Sunday, January 24, 2021

GLOBAL CRIMINAL BANKSTERS TO THE DRUG CARTELS HSBC COLLUDES WITH RED CHINA - HUNTER BIDEN WANTS TO KNOW HOW MUCH IS IN IT FOR HIM AND POPS?

 

THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY


RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)





Schweizer: ‘It’s Going to Be Business as Usual’ for Hunter’s Dealings

0:52

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer said he reads President Biden’s statements about his son Hunter’s deals as a declaration that “it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”

Schweizer said, “Joe Biden has said there are going to be no sketchy overseas deals during his second term. Here’s the problem: He does not believe that the early deals that Hunter was involved in, the China deal, Burisma, he’s never described those as sketchy. So, I read that as saying, it’s going to be business as usual in the Biden administration as far as these deals are concerned.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett


THE BANKSTER OLIGARCHY THAT DESTROYED AMERICA

COVERS THE FRADULENT 'POPULIST' HOAX STAGED BY OBAMA, CLINTON AND BIDEN EVEN AS THEY SERVED WALL STREET BANKSTERS AND THE SUPER RICH... AND FILLED THEIR POCKETS DOING SO.

Chris Hedges: How Republicans, Democrats, and the Media Have Weakened US Democracy


HSBC ‘Colluded’ with CCP to Debank Democracy Activists: Hong Kong Watch

Protesters sit outside a HSBC in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong on August 11, 2019, in the latest opposition to a planned extradition law that was quickly evolved into a wider movement for democratic reforms. - Thousands of pro-democracy protesters hit the streets of Hong Kong for a tenth …
ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images
3:36

Multinational investment bank HSBC has “colluded” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to debank pro-freedom campaigners in Hong Kong, says the founder of Hong Kong Watch, as the bank’s chief executive is set to be grilled by British MPs on Tuesday.

Last month, HSBC froze the accounts of a church in Hong Kong that had provided humanitarian assistance to protesters during the massive movement against the national security law, which was illegally imposed on the city by the communist dictatorship in Beijing.

Ted Hui, a former member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, also had his bank accounts frozen after he fled the former British colony to seek political asylum in the United Kingdom.

Last week, in a remarkable move for a bank boss, chief executive of HSBC Noel Quinn personally told Mr Hui: “I regret that HSBC is not able to operate your bank and credit card accounts.”

Following the admission, Mr Quinn, alongside HSBC compliance chief Colin Bell, will be forced to give evidence to the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee on the national security law and the “recent freezing of accounts of activists”, according to The Telegraph.

In comments made to Breitbart London, the founder and chairman of Hong Kong Watch, Benedict Rogers, said: “HSBC’s collusion with the Chinese Communist Party’s repression is absolutely outrageous and should be called out clearly by the international community.”

“HSBC could have remained silent on the national security law, it could have been courageous and refused to freeze the accounts of Ted Hui, his family, Pastor Roy Chan and his wife and church, but instead HSBC caved in immediately and became a party to repression.

“HSBC now faces a choice: does it want to be a global bank or a CCP-controlled bank. It cannot be both,” Rogers concluded.

Ted Hui has said that HSBC never questioned him about any transactions or reported any suspicious activity, but that the bank shut down his account “because the police said so”.

“The international bank has put its customer service on the pillar of shame in its political toadyism,” Mr Hui said.

The chair of the foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat said that HSBC’s CEO was “clearly defending his actions by denying responsibility”.

HSBC, which stands for the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, is heavily dependent on its profits from mainland China.

As a result, the bank has backed the draconian national security law, which was illegally imposed on the city, contravening the “One Country, Two Systems” policy which sought to ensure the city’s freedoms as promised under the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Those convicted of engaging in “foreign interference”, “secession”, “terrorism”, and “subversion of state power” face at least ten years in prison.

In July, Reuters reported that wealth managers at HSBC were scanning their client lists for any connections to the pro-democracy movement in order to keep in line with the diktats from Beijing.

