Daily News Roundup - PRICKLY PEAR

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SUNDAY, JUNE 19, 2022 IS FATHER’S DAY

American Minute with Bill Federer: Father’s Day! “America needs heroes on the battlefield of everyday life” -U.S. Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall

U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Center for Disease Control, and other agencies report that children from fatherless homes are: Five times more likely to live in poverty; Nine times more likely to drop out of school; Twenty times more likely to go to in prison; Higher risk of drug and alcohol abuse; Increased incidents of internalized and externalized aggressive behavioral problems; Greater chance of runaways and homelessness; Twice as likely to commit suicide. In an effort to recognize the importance of a father in the home, the several “Father’s Day” services were celebrated. One was organized by Grace Golden Clayton, who on July 5, 1908, arranged a church service to honor all fathers, in memory of her father who was a Methodist minister in West Virginia. Another event was celebrated June 19, 1910, in Spokane, Washington. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd heard a church sermon on the newly established Mother’s Day and wanted to honor her father, Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, who had raised six children by himself after his wife Died in childbirth. Sonora Louise Smart Dodd drew up a petition supported by the Young Men’s Christian Association and the ministers of Spokane to celebrate

Father’s Day. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson . . .

NOTABLE QUOTES

President Ronald Reagan, in 1988, said: “Children, vulnerable and dependent, desperately need security, and it has ever been a duty and a joy of fatherhood to offer it. Being a father requires strength … and more than a little courage … to persevere, to fight discouragement, and to keep working for the family …” “Let us … express our thanks and affection to our fathers, whether we can do so in person or in prayer.”

Associated Press: President Joe Biden told The Associated Press on Thursday that the American people are “really, really down” after a tumultuous two years with the coronavirus pandemic, volatility in the economy and now surging gasoline prices that are slamming family budgets. He said a recession is not inevitable and bristled at claims by Republican lawmakers that last year’s COVID-19 aid plan was fully to blame for inflation reaching a 40-year high, calling that argument “bizarre.”

Mark Tapson contributor to FrontPage Magazine reviews a new book by Cheryl Chumley, Lockdown: The Socialist Plan to Take Away Your Freedom: The targeting of Christian patriots is particularly telling – and alarming. “Strip away God, and what’s left is government,” Chumley warns. “Government, big government, bigger government, ever-growing, ever-expanding government: Democratic, socialist, communist, collectivist government. Do that, and America itself is cancelled.”

Mark Tapson contributor to FrontPage Magazine reviews a new book by Cheryl Chumley, Lockdown: The Socialist Plan to Take Away Your Freedom: She is not reticent about identifying as “evil” the forces wreaking ruin in the world today; nor is she vague about their aim: leftists “want total and complete lockdowns of individual freedoms, individual rights, individually held liberties so they can stage their reset and reshape a new America, a new world, more in line with their collectivist and elitist beliefs. It’s called destroy, then rebuild. What they’re destroying is the Constitution; what they’re trying to rebuild is cultural Marxism and communist control.”

TRANSHUMANISM: HUMANS 2.0

Hunt: Know Your Enemy

In “The Lost Interview,” Steve Jobs gives insight into the motivations of the elite who seek to hack into our bodies and steal our minds. “If you set a vector off into space, and you change its direction just a little bit at the beginning, the difference is dramatic when it gets a few miles out in space. If we can nudge it in the right direction, it will be a much better thing.” Interviewer Robert X. Cringley then asks a deeply probing question: . . . […] Harari warns us that “science is changing evolution by natural selection for evolution by intelligent design. Not the intelligent design of some God above the clouds. But our intelligent design.” Who does he mean by “our intelligent design?” Not yours or mine. He means, of course, the elites’. […] Dr. Simon McCarthy-Jones, associate professor in clinical psychology and neuropsychology at Trinity College Dublin, writes: [AI] will know us better than we know ourselves. A government armed with AI could claim to know what its people truly want and what will really make them happy. Imagine our current government (or any government) having that kind of power. We must understand what we are up against: . . .

U.S. SUPREME COURT

Greenfield: “Justice Thomas is the one Justice in the Building That Literally Knows Every Employee’s Name”

Now that the lynch mob is out for Justice Clarence Thomas again, these remarks by Justice Sotomayor are interesting. […] This year, Thomas is much more in the eye of the hurricane. So while Sotomayor has talked about Thomas before, there’s a certain defiance or court solidarity in doing so now. While I don’t particularly care for institutional solidarity in D.C., arguably one of the country’s biggest governmental problems, it points again to how big of a violation the draft leak was.

