PrairiePundit

Power Line: Daniel Horowitz  writes: The act of the officer who placed his knee on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes after he was completely neutralized and couldn’t move is obviously indefensible. As with every criminal act that leads to murder, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. But why is it we never heard on the news about the endless trend of  cop ambushes  and  executions  at the hands of violent criminals in recent months? Why do we never hear about the cases where cops engage in  near-suicidal restraint  to go the extra mile to defuse a situation? Consider the following: According to the Washington Post’s database on police shootings,  17 unarmed African-Americans were killed by police in 2018 . Let’s just assume the unlikely assumption that all 17 were unjustified in the mold of the choking death of George Floyd. That accounts for just 0.002% [note: actually 0.2%] of the  7,407 black homicide vict...

Fuel Fix: The number of operating U.S. oil and gas rigs plunged again this week in its twelfth week of losses, according to Baker Hughes. The total number of operating rigs fell by 17 to 301. The lowest number during the most recent oil bust in 2014-16 was 404 in May 2016, and until this collapse was the lowest number ever recorded. The number of rigs in operation, a leading indicator of oil and gas production activity in the U.S., has plunged by more than 50 percent since mid-March and two-thirds from a year ago, when 984 rigs were drilling in U.S. oil fields. The losses reflect an oil price bust that began in January as the spread of the coronavirus across the globe and an oil price war sent crude prices into a slump and the subsequent stay-at-home orders in the spring that sent prices diving. Oil was trading at $33.64 a barrel in New York around 12:30 p.m. Central, about half its price at the beginning of this year. ... The good news is that oil is trading at over 33 times...

Mark Hemingway: ... The question of what to do about Trump was no doubt a thorny one for a company that once proclaimed itself the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” But however desperately one believes Trump’s tweets necessitated a response, it would be hard to imagine Twitter handling this situation worse than what it did this week. Aside from issuing a public apology, Twitter didn’t do anything about the tweets that prompted the outrage. Instead, the social media company started to “fact-check” Trump’s tweets – and in doing so, Twitter provided a master class on how not to do a fact check. On Tuesday, Trump fired off two tweets about the increase in mail-in voting expected across the country as a result of the pandemic. Suffice it to say, he’s not a fan: “There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent. Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed. The Gov...

Heather MacDonald: Cuomo’s Coronavirus Personae All Fail the Statesmanship Test However much past policy decisions were taken in good faith, they must now be reversed for the sake of human life. To dodge political accountability by invoking science is not leadership, it is cowardice. They are flunking the science test despite their preening about it.  Reality keeps slapping them in the face not only in the states they control, but also the red states that are out performing  them in dealing with the virus. This is a long piece, but it is interesting to see the way she "scientifically" takes Cuomo apart.

Sohrab Ahmari: ... But I wonder: Will the platform also append “fact-check” labels and links to tweets from prominent liberals that also turned out to be “misleading” or outright false? Start with a 2017 tweet from CNN contributor Ana Navarro claiming that an “Ivanka Fund got $100 million pledge from the Saudis and UAE.” The truth: The cash went to a World Bank initiative for female entrepreneurs. Navarro’s tweet garnered more than 43,000 retweets. Or how about a 2019 tweet from actress Nancy Lee Grahn that featured photos of migrant children at a border detention center and railed against Team Trump for allegedly torturing kids? As Internet sleuths pointed out, Grahn’s photo was cropped to remove the timestamp: 2015. It garnered nearly 50,000 retweets anyway. ... Then there was Rachel Maddow’s blog’s 2018 claim that the White House had edited the video of the president’s Helsinki news conference with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin “to remove [a] question about whether [he] wan...

Washington Post: Trump might have won three states in 2016 solely on the strength of Republican absentee voting White House advisers have spent the past week disparaging voting by mail, bolstering the president’s insistence that mail-in ballots are rife with fraud. What they are objecting to is mailing ballots of all so called registered voters whether they are living or dead or have moved and are no longer eligible to vote in those states.  Some locations have more registered voters than adults. Some states have automatically sent voter registration to illegal immigrants who are not eligible voters. In Nevada ballots are stacking up outside apartments for people who no longer live there, and there is nothing to keep someone from taking those ballots and illegally voting. It is a really stupid system and it is indefensible.  The main objective appears to make it easier for Democrats to cheat.  It would automatically lead to the questioning the legitimacy of t...

