thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--UVA Professor Calls for Cabinet-Level ‘Secretary of Equity’ in Biden Administration

University of Virginia associate professor Ebony Hilton is calling on Joe Biden to create a secretary of equity .
Hilton is an associate professor anesthesiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine .
She was featured in one of Joe Biden ’ s campaign ads discussing COVID-19 ’ s “ impact on communities of color ” and the “ social determinants of health.
” Hilton is also the medical director of Goodstock Consulting , which is a medical consulting firm “ committed to implementing policies that result in # HealthEquity.
” In a tweet , Hilton states that this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the social determinants of health.
” On the 160th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln ’ s presidential election , Hilton tweeted that it is “ high pass due for us to have a # SecretaryOfEquity because the disparities that existed 160 years ago are the same exact ones that exist today.
” “ [ Joe Biden ] create this department as part of your # PresidentialCabinet to be repeated on # State and # Local levels , ” Hilton continued .
The overwhelming majority of commenters were not in favor of Hilton ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ totalitarian , ” “ stupid , ” and “ factually inaccurate.
” “ How can a person-of-color with a Medical Degree say this with a straight face ?
” one commenter tweeted .
One commenter took issue with Hilton ’ s claim that issues that affect the minority community are the same now as they were in the 19th century .
“ It ’ s hard to comment on the merits of your proposal bc the only justification you offer is simply not true .
By any measure .
This country is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the disparities that existed 160 years ago are NOT the SAME EXACT ones that exist today , ” a tweet stated .
One of Hilton ’ s Democrat followers was not in favor of the idea either .
“ In other words , you want to hand the midterms—and possibly the next presidential election—to the Republicans .
If the woke crowd takes things any further , count on the Republicans coming back stronger than ever , with a slew of ex-Democrats on their side , ” the tweet said .
Hilton declined Campus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ however , she posted a screenshot of the request for comment on Twitter .
“ Can someone let @ campusreform know I ’ m not the one if you are trying to target a # LiberalBias angle , ” Hilton tweeted .
“ But I ’ m glad # SecretaryOfEquity caught your eye…as it should .
When we address disparities our entire nation will benefit.
” McKenna Dallmeyer is a Texas Senior Campus Correspondent , reporting on liberal bias and abuse for Campus Reform .
She is a Junior studying Cybersecurity at Liberty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Director for a congressional campaign in Iowa .
She previously attended Texas A & M where she was the Founder and President of Young Women for America and Events Coordinator for TPUSA .
Photo “ Dr .
Ebony Hilton ” by UVA School of Medicine .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Venezuela Judge Convicts Six American Oil Execs, Orders Prison

CARACAS , Venezuela ( AP ) — Six American oil executives held for three years in Venezuela were found guilty of corruption charges by a judge Thursday and immediately sentenced to prison , dashing hopes of a quick release that would send them home to their families in the United States .
Some relatives had been bracing for the disheartening outcome , which came on the evening of Thanksgiving Day .
Alirio Rafael Zambrano , brother to two of the men , said they were “ undeniably innocent ” and victims of “ judicial terrorism.
” No evidence in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ We , the family , are heartbroken to be separated even further from our loved ones , ” Zambrano said in a phone message from New Jersey .
“ We pray that the leaders of our nation step forward and continue to fight unceasingly for their freedom and human rights.
” Attorney María Alejandra Poleo , who helped represent three of the men , said the case was “ void of evidence.
” “ Of course , the defense will appeal the decision , ” she said .
The so-called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refining company , which is owned by Venezuela ’ s state oil company , PDVSA .
They had been lured to Venezuela three years ago for a business meeting and were arrested on corruption charges .
Their arrest launched a purge by President Nicolás Maduro ’ s government of PDVSA and at a time when relations between Caracas and Washington were crumbling as Venezuela plummeted into economic and social crisis .
Five of the men were sentenced to prison terms of 8 years and 10 months , while one of them received a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said the five with lesser terms could be released on parole in a couple of years .
Venezuela ’ s Supreme Tribunal of Justice announced the verdicts and prison sentences but offered no other comment on the trial ’ s outcome .
One of the men , Tomeu Vadell , has said in a letter written in a Caracas jail and provided exclusively to The Associated Press before the verdict that he had hopes for a fair trial so he could walk free with his name cleared and go home to his family @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circumstances , Vadell held out hope .
“ During the trial , the truth has proven undeniable , ” Vadell said in the four-page hand-written letter .
“ It proves that I am innocent.
” “ I ’ m now reaching an intersection where if justice is done , I will be able to rebuild my life and try to compensate my family for all the lost moments , ” he added .
“ The light is intense — the hope is great — give me freedom.
” Vadell said it was especially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ season from his wife , three adult children and a newborn grandson he has never held .
“ Before living this tragedy , these celebrations were very special times for our family , ” Vadell wrote , saying he embraced the traditional American holiday after moving in 1999 from Caracas to Lake Charles , Louisiana , for a job with Citgo .
“ Now , they bring me a lot of sadness.
” It ’ s the first time Vadell , or any of the so-called Citgo 6 , had spoken publicly since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purported big corruption scheme .
He has been held at a feared Caracas jail called El Helicoide .
The others convicted are Gustavo Cárdenas , Jorge Toledo , brothers Jose Luis Zambrano and Alirio Zambrano , all now U.S. citizens .
Jose Pereira , a permanent resident , received the longest sentence .
They were also charged with embezzlement stemming from a never-executed proposal to refinance some $ 4 billion in Citgo bonds by offering a 50 % stake in the company as collateral .
Maduro at the time accused them of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the headquarters of PDVSA for what they were told was a budget meeting on Nov. 21 , 2017 .
A corporate jet shuttled them to Caracas and they were told they would be home for Thanksgiving .
Instead , military intelligence officers swarmed into the boardroom and hauled them off to jail .
Their trial started four months ago and closing arguments took place Thursday .
The judge immediately announced her verdict .
The proceeding played out one day a week in a downtown Caracas court .
Due to the pandemic , sessions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of dormant elevators in a hallway , apparently to take advantage of air flowing through open windows .
News media and rights groups were denied access to the hearings .
There was no response to a letter addressed to Judge Lorena Cornielles seeking permission for The Associated Press to observe .
The office of Venezuela ’ s chief prosecutor said prior to the verdict in a statement to AP that investigators found “ serious evidence ” that corroborated financial crimes potentially damaging to the state-run company .
“ The Citgo case has developed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Venezuelan criminal process , ” the statement said .
Loreto said his client appeared to have been caught up in a “ geopolitical conflict ” of which he was not a part .
He said Vadell ’ s name never appeared on any of the documents prosecutors read into evidence .
“ There ’ s nothing that refers to Tomeu in any way — directly or indirectly , ” the lawyer said .
“ This is the story of a good guy being held against his will for all the wrong reasons.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Richardson , who has negotiated the release of other Americans held by hostile governments , traveled to Caracas in July and met with Maduro .
He didn ’ t win their freedom , but days later two of them — Cárdenas and Toledo — were freed from jail and put in house detention .
Two weeks later , the long-delayed trial began .
Richardson told AP that conversations with the Venezuelan government continue despite his meeting with Maduro being “ a little stormy.
” He said he he believes there is an opening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ desire by Maduro to improve relations with Washington .
“ I think the Venezuelans have been straight with me , but more progress needs to be made , ” Richardson said before the verdict .
“ My hope is to have something positive by Christmas.
” It is not clear what approach Biden will take toward Maduro .
Trump aggressively pressed to remove Maduro through sweeping financial sanctions and the U.S. Justice Department has indicted Maduro as a “ narcoterrorist , ” offering a $ 15 million reward for his arrest .
Vadell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He didn ’ t mention Maduro or speak about his jailers , though he did express concern about the “ consequences of repercussions ” of speaking out .
With encouragement from his family , Vadell broke his silence , taking a risk relatives said was necessary .
“ I believe it ’ s more important that the light of hope illuminates us , ” Vadell wrote .
“ May the light of hope put an end to the sadness of my family.
” The five other men did not respond to invitations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Vadell ’ s daughter , Cristina Vadell , said in a phone interview from Lake Charles that her father isn ’ t the kind of person who seeks attention .
Rather , he prefers to focus on work and his family .
During his 35-year career with PDVSA and Citgo , Vadell ended up running a refinery in Lake Charles and then became vice president of refining .
The letter attempts to expose this side of his life , she said .
“ I think he was willing to take some risks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to come home , ” she said .
“ I think he ’ s still wondering ‘ What happened ?
’ He went to a work meeting and never came home.
” Scott Smith is a reporter for The Associated Press .
AP writer Joshua Goodman in Miami contributed to this report .
About the Headline Photo : Jesus Loreto , an attorney representing Tomeu Vadell , one of six U.S. oil executives jailed for three years in Venezuela , shows a letter written by Vadell , in Caracas , Venezuela , Wednesday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the letter provided exclusively to The Associated Press on Tuesday , Nov. 24 , 2020 , Vadell pleads for freedom , reflects on his past and shares the pain he feels over being separated from his wife , three adult children and a newborn grandson he ’ s never held .
( AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos )

by Eric Lendrum
The United States Capitol Police (USCP) announced on Thursday that the department is currently investigating 29 officers, and has suspended six, for their actions during the protests at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, according to CNN.
A department spokesman said that “Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman has directed that any member of her department whose behavior is not keeping in line with the Department’s Rules of Conduct will face appropriate discipline.” The six who were suspended will still be receiving pay, and the 29 total officers under investigation is nearly three times the amount of officers who were previously announced as being under investigation back in January.
Pittman said that, as part of the ongoing investigations, the USCP was “reviewing video and other open source materials of some USCP officers and officials that appear to be in violation of Department regulations and practices.” Some Democrats, including Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), have claimed, without evidence, that some officers openly supported the protesters, allowed them inside, and even guided them around the interior of the building.
During the mostly peaceful protests, Trump supporters entered the Capitol out of protest of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, as the questionable electoral college results were being formally tabulated by Congress. One Trump supporter, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, was shot in the neck by a plainclothes police officer at close range; the officer who killed her will not be facing any charges for her death.
Several other people died that same day due to sudden medical conditions that had nothing to do with the protests, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick; Sicknick has been confirmed to have died of a stroke after it was erroneously reported that he had been beaten to death by protesters with a fire extinguisher.
– – –
Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
Photo “Capitol Police” by Elvert Barnes. CC BY-SA 2.0.