JANUARY 6

Harsanyi: The Jan. 6 Committee’s Targeting Of Ginni Thomas Is Despicable

Jan. 6 Committee Chair Bennie Thompson says it’s “time” to drag Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in front of his partisan panel so they can grill her over some private text messages and emails. To this point, Thompson hasn’t presented a scintilla of evidence implicating Ginni Thomas in any illegality, nor any evidence that she was in favor of rioting or violence. Thomas isn’t an elected official, she wasn’t running for office or working for the administration, nor was she imbued with supernatural powers that could compel anyone to act against their will or the Constitution. As a private citizen she was petitioning officials to engage in the political act of challenging election results—something Democrats regularly do. As my colleague Tristan Justice has pointed out, not a single of the 29 texts exchanged between Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Thomas (of more than 2,300 text messages released to the committee) included a single direct reference to her husband or any other justice.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INJUSTICE

Kelly: Why Is Merrick Garland Smiling?

Attorney General Merrick Garland, the media insists, is handling the unprecedented criminal investigation into the events of January 6 with a calm, objective professionalism and is above reproach. The former federal prosecutor who sat on the D.C. appellate court for 25 years is somehow beyond the rising temperatures in Washington’s political pressure cooker and remains nonplussed by the January 6 drama produced on an hourly basis on Capitol Hill. To some degree, the media is correct about the attorney general’s detachment. Garland is to the Justice Department what Joe Biden is to the White House—a lost old man installed in office to give a grandfatherly-like disguise to the malicious puppet masters in control of his teleprompter. In Garland’s case, as the New York Times recently confirmed and American Greatness has reported for months, the real authority lies in the vengeful hands of Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, a longtime Obama loyalist. But the carefully crafted hagiography portraying Garland as independent of the partisan machinations of U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and company came crumbling down this week.

The Right Scoop: “I’m a very Catholic person and I believe in abortion” – Pelosi’s response to pregnancy centers being attacked by pro-baby murder activists

Nancy Pelosi was asked today about the pro-life pregnancy centers being attacked and why, as Republicans accuse, the Democrat Party has been so silent on these attacks.

Watch the 1 minute video: https://therightscoop.com/im-a-very-catholic-person-and-i-believe-in-abortion-pelosis-response-to-pregnancy-centers-being-attacked-by-pro-baby-murder-activists/

FAUCI’S VIRUS: IT’S POLITICAL

Hauf: Quarter of Federal Health Workers Failed To Check Email Amid Pandemic, Report Reveals

An estimated 25 percent of Department of Health and Human Services employees neglected to log on to the agency’s software suite, which includes their email, work files, video conference calls, and other applications needed to perform remote work, according to the internal documents. The report, commissioned by then-HHS chief of staff Brian Harrison, measured employees’ inactivity on a day-to-day basis between March 2020 and December 2020. The documents, portions of which were leaked by a whistleblower to the Functional Government Initiative and reviewed by the Free Beacon, state that all HHS employees had secure access to these accounts to work remotely. […] “Extending pandemic-era telework for no good reason hurts Americans who need in-person attention and care,” Herrell told the Free Beacon. “The first priority of public employees should be to serve their employers, the American people.”

HHS, which employs more than 80,000 workers and requested a mandatory budget of $1.7 trillion for 2023, did not respond to a request for comment. […] Previous administrations debated telework policies before the pandemic. The Obama administration expanded telework opportunities, but these programs were reduced under former president Donald Trump. “Americans expect accountability from an agency that deals with some of the nation’s most difficult and complex challenges,” Burr told the Free Beacon.

BIDENS UNCONSTITUTIONAL VACCINE MANDATES

Hubbard: Yale epidemiologist says FDA approval of COVID vax for small children is ‘preordained outcome’

Yale Epidemiology Professor Harvey Risch says there is “no benefit and only potential risk” for healthy infants and children to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, but the government has taken on a “very paternalistic attitude” toward the public during the pandemic. The risks from COVID are “close to zero for healthy children,” Risch told “Just the News, Not Noise,” on Thursday. One day prior, a US Food and Drug Administration committee voted to recommend the Moderna and Pfizer COVID vaccines for infants as young as 6 months old. “For children who are obese or have diabetes, or other chronic conditions, that’s a discussion with a care provider who understands how to balance risks versus benefits,” he stressed. “But for healthy children, there is no benefit and only potential risk.” Risch said he “just cannot understand” why the FDA voted to approve the Pfizer vaccine under an emergency use authorization for children.

