Author: Phoenix

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Back Door Power Grab Biden Pandemic Corruption COVID Medicine Politics

Winning. Judge Tosses NYC Vaccine Mandate – Reinstates all Fired City Workers, Orders Back pay

Views: 16

New York – In Richmond County Supreme Court, Judge Ralph Porzio, has ruled that the vaccine mandates issued by the New York City Health Commissioner are unconstitutional and violate the separation of powers.

The ruling permits city employees to return to work effective immediately and orders back pay.

According to attorney Chad Laveglia, the judge ruled “the commissioner’s order mandating private and public employees get vaccinated was arbitrary and capricious.”

“Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid-19,” the judge stated.

[Due to Rumble and the FV player we use here not speaking to each other, we cannot supply the accompanying video, but you can see it here: Judge strikes down nyc vaccine mandate for city workers ]

While Laveglia was representing members of the Dept. of Sanitation in New York (DSNY), this ruling will impact the FDNY, NYPD, Dept. of Corrections and all other city employees who were shut down and forced to resign for refusing to cave in to an experimental emergency use vaccine.  The Gateway Pundit has previously reported on closures of firehouses in New York City that couldn’t remain open due to personnel shortages.  The Gateway Pundit also reported on a mass exodus of NYPD officers; although this was not exclusively related to the vaccine, it does pose a serious problem when the department’s numbers were already impacted greatly by the forced resignations earlier on.

The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.

The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance.

The defendants, of course, filed a Notice of Appeal.  In New York, there are 62 courts, one for each county, representing the Supreme Court.  Despite the name, the Supreme Court in New York is not the highest court.  That position reigns with the New York Court of Appeals.  It appears as though there is still the possibility of one last battle for the DSNY employees and Mr. Laveglia.

The City of New York is represented by the New York City Law Department.  This means that the tax-payers of New York City are funding the fight to take away their own rights to work despite their personal decisions not to take an experimental vaccine that has numerous documented health implications in comparison to all other vaccines since the VAERS system began tracking adverse events.

The tax-payer funded New York City Law Department writes in their appeal:

“Did Supreme Court err in granting the petition, granting declaratory relief, and denying respondents’ cross-motion to dismiss, where, among other things, the petition is time-barred and the underlying employee vaccination requirements are entirely lawful and rational, as multiple courts have held”

In the decision from the Richmond Supreme Court, Judge Porizio writes:

“An administrative agency usurps the authority of the legislative branch when it promulgates a rule that the legislature did not delegate it the authority to make in the first
instance“

As you read the following, specifically the bold print, remember that the New York City Law Department is expending tax payer dollars to appeal this decision while costing the DSNY employees exorbitant legal fees to fight the appeal.  New York is no longer under a state of emergency, Joe Biden declared the pandemic over, and CDC guidelines for vaxxed vs unvaxxed are the same.

“The punishment is the process.”

Judge Porizio continues in his Conclusion:

“It is clear that the Health Commissioner has the authority to issue public health mandates. No one is refuting that authority.

However, the Health Commissioner cannot create a new condition of employment for City employees. The Health Commissioner cannot prohibit an employee from reporting to work. The Health Commissioner cannot terminate employees. The Mayor cannot exempt certain employees from these orders. Executive Order No. 62 renders all of these vaccine mandates arbitrary and capricious. Being vaccinated does not prevent an individual from contracting or transmitting Covid19.

As of the day of this Decision, CDC guidelines regarding quarantine and isolation are the same for vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.  The Petitioners should not have been terminated for choosing not to protect themselves. We have learned through the course of the pandemic that the vaccine against Covid-19 is not absolute. Breakthrough cases occur, even for those who have been vaccinated and boosted. President Joseph Biden has said that the pandemic is over.  The State of New York ended the Covid-19 state of emergency over a month ago. 

As this Court stated in its decision in the Rivicci matter, this is not a commentary on the efficacy of vaccination, but about how we are treating our first responders, the ones who worked day-to-day through the height of the pandemic.  They worked without protective gear. They were infected with Covid-19, creating natural immunity. They continued working full duty while their exemption requests were pending. They were terminated and are willing to come back to work for the City that cast them aside.