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Trump Praises Carter Page’s Lawsuit Against FBI and DOJ, Asks ‘Where’s Durham?’

Trump was lamenting that the Justice Department was not investigating allegations of voter fraud in various swing states .
He brought up an investigation led by U.S. Attorney John Durham into FBI and CIA intelligence-gathering activities related to the Trump campaign in 2016 .
Republicans had high hopes for Durham ’ s investigation when it started in April 2019 , but have recently grown frustrated at a lack of public revelations from the probe .
Trump expressed support for Page , who filed a $ 75 million lawsuit on Friday against the FBI , Justice Department and multiple former FBI @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2017 as part of an FBI investigation into the Trump campaign .
Page accused the agencies and multiple former FBI officials of authorizing “ unlawful spying ” against him as part of Crossfire Hurricane , the FBI ’ s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign .
“ I see Carter Page is bringing a lawsuit .
That ’ s good news , ” Trump said .
Page ’ s lawsuit cites a Justice Department inspector general ’ s report released on Dec. 9 that said the FBI made at least 17 “ significant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Page .
Many of the errors involved the Steele dossier , which the FBI cited extensively in its applications to surveil Page .
The special counsel ’ s office debunked the dossier ’ s central thesis of a “ well-developed conspiracy of cooperation ” between the Trump campaign and Russia .
The Justice Department in January deemed two of the four FISA warrants against Page to be invalid because of all the errors in the FBI applications .
Durham is investigating aspects of the IG ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FBI ’ s activities leading up to the opening of the Trump campaign investigation in July 2016 .
Republicans have hoped for more indictments in the investigation , as well as a report of his findings .
So far , only former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith has pleaded guilty in Durham ’ s probe .
He pleaded guilty on Aug. 19 to altering an email from the CIA regarding Page ’ s past relationship with the spy agency .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Penguin to Buy Simon & Schuster, Create Publishing Giant

BERLIN , Germany ( AP ) — German media giant Bertelsmann said Wednesday that its Penguin Random House division is buying rival Simon & Schuster in a megadeal that would reshape the U.S. publishing industry .
Penguin Random House , already the largest American publisher , will buy the New York-based Simon & Schuster , whose authors include Stephen King , Hillary Clinton and John Irving , from TV and film company ViacomCBS for $ 2.17 billion in cash .
“ Simon & Schuster strengthens Bertelsmann ’ s footprint globally , and ( particularly ) in the U.S. , its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Germany-based company said in a statement .
The purchase of Simon & Schuster would reduce the so-called Big Five of American publishing — which also includes HarperCollins , Hachette Book Group and Macmillan — to four .
The companies said the deal is expected to close in 2021 , subject to regulatory approval .
No U.S. publisher in modern times would approach the power of the new company .
ViacomCBS said Bertelsmann will pay a termination fee if the deal fails due to regulatory reasons .
Agents and authors often worry that a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less competition for book deals , and lower advances .
The Authors Guild , a writers ’ organization , said Wednesday that it opposed the sale because it would hurt competition , making it more difficult for authors and agents to negotiate with publishers .
It said the U.S. Department of Justice should challenge it .
The department did not immediately return a request for comment .
“ As an organization of writers it ’ s important to us that the publishing industry ( thrives ) , and that there be multiple , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of books to audiences , ” said Suzanne Nossel , the CEO of PEN America .
“ To the extent that efficiencies are garnered through consolidation , it is our hope that they are a catalyst to enable greater investment in authors , books , and outreach to readers.
” Bertelsmann ’ s rival News Corp. , which owns HarperCollins , also slammed the deal .
“ Bertelsmann is not just buying a book publisher , but buying market dominance as a book behemoth , ” said News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ literary leviathan would have 70 % of the U.S. literary and general fiction market.
” Penguin Random House Chief Executive Markus Dohle told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Simon & Schuster would retain its editorial independence and that individual imprints within Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster could continue to compete with each other for book deals .
Simon & Schuster ’ s current president and chief executive , Jonathan Karp , will continue to lead the publishing house , Bertelsmann said .
Under the new company , authors would range @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barack Obama and Bill Clinton .
Every living former or current American president , from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump , will have published a book with the new company .
So will first ladies such as Barbara Bush , Hillary Clinton , Laura Bush and Michelle Obama .
Dohle declined to say whether there would be any layoffs , saying it was too soon to speculate .
The German conglomerate , which was founded in 1835 and also owns a broad portfolio of broadcast , music and online businesses , has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since April .
ViacomCBS put up Simon & Schuster , founded in 1924 , for sale earlier this year as the entertainment company tries to sell off “ non-core assets ” to pay down debt , please shareholders with dividends and stock buybacks , and invest in streaming .
ViacomCBS owns cable networks Nickelodeon , MTV , BET and Comedy Central as well as broadcast network CBS and movie studio Paramount .
It is trying to navigate consumers ’ shift from watching live TV on a television set to streaming shows and movies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hillel Italie are reporters for The Associated Press .
Italie reported from New York .
Associated Press writer Tali Arbel in Phoenix contributed to this report .
About the Headline Photo : This March 13 , 2003 file photo shows an exterior view of the German media giant Bertelsmann in Guetersloh , Germany .
German media giant Bertelsmann said Wednesday that it is buying publisher Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for $ 2.17 billion in cash .
( AP Photo/Michael Sohn , file )


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Champion Ken Jennings Will Be First Interim ‘Jeopardy!’ Host

NEW YORK , New York ( AP ) — “ Jeopardy !
” record-holder Ken Jennings will be the first in a series of interim hosts replacing Alex Trebek when the show resumes production next Monday .
Producers announced Monday that Jennings , who won 74 games in a row and claimed the show ’ s “ Greatest of All Time ” title in a competition last year , will host episodes that air in January .
A long-term host to replace Trebek , who died of cancer on Nov. 8 , will be named later .
“ By bringing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future , our goal is to create a sense of community and continuity for our viewers , ” the show ’ s executive producer , Mike Richards , said .
The show is in its 37th year of syndication .
It is still airing shows that Trebek filmed before his death .
Art Fleming hosted earlier editions of the game show , including the original “ Jeopardy !
” that debuted in 1964 on NBC and aired for a decade .
Richards said “ Jeopardy !
” will air repeat episodes for the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , meaning Trebek ’ s final week of shows will air starting Monday , Jan. 4 .
About the Headline Photo : This image released by ABS shows contestant Ken Jennings with a trophy on “ JEOPARDY !
The Greatest of All Time.
” Jennings will be the first interim guest for the late Alex Trebek , and the show will try other guest hosts before naming a permanent replacement .
( Eric McCandless/ABC via AP )


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Commentary: Simplest Source of Voter Fraud Is Baked Into the System

