Day: December 19, 2018

Candidates Gear Up to Replace Mark Norris in State Senate

Chris Butler

Four Republicans have filed paperwork to replace Mark Norris in  a special election in Tennessee’s 32nd State Senate District, according to The Daily Memphian. Norris was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a federal judge earlier this year. The primary will be held on January 24, with early voting beginning on January 4. The general election is scheduled for March 12. Tipton and part of Shelby County make up that district. “Former state Rep. Steve McManus, former Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, former Shelby County Commissioner George Chism and Covington businessman Paul Rose turned in their paperwork at Shelby County and Tipton County election offices,” The Daily Memphian reported. “Shafer and Chism were the last to make public commitments to the race. McManus entered the fray first and already has a campaign billboard along I-40 in Memphis, while Rose previously said he was committed and made a formal announcement recently.” Shafer served two terms as a Shelby County Commissioner. Shafer told The Tennessee Star she believes West Tennessee “is getting left behind in a burgeoning economy, particularly when it comes to economic incentives and infrastructure.” “We have had some really strong previous folks from West Tennessee (in the state legislature) so…

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On His Way Out, Bob Corker Reportedly Won’t Say Whether He Prefers a Democrat Over Trump in 2020

Chris Butler

Outgoing Tennessee Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker was quoted this week expressing concern about the path of the Republican Party. “We’ve got to remember what the Republican Party is,” Corker reportedly said on MSNBC. Corker also reportedly won’t say whether he prefers voters elect a Democrat over Trump in 2020. Writing for The Washington Post, Phillip Wegmann said Corker longs for “what the Republican Party used to be.” “And it’s worth asking what it was before President Trump and before the Tea Party,” Wegmann wrote. “Perhaps Corker yearns for the simpler time of his predecessors such as Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn. Before coming to Congress, Corker watched Frist wheel and deal in the halls of Congress. Corker later watched Frist lobby for Obamacare in retirement and make a fortune from his stock options in the Hospital Corporation of America in the process.” Wegmann wrote Corker possibly misses the days of Majority Leader Eric Cantor and former Speaker John Boehner of Ohio. The Tea Party opposed Cantor. Under Boehner, Wegmann wrote, members of the House of Representatives operated like a tollbooth, and members had to deposit campaign contributions into the party’s coffers. “Boehner and Cantor and Frist were all respectable members of the…

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Commentary: Time Magazine Journos Basically Just Named Themselves ‘Person of the Year’

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by Jason D. Meister   The liberal journalists at Time magazine have an interesting pick for 2018’s “Person of the Year.” That’s right, it’s themselves! They didn’t quite have the gall to claim the mantle directly, so they went with a somewhat more awkward construction: “The Guardians and the War on Truth.” But Times’ message is clear. They, the journalists, are the real heroes, and the whole world is depending on their bravery in the “War on Truth.” The enemy in that war is, of course, the daily target of their anger and derision: President Donald Trump. Gracing one of their four covers is Jamal Khashoggi, the late, dissident Saudi newspaper columnist and Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer who was murdered by his own government in Turkey. There’s no indication that Khashoggi’s occasional Washington Post column played any role in his killing, but it certainly went a long way towards making him a cause celebre among journalists eager to use his death to attack Donald Trump. Alternate covers featured Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, journalists who were arrested for reporting on the Myanmar military regime’s human rights violations, and Maria Ressa, a Philippine blogger who’s been charged with tax evasion after…

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Rep. Jim Cooper Announces 2020 Campaign to Retain 5th Congressional District Seat

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) announced his re-election bid for 2020. A statement by the congressman’s spokesman Chris Carroll said, “Jim is honored to represent Cheatham, Davidson, and Dickson counties in Congress, and he looks forward to running for re-election in 2020,” according to a story in The Tennessean. Cooper handily won re-election Nov. 6 against Republican challenger Jody Ball by a margin of 67.8 percent to 32.2 percent, Ballotpedia said. Cooper is not the only Tennessee politician to make an announcement about 2020 this week. When U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) announced Monday he would not run for re-election, Cooper said this in a statement: Lamar is finishing a stellar career in Tennessee politics. I honor him for his service, but I also hope he will use his last two years in office to challenge President Trump the way that Bob Corker has done. I am worried that the Tennessee Republican Party is losing the legacy of Howard Baker: his willingness to investigate his own president, to insist on fiscal discipline, open markets, and civil rights. America needs that fair-mindedness now more than ever.” Cooper’s voting record is available here. Last month Cooper signed a letter with 17 other…