The vaccination mandate for City employees was not just about safety and public health; it was about compliance. If it was about safety and public health, unvaccinated workers would have been placed on leave the moment the order was issued. If it was about safety and public health, the Health Commissioner would have issued city-wide mandates for vaccination for all residents. In a City with a nearly 80% vaccination rate, we shouldn’t be penalizing the people who showed up to work, at great risk to themselves and their families, while we were locked down.

 

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Corruption Crime How sick is this? Politics The Law

CEO Declares San Francisco Has ‘Descended Into Chaos’ as He Pulls Company from City

The San Francisco Police Department says people should stay away from Dolores Park.

Views: 46

SF crime wave — mapped in 3D

Another company is calling it quits in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home city.

Outdoor active-wear brand Cotopaxi is closing its San Francisco store after only a year following rampant theft that left the store’s staff “terrified.”

The company’s founder, Davis Smith, announced the closing in a LinkedIn post Tuesday.

“It’s sad, but San Francisco appears to have descended into a city of chaos,” he wrote. “Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction.

“One of the most beautiful and amazing cities in the world is now a place where many no longer feel safe visiting or living.”

Smith’s LinkedIn post featured two photos of broken and boarded-up windows.

Smith further outlined a pattern of property crimes, theft, and burglaries affecting his company’s San Francisco location in a Thursday interview with KABC-TV.

According to San Francisco Police Department data, overall crime in San Francisco is up 7.4 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year. But that number tells only part of the story.

In some districts of the city, crime was up over 20 percent. The data also includes only those crimes reported to the police; one would expect that as crime increases and law enforcement shows a general unwillingness or inability to act, reporting would die off even though crime is alive and well.

Moreover, the SFPD uses a “hierarchy rule,” so that in incidents involving multiple reported offenses, “only the highest offense is represented in the dataset.”

In other words, the only thing we can say for sure about crime in San Francisco is that the SFPD database doesn’t capture it all.

Smith’s post not only lamented the crime but the refusal of local officials to address it.

Smith is blaming city authorities and local law enforcement for inaction in the face of the neighborhood’s condition and is closing the store until the situation improves.

“Many streets and parks are overrun with drugs, criminals, and homelessness, and local leadership and law enforcement enable it through inaction,” Smith continued.

“We opened a retail store a year ago on Hayes Street, the charming shopping district just blocks away from the famous Full House home,” he wrote. “Our first week there, our windows were smashed and thousands of dollars of product was stolen. We replaced the window, and it immediately happened again (four times). We replaced with window with plywood as we waited for a month+ to get a metal security gate installed (demand for those gates is creating huge delays).”

As a result, he said, the company was left with no choice but to shutter the location, one of 10 that had been operated by Cotopaxi. The company website lists the location as “temporarily closed,” but Smith didn’t sound optimistic about the chances that it would re-open any time soon.

Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them.

“As of today, we are closing the store due to rampant organized theft and lack of safety for our team. Our store is hit by organized theft rings several times per week. They brazenly enter the store and grab thousands of dollars of product and walk out. We started keeping the door locked and opening it only for customers, but even then, they’ll have a woman go to the door, and then hiding individuals rush into the store as soon as the door opens.

“Our team is terrified. They feel unsafe. Security guards don’t help because these theft rings know that security guards won’t/can’t stop them.”

The rule of law is fundamental to human flourishing. Without governmental authorities bearing their sword to the terror of bad actors, chaos ensues.

“For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad,” Paul tells us in Romans. “Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

That’s why, he says, we pay taxes — a point not lost on Smith.

“It’s impossible for a retail store to operate in these circumstances, especially when cities refuse to take any action (despite us paying taxes well above any other state we operate in),” he wrote. “The city recently announced a reduction of police presence in this neighborhood, despite mass-scale crime.”

Smith expressed his sorrow at closing a shop in a city he is fond of — but that’s when he made his most striking point:

“I grew up in Latin America and spent much of my adult life there, and I never felt this unsafe there. Something has to change in San Francisco.”

This comes from two separate articles in The Western Journal.

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Categories
Corruption Elections Leftist Virtue(!) Politics Reprints from others.

Democratic Pols Desperate? Obama Now Telling Them to stop Focusing on Woke issues…

Views: 39

The Democratic Politicians are facing a potential shellacking in November and they know it. They are desperate to come up with a winning narrative to try and stem their potential losses.