CHINA: AMERICA’S MORTAL ENEMY

Bergman: China’s New Way of War

Since 2019, China has been pursuing a new concept of war, known as “intelligentized warfare.” The idea is to operationalize artificial intelligence (AI) and the use of unmanned platforms (such as drones) in a way that subdues the enemy, ultimately without having to resort to conventional “hot” warfare. According to the 2019 Annual Report to Congress, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China,” written by the Office of the Secretary of Defense: “The PLA is … exploring next-generation operational concepts for intelligentized warfare, such as attrition warfare by intelligent swarms[1], cross-domain mobile warfare[2], AI-based space confrontation[3] and cognitive control operations[4]. The PLA considers unmanned systems to be critical intelligentized technologies, and is pursuing greater autonomy for unmanned aerial, surface, and underwater vehicles to enable manned and unmanned hybrid formations[5], swarm attacks[6], optimized logistic support[7] and disaggregated ISR [Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance] among other capabilities.” [Emphasis added.] What sets China apart in its pursuit of “intelligentized warfare” is not its focus on AI and drone swarming – the US Army, Air Force, and the Navy are all pursuing drone swarm projects and the U.S. Marine Corps is working on so-called kamikaze drone swarms – but the cognitive aspects of intelligentized warfare. According to Colonel Koichiro Takagi is a senior fellow of Training Evaluation Research and Development Command, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force: . . .

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA REGIME: TRANSFORMING FOREIGN POLICY

Heath: Blinken: I press Saudis on LGBTQI issues ‘in every conversation’

Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he brings up LGBTQI rights with his Saudi counterpart “invariably, in every conversation,” but defends President Joe Biden’s planned July visit to the kingdom — where homosexual acts carry the death penalty. “There are a lot of different things” that constitute America’s interests in the country, Blinken said. Speaking at the State Department’s first-ever briefing for LGBTQI reporters, Blinken told POLITICO that “we have real engagement” with Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud when he raises his LGBTQI-themed complaints. But he said human rights are only one part of America’s foreign policy and “everything has to be reflected in what we do.”

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA REGIME: TRANSFORMING AMERICA

Arama: Biden Now Claims Shipping Companies Are ‘Price Gouging’ but the Facts Say Differently

In the effort to deflect from his failures when it comes to inflation and gas prices, Biden has also been going after private companies, like the oil companies, threatening them and blaming their “greed” for the rise in prices–when it’s his bad and inconsistent policies that have decimated the energy industry. Instead of letting loose private industry, thus encouraging their growth in a way that’s better for Americans, Biden is always trying to restrict it with heavy regulation, which discourages industry and growth. Now Biden has moved on to attacking the shipping companies. Here he was on June 10 threatening to “pop ’em” — meaning, punch the people running the shipping companies.

The Center Square Staff: Total illegal migrants crossing border under Biden greater than population of 23 U.S. states

. . . since Biden took office, more than 3 million people have been encountered/apprehended entering the U.S. illegally from over 150 countries, according to Customs and Border Patrol data. And that number doesn’t include so-called “gotaways,” the term used for those crossing the border illegally who evade capture. CBP doesn’t report the number of gotaways publicly, but Border Patrol agents who spoke to The Center Square said they total more than a million since Biden took office, setting the total number of border crossings at more than 4 million. In 17 months, those entering the U.S. illegally total more than the individual populations of 23 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

Sundance: There it is, Samsung Signal Flare, Demand Side Contraction, Inventories Too High, Request Suppliers Stall Shipments

We have been waiting for the non-essential durable goods side of the manufacturing sector to start showing evidence of demand side contraction in consumer purchases. There have been subtle sector-by-sector indicators of consumer spending shifts for several months; however, today we get the direct evidence from Samsung.

Nelson: WH denies ‘blacklisting’ media but can’t explain lack of access to Biden events

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday denied that President Biden’s press office is “blacklisting” reporters and news outlets when pressed by The Post on a mysterious pre-screening process in place for presidential events. Jean-Pierre said she didn’t know how the press office is picking reporters for indoor events where Biden often takes questions. Journalists suspect the year-old practice is a way to shape questions posed to Biden. The press secretary proceeded to commit to giving White House Correspondents’ Association President Steven Portnoy a full explanation at their next meeting in coming days. Portnoy confirmed to The Post that he has requested a meeting with Jean-Pierre to discuss access issues and the association has called for the screening process to end and for all large indoor events to be open to all reporters. […] The reporters picked to attend presidential events join members of the rotating daily press pool and over time clear patterns have emerged.

