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AFFH: Biden and Democrats plan to abolish the suburbs!

Stanley Kurtz
National Review
Tue, 30 Jun 2020 09:42 UTC
Biden
© Matt Rourke/AP Photo.jpg
Former VP and presidential candidate Joe Biden
President Trump had a great riff at his rally the other day in Phoenix. It was all about "abolish," about how the Left wants to abolish the police, ICE, bail, even borders. Trump's riff is effective because it is true. The Left has gone off the deep end, and they're taking the Democrats with them.

Well, there's another "abolish" the president can add to his list, and it just might be enough to tip the scales this November. Joe Biden and the Democrats want to abolish America's suburbs. Biden and his party have embraced yet another dream of the radical Left: a federal takeover, transformation, and de facto urbanization of America's suburbs. What's more, Biden just might be able to pull off this "fundamental transformation."

The suburbs are the swing constituency in our national elections. If suburban voters knew what the Democrats had in store for them, they'd run screaming in the other direction. Unfortunately, Republicans have been too clueless or timid to make an issue of the Democrats' anti-suburban plans. It's time to tell voters the truth.

I've been studying Joe Biden's housing plans, and what I've seen is both surprising and frightening. I expected that a President Biden would enforce the Obama administration's radical AFFH (Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing) regulation to the hilt. That is exactly what Biden promises to do. By itself, that would be more than enough to end America's suburbs as we've known them, as I've explained repeatedly here at NRO.
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Arrow Down

Joe Biden setting the lowest bar ever for a potential US president: 'I'll read my daily briefings'


RT
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 14:15 UTC
Bidentweet
© Quartz/KJN/Twitter
Presumptive Democratic nominee for President Joe Biden has perplexed the Internet by making a highly confusing brag against sitting President Donald Trump, by saying that he will "read his daily briefings."

Biden's tweet came on the heels of unconfirmed media speculation that Trump did not read his presidential briefings, supposedly including the one that said Russia offered bounties for the killing of US troops in Afghanistan. Trump dismissed the bounty report claims as a "fake-news tale," and said he wasn't briefed on the matter, as it "did not rise to that level of threat."


Comment: See also:


Former President Barack Obama reportedly counseled Biden to keep his tweets short, but the strategy seems to have backfired, as Biden provoked very mixed reactions from Twitter users.

The lack of overt context in his statement quickly led many commenters to declare his pledge the "lowest bar ever" for a presidential hopeful.
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Propaganda

NYT advice: Punish Putin for anonymous bounty claims without evidence; let ISIS kill Russian troops in Syria


RT
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:13 UTC
Thomas Friedman
© Jewish Broadcasting Service
Thomas Friedman, journalist, columnist for NYT
The same New York Times reporting anonymous claims of Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan opined in 2017 that President Trump should let ISIS "bleed" Russian forces in Syria rather than help defeat the terrorists.

Thomas Friedman, who has won three Pulitzer prizes as a journalist and columnist for the Times, argued in an April 2017 column that the US should "back off" fighting ISIS in Syria because the terrorist group "plays as dirty as Iran and Russia" and would prevent government forces from crushing "moderate rebels" in the country. "This is a time for Trump to be Trump - utterly cynical and unpredictable," Friedman wrote in 2017.

Comment: The Times has wiggled all over this story making claims and insinuations, a standard tactic when it comes to 'anything Trump'. National security advisor Robert O'Brien provided some clarification:
A career CIA officer decided not to brief President Donald Trump about intelligence speculation that Russia was paying bounties for deaths of US troops in Afghanistan, his national security adviser Robert O'Brien has revealed.

"She made that decision because she didn't have the confidence in the intelligence that came up. She made that call and you know what? She made the right call. And knowing the facts I know now, I stand behind that call."

The New York Times published a story last week, sourced to anonymous intelligence officials, claiming that the "assessment" about the bounties was briefed to Trump in March, later changing that to a February written brief.

The White House has denied it outright. Trump himself denounced it as
"just another made up by Fake News tale" and "another HOAX! This was something that never got presented to me ... because it didn't rise to that level. Many of the intelligence people didn't think it was something that even happened."
Democrat lawmakers have suggested that it was a political appointee who may have withheld the intelligence from the president, but O'Brien's comments make it clear it was a career CIA official that made the decision.