Hot Air: In a victory for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a lack of immunity to the coronavirus is not a reason to request a mail-in ballot by claiming a disability. The question was this – Does fear of the coronavirus spreading among voters without immunity at polling places on election day amount to a disability? Should mail-in voting be expanded due to the pandemic? That question is still playing out in federal courts but the ruling by U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that all Texas voters can now be considered as “disabled” due to  concerns  over the safety of voting in person during the coronavirus pandemic was rejected by the Texas Supreme Court. Texas Democrats rejoiced that Judge Biery’s ruling would massively increase mail-in voting in Texas. Attorney General Paxton is  pleased  with the state supreme court’s ruling. ... The court’s opinion included  an acknowledgment  that the political debate o...

Joel Gehrke: Chinese communist officials are making major policy decisions and even public pronouncements that suggest unease about the potential for domestic political friction, China watchers say. “I think he's worried about his own domestic political standing,” former Australian defense ministry adviser Patrick Buchan said of Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. “Furthermore, what he's worried about is any outbreak of a pro-democracy or anti-CCP sentiment, which further adds to fuel to his own domestic political [stress] in the party.” That assessment came apropos of Xi’s decision to  unveil national security legislation  pertaining to Hong Kong that local dissidents and U.S. officials regard as a historic move to  dominate  the former British colony. The move could come at  significant costs  for  China’s economy , but Chinese communist officials raised the specter of protests against the central government in Be...

Red States: Dan Bongino: The Stunning Reason Why Rod Rosenstein Will Be the First Witness Before Senate Committee ... It’s been clear for a long time that the FBI and Robert Mueller knew early on that President Trump had done nothing wrong. For example, we know that after the FBI’s January 2017 interview with dossier author Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source, they had a pretty good idea it was all a lie. The FBI interviewed the sub-source two additional times, in March and in May 2017, and by then, they were sure of it. We also learned from the testimony of former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, that in May 2017, when the FBI turned their counterintelligence investigation over to Robert Mueller, they still had no evidence that Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the election. The FBI had been investigating Trump for ten months at that point. ... Rosenstein knew there was no evidence to support the investigation but went forward with it anyway.  Muller and his team ha...

Washington Examiner: President Trump reacted with shock and anger to the third night of  protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul  over the death of George Floyd. Just before 1 a.m. EST Friday, after the Minneapolis Police Department's 3rd Precinct was  set on fire , Trump shot off multiple tweets that decried a "lack of leadership" from Minneapolis officials and compared the protesters to "thugs." "I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right," Trump said in one tweet. "These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen," he said in another tweet. "Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will ass...

Epoch Times: The state of Arizona has filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company used “unfair” practices to track the location data of its users even after they had turned off the tracking function. The lawsuit, filed on May 27 by Attorney General Mark Brnovich, alleges that the technology company violated the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. It requires Google to “disgorge gross receipts arising from its Arizona activities.” The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and argues that the maker of the Android smartphone operating system had set its mobile software to deceive device owners about protections afforded to them regarding their personal data. “We filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against Google for deceptive and unfair practices used to obtain users’ location data, which Google then exploits for its lucrative advertising business,” Brnovich said in a statement on Twitter. Brnovich pointed out that last year, over 80 percent of Google’s revenue—$135 ...

Jonathon Turley: Free speech, our defining right in the United States, seems to be dangling on social media. Twitter added warnings on tweets from President Trump, marking a major escalation of speech controls on the internet, something that has been demanded by Democrats. While the company clarified that Trump did not violate the rules, it still intervened between him and all his followers to add its own view of the truth on a political controversy. The action against Trump on his mail voting tweets is the realization of the fear of free speech advocates. People sign up for updates from Trump, not Twitter, but the company decided to force his 80 million followers to view its own position on this issue. Imagine if a telephone company listened for errant political statements on calls to flag its business concerns. Unfortunately, Trump added his own threat to free speech by pledging to “shut down” Twitter and others if they do not change their positions. It is akin to denouncing pe...

AP/Fuel Fix: Federal courts have delivered a string of rebukes to the Trump administration over what they found were failures to protect the environment and address climate change as it promotes fossil fuel interests and the extraction of natural resources from public lands. Judges have ruled administration officials ignored or downplayed potential environmental damage in lawsuits over oil and gas leases, coal mining and pipelines to transport fuels across the U.S., according to an Associated Press review of more than a dozen major environmental cases. The latest ruling against the administration came Thursday when an appeals court refused to revive a permitting program for oil and gas pipelines that a lower court had canceled. Actions taken by the courts have ranged from orders for more environmental analysis to the unprecedented cancellation of oil and gas leases across hundreds of thousands of acres in Western states. ... Some of the most far-reaching rulings have come fro...