Back in 2016 , when broadcaster Lars Larson attempted to find out whether one Arcan Cetin was a citizen of the United States , the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency told him , essentially , “ Sorry , our obligation is to protect this migrant ’ s privacy.
” “ Who , ” you ask , “ is Mr. Cetin ” ?
Cetin is a contributor to the phenomenon I term “ murder-by-Muslim-immigrant.
” He murdered five innocents , north of Seattle .
Arcan Cetin voted , reports Larson .
But nobody at ICE was willing to tell a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voted legally or not .
As it turned out , a sigh of relief was in order .
The stellar Cetin , who , like most Muslim immigrants , voted Democrat , violated the Sixth Commandment five times , but , thank God , did not appear to have violated the commandment against voter fraud .
Rumor has it that the murderer had been awarded citizenship , although it ’ s impossible to ascertain .
The point is you can rest assured voter fraud is as rampant in the United States as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because Americans are barred from checking whether a Muslim murderer is a fellow citizen .
But , rather , because the progressive , globalist Left has fought down-and-dirty to bar any proof of citizenship at the time of voting .
Yes , the law requires , in my state , as in most of these United States , that you be a citizen , as well as a resident of the state in which you ’ re voting .
But you don ’ t have to provide proof of citizenship when voting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in most states , all that ’ s needed is a driver ’ s license or a current state ID card .
Essentially , the American voting system , thanks to the triumph of left-liberalism , is based on an honor system .
Journalist John Fund ’ s research has shown that when they vote ; “ 80 percent of non-citizens vote Democratic.
” And that “ 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 election.
” Funds ’ sources confirm that a significant number of “ non-citizens register as voters ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sway elections .
And when these efforts fail , the government might step in and commit indirect voter fraud .
For instance , in 2016 , or thereabouts , the Feds wrongly granted citizenship to hundreds facing deportation , an “ error ” the culprits were unwilling to correct .
The point is that the progressive Left—Obama ’ s Justice Department in particular—pursued every legal remedy in the book against states seeking to require proof of citizenship from voters .
The point is that we ’ re a sprawling country of competing interests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has long-since usurped the old constitutional republic , where limits were placed on the power of thumping majorities .
In a rank , raw democracy , where might makes right , and almost every vote is a lien against someone ’ s private property ; voter-fraud by default is a big deal .
Donald Trump ’ s supporters might be the losers in something of a rigged electoral system ; but they ’ re certainly not stupid .
That ’ s another oft-repeated insult .
Trump ’ s base of supporters is referred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Again and again we ’ ve heard that Trump overperformed with white men without college degrees .
The reference is intended not only as a demographic marker , but as a Mark of Cain .
Implicit in tethering a lack of education to Trump support is the notion that the more educated a voter , the smarter .
And the smarter the voter , the more likely he or she is to support the Democrats .
Correlation , of course , is not causation .
My hypothesis , however , points to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ words , another variable related to both education and voting patterns that could account for the good sense displayed by degreeless Trump supporters .
Voters without college or university degrees have not been institutionalized during life ’ s formative years .
Voters without college or university degrees have not spent years in the tertiary school asylums , where , as in Edgar Allan Poe ’ s “ The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether , ” inmates in an asylum overpower their wardens , tar and feather them , throw them into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ a jolly season of it.
” ( The point of Poe ’ s story , mind you , was that the inmates are at least as “ sane ” as the wardens . )
In other words , many of Trump ’ s supporters are less likely to have been brainwashed and propagandized by the asphyxiating , postmodern , racial and gender agitprop that makes college-educated kids insufferable .
Trump voters are not subject to groupthink and atavistic acting out commensurate with “ education ” emphasizing a wanton abandoning of inhibitions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is almost guaranteed to turn out individuals whose uniformity of opinion is as scary as its uninformed nature .
Support for Trump is associated with a less propagandized population .
In my thoroughly propagandized county , 70 percent approved a charter amendment to transfer property ( we all pay for ) to be used for low-income housing ( read : the homeless , to whom the city of Seattle has already been ceded . )
Don ’ t complain , neighbors , when the sh-t hits the fan .
Also , 57 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County , decided to relinquish their sovereignty and let a council of Jenny Durkans choose their sheriff for them—thus making the sheriff a patronage position .
Most of my neighbors voted to allow the political class to invest public money in causes driven by their politics .
Majorities opted to assign more taxpayer-funded lawyers to assorted claims-makers and add more protected-species categories to already oppressively expansive , extant law .
Washingtonians said “ hell , yes ” to more twerking , transgendered genitalia in the faces of their toddlers .
The neighbors seconded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trashes the word “ citizen , ” and replaces it with “ member of the public ” or “ resident , ” all the better to facilitate wealth transfer .
The “ People of the World ” passing through our county may get free goodies or vote to get them if denied .
Neighbors voted to impose more sensitivity training on our demoralized and defunded police force .
Oh , and should you call in a burglary , why , a “ mental-health professional ” may arrive on your doorstep .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , English is also on the wane in the Evergreen State .
Governor Jay Inslee won 58 percent of the vote .
If you ’ re among the business owners who voted for this chap – suck it up !
Having voted for Inslee ’ s internment terrorism , you can ’ t expect sympathy , now , can you ?
Love thy neighbor as thyself ?
Forgive me , vengeful God of the Hebrews , but it ’ s getting harder and harder .
.
.
Ilana Mercer has been writing a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She is the author of Into the Cannibal ’ s Pot : Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa ( 2011 ) and The Trump Revolution : The Donald ’ s Creative Destruction Deconstructed ( 2016 ) .
Follow her on Twitter , Facebook , Gab , and YouTube .
Photo “ People Voting ” by Wyofile Wyofile .
CC BY 2.0 .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--FBI Requests Voter Integrity Project Data on Absentee Ballots for Investigation

The Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) has requested the Voter Integrity Project ’ s ( VIP ) findings indicating illegal ballots in Georgia and other contested states .
VIP was started by Matt Braynard immediately following this most recent general election .
VIP has claimed to discover significant evidence of voter fraud that would impact the election ’ s outcome .
Braynard is the Executive Director of Look Ahead America , a voting registration and informational nonprofit , and former Data Chief and Strategist for Trump for President .
According to former Kansas Attorney General and Thomas More @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agent from the Los Angeles Field Office reached out to Braynard regarding VIP ’ s data .
In Georgia , VIP discovered that many apartment addresses for those who voted absentee were actually postal facilities .
According to the Federal Post Card Application ( FPCA ) , individuals are prohibited from registering and requesting absentee ballots using a postal facility as a residential address .
Additionally , VIP discovered at least one thousand votes that were attached to “ non-residential , purely commercial addresses.
” More Georgia residency analyses within VIP research uncovered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change of address to another state , with nearly 5,000 having issued a subsequent voter registration in another state .
Braynard ’ s team also investigated the infrequent voters in precincts with high turnouts .
In Georgia , about one percent of respondents stated that they hadn ’ t casted a ballot , though the state reported they did .
Over 44 percent of nearly 260 respondents shared that they had returned their absentee ballot – yet the state recorded that they didn ’ t .
Of the total amount of absentee ballots @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unreturned .
As for dead voters , Braynard shared that VIP hadn ’ t found some evidence , but not any correlation of a “ targeted effort to cast the ballots of deceased voters.
” Additionally , legal teams have requested for Braynard to submit his work to their cases in Pennsylvania , Michigan , Wisconsin , and Arizona .
A full analysis of VIP ’ s findings and conclusions in Georgia and the other contested states was published in a video .
Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Georgia Star News @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her latest on Twitter , or email tips to [ email protected ] .
Photo “ Matt Braynard on the Whiteboard ” by Matt Braynard .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Only 23 Percent of Republican Voters Would Vote for Gov. DeWine in a Primary

A statewide survey conducted by the Strongsville , Ohio GOP asked respondents “ If a qualified Republican ran against Governor DeWine in the Republican primary , for whom would you vote ?
” Only 23.8 % said they would vote for DeWine , while an unnamed “ qualified Republican ” would get 39.2 % of the vote .
Thirty-six percent were not sure and 1 % would support an “ other ” candidate .
“ That ’ s not necessarily the spot you want to be in if you ’ re going into a primary , ” said Strongsville GOP @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heard talk from legislators and other stakeholders about the Governor and his high popularity – so we wanted to test it.
” Burns noted “ and when you look at the number of people surveyed , 8339 likely Republican primary voters – that ’ s significant .
For perspective , that ’ s 10-times to 15-times higher than the number of people who were being polled ( around 600 to 800 people ) by the polling services going into the last primary.
” The survey also shows 61 % oppose ( 56 % @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , bars and fitness centers .
while 61 % support mask mandates .
When asked “ Do you approve or disapprove of the job that Governor DeWine is doing ?
” The result was : The full survey can be viewed here .
It was conducted November 16-17 .
On November 17 DeWine imposed a 21-day curfew from 10p.m .
to 5a.m .
after a week earlier threatening another statewide shutdown of restaurants , bars and gyms .
The curfew applies to retail establishments and indoor dining but contains exemptions for those traveling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , seeking medical care or experiencing an emergency .
The effort is designed to slow down Ohioans and came as a compromise after DeWine is said to have been preparing to shut down the entire state for four to six weeks .
“ We ’ re not shutting down , we ’ re slowing down .
The curfew is aimed at helping to reduce the number of person-to-person contacts because the only way a virus lives is when it goes from one person to another .
We have to flatten this curve again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said DeWine during a COVID briefing delivered on November 17 .
The curfew came days after a revised statewide mask mandate was announced , which would carry with it the standing-up of a team of retail enforces inside the Ohio Bureau of Workers ’ Compensation department – charged with spying on businesses , levying warnings , fines and shutdowns .
The implications of the survey stretch beyond the Governor , particularly those who are seen as to soft in their legislative opposition .
As Burns noted “ I think it ’ s safe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be open to a challenge from the right given these statistics that we found.
” Jack Windsor is Managing Editor and an Investigative Reporter at The Ohio Star .
Windsor is also an Investigative Reporter at WMFD-TV .
Follow Jack on Twitter .
Email tips to [ email protected ] .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Virginia Tech Upsets No.3 Villanova in Overtime Thriller

After trailing by double digits late in the second half , Virginia Tech came from behind and upset No.3 Villanova 81-73 in a thrilling overtime game that wasn ’ t even supposed to happen in the first place .
Despite some late-game adversity , the Hokies ( 2-0 ) defeated one of college basketball ’ s best teams on Saturday thanks to 23 points and eight rebounds from Keve Aluma , 20 points from Nahiem Alleyne off the bench and a stuffed stat sheet by Tyrece Radford with eight points , five assists and 13 rebounds .
For Villanova , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Jeremiah Robinson-Earl produced 14 points and 9 rebounds and Caleb Daniels added 17 points of his own .
“ Needless to say , I ’ m happy with our team and their toughness , ” Virginia Tech head coach Mike Young said during the postgame press conference .
“ We came in here with a plan , but it ’ s up to them to believe and fight and hang in there and find a way.
” “ I thought we guarded so very well throughout [ the game ] and we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the overtime and found a way to win , ” Young added .
“ Huge win for us.
” The non-conference game was highly competitive and after 20 minutes of action the score was tied 29-29 going into halftime .
In the beginning of the second half , the two teams were still trading scores , and found themselves tied at 38 five minutes in .
It seemed as if Villanova was going to pull away from Tech after going on a 14-2 run midway through the second half to take a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ game .
But the Hokies slowly chipped away at the deficit until the team was down by 62-61 with 12 seconds left .
What followed next is arguably one of the wildest sequences of the young college basketball season so far .
With 10 seconds left and clinging to a one-point lead , Villanova ’ s Justin Moore missed a one-and-one free throw , giving Virginia Tech a shot to win the game .
After collecting the rebound Virginia Tech hurried up the floor and got the ball into guard Cartier Diarra ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lane and was able to find Aluma underneath the basket on a quick pass , who proceeded to score a layup and get fouled with just 1.3 remaining on the clock , giving the Hokies a 63-62 lead .
“ That was a key , just keeping our cool and feeding off our bench ’ s energy , that helped us through the game , ” Aluma said , according to ESPN .
Trying to intentionally miss the free throw , which Young confirmed was the plan after the game , Aluma ended @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off the backboard .
Instead of essentially sealing the victory with a miss , the made free throw kept the Wildcats ’ chances alive .
On the inbounds play , Moore set a screen on Tech ’ s Justyn Mutts who was trying to guard the pass and ended up drawing a foul on the Hokies .
The officials initially called the foul on Villanova before reversing the call .
Moore calmly made both free throws , tying the game at 64 and forcing overtime .
Even with the confusing and controversial ending @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overtime started .
They outscored Villanova 17-9 in the period and secured the hard-fought victory .
Virginia Tech was originally supposed to play Temple on Saturday , but a positive COVID test on Thanksgiving in the Owls program forced the team to pause activities for two weeks , and left both Tech and Villanova without opponents .
The two teams agreed to play even though both programs had just one days ’ notice and very little time for preparation .
“ We are here to play , we are here to challenge ourselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Was I thrilled that we were matched with Villanova ?
No , not this early in the season , ” Young said .
“ It ’ s a different year , needless to say , so we ’ re going to challenge ourselves and we ’ re going to lay it on the line , and they did exactly that.
” Jacob Taylor is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Digital Network .
Follow Jacob on Twitter .
Email tips to [ email protected ] Photo “ Virginia Tech @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Dominion Representative for Fulton County Was Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign Photographer