So what is Obama proposing to help Democrats do this? He’s telling them to stop focusing on woke issues so much because they are alienating people and hurting them politically

In a podcast, Obama is literally telling Democrats to stop focusing on identity politics because people are tired of getting lectured that they are the bad guy, and it’s causing them ‘difficulties’:

I think where we get into trouble sometimes is when we try to suggest that because some groups historically have been victimized more, that somehow they have a status that’s different than other people, and we’re going around scolding folks if they don’t use exactly the right phrase; that identity politics becomes the principle lens through which we view our various political challenges.

To me, I think that for a lot of average folks that ends up feeling as if you’re not speaking to me and my concerns…

The less we’re leaning into an argument that says ‘we’re deserving of consideration and you guys are the problem’ – however you want to frame ‘you guys’ – yeah I think most people don’t want to be lectured to in that way and I think that can cause us some difficulties.

Democrats really turned on the woke-ism in the 2020 election and they haven’t looked back since.

But now that they are about to lose hold of their power in Congress, the prevailing wisdom is to dial it back so they can win elections again.

That may sound like a good strategy but I’m afraid that rabbit is out of the hat and it ain’t going back in. Democrat higher-ups are far too entrenched in wokeism to go back now. It would probably split the Democrat party if they tried.

But even so, it’s amazing that this is what their most popular leader in modern times is telling them to do, especially when he pushed them all in this direction.

Go woke, go broke.

Adapted from The Right Scoop

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Elections Politics

Crowd Reacts with Confused Silence as Fetterman’s Speech Turns Into Word Salad

Please get off the stage.

Views: 50

Just what we need, another brain-damaged Senator

By Michael Austin   for The Western Journal October 16, 2022

A video of Pennsylvania Democrat John Fetterman struggling through a campaign speech is making the rounds on social media.

Fetterman, currently serving as the state’s lieutenant governor, suffered a stroke on May 13.

Nevertheless, he has chosen to continue his U.S. Senate campaign in Pennsylvania against his Trump-endorsed opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz.

Since then, a series of odd verbal blunders and gaffes has raised many questions as to whether Fetterman is fit for office.

The video, shared by RNC Research on multiple platforms Saturday, has garnered quite a view count. (The date the video was taken isn’t clear.)

On Sunday afternoon, the video had more than 18,000 views on YouTube and over 340,000 on Twitter.

“Send me to Washington D.C …,” Fetterman said in the video as he received much applause from the audience.

Is Fetterman fit to run for office?
Yes: 1% (9 Votes)
No: 99% (961 Votes)

Then the 53-year-old Senate candidate continued, clearly looking for more applause from the audience.

All he was met with after his next few lines, however, was silence, seemingly because of the jumbled, incomprehensible nature of his comments.

“To take on to make sure I push back against work to work,” Fetterman continued.

His recent health complications were highlighted by a recent Oct. 7 interview with Dasha Burns of NBC News. The interview aired on Wednesday.

As reported by American Wire, NBC News’ preview coverage of the interview on Tuesday revealed that Fetterman was far from a healthy state of mind.

“I talked with [Fetterman] back in May, back before the primary, before the stroke, at his home in Braddock. That interview was very different from what we discussed, very different from the backdrop that we have here today,” Burns said.

“He is still suffering from auditory processing issues, which means he has a hard time understanding what he’s hearing, so NBC News agreed to closed captioning during this interview.”

In the interview, Fetterman had a screen sitting in front of him transcribing Burns’ questions.

According to Burns, Fetterman wasn’t able to fully understand anything she had been saying until he read it on the screen.

video
play-sharp-fill

No doubt the same people who voted for dementia Joe will vote for easily confused Fetterman.

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Back Door Power Grab How sick is this? Politics

Biden’s Nuclear ‘Armageddon’ Comments So Egregious, Even French President Macron Speaks Against Him

Twitter fact checks Jow

Views: 32

pResident Joe Biden’s warning about a nuclear “Armageddon” drew a rebuke from French President Emmanuel Macron.

Biden was thought to be speaking ‘off the cuff’ when he said that Vladimir Putin was ‘not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons,’ at the end of a Democratic fundraising event on Thursday night when he spoke of the potential for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to use nuclear weapons in his invasion of Ukraine. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Biden said according to The New York Times.