On Sunday, The Telegraph also revealed that MPs in Britain have been informed of allegations that the bank protected a Chinese executive who was accused of sexually assaulting an employee because of the executive’s status as an official for the Chinese Communist Party.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

BLACK LIVES MURDER - At Least 20 Shot Friday into Sunday Morning in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago

 

At Least 20 Shot Friday into Sunday Morning in Mayor Lightfoot’s Chicago

Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot listens to a question after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced a shelter in place order to combat the spread of the Covid-19 virus, during a news conference Friday, March 20, 2020, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
2:10

At least 20 people were shot, five fatally, Friday into Sunday morning in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s (D) Chicago.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports the weekend’s first fatality occurred at 8:55 p.m. Friday, when a 26-year-old male was shot in the head “in the 6500 block of South Kenneth Avenue.”

The weekend’s second fatality was discovered about an hour later, when the body of a woman was found in an alley “in the 100 block of East 118th Place.” The woman had been shot in the head.

Roughly 24 hours later, a man with a gunshot wound to head was found in a burning car “in the 12000 block of South Yale Avenue.” He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The fourth fatality of the weekend occurred at 12:50 a.m. Sunday, when a 24-year-old male was shot multiple times and killed “in the 7900 block of South Paulina Street.” The deceased male was shot in the back, in the legs, and in “the lower backside.”

Minutes later, at 1 a.m. Sunday, another fatality occurred, according to ABC 7 / Sun-Times. A 39-year-old male was shot and fatally wounded while inside a home “during a gathering” in the 1100-block of West 104th Street.

Breitbart News reported at least 23 people were shot last weekend in Chicago and 30 the weekend before that.

The Chicago Tribune reports that 156 people were shot in Chicago January 1, 2021, through January 21, 2021.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkinsa weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

 

JOE BIDEN HANDS OVER ANOTHER $4 BILLION TO NARCOMEX - BUT OFFERS $0 TO MEXIFORNIA'S HOMELESS LEGALS!

 

Mexican leader says Biden offers $4B for Central America

MARK STEVENSON, ROB GILLIES and AAMER MADHANI

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden's first calls to foreign leaders went to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at a strained moment for the U.S. relationship with its North American neighbors.

Mexico's president said Saturday that Biden told him the U.S. would send $4 billion to help development in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala — nations whose hardships have spawned tides of migration through Mexico toward the United States.

López Obrador, who spoke Friday with Biden by phone, said the two discussed immigration and the need to address the root causes of why people migrate.

Mexico has stopped recent attempts by caravans of Central American migrants to cross Mexico.

Biden's call to Trudeau, also on Friday, came after the Canadian prime minister this week publicly expressed disappointment over Biden’s decision to issue an executive order halting construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The long-disputed project was projected to carry some 800,000 barrels of oil a day from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Biden told Trudeau that by issuing the order he was following through on a campaign pledge to stop construction of the pipeline, a senior Canadian government official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversation.

The White House said in a statement that Biden acknowledged Trudeau’s disappointment with his Keystone decision.

Biden's call with López Obrador also came at a tense moment — days after the Mexican president accused the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of fabricating drug trafficking charges against the country’s former defense secretary.

While Mexico continues to pledge to block mass movements of Central American migrants toward the U.S. border, there has been no shortage of potential flashpoints between the two countries.

Mexico demanded the return of former Defense Secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos after he was arrested in Los Angeles in October, threatening to restrict U.S. agents in Mexico if he wasn’t returned. U.S. prosecutors agreed to drop charges and return Cienfuegos to Mexico.

But Mexico passed a law restricting foreign agents and removing their immunity anyway, and went on to publish the U.S. case file against Cienfuegos, whom Mexican prosecutors quickly cleared of any charges.

López Obrador said in a statement Friday that the conversation with Biden was “friendly and respectful."

The White House said Biden mentioned “reversing the previous administration’s draconian immigration policies.”

Trudeau told reporters before the call on Friday that he wouldn’t allow his differences with Biden over the project to become a source of tension in the U.S.-Canada relationship.

“It’s not always going to be perfect alignment with the United States,” Trudeau said. “That’s the case with any given president, but we’re in a situation where we are much more aligned on values and focus. I am very much looking forward to working with President Biden.”

Biden signed the executive order to halt construction of the pipeline just hours after he was sworn in.