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Report: Years of Bad Land Management Led to One of California’s Most Devastating Wildfires

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by Jason Hopkins   An in-depth investigation found that federal, state and local governments were aware of California’s vulnerability to wildfires, but failed to take the necessary steps to prevent its devastation. California residents have recently been forced to deal with some of the worst wildfires in the state’s history. Over the course of a 13-month period that began in October 2017, four major fires scorched California. The fires ultimately burned 700,000 acres of land, destroying nearly 27,000 properties and killing over 100 people. The devastation has left leaders wondering who — or what — is to blame. California and the Trump administration have sparred heavily over what was responsible for the fires. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and environmental activists have directed blame at climate change, claiming that rising temperatures make the fires more brutal. California officials are currently investigating whether a malfunction in an electric utility’s equipment may have caused one of the fires. Mounting evidence suggest the wildfires were in large part a result of regulatory failure. ProPublica, an investigative outlet based in New York, reviewed records and conducted dozens of interviews concerning one of these deadly fires: the Carr Fire. Its team ultimately concluded that “every level…

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Soros Org Gave $500K to Activists Who Accosted Pam Bondi at Movie Theater

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by Peter Hasson   The left-wing activist group that accosted Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi at a movie theater in June received half a million dollars in 2017 from an organization funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros in 2017, documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation reveal. Organize Florida, the group that hounded Bondi from a Florida movie theater, received $500,000 last year from the Open Society Policy Center (OSPC), according to OSPC’s most recent tax forms. OSPC is the advocacy arm of Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which the billionaire uses to advance his left-wing worldview around the globe. OSPC awarded the grant to Organize Florida to “support policy advocacy,” according to the group’s tax forms. Organize Florida activists yelled at Bondi, a Republican ally of President Donald Trump, about the president’s immigration and health care policies during the protest in June. One of the protesters spit on Bondi’s head, she said afterwards. WATCH: https://youtu.be/HqScWovwPe8 Other targets of Organize Florida’s protests include women’s health centers that don’t perform abortions. OSPC did not respond to a request for comment regarding the grant to Organize Florida, and whether the activists’s actions toward Bondi are consistent with OSPC’s mission. – – – Peter Hasson…

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The Fed Finally Begins Rolling Back its Portfolio

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by Robert Romano     The Federal Reserve has dumped an eye-popping $343 billion of U.S. treasuries and mortgage-backed securities since it began its policy normalization program in Sept. 2017. $116 billion of that, or more than a third, has been since Sept. 2018 as the nation’s central bank has begun to accelerate its program. At the same time, the Fed has been hiking the effective federal funds rate, increasing the costs of borrowing by financial institutions. Now, the effective rate stands at 2.2 percent. The pertinent question might be what took it so long? After keeping rates near-zero for the entire Obama administration, and holding onto its dragon’s horde of treasuries and other securities for almost a decade, suddenly the Fed has finally begun unwinding its portfolio—long after economic conditions had settled down after the financial crisis. The high-water mark was reached at the end of 2014, when its holdings were as high as almost $4.3 trillion. It had been a massive $3.5 trillion expansion of its balance sheet going back to Aug. 2007 when the crisis began. Arguably, the Fed has waited until nearly the end of the business cycle to begin unwinding — that is the period…

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EXPOSED: Antifa Leader ‘Chepe’ Relied On Anonymity To Push Radical, Violent Communist Agenda