Cole: Biden signs bill extending security protections to families of Supreme Court justices

The bill – the Supreme Court Police Parity Act of 2022 – was passed by the House earlier this week and the Senate passed the measure last month. It allows the families of Supreme Court justices to be covered by the security currently provided to the justices if the Marshal of the Supreme Court “determines such protection is necessary,” according to the text of the legislation.

CLIMATE EMERGENCY: IT’S POLITICAL

Hoft: King Hypocrite Obama to Install Massive 2,500 Gallons Propane Tank for his Seaside Home in Martha’s Vineyard

Hypocrisy at its best! Instead of installing windmills and solar panels for someone so concerned about global warming, former President Barack Obama has ordered the installation of three massive propane gas tanks, two sized at 1,000 gallons and another one at 500 gallons, at his Martha’s Vineyard estate which sits along the “rising” seashore. According to a report from The Martha’s Vineyard Times, the office of the select board of Edgartown, Massachusetts approved an application for a 2,500-gallon commercial propane tank for 79 Turkeyland Cove Road in Katama, a property owned by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. These three propane tanks were to be installed above ground on the Obamas’ property, in contrast with the initial report that it will be buried. […] According to BBC, a new study revealed that the world is using more fossil fuels than ever as the transition to green energy stalls — That includes Obama.

THE DEMOCRAT LED WAR ON CHILDREN

Pondiscio: Elite NYC private schools are teaching kids that American society must be destroyed

Ryan Finlay is a brave young man. A senior at the elite private Horace Mann School, Finlay last week published a pointed but measured essay describing the aggressive political bias that’s dominated his education on the Bronx campus, where generations of famous and well-connected New Yorkers, from Jack Kerouac to Eliot Spitzer, have matriculated or sent their children. Faculty “feel obligated to open students’ eyes to the inequality that surrounds them,” Finlay explained, but that takes the form of “continuous pressure in the classroom to embrace visions of wholesale societal reform.”

The message, hammered relentlessly into students’ heads at Horace Mann, is that “the system is broken, unable to be reformed, rotten to the core, and deserving of demolition,” he wrote. The irony of hyper-privileged New Yorkers paying nearly $60,000 a year for their children to learn they are the undeserving beneficiaries of a broken system need not be dwelled upon here. Finlay’s essay breaks the self-imposed conspiracy of silence that has largely shielded top private schools from criticism from within.

Troutman: Gretchen Whitmer and Her Board of Education Look To Crush School Choice in Michigan

Democratic Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and her state’s Board of Education are opposing a ballot initiative, already passed by the state legislature, that would provide vouchers for more than one million students to attend the school of their choice. The state education board adopted a resolution on Tuesday against the Let MI Kids Learn ballot initiative, which is similar to legislation used in dozens of other states and would allow families to use tax credits to send their children to private schools. If it receives around 340,000 signatures, the proposal will be included on the November ballot without the governor’s signature. Whitmer in October had vetoed bills containing the school choice tax credits, which had been passed by the Michigan House and Senate, saying they created “tax shelters for the wealthy.” Democrats and members of national teachers’ union organizations have consistently opposed school choice initiatives. […] Michigan superintendent Michael Rice said the Michigan Student Opportunity Accounts program would “devastate” public schools and reduce state revenue by $500 million in the first year. But Mackinac Center for Public Policy director of education policy Ben DeGrow argued looking at only the revenue impact obscures the program’s overall fiscal effect.

WOKE CORPORATION

Simonson: UNFAIR: Woke Tech Company Slack Bans Conservative Group From Platform

A Slack employee informed FAIR of the ban on Wednesday but did not provide any rationale other than that they violated the company’s “Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” according to emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The ban, imposed on one of the largest anti-immigration policy groups in the country, comes as part of a broader trend from tech companies arbitrarily censoring conservative groups and individuals. […] Slack is owned by Salesforce, a software company valued at more than $160 billion and chaired by left-wing activist Marc Benioff. Over the years, Benioff has earned the moniker “Tech’s woke CEO” by making Salesforce a champion of left-wing values. Benioff has generously donated to various Democratic politicians such as Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. In 2019, he announced that Salesforce would no longer do business with any company that sells certain types of firearms or ammunition magazines. Last September, Salesforce said it would pay to relocate any employees in Texas who feared they could not get abortions. The move from Slack follows years of censorship campaigns against conservatives. In January, Facebook banned a conservative publisher from advertising children’s books about U.S. presidents for allegedly violating the company’s “standards.” [NOTE: Slack is a workplace messaging program]

