Why have our today’s Republicans in Congress Been So Leftist, So Numb and Dumb, YET MAKING ALOT OF MONEY AND POWER LIKE THEIR DEM FASCISTS?
Who’s the Sly Republican IN CONTROL OF sabotaging America INSTEAD OF SAVING THE COUNTRY from lefty DEM fascists promoting corrupt Nancy Pelosi’s Greed and EVIL?
Why IS this leftist REPUBLICAN SENATOR, Mitch McConnell a millionaire of the MULTI kind or more? And why have so many Republicans join DEMS…..to HATE President Donald Trump for being a successful PRESIDENT DESPITE THE CONGRESSIONAL CORRUPTION PROGRAMMED TO DESTROY DONALD J. TRUMP’S FOUR YEARS OF SUCCESSFUL PRESIDENCY?
WHY WAS THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SO CORRUPT FROM COAST TO COAST….AND NEITHER DEM OR REP CARE TO INVESTIGATE THE CAMPAIGN HONESTLY?
Why were and probably are so many Congressional and Communication big shots in control of our American news world so vicious to destroy such a fine President when one considers how alone he was due to the gangs of Republicans who hated President Trump because the Party couldn’t control him?
WHY HAS AMERICA BECOME SO CORRPUT AND UGLY OVER THESE PAST TWENTY YEARS OF DISGUSTING CONGRESSIONAL DISORDER?
The Idaho college students’ deaths won’t help congressional Democrats push gun laws or score points with minorities or LGBT Americans.
EVITA DUFFY
Two deadly tragedies are capturing national attention this week. Last Saturday, a man shot and killed five people and injured at least 25 at Club Q, a Colorado LGBT nightclub. One week before, four University of Idaho students were brutally stabbed to death by a still unknown murderer. Both killings were grotesque, traumatized their respective communities, and have garnered national headlines and mourning. Only one of these mass killings, however, was addressed by President Joe Biden.
“While no motive in this attack is yet clear, we know that the LGBTQI+ community has been subjected to horrific hate violence in recent years,” Biden said in a statement about last Saturday’s nightclub shooting. “We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate.”
We now know that Biden and other Democrats jumped the gun by suggesting the shooting was the result of LGBT “hate.” On Tuesday, it was reported that the 22-year-old alleged nightclub shooter identifies as “non-binary” and uses the plural “they” and “them” pronouns, making him part of the LGBT coalition himself.
The president also used the shooting to promote his anti-Second Amendment agenda. “We must address the public health epidemic of gun violence in all of its forms,” Biden said. “Earlier this year, I signed the most significant gun safety law in nearly three decades, in addition to taking other historic actions. But we must do more. We need to enact an assault weapons ban to get weapons of war off America’s streets.”
Perhaps Biden is ignoring the tragic deaths of four young college kids in Idaho because their murders did not involve a gun. Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Xana’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, were brutally stabbed to death with what police are calling a Rambo-like knife.
The killings took place sometime after 3 a.m. while the students were sleeping in a home near the university campus. Mysteriously, two roommates and a dog who also lived in the house were spared by the killer. The murderer is still at large, and local authorities have not yet named a suspect, which is terrifying the local community.
The students are so disturbed by what happened that many left campus early for Thanksgiving break. The president of the university even announced that students and professors have the option to use remote learning for the remainder of the fall semester.
Since their deaths, heartbreaking old photos and TikTok videos have emerged of the young friends enjoying life and the college experience. The victims of this crime don’t check off any intersectional boxes. They were white college kids living in a flyover state. Their cause of death won’t help congressional Democrats push gun laws or score points with minorities or LGBT Americans. Publicly speaking about these murders and showing compassion for the victims and their families also won’t give them the benefit of blaming Republicans for somehow “inciting” violence.
The truth is, tragedy can and will strike no matter how many gun laws are passed. Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Yet every week countless, mostly black residents, are shot and killed. Just this morning a teen was murdered in the Windy City. Chicago is a leftist utopia, complete with a radical mayor, tough gun laws, and an attorney general who refuses to prosecute violent criminals, including murderers, in the name of equity, so the president and corporate media have no comment for the bloody streets of Chicago. It’s not politically advantageous.