“Leaving the Keystone XL pipeline permit in place would not be consistent with my Administration’s economic and climate imperatives,” Biden’s executive order said.

Critics say the growing operations increase greenhouse gas emissions and threaten Alberta’s rivers and forests. On the U.S. side, environmentalists expressed concerns about the pipeline— it would cross the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest underground deposits of fresh water — being too risky.

But proponents of the project say it would create thousands of jobs on both sides of the border.

The project was proposed in 2008, and the pipeline has become emblematic of the tensions between economic development and curbing the fossil fuel emissions that are causing climate change. The Obama administration rejected it, but President Donald Trump revived it and was a strong supporter. Construction already started.

Biden and Trudeau also discussed the prospects of Canada being supplied with the COVID-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's facility in Kalamazoo, Michigan, according to a second senior Canadian government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Canada has been getting all its Pfizer doses from a Pfizer facility in Puurs, Belgium, but Pfizer has informed Canada it won’t get any doses next week and will get 50% less than expected over the next three weeks. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has publicly asked Biden to share a million doses made at Pfizer’s Michigan facility.

The U.S. federal government has an agreement with Pfizer in which the first 100 million doses of the vaccine produced in the U.S. will be owned by the U.S. government and will be distributed in the U.S. Anita Anand, the Canadian federal procurement minister, has said the doses that are emerging from the Michigan plant are for distribution in the United States.

The two leaders also spoke broadly about trade, defense and climate issues. Trudeau also raised the cases of two Canadians imprisoned in China in apparent retaliation for the arrest of a top Huawei executive, who was apprehended in Canada on a U.S. extradition request, according to the prime minister's office.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto and Stevenson from Mexico Cit


THIS IS THE REALITY OF AMERICA. THIS IS WHAT THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS DONE TO AMERICA!


Fleeing California





Why Is Everyone Leaving California?





What’s Happening to California’s Middle Class | Urban Policy Expert Joel Kotkin




What’s Causing an Increase in Crime in California? | Steve Cooley







How to Help the Homeless with Edward Ring | California Insider






How California's Unfunded Pension Liabilities Could Lead to Bankruptcy | Sen. John Moorlach





California Worst State at Vaccine Distribution

Governor Gavin Newsom watches as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is prepared by Director of Inpatient Pharmacy David Cheng at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Los Angeles, California on December 14, 2020. - The United States kicked off a mass vaccination drive Monday hoping to turn the tide on …
JAE HONG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
2:36

The State of California became the worst of the 50 states in distributing its share of coronavirus vaccines on Thursday, as other states picked up their pace.

Despite improving from 27.5% last week to 37.3% this week, California is “dead last,” as SFGate.com reported Friday:

Thursday’s update to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker shows that the national rate increased from 38.8% last week to 48.6% this week. Last week’s 50th-ranked state was Alabama, which saw its usage rate jump from 21.2% to 41.1% week-over-week. For reference, California was ranked 49th last week.

This week, the 49th, 48th and 47th ranked states in order are Minnesota (39.8%), Virginia (40.2%) and Alabama (41.1%). The top three states are North Dakota (82.8%), West Virginia (73.0%) and New Mexico (68.6%).

Of the nation’s six largest states, California remains the only one with a usage rate below 40%, as was the case last week. Three have since crossed the 50% threshold this week.

California has become the epicenter of this winter’s coronavirus wave. Though there was some improvement over the past week, the COVID-19 crisis — fueled by a new, more easily transmissible strain of the virus first discovered in the United Kingdom — continues.

The state government, however, is flush with cash. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently reported that the state expects to have a $15 billion surplus this year despite the economic crisis — so much cash, in fact, that it may be required to refund some to taxpayers by law.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Pollak: Biden Kills Up to 70,000 Jobs on First Day in Office

AP Photo/Evan Vucci
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
2:53

President Joe Biden’s first day in office may have been historic in more ways than one: he may have set a single-day record for the number of jobs killed by an American president.

Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, as promised. In so doing, he killed some 11,000 direct jobs that the pipeline’s construction was to have created, and an estimated 60,000 indirect jobs in secondary, related industries.

