Saturday, December 31, 2022

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Wishing everyone on Conservatively Speaking a very

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May 2023 bring you good health, much love, blessings from God and a fire in your belly to continue the good fight!

New Text and Email Evidence: Pelosi Staff Secretly DECREASED Security at US Capitol for Jan 6 (While Pelosi Organized Film Crew For That Day)

The whole thing was a set-up, a terrible, elaborate set-up to inflict a death blow to our Constitutional Republic.

https://gellerreport.com/2022/12/new-text-pelosi-secretly-decreased-security.html/

HUGE: House Republicans Find Text and Email Evidence that Pelosi Staffers Secretly DECREASED Security at US Capitol for Jan 6 – While at Same Time Pelosi Was Organizing Film Crew that Day

Rogan O’Handley posted a text message from Nancy Pelosi’s staff secretly editing the J6 security plan for the US Capitol and then telling the House Sergeant at Arms to “please act surprised” when the final draft was published.

The House Sergeant at Arms responded, “I’m startled!” to the request showing his willingness to play along.

This is more evidence that the January 6 disruptions were planned in advance.

DC Draino was on The War Room with Steve Bannon on Friday, discussing how House Republicans found texts and emails from Pelosi staffers proving Pelosi decreased security at the US Capitol prior to the January 6 protests.

President Trump requested additional National Guard protection for the US Capitol that day. Pelosi turned him down.

But during this same time Nancy Pelosi, possibly the most dishonest politician of our time, organized a film crew to come to the US Capitol and film her that day.

It was as if SHE KNEW something big was going to happen.

Now this wicked woman is caught.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/huge-house-republicans-find-text-email-evidence-pelosi-staffers-secretly-decreased-security-us-capitol-jan-6-time-pelosi-organizing-film-crew-day/

King Charles leads tributes from across the world to 'God's Rottweiler' Pope Benedict XVI: Monarch expresses 'deep sadness' at the death of ex-pontiff aged 95 as he praises his 'efforts to promote peace and goodwill to all people'

Former Pope Benedict has died aged 95 following prayers for his failing health
King Charles has expressed his 'deep sadness' at the death of the former Pope
World leaders have paid tribute to the ex-pontiff as a 'great theologian'
He died at 9:34 on Saturday in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican
He was first pontiff to resign as head of Catholic Church since the Middle Ages

King Charles has led tributes to 'God's Rottweiler' Pope Benedict XVI after his death aged 95, with the monarch expressing his 'deep sadness' at the death of the ex-pontiff as he praises his 'efforts to promote peace and goodwill to all people'.

Within minutes of the announcement of the death of Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday morning, a wealth of tributes poured in from around the world, while the Vatican revealed that the late pontiff would be given a 'simple' funeral, celebrated by Pope Francis, in keeping with his wishes.

Words of praise and fond remembrance poured in from world leaders and religious figures.

While a year-end holiday mood was palpable in the square of the small Bavarian town where the former pope was born in 1927, church bells tolled solemnly at St Oswald Church in Marktl am Inn, near the Austrian border.

King Charles paid his respects to Pope Francis on the death of former Pope Benedict, praising his efforts to 'promote peace' between Catholic and Protestant communities.

The king acknowledged the former pontiff's 'constant efforts to promote peace' and to 'strengthen the relationship between the global Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church', adding he received the news with 'deep sadness'.

Former Pope Benedict was the first pontiff in 600 years to resign, leaving behind a Catholic Church battered by sexual abuse scandals, mired in mismanagement and polarised between conservatives and progressives.

Former Pope Benedict, who died on Saturday aged 95, was the first pontiff in 600 years to resign

The then Prince of Wales being welcomed by Pope Benedict XVI in the library at the Vatican in April 2009

Vatican bells toll as former Pope Benedict dies aged 95

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Longtime Broadcast Journalist Barbara Walters Has Died

Longtime ABC News anchor Barbara Walters has passed away. The View creator and fixture of broadcast journalism was 93 years old, having a career that spanned 65 years. Walters retired in 2016, but not before making her start at a local NBC affiliate in New York upon graduation from Sarah Lawrence College in 1951.

From there, she sharked her way up the ladder, working on The Today Show before hopping over to ABC News, becoming the long-standing anchor for 20/20. She was also a mainstay for interviews with some of the most prominent newsmakers and world leaders. Waters became more of a household name when she was mocked over her speech impediment by the late comedian Gilda Radner in the early years of Saturday Night Live. At first, Waters did not receive Radner’s impersonation of Barbara “WaWa " but came to embrace it in later years. And in those years, she has earned nearly every accolade when it comes to broadcasting, not least being a 1989 inductee in the Television Academy Hall of Fame (via ABC News):

