Random

    Opinion

    Home Opinion Page 39

    Vice President Biden Flew Son Hunter On Air Force Two To Close Foreign Business Deals

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    3
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – Even as the world obsesses over Donald Trump’s latest legal dangers, the walls are slowly closing in on the Biden crime family. And I don’t use the phrase ‘crime family’ often.

    But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden used his time as Vice President as a golden opportunity to unlawfully enrich his entire family, often flying his son Hunter on Air Force Two abroad to seal deals.

    In one well-known instance, VP Biden leveraged a billion dollars in U.S. aid to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the energy firm that employed Hunter.

    In their ongoing investigation into alleged influence peddling involving Biden, members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have asked the National Archives and Records Administration for unrestricted access to Biden’s travel aboard the vice-presidential jet, known as Air Force Two, and the VP’s official helicopter, known as Marine Two.

    They want to determine whether the trips aided his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.

    House GOP investigators believe Biden, while vice president under Barack Obama, used his power and influence to help his family and a group of associates with foreign business deals involving China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries, worth tens of millions of dollars.

    And there is more evidence to back up their beliefs. Last month, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, told House investigators the foreign deals were secured by selling the Biden “brand,” essentially, Joe Biden’s position as vice president of the United States.

    “Then-Vice President Joe Biden abused Air Force Two by allowing his son to jet set around the world to sell ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” said House Oversight Chairman James Comer.

    “This is yet another example of then-Vice President Biden abusing his public office for his family’s financial gain.”

    More specifically, the Washington Times reported that:

    Lawmakers on the Oversight panel said the president’s son Hunter Biden may have traveled to 15 countries with his father while he was vice president and that during that time, Mr. Biden met in Beijing with his son’s business associate, a Chinese national, while he was on official business.

    “Then Vice-President Biden’s misuse of Air Force Two and Marine Two is indicative of yet another way in which the President has abused his various offices of public trust and wasted taxpayer money to benefit his family’s enterprise, which consisted of nothing more than access to Joe Biden himself,” Oversight lawmakers wrote to U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan.

    House investigators also believe Biden used numerous aliases to hide his participation in his son’s shady deals. The Times added:

    …Comer also is seeking more than 5,000 White House emails that used aliases for then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden. The National Archives said it is awaiting approval from Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama before handing them over to Mr. Comer, according to an aide to Mr. Comer.

    White House records show that Mr. Biden used the name Robert L. Peters while serving as vice president. Mr. Biden also disguised his name on emails using the pseudonyms Robin Ware and JRB Ware, a play on his middle name and initials paired with his home state of Delaware.

    Critically, investigators noted a May 26, 2016, White House scheduling email sent to VP Biden ahead of a call with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko that was also inexplicably sent to his ‘private citizen’ son, Hunter. 

    At the same time, the drug-addicted, unqualified Hunter was earning $100,000 a month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which was under investigation for corruption. The U.S. State Department had said Burisma engaged in bribery.

    And in a typical moment of braggadocio, a clueless Biden senior bragged about it. The New York Post reported:

    In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin.

    The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”

    Tough guy, that Biden.

    Biden has claimed he demanded Ukraine fire its equivalent of Attorney General because he was corrupt, but we now know the State Department had found that Ukraine had made great strides in dealing with corruption, and Shokin, specifically, was praised in private correspondence.

    The Post added that Devon Archer’s testimony revealed that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with their hired gun, Hunter.

    Archer reportedly described how Burisma officials told Hunter of the importance of neutralizing Shokin, and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. The call was of course to Dad.

    And that’s what House investigators are hoping to prove. The Obama-Biden White House call logs, emails, and flight schedules are all part of the mounting evidence against Joe Biden.

    Amanda Head: Hollywood Strikes Again!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    1

    Are you a fan of late-night talk shows? Well, buckle up because some big changes are coming to your TV…

    Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Biden’s Lies About Hunter’s Foreign Influence Peddling Are About To Blow Up In His Face

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    6
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And there is a lot of smoke surrounding Joe and Hunter Biden. It is increasingly clear that Joe Biden has repeatedly lied about his involvement in, and knowledge of, his son Hunter’s overseas influence peddling businesses.

    And with Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI dragging their feet with documents requested by congressional investigators, an official impeachment inquiry may be the only way to get to the truth.