Over 1,000 workers already on the job — mostly union workers — will be laid off as a result of the decision, even if it is litigated, as many expect it will be, in the courts.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) confronted Secretary of Transportation nominee Pete Buttigieg over the Keystone XL decision on Thursday morning, during Buttigieg’s confirmation hearing. If the administration was serious about infrastructure, Cruz asked, why was it killing an infrastructure project with “good, paying union jobs”?

When Buttigieg said the idea was that “net” jobs created in more climate-friendly industries would be positive, Cruz retorted that that was little comfort to the Keystone XL workers who were being laid off: “So for those workers, the answer is somebody else will get a job?”

The Association of Oil Pipe Lines complained, as did the United Association of Union Plumbers and Pipefitters — though the union may only have itself to blame: it endorsed Biden in August, after he had promised to kill the pipeline in May.

Biden also halted the construction of the border wall on the U.S.-Mexico boundary on Wednesday. While the projections for jobs there are somewhat unclear, one analysis (by an opponent of the wall) in 2017 estimated that the wall, if fully constructed, would create 10,500 jobs.

Moreover, on Thursday, the Biden Administration announced that it had suspended oil and gas permits on federal land Wednesday. It is unclear how many jobs that will cost — but the outlook is not good.

Most presidents promise to create jobs. Biden killed up to 70,000 jobs in his first 24 hours — and the true total may be even higher.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Democrats Expose Dynamics of the Oligarchy

A legal, democratic recall election is now a “coup” attempt by extremists.

  

“This recall effort, which really ought to be called ‘the California coup,’ is being led by right-wing conspiracy theorists, white nationalists, anti-vaxxers and groups who encourage violence on our democratic institutions.”

That was California Democratic Party chair Rusty Hicks, in a January 12 press conference, joined by Fresno city councilman Nelson Esparza who called the recall “treasonous.”  That language prompted Ben Christopher of CalMatters to clarify the matter.

“Unlike a coup, which is an illegal seizure of power,” Christopher wrote, “a recall campaign is a democratic mechanism written into the California constitution that allows voters to remove an elected official by popular vote.” This legal, democratic mechanism is what the California Democrats call “treasonous,” and it models what national Democrats have been deploying since 2016.

The “composite character” David Garrow charted in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, whose Dreams from My Father was a novel, transformed a democratic nation into an authoritarian arrangement where the outgoing president picks his successor and deploys the DOJ and FBI to support her and attack her opponent. The overconfident Hillary Clinton failed to campaign in key states and vilified Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.” Trump campaigned tirelessly and the people elected him president.

“The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump,” Roger Kimball explains, “is that he was elected without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the woke oligarchy that governs us.” As in California, Democrats regarded a democratic mechanism for choosing the president as illegitimate. By the time of Trump’s inauguration, the coup attempt was already in progress and for the next three years on full display in the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes. The 2020 election is best seen as the continuation of the Democrat coup attempt.

“Every honest person knows the 2020 election was rigged,” writes Kimball, who cites  William Briggs on how the “woke oligarchy” works. The party that cheats is also in charge of investigating the accusations of cheating. The media calls cheating a conspiracy theory, and rulers move to expel or cancel those who even question the cheating. According to Briggs, “That party will win by virtue of its power. This is the way power works.” For his part, Kimball shows what our particular form of oligarchy means in practice.

The people do have a voice, “but it is a voice that is everywhere pressured, cajoled, shaped and bullied.” The people have a choice, says Kimball, but “only among a roster of approved candidates.”

In 2016 the Democrat candidate should have been Bernie Sanders, but “the way power works” brought in Hillary Clinton. In 2020, the party was responsible for counting the votes is in charge of investigating the accusations of cheating, so the nation gets addled retread Joe Biden, choice of the oligarchy. In similar style, the DOJ and FBI, which spearheaded the coup attempt against President Trump, are responsible for investigating the coup, so there will be no criminal charges against Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Ohr et al.

For Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, there was no treason and no crime, only “a massive system failure by senior leadership,” in the DOJ and FBI. For the oligarchy and its collaborators, the real problem is the power of the people to remove politicians from office by legal means.