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: Chevron is planning a 10% to 15% reduction in its global workforce this year, the biggest cut to headcount yet among global oil majors following the Covid-19 pandemic. The cuts equate to about 6,000 of its 45,000 non-gas station employees and may be a precursor to staffing reductions at Big Oil rivals such as BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Until now, layoffs had primarily been felt in the oilfield services sector and among North American independent producers. Chevron is "streamlining our organizational structures to reflect the efficiencies and match projected activity levels," the San Ramon, California-based company said Wednesday in a statement. "This is a difficult decision, and we do not make it lightly." Unemployment is surging around the world due to the pandemic but is particularly marked in the energy business after oil prices crashed to record lows last month. Many companies, including Chevron, were already in cost cutting mo...

Daniel Payne: Twitter this week slapped a warning label on some of Donald Trump's tweets for the first time, cautioning users that the president's "series of claims about potential voter fraud" were "unsubstantiated," citing "CNN, Washington Post and others" for authority. "Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud," Twitter declared. In an accompanying "What you need to know" list, the social media giant added that "fact checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud." In fact, there have been numerous cases of mail-in voter fraud scattered widely across the country over the past four years, evidence that the absentee ballot system is open to at least some voter manipulation, even as many experts and pundits continue to insist otherwise. According to data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, there have been around three dozen criminal convictions for ab...

Washington Examiner: President Trump  signed an executive order targeting social media  companies for the way they regulate content on their platforms. Speaking from the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump accused Twitter and other social media giants of repressing free speech. "What they're doing is tantamount to monopoly, you can say it's tantamount to taking over the airwaves," Trump said. "Can't let it happen. Otherwise, we're not going to have a Democracy, we're not going to have anything to do with a republic." Trump announced that he is directing his administration to "develop policies and procedures to ensure taxpayer dollars are not going in any social media company that repress free speech." Trump said he would delete Twitter if there was a "fair press" in the United States but that he refuses to do so because of the wide reach the platform gives him. ... The social media giants are already trying influence th...

The National Pulse: Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden has said he welcomes Chinese intrusion into “all levels of [U.S.] government, classrooms, laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms.” The comments – unearthed from a 2011 Sichuan University speech – demonstrate either a fundamental misunderstanding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or outright collusion with it. The former veep  stated at the time : “In order to cement this robust partnership,  we have to go beyond close ties between Washington and Beijing , which we’re working on every day, go beyond it  to include all levels of government, go beyond it to include classrooms and laboratories, athletic fields and boardrooms .” Biden takes this reckless approach to the private sector, too: “The United States should undertake to make it easier for Chinese businesspeople to obtain visas to travel to the United States. It takes much too long for that to happen.” “Already, we have made ...

NY Times: Get Republicans to Vote Against Trump? This Group Will Spend $10 Million to Try A new organization, Republican Voters Against Trump, is testing the premise of whether there are really any persuadable voters left. These people are nuts. When it comes to evil objectives, the left in this country out paces Trump by a significant decree.  The policies of the left kill jobs and create government dependency.  They make the country weaker economically and militarily. Trump has reversed the left's grip on the courts which they used in the past to get polices that could not get approved at the ballot box.  He has demonstrated how you can grow the economy by getting the government out of the way.  He has dealt effectively with a Chicom pandemic.  I see no reason why any conservative would ever vote against Trump. What we have also learned is that the Obama administration was one of the most corrupt in history, using the assets of US intelligence ...

Politico: Trump and Musk unite over Twitter, the moon and sticking it to the establishment The Silicon Valley environmentalist and the U.S. president who shunned the Paris climate agreement are forming a bond through Covid-19 and outer space. Musk is a businessman and the lock down Democrats are hurting his business. 

Right Scoop: Tom Cotton says this is the RIGHT question we should be asking about Democrats and mail-in voter fraud I love the way Tom Cotton thinks. Today he tweeted that there’s no question that expanding voting by mail opens up opportunities for fraud. Rather, he says this is question we should be asking about Democrats and mail-in voter fraud: Cotton took it right from their 3 trillion dollar bill. Boom. Cotton also noted some cases of mail-in ballot voter fraud that the ‘smug liberals’ at Twitter tells us aren’t happening.... ... There is more, including some obvious examples of the vote fraud that the left is denying.  They are just not credible on this issue.  Cheating is just too important too them.