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by Andrew Kerr   Smash Racism DC organizer Jose Martin, also known as “Chepe,” is a radical communist and Antifa leader operating in the U.S. He advocates for the violent overthrow of the government and for the murder of the rich and claims to have international involvement in left-wing movements. Smash Racism DC is the Antifa group that protested in front of Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s house and berated Sen. Ted Cruz at a restaurant until he and his wife were forced to leave. It’s only one of the Antifa leader’s radical left-wing projects. But the agitator has made great efforts to separate his fanatical personas from a third identity, his legal name: Joseph “Jose” Alcoff. Under that identity, the 36-year-old has worked as a payday campaign manager for Americans for Financial Reform since 2016, where he advocates for reforms of predatory loans before members of Congress. Alcoff left nearly no connections between his real identity and Jose Martin and Chepe, but a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation of public records, social media posts, media reports, books, protest videos and podcasts dating back to 2004 found that all three identities are actually one person, posting online from the Twitter handle @Sabokitty. He…

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Martha McSally Will be Appointed to John McCain’s Seat

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by Henry Rodgers   Arizona Republican Rep. Martha McSally will be appointed to John McCain’s former Senate seat after Republican Sen. Jon Kyl announced he is resigning from the U.S. Senate at the end of December. Gov. Doug Ducey, announced in a Tuesday statement that McSally will be taking the seat. This comes as McSally lost her Senate bid to Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a tight Nov. 6 midterm race. “All her life, Martha has put service first — leading in the toughest of fights and at the toughest of times,” Ducey said in his statement. “With her experience and long record of service, Martha is uniquely qualified to step up and fight for Arizona’s interests in the U.S. Senate. I thank her for taking on this significant responsibility and look forward to working with her and Senator-Elect Sinema to get positive things done.” Kyl, who replaced McCain after his death, told The Arizona Republic that he will leave office on Dec. 31, when the legislative calendar ends. He said he agreed to finish working until the 115th Congress concluded, he also thanked Ducey for his appointment. McCain’s wife, Cindy, tweeted out her support for McSally shortly after the news broke: “Arizonans will be pulling for…

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Michael Flynn Sentencing Delayed

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A U.S. judge in Washington on Tuesday sternly rebuked President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia in the weeks before Trump assumed power in early 2017, but delayed his sentencing. “I can’t hide my disgust, my disdain,” U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said of Flynn’s behavior, before later acceding to a request by Flynn’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing. Flynn acknowledged to Sullivan, “I was aware,” that it was a crime to lie to interrogators when they asked him about his discussions with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. The judge told Flynn that his offense was “very serious” and that “arguably, you sold your country out.” Special counsel Robert Mueller had recommended the 60-year-old Flynn, a retired Army general and once head of the country’s Defense Intelligence Agency, not be sentenced to any prison time because he had provided “substantial” cooperation with prosecutors in their ongoing 19-month investigation of Trump 2016 campaign links with Russia and whether, as president, Trump obstructed justice by trying to thwart the probe. But Sullivan said he could not guarantee that Flynn will avoid a prison term when he is eventually sentenced, sometime…

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Commentary: Break Up Google for the Public Good

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by Ned Ryun   It’s time for all of us to admit that Alphabet, Inc. is the 21st century equivalent of Ma Bell: it is an almost all-controlling monopoly that restricts consumer choice in order to maximize profit for the company. We all know what Ronald Reagan did to AT&T. He broke up that monopoly so Americans could have real choices and the free market could actually work. So it’s time for the Trump Administration to break up the Alphabet, Inc. monopoly. But unlike the Ma Bell monopoly, Alphabet, Inc.’s monopoly—which includes the search-engine behemoth Google—isn’t just about greater competition and more choices for the American people. It’s about so much more: free political discourse and our privacy rights as citizens. Last week in Washington D.C., the House called in Google CEO Sundar Pichai to question him about the bias against conservatives at his company, but also about data privacy and Google’s plans for working with China. Every last one of those issues should trouble every last American. The mainstream media, as the mindless propagandists of the deep state and Democratic Party, are still trying to maintain the miserable hoax of Russian collusion to cover up their own misdeeds and…

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Bob Lighthizer Compared to ‘General Patton’ in Leading the Way on Trade Talks with China