He suggested the threat from Putin is real “because his military is — you might say — significantly underperforming.”

Macron said nuclear war is too delicate a subject to be spoken of carelessly, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.

“We must speak with prudence when commenting on such matters,” he said.

“I have always refused to engage in political fiction, and especially … when speaking of nuclear weapons. On this issue, we must be very careful,” he said.

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin had a response to Biden’s Thursday rumination about how Putin can be given an “off-ramp” to end the war.

“The way out of this conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine. That is the way out of the conflict,” she said.

European Council President Charles Michel said leaders there take “every escalation very seriously.”

“Threats will not intimidate us. Instead,  we are going to remain calm. We are going to keep cool heads and we will, each time, denounce the irresponsible character of these threats,” he said, according to the Daily Mail.

Kori Schake, the foreign and defense policy studies director at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said Biden’s comment helped no one, according to the Washington Examiner.

“It undercuts deterrence for the president to sound anxious about Russian nuclear threats,” said Schake, a former National Security Council and State Department official, the outlet reported. “That incentivizes nuclear proliferation and encourages efforts at nuclear blackmail.”

Schake also said the time was not right for Biden to make an ad-lib about nuclear war.

“If he wants to prepare Americans for the danger, he shouldn’t do that via leaked off-the-record comments at a private political fundraiser; he should give a public national address,” she said.

Former national security adviser John Bolton also took issue with Biden’s comments, according to CBS News.

“I think any time we contemplate the potential use of nuclear weapons, we’ve got to take it seriously,” Bolton said, according to CBS. “But I also think we’ve got to be very clear-eyed about it. And I think the president’s comment overstated the gravity of the situation we’re in right now.

“I was particularly disturbed when he said, ‘you know, I can’t imagine the use of a tactical nuclear weapon that doesn’t lead to Armageddon.’ And it’s that chain of causality from one demonstration use of a tactical nuclear weapon that Vladimir Putin is currently threatening all the way up to an exchange of nuclear salvos between Russia and the United States,” he said.

“It is not inevitable. But Putin would like us to think it’s inevitable. He’d like to see people nervous. He’s trying to deter us. He has done this several times already after his invasion of Ukraine. He’s been bluffing each time. There is a risk here of the use of nuclear weapons.

“I don’t think we’re in the circumstances where it’s going to happen, although we watch it carefully,” he said. “But it’s very important for the West not to be deterred by Putin’s use of this nuclear threat.”

Bullet points:

  • Macron rebukes Biden over his warning that Putin could start ‘Armageddon’ 
  • White House tried to walk comments back and blamed “Russian irresponsibility”
  • US officials scrambled to assure allies they had no specific intel on Putin’s plans
  • Macron spoke of the need to speak with care on the nuclear threat from Putin
  • Finnish PM also rebuked Biden over his comments that Putin needs an ‘off ramp’ 

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Categories
Corruption Immigration Leftist Virtue(!) Politics

Oh, my! “This is Unsustainable” – NYC Mayor Eric Adams Declares State of Emergency Over Illegal Aliens

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Friday declared a state of emergency over the influx of illegal aliens.

Views: 31

According to reports, five or six busloads of illegals are arriving from Texas to New York City each day.

Adams lashed out at Abbott and accused the Texas governor of exploiting New York City’s compassion.

“Although our compassion is limitless, our resources are not,” Adams said. “This is unsustainable.”

New York City has compassion?

Adams said the influx of illegals is “straining” the City’s ability to take care of New Yorkers in need.

Oh, really? Since when? –TPR

More than 17,000 illegals have been bused into New York City in the last few months, according to ABC 7 NY.

ABC 7 NY reported:

The number of people in New York City shelters is setting new records daily amid the unyielding arrival of asylum seekers bused from Texas and elsewhere.

On Friday, New York Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency and announced an executive order to suspend land use requirements to help the city cope with the influx of people.

Adams said he was “angry” the city’s compassion was being “exploited by others for political gain” and what he called a “humanitarian crisis” the mayor said is being “accelerated by American politics dynamics.”

There are 61,000 people currently in the shelter system, “straining our ability to care for New Yorkers in need,” Adams said. He expects the city will have spent $1 billion by the end of the fiscal year

5,500 migrant children have been enrolled in city schools.