    And that official inquiry may be coming very soon.

    Republicans could open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over ties to his son Hunter’s shady and unethical business entanglements when Congress reconvenes on September 12.

    In the final presidential debate of the 2020 U.S. election between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joseph Biden, moderator Kristen Welker asked Biden: “there have been questions about the work your son has done in China and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were vice president; in retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?”

    “Nothing was unethical. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” Biden replied.

    Biden also said he never discussed business with his son.

    Well, to put it in Biden terms, that was all a bunch of malarkey.

    Now, nearly three years later, Hunter has rebutted Joe Biden’s assertions directly. In court testimony in late June, Hunter acknowledged that he had been paid substantial sums in China – the first official confirmation that this was the case.

    This direct contradiction creates a major problem for the White House, and Republicans insist there’s a lot more to find out.

    “A lot of the things the president said about his family’s shady business dealings, we’re proving every day that they’re not true,” Republican James Comer, Chair of the Oversight and Accountability Committee, said.

    An impeachment inquiry is the next logical step to find out what is true.

    The Epoch Times (ET) reported: “House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that initiating an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden would be a ‘natural step forward.’” This, following unresolved questions from the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s investigations into the Biden family’s business dealings.

    The speaker said on Monday that the impeachment inquiry could start soon. McCarthy added that an impeachment inquiry would provide Congress “the apex of legal power to get all the information they need” to investigate whether President Biden misused his office to assist family businesses.

    ET continued:

    McCarthy said on Monday that the inquiry was needed to overcome stonewalling of congressional investigators looking for transparency about the Biden family’s business records following testimony from former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer that President Biden met with son Hunter Biden’s business partners during the time he was vice president, as well as concerns raised by whistleblowers at the IRS regarding Hunter Biden’s tax records.

    The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has so far subpoenaed six different banks, receiving thousands of bank records of businesses and individuals connected to Joe Biden’s family members.

    According to ET:

    Those records showed that more than $20 million in payments from foreign sources have been made to the president’s relatives, including Hunter Biden, and their business associates while Mr. Biden was acting as U.S. vice president from 2009 to 2017.

    Romanian, Chinese, and Russian nationals were among those making payments to the Biden family and their associates. The records also revealed that the funds were funneled through a network of at least 20 shell companies before being transferred to Biden family members.

    An inquiry doesn’t mean the House will impeach Biden. But it does give Republicans far more legal power to force reluctant Biden DoJ bureaucrats and others to come forward with the truth.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

    How the FBI Colluded with Big Tech’s Twitter to Censor Hunter Biden Laptop Story

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    1
    President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

    ANALYSIS – While the establishment media continues to ignore the disturbing ‘Twitter Files’ released by Elon Musk showing how Twitter censored the Hunter Biden laptop story, more information now indicates it was worse than we first thought.

    As Musk noted, it’s not a direct First Amendment violation for a private company to censor the news, but it absolutely is if it’s done at the behest of our government.

    And while I will argue that as the nation’s new ‘public square,’ Big Tech does violate the First Amendment when it censors news, there is now no denying that in the Hunter laptop case it did so with input from the FBI.

    I will save the public square censorship discussion for another time.

    These new disclosures provide more evidence that under the purported guise of stopping Russian election interference, the FBI ended up being guilty of employing its own U.S. election interference.

    And Twitter (like Facebook and LinkedIn, et al.) took the ball and ran with it.

    Based on the Twitter emails recently released by Elon Musk and reported by former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, the Daily Caller reports:

    The FBI explicitly warned Twitter about a potential “hack-and-leak” operation involving Hunter Biden shortly before the platform censored the New York Post’s story based on emails from Biden’s laptop, according to a signed declaration by Twitter’s former head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth.

    The FBI, along with several other agencies, warned Roth that “state actors” might attempt to leak hacked materials shortly before the 2020 election in a bid to influence its results, according to the declaration filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in December 2020, two months after the platform censored the NYP’s story. Roth stated that the conversation occurred during weekly meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, in which they warned him of potential threats to election security.

    “These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” Roth wrote.

    As Taibbi notes, Twitter, like all of Big Tech, including Twitter, is staffed by leftists and hence skewers its policies and actions to favor the left.

