Originally General Research #16617 >>13046935

FRANKLIN GRAHAM SAYS WE CAN NOT REMAIN SILENT – THE EQUALITY ACT IS A DANGEROUS THREAT TO OUR NATION

Franklin Graham, President of the Bill Graham Evangelistic Association, sent out emails and notices on other media today about a very dangerous piece of legislation—the Equality Act. He wrote, The Biden Administration has said they want to pass this within their first 100 days. I cannot say this more emphatically—for people, for businesses, and for ministries of faith, the Equality Act is a threat to life as we know it in our nation today. It’s a real game-changer.

The House has already passed this legislation one time previously, so it will likely pass in the House again before moving on to the Senate. We need you to contact your congressmember and U.S. senators and ask them to vote NO. I also encourage you to let the White House know about your strong opposition to this bill. The progressive Left is zealous about this issue and will pull out all the stops to try to make it the law of the land.

• The Equality Act designates schools, churches, and healthcare organizations as “public accommodations.” With this, schools, churches, and hospitals could be forced to accept the government’s beliefs and mandates about sexual orientation and gender identity. That would be highly intrusive and incredibly far-reaching. It will threaten everyday speech where people can be fined or lose their jobs for using the wrong name or pronouns.

• The Equality Act will legislate that we allow boys in girls’ sports, boys in girls’ locker rooms, men in women’s shelters, and men in women’s prisons. It will force teachers and students to publicly pretend that a biological male is a female. Schools will be encouraged or mandated to instruct first, second, and third graders that they can choose to be a boy or a girl, or neither, or both, making biological sex (and science) a relic of the past.

• The Equality Act will use the force of law across all 50 states to strip Christian and other religious ministries of their right to hire people of shared faith to pursue a shared mission. Can you imagine a Christian organization being forced to hire people hostile to its deeply held beliefs who have no passion for its beliefs, teachings, and mission? That doesn’t work.

• The Equality Act will strip health professionals of their rights of conscience. It will force doctors and medical professionals who long to do no harm to engage in gender transition treatments such as hormone-blocking, cross-sex hormones, or surgery. It is obvious that a Catholic or faith-based hospital should not have to perform gender transition surgeries that go entirely against all they believe.

https://thedcpatriot.com/%e2%80%8bfranklin-graham-says-we-can-not-remain-silent-the-equality-act-is-a-dangerous-threat-to-our-nation/

What I Learned at the Aspen Ideas RE$ET Festival Sponsored by Mastercard, PayPal, and Prudential in Partnership with Bloomberg

Aspen Ideas: RE$ET, a virtual symposium of experts and thought leaders designed to "give voice to the bold ideas" for "building an equitable economy," took place earlier this week. If you're in the target demographic—people who enjoy giving and receiving PowerPoint presentations—the entire 10-hour program is available online for your enjoyment.

On the other hand, don't bother. Three hours is more than enough to make the average viewer wish they were rewatching the Democratic primary debates instead, which were interesting and informative by comparison. At least the candidates disagreed on some issues. The Aspen-approved experts rarely did, while deploying many of the same talking points.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a "challenge" but also an "opportunity" for progress, just like World War II and the race to put a man on the moon. Those challenges-turned-opportunities epitomized the greatness that America should endeavor to achieve again by building back better using "mutualistic public-private partnerships."

As the economist Mariana Mazzucato explained during an afternoon breakout session, re-actualizing American greatness will require "a mission-oriented approach to stakeholder capitalism." What does that mean, exactly? Better to let the expert explain it herself: "We must seize the moment to set a direction for change, catalyze innovation across the economy aimed at societal challenges." Now you know.

Like any worthwhile gathering of experts, the virtual conference consisted of plenary sessions and breakouts. Panel discussions were interspersed with short videos highlighting "changemakers," as well as interviews with non-experts to give viewers a sense of what "Main Street" is thinking.

Martin Muoto, for example, is making change via his role as founder, managing partner, and CEO of "a family of social impact real estate funds" called SoLa Impact. In the short video clip, Muoto demonstrated his talent for cramming an obscene amount of woke corporate jargon into a single sentence. "We really are resetting the framework for how we execute compassionate capitalism with intention, with inclusion, and with sustainability," he said, expertly.

The man-on-the-street interviews were equally compelling. Uncredentialed commoners were asked to weigh in on a variety of topics, such as structural inequality, sustainability, and trade. In most cases, their thoughts, suggestions, and admissions of white privilege were no less insightful than those of the credentialed experts.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/aspen-ideas-reset/

Originally General Research #16617 >>13046958

Once-secret FBI informant reports reveal wider-ranging operation to spy on Trump campaign

Goal was to find "anyone" inside GOP campaign tied to Russia who could be get dirt "damaging" to Clinton, newly declassified memos reveal.

Once-secret reports show the FBI effort to spy on the Trump campaign was far wider than previously disclosed, as agents directed an undercover informant to make secret recordings, pressed for intelligence on numerous GOP figures, and sought to find "anyone in the Trump campaign" with ties to Russia who could acquire dirt "damaging to Hillary Clinton."