If guns are illegal, a criminal will still find a way to get one, just as they do in Chicago, and those who can’t use a gun will use a knife or a car. There is evil in our fallen world, and there always will be. Placing a tragedy on the shoulders of a political opponent is ugly.
It is also gross for the president of the United States to make statements only about national tragedies that are politically useful to him. “I promise you this,” wrote Biden before taking office, “I will be a President for all Americans.”
If Biden were sincere, he would acknowledge the killings that occur every day in Chicago, and he would treat the deaths of the four young Idaho college students with the same compassion and urgency that he afforded those who died at Club Q in Colorado.
The greatest American film reminds us to give thanks that the cause of freedom remains there, waiting to be joined.
The beautiful 17-year-old actress Madeleine LeBeau fled Paris in June, 1940, just hours before the Germans marched in. The face of her Jewish husband, a celebrated film star in France, was featured on Nazi propaganda posters as a typical Jew. The rest of his family died in Nazi concentration camps. Like thousands of other refugees, they made their way to Lisbon, and from Lisbon, with forged visas and all the complications, uncertainties, and delays imaginable in wartime, they managed to make their way eventually to Hollywood. Two years later, still only 19, Madeleine LeBeau would play a memorable role in a pivotal scene in what would become one of the most well-loved movies ever made: Casablanca.
LeBeau and her husband both had parts in the movie and, in a sense, the movie was really about them and others like them. Warner Brothers purchased the story for Casablanca just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. The film premiered on Thanksgiving Day 1942, just two weeks after the city of Casablanca in the real world had surrendered to American forces. The premiere was sold out and, after opening titles, the first thing the 1,500 people in the theater would see on the big screen was “a revolving globe,” which, as the script describes, “turns briefly into a contour map of Europe, then into a flat map. Superimposed over the map are scenes of refugees fleeing from all sections of Europe by foot, wagon, auto, and boat, and all converging upon one point on the tip of Africa—Casablanca.”
A narrator tells us in a voiceover:
With the coming of the Second World War, many eyes in imprisoned Europe turned hopefully, or desperately, toward the freedom of the Americas. Lisbon became the great embarkation point. But not everybody could get to Lisbon directly, and so, a tortuous, roundabout refugee trail sprang up. Paris to Marseilles, across the Mediterranean to Oran, then by train, or auto, or foot, across the rim of Africa to Casablanca in French Morocco. Here, the fortunate ones, through money, or influence, or luck, might obtain exit visas and scurry to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to the New World. But the others wait in Casablanca – and wait – and wait – and wait.
And while they were waiting they would inevitably make their way to Rick’s Café Americain, a gin joint whose owner, Richard Blaine, played by Humphrey Bogart, is an American expatriate with a mysterious past, who presents himself to the world as a cynic, but who underneath his cool exterior is a man of honor who might, if you were the most beautiful woman in Casablanca or the greatest resistance fighter in Europe, risk everything to obtain for you an illegal letter of transit so that you could escape Casablanca to Lisbon, and to the New World to continue the fight for freedom.
In the film, if you pay attention, it’s the first week of December, 1941. America is far away and seemingly asleep. But here in the Vichy-controlled African port city of Casablanca, the grim reality of Nazi tyranny casts its shadow over everything. The emotional turning point of the film is a scene in Rick’s Café, where Nazi officers begin singing the German patriotic song Die Wacht am Rhine, whereupon the Czech resistance leader Victor Laszlo, played by Paul Henreid, orders with Rick’s approval the house band to strike up LaMarseillaise, the French national anthem.
The most stirring part of the scene is played by LeBeau, the young French girl we know as Yvonne, who stands up to join in the song. We have seen her, having been spurned by Rick, coming into the bar on the arm of a German officer, an act of treachery during those times that was common and would be severely punished after the war. But now we see her showing her true colors, standing up for her country and its cause. This is where her true loyalty lies. Tears are streaming down her face as she cries, “Vive la France!” and “Vive la démocratie!”
And she wasn’t the only one with tears streaming down her face. One of the American born actors, who played the doorman Abdul at Rick’s Café, noticed many of his fellow actors shedding real tears during that scene, and recalled, “I suddenly realized that they were all real refugees.”