The leak to the Times has been referred to the Justice Department, the adviser added, because the revelation has now made it "almost impossible for us to find out what happened."
The White House has referred to the Times reporting as "unverified intelligence that is currently being assessed." Directors of the CIA and NSA are expected to brief the 'Gang of Eight' congressional leaders about the alleged bounties on Thursday.
See also:

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Arrow Up

Wake-up call: Overwhelming support for Putin's constitution changes proves Russian system is not ready to collapse

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:53 UTC
Russian polling station
© Reuters/Evgenia Novozhenina.
Members of a local electoral commission count ballots at a polling station following a seven-day nationwide vote on constitutional reforms, in Moscow, Russia, July 1, 2020.
The outcome of Russia's 'national vote' on a series of amendments to the constitution serves to reaffirm that most Russians want the country to plow its own furrow, regardless of what outsiders think.

In the end, the margin was huge. Exit polls suggested around 70 percent of voters said 'yes' to 206 amendments to their constitution, and close to 30 percent rejected the changes. Official results put the 'yes' vote to above 78 percent, with 99 percent of ballots counted.

Even Moscow liberal political organizers conceded that their own exit polls showed the capital had supported Vladimir Putin's proposals. What's more, those tallies revealed how a majority of voters in numerous Moscow districts with opposition-controlled local councils had backed the 'yes' side.

One thing forgotten in almost all Western speculation about the process (erroneously labeled a 'referendum' by some US/UK media) was that it wasn't strictly necessary at all. The backing Putin obtained in spring from the Duma (parliament), the Constitutional Court, and all 85 federal subjects sufficed. However, the President decided to stage a 'confirmatory plebiscite' to obtain broad public legitimacy for his project. Thus, the vote itself was mostly about establishing whether Putin still has a popular mandate to uphold his domination of Russian politics.
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Arrow Down

US Senate kills bipartisan bill to end Afghanistan war and repeal 2001 authorization for the War on Terror


RT
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 22:34 UTC
2 US soldiers
© Reuters/Lucas Jackson
A US soldier from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment uses the optic on his rifle to observe Afghans in the distance, near forward operating base Gamberi, in the Laghman province of Afghanistan.
The US Senate has voted to table a bill that would have ended the war in Afghanistan and repealed the 2001 law authorizing the War on Terror, shooting down a rare attempt to wind down the longest conflict in American history.

Lawmakers voted 60-33 on Wednesday to kill legislation introduced by Senators Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Tom Udall (D-New Mexico) as an amendment for a broader defense spending bill. Dubbed the AFGHAN Act, the measure would have directed the Pentagon to begin an "orderly withdrawal" from Afghanistan and pay a $2,500 bonus to American soldiers.

Ahead of the vote, Senator Paul castigated the nearly 20-year-old conflict as wasteful of American lives and tax dollars, urging lawmakers to send the troops home.

"It is not sustainable to keep fighting in Afghanistan generation after generation," Paul said on the Senate floor, noting that some of the soldiers taking part in the conflict were not even born when it was launched in 2001. "Many people have said we should end the war. Today you get to vote."

Comment: Another sane opportunity missed, bypassed, thrown out by today's congressional mess. Congress wants to keep its authority over war decisions, but it forgets it works for 'the people'.

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Arrow Down

WHO warns some countries may have to reinstate lockdowns

William Feuer
CNBC
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 17:35 UTC
World Health Org
Some countries with rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreaks might have to reinstate lockdowns and other restrictions to curb the spread of the virus, a top World Health Organization official said Wednesday.


Comment: The propaganda is boring by now, but it has worked so well, people will probably go along with it.


Countries like Spain and Italy successfully drove back severe outbreaks with a comprehensive public health strategy that mobilized the public, said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. However, some countries have struggled to contain the virus and many still don't have the best systems in place to prevent another outbreak, said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit.


Comment: Successfully? Massive spikes in deaths only began after the imposition of lockdowns. Correlation may not be causation, but it's at least cause for concern.


"Some countries who have had success in suppressing transmission who are opening up now may have a setback, may have to implement interventions again, may have to implement these so-called lockdowns again," she said at a news briefing from the agency's headquarters in Geneva. "We hope not. We hope that we won't have to go into widespread lockdown again. So it's not too late to act fast."


Comment: Even if those lockdowns cause more death and destruction than the virus itself? The world has gone mad.


Some of the countries that have responded most effectively to the pandemic have been countries with recent experience handling outbreaks such as SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2013.

"They had first-hand experience of how dangerous a pathogen like this could be," she said. While she did not specifically mention any specific countries, SARS emerged in China and hit parts of Asia, including Hong Kong and Singapore. MERS mostly hit South Korea.

Comment: Note how the narrative has shifted from deaths to cases. No mention of deaths in the above. That's because even though more cases are being reported (largely due to more testing), deaths are trending downward. E.g., here's the data for the States (and keep in mind this is "official" data):
us covid deaths
But that isn't stopping some states and cities from reimposing lockdown. Arizona's governor is banning gatherings of 50+ people, closing bars, clubs and gyms for 30 days. Leicester, UK, is going back into lockdown:
"It's depressing," Stuart Towers, landlord of the Market Tavern pub told Reuters. "We were all looking forward to opening Saturday and the next thing you know that's it. What do we do now?"