Of the 61,000 people in shelters, 20,000 are children. One on five is an asylum seeker.

More than 17,000 asylum seekers have been bused to NYC.

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Categories
Back Door Power Grab Elections Faked news Politics

Democrat Operatives Running Phony PR Campaigns Disguised As Local News In Swing States

Is it a real news site -- or is it propaganda in disguise instead

Views: 25

Democrat operatives have set up websites disguised as innocent local news to disseminate leftist propaganda and boost blue candidates in swing states ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

As of October, Local Report Inc., an organization formed just last year, created more than 50 websites masquerading as online news media outlets to influence “local” coverage of key races and issues.

A closer look by Axios found that these sites are also associated with and sometimes even manned by writers from The American Independent, a progressive media group founded by the same Democrat operative, David Brock, who created the leftist propaganda machine Media Matters for America.

For those who remember,  Media Matters for America trained a large group of individuals to troll and disrupt conservative websites during the runup to the 2016 presidential elections, and David Brock was behind it — TPR

The websites target voters in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin with stories that look like news but are actually designed to boost Democrats’ midterm priorities.

That includes amplifying pro-abortion candidates and their unpopular baby-killing agenda, celebrating Democrats’ embrace of the crisis-plagued Biden Administration, and penning hit pieces that target Republican candidates in tight races.

In some cases, Local Report’s websites went so far as to copy the work of other legitimate news organizations and were still rewarded with the attention of Democrats such as Stacey Abrams.

In fact, Axios reports that “Local Report stories have popped up in communications from the Democrat Parties of Georgia and Michigan, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state and independent political groups such as Color of Change and the Democratic Coalition.”
By manufacturing “news” websites to influence voters, Local Report joins the efforts of other Democrat propaganda groups including the George Soros-linked Courier Newsroom, which prides itself on disguising leftist narratives as local news. The supervisor tasked with overseeing the launch of Courier admitted in a 2020 interview with Vice that “it’s more effective to create ‘news content’ than to simply run ads for Democratic causes.” 

Seeing as Democrats’ top issues such as abortion and climate change aren’t faring well with voters, who are more concerned about inflation, economic recession, and rising crime, it’s no surprise that they feel the need to hide their shady campaigning behind inconspicuous sites.

Axios calls these actions a “ploy.” Contrast that characterization with a report from Politico, which called GOP efforts to restore the balance in news in the 2018 election cycle “fake” news. Sham fact-checking website Snopes and Harvard’s media arm Nieman Lab used similar framing in the 2020 election cycle when it smeared Republicans for entering the world of media and said their presence was just going to “exacerbate polarization.”

The press is certainly not unfamiliar with harnessing its control of information to influence elections. During the 2020 elections, the corrupt corporate media tried to memory-hole the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell by claiming it was Russian disinformation. Other outlets such as NPR went so far as to pledge not to cover the issue at all. ✪

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Uncategorized

Newscum Strikes Again: Pro-Abortion Billboards (in other states) and New Abortion Laws

Views: 27

Just when you think Gavin Newsom couldn’t be any more arrogantly clueless, he proves otherwise.

After Gov. Gavin Newsom placed pro-abortion billboards as part of his re-election campaign advertisements in states restricting abortions, Christians in California are responding.

On Sept. 15, Newsom, a Democrat, announced several versions of billboard advertisements that would be going up across seven states.

California is a “sanctuary state” for women seeking an abortion.

“Just launched billboards in 7 of the most restrictive anti-abortion states that explain how women can access care–no matter where they live. To any woman seeking an abortion in these anti-freedom states: CA will defend your right to make decisions about your own health,” Newsom wrote on Twitter.

One of the billboards placed in Oklahoma and Indiana, which reads “Need an abortion? California is ready to help” also included a verse from the Bible, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” quoted from Mark 12:31.

Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church in Los Angeles responded in an open letter to Newsom on Sept. 28, calling the governor’s actions “thoroughly rebellious against God” and that the billboards promote “the slaughter of children, whom He creates in the womb.”

“You further compounded the wickedness of that murderous campaign with a reprehensible act of gross blasphemy, quoting the very words of Jesus from Mark 12:31 as if you could somehow twist His meaning and arrogate His name in favor of butchering unborn infants,” MacArthur wrote.

MacArthur, 83, added the inclusion of scripture made it hard to “imagine a greater sacrilege.”