In 2003, Californians of all parties recalled Democrat Gov. Gray Davis, who couldn’t even keep the lights on. Current Gov. Gavin Newsom is basically Davis plus an emergency order that empowered him to govern as a full-on autocrat. Among other actions, Newsom locked down the state, brought back the blackouts, spent $1 billion on masks from a Chinese company, and looked the other way as convicts scammed the unemployment system for $2 billion.

The lawful process to recall the disastrous Newsom is a “California coup,” according to Rusty Hicks, who has an election back story of his own. Hicks became state Democrat Party boss after charges of sexual harassment forced former state party chair Eric Bauman to resign. Democrat staffer William Floyd charged that Bauman forcibly performed oral sex on him several times and sued Bauman over sexual harassment, assault, battery, negligence and civil rights violations.

Hicks won the state party post with support from 57 percent of delegates, which nixed prospects of a runoff with African American Kimberly Ellis. The Emerge California activist ran for Democrat Party chair in 2017, narrowly losing to Eric Bauman and contesting the results, “keeping the party friction alive for months and turning off some members of the party establishment,” as the Associated Press reported.

According to Politico, the Democrat Party “paid millions of dollars to settle sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuits against Bauman.” The party conducted an investigation into Bauman’s conduct but last year approved candidate Rusty Hicks declined to release the results. Hicks’ effort to “deny the truth and hide the evidence,” party members charged in a letter, “sends the message that serial harassers and assailants are still welcome in the party.”

In 2008, Rusty Hicks served as California political director for the composite character formerly known as Barry Soetoro. In eight years, he transformed the nation into the oligarchy it has now become.

The FBI and DOJ are political players operating above the law. Voter fraud is standard practice. The truth counts for nothing and the voice of the people is bullied.  The people must choose from a roster of approved candidates. And the people’s attempt to recall a politician by constitutional, democratic means becomes an attempted coup.

Leftist Policies and Soaring Crime Rates

All while the Dems continue their attack on the Second Amendment.

  

Progressives are consistently clueless. Taxes go up and productivity goes down. What’s that about? Give illegal aliens welfare benefits and more come. Don’t see the connection.

Cities burn and gun sales are at an all-time high. Can’t figure it out?

 A January 14 story in The Boston Globe was headlined, “A more general anxiety: Gun Sales have soared in the past year.”

The paper discloses that, “demand for firearms skyrocketed in Massachusetts in 2020,” which it attributes to “the pandemic, coupled with racial equity protests and a divisive presidential election.”

“Racial equity protests,” what a charming way to describe riots in 130 cities, that led to blocks looking like Dresden after the bombing, assaults on the police and civilians, and murder. None of this was lost on Middle America, which saw elected officials unwilling or unable to protect the innocent.

It took President Biden three months to condemn the riots, and then in the most vague and general terms. Baring something unforeseen, Sheriff Joe and his posse will govern the country for the next four years. And they wonder why gun sales have gone through the ceiling.

Nationally, there were 21 million FBI background checks in 2020, breaking the 2016 record of 15.7 million. A gun store owner in Western Massachusetts told the Globe that he couldn’t keep his shelves stocked, and 40% of the purchasers were first-time buyers. Nationally, the number of black people buying guns jumped 60%. The number of women buying a gun almost doubled.

The rioters demanded defunding the police, and municipalities couldn’t wait to capitulate.  Police in Minneapolis (where the George Floyd “racial equity protests” began – led by Marxists and anarchists) lost $1.1 million.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who David Boaz of the Cato Institute calls “America’s Marxist Mayor,” slashed $1 billion from the NYPD budget.

Los Angeles cut $150 million, Portland $15 million and Seattle $23 million. Everywhere, it was the same story: violent protests, followed by political equivocation, followed by cutting police budgets, followed by surging crime rates. Only a progressive could fail to connect the dots.

Chicago had 750 murders last year, 50% more than in 2019. New York had 437 homicides (up almost 40%), and Los Angeles saw a 30% increase in homicide.

Democratic mayors groveled nicely. De Blasio’s daughter joined the mob. When the rioting – forgive me, the racial equity protests -- started, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said he was waiting for the rampage to burn itself out. Four months later, he was still waiting.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot got tough – when it came to protecting her home, which at one point was guarded by 140 police officers.

