News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.
In The News:
Gov. Newsom Spends ‘Gas Tax’ Funding For Fixing Calif’s Roads On Fighting So-Called Climate Change
Despite promising to use funding from California’s latest gas tax to fix the state’s crumbling roads, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is using the money to fight so-called climate change instead.
One America’s Pearson Sharp explains how billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on projects they didn’t approve.
National Association of Realtors Board Moves to Control Professional and Private Speech of Members
John Murawski of RealClearInvestigations reported the story on the wide-ranging new policy, announced a little over a week after Election Day, and reactions to it.
Based in Chicago, the board of directors of the NAR – which claims to be the world’s largest trade organization, with 1.4 million members – declared in a press statement it would be “making it a violation for Realtors to use harassing or hate speech toward any of the protected classes under Article 10 of NAR’s Code of Ethics.”
The “protected classes” include “race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“NAR’s Advisory Board recommended that its Code of Ethics apply to every action a Realtor® takes, whether personal or professional,” the announcement stated.
Wife of Rand Paul Slams Twitter for Allowing Threats Against Her Husband
Amid censorship and removal of President Trump from certain platforms, Kelley Paul, the wife of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), took to Twitter on Sunday where she slammed the tech giant for not removing threats against her husband.
“Hey @jack, remember how for the last three years you have allowed thousands of hateful tweets celebrating my husband’s assault and encouraging more violence against him? I do,” wrote Paul’s wife in a tweet.
“I am so disgusted by this I have no words.
The 2019 ‘National teacher of the Year’ is celebrating the violent assault on my husband that resulted in 6 broken ribs and part of his lung being removed,” Paul wrote. “This hateful thug is calling for more violence on Sen McConnell.”
Twitter Stock Falls More Than 10% Following Trump Ban
CNBC reports that Twitter stock dropped by as much as 12.3 percent on Monday morning, reaching a low as $45.17 per share.
The stock dip comes shortly after the company’s permanent suspension of President Trump last week.
The Bank of America Securities Analysts added: “We would anticipate new proposed legislation in Congress on Social Media content given recent events, but note content concerns are not new and we think that new laws will provide social media companies with better guidelines and less uncertainty.”
Bernstein analysts stated in a note on Sunday: “Can we expect more regulatory activity? It seems likely.”
Idaho Internet Provider Blocks Facebook, Twitter
An internet service provider (ISP) in the North Idaho and the Spokane, Washington, area has decided to block Facebook and Twitter for its customers after some called in to complain about censorship on the platforms.
The ISP, Your T1 WIFI, confirmed that it will block Facebook and Twitter from its WIFI service for some customers starting this Wednesday, according to a report by KREM 2.
FBI warns of plans for nationwide armed protests next week
An internal FBI bulletin warned that, as of Sunday, the nationwide protests may start later this week and extend through Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, according to two law enforcement officials who read details of the memo to The Associated Press.
Investigators believe some of the people are members of some extremist groups, the officials said. The bulletin was first reported by ABC.
Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters on Monday that the Guard is also looking at any issues across the country,
“We’re keeping a look across the entire country to make sure that we’re monitoring, and that our Guards in every state are in close coordination with their local law enforcement agencies to provide any support requested.”
Parler plans to sue Amazon, ask federal judge to reinstate service
Social media service Parler has announced that it is suing Amazon after the company removed Parler from its AWS platform, effectively causing the service to shut down indefinitely.
According to multiple reports, the company intends to sue Amazon for antitrust violations, breach of contract, and unlawful business interference.
Parler also intends to ask for an injunction that would require Amazon to reinstate the service during the pendency of the litigation.
First Lady Calls for America to ‘Heal’; Dems to Continue Impeachment; Big Tech Targets Parler | NTD
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi says they’re moving forward to impeach President Trump if Vice President Mike Pence doesn’t invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him;
Social media platform Parler goes offline and its CEO says even their attorneys have dropped them over pressure from Silicon Valley;
and Representative Devin Nunes calls for a racketeering probe into Big Tech companies.
Big Tech Whistleblower: Part 1 | Full Measure
Zachary Vorhies: Yeah. I was working at YouTube in 2016 and everything was really great. But then something happened.
And what happened was Donald Trump won the election.
Vorhies: And after he won the election, the company just took a hard left and decided that they were going to abandon their liberal principles and start going towards an authoritarian sort of management of their products and services.
Zachary Vorhies was as an insider for more than eight years, a senior software engineer at Google and Google’s YouTube. Sharyl: Can you describe how that manifested itself, this change in direction you describe?
Big Tech Censorship: Part 2
It is no accident that so much Big Tech fact checking and labels appeared in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Millions poured into the efforts behind the scenes. We continue our report on Big Tech censorship by Following the Money.
Whistleblower Zach Vorhies says his bosses at Google were devastated by President Trump’s unexpected victory.
Then-CEO of Google’s parent company Eric Schmidt was a major donor and volunteer for Hillary Clinton.
Politics:
Left-Wing Terrorists Bombed The Senate In 1983. Bill Clinton Let Them Out Of Prison Early — At Jerry Nadler’s Request
A historian interviewed by the Smithsonian described the group as an “offshoot” of Weather Underground, the domestic terror group led by Bill Ayers, who bombed the Pentagon and the Capitol in the 1970s and now lives as a prominent academic.
M19’s acts of radical left-wing terror appeared to catch a sympathetic eye in Washington that would relieve its members of their time in prison.
According to the New York Post in 2001, New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, who today serves as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, played a “crucial role” in Clinton’s decision to commute Rosenberg’s sentence.
Rosenberg’s case is a reminder of the long, growing list of left-wing acts of terrorism either excused or endorsed by Democrats and their allies in corporate media, who now condemn the violent attacks on the U.S. Capitol that came from right-wing extremists last week.