Kamala Harris ’ presidential campaign photographer , Aric Thompson , served as a Dominion Voting Systems ( Dominion ) technician representative in Fulton County .
The photographer described Harris as his “ long time client ” – over four years , according to him .
In a similar Facebook post , Thompson also mentioned that he was working with Democratic activist Stacey Abrams .
“ Now that I ’ m home , contracts have been signed and I ’ ve been vetted by security , I can spill the beans on my big shoot !
I ’ ll be the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is running for President in 2020 !
I ’ ve been her Atl [ sic ] photographer for a while now so it was a great surprise when I got the call to shoot for her during her fundraising events on Sunday !
Added Bonus I forgot to mention !
I leave from shooting for Kamala and head to shoot an event with Stacey Abrams… !
Blessed !
” Thompson was introduced as a Dominion on-site technician near the beginning of this year .
He served as an elections systems representative throughout the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ His photography Facebook page confirmed that he was a representative for the Dominion tabulation machines during the vote counting .
Additionally , Thompson confirmed that he assisted with the recount and is preparing to assist in the runoff election .
Dominion has been the primary focus for attorney Sidney Powell ’ s series of lawsuits alleging mass voter fraud .
Powell alleged that Dominion used a software lineage that was created for the sole purpose of rigging Venezuelan elections in favor of dictator Hugo Chavez .
All of Georgia ’ s counties used @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ statewide voting system rollout.
” Notably , the state of Texas rejected Dominion for use as their voting systems , citing security concerns .
Following Election Day , multiple reports of glitches and delays within Dominion ’ s systems surfaced .
As reported previously , Fulton County had to re-scan ballots after discovering discrepancies between the number of scanned ballots and votes received .
Officials reported that they didn ’ t know why the information didn ’ t transfer properly into the system .
During the hand recount , Thompson ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uncounted ballots .
In Fayette County an additional 2,755 votes were discovered uncounted .
A majority of those votes were for President Donald Trump .
Thompson ’ s last post mentioning the elections occurred November 6th , ahead of the recounts .
Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Georgia Star News and the Star News Network .
Follow her latest on Twitter , or email tips to [ email protected ] .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--New Study Finds Detroit Charter Schools Receive 29 Percent Less Per Pupil than Traditional Public Sc

New Study Finds Detroit Charter Schools Receive 29 Percent Less Per Pupil than Traditional Public Schools

A new study from the University of Arkansas found the average disparity in per-pupil funding between traditional public schools and @ @ @ @ @ 18 cities reached $ 7,796 per-pupil — a record high .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--The 2021 VCDL Lobby Day Will Be a Car Rally

The annual pro-gun Lobby Day in Richmond will feature a Trump-Train style rally in January 2021 .
The anti-gun group Virginia Center for Public Safety ( VCPS ) and three other anti-gun groups obtained permits for the Bell Tower in the Capitol Square early in 2020 , leaving only a 6 a.m. and a 6 p.m. slot for the pro-gun Virginia Citizens Defense League ( VCDL ) to hold its traditional rally .
As a result , VCDL President Philip Van Cleave said that cars from across the state will drive through the Capitol on January 18 .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we expect to be thousands of cars driving from across the four corners of the state , gathering people as they travel , and more and more people joining these caravans as they ’ re headed into Richmond , ” Van Cleave said .
The change may actually be a better fit for 2021-style advocacy .
Governor Ralph Northam ’ s executive orders might have limited group size to 25 .
Richmond has also passed new rules banning firearms at permitted events in the city , meaning officials would potentially have enforced a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Virginia House of Delegates will be holding a virtual session , and the location of the socially-distanced Senate is still to be determined , meaning that few legislators would be nearby to witness the Lobby Day held on Capitol grounds .
“ The General Assembly building is going to be nothing but a shell , there ’ s not going to be anybody in it , ” Van Cleave said .
“ All that matters is we ’ re going to be close by.
” Van Cleave said he had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not allowed to apply for permits more than six months in advance .
However , VCPS and the others applied for permits for the January 18 , 2021 slot over a year in advance , according to Van Cleave .
He said that when he followed up with officials , they told him somebody had misspoken – that there was never a ban on earlier applications .
However , Van Cleave thinks it might be part of a deliberate effort to block the Lobby Day rally .
Event speakers will be livestreamed on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the timing and location of the vehicles so that supporters can watch , according to a VCDL news alert .
“ I ’ m going to tell people to feel free to get out of their cars , walk around .
If they want to walk around Richmond and see the sights , they can get out of the cars , be armed , they can carry signs , ” Van Cleave said .
As long as individuals obey local traffic laws there shouldn ’ t be problems , he said .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ armed because it ’ s not an event.
” Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Digital Network .
Email tips to [ email protected ] .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Minnesota Sheriff Calls Walz Orders a ‘Big Government Overstep’

“ To start to tell you how many people you can have in your residence , I don ’ t necessarily think that that is any place for the government to tell people , ” Empting told KVRR in a Nov. 11 interview .
Empting ’ s comments were made after the governor limited social gatherings to 10 people from no more than three households .
Walz has since prohibited all social gatherings with anyone from another household .
According to another KVRR article , Empting called these restrictions a “ big government overstep.
” “ I understand what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do with the order , but to be able to enforce that would be very difficult and nearly impossible to enforce I think , ” he said .
Empting said his office hasn ’ t “ issued any citation for any executive order ” and “ won ’ t be seeking this out whatsoever.
” “ If we get a call for service on it , we will obviously look into that call for service and take appropriate steps and actions at that point , but we are definitely not going to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Right now more than anything , people want to get together and be with family during this time .
To limit that is very , very difficult.
” Clay County is located in northwestern Minnesota on the border of North Dakota and its county seat is Moorhead .
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News .
Photo “ Sheriff Mark Empting ” by Sheriff Mark Empting .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--David Vs. Goliath: BetMGM Picks a Fight with Tennessee Owned and Operated Action 24/7 Over Jerry ‘Th

David Vs. Goliath: BetMGM Picks a Fight with Tennessee Owned and Operated Action 24/7 Over Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler Ad

An attorney for the Las Vegas-based BetMGM sportsbook company has claimed trademark infringement against its Tennessee-based competitor Action 24/7 because of two advertisements that Memphis wrestler Jerry Lawler tweeted this week .
The Jerry Lawler ad prompted Las Vegas-based attorney Lindsey A. Williams to send a cease and desist letter to Action 24/7 on behalf of BetMGM Lawler , in the first and the second ad , posted photos of himself wearing a king ’ s crown .
In both ads , a caption said “ The Real King of Sportsbooks.
” The Action 24/7 logo appeared in both ads @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Williams told Action 24/7 that BetMGM “ owns extensive rights in the trademark THE KING OF SPORTSBOOKS ( the ‘ BetMGM Mark ’ ) in connection with sports betting services and mobile gaming applications.
” “ Action 24/7 is advertising its sports betting platform using a nearly identical variation of the BetMGM Mark featured with imitating font , spacing , and coloring , and an overall substantially similar appearance , ” Williams wrote .
“ Such promotional activities amount to trademark infringement , trademark dilution and/or unfair competition under the Lanham Act and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any use of the BetMGM Mark or a confusingly similar variation that misleads the public by creating a false association and/or suggests an affiliation or endorsement between BetMGM and Action 24/7 violates BetMGM ’ s federal and state trademark rights.
” Williams did not return The Tennessee Star ’ s requests for comment Friday .
Action 24/7 spokeswoman Tina Hodges said Friday that BetMGM officials don ’ t have a case and that Lawler has gone by the nickname “ The King ” for nearly 50 years .
“ I guess they ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Tennessee or anything about Jerry Lawler , ” Hodges said .
“ People in Tennessee love Jerry ‘ The King ’ Lawler , and he just wanted to let them know that there is only one king in Tennessee .
That ’ s him.
” Hodges said this is “ a classic case of a big international casino and hotel chain with a high-priced attorney sending a threatening letter to a hometown startup that they think will just be afraid.
” “ I think it ’ s funny that such a big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arms about Jerry ‘ The King ’ Lawler responding to their tweet , ” Hodges said .
As The Star reported this month , Action 24/7 is headquartered in modest startup offices in Nashville .
As The Star reported in September , members of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted sports betting into law more than a year ago .
The licensing authority is under the Tennessee Education Lottery .
States other than Tennessee have both online sports betting and in-person sports betting , but Tennessee is the only state that has online sports @ @ @ @ @ @ @ casinos or betting parlors .
Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star .
Follow Chris on Facebook .
Email tips to [ email protected ] Action 24/7 is an advertiser on The Tennessee Star Report radio program and The Tennessee Star website .


thetennesseestar--2020-11-30--Lin Wood Wins Restraining Order to Stop Georgia Elections Officials From Wiping Dominion Voting Mach