Almost all of the 75 actors and actresses cast in Casablanca were immigrants, refugees from more than 30 different countries, most of them in war-torn Europe. Of the 14 actors given screen credit, only three were born in the United States. The living experience of Nazi tyranny, and the living experience of the fight for freedom were overwhelmingly present on the studio set in Burbank, California. Their own living experience of Nazi tyranny and of the fight for freedom that was still going on and was still uncertain, made those scenes overwhelming in their effects on the souls of those refugees. They are singing and weeping with souls full of defiance for tyranny and resolution on behalf of the cause of freedom.
The Russian born actor Leonid Kinskey played the bartender who was smitten by Yvonne’s charms and found himself saying deferentially, but more than once, “Yvonne, I love you.” Three decades after the performance of this scene, he recalled, “I think it was the most moving patriotic scene ever played in any picture.” And Madeleine LeBeau as Yvonne is the soul of the scene.
The film gained meaning over the decades after it was released. It became the way in which generations remembered what was at stake in that war and all the complexities involved in it: the failures, the compromises, the choices, the heroism, the cause. Because of the art of the film, millions of moviegoers in coming generations experienced these scenes with the same depth of feeling as those who had experienced tyranny and the fight for freedom in person. Good art helps us respond commensurately to the world as it really is, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die. In the real world as it always is, the cause of freedom is there, waiting to be joined.
Lebeau would live for over 70 years after appearing in Casablanca, but the world remembers her for her role in one brief scene in that film, when she was just 19, and for that, she will be remembered as long as films are remembered. She died in 2016, at the age of 92, and seems to have been the last surviving Casablanca cast member. In an official announcement, the French culture minister said, “She will forever be the face of the French resistance.” Like eminent Frenchmen before her, she will now forever be remembered for and associated with the cause of freedom that has been shared by France and America and is the greatest glory of both countries—a cause that is an eternal reason for Thanksgiving.
Christopher Flannery is a Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and author of The American Story podcast.
Elon Musk’s effort to turn Twitter into a free speech platform has encountered angry resistance from the Left. The EU has demanded that he expand censorship, liberals have insisted that “hate speech” has proliferated since his takeover, and so on. As Scott noted earlier, members of Twitter’s “Trust and Safety Council,” who may or may not be out of a job, have denounced Twitter’s incipient libertarianism.
At the same time, liberals have sneered when Musk has acknowledged some need for content moderation, as though that somehow negated his commitment to free speech. There is a lot of fuzzy thinking going on here. Liberals talk about the “safety” of the platform, which makes little sense unless they are claiming that it may cause your cell phone to explode, causing personal injury. Musk, on the other hand, has at times described himself as a free speech absolutist. I am an absolutist, too, if you start with an understanding of what “speech” means.
I don’t think the issue of content moderation on a social media platform is particularly hard to resolve. First of all, on reflection anyone–including more-or-less absolutists like Musk and me–will agree that some content moderation is necessary. Bots should be banned, child pornography should not be permitted, users should not be allowed to conspire to commit terrorist acts.
Such content moderation can easily be reconciled with Musk’s commitment to free speech. I drafted a statute that was introduced, but not passed, in the last session of Minnesota’s legislature. It applied to a defined range of social media platforms, and banned discrimination in content moderation. Platforms could moderate content to their hearts’ content, but in doing so, they were prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, religion or political orientation.
The tech giants purported to be outraged by my proposal. They (Twitter, Facebook et al.) hired three industry groups to appear at a committee hearing to testify against it. They claimed that my bill would make it impossible to block child pornography or terrorist plots. Really? I asked. Please explain why you need to engage in race discrimination to prevent child pornography on your platform. They were unable to do so, of course. Their position was absurd.
One good thing about the anti-discrimination approach is that it is consistent with various degrees of content moderation. For example, a platform might want to enforce a minimum level of good taste. Thus, it might delete content featuring the severed head of Barack Obama, or use of the hashtag #RapeMichelle. Fine. But then, it would also have to ban content featuring the severed head of Donald Trump and the hashtag #RapeMelania, both of which were A-OK with Liberal Twitter.
If I were Elon Musk, I would announce whatever content moderation standards he wants to apply to Twitter. I would then add that those standards would be applied in a way that does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion or political orientation, and I would hire employees who would effectuate that commitment. Liberals would weep and gnash their teeth, but they would be unable to articulate a plausible objection to such a policy. As I know from experience.