Nadler, in his role as House Judiciary chair, has been among the most vocal in Congress, outraged at the Capitol chaos that ensued and demanding that the president be impeached after failing to successfully remove Trump last year.
FOX NEWS VIDEO: Big Tech companies have ‘dominant force,’ can behave in ‘totalitarian fashions’: Ben Domenech
Commentary/Opinion:
“This is a situation that I think a lot of us have been warning against, on the right, for a long time,” Domenech, who publishes The Federalist, told Brian Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday.
“They can undermine and they can behave in totalitarian fashions, in ways that frankly smack of the kind of approaches that we’ve seen in places like China and Russia,” he added.
The Truth About Impeaching Trump Again.
Commentary/Opinion:
If you want to understand why Democrats are wanting to impeach the President again.
It’s not that much different than the first time.
Here’s the Simple Truth.
How Much Did Big Tech Influence the Biden Ticket? | Declassified
Big Tech companies have been accused of meddling in the 2020 election in a variety of ways.
Their employees have also obtained influential roles within the Biden-Harris organization, which critics say could signal a return to the friendly stance held by the Obama administration toward Silicon Valley
World News:
Venezuela women’s groups halt abortion services after activist arrest
Police in October raided the home of Vannesa Rosales in the northwestern state of Merida and arrested her. Her lawyer says she will likely be charged with inducing an abortion and conspiring to commit a crime for her role in helping the girl terminate a pregnancy after being raped.
Rosales was held behind bars for more than three months without being formally charged, but was released from prison on Monday and is now under house arrest, according to her lawyer, Venus Faddull. Chief Prosecutor Tarek Saab tweeted Sunday night that a man had been indicted for raping the teenager.
Venezuela has one of the strictest abortion laws in South America, allowing the practice only to save the mother’s life – but a number of individuals, organizations and informal networks around the country nevertheless counsel women on terminations.
Britain to tighten laws on imports linked to alleged Chinese human rights abuses: Telegraph
According to the Telegraph report, the government is considering imposing heavier fines on companies that breach the terms of the legislation, along with new due diligence criteria that oblige firms to ensure that no one in their supply chain has been part of a forced-labour transfer scheme.
Among other measures, British ministers are looking to impose tougher export controls on goods and technology to China that could be used for repression, the report added.
Hong Kong Trump Fans Change Twitter Icons to Oppose Censorship
Pro-democracy Hong Kongers are reportedly changing their Twitter avatars to signal support for outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump and protest Trump getting banned from the platform.
Many of these Hong Kong Twitter users found uncomfortable parallels between Twitter’s ban on Trump and the way their own speech and political activism has been ruthlessly criminalized and suppressed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
WHO investigation into Chinese origins of coronavirus may not include Wuhan visit
The World Health Organization this week will send experts to China to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic following months of discussions.
However, the investigating team may not visit Wuhan, where the virus was first detected back in 2019. China’s government strictly controlled domestic research into the origins of the virus, while state-owned media pushed theories that the virus originated elsewhere, according to the Associated Press.
US designates Cuba state sponsor of terrorism
“The Trump Administration has been focused from the start on denying the Castro regime the resources it uses to oppress its people at home, and countering its malign interference in Venezuela and the rest of the Western Hemisphere,” Secertary of State Michael Pompeo said in a statement.
“With this action, we will once again hold Cuba’s government accountable and send a clear message: the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of U.S.”
Even European Leaders Are Raising Concerns About Twitter Banning Trump
“The right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance,” said Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman on Monday. “Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president’s accounts have been permanently suspended.”
Seibert says that Twitter was right in flagging Trump’s tweets that he says were “inaccurate,” but banning his account was going too far. He said that governments, not private companies, should decide what, if any, limits there should be on free speech.
Merkel is not the only European leader speaking out against Twitter.
U.K Health Secretary Matt Hancock accused big tech of “taking editorial decisions” that raised a “very big question” about how social media is regulated. “That’s clear because they’re choosing who should and shouldn’t have a voice on their platform,” Hancock told the BBC on Sunday.
Kremlin foe Navalny decries Twitter ban on Trump as dangerous ‘precedent’
Exiled Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny has accused Twitter of “an unacceptable act of censorship” in a thread arguing against that powerhouse private social network’s permanent ban on outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump after violence in Washington this week.
The 44-year-old Kremlin foe warned in the 11-point thread that “this precedent will be exploited by enemies of freedom of speech around the world.”
Navalny dismissed the argument that Trump was banned for violating Twitter’s rules because “I get death threats here every day for many years, and Twitter doesn’t ban anyone (not that I ask for it).”
Iran Set to Execute Another Wrestling Champion
The Iranian regime plans to execute another champion wrestler in the coming days, after wrestler Navid Afkari was executed in September.
Afkari faced the death penalty last year on charges of murdering a security guard during a protest, which the wrestler denied.
Afkari’s brothers also allegedly confessed to trumped-up charges related to the case after suffering torture at the hands of regime officials.
Reza Tabrizi, another Iranian athlete, is currently imprisoned for criticizing the regime, and human-rights experts worry he too may face execution.
Commentary/Opinion:
What I Can Teach You About Racism
Renowned political science professor Carol Swain started out life with every possible disadvantage.
She ended up teaching at two of the most prestigious universities in the country.
How did she do it? She shares her story and her wisdom in this inspiring video.
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast – Season 4 Episode 1: Matthew McConaughey
Matthew McConaughey (actor, producer, and best-selling author of Greenlights) sits down with Jordan B. Peterson to talk about Matthew’s new book, his upbringing, his relationships with his mother and father, his journey to being at peace with his fame, what it’s like to play malevolent or dark characters in movies or on television, and a surprising satirical review of Greenlights.
In The News Feed. 