    This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.

    The Daily Caller continues explaining the background to the Bureau’s own ‘election interference’ events:

    Roth’s revelations about the meetings with intelligence agencies are similar to those of Mark Zuckerberg, who said in August that Facebook censored the Hunter Biden story after federal law enforcement officials asked him to restrict “misinformation” and “Russian propaganda” ahead of the 2020 election.

    The FBI agent overseeing these weekly meetings was Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, according to the NYP; however, Chan claimed not to recall whether the topic of Hunter Biden came up at these meetings in a deposition for a lawsuit filed by Republican attorneys general that alleged collusion to censor speech by federal agencies and Big Tech. Chan was also one of two FBI agents who met with Zuckerberg to warn him of potential Russian election interference before Facebook censored the story.

    However, while the FBI insinuated and influenced Twitter and Facebook and other platforms, like LinkedIn, indirectly to censor the laptop story, it never explicitly provided Big Tech any evidence or statement claiming officially that the laptop info was hacked.

    And this only makes Twitter’s decision more egregious.

    As the Daily Caller concludes:

    Taibbi tweeted an email indicating that Twitter’s trust and safety team initially explained to other employees that it made the decision to suppress the story — the company even went so far as to prevent it from being sent in private messages — because it violated Twitter’s policy for sharing “hacked materials.” Typically, such a ruling would require an official statement from law enforcement identifying the material as hacked, something that Twitter never received, according to Taibbi…

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Amanda Head: Lauren Boebert Election Update!

    By
    Amanda Head
    -
    2

    Pro-Trump superstar Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-3rd) has faced a contentious post-Election Day battle as she fights for another term in Congress.

    Watch Amanda explain the ongoing ballot fiasco below.

    On Twitter Show, Tucker Carlson Blames Ukraine for Attack on Dam

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    1
    Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America,

    ANALYSIS – In his Twitter Spaces debut Tuesday night, called “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson immediately accused Ukraine of being responsible for the catastrophic attack on the Nova Kakhovka dam in Southern Ukraine.

    And he may be right.

    Ukraine and Russia have routinely accused each other of shelling the dam, the hydroelectric station and the nearby Zaporizhia nuclear power plant.

    Both sides have blamed the other for the attack, in what appears to be a war crime. Kyiv blamed Moscow for the “terrorist attack,” but the Kremlin claimed that Ukraine had struck the dam to impact Russian-controlled Crimea’s water supplies.

    As Newsweek reported, that is part of Tucker’s claim, too.

    And, despite his spotty track record on speculation, in this case, he may be right. Or at least, the assumption that Russia is always the culprit is no longer valid.

    Based on recent reporting, which I wrote about here, Ukraine may, in fact, have been responsible for the serious sabotage of the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022, which was long blamed on Russia.

    This makes the always-blame Russia crowd look less credible. But that doesn’t mean Tucker’s always-blame-everyone-except-Russia approach is any better.

    While on Fox, Tucker repeatedly blamed the United States and Joe Biden for being behind the Nord Stream attack.

    On Feb. 24 he said: “So the Biden administration committed the single largest most profound act of industrial terrorism of sabotaging history. They blew up the Nord Stream pipeline …”

    And that has always been a stretch. Instead, The Post reporting today reinforces my earlier conclusion that it is “likely, the U.S. was aware but turned a blind eye.”

    Thus, as far as we can tell, Biden knew about it beforehand but was unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

    Tucker’s claims aren’t helped when he spouts pro-Russian talking points in his video, such as:

    The Kakhovka dam was effectively Russian. It was built by the Russian government. It currently sits in Russian- controlled territory. The dam’s reservoir supplies water to Crimea, which has been for the last 240 years home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

    Firstly, the ‘Soviets’ built the dam during the USSR, not the ‘Russians,’ and the USSR no longer exists. Secondly, it doesn’t matter how long Russia’s Black Sea Fleet was based in Crimea; it belongs to Ukraine because that’s what happened when the USSR dissolved in 1991 and Ukraine became independent.

    Tucker’s Trumpian personal insults, like describing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “sweaty and rat-like comedian-turned-oligarch,” probably don’t help his credibility much either.