Democrats had stock responses to the mayhem – “mostly peaceful protests,” “what about ‘police violence?’” and “Antifa is an ‘idea’ not a movement.” (Did you ever get beaten unconscious and left bleeding in the street by an idea?) Black Lives Matter, whose co-founder described herself as a “trained Marxist,” was heralded as the successor to Martin Luther King and the Freedom Riders.

Blacks and whites, men and women, witnessed the carnage, heard the rhetoric, saw the response and flocked to the nearest gun store.

While Democrats defended the rioters and cut police funding, Biden is making it easier to import gang members, drug dealers and career criminals. A caravan of 9,000 from Honduras is headed for the border.

“Not another foot” of border wall will he build, Joe of the Jungle told the Washington Post this summer. Trump’s policies have been largely successful at stemming illegal immigration. His successor will fight the crisis at our southern border by offering free health care and amnesties to illegals – the lifeblood of the Democrat Party.

Gun prohibition is on the horizon. Good Democrat crime-buster that he is, Biden will fight soaring crime rates with tighter gun control that includes outright confiscation.

The man who once told us that there were 150 million gun deaths between 2007 and 2018, which would be close to half the total population of the United  States (the actual number is 148,000, including acts of self-defense), is putting in charge of his anti-gun initiatives the man who loudly proclaimed, “Hell yes, we’re coming for your AR-15s and AK-47s.” Beto O’Rourke can’t even tell the difference between a semi-automatic and fully-automatic rifle. (Come on, man, they’re all “military-style assault weapons.”)  Joe and Beto -- Sergeant York meets Yosemite Sam.

Biden’s candidate for Secretary of Health and Human Services says “gun violence” should be treated as a public health issue. Mandatory buy-back programs might be the vaccine.

So, to recapitulate, Democrats watched the cities burn last summer, crime rates are soaring, if you call 9-11 you’ll listen to a pre-recorded message or, perhaps, be switched to a prayer line. With Biden in office, the border will be wide open to alien predators and your Second Amendment rights will be under constant attack.

And progressives can’t figure out why people are buying guns in record numbers. 

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti Announces ‘Implicit Bias’ Training for All City Employees

Eric Garcetti takes a knee (Richard Vogel / Associated Press)
Richard Vogel / Associated Press
4:07

LOS ANGELES, California — Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Thursday that the City of Los Angeles would require all employees to undergo “implicit bias” training as part of an effort to achieve “racial justice.”

Garcetti, speaking from Dodger Stadium at a press conference about the city’s coronavirus vaccination effort, said that the city would use “equity” in its distribution of vaccines, to prioritize minority communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

He then added that “in the midst of the clarion calls for racial justice that we saw in the streets of this country,” L.A. would require all city employees to undergo “anti-bias learning” and “mandatory implicit bias training” to help “dismantle racism for good.”

The City of Los Angeles currently employs more than 50,000 people.

Garcetti acknowledged that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) already conducts such training, but noted that it would be extended across all departments, on an annual basis.

In a separate press release, the city announced that it would be using a training program developed by Ohio State University:

An agreement was made with The Ohio State University’s Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity to adopt its highly-regarded implicit bias training and adapt it for City staff.

The Kirwan training centers on three broad concepts: first, understanding implicit bias; second, recognizing our own biases; and third, mitigating the impact of negative bias, with a focus on identifying, understanding, and counteracting implicit bias on the individual level.

The program uses a combination of video, reading content, and interactive quizzes to help participants explore the historical, psychological, and institutional causes of implicit biases, along with how these long-standing structures directly affect the way people think and interact. Built into the training is the opportunity for each trainee to take the Harvard University Implicit Associations tests to learn of their own implicit biases.

“Racism is woven into the systems that define our daily lives and we must be relentless in rooting it out,” said Capri Maddox, Executive Director of the Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department, in the release.

The Kirwan training can be found here. It makes claims such as “research suggests that most Americans – regardless
of race – hold an anti-Black/pro-White implicit bias.”

Last year, President Donald Trump used an executive order to suspend racial bias training in the federal government that used “Critical Race Theory” as a basis, and forbade federal contractors from using such programs.

