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Post by Admin on Jan 19, 2020 21:37:47 GMT
Two Republican state senators in Oklahoma proposed a bill that would create specialty license plates that showcase the president’s campaign slogans, a move that could violate federal campaign finance laws. Sens. Nathan Dahm (R) and Marty Quinn (R) penned the legislation, which would make state license plates that say “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) and “Keep America Great” available for purchase. Currently, 98 styles are available for purchase for registered vehicles in the state, with more than half the proceeds going to a related cause, often nonpolitical charities. Proceeds from the "MAGA" and “Keep America Great” license plates won’t go directly to the president’s reelection bid, but instead they’ll be split between two veterans groups: the Warriors for Freedom Foundation and the Folds of Honor Foundation. Trump will, however, have a say in the design. “The license plates shall be designed in consultation with the corporation or entity designated by Donald J. Trump for such purposes,” the bill reads. According to the Washington Post, the two senators have not submitted the bill to the Federal Elections Commission for an advisory opinion, considering it may be using state resources to distribute campaign materials for the president. Though the money collected from the sale of the plates would not go toward Trump's reelection efforts, some argue that it still goes against the federal campaign finance laws if the state uses taxpayer dollars to make them, according to the newspaper. “These are political slogans,” said Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School told The Post. “This has the look and feel of using state resources to support a political candidate, which seems improper . . . and possibly illegal.” The bill is just one piece of uniquely pro-Trump legislation state lawmakers will mull when the statehouse convenes in February. In November, the same two senators submitted a bill that would rename a section of Route 66 the “President Donald Trump Highway.”
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Post by Admin on Jan 20, 2020 18:29:35 GMT
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” returned Sunday night for its long-awaited 10th season and Larry David wasted no time leaping right into the latest cultural landmines.
The season debut featured cracks about Harvey Weinstein, sexual harassment, electric scooters, selfie sticks and President Donald Trump. The part that stuck out most to folks on social media was David donning one of Trump’s signature red “Make America Great Again” caps ― but it wasn’t exactly an endorsement.
David discovered that wearing a MAGA hat was a “great people repellent,” allowing him to avoid talking to others:
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Post by Admin on Mar 4, 2020 2:34:19 GMT
Antonio Sabato Jr. was one of the few actors who publicly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election. His candidate won, but his career in Hollywood ended. “I had to sell everything,” Sabato reveals in a phone interview with Variety from his new home in Florida. “I had to pay all my debts. I was blacklisted. All my representatives left me, from agents to managers to commercial agents. I literally had to move, find a new job to survive and take care of my kids. It’s been terrible. It’s mind-blowing. It’s a disgrace. It’s tough, because if you’re in that environment in Hollywood and you have something to say that they don’t like, they’re going to let you know.” Despite a 30-year career as an actor, Sabato claims he couldn’t line up any new roles after the election. He alleges that he was cut from a reality TV competition series because of his political beliefs. In 2018, he attempted an unsuccessful run for a congressional seat in California, where he was defeated by a Democrat. Shortly after that, at 47, Sabato decided to relocate to Florida, where he now works long days in construction. “I’m on the ground,” Sabato says when asked to describe his new life. “I go on the job at two in the morning, and I’m making sure that the job is controlled and supervised by me. I’m in the car all day, driving, going through all the sites. Five days a week, nonstop.” An immigrant from Italy who came to the United States as a model in the 1985, Sabato didn’t always vote Republican. He supported Bill Clinton for both of his presidential bids, because that’s what most of his friends in Hollywood did. And he didn’t consider himself socially conservative. Since the ’90s, Sabato has appeared in dozens of TV shows, including the primetime hit “Melrose Place” and daytime soap operas “The Bold and the Beautiful” and “General Hospital.” He’s starred in more than 40 movies, many of which went straight to TV but still provided him with a steady paycheck. But his decision to back Trump was a defining point for him, both politically and professionally, one he says he doesn’t regret. Sabato was among the only celebrities to give a speech at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, and he created a kerfuffle on ABC News when he claimed that Barack Obama was a Muslim, reinforcing a talking point from Trump’s birther conspiracy theories. That moment may have accelerated his fall from acting. “I was the first celebrity to come out and talk about the president, and he had my vote from day one,” Sabato says. “I was the first one to say he was going to win. My integrity is intact. What I believe in is still intact. What doesn’t break you makes you stronger–that’s what they say. So I’m stronger than ever, and I didn’t have to lie about who I am.”