    Tucker is on firmer ground when he argues that: “Blowing up the dam may be bad for Ukraine, but it hurts Russia more, and for precisely that reason, the Ukrainian government has considered destroying it.”

    Especially when he cites a December report from The Washington Post in which a Ukrainian general spoke of using U.S.-made HIMARS launchers to “test strike” on the Kakhovka dam.

    So, what are the facts?

    The dam spanning the Dnipro River was breached on Tuesday, flooding swaths of territory and threatening crucial water supplies to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

    At least 42,000 people and 1,500 square miles of land are at risk from the flooding caused by the destruction of the dam, likely slowing any potential Ukrainian military advance in the Dnipro River delta.

    Much of the Dnipro River delta will become inaccessible for land operations, raising suspicions that Russia deliberately sabotaged the dam to prevent an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.

    However, the flooding has disproportionately affected the Russian-occupied side of the river.

    The Kakhovka reservoir does supply Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast and the Crimea peninsula with fresh water.

    Zelensky has said that the only way to destroy the dam is through mining and explosives and emphasized that Russian forces have now occupied the dam for over a year.

    In a statement, Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command said, “Russian occupation troops blew up the dam” at Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

    Blaming “Russian terrorists” for the attack, Zelensky said on Twitter that “the destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant dam only confirms for the whole world that they must be expelled from every corner of Ukrainian land.”

    In the end, Tucker may be right. Ukraine could have been behind the attack. 

    But he is far more credible when he is less bombastic and emphatic with his theories. Such as when he states:

    So really, once the facts start coming in, it becomes much less of a mystery what might have happened to the dam, and a fair person would conclude that the Ukrainians probably blew it up, just as you would assume they blew up Nord Stream, the Russian natural gas pipeline last fall.

    Tucker ended his new Twitter show by promising to be back with “much more, very soon.” I’m looking forward to it.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Video Shows Biden Sent Troops To Border To Open Gates

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    0
    Construction continues on new border wall system project near Yuma, AZ. Recently constructed border wall near Yuma, Arizona on June 3, 2020. CBP photo by Jerry Glaser.

    ANALYSIS – Please hold the door! Well, it can’t get more ironic or infuriating than this.

    A new video appears to show a U.S. soldier, apparently, a female National Guard troop activated by Joe Biden, unlocking and opening a gate in Texas to allow a large group of illegal aliens to cross into the United States.

    And Biden thinks it’s funny.

    This, after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas shamelessly said on ABC’s “This Week” that Team Biden had succeeded in getting the word out that the nation’s borders were not open.

    The video tweeted by Fox News Channel (FNC) Los Angeles bureau reporter Bill Melugin, is dated May 15, just after Biden allowed the Trump-era Title 42 to expire. The specific location in Texas was Eagle Pass in the U.S. Border Patrol Del Rio Sector.

    It is not an official Customs and Border Protection (CBP) entry point. In fact, the gate is part of a Texas state border barrier, and the land is reportedly private property.

    And to be clear, the soldier was reported to be acting under orders, and the migrants were loaded on a U.S. government bus.

    Texas officials quickly highlighted that the soldier is not a member of the Texas National Guard deployed by Governor Greg Abbott under Operation Lone Star.

    Instead, she is a Missouri Army National Guard (ARNG) member deployed to “assist” Border Patrol agents under Title 10 by Team Biden.

    But the joke is on us.

    It seems Biden’s understanding of “assisting the Border Patrol” involves opening the gates to allow illegal migrants to enter the country before being symbolically “processed” and released into the country.

    Many of the migrants are being given immigration court date appearances set so far into the future as to be meaningless. Others are let go without any specific court dates.

    One Venezuelan told the Washington Examiner that his mother “was told to wait 10 years before she can see a judge.” Another Venezuelan man was told to appear in court in March – 2027.

    When asked by reporters about how he believed things were proceeding after Title 42 expired, Biden responded with a laugh, saying: “Much better than you all expected.”

    Of course, they are better than expected when you are facilitating their entry to avoid images of mass chaos at the border. “Thank God there’s a camera there so we can watch them all come through in a nice orderly fashion,” one Twitter user commented.

    Even disgraced and fired liberal CNN host Chris Cuomo bashed Biden about this:

    …we have our president laughing, “Ha ha ha. It’s not as bad as you expected.” Really? With record numbers being processed and released into America. It’s no laughing matter, but if it is a joke, the joke is on us, because the people in power are allowing this to continue.