Kathleen Domingo, executive director of the California Catholic Conference—a public policy advocacy group for the Catholic Church in California—told The Epoch Times that the billboards are “unconscionable” and “co-opt” the meaning of Jesus’s words in the verse.

“He’s twisting the meaning of what Jesus and the Christian community meant for the last 2,000 years by this particular passage and using it to describe something that the Christian community traditionally has seen as absolutely adverse to their teachings,” Domingo said.

The advertisements placed in conservative states are nothing more than “political theater,” she added.

“The reaction even of the Christian community is probably what he was hoping for,” she said.

In the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned on June 24, California’s Democratic lawmakers drafted bills to codify its abortion procedures into the state’s constitution. Newsom signed 13 bills that make abortion more accessible on Sept. 27, deeming California a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortion.

This month, California also launched a taxpayer-funded website connecting women with abortion resources and services, including how to seek financial assistance.

Newsom promotes that website on 18 billboards placed in seven states: Oklahoma, Mississippi, South Carolina, Ohio, South Dakota, Indiana, and Texas. Each of those states has enacted some restrictions on abortion.

“An alarming number of states continue to outlaw abortion and criminalize women, and it’s more important than ever to fight like hell for those who need these essential services,” Newsom said in a Sept. 27 statement. “We’re doing everything we can to protect people from any retaliation for accessing abortion care while also making it more affordable to get contraceptives.”

Some of the state legislation signed include Senate Bill 1245, by Sen. Sydney Kamlager (D-Los Angeles), Senate Bill 1375 by Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), and Assembly Bill 2223 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland).

SB 1245 allocates $20 million to a Los Angeles County abortion pilot program, and SB 1375 will permit trained nurses to perform abortion in the first trimester without the supervision of a physician.

Decried by opponents as an “infanticide” bill, AB 2223 will shield mothers and certified medical providers from criminal prosecution in infant deaths resulting from “causes that occurred in utero” up to days after birth.

The California Family Council—a pro-life, “biblically faithful” nonprofit—also condemned the governor for signing the abortion bills in a Sept. 27 statement, saying the move was “meant to transform the state into a destination location for the country’s abortions.”

“With today’s abortion expansion, Gavin Newsom continues his shadow campaign for [the U.S.] president. By signing these 13 bills from the Future of Abortion Council, Newsom hopes to secure his spot in the White House at the expense of women and their unborn children,” the nonprofit’s President Jonathan Keller said in the statement. “Governor Newsom tells pregnant women California has their back, but only if they choose to end their pregnancies. This package provides NO care for women who choose to keep their children. Gavin’s not pro-choice; he’s no choice.”

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Life

Category 3 Ian Trashes Cuba’s Ailing Power Grid.

After Ian passed through

Views: 11

Cuba entirely without power after Ian caused grid to collapse.

Some areas start seeing power restored on Wednesday, but…

Ian is seen near the coast of Cuba in this satellite image taken September 25, 2022. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Handout via REUTERS /File Photo

By Dave Sherwood for Reuters

PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Cuba’s electrical grid collapsed late on Tuesday, local officials said, leaving the entire country in the dark shortly after Hurricane Ian plowed through the western end of the island leaving a path of destruction in its wake.

The sprawling Category 3 hurricane was barreling north towards the Dry Tortugas, off the Florida Keys, late on Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 120 miles per hour (195 km per hour), the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Cuba’s electrical grid – decades-old and in desperate need of modernization, has been faltering for months with blackouts an everyday event across much of the island.

“There is no electricity service in any part of the country right now.”

But officials said the storm had proven to be too much for the system, provoking a failure that shut off the lights for the island’s 11.3 million people.

“The system was already operating under complex conditions with the passage of Hurricane Ian,” said Lazaro Guerra, technical director of Cuba’s Electricity Union. “There is no electricity service in any part of the country right now.”

He said the union would work through the night and into Wednesday to restore power as soon as possible.

The countrywide blackout added insult to injury for exhausted Cubans.

Mayelin Suarez, a street vendor who sells ice cream in the provincial capital, called the night of the storm’s passage the “the darkest of her life.”

“We almost lost the roof off our house,” Suarez told Reuters, her voice trembling. “My daughter, my husband and I tied it down with a rope to keep it from flying away.”