Lin Wood Wins Restraining Order to Stop Georgia Elections Officials From Wiping Dominion Voting Machines

President Donald Trump ’ s attorney Lin Wood reportedly experienced a series of ups and downs Sunday in a court battle to ensure Georgia elections officials do not wipe Dominion voting machines , and won a temporary restraining order following a night-time Zoom hearing .
Late Sunday night , Wood tweeted , “ Sidney Powell @ SidneyPowell1 & I won , then lost , but ended up winning .
We will never give up the pursuit of TRUTH to achieve justice.
” Wood referred to the third decision in one day by Senior Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Georgia Atlanta Division .
The decisions came in a civil suit asking Gov .
Brian Kemp , Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and others to decertify the election results , protect machines and verify ballot envelope signatures .
Batten ’ s third decision meant Kemp and the other defendants have until 5 p.m. Wednesday to “ file a brief setting forth in detail the factual bases they have , if any , against allowing the three forensic inspections.
” The judge ordered the protection of Dominion software in Cobb , Gwinnett and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good for up to 10 days .
In his first order Sunday , Batten had ordered officials to “ maintain the status quo ” and preserve the machines , according to a tweet by Wood .
Regarding Fulton County ’ s efforts to wipe the machines , Wood tweeted , “ On November 24 , a litigation hold notice was served on Fulton County which demanded that all evidence related to voting machines be preserved .
Scrubbing the machines or tampering with them in any manner should NOT be occurring.
” In a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Board of Registration & Elections , Wood and his attorneys demanded officials preserve all records connected to the election .
“ Furthermore , no repairing , maintenance , altering or destroying of said evidence is to be done , ” the letter said .
“ You have a legal obligation to preserve evidence , regardless of whether any Court Order , to that effect has ever been entered , because you know or with the exercise of due diligence should know that litigation has risen out of this matter.
” However , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Batten changed his decision .
In addition , Plaintiffs contend that Union County officials have advised that they are going to wipe or reset the voting machines of all data and bring the count back to zero on Monday , November 30 .
On this basis , Plaintiffs seek a temporary restraining order to impound and preserve the voting machines in the State of Georgia , and to prevent any wiping of data .
However , Plaintiffs ’ request fails because the voting equipment that they seek to impound is in the possession @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Court issues would extend only to Defendants and those within their control , and Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that county election officials are within Defendants ’ control .
Defendants can not serve as a proxy for local election officials against whom the relief should be sought .
Jacobson v. Fla. Sec ’ y of State , 974 F.3d 1236 , 1256–58 ( 11th Cir .
2020 ) .
Therefore , to the extent Plaintiffs seek emergency relief to impound and preserve the voting machines , that request is denied .
Following the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What ?
?
?
Judge reversed order based on Defendants ’ claim that GA Counties control voting machines .
Machines are owned by State & @ GaSecofState administers state laws on elections .
Why are GA officials determined to wipe these machines clean be resetting them ?
” He also said , “ GA officials performing “ software update ” on Fulton County voting machines at this very moment at World Congress Center .
They are trying to erase the evidence by scrubbing the machines with litigation pending .
BLOW YOUR HORNS .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Meanwhile , Wood questioned Raffensperger ’ s business connections to an engineering services company in Smyrna , Georgia , alleging he maintains an office there based on a wifi network named “ GA SOS.
” Wood did not specify what such an alleged connection would mean .
“ Looks like @ GaSecofState Brad Raffensperger DOES do business at Eaton Corporation .
State business .
Voting related .
Do GA Patriots think Raffesperger is corrupt & knee deep in the fraudulent election or is it just me ?
” However , anyone can name @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retweeted a tweet pointing out that in 2017 , then-Secretary of State Kemp , who was running for governor , was the overseer of an election in which the election server in Kennesaw was mysteriously wiped clean after a lawsuit was filed .
A screenshot of an Associated Press story was included .
Wood tweeted , “ Given his total lack of support for @ realDonaldTrump , his refusal to call special session of legislature , & his history of wiping servers clean , @ BrianKempGA apparently took political corruptness lessons from Hillary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ taken some kickbacks too.
” Wood did not provide evidence of any kickbacks .
The attorney also tweeted a link to a Washington Examiner story that said the recount in Fulton County was delayed after a Dominion server crashed .
Wood tweeted , “ GA general election & now recount tabulations have NO integrity .
Taxpayers paid $ 107M for Dominion election theft machine .
We got taken to the cleaners while @ BrianKempGA & @ GaSecofState went to the bank .
These people must go .
GA deserves better.
” Jason M. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes .


thetennesseestar--2020-12-01--Governor Lee Taps Ousted Democratic Representative John DeBerry to Become Cabinet Senior Advisor

Governor Bill Lee tapped former State Representative John DeBerry ( D-TN-Memphis ) to join his Cabinet as a senior advisor .
Lee ’ s announcement came shortly after DeBerry lost his re-election .
The governor appears to hold high regard for the former representative , though their party alignments differ .
“ John DeBerry is a respected leader and man of faith who has served our state with integrity for decades as both a legislator and civil rights champion , ” stated Lee in his statement .
“ John has fought to protect life , provide better education options for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criminal justice system and I ’ m honored to have his counsel within the Cabinet .
The Democratic Party quietly removed DeBerry from the ticket earlier this year following conflict over his support for school voucher and pro-life policies .
Specifically , DeBerry voted against the Party on a fetal heartbeat bill and Education Savings Account legislation .
As a result of the Party ’ s decision , DeBerry was forced to run as an independent for his own re-election .
He had served as the District 90 state representative for the last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the work accomplished throughout my time with the Tennessee General Assembly and I look forward to serving Tennesseans in this statewide role , ” stated DeBerry in the press release .
Democratic candidate Torrey Harris received 77 percent of the vote compared to DeBerry ’ s 23 percent .
Harris became Tennessee ’ s first openly bisexual state representative , coming into office with mainly a decade ’ s worth of activism as his background .
DeBerry will be paid around $ 165,000 a year .
The former representative is scheduled to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cabinet on Tuesday .
Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network .
Follow her latest on Twitter , or email tips to [ email protected ] .

Governor Bill Lee tapped former State Representative John DeBerry (D-TN-Memphis) to join his Cabinet as a senior advisor. Lee’s announcement came shortly after DeBerry lost his re-election.
The governor appears to hold high regard for the former representative, though their party alignments differ.
“John DeBerry is a respected leader and man of faith who has served our state with integrity for decades as both a legislator and civil rights champion,” stated Lee in his statement. “John has fought to protect life, provide better education options for Tennessee students, and to reform our criminal justice system and I’m honored to have his counsel within the Cabinet.
The Democratic Party quietly removed DeBerry from the ticket earlier this year following conflict over his support for school voucher and pro-life policies. Specifically, DeBerry voted against the Party on a fetal heartbeat bill and Education Savings Account legislation.
As a result of the Party’s decision, DeBerry was forced to run as an independent for his own re-election. He had served as the District 90 state representative for the last 26 years.
“I am proud of the work accomplished throughout my time with the Tennessee General Assembly and I look forward to serving Tennesseans in this statewide role,” stated DeBerry in the press release.
Democratic candidate Torrey Harris received 77 percent of the vote compared to DeBerry’s 23 percent. Harris became Tennessee’s first openly bisexual state representative, coming into office with mainly a decade’s worth of activism as his background.
Harris previously challenged DeBerry in 2018, unsuccessfully.
DeBerry will be paid around $165,000 a year. The former representative is scheduled to assume his new position within Lee’s cabinet on Tuesday.
– – –
Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].