    And while the border looks less chaotic than in recent months, illegal migrants are filling processing centers to capacity, with an unbelievable backlog of two million pending court cases.

    Meanwhile, Mayorkas also touted a 50% drop in illegal migrant encounters on the border since Title 42 was rescinded, with 6,300 encounters on Friday and about 4,200 on Saturday.

    But their numbers had exploded right before the end of the pandemic-era restriction, topping more than 10,000 a day, so a big drop isn’t hard to achieve.

    And with U.S. troops deployed, order is restored – because the border gates are now officially open. The joke really is on us.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    Biden Doctor Ordered To Testify On President’s Mental Decline

    By
    Donny Ferguson
    -
    1
    Photo via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    President Joe Biden’s White House physician, along with Biden’s top aides, have been ordered to testify to Congress on Biden’s mental decline and whether top decisions were made by Biden or by unelected figures.

    “As part of the investigation into the cover-up of President Joe Biden’s mental decline and potentially unauthorized use of autopen for sweeping pardons and other executive actions, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) today sent letters to President Biden’s physician and former White House aides demanding they appear for transcribed interviews,” the committee announced in a statement.

    “The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal. The American people deserve to know when this decline began, how far it progressed, and who was making critical decisions on his behalf. Key executive actions signed by autopen, such as sweeping pardons for the Biden Crime Family, must be examined considering President Biden’s diminished capacity. Today, we are calling on President Biden’s physician and former White House advisors to participate in transcribed interviews so we can begin to uncover the truth. In the last Congress, the Biden White House blocked these individuals from providing testimony to the Oversight Committee as part of the effort to cover-up Biden’s declining health. Any continued obstruction will be met with swift and decisive action. The American people demand transparency and accountability now,” said Comer. 

    The committee reports:

    Last Congress, Chairman Comer subpoenaed three key White House aides – Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, and Ashley Williams – who ran interference for President Biden and also requested a transcribed interview with his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor. 

    The Biden White House obstructed the Committee’s investigation and refused to make the aides available for depositions or interviews. Chairman Comer also subpoenaed the audio recordings related to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, but Attorney General Merrick Garland defied the subpoena. 

    According to a new book, Original Sin, one person familiar with the internal dynamic at the White House stated, “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”  

    Comer reports he is continuing “the investigation into the cover-up of Biden’s mental decline and use of autopen for key decisions.”

    New Poll Exposes Democrats’ True Thoughts About Biden

    By
    Norman Leahy
    -
    1
    Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    There’s a wealth of new polling data on the Democratic presidential nomination contest, with polls from The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press both finding that even Democratic voters are concerned that President Joe Biden is too old to run.

    The AP/NORC poll of adults (not registered voters) found that 77 percent of respondents believed Biden was too old to serve another term.

    And for the hardened Team Blue partisans who shout “ageism!” at such findings…69 percent of self-identified Democrats said Biden’s age is a big issue (among Republicans, it was a whopping 89 percent – which shouldn’t come as a surprise).

    But this must be a fluke, an outlier, and a one-off. Surely, the age issue can’t be that big a deal for Mr. Biden. Except The Wall Street Journal poll confirmed it is.

    The Journal asked a split question – one if voters think Biden’s mental fitness is sufficient for the job, the other specifically on whether he is “too old.”

    On the mental ability, 60 percent questioned Biden’s mental ability. On age, a total of 73 percent said he is “too old.”

    What are the comparable numbers for former President Donald Trump?

    A 49-46 split says Trump isn’t mentally up for the job. On age, another spilt, with 47 percent saying he’s too old and 45 saying he isn’t.

    As always with polls, the numbers are snapshots in time and subject to change.

    What these data points do, though, is reinforce narratives that have long been whispered in Democratic circles: Biden’s time has passed, and he would be wise to bow out and allow someone else to take the fight to what looks like Donald Trump in 2024.