The city's lockdown will affect almost 4,000 retailers, 239 restaurants, 182 pubs, 26 hotels and five cinemas, according to real estate adviser Altus Group. Many businesses would have been preparing to open on Saturday for the first time since March.
And Leicester isn't the only UK city.

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Vader

Caitlin Johnstone: Why the Empire is working so hard to control the international narrative about Russia

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 17:17 UTC
russia us american flag
© Getty Images / mashabuba
On a December 2010 episode of Fox News' Freedom Watch, John Bolton and the show's host Andrew Napolitano were debating about recent WikiLeaks publications, and naturally the subject of government secrecy came up.

"Now I want to make the case for secrecy in government when it comes to the conduct of national security affairs, and possibly for deception where that's appropriate," Bolton said. "You know Winston Churchill said during World War Two that in wartime truth is so important it should be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies."

"Do you really believe that?" asked an incredulous Napolitano.

"Absolutely," Bolton replied.

"You would lie in order to preserve the truth?" asked Napolitano.

"If I had to say something I knew was false to protect American national security, I would do it," Bolton answered.
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Russian Flag

On Russia-haters, then and now

Patrick Armstrong
The Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 23 Jun 2020 16:13 UTC
putin russian orthodox church
© Kremlin.ru
President Vladimir Putin pays homage to Russia's World War II dead as he visits an enormous new Orthodox cathedral built to honor the military.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - Max Planck
I've been at the Russia business for a while - since the days of Konstantin Chernenko in fact. As I've related elsewhere it was the summer of 1987 when I began to realise that things were really changing. Sometime around then I was invited to Massey College to debate with a Soviet diplomat the proposition that perestroyka meant the end of Marxism-Leninism; which, of course, it did. While I saw changes coming and was listened to seriously by my superiors in the Department of National Defence (DND) there were plenty of people who said that change was impossible. One senior guy from Foreign Affairs said his experience in Algeria showed him these regimes could never change and soon after he caused a paper to be produced that argued that the threat of nuclear war over Africa was very high. (!) The last words a local professor said to me was that change was impossible. I used to, when I gave presentations, ask the audience when they thought things were really changing in the USSR. Most of them would say when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Well, I would say, I realized it back then; just think how much farther along I am on the curve.
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Sherlock

American troops ditch Defender Europe 2020 over coronavirus fears leaving Lithuanian generals shocked

Vairis Godmanis
BalticWorld.eu
Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:00 UTC
Lithuania Tanks

The American mechanized battalion left Lithuania. Tanks and soldiers went to Germany and then to Texas.
The U.S. battalion left Lithuania without waiting for Defender Europe 2020 military exercises.

The battalion has been in the country since last fall and took part in some exercises. It was planned that the battalion would join the largest Defender 2020 NATO maneuvers, but they were eventually canceled due to the coronavirus. Several dozens of NATO troops stationed in Lithuania fell ill with COVID-19.

The American soldiers at the Pabrade training ground had a really great time. Firstly, any of their whims were paid at the expense of Lithuanian taxpayers. Secondly, the American guests were not burdened with complex combat training. Thirdly, for this reason they spent most of their time in bars, nightclubs and restaurants in Vilnius. By the way, taxi drivers were happy about the redeployment of the tank battalion of the U.S. Army to Lithuania more than others. They really liked to deliver frankly drunken American soldiers to their places of deployment, generously raising the rates for night trips out of town.

However, on March 14, Сoronavirus quarantine began and U.S. soldiers barricaded themselves at the training ground, and left home at the end of May. It was so unexpected that Lithuanian waiters, bartenders, taxi drivers and easily accessible women lost their high-income revenues.

Comment: For a virus that is relatively harmless to the vast majority - particularly the young and healthy - one would need to read Pierre Lescaudron's article Compelling Evidence That SARS-CoV-2 Was Man-Made for insight into why the American troops may have been brought home with such haste.

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Megaphone

Tucker Carlson: Republican politicians no longer lead the USA - The people have to. And when they do, the GOP will follow


Fox News
Wed, 01 Jul 2020 19:21 UTC
carlson braun GOP
Republican office holders are not working hard enough for the American people and, at a moment like this, that's a severe and dangerous problem.


Comment: God bless Tucker Carlson. At this point, ordinary working people successfully turning things around in spite of atrocious leadership is a long shot, but maybe, somehow, just articulating what needs or ought to be done can offset some of the mayhem to come.

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