “voter suppression” of evil GOP votes is another story. Here’s a report on in-person voting in Maricopa county in Arizona (Maricopa’s voters are mostly red on Election Day):
The 11 attorneys visited 115 out of the 223 vote centers in Maricopa County on Election Day and found that 72 of them (or 62.61%) “had material problems with the tabulators not being able to tabulate ballots,” Sonnenklar reported, “causing voters to either deposit their ballots into box 3, spoil their ballots and re-vote, or get frustrated and leave the vote center without voting.”
Box 3 — also called “Door 3” or “Slot 3” — is a separate box on the tabulators into which ballots not counted by the machines were placed for later tabulation. Maricopa County, however, has admitted that “in some voting locations, ‘Door 3’ non-tabulated ballots were commingled with tabulated ballots,” according to a letter from the Arizona attorney general’s office to the county.
“In many vote centers, the tabulators rejected the initial insertion of a ballot almost 100% of the time, although the tabulators might still accept that ballot on the second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth attempt to insert the ballot,” the RNC attorney report states. “However, many ballots were not able to be tabulated by the tabulators at all, no matter how many times the voter inserted the ballot.”…
Sonnenklar said these reports “directly contradict the statements of County election officials that (1) printer/tabulator issues were limited to only 70 of the 223 vote centers, (2) the printer/tabulator problems were resolved as of 3:00 p.m., and (3) the printer/tabulator issues were insignificant in the entire scheme of the election.”
There were also “significant lines at 59 of the 115 vote centers” (51.30%) that the attorneys visited, with many voters waiting 1-2 hours before receiving a ballot, according to the report. As a result of the printer and tabulator issues, many voters spoiled ballots that wouldn’t tabulate and tried voting with new ballots, sometimes still having the same issues, and causing the process to take longer.
The certification of the election has been delayed till November 28, but I don’t see how that will solve anything in terms of redress.
I have long felt that the phenomenon of voter fraud must be prevented for that very reason – there is tremendous motive to commit it because there is no way to undo it, or at least no way that is ordinarily seen as practical or possible. The traditional remedy is prosecution of the perpetrators, with fines or even sometimes short prison terms if found guilty. But it’s very hard to prove guilt in these cases when the evidence is destroyed or contaminated, and it’s ordinarily impossible to know the effect of the fraud on the result of the election for the candidates: its extent, and whose votes were added illegally or suppressed in any number of ways. Did it change the outcome?
And unless there’s a do-over, which is very rare indeed, it doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. The perps have been rewarded for their efforts in the high-stakes game of modern elections in a sharply divided country.
[NOTE: I urge you to read this post of mine from April of 2014. It describes how Obama pressed the idea that Republicans were racist liars in wanting voter ID. Obama had a tremendous influence in shaping the thrust of the Democrat attack on voting security laws.]
[ADDENDUM: My current donation appeal will be winding down soon. A preliminary THANK YOU! to all who’ve contributed to helping keep this blog running.]
Now that everyone’s depressed about the elections and strapped for cash with the holidays coming, I thought I’d ask for donatio
Never let it be said that my timing was especially good.
But I do need to pass the hat now and then, and I haven’t done it in a long while. I greatly and deeply appreciate all contributions towards running this blog.
You may have noticed that I still have the Paypal button method of donating on the right sidebar (or towards the bottom of the blog if you use a cellphone). That’s because, although I’ve researched tons of Paypal alternatives for many many hours, I have yet to come up with a substitute that will work for me. They all either have similar issues as Paypal, or different ones that include very major privacy problems that only emerged when I started signing up.
I’ll still be looking for a substitute, But for now the Paypal method of donating still works the best.
I also want to mention that it’s possible to set up recurring donations, such as once a month.
Thanks, thanks, THANKS in advance!
NOTE: I’ll be bumping this up each day for about a week.
Almost two months after the Russian Nord Stream pipelines blew up in the Baltic Sea, the Swedish prosecutors have found traces of explosives at the underwater site and declared that the incident was an act of “gross sabotage.”
The explosions that ripped apart the pipelines at four places had a force of almost “500 kilograms of TNT” and measured 2.3 on the seismic Richter scale — comparable to “a powerful bomb from the second world war,” the German and British media outlets reported.