thetennesseestar--2020-12-01--Commentary: Why Our Universities Have Failed

Where did Antifa youth rioting in the streets receive their intellectual and ethical bearings ?
Why are the First and Second Amendments no longer fully operative ?
How did the general population become nearly ignorant of their Constitution , history , and the hallmarks of their culture ?
Why do employers no longer equate a bachelor ’ s degree with competency in oral and written communications , basic computation , and reasoning ?
How in the 21st century did race and ethnicity come to define who we are rather than become incidental to our individual personas ?
In answering all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ return to higher education – the font of much of our contemporary malaise .
A perfect storm of events – many of them reforms with unintended consequences – have conspired to end disinterested education as we once knew it .
The passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971 , lowering the voting age to 18 – in response to widespread resistance to the draft and the Vietnam War – turned rhetorical campus activism into real progressive block voting .
The campuses were no longer just free-speech zones , but woke reservoirs of millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and mostly subsidized constituency with clout , to which universities catered .
Globalization enriched the coasts .
Seven-billion-person markets were translated into multibillion-dollar endowments of a magnitude never imagined .
The Ivy League , MIT , Caltech , Stanford , the UC system , and dozens of other research universities between Boston and Miami , and San Diego and Seattle , partnered with corporations and solicited foreign government money .
They opened up overseas satellites , welcomed in hundreds of thousands of foreign students , and began adjusting their curricula to reflect transnational @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was no longer the sleepy domain of burned-out faculty , who “ went into administration ” for a few years before retirement to glad-hand a few wealthy alumni .
Instead , it became a massive industry of tapping into the huge global fortunes of Silicon Valley , Wall Street , vertically integrated corporations , and mostly illiberal petro-governments in the Middle East and Chinese-communist approved conglomerates .
Floods of cash created new “ centers ” and “ institutes ” on campus .
The vast majority were boutique left-wing .
The disconnected result was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ campus dorms , enjoying Club Med gyms and recreation centers , and replete with all sorts of influential internships and overseas enrichment – as they cosplayed Marxist activists .
The legions who staffed the new universities were upper-middle class , affluent and the beneficiaries of the privilege which they trashed from 8-5 before returning home to comfort .
Few tenured grandees cared about growing percentages of exploited and part-time lecturers , the campus ’ version of the interior deplorables , who taught large courses for little pay and no security .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two growing phenomena when I walked to work on the Stanford campus : in the C/student lots , there was a growing epidemic of student Lexuses , Audis , and BMWs , even as student protests were growing shriller , more radical , and intolerant .
Massive immigration – nearly 50 million current American residents were not born in the United States , including 27 percent of the California resident population – redefined the old 88-12 percent white/black American binary into “ diversity.
” The melting pot of assimilation , in retrograde fashion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Class and historical issues faded in the face of a new dogma of “ white supremacy.
” That now empty banality was the banner for a new constituency of 30 percent of the country .
Regardless of their own wealth or absence of past grievance , dozens of ethnic and gender groups now were “ victimized ” on their claims of a non-white or non-male appearance .
And they demanded reparatory redress in admissions and applications , and institutionalized their lamentations in the hiring of faculty and administrators .
Wealthy white females , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the children of Jamaican or Nigerian doctors , all in theory felt the university should provide them some sort of redress for their intersectional , inclusive victimhood .
In the zero-sum game of university curricula , deductive “ -studies ” courses sprung up to indoctrinate students in “ what ” to think , rather than inductively how and why .
Therapy replaced tragedy in the study of the past and present .
Federal loans ( see below ) infused billions of dollars into the university , while ensuring ever greater moral hazards of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student loans were near-zero interest , “ free ” money .
The loans might not really have to be paid back .
And they were a pathway to an impressive salary even if some day they were to be called in .
Many loans easily exceed 5-6 percent of compounded interest .
Such guaranteed income greenlighted university price-gouging , and were not forgiven ( at least not yet ) .
To justify the illiberal usury and Ponzi schemes , progressive universities winked and nodded that in “ our globalized world ” a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on branding students – from a “ good ” college ensured lifetime higher salaries unavailable to “ them , ” who worked with their hands , built , assembled , farmed , or delivered .
These were to be the new despised “ losers ” who never were properly prepped in “ diversity , inclusion , and equity.
” The result is that students and graduates now struggle under $ 1.6 trillion in aggregate – and growing – student debt .
These millions for the most part are not for Ivy League undergraduates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their debts at thousands of public universities and small , private undergraduate liberal arts colleges .
Current calls to cancel that obligation assume at least three things : 1 ) Graduates who scrimped and saved either to pay upfront for college or to pay off their debts , are seen as naïve if not delusional .
So did paying what they owed prove a chump ’ s decision ?
2 ) Those who either could never afford college or chose to take their chances in the workplace without a degree , as taxpayers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off what their supposedly better educated counterparts would or could not ?
3 ) The next cohort of students , hand-in-glove with rapacious colleges , will learn what exactly from debt relief – that they too can borrow without worry on the expectation of yet another eventual amnesty ?
In fairness , for hundreds of thousands of youth , there is no university assurance that such expensive branding will lead to the sort of job that would allow such staggering obligations to be repaid .
Indeed the debt affects us all .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ entire generation – a fact well known to those who run universities but one that is apparently of little moral concern to them .
The ancient formula of four years at a university and a job have metamorphosed into six to eight years now and then in college , as a low-wage job scarcely pays the interest on a student loan .
The result is that our traditional cursus honorum is warped .
Marriage ?
Later than ever .
Childbearing ?
Near record-low fertility .
Home ownership ?
Receding .
It is no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and conservatism – the grown-up responsibilities of career , marriage , family , and home ownership – are inert .
They seem replaced by ever more prolonged adolescence , as one drifts in and out of near perennial psychological student-hood .
And the regression is a particularly dangerous sort of infantilization .
Nothing historically has proven more dangerous to a society than millions of half-educated college students and graduates , indebted , either idle , underemployed , or poorly remunerated , full of pride in their largely suspect majors , and bitter that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sophisticated cohorts are deservedly making more than they .
Their educations ensured that they are glib , but not necessarily industrious .
An unemployed sociology graduate , up to his neck in debt , without a good job is a volatile citizen – once he grasps too late in his late 20s that he is no better educated than a plumber or electrician , and far less compensated .
Mutatis mutandis , these profiles were the wannabe mid-echelon of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions .
The country is split in two .
Red-state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other .
Not so on campus .
Various surveys suggest 95 percent or more of the faculty is left-leaning and often eager to enforce their conformity of thought and ideology on students .
The latter enter college worried that their parents ’ views may be seen as liabilities by those “ enlightened ” who grade them .
The university makes no attempt to defend its lack of intellectual diversity .
By default , one is to assume that it believes that either perfect progressivism needs no balance , or its own biases are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ large .
Today ’ s global research universities are multibillion-dollar enterprises more akin to multinational corporations than to the idyllic undergraduate campuses of traditional lore .
Yet huge endowments and their income remain tax-exempt .
Few occupations outside academia ensure veritable lifetime employment through tenure – a rarified tradition designed to ensure free expression and diversity of thought , but which may have had the exact opposite effect of guaranteeing unchecked intellectual intolerance and suppression of free expression .
The less a tenured scholar produces , and the poorer his teaching will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mind , as recompense for mediocrity , turns to rooting out purporting enemies of the people .
But most importantly , universities no longer inform students of the huge and often dangerous choices they make as teenagers when they enroll .
How will they pay off such huge debts ?
Which majors are likely to earn what sort of income ?
Can students at least receive an itemized bill of charges to apprise them where exactly their tuition dollars are allocated – and thus where they could be trimmed ?
In sum , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , why then should they assume that the moral hazards of their risky behavior fall on others ?
Why can not schools with ample endowments guarantee their own student loans to ensure such exposure reminds them to control the costs they charge students ?
If student applicants must submit standardized scores on the theory their prior high schools ’ grades are too idiosyncratic to offer reliable constant standards of achievement , then why should not higher education adhere to its own rules ?
Why , then , not have exit exams to guarantee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or GPA from Harvard really is superior to one from a land-grant college , through a standardized national exit exam ?
Why are GPAs in high schools – but not in colleges – subject to authentication and audit through standardized tests ?
Today what is college for ?
To teach induction and empiricism , and empower such skills through a common body of knowledge , with shared classical referents of science , mathematics , literature , history , language , and philosophy ?
To ensure that a student ’ s future stays inquisitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
To inculcate a sense of civics and social morality that emphasizes the values of free speech and expression , individualism , tolerance , public service and constitutional government ?
To seek and reinforce commonalities between citizens of a shared republic ?
The implicit directive of undergraduate education is so often deductively to enhance progressive values that center on a common but unquestioned core : radical restructuring of the economy to fight “ climate change , ” the shift from free-market capitalism to state redistributionism , equality defined not as parity in opportunity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Constitution is fossilized and an impediment to the moral arc of history , the surety that values are mostly race , class , and gender constructs and do not reflect eternal truths of unchanging human nature , identity politics above all , abortion on demand , and real doubt that the American project , now and in the past , has been a force for good .
This is the unquestioned creed of the university , its faculty advocacies , its students ’ acquiescence , and the subtext of its themes in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try the thought experiment of entering a university and throughout those four years suggesting that a heating planet may be primarily a result of age-old and cyclical natural phenomena , or that capitalism has brought far more out of poverty than statism , or praise the Second Amendment , or the melting pot over the salad bowl .
Support a ban on partial or late-term abortion , and express faith that America has been good without having to be perfect .
At each juncture , a student would not only be questioned but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ academically and socially ostracized .
Something went wrong with the rapidly expanding university in the 1960s during the affluence and leisure of the postwar boom .
And the new 21st century , high-tech , globalized campus has now made that mess it inherited dangerous .
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian , columnist , former classics professor , and scholar of ancient warfare .
He was a professor of classics at California State University , Fresno , and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004 .
Photo “ Protest ” by TellingAdmire CC4.0 .