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by Natalia Castro   While some have been critical of President Donald Trump’s use of tariffs to win the trade war with China, one analyst is arguing these tariffs have been one of many tools used by the Trump administration to push China to comply with fairer trade deals. Last week on the Conservative Commandos Radio Show Senior Policy Advisor at America First Policies Curtis Ellis joined Natalia Castro to discuss the U.S. trade relationship with China. Ellis noted how China has cheated the U.S. and the entire world out of billions by abusing trade laws to their benefit. For the first time in nearly 30 years, the Trump Administration is forcing China to the negotiating table and presenting an opportunity for real change. Ellis argued, in the long run, the Trump trade agenda will boost U.S. productivity and save our technology from Chinese theft. While China has come close to deals before only to back out and continue cheating, Ellis notes that this situation is different for one key reason: Bob Lighthizer. Ellis explained, “Leading out team of negotiators is Bob Lighthizer, he is the U.S. Trade Representative. This is General Patton in the trade world. He is seasoned.…

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Donations Pouring In for Florida Vet’s Fundraiser to Build the Wall

Anthony Gockowski

A Florida veteran and triple amputee launched a GoFundMe Sunday to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall, and he’s already raised more than $200,000 and counting. The fundraiser has been public for just over two days and donations are already pouring in. According to Brian Kolfage, an Iraq war veteran and public figure, if the 63 million people who voted for Trump each donate $80, then there would be enough money to pay for the wall. “Democrats are going to stall this project by every means possible and play political games to ensure President Trump doesn’t get his victory. They’d rather see President Trump fail than see America succeed,” Kolfage says on the fundraiser’s page. “However, if we can fund a large portion of this wall, it will jumpstart things and will be less money Trump has to secure from our politicians.” Kolfage provided extensive information about himself to assure supporters that the fundraiser is not a scam, and notes that his team has already “contacted the Trump administration to secure a point of contact where all funds will go upon completion.” “We are working with a law firm on a legal document that will bind the government to using…

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Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar Attacks Trump Over ‘Muslim Ban,’ Promises Impeachment

Anthony Gockowski

Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) claimed that she was “sickened and outraged” over the case of a Yemeni mother who was prevented from traveling to the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s travel ban. Two-year-old Abdullah Hassan suffers from a genetic brain disorder, according to The Guardian, and is currently on life support in a California hospital. But his mother, Shaima Swileh, was unable to visit her son because she resides in Yemen, one of the six countries included in Trump’s travel ban. “As a mother and immigrant from one of the so-called ‘banned’ countries, I am sickened and outraged by the Trump administration’s disregard for a mother separated from her son,” Omar said in a Monday press release, referring to the Trump policy as a “Muslim ban.” “This child is dying and his mom is forbidden entry into our country to see him because of the Muslim ban,” she continued. “I commend the Council of American Islamic Relations in Sacramento and others for calling attention to this tragedy and demanding a visa waiver be issue to the child’s mother.” On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department granted Swileh a waiver to travel to see her son, and she will arrive in…

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Speaker-Elect Glen Casada Will Dive Into Solutions for Problem of Invasive Asian Carp In Tennessee Rivers

Laura Baigert

Speaker-Elect Glen Casada will convene an open forum this week to discuss the invasive Asian carp problem in Tennessee waters, according to a press release. The forum, scheduled for Thursday, December 20 at 12:45 p.m., will include several current and newly elected State Representatives who will attend the forum along with current TWRA Commission Chair Kurt Holbert as well as other TWRA officials and experts. According to the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA), there are four species of Asian carp, originating in China, now in Tennessee and throughout the United States. The carp, brought to the U.S. for aquaculture purposes as far back as the 1970s, escaped into the delta areas of the Mississippi River during extreme floods in the late 80’s and early 90’s. While all four species of Asian carp can impact fish and other aquatic life in a number of ways, TWRAs most immediate concern is for the safety of boaters. Some species of carp are known for jumping when encountered by a boat. When they jump, the carp colliding with a passenger can cause serious injury. A number and variety of efforts are underway to control the spread not only in Tennessee, but nationwide. While controlling…

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