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Post by Admin on May 17, 2020 19:15:32 GMT
During the last presidential campaign, Facebook board member and billionaire Peter Thiel was among Donald Trump’s most important backers, campaigning for the future president as a “proud,” openly gay supporter of the Republican nominee and even speaking at the Republican Party’s 2016 convention. Four years later, Thiel has taken on a dramatically reduced—if not altogether nonexistent—role in pushing for Trump 2020. Though Thiel declared a year and a half ago that he supports Trump’s re-election, he so far hasn't donated large sums to any of the major Trump campaign committees, and it is unclear to various Trump lieutenants if those contributions are forthcoming. Top officials in the president’s political orbit say that Thiel has been absent from 2020 discussions, with one proclaiming the famous investor had “ghosted” Team Trump lately. And several people familiar with the situation say he has privately criticized Trump in recent months and contemplated limiting his support to other GOP or conservative-nationalist politicians such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, to whom he donated the legal maximum of $5,400 in 2017. Thiel’s cold front has come as the data-mining firm that he co-founded has been raking it in from federal contracts with the Trump administration, including a recent deal to help build what the government hoped would be “the single source” for data to understand and mitigate the effects of the coronavirus. But, as it were, sources say the heart of Thiel’s disaffection with the president is Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis. One person in Thiel’s circle tells The Daily Beast that Thiel has been “shit-talking” Trump over what he views as the president’s hamfisted and botched handling of the pandemic that has resulted in a stalled economy, massive job losses, and a U.S. death toll approaching 90,000. Another person familiar with Thiel’s recent griping said that Thiel was “clearly very frustrated” with the president’s uneven public appearances, particularly the daily White House press briefings Trump held that often ended in head-scratching pronouncements or politically disastrous boasts. ] In that regard, Thiel was hardly alone. Trump’s briefings got so bad that his own most senior advisers were urging him to cut down on them, arguing to him directly that these hours-long briefings were tanking his poll numbers and handing a gift to Team Biden. But for a once-declared MAGA diehard to feel this way underscores the degree of self-inflicted damage Trump may have done. “Everybody goes into the Trump relationship woodchipper,” said Trump’s former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who worked on the Trump presidential transition team with Thiel and who had his own falling-out with the president. “You either come out on the other side with your dignity and your personal story intact or you’re reformed as Trump compost and you’re fertilizer under his shoe. You have to make a decision and it happens to everyone.” The Daily Beast asked more than a dozen Trump campaign officials, White House aides, and others close to the president and involved in his re-election effort if Thiel had been quietly working with Team Trump on anything 2020 or campaign cash-related, if there had been any meaningful contact in the past three months, or if Thiel had come up in any planning conversations, even in passing. None could offer any examples, and each said they weren’t aware of anything of that nature. The White House and Trump campaign did not provide comment. The Daily Beast emailed Thiel and his representative a detailed list of questions and gave them multiple opportunities to comment. They did not respond, though in this case, the money—or lack thereof—may tell the story. Though a major financial supporter of Trump and other Republican politicians in the past, Thiel has donated nothing to the president’s re-election campaign or the Republican National Committee since 2018, according to the most recent available Federal Election Commission data. He’s donated to just one federal political candidate since last year: former Kansas secretary of state and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kris Kobach, an anti-immigration hardliner and Trump buddy. Thiel has also backed a super PAC supporting Kobach’s Senate bid, and last year chipped in $5,000 for Facebook’s political action committee.
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Post by Admin on Jun 17, 2020 18:31:24 GMT
Do we, as a nation, want to be Chicago or MAGA country? As societal unrest and economic anxiety grip our land, the ascendant and increasingly aggressive leftists seek a wholesale transformation of America into the harsh realities of Chicago, a place afflicted by violence, bereft of opportunity, and committed to stifling statism.