by Victor Davis Hanson
Where did Antifa youth rioting in the streets receive their intellectual and ethical bearings? Why are the First and Second Amendments no longer fully operative? How did the general population become nearly ignorant of their Constitution, history, and the hallmarks of their culture? Why do employers no longer equate a bachelor’s degree with competency in oral and written communications, basic computation, and reasoning? How in the 21st century did race and ethnicity come to define who we are rather than become incidental to our individual personas? In answering all these questions, we always seem to return to higher education – the font of much of our contemporary malaise.
The Perfect Storm
A perfect storm of events – many of them reforms with unintended consequences – have conspired to end disinterested education as we once knew it.
The passage of the 26th Amendment in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18 – in response to widespread resistance to the draft and the Vietnam War – turned rhetorical campus activism into real progressive block voting. The campuses were no longer just free-speech zones, but woke reservoirs of millions of young voters, a new political and mostly subsidized constituency with clout, to which universities catered.
Globalization enriched the coasts. Seven-billion-person markets were translated into multibillion-dollar endowments of a magnitude never imagined. The Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, the UC system, and dozens of other research universities between Boston and Miami, and San Diego and Seattle, partnered with corporations and solicited foreign government money. They opened up overseas satellites, welcomed in hundreds of thousands of foreign students, and began adjusting their curricula to reflect transnational issues.
So university “development” was no longer the sleepy domain of burned-out faculty, who “went into administration” for a few years before retirement to glad-hand a few wealthy alumni. Instead, it became a massive industry of tapping into the huge global fortunes of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, vertically integrated corporations, and mostly illiberal petro-governments in the Middle East and Chinese-communist approved conglomerates.
Floods of cash created new “centers” and “institutes” on campus. The vast majority were boutique left-wing. The disconnected result was often bizarre: students living in upscale campus dorms, enjoying Club Med gyms and recreation centers, and replete with all sorts of influential internships and overseas enrichment – as they cosplayed Marxist activists.
The legions who staffed the new universities were upper-middle class, affluent and the beneficiaries of the privilege which they trashed from 8-5 before returning home to comfort. Few tenured grandees cared about growing percentages of exploited and part-time lecturers, the campus’ version of the interior deplorables, who taught large courses for little pay and no security. It was about 2008 when I began to notice two growing phenomena when I walked to work on the Stanford campus: in the C/student lots, there was a growing epidemic of student Lexuses, Audis, and BMWs, even as student protests were growing shriller, more radical, and intolerant.
Massive immigration – nearly 50 million current American residents were not born in the United States, including 27 percent of the California resident population – redefined the old 88-12 percent white/black American binary into “diversity.” The melting pot of assimilation, in retrograde fashion, was replaced by salad-bowl segregation.
Class and historical issues faded in the face of a new dogma of “white supremacy.” That now empty banality was the banner for a new constituency of 30 percent of the country. Regardless of their own wealth or absence of past grievance, dozens of ethnic and gender groups now were “victimized” on their claims of a non-white or non-male appearance. And they demanded reparatory redress in admissions and applications, and institutionalized their lamentations in the hiring of faculty and administrators.
Wealthy white females, upper-middle class immigrants from Brazil, and the children of Jamaican or Nigerian doctors, all in theory felt the university should provide them some sort of redress for their intersectional, inclusive victimhood. In the zero-sum game of university curricula, deductive “-studies” courses sprung up to indoctrinate students in “what” to think, rather than inductively how and why. Therapy replaced tragedy in the study of the past and present.
Federal loans (see below) infused billions of dollars into the university, while ensuring ever greater moral hazards of default. Students came to believe that student loans were near-zero interest, “free” money. The loans might not really have to be paid back. And they were a pathway to an impressive salary even if some day they were to be called in.
Many loans easily exceed 5-6 percent of compounded interest. Such guaranteed income greenlighted university price-gouging, and were not forgiven (at least not yet). To justify the illiberal usury and Ponzi schemes, progressive universities winked and nodded that in “our globalized world” a “degree” – i.e., their monopoly on branding students – from a “good” college ensured lifetime higher salaries unavailable to “them,” who worked with their hands, built, assembled, farmed, or delivered. These were to be the new despised “losers” who never were properly prepped in “diversity, inclusion, and equity.”
The Wages of Debt
The result is that students and graduates now struggle under $1.6 trillion in aggregate – and growing – student debt. These millions for the most part are not for Ivy League undergraduates, but for students who ran up their debts at thousands of public universities and small, private undergraduate liberal arts colleges. Current calls to cancel that obligation assume at least three things:
1) Graduates who scrimped and saved either to pay upfront for college or to pay off their debts, are seen as naïve if not delusional. So did paying what they owed prove a chump’s decision?
2) Those who either could never afford college or chose to take their chances in the workplace without a degree, as taxpayers, are now obliged to help pay off what their supposedly better educated counterparts would or could not?
3) The next cohort of students, hand-in-glove with rapacious colleges, will learn what exactly from debt relief – that they too can borrow without worry on the expectation of yet another eventual amnesty?
In fairness, for hundreds of thousands of youth, there is no university assurance that such expensive branding will lead to the sort of job that would allow such staggering obligations to be repaid. Indeed the debt affects us all. It is a drag on half of an entire generation – a fact well known to those who run universities but one that is apparently of little moral concern to them. The ancient formula of four years at a university and a job have metamorphosed into six to eight years now and then in college, as a low-wage job scarcely pays the interest on a student loan.
The result is that our traditional cursus honorum is warped. Marriage? Later than ever. Childbearing? Near record-low fertility. Home ownership? Receding. It is no exaggeration that all the referents of traditionalism and conservatism – the grown-up responsibilities of career, marriage, family, and home ownership – are inert. They seem replaced by ever more prolonged adolescence, as one drifts in and out of near perennial psychological student-hood. And the regression is a particularly dangerous sort of infantilization.
Nothing historically has proven more dangerous to a society than millions of half-educated college students and graduates, indebted, either idle, underemployed, or poorly remunerated, full of pride in their largely suspect majors, and bitter that the supposedly less educated and not as sophisticated cohorts are deservedly making more than they. Their educations ensured that they are glib, but not necessarily industrious. An unemployed sociology graduate, up to his neck in debt, without a good job is a volatile citizen – once he grasps too late in his late 20s that he is no better educated than a plumber or electrician, and far less compensated. Mutatis mutandis, these profiles were the wannabe mid-echelon of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions.
The country is split in two. Red-state conservatives and blue-state progressives roughly balance each other. Not so on campus. Various surveys suggest 95 percent or more of the faculty is left-leaning and often eager to enforce their conformity of thought and ideology on students. The latter enter college worried that their parents’ views may be seen as liabilities by those “enlightened” who grade them. The university makes no attempt to defend its lack of intellectual diversity. By default, one is to assume that it believes that either perfect progressivism needs no balance, or its own biases are properly offset by those of society at large.
Corporate Education
Today’s global research universities are multibillion-dollar enterprises more akin to multinational corporations than to the idyllic undergraduate campuses of traditional lore. Yet huge endowments and their income remain tax-exempt. Few occupations outside academia ensure veritable lifetime employment through tenure – a rarified tradition designed to ensure free expression and diversity of thought, but which may have had the exact opposite effect of guaranteeing unchecked intellectual intolerance and suppression of free expression. The less a tenured scholar produces, and the poorer his teaching will be, so the more likely his idle mind, as recompense for mediocrity, turns to rooting out purporting enemies of the people.
But most importantly, universities no longer inform students of the huge and often dangerous choices they make as teenagers when they enroll. How will they pay off such huge debts? Which majors are likely to earn what sort of income? Can students at least receive an itemized bill of charges to apprise them where exactly their tuition dollars are allocated – and thus where they could be trimmed?
In sum, if universities are increasingly akin to corporations, why then should they assume that the moral hazards of their risky behavior fall on others? Why cannot schools with ample endowments guarantee their own student loans to ensure such exposure reminds them to control the costs they charge students?
If student applicants must submit standardized scores on the theory their prior high schools’ grades are too idiosyncratic to offer reliable constant standards of achievement, then why should not higher education adhere to its own rules?
Why, then, not have exit exams to guarantee employees and professional schools that a BA or GPA from Harvard really is superior to one from a land-grant college, through a standardized national exit exam? Why are GPAs in high schools – but not in colleges – subject to authentication and audit through standardized tests?
Today what is college for?
To teach induction and empiricism, and empower such skills through a common body of knowledge, with shared classical referents of science, mathematics, literature, history, language, and philosophy? To ensure that a student’s future stays inquisitive, enhancing his contribution to his nation? To inculcate a sense of civics and social morality that emphasizes the values of free speech and expression, individualism, tolerance, public service and constitutional government? To seek and reinforce commonalities between citizens of a shared republic?
Progressive Boot Camps
The implicit directive of undergraduate education is so often deductively to enhance progressive values that center on a common but unquestioned core: radical restructuring of the economy to fight “climate change,” the shift from free-market capitalism to state redistributionism, equality defined not as parity in opportunity but in result, the view that the Constitution is fossilized and an impediment to the moral arc of history, the surety that values are mostly race, class, and gender constructs and do not reflect eternal truths of unchanging human nature, identity politics above all, abortion on demand, and real doubt that the American project, now and in the past, has been a force for good.
This is the unquestioned creed of the university, its faculty advocacies, its students’ acquiescence, and the subtext of its themes in internal communiques. If anyone doubts, try the thought experiment of entering a university and throughout those four years suggesting that a heating planet may be primarily a result of age-old and cyclical natural phenomena, or that capitalism has brought far more out of poverty than statism, or praise the Second Amendment, or the melting pot over the salad bowl. Support a ban on partial or late-term abortion, and express faith that America has been good without having to be perfect. At each juncture, a student would not only be questioned but likely would find himself at a disadvantage academically and socially ostracized.
Something went wrong with the rapidly expanding university in the 1960s during the affluence and leisure of the postwar boom. And the new 21st century, high-tech, globalized campus has now made that mess it inherited dangerous.
– – –
Victor Davis Hanson is an American military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.
Photo “Protest” by TellingAdmire CC4.0.


thetennesseestar--2020-12-01--Moderna Asks FDA for Emergency Approval of COVID-19 Vaccine, Second Company to Pass Milestone

Pharmaceutical company Moderna announced Monday that it will submit its coronavirus vaccine to the federal government for emergency use authorization approval .
Moderna said it would ask the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA ) for approval after its large-scale human trial concluded and showed the company ’ s vaccine to have an overall efficacy of 94.1 % , according to NBC News .
The vaccine was found to be 100 % effective in preventing severe cases of coronavirus , according to Moderna .
“ We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prevent severe disease , hospitalizations and death , ” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said , according to a Monday press release .
Moderna is the second company to seek emergency approval for a coronavirus vaccine after Pfizer requested FDA approval Nov. 20 , the company announced .
Following the announcement Monday , President Donald Trump tweeted that the FDA “ must act quickly.
” Trump celebrated the progress of Operation Warp Speed , the federal government ’ s multiagency effort to produce a coronavirus vaccine quickly , during a news conference @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2.48 billion in research and supply funding related to its coronavirus vaccine development from the Trump Administration , according to Fierce Pharma .
Average coronavirus cases and deaths per million have been increasing rapidly nationwide for several weeks , according to The COVID Tracking Project .
On Sunday , the U.S. reported 801 new coronavirus-related deaths and 134,184 new cases while 93,219 Americans remained hospitalized from the virus .
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that the U.S. is approaching another significant coronavirus surge after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Thanksgiving .