The advice if free, Elon. If you take it, it will be the best bargain anyone offers you today.
YouTube deleted the video comparing Trump’s statements questioning the 2020 election results to Democrats questioning the 2016 contest.
VICTORIA MARSHALL
Independent YouTuber Matt Orfalea does not align with Democrats or Republicans. He eschews any type of label because labels are dangerous, he tells The Federalist.
“A lot of people identify with their politics. I just identify as a video creator.”
Perhaps this is why Orfalea’s videos are so effective. Amassing hundreds of thousands of views, and in some cases, millions, the filmmaker’s work consists of crisply edited mash-ups of politicians and corporate media figures making complete fools of themselves — without any commentary from Orfalea himself. One such mashup shows politicians and media decrying the Wuhan lab leak theory as a baseless conspiracy, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. Another shows the media’s hypocrisy surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop (and their quest to characterize the story as Russian disinformation — an actually baseless claim).
While Orfalea’s videos do not explicitly criticize the politicians or talking heads they represent, this has not stopped YouTube from demonetizing certain videos it deems hostile to the establishment-backed narrative of the day.
In the comment section of the Wuhan lab leak video, Orfalea tells viewers, “This video is of course demonetized without explanation. Follow me on Rumble!”
But Orfalea is no stranger to censorship. During the 2016 election, he created a video that revealed PBS News’s selective editing of an interview with then-Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. Of particular note was PBS’s censoring of Stein’s entire criticism of Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and Clinton’s support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Within 24 hours of publishing his video on Facebook, Orfalea said, it was deleted with no explanation. The YouTuber also said last year that he has been censored for publishing the same content as corporate media outlets as well as drawing attention to the comments of a disgruntled Netflix employee.
But in the wake of the 2022 midterms and YouTube’s recent crackdown on election-related “misinformation,” Orfalea has once again found himself in the popular video platform’s crosshairs.
In September, Orfalea published a montage of Democrat politicians and media figures questioning the results of the 2016 election and characterizing it as “illegitimate,” “rigged,” and “hacked.”
He then released a second montage comparing the statements of then-President Trump questioning the 2020 election results to Democrats — most notably, Hillary Clinton — questioning the results of the 2016 contest.
“I wanted to show that Trump and the Republicans are not the only ones to challenge or question the integrity of an election,” Orfalea said. “It was literally just the last election cycle. And people have already forgotten.”
YouTube immediately tried demonetizing both videos, as journalist Matt Taibbi reported, but then reversed the demonetization of the first video after Orfalea pushed back. But that didn’t stop the video-sharing platform from deleting the second video and giving Orfalea a strike (if a YouTuber receives three strikes, his entire channel will be deleted), imperiling his livelihood. Orfalea is currently banned from posting to YouTube for a week.
YouTube rationalized its decision by arguing Orfalea’s second montage “contains claims that past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen, and our election integrity policy prohibits content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in US presidential elections.”
If YouTube’s “‘election integrity policy’ prohibits content that advances false claims that ‘past US presidential elections were rigged or stolen,’” Taibbi noted, then it should have removed Orfalea’s first video as well. After all, the first montage features politicians ranging from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris — and even former President Jimmy Carter — all claiming the 2016 election was rigged and that Trump was an illegitimate president.
But of course, Democrats can get away with election “denialism” (whatever that means) when Republicans can’t. Orfalea’s censorship by YouTube just shows how hypocritical leftist politicians, the corporate media, and other peddlers of the Official Narrative really are. And the best part? They don’t care.
No matter that the Russian collusion hoax and claims that Trump stole the 2016 election were dead on arrival. No matter that voter skepticism over the legitimacy of the 2020 election was indeed well-founded (and outlined in Federalist Editor-In-Chief Mollie Hemingway’s book, “Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections“). Whatever (or whoever) poses a threat to the regime and its narrative must always be squelched – including inconvenient facts.
Despite finding himself once again under the boot of the left’s censorship regime, Orfalea remains undaunted. He’s still committed to creating videos that challenge propaganda from both the left and the right.
“It’s important for people to realize that we swallow the narratives the media feeds us without thinking about it,” Orfalea said.
Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.
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