But is this really news? I suppose the traces of explosives and the official confirmation are news, but I don’t think there have been many people who didn’t conclude quite early on that this was most likely sabotage. Among other things, seismographic data indicated it almost from the start. The real question is whodunnit, and as in the best detective novels, there is no shortage of candidates.
I’d like to add a few things that people don’t usually emphasize. The first is that neither pipeline was active at the time. Number two wasn’t yet operating to begin with, and Russia had purposely stopped the flow of number one for “repairs” close to four weeks earlier (the article just linked was written weeks before the explosions):
Russia’s state-owned energy giant, Gazprom, halted all exports via Nord Stream 1 from Aug. 31, citing maintenance work on its only remaining compressor.
However, while flows were due to resume after three days, Gazprom on Friday cited an oil leak for the indefinite shutdown of the pipeline. The shock announcement came hot on the heels of a joint statement from the G-7 economic powers backing a proposal to put a price-capping mechanism on Russian oil.
In what energy analysts see as an escalation of Russia’s bid to inflict economic pain on the region, the Kremlin has since said that the resumption of gas supplies to Europe is completely dependent on Europe lifting its economic sanctions against Moscow.
The sanctions were not lifted. Also, Gazprom informed Germany’s Siemen’s Energy that until Siemen’s repaired some allegedly faulty equipment, the flow would not be resumed and the shutdown would continue. Siemen’s said this:
…[T]he company told Reuters that it’s not currently commissioned by Gazprom to do maintenance work on the turbine with the suspected oil leak, but said it remains on standby to do so.
Siemens Energy added that it “cannot comprehend this new representation based on the information provided to us over the weekend.”
Even more interestingly, months earlier Russia had already reduced the flow in the only-operating Nord Stream pipeline (number one) to 20% of the originally agreed-upon volume. Then came the report by Russia of a maintenance problem, and then a shutdown that was supposed to last three days, and then an indefinite shutdown supposedly due to a leak. The shutdown was about a month before the sabotage. Even the shutdown was causing great worry in Europe and particularly Germany about fuel shortages:
“Russia’s move to again cut gas supply to the EU just as the region scrambles to fill its inventories ahead of winter is a further escalation of its policy of the past months to inflict economic pain through repeated supply cuts to Germany, the EU’s biggest economy and gas consumer,” analysts at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group said in a research note.
“Sources in Berlin say they are now making all winter energy plans on the assumption of zero supply from Russia,” they added. “That means there will now also be a focus on central and southern Europe, which still receives Russian gas including through pipeline transit of Ukraine and Turkey.”
Again, please note that was written three weeks before the explosions.
It is my impression that many of those blaming the US for the sabotage – and there are plenty of them – seem to be ignoring this build-up. Let me say right here that I do not know who set the explosives. But to me, Russia is the most likely culprit for the simple reason that Russia had already been cutting off the flow through that pipeline for months, and then shutting it off for a month, in order to get the concessions it wanted from Europe. Russia was obviously more than willing to sacrifice whatever revenue it got from the Nord Stream, bargaining that hurting Europe was well worth it. And it had already become clear that Europe wouldn’t cooperate and give Russia what it wanted – with Germany also making it clear that it was trying to free itself from dependence on Russian fossil fuels entirely as soon as possible. So Russia may indeed have calculated that it would be losing nothing by making the already-shut-down Nord Stream pipelines inoperative, and that Europe would be losing much more.
To go back in time a bit further to demonstrate what I mean, in April of 2022 Germany made this announcement:
Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signalling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine…
“We are actively working to get independent from the import of (Russian) oil and we think that we will be able to make it during this year,” Scholz said during a news conference in London with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson…
The DIW economic institute said in a study published on Friday that Germany might be able to secure enough gas supplies for the coming winter without any imports from Russia through a combination of alternative suppliers and drastic energy-saving measures.
That deadline might have been somewhat premature, but at any rate the intent of Germany was clear way back in April and Nord Stream was due to become obsolete in fairly short order. Then Russia shut it down, and then it was purposely damaged.