In recent weeks, agitators have deployed street violence to achieve political power in ways unseen in this country since at least the 1960s, and perhaps since the Civil War. Amazingly, a litany of establishment media voices are providing explicit approval and cover for them. CNN anchor Chris Cuomo declared, “Show me where it says protests are to be polite and peaceful.” Well, Chris, human decency and common sense dictate that protests in a civil society entail neither violence nor vandalism. But, if you are too conscience-challenged for such awareness, the First Amendment to our Constitution also protects, explicitly, “the right of the people to peaceably assemble.” Perhaps Cuomo skipped Bill of Rights day when he attended law school.
It is not a trivial point. This preference and proclivity for violence can reshape America into a brutish nation that soon resembles the dangerous streets of Chicago. In fact, during the height of the recent protests and looting, Chicago suffered the deadliest single day in its modern history, with 18 people murdered on May 31, prompting the Chicago Sun-Times cover headline “Bloody Sunday.” But well before recent unrest, Chicago’s street carnage had grown so intense in recent years, that the U.S. military sends medics to city hospitals to train in gunshot wound treatment before overseas deployments to battle zones.
Much of this violence flows from a lack of opportunity that drives far too many young men to lives of despair, danger, and criminality. A recent University of Illinois study reports that 40% of Chicago black men aged 20-24 were neither employed nor in school. Part of this idleness flows from the scandalous failure of public education in Chicago. At the end of the 2019 school year, per Illinois exam guidelines, only 26% of Chicago public schools students tested ready for the next grade level.
Much of the dereliction of duty in public education results from a bloated and expensive bureaucracy that exists for its own self-aggrandizement, to the detriment of children and families. Too many young Chicagoans find themselves consigned to lives of underperformance in a digital economy that emphasizes STEM skills and creative capacity.
Those same bureaucrats totally oppose Republican Party efforts to offer school choice for poor parents. They steadfastly fight efforts to empower parents and students to afford alternatives like Catholic schools. Why? Because statist monopolies in Chicago sustain a power structure of politically connected cronies. In most American cities, but especially Chicago, these government-paid charlatans ignore poor performance, eschew accountability, and carefully watch the clock while manipulating a union system that rewards retirees with pension benefits unfathomable to private-sector workers.
The end result of these policy failures? A city that, in many ways, resembles the Third World. Yes, like most developing-country urban areas, Chicago boasts incredible architecture and amenities in prosperous neighborhoods near the water. But many citizens endure a much bleaker and deadlier reality. Chicago has the highest life expectancy gap in America. According the New York University school of medicine, the denizens of tony Streeterville high-rises (ironically the scene of Jussie’s “attack”) live, on average, to 90 years of age, while only nine miles away in Englewood, on the city’s South Side, the average life expectancy is a mere 60 years old.
In response to this litany of failures, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot predictably deflects blame by castigating President Trump. When Trump tweeted condemnation of the inability, or unwillingness, of Democratic mayors and governors to restore order during recent looting and rioting, Lightfoot responded: “I will code what I really want to say to Donald Trump. It’s two words. It begins with and F and ends with a U.” Her dismissive vulgarity exemplifies the arrogance of local officials, almost invariably Democrats, who have failed in the most basic governmental obligation to provide public safety. Lightfoot embodies the callous indifference to the hopelessness that permeates her city. Nonetheless, both locally and nationally, Chicago’s political leaders find a supportive leftist coalition of race-baiters, public-sector unions, trial lawyers, and corporate media cheerleaders.
So, let Chicago’s sad example proclaim a clarion call to the rest of America. In my city, under Democratic Party domination, wrongheaded policies have plunged a once-great metropolis into danger and deprivation. Chicago should be a warning to the rest of our country about the inevitable results of one-party rule and leftist statism. I highly doubt that Chicago will ever become “MAGA country.” But I firmly believe that America does not want to become Chicago. Instead, in the coming months and in the November election, my hope is that our nation will re-embrace the “America First” agenda to power out of our present difficulties with a renewed patriotism that rejects violence and enables success for all citizens.
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