In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News.
She made her final appearance as a co-host of "The View" in 2014, but remained an executive producer of the show and continued to do some interviews and specials for ABC News.
"I do not want to appear on another program or climb another mountain," she said at the time. "I want instead to sit on a sunny field and admire the very gifted women -- and OK, some men too -- who will be taking my place.
[…]
"No one was more surprised than I," she said of her on-air career. "I wasn't beautiful, like many of the women on the program before me, [and] I had trouble pronouncing my r's."
In her memoir, Walters wrote that she had dark hair, a sallow complexion and was often told she was skinny. She said her parents' term of endearment for her was "Skinnymalinkydin."
In 1976, Walters found a new home on ABC's "Evening News," making history as the first female co-anchor of an evening news program.
[…]
In her inaugural broadcast on Oct. 4, 1976, with co-anchor Harry Reasoner, Walters scored an exclusive interview with Earl Butz, who had just resigned as President Gerald Ford's Secretary of Agriculture after it was revealed he told a racist joke. She also conducted a satellite interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on his plans to end his country's fighting with Lebanon.
At ABC, her interviews were wide-ranging and her access to public figures, unparalleled; Walters crossed the Bay of Pigs with Fidel Castro and conducted the first joint interview with Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin. She also developed a reputation for asking tough questions.
"I asked Vladimir Putin if he ever ordered anyone to be killed," she once recalled. "For the record, he said 'no.'"
[…]
There were lighter interviews, too. For years, she hosted an annual Oscars special, in which she interviewed Academy Award nominees and was known for making a number of them reveal deeply personal information and even cry. In 1994, she launched the "Most Fascinating People" special, which aired every December and afforded her the opportunity to chat with the year's top newsmakers.
In 1999, an estimated 74 million viewers tuned in to watch Walters interview Monica Lewinsky about the former White House intern's affair with then-President Bill Clinton. Toward the end of the interview, Walters asked Lewinsky, "What will you tell your children when you have them?" Lewinsky replied, "Mommy made a big mistake" to which Walters quipped, "And that is the understatement of the year."

Barbara Walters. 93 years old. What a life.

Scientology Leader Disappears After Being Named in Child Trafficking Lawsuit

Scientology leader David Miscavige is “nowhere to be found” as prosecutors attempt to serve the 62-year-old with a federal child trafficking lawsuit that names him as a defendant, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

The outlet reported that process servers have tried to serve papers to Miscavige 27 different times over the past four months in the Clearwater, Fla. area and in Los Angeles, to no avail.

When lawyers showed up to Scientology properties in search of the leader, security guards reportedly said they were clueless. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit have also hired a private investigator to help find Miscavige.

Lawyers have also sent an Instagram message to the church’s official account to ask about Miscavige.

Former Scientology church members, husband and wife, Gawain and Laura Baxter and Valeska Paris filed the lawsuit after claiming they were forced into labor on Scientology boats as children after signing a one billion-year contract in exchange for little or no money.

Paris reportedly left the church in 2009 and Gawain and Laura Baxter left in 2012.

In addition to the trafficking allegations, Paris alleges she was the victim of repeated sexual assaults in her youth and that when her mother left Scientology, the then-17-year-old was locked in an engine room for 48 hours as punishment.

Gawain Baxter said his parents put him in a Sea Org nursery when he was two months old, according to the lawsuit. When he turned six, he was also forced to sign the one billion-year contract and sent to live in a Cadet Org dormitory with around 100 other children.

Children over six years old are considered to be, and are frequently told that they are, adults and that they should act and expect to be treated as adults. The lawsuit said the children must be referred to as “cadets” and not kids.

Miscavige’s last known address is the church’s international building in L.A., but similar to other members of Scientology’s extremist wing, the Sea Org, he does not have a recorded address.

Court filings related to the recent lawsuit list his home as a Scientology property in a gated community known as the Hacienda Gardens in Clearwater. The 120-unit apartment complex hosts Scientology staff and was purchased by the organization in 2001.

During a motion earlier this month, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, Neil Glazer, said, “Miscavige cannot be permitted to continue his gamesmanship,” the Tampa Bay Times reported. He is due in court on Jan. 20, but that meeting is pending unless he is served with the papers.

Glazer also said Miscavige is taking part in an “intentional concealment of his location and evasion of service.”

The Tampa Bay Times report stated lawyers have tried to locate him through two traffic tickets he received in the 1990s, but both of those citations list the Scientology Los Angeles center as his home.

Miscavige’s lawyers told the newspaper he is merely the target of a legal strategy due to his status within Scientology. They added that he does not live in Florida, hence why lawyers can’t serve him.

US Magistrate Judge Julie Sneed served a summons to Miscavige on behalf of the plaintiffs. Ten copies of the summons were sent to various Scientology properties in Florida and California.

All were sent back as undelivered since nobody would sign for them.

https://www.cf.org/news/scientology-leader-disappears-after-being-named-in-child-trafficking-lawsuit/

Here’s What We Know About Suspect in Killing of 4 University of Idaho Students

The man arrested over the brutal murders of four University of Idaho students is a crime expert who was studying for a Ph.D in criminal justice just 10 miles from where the slayings took place.