The hurricane hit Cuba at a time of dire economic crisis. Blackouts and long-running shortages of food, medicine and fuel are likely to complicate efforts to recover from Ian.

“Ian has done away with what little we had left,” said Omar Avila, a worker at butcher shop in Pinar del Rio. “It’s a horrible disaster.”

A man carries his children next to debris caused by the Hurricane Ian after it passed in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, September 27, 2022. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Ian made landfall in Cuba’s Pinar del Rio Province early on Tuesday, prompting officials early on to cut power to the entire province of 850,000 people as a precautionary measure and evacuate 40,000 people from low-lying coastal areas, according to local media reports. The storm left at least two dead in western Cuba, state-run media reported.

Violent wind gusts shattered windows and ripped metal roofs off homes and buildings throughout the region, where many houses are decades old and infrastructure is antiquated. Roads into the areas directly hit by the hurricane remained impassable, blocked by downed trees and powerlines.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ana Julia Gomez, a 56-year-old woman who lives alone in Pinar del Rio, as she surveyed the wreckage inside her home. “I lost everything; nothing is left.”

Pinar del Rio Province is a rural, lightly populated region but a top producer of farm crops and tobacco. State-run media said farmers had secured 33,000 tonnes of tobacco in storage from prior harvests, but many farms buildings, made with thatched palm roofs, had been flattened by the storm.

“Sometimes hurricanes pass through here, but not of this magnitude,” said Abel Hernandez, a 49-year-old tobacco farmer. “It destroyed our houses, our drying huts, our farms, the fruit trees, everything.”

A family speaks in front of their destroyed home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in El Cafetal, Cuba, September 27, 2022. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Neighboring Artemisa Province, nearer Havana, reported that 40% of its banana plantations had been damaged by the storm.

LIGHTS OUT

Havana appeared to have escaped the brunt of the storm although rain and strong winds uprooted trees, flooded low-lying areas and left many of the city’s roadways impassable.

By 8 p.m. local time Tuesday, it appeared that virtually all of the city was without power, with only some of the larger tourist hotels still lit by generators.

Further north, in Florida, residents and officials were hunkering down in anticipation of what the NHC called a “large and destructive hurricane.”

Ian is expected to bring winds of up to 130 mph and as much as 2 feet of rain to the Tampa area on Florida’s Gulf Coast starting early on Wednesday through Thursday evening, the National Weather Service said.

A hurricane warning has been extended to portions of far southwestern Florida as the storm’s path veered slightly from previous predictions.

The storm surge along Florida’s Gulf Coast could cause devastating to catastrophic damage with some locations potentially uninhabitable for weeks or months, the service warned, urging residents to move to safe shelter before the storm’s arrival.

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Medicine Politics

AZ Abortion Ban from 1901 Upheld: Judge Kellie Johnson Devastates Pro-Abortion Advocates

Abortion supporter threatening Pro-life sidewalk counselors

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A Pima County judge cleared the way Friday for a 121-year-old near-total ban on abortion to go back into effect in Arizona.

Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson’s ruling reinstated a law from 1901 — more than a decade before Arizona was granted statehood — that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother, KOLD-TV reported. There is no exception for cases of rape or incest, according to the report.

Johnson’s ruling lifted a 1973 court injunction against the ban.

Johnson heard arguments one month ago in the case brought by Planned Parenthood of Tucson against the Arizona attorney general’s office, according to KGUN-TV.

Pro-abortion advocates, including Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs, were infuriated at the ruling.
Katie_Hobbs, pro-abortion AZ gubernatorial candidate

“I am outraged and devastated by today’s decision by the Pima County Superior Court to allow a territorial ban on abortion to take effect,” Hobbs said, according to KOLD. “There’s no doubt in my mind that this draconian 1901 law will have dire consequences on the health and well-being of Arizona women and their families.”

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich lauded the new development.

“We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue,” Brnovich wrote in a tweet.

“I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.”

KGUN reported that the 12-decade-old law, now codified in Arizona as Revised Statute 13-3603, “does not mention any timeline for when an abortion may be permitted. There’s no 15-week rule, like the one stated [in] the more recent state law, SB 116.”

The statute mandates a prison sentence of two to five years for abortion providers.

Johnson cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade as the legal basis for her ruling.

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