I am virtually certain that many people here will disagree with me about the likelihood that Russia was the culprit and not the US. I have no illusions about those running Biden’s administration; I believe they are capable of deeply nefarious activities. But I don’t see strong signs that point to them being the perpetrators in this particular case and I see much stronger signs that point to Russia. That said, nothing would surprise me.
NOTE: This article on the history of Germany’s dependence on Russia is of interest (yes, I know, the Guardian is leftist, but it still seems pretty comprehensive to me). Many ironies abound, including the surprising (to me, at least) fact that the whole thing began in 1970, when Russia was still the USSR. Some details:
On Sunday 1 February 1970, senior politicians and gas executives from Germany and the Soviet Union gathered at the upmarket Hotel Kaiserhof in Essen…to celebrate the signing of a contract for the first major Russia-Germany gas pipeline, which was to run from Siberia to the West German border at Marktredwitz in Bavaria…
Germany would supply the machines and high-quality industrial goods; Russia would provide the raw material to fuel German industry…[This was part of the] new “eastern policy” of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and its allies including East Germany, launched the previous year under chancellor Willy Brandt…
Before the signing, Nato had discreetly written to the German economics ministry to inquire about the security implications. Norbert Plesser, head of the gas department at the ministry, had assured Nato that there was no cause for alarm: Germany would never rely on Russia for even 10% of its gas supplies.
Half a century later, in 2020, Russia would supply more than half of Germany’s natural gas and about a third of all the oil that Germans burned to heat homes, power factories and fuel vehicles. Roughly half of Germany’s coal imports, which are essential to its steel manufacturing, came from Russia.
The article goes on to list many many people over the years who warned Germany, including a lot about Reagan:
Over 50 years, Germany fought numerous battles with a series of US presidents over its growing dependence on Russian energy. In the process, Germany’s foreign office developed a view of American anti-communism as naive, and a belief that only Germany truly understood the Soviet Union.
“I was wrong,” the former German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says, simply. “We were all wrong.”
What name is prominently missing from the entire 4,200+ word article? You can probably guess: Donald Trump. A reminder from 2018; Nord Stream 2 was planned but not yet built at the time:
I haven’t read any apologies to Trump coming from Germany or Western Europe. Perhaps I missed them, but a search didn’t locate them. If you find some, let me know.]
You can’t exactly call it a scoop, but CBS News seems to be admitting that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic.
Two years late and two elections short, they grudgingly admit something that was obvious from the start, and discredited and suppressed by the MSM and the Democrats despite that because the truth was so potentially dangerous to their plans.
So, why now? I’ve noticed quite a few people saying it’s because they’re getting ready to jettison Biden, at least for 2024 if not sooner. But they could have dropped him anyway without this particular admission. What is my theory? I think they might just be trying to get slightly ahead of some parts of the planned House GOP investigation of the laptop evidence. They will be reporting that investigation as negatively as possible to the GOP and as positively as possible to the Democrats and especially to Biden himself. But in the meantime they’re admitting what will come out anyway, which is that the laptop is authentic.
I happened across this 2010 interview with Victor Davis Hanson. I’ve cued up two short segments that I found impressive. Here’s the first part, which is about Russia and Putin:
Here’s the second part, which is about the choices the United States faces:
Today’s we-now-live-in-a-3rd-world-dictatorship news from the Biden administration is Merrick Garland’s breathtaking announcement that he has named a special counsel to conduct a criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Given the complete absence of evidence of any wrongdoing, it’s very clear that the Democrats are terrified of Trump and that they will do anything they can to destroy his candidacy. My suspicion is that this will backfire and, instead, solidify Trump’s support.
Then again, perhaps they would actually prefer Trump as a candidate because they think he’s tainted goods already and they can defeat him fairly easily, with or without fraud. So maybe they want that backlash and solidification of his support on the right, in order to encourage his nomination. Either way, though, they probably figure the appointment of a special counsel is a win/win, because they either imprison Trump as so many have been salivating to do for so long – placating their base – or they nudge the GOP voters into nominating Trump and they think he’s now a loser.
That’s one counter-theory, anyway. Or maybe the Democrats are indeed terrified of Trump. Personally, though, I don’t think so.