by Thomas Catenacci
Pharmaceutical company Moderna announced Monday that it will submit its coronavirus vaccine to the federal government for emergency use authorization approval.
Moderna said it would ask the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval after its large-scale human trial concluded and showed the company’s vaccine to have an overall efficacy of 94.1%, according to NBC News. The vaccine was found to be 100% effective in preventing severe cases of coronavirus, according to Moderna.
“We believe that our vaccine will provide a new and powerful tool that may change the course of this pandemic and help prevent severe disease, hospitalizations and death,” Moderna Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said, according to a Monday press release.
Moderna is the second company to seek emergency approval for a coronavirus vaccine after Pfizer requested FDA approval Nov. 20, the company announced. Following the announcement Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted that the FDA “must act quickly.”
Moderna now applying for Emergency Vaccine Approval.. @US_FDA MUST ACT QUICKLY!!! “Operation Warp Speed has been a great modern day miracle.” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2020
Trump celebrated the progress of Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s multiagency effort to produce a coronavirus vaccine quickly, during a news conference on Nov. 13. Moderna received $2.48 billion in research and supply funding related to its coronavirus vaccine development from the Trump Administration, according to Fierce Pharma.
Average coronavirus cases and deaths per million have been increasing rapidly nationwide for several weeks, according to The COVID Tracking Project. On Sunday, the U.S. reported 801 new coronavirus-related deaths and 134,184 new cases while 93,219 Americans remained hospitalized from the virus.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci warned on Sunday that the U.S. is approaching another significant coronavirus surge after millions of Americans traveled and attended gatherings for Thanksgiving.
– – –
Thomas Catenacci is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.


thetennesseestar--2020-12-01--Commentary: Legitimacy of Biden Win Buried by Objective Data

During the weeks following November 3 , innumerable election experts and statistical analysts have pored over the voting data upon which former Vice President Joe Biden ’ s purported campaign victory ostensibly stands .
A growing body of evidence ranging from straightforward ballot audits to complex quantitative analyses suggests that the tabulation of the votes was characterized by enough chicanery to alter the outcome of the election .
Consequently , a consensus has gradually developed among the auditors of publicly available information released by the states , and it contradicts the narrative promulgated by the Democrats and the media .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ less convinced they are that Biden won .
Among the analysts who question the legitimacy of Biden ’ s victory is Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia , a cybersecurity expert whose technical expertise was touted by the New York Times last September and who has been described as a hero in the Washington Monthly .
It ’ s unlikely that either publication will be singing his praises for his work pursuant to the recent election .
His damning analysis of the electronic manipulation of votes that occurred in the early hours of November 4 appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Pearson v. Kemp , a lawsuit filed by Attorney Sidney Powell in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia .
His nine-page affidavit ( Exhibit 26 ) describes how it is possible to manipulate votes , where this occurred , and sums up his findings as follows : Dr. Keshavarz-Nia is by no means the only expert to reach the conclusion that widespread vote-tampering occurred .
This examination of the election results , for example , uses quantitative analysis to identify some very odd anomalies in the 2020 vote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessary to be a sophisticated statistician or cybersecurity expert possessed of arcane knowledge of how voting machines operate to see that enough ballot fraud occurred to change the election results in several states .
That Keshavarz-Nia provides his findings in a sworn affidavit , under penalty of perjury , renders him highly credible .
Still , his conclusions are rather opaque to anyone without an enormous amount of training and experience in his field .
This requires many of us to take what he says on faith .
Bearing this in mind , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( VIP ) approached the 2020 results in a far less arcane fashion .
His team analyzed publicly available data on absentee ballots , and he explained his findings in a way that any intelligent voter can understand .
VIP looked at suspicious ballot activity in Arizona , Georgia , Michigan , Nevada , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin .
Among the most significant VIP findings involved people who changed their state of residence , yet voted absentee using their prior address .
In Arizona , which Biden “ won ” by 10,457 votes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In Georgia , which Biden “ won ” by 12,670 votes , VIP found 138,221 such votes .
In Wisconsin , which Biden “ won ” by 20,608 votes , there were 26,673 such votes .
As Braynard told the Epoch Times : This election , it appears to me , has been decided by ballots that are highly questionable.… I can give you the list of the people who voted in this election , who filed National Change of Address cards in Georgia , moving themselves to another state.… I can also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of these individuals in other states , who then cast absentee ballots back in Georgia.… I have no confidence that Joe Biden is the deserved winner of this election .
Braynard has been asked to present the findings of the Voter Integrity Project to Monday ’ s hearing with members of Arizona ’ s legislature .
Moreover , as Braynard tweeted Friday , “ The VIP findings have also been included in court filings in PA , GA , MI , WI , and AZ , including declarations we collected.
” Sunday , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FBI has proactively requested VIP findings that may indicate illegal ballots .
Meanwhile , no discussion of 2020 election skulduggery is complete without a discussion of the Democrat precincts that record more votes than registered voters .
Rep. Bill Posey ( R-Fla. ) tweeted the following on that perennial topic : “ According to an affidavit in the MI lawsuit , one Michigan precinct/twnship had 781.91 % turnout .
How does this happen ?
” Good question .
No fewer than six precincts listed by Rep. Posey experienced turnout exceeding 120 percent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is an insult to the electorate ’ s intelligence , and it happened in Democrat precincts all across the nation .
From World War II through 2016 average turnout in a presidential election was about 56 percent .
Yet we are expected to believe that , in 2020 , the national turnout was 66 percent .
It simply does not pass the laugh test .
This looks to be the result of widespread Democrat chicanery facilitated by high-handed flouting of federal , state , and county election laws .
Joe Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than his plagiarized rhetoric or working-class credentials .
His Potemkin presidency would be no more authentic than the man himself .
David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator .
You can follow him on Twitter at @ Catronicus .

by David Catron
During the weeks following November 3, innumerable election experts and statistical analysts have pored over the voting data upon which former Vice President Joe Biden’s purported campaign victory ostensibly stands. A growing body of evidence ranging from straightforward ballot audits to complex quantitative analyses suggests that the tabulation of the votes was characterized by enough chicanery to alter the outcome of the election. Consequently, a consensus has gradually developed among the auditors of publicly available information released by the states, and it contradicts the narrative promulgated by the Democrats and the media. The more data experts see, the less convinced they are that Biden won.
Among the analysts who question the legitimacy of Biden’s victory is Dr. Navid Keshavarz-Nia, a cybersecurity expert whose technical expertise was touted by the New York Times last September and who has been described as a hero in the Washington Monthly. It’s unlikely that either publication will be singing his praises for his work pursuant to the recent election. His damning analysis of the electronic manipulation of votes that occurred in the early hours of November 4 appears in a sworn affidavit included with C.J. Pearson v. Kemp, a lawsuit filed by Attorney Sidney Powell in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. His nine-page affidavit (Exhibit 26) describes how it is possible to manipulate votes, where this occurred, and sums up his findings as follows:
I conclude with high confidence that the election 2020 data were altered in all battleground states resulting in hundreds of thousands of votes that were cast for President Trump to be transferred to Vice President Biden. These alterations were the result of systemic and widespread exploitable vulnerabilities in DVS, Scytl/SOE Software and Smartmatic systems that enabled operators to achieve the desired results. In my view, the evidence is overwhelming and incontrovertible.
Dr. Keshavarz-Nia is by no means the only expert to reach the conclusion that widespread vote-tampering occurred. This examination of the election results, for example, uses quantitative analysis to identify some very odd anomalies in the 2020 vote patterns. But it isn’t necessary to be a sophisticated statistician or cybersecurity expert possessed of arcane knowledge of how voting machines operate to see that enough ballot fraud occurred to change the election results in several states. That Keshavarz-Nia provides his findings in a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, renders him highly credible. Still, his conclusions are rather opaque to anyone without an enormous amount of training and experience in his field. This requires many of us to take what he says on faith.
Bearing this in mind, Matt Braynard of the Voter Integrity Project (VIP) approached the 2020 results in a far less arcane fashion. His team analyzed publicly available data on absentee ballots, and he explained his findings in a way that any intelligent voter can understand. VIP looked at suspicious ballot activity in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Among the most significant VIP findings involved people who changed their state of residence, yet voted absentee using their prior address. In Arizona, which Biden “won” by 10,457 votes, there were 19,997 questionable votes. In Georgia, which Biden “won” by 12,670 votes, VIP found 138,221 such votes. In Wisconsin, which Biden “won” by 20,608 votes, there were 26,673 such votes. As Braynard told the Epoch Times:
This election, it appears to me, has been decided by ballots that are highly questionable.… I can give you the list of the people who voted in this election, who filed National Change of Address cards in Georgia, moving themselves to another state.… I can also show you the subsequent state voter registrations of these individuals in other states, who then cast absentee ballots back in Georgia.… I have no confidence that Joe Biden is the deserved winner of this election.
Braynard has been asked to present the findings of the Voter Integrity Project to Monday’s hearing with members of Arizona’s legislature. Moreover, as Braynard tweeted Friday, “The VIP findings have also been included in court filings in PA, GA, MI, WI, and AZ, including declarations we collected.” Sunday, another tweet by Braynard revealed that the FBI has proactively requested VIP findings that may indicate illegal ballots. Meanwhile, no discussion of 2020 election skulduggery is complete without a discussion of the Democrat precincts that record more votes than registered voters. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) tweeted the following on that perennial topic: “According to an affidavit in the MI lawsuit, one Michigan precinct/twnship had 781.91% turnout. How does this happen?”
Good question. No fewer than six precincts listed by Rep. Posey experienced turnout exceeding 120 percent. Another 10 allegedly enjoyed 100 percent turnout. This is an insult to the electorate’s intelligence, and it happened in Democrat precincts all across the nation. From World War II through 2016 average turnout in a presidential election was about 56 percent. Yet we are expected to believe that, in 2020, the national turnout was 66 percent. It simply does not pass the laugh test. This looks to be the result of widespread Democrat chicanery facilitated by high-handed flouting of federal, state, and county election laws. Joe Biden’s victory is no more legitimate than his plagiarized rhetoric or working-class credentials. His Potemkin presidency would be no more authentic than the man himself.
– – –
David Catron is a recovering health care consultant and frequent contributor to The American Spectator. You can follow him on Twitter at @Catronicus.