Politics

The Congressional Black Caucus did not respond when asked on Friday whether they agree with Rep. Maxine Waters’s comment that the treatment of Haitian migrants by Border Patrol agents is 'worse than what we witnessed in slavery'. 'What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery,' Waters said during a news conference outside the Capitol on Wednesday. 'Cowboys — with their reins, again — whipping black people, Haitians, into the water where they're scrambling and falling down when all they're trying to do is escape from violence in their country.

Cockburn was intrigued to learn that OkCupid, the dating app service, now offers a ‘pro-choice’ badge for its users’ profiles. The feature was introduced in response to Texas Senate Bill 8, a law that could potentially limit abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected at around six weeks.  While dating apps are not Cockburn’s preferred method of wooing the ladies (mystery is everything), he wonders whether this corporate vice-signaling is catching on. In addition to abortion enthusiasm, OkCupid also promotes itself as a platform for the sexually adventurous. On its website, colorful gender-bending models simulate various sex positions and one apparent orgy.

It went virtually unnoticed in April when Donald Trump recruited Susie Wiles to oversee his fundraising operation and create a system for issuing endorsements. Wiles is a veteran political consultant in Florida, having worked for Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron DeSantis and helped with Trump’s campaigns there. 'The president tells everyone around Mar-a-Lago that Susie is now in charge,’ an adviser told Politico. Despite media narratives of Jared Kushner’s withdrawal from Trump’s affairs, one source with knowledge of Mar-a-Lago’s inner workings said Wiles serves a 'buffer to give Kushner distance’. Wiles currently works with Kushner confidant Bill Stepien on endorsements. According to broadcaster Stew Peters, Wiles isn’t taking a paycheck for her work.

Chris Cuomo won’t give CNN, or his very concerned social justice warrior colleagues, a break. Cuomo is arguably the face of the network. That’s a serious problem for Jim Acosta’s anti-Fox News jihad, Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy’s Media Matters rip-off gig, Jake Tapper’s 'last honest man in Washington' act and Wolf Blitzer still trying to pretend he’s just the straight news guy. Cuomo has eclipsed them all. Hence his magical COVID basement Lazarus miracle last year. Hence also the circus act with his now-humiliated brother and all the special favors that come from that kind of family connection.

Rep. Matt Gaetz is requesting a meeting with Israel's ambassador to the US, Gilad Erdan, to discuss the alleged extortion plot of the Gaetz family, according to a letter obtained by The Spectator. As previously reported, days before news broke that the FBI was investigating the Florida congressman for sex trafficking allegations, Jake Novak at the Israeli consulate in New York told Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams about the probe. 'I come as a friend to Israel. Supporting the US-Israel relationship is very important to me and to my constituents,' Gaetz writes in the letter. 'Jake Novak is the Broadcast Media Relations Director at Israel's Consulate in New York.

President Joe Biden had a busy week at the United Nations, and as the media focused much of its attention on his first address to the General Assembly, another interesting presidential public appearance slid under the radar. On Tuesday, Biden delivered the opening address for the Root Institute 2021, a virtual conference put on by the Root, a blog 'covering the Black community' whose tagline is 'The Blacker the Content the Sweeter the Truth’. For those unfamiliar, the Root publishes opinion pieces that specialize in aggressive race-baiting.

The record influx of illegal immigrants on the southern border — and the White House's refusal to refer to it as a 'crisis' — was the biggest story of the young Biden presidency at the start of the year. Even though the number of illegal crossings continued to swell, hitting over 200,000 migrants a month, the scandal practically disappeared during the summer. The media distracted Americans with fear-mongering about the new Delta variant of COVID-19 and warmongering about the undeniably disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden border crisis has now returned with a vengeance. This week, more than 10,000 Haitians descended on the border town of Del Rio, Texas seeking entry to the United States.

Eight months in and I am perilously close to employing one of the worst political clichés in existence — Joe Biden’s honeymoon is over. You’re not imagining things — the Biden presidency is in a state of free-fall. This is not a joke. It’s not an overreaction. It’s not about Biden’s opponents pouncing or seizing. Biden’s presidency has a very real chance of completely foundering within its first year. After a promising start where he inherited a vaccination process that was already in progress, albeit briefly, under Trump, his vaccine strategy has stalled to the point of him now demanding mandates on private businesses, a step he assured the electorate he would not take.

There used to be an old joke that there were more members of the FBI who were members of the American Communist party than there were actual believers in rule from Moscow. Something like that seems to have occurred with the much ballyhooed 'Justice for J6' rally in Washington DC. Justice, schmustice. Much as I had expected, almost no one rallied to the rally. A grand total of two people were arrested. Seldom has Washington seemed more peaceful. The notion that DC was about to be stormed may have given a lascivious pleasure to those liberals convinced that the enemy is not just at the gates but within them already. But that was never in the cards. Having been caught napping on January 6, there was no way a repetition of those sanguinary events would recur.

All eyes are on the flyover state of Ohio as the fight for the future of Trumpism unfolds. In January, Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman announced he was bowing out of politics for good. His vacancy has set up a rare primary between two candidates offering two different versions of Donald Trump's amorphous ideology. One believes the former president's rhetoric should assimilate with bygone Tea Party-era politics and contemporary culture war talking points. The other is running on the populist rollercoaster that slung Trump into the White House. Rust Belt boy wonder Josh Mandel, who served in the statehouse and was state treasurer for almost a decade, touts a pro-Trump campaign 'to protect the Judeo-Christian bedrock of America.

I never wanted any of this. I came to Los Angeles like any broken, lost 19-year-old searching for fame and fortune, running from myself, my past and my family. As I made a beeline for the West Coast a mere six months after getting out of rehab for heroin addiction, I daydreamed about what my life would look like. I envisioned myself sitting on the deck of my Malibu beach home, idly flipping through scripts after my morning yoga session. Against the backdrop of the mighty Pacific, I would eat mango, listen to the waves, watch dolphins and smoke that sweet California weed. A superstar must always flip through scripts idly. I wanted to be a superstar.