BOOK REVIEW

Tapson: Lockdown: The Socialist Plan to Take Away Your Freedom

When COVID-19 first reared its ugly head a mere couple of years ago (seems like much longer, doesn’t it?), the Trump-hating Left recognized that here was a crisis too good to waste, to paraphrase Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. As Cheryl Chumley observes in her new book Lockdown: The Socialist Plan to Take Away Your Freedom, “Democrats, progressives, globalists, collectivists, socialists, and Marxists saw opportunity to reshape an entire world.” Lockdown, from Humanix Books, is her damning overview of how the power-lusting Left manipulated and exploited the pandemic to kickstart their Great Socialist Reset. […] In her chapter on the “free market freefall,” Chumley warns that the Great Reset envisioned by our elitist betters – Marxism “masked as ‘better’ capitalism” – will be the end of America as we know it. The pandemic has been exploited to usher in a new era of woke corporatism in which CEOs “serve as enforcers” for a leftist agenda. It is nothing less than “the weaponizing of the private sector against private citizens, on behalf of government’s wishes.” […] In “Lessons on Deception From Animal Farm,” Chumley draws an insightful comparison between the Left’s self-serving, ever-shifting narratives and those of the totalitarian pigs in George Orwell’s 1945 political fable, who modify the Farm Rules as necessary to benefit themselves (“Some animals are more equal than others”). “The sanest people in America today,” Chumley writes, are . . .

OTHER NEWS

Garcia-Galindo: Poll: Nearly Half Of Employers Find Social Activism Unacceptable On Resumes

Forty-seven percent of employers believe that participation in social activism or movements is unacceptable on resumes, according to a study from Skynova. Among the social movement topics that employers viewed as automatically disqualifying for an applicant were taking any stances on anti-vaccine measures, stricter gun legislation, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and racial justice, according to the Skynova study. This seems to be at odds with the 46% of Gen Z — those born between 1997 and 2012 — who believe that including activism on their resumes should be more acceptable, something that only 29% of employers agreed with, according to the study.

Arama: Leaked: Twitter Employees Have a Meltdown Over Elon’s ‘All-Hands’ Call

On Thursday, Twitter held an “all hands” virtual meeting for employees to hear from Elon Musk about his plans for the company as they move toward finalizing the deal for him to take over the platform. Musk has said that he wants to eliminate bots and try to ensure freedom of speech on the platform.

[…] Project Veritas leaked Musk’s remarks to the employees where he said it was essential to have “free speech,” it was “important to represent multiple opinions & not driving a narrative,” and that there needed to be transparency if people were to trust the platform. Musk concurred, showing that yes, he is likely to inhibit the driving of the “narrative.” […] But that didn’t stop the employees who were hearing his remarks from throwing a tantrum on their private Slack channel. Reuters reported that they were posting memes and complaining about Musk. Project Veritas then leaked the complaints. What’s funny about the comments is that they’re so concerned about the comments and disinformation that people might make on Twitter, yet the stuff they were posting was such a font of misinformation and liberal bias, that it was easy to see why Twitter has been so left-wing up to this point. […] Probably the employee who won the award for stepping in it was this guy.

Nelson: Virginia Governor amends budget to restore state’s school choice program

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin made a significant move to bolster the state’s school choice efforts, releasing a statement on Wednesday that he sent “thirty-eight budget amendments” to two budget bills, which included “expanding opportunities for education.” “We’re … restoring educational freedom by protecting the education scholarship tax credits which expand parental choice.” The amendment removes the reduction in the cap on the Education Improvement Scholarship Tax Credit [EISTC]. The Virginia EISTC program offers support for low and middle-income families. The program provides an opportunity for at-risk families to have more options to send their children to school using private scholarships from scholarship foundations.

INTERNATIONAL

Robinson: Julian Assange could be extradited to the US in WEEKS: Priti Patel signs order to send WikiLeaks founder to America where he faces 175-year jail term over spy charges

The Home Secretary has rubber stamped the order issued by a judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court to fly the WikiLeaks founder to America where he will be handed over to federal agents and put on trial. Assange, who is currently held in the maximum security Belmarsh Prison in south-east London, has 14 days to appeal. WikiLeaks today declared it is ‘not the end’ and pledged to go back to court to try to keep him in Britain, claiming today is a ‘dark day for press freedom and British democracy’ and accusing Ms Patel of choosing not to ‘do the right thing’.

Crowdfunders have raised more than £55,000 since the start of the year to help pay his legal bills.

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

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