Critical Race Theory holds that racism is inherent in American institutions. “On a practical level, Critical Race Theory teaches that social interactions are guided by “white supremacy,” and that society is corrupted by “systemic racism,” according to which black Americans must always be victims — even if unconsciously so. Critical Race Theory is the ideology animating the Black Lives Matter movement that has brought unrest to America’s cities,” Breitbart News noted at the time.

President Joe Biden rescinded that order on his first day in office, citing the “unbearable human costs of systemic racism.”

In December, the United Kingdom ended a program of “unconscious bias training” for civil servants after finding that it did not work. The Harvard “implicit association tests” have also come under significant criticism.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is How Not to Be a Sh!thole Country: Lessons from South Africa. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Morgues overflow, air quality restrictions on crematoriums suspended as Los Angeles County surpasses 1 million COVID-19 cases

On Saturday, Los Angeles County in southern California became the first in the United States to hit the grim record of 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

The hospital systems in Los Angeles and surrounding cities are strained past their limits, with some operating at over 320 percent capacity, and the region is recording more than 250 deaths each day. Patients line corridors, hallways, gift shops, and cafeterias turned patient care, and fill parking lot tents. Los Angeles County is the starkest expression of the pandemic’s spread throughout the state of California. According to the state’s official dashboard, as of January 17, California has 2,942,475 confirmed cases of COVID-19, resulting in 33,392 deaths, the second highest toll in the US, behind New York.

Registered nurse Leslie Clark, right, collects a nasal swab sample from a mans as administrative worker Sander Edmondson works on his computer at a COVID-19 testing site in Los Angeles, Sunday, Dec. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The crisis facing the nation’s most populous county, with more than 10 million residents, is deepening as the presence of the UK variant, which is predicted to be some 70 percent more transmissible, has been confirmed. There is no end in sight to this upward trend as over 20 percent of tests in Los Angeles County are coming back positive, pointing to rampant community spread.

The county’s hospital morgues are so full that more than a dozen members of the California National Guard have been called in to help store corpses as funeral homes and mortuaries work through a backlog. A temporary morgue consisting of five 53-foot refrigerated trailers and a number of other containers were set up last week in a parking lot adjacent to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s building. As of Friday, over 2,700 bodies were being stored at hospitals and the coroner’s office. Just east of Los Angeles, Riverside County has also procured additional storage space to store bodies—10 refrigerated trailers, eight of which can store 50 bodies per trailer.

There are so many deaths that air quality regulations for crematoriums in the county had to be suspended to keep up with the death toll and speed up cremations of bodies. On Sunday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an executive order to suspend air quality regulations that currently limit the number of cremations. The official district order states that the current death rate is “more than double that of pre-pandemic years, leading to hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums exceeding capacity, without the ability to process the backlog.”

The skyrocketing death toll reflects the deep poverty and social inequality that exists in the wealthiest state in the US. In Los Angeles, some 16 percent of the population live below the poverty line. Dr. Elaine Batchlor, CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital, described the higher rates of chronic illness among impoverished residents, telling CNN that “Diabetes is three times more prevalent here than in the rest of California. Mortality is 72 percent higher. The life expectancy is 10 years shorter here than in the rest of the state.”

California also has one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per capita—just 1.8 beds for every 1,000 people, compared to four beds in Mississippi. The shortage of hospital beds is a reflection of the profit motive in the health care system, and of the conscious decisions to keep hospitals short-staffed, known as the LEAN model, which is embraced by all hospital systems to maintain the bare minimum of staff, a method focused on “minimizing waste”—i.e., labor costs.

The sorry state of California’s intensive care unit (ICU) capacity has been prepared through decades of cost-cutting to services such as intensive care that are more costly. According to a 2017 financial analysis by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), titled “Rethinking the Use of Intensive Care Beds in California’s Hospitals,” the foundation, speaking for the shareholders and CEOs of the state’s health care systems, argued that hospitals should shift ICU patients to non-ICU beds instead of increasing ICU capacity, noting that an unforgivable $55 billion is spent annually on critical care across the United States.

