90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Leftist Strategy: "Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste..."

#crenshaw

Watch Dan Crenshaw Beat Down Media’s Wild Hyperbole About Trump ‘Undermining Democracy’

What Does A Treasonous Government Look Like?

Did Podesta’s Ex-Wife Pay Off Kamala Harris to Give Pyramid Scheme a Pass

Ever heard of Herbalife? It’s a company that sells health and fitness supplements by getting ordinary people to sign up as distributors. If the name sounds familiar to you, it might be because of that one person in your Facebook feed list who’s always singing its praises in a creepy cultish tone.

It’s also a huge scam not unlike a pyramid scheme. This 2016 press release from the Federal Trade Commission should give you a basic idea:

Advertising in English and Spanish, Herbalife pitched its business opportunity as a way for people to quit their jobs and make the big bucks […] But don’t start packing the kids’ bags because according to the FTC, it’s virtually impossible to make money selling Herbalife products. As explained in the complaint, our analysis shows that half of Herbalife “Sales Leaders” earned on average less than $5 a month from product sales […]

Which brings us to the inconvenient little secret about Herbalife that the FTC’s complaint alleges: The small number of distributors who actually made money made it not by selling products to people who wanted the company’s powders, pills, and potions, but rather by recruiting others to serve as distributors – and encouraging them to buy Herbalife products.

Sounds pretty sleazy, right? Apparently not to Democrat presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, who is being accused of giving Herbalife a pass because campaign contributions from a familiar name spoke even louder. The Washington Free Beacon has the scoop:

In 2013, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and four other groups urged Harris to investigate Herbalife for deceptive business practices. Now documents obtained by Yahoo News indicate the San Diego office of the California attorney general agreed and wrote a memorandum asking Harris for resources to investigate the company in 2015.

Harris never gave a reason for declining the request. But Yahoo News notes that around the same time Harris received the first of three donations from Heather Podesta, whose ex-husband Tony Podesta runs a powerful lobbying firm that represented Herbalife at the time. Heather Podesta, a high-powered Washington lobbyist in her own right, was hired by Herbalife herself a year later. Herbalife was also represented by Veneble LLC, a prominent law firm that employed Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff.

“It’s disgusting,” Latino anti-Herbalife activist Julie Contreras told Yahoo News, adding that “Kamala Harris did a huge injustice.” Contreras supports Beto O’Rourke in the presidential race instead, and her punny Spanish nickname for Harris is “Qué Mala,” meaning “how bad.”

The Harris campaign shot back with a statement touting a “long record of going after bad corporate actors engaging in fraudulent behavior and delivering results for people who have been...

Big Tech’s Censorship Continues To Squeeze Free Speech

By: Donald Trump, Jr.
As Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt, the old arguments about protecting the sanctity of the modern public square are now invalid. Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack, necessitating a vigorous defense against the major social media and internet platforms.

From “shadowbans” on Facebook and Twitter, to demonetization of YouTube videos, to pulled ads for Republican candidates at the critical junctures of election campaigns, the list of violations against the online practices and speech of conservatives is long.

I certainly had my suspicions confirmed when Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, “accidentally” censored a post I made regarding the Jussie Smollett hoax, which consequently led to me hearing from hundreds of my followers about how they’ve been having problems seeing, liking or being able to interact with my posts. Many of them even claimed that they’ve had to repeatedly refollow me, as Instagram keeps unfollowing me on their accounts.

While nothing about Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives truly surprises me anymore, it’s still chilling to see the proof for yourself. If it can happen to me, the son of the president, with millions of followers on social media, just think about how bad it must be for conservatives with smaller followings and those who don’t have the soapbox or media reach to push back when they’re being targeted?

Thanks to a brave Facebook whistleblower who approached James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, we now know that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant developed algorithms to “deboost” certain content, limiting its distribution and appearance in news feeds. As you probably guessed, this stealth censorship was specifically aimed at conservatives.

Facebook appears to have deliberately tailored its algorithm to recognize the syntax and style popular among conservatives in order to “deboost” that content. “Mainstream media,” “SJW” (Social Justice Warrior) and “red pill” — all terms that conservatives often use to express themselves — were listed as red flags, according to the former Facebook insider.

Facebook engineers even cited BlazeTV host Lauren Chen’s video criticizing the social justice movement as an example of the kind of “red pills” that users just aren’t allowed to drop anymore. Mainstream conservative content was strangled in real time, yet fringe leftists such as the Young Turks enjoy free rein on the social media platform.

Despite the occasional brave gesture, politicians have been far too sluggish in recognizing the extent of the problem. But the Republican Party and the conservative movement are becoming more vigilant against the suppression of our speech, as we saw at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Silicon Valley lobbyists have splashed millions of dollars all over the Washington swamp to play on conservatives’ innate faith in the free-market system and respect for private property. Even as Big Tech companies work to exclude us from...

#aoc

Media Touts ‘Clear Sign of Human-Caused Climate Change.’ Here Are the Facts.

Associated Press reporter Seth Borenstein has made another attempt to convince the public of global warming, but his latest analysis has climate scientists once again refuting his claims.

On Tuesday, Borenstein cited AP analysis that found hot temperature records in the U.S. were being broken twice as often as cold temperature records. He concluded that this is “a clear sign of human-caused climate change.”

Borenstein wrote:

The AP looked at 424 weather stations throughout the Lower 48 states that had consistent temperature records since 1920 and counted how many times daily hot temperature records were tied or broken and how many daily cold records were set. In a stable climate, the numbers should be roughly equal. Since 1999, the ratio has been two warm records set or broken for every cold one. In 16 of the last 20 years, there have been more daily high-temperature records than low.

He went on to cite various climate scientists:

The AP shared the data analysis with several climate and data scientists, who all said the conclusion was correct, consistent with scientific peer-reviewed literature and showed a clear sign of human-caused climate change. They pointed out that trends over decades are more robust than over single years.

He concluded:

The analysis stopped with data through 2018. However, the first two months of 2019 are showing twice as many cold records than hot ones.

But the scientists he cited don’t speak for all climate scientists. Some, in fact, are dismissing his “clear sign” analysis.

Climatologist John Christy told me that Borenstein framed the data wrongly:

The occurrence of both record highs and record lows is declining. Record-low events are simply declining more rapidly than record highs. The drop in record lows is associated with development around the weather stations, which causes low temperatures to increase more than highs for a variety of reasons.

Most climate change activists cite the greenhouse gas theory—that man-made gases are causing changes to the Earth’s temperature. Christy noted that this theory predicts an increase in frequency of record-breaking temperatures. Yet the exact opposite is happening in the U.S.—the frequency of those temps is declining.

The cause? Christy says it’s likely “urbanization and natural variability.”

He added: “I’ve actually done this same analysis for the 682 [U.S. Historical Climatology Network] stations with at least 105 years of record since 1895. It is clear that the occurrence of both record high and record lows has declined since 1895, thanks to many records set from the 1920s to 1954.”

He continued:

The AP … is spinning the story by only noting that record lows are fewer than highs now—but the real story is that in the U.S., both extremes are falling. This is consistent with the decline in...

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration Tuesday, allowing federal officials to detain and deport illegal immigrants after they have served their time in the U.S. for other crimes.

It was a 5-4 decision that reversed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which restricted when the immigrants could be deported. For example, the 9th Circuit ruling stated that Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement would have to detain the illegal immigrants immediately or they would exempt from ever being detained.

The court’s majority opinion was delivered by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh, according to the Associated Press. Justices Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,...