The now-declassified operational handling reports for FBI confidential human source Stefan Halper — codenamed "Mitch" — provide an unprecedented window both into the tactics used by the bureau to probe the Trump campaign and the wide dragnet that was cast to target numerous high-level officials inside the GOP campaign just weeks before Americans chose their next president in the November 2016 election.

Among the revelations, the memos make clear that:

Almost immediately after the FBI opened a Russia collusion probe on July 31, 2016 narrowly focused on the foreign lobbying of a single Trump campaign aide named George Papadopoulos, agents pressed Halper for information on more than a half dozen other figures, including future Attorney General Jeff Sessions, foreign policy adviser Sam Clovis, campaign chairman Paul Manafort, economic adviser Peter Navarro, future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and campaign adviser Carter Page.

Halper provided significant exculpatory evidence to the FBI — including transcripts of conversations he recorded of targeted Trump advisers providing statements of innocence — that was never disclosed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that approved a year of surveillance targeting the Trump campaign, and specifically Page.

While current FBI Director Chris Wray has insisted the bureau did not engage in spying on the Trump campaign, Halper's taskings include many of the tradecraft tactics of espionage, including the creation of a fake cover story (he wanted a job at the Trump campaign), secret recordings, providing background on targets, suggested questions to ask and even contact information for potential targets.

But the memos' most explosive revelations are the sheer breadth of the FBI's insufficiently predicated dragnet targeting the Trump campaign, and the agents' clearly stated purpose of thwarting any Trump campaign effort to get dirt from Russia that could hurt his Democratic rival.

"Given the Trump campaign's desire to hire the CHS as an advisor, the CHS is in a perfect position to ask CD direct questions about the Trump campaign's alleged ties to RF," one memo noted. "The team provided the CHS with several open source articles about the Trump campaign."

Brock, the former FBI executive, said Wray's and Comey's effort to avoid using the word spying in the Russia case were simply semantics.

“What they are doing is using preferred definitions,” he said. “When we employ the investigative techniques used against Carter Page to break the laws of another country and steal their secrets, it’s okay to call it spying. When we use those same techniques against a U.S. citizen, it’s called an investigation."

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/once-secret-fbi-informant-reports-reveal-wide-ranging

Originally General Research #16617 >>13046960

Maoist Monster: Biden Aide Says Pandemic, Which Has Ravaged the Nation, Was the 'Best Thing That Ever Happened' to Biden

Joe Biden’s senior advisor Anita Dunn said that the coronavirus was “the best that ever happened” to Joe Biden, alluding to the impact of the pandemic on the voting public.

The remark will appear in Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, which will hit the bookstores on March 2. It’s the first major book released on the 2020 presidential contest. The Guardian obtained a copy prior to publication and found the quote. “It was, the authors add, a necessarily private comment that ‘campaign officials believed but would never say in public.'”

Washington Examiner:

That private thinking reflects what many political analysts said at the time, that the rampant pandemic undermined then-President Donald Trump’s solid economic achievements and standing in national and battleground state opinion polls.

But the comments could be seized on by Biden’s critics that his campaign used the suffering of the public in the opportunistic pursuit of power.

Dunn was appointed co-chair of Biden’s transition team and served as interim press secretary during that time. Her name may be familiar to many on the right. In 2009, a video clip of the then-White House communications director surfaced where she expressed admiration for Chinese Communist mass-murderer Mao Zedong, calling him “one of my favorite political philosophers.” She left her position a month later.

Keep that quote in mind whenever you listen to Biden’s pious words about how awful it is that the coronavirus has claimed so many lives.

Associated Press:

“We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There’s no such thing,” he said Monday evening. “There’s nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary.”

“Just like that,” he added, “so many of them took their last breath alone.”

A president whose own life has been marked by family tragedy, Biden spoke in deeply personal terms, referencing his own losses as he tried to comfort the huge number of Americans whose lives have been forever changed by the pandemic.

He probably should have thanked the families of all those dead Americans for giving him the presidency. Biden was dead in the water before the pandemic hit. It wasn’t until the Democratic/Media complex began their daily pronouncements of death and incompetence that his numbers began to rise.

But Dunn’s reported comment points to what became the dominant theme of the election. As the pandemic capsized Trump along with the economy Biden, through a much more cautious approach to campaigning and basic public health concerns, appealed to voters as the right man to manage a recovery.

Trump sought to hammer Biden for “hiding in his basement” – a reference to Biden’s decision to rarely leave home in Wilmington, Delaware, instead campaigning virtually while the president held rallies and ignored public health guidelines. But such attacks did not hit home.

It’s hard for an opponent to hit a moving target. It’s even harder to hit one that goes into hiding. Biden’s strategy was dictated as much by his low energy as it was any grand design and Trump was never quite able to get him in the open to engage in a day-to-day war where Biden would be forced to constantly defend himself.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/25/maoist-monster-biden-aide-says-the-pandemic-which-has-ravaged-the-nation-was-the-best-thing-that-ever-happened-to-joe-biden-n1428215

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