The report sought to undermine the 1:2 nurse-to-patient ratios in ICUs and advocated instead for 1:5 ratios in non-ICU nursing. The job losses that would result for nurses is a celebrated cost-cutting measure to boost the profits of the owners of the hospital system. It also regretfully noted that the average Medicare discharge of an ICU patient results in hospital losses of $2,431, losing a yearly aggregate of $5.8 billion, whereas $2 billion in profits are made on patients that do not spend time in an intensive care or critical care unit.

Health care workers are facing lack of bed capacity, dwindling resources, and dangerous short-staffing amid the worst wave of the pandemic so far. The response of the ruling elite and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has not been for an immediate lockdown to halt the spread of cases but has been to grant hospitals the ability to waive the nurse-to-patient ratios. About 115 hospitals in California have been approved for 90-day waivers repeatedly including about 31 facilities in Los Angeles County, according to an analysis of California Department of Public Health data. Most recently, Antelope Valley Hospital in Lancaster received approval shortly after Thanksgiving.

The result of these conditions has pushed hospitals and strained staff to a breaking point as they face war-like carnage on a daily basis that is only fueling the understaffing issues. A nurse from the Apple Valley hospital told Reuters that “We’ve had physicians retire, we’ve had lab staff quit, we’ve had nurses quit, we’ve had CNAs quit, monitor techs quit, people have left critical care and gone to other units because it’s too much for them.”

Numerous hospitals have reported they are rationing care and limited resources due to lack of beds and staff, and to add insult to injury, many hospitals throughout the state have declared “internal emergencies,” as they are runningoutofoxygen. First responders in Los Angeles County have been ordered not to administer oxygen unless a patient’s levels drop below 90 percent. Nurses at Riverside Community Hospital have been directed via e-mail to “preserve their oxygen supplies.”

Throughout the media, headlines for the necessity of “ethical protocols to prioritize lifesaving care” dominate, but stripped of their euphemistic language, these are arguments for withholding patients from lifesaving care. Gary Herbst, the CEO of Kaweah Delta, the largest acute care hospital in Tulare County in central California, who brings home a yearly package of $1,058,692, remarked coolly last week that it was “our responsibility as a healthcare facility to plan for these types of scenarios.”

As the death toll mounts and care continues to be rationed, the slow pace of vaccinations will do little to nothing to affect the upward trend of cases and provide relief to strained health care systems. Los Angeles County is still not through vaccinating health care workers who had exposure to patients or infectious materials. There are an estimated 450,000 health care workers who have yet to be vaccinated and only 700,000 residents out of 3 million are currently eligible to receive the vaccine. The additional facilities set up for “mass” vaccinations can only provide relief for an additional 8,000 people per day.

In Riverside County, the registration for 11,000 vaccination slots scheduled for a four-day period starting Tuesday was filled two hours after registration opened, while many were unable to access the overwhelmed county website. “As of right now, we have 14,346 doses in our hands as public health and that is just enough to get through the vaccine clinics we have planned Sunday,” Kim Saruwatari, the county public health director, said Friday at a live-streamed meeting with county officials. “And by the end of Sunday we should be pretty close to out of vaccine as a public health department.”

Despite the horrific strain on the system and the 1 million infection mark reached, the Democratic-controlled government is doubling down on its plans to reopen the economy. Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors met behind closed doors for a perfunctory 10-minute meeting on Friday and announced that they do not see a need to enforce additional restrictions. Governor Newsom continues to pursue a $2 billion plan to force cash-starved schools to reopen by mid-February, and emphasized this past week that the state’s hospitalization rates are beginning to show “the light at the end of the tunnel” since they’re now growing at a slower rate than the December influx.

A Riverside nurse blasted Newsom’s statement, telling the WSWS: “Yesterday a patient in his 40s asked me with fear in his eyes ‘Am I going to die?’ He was maxed on oxygen support and the time was near for him to be put on a ventilator. The short answer was yes, he would likely die. I tried to explain without lies so he would have hope in the end. ‘We’re going to take care of you and do everything we can. We have the best treatment available. I’m going to be right here with you and holding your hand.’ He didn’t make it. Where is his light at the end of the tunnel? He’s not the first and won’t be the last to suffer from this virus.”