More:
When Biden was asked about Trump’s plan to run again for president, there were lots of standard things he could have said, such as saying that he looks forward to a hard-fought campaign or that he doesn’t think Trump can win or that the American people won’t stand for yet another Trump term in office. Biden, however, said none of those things. Instead, Biden said something bizarre and fundamentally un-American: “Well, we just have to demonstrate that he will not take power by—if we—if he does run. I’m making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next President again.”
Ignore the obligatory cover language about “our Constitution.” The key words are “I’m making sure he…does not become the next President again.”
It truly is an extraordinary statement by Biden or any president – or it would have been just a few short years ago. Things have moved along towards tyranny so rapidly, though, that it is no longer surprising.
As for my own opinion, I’m with John Hinderaker on this: it’s dueling investigations, and with the help of their MSM buddies the left believes it can overshadow the GOP’s hearings on Biden:
The Democrats have been planning on indicting Trump for a long time, and appointing a special counsel is part of their plan. It allows them to wash their hands of the investigation, pretending that impartial justice is simply taking its course…
I assume that Smith will be able to bring criminal charges against Trump in Washington, D.C., and it is almost a foregone conclusion that Trump will be convicted (of whatever the charges may be) by a hyperpartisan D.C. jury…
While the ability of a special counsel to wreak havoc is well established, Congressional investigations tend to fizzle out…
So I expect the dueling investigations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden to be a mismatch. The Trump investigation will likely result in an indictment and criminal conviction. The Biden investigation will tell us what we already know, and its findings will be a deep secret unless you read Power Line, InstaPundit, Breitbart, and other conservative news sources. Most news outlets will parrot the Democrat line that Biden’s corruption is a “long-debunked conspiracy theory.”
I hope I’m wrong. But that’s the way I imagine it will go. However, one other possibility is the Netanyahu route. Netanyahu was indicted on trumped-up (pun intended) charges, the trial is still ongoing but the prosecution hasn’t been doing well, and Netanyahu was re-elected after some time in the political wilderness.
For anyone still scratching his or her head about what on earth FTX was supposed to do and what it actually did, here’s a good summary entitled “What You Need to Know about the Colossal Mess of FTX”.
Some excerpts follow. First, the promise and the supposed structure:
Back in 2017, Sam Bankman-Fried noticed that Bitcoin was bought and sold at significantly different prices in different countries’ markets — sometimes 60 percent more than the lowest priced markets. He bought Bitcoin in the markets where it was the cheapest, and then resold it in South Korean markets at a much higher price, what he nicknamed “the Kimchi Premium.” After a month, he launched his own trading house, Alameda Research.
Bankman-Fried founded FTX, which is short for “Futures Exchange,” in 2019. “In creating FTX, I wanted to build a platform for professional traders like me, while also bringing crypto trading to the mass market and first-time users,” he later said…
As a cryptocurrency exchange, FTX allowed customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional — some would say, “real”– money or other cryptocurrencies.
The article goes into the manner in which Bankman-Fried was lauded as a veritable financial genius, and lots of other things with which you may be familiar. But it’s well worth reading even if you know; as I said, I think it’s a good overview that’s not too long. It also has details on how the unraveling occurred.
There’s also this news, which you may have missed (it includes a link to another article):
Apparently, there’s no proof to the rumor that the Ukrainian government invested heavily in FTX, with some folks on social media spinning a conspiracy theory that the Ukrainians gave to FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried gave money to Democrats, and Democrats and the Biden administration sent U.S. aid to Ukraine. FTX was a partner in helping the Ukrainian government convert donated cryptocurrencies to fiat money.
But the story is bad enough as is…It is believed that more than a million people have lost the money they invested in FTX, an estimated $8 billion or so.
I haven’t read articles about FTX in the regular MSM, but I hear it alleged that Bankman-Fried’s enormous donations to the Democrats are mostly not mentioned – or, if mentioned, it’s in the context of a misleading statement that he “donated to both parties.” His donations to Republicans were actually to a few RINOs like Romney, and they were extremely paltry compared to what he gave to Democrats.
No one seems to have done due diligence concerning FTX and Bankman-Fried. It is shocking to learn that a company can be such an empty house of cards, and yet no one seemed to catch on for such a long time. Among others, the MSM itself was responsible for lauding Bankman-Fried and the company to the skies, helping to give him and FTX the patina of reliability.