    But such whispers against an incumbent are very hard to translate into hard reality. What could bring them a tad bit closer to the fore are the other items in the Journal poll, particularly the sense that most people think the economy has hit a rough patch, and they are feeling the effects:

    …58% of voters say the economy has gotten worse over the past two years, whereas only 28% say it has gotten better, and nearly three in four say inflation is headed in the wrong direction. Those views were echoed in the survey by large majorities of independents, a group that helped deliver Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Voters were almost evenly split on the direction of the job market.

    It’s not a wipeout for Biden, but the data are hardly comforting to an incumbent who has staked his presidency on a massive reworking of the economy, with government intervention and support leading the way. Team Blue partisans will say it’s early, these things take time, etc., etc. And they aren’t entirely wrong.

    But there’s also the iron law of politics to contend with: if you’re explaining, you’re losing. And until the data show voters are feeling better about their own particular economic situation, then Mr. Biden will need more than a slogan – “Bidenomics” – and promises of widespread prosperity to save his own political future.

    The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

    ‘Barbie’ Movie Banned in Vietnam as Hollywood Again Kowtows to China

    By
    Paul Crespo
    -
    1

    ANALYSIS – China’s outrageous claim to almost the entire South China Sea – everything within a “nine-dash line” drawn on Chinese maps – has taken its most recent victim – the movie-viewing public in Vietnam. The Vietnamese government has banned the movie due to a scene with that Chinese-made line on a map.

    China takes its illegal claim very seriously and strives to impose its visual representation on maps everywhere, including those appearing in Hollywood movies.

    While it’s unclear why the soon-to-be-released film ‘Barbie’ about the iconic doll and her boyfriend Ken would get embroiled in international politics, it has. 

    This south China Sea has been a flashpoint between Vietnam and China for years. The artificial line is shown on Chinese maps to mark their claims over the area despite Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, and Taiwan claiming parts of the same vast expanse of sea.

    Chinese warships and fishing vessels routinely operate in these waters to establish de-facto presence, often provoking clashes with neighboring countries.

    The Daily Wire (DW) reported:

    “We do not grant license for the American movie ‘Barbie’ to release in Vietnam because it contains the offending image of the nine-dash line,” Vi Kien Thanh, head of the Department of Cinema, a government body in charge of licensing and censoring foreign films, was quoted as saying in the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper.

    The movie’s trailer shows Barbie leaving her perfect doll world and to explore the “real world” after becoming disillusioned with her life.

    So why did a big Hollywood studio decide to include this ridiculous claim in their otherwise non-political movies?

    All I can think of is – in order to please the communists in Beijing. China is obviously a far bigger market than Vietnam. And who knows if Chinese investors were involved in the movie’s production.

    DW notes:

    “Barbie” isn’t the first film banned for including the nine-dash line. The Vietnamese government also blocked the DreamWorks animated film “Abominable” (2019) and the action-adventure film “Unchartered” (2022) for the same reason. Netflix removed the Australian spy drama “Pine Gap” in 2021 for their inclusion of the line.

    Hollywood blockbusters including the Marvel films “Eternals” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” have also been in China after directors or actors involved in the films made comments critical of China.

    Another big controversy exploded in 2019 over the Tom Cruise movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick.’ Initially the movie appeared to remove the flags of Taiwan and Japan from Maverick’s flight jacket. The flags were part of historical patches representing prior U.S. naval deployments to the region.

    As NBC News reported:

    In 2019, the trailer for “Top Gun: Maverick” showed Cruise’s character, U.S. Navy pilot Pete Mitchell, in the same bomber jacket he wore in the original film. But two of its flag patches — representing Japan and the Republic of China, the official name for Taiwan — appeared to have been replaced by other emblems.

    The move was criticized at the time as an act of self-censorship to please China’s censors. Beijing sees Taiwan, a self-ruling democracy of 24 million people, as an inalienable part of its territory and lashes out at any reference to it as a sovereign nation.  

    In this case Hollywood, or Cruise, had a change of heart and reversed their apparent kowtowing to China. CHinese investors also pulled out of the movie.

    NBC News continued:

    On the film’s release last month after a two-year pandemic delay, both flags had been restored. At an advance screening in Taipei, the audience broke out in cheers and applause at the sight of the Taiwanese flag on the big screen, local news outlet SETN reported.

    Sometimes in Hollywood the good guys do win. Sadly, not in the case of Barbie.

    Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

    1...38394041Page 39 of 41
    © Great America News Desk 2022