Bryan Kohberger, 28, was arrested after a SWAT team made a raid at the location in Chestnuthill Township, Pa., where he was staying at around 3 a.m. Friday.

Police also seized a white Hyundai Elantra matching the description of a car they had being trying to locate and Kohberger’s DNA has been matched to samples recovered at the scene of the killings, according to CNN.

Kohberger was pursuing a doctorate in criminal justice at Washington State University in Pullman, a short drive from Moscow, where the murders took place. He completed his first semester earlier this month.

Shortly after his arrest, the university took down a grad student page listing his name and police were pictured raiding the apartment where he had stayed.

He also received a master of arts in criminal justice from DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., in 2022. The university later put our a statement saying they were aware of his arrest and “devastated by this senseless tragedy.”

While at DeSales, Kohberger posted in a Reddit community for former prisoners to ask for help with a research survey about “how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.”

In the post “student investigator” Kohberger wrote his project “seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.”

Questions he asked respondents took on eerie new significance in light of his alleged crimes, including: “Before making your move, how did you approach the victim or target?” “After committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?”

“Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your home? What were you thinking and feeling at this point? And “why did you choose that victim or target over others?”

Kohberger had appeared to evade the combined efforts of the Moscow Police, Idaho State Police and FBI for over six weeks following the slayings during which authorities offered little information beyond saying they were looking for a knife, which was the murder weapon.

However, CNN reported an FBI surveillance team from the Philadelphia had been tracking Kohberger for four days before his arrest.

A motive for Kohberger’s crimes or whether he’d had any previous relationship to any of his victims had not emerged late Friday. Little has emerged about his personality, beyond his obsessive-compulsive eating habits.

A former school friend told the Daily Beast Kohberger started boxing in his senior year of high school and had taken criminal justice classes with a view to potentially becoming a cop.

“He always wanted to fight somebody, he was bullying people. We started cutting him off from our friend group because he was 100 percent a different person,” Nick Mcloughlin told the outlet.

Records showed Kohberger appeared briefly in a Monroe County court where he was ordered held without bail and is due to be extradited after a hearing on Jan. 3.

His arrest comes almost seven weeks after Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in their beds as they slept in their off-campus home on Nov. 13.

The murders were the first in Moscow in seven years and have rocked the small college community. Earlier this week, police confirmed they were sifting through 20,000 tips in connection with the case.

Police say the four students were murdered sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. but they were not discovered until hours later, after roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke became worried they could not reach their friends and called police, who made the grim discovery.

https://www.cf.org/news/heres-what-we-know-about-suspect-in-killing-of-4-university-of-idaho-students/

Pelosi Announces Big Change to Salaries of House Staff on Her Way Out

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday issued a new directive raising the maximum rate that lawmakers can pay House staff to $212,100 annually — $38,000 more than what members of Congress make.

The move comes after Pelosi already issued a directive earlier this year raising the maximum pay staffers can make from $199,300 to $203,700. At the time, Pelosi also instituted a minimum salary level of $45,000 for House staff.

The move was seen as precedent-breaking since for decades there were no official House rules governing staffer pay. Instead, House offices were free to negotiate staff pay individually.

Pelosi, who is set to relinquish the speaker’s gavel when the new Republican Congress takes office on Tuesday, said the move would help Congress retain quality staff who might otherwise be lured by private-sector employment.

“As you know, our hard-working, patriotic congressional staffers are integral to the functioning of the House of Representatives,” Pelosi, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to House lawmakers. “To that end, we must do all we can to retain and recruit the best talent in our nation — and to build a congressional workforce that reflects the communities we are honored to serve.”

The new salary cap means that senior staffers can make more annually than the lawmakers who serve as their employees. Both House and Senate lawmakers are paid $174,000 annually.

Pelosi said the pay hike brings the maximum salary available for house staffers in line with President Biden’s administration.

Before the new minimum pay rule, there was a wide pay divergence between offices, according to a report by the centrist advocacy group Issue One.

The group found that some offices, most notably run by progressive Democrats, have wide-ranging pay scales with interns even making as much as $15 per hour. Other offices, meanwhile, paid junior staffers salaries below $30,000 per year.

Overall, Issue One found one out of eight congressional offices were not paying wages that are comparable to the cost of living in Washington, D.C. The report estimated that there were roughly 1,200 congressional staffers making less than $42,610 annually.

https://www.cf.org/news/pelosi-announces-big-change-to-salaries-of-house-staff-on-her-way-out/

9 Controversial California Laws Taking Effect on Jan. 1

As Californians get ready to turn the page on 2022, hundreds of new laws will go into effect starting Jan. 1. From increasing the minimum wage to legalizing jaywalking to shielding criminal records, the new laws will impact employment, health care, housing, public safety, and consumer protection.

Here’s a look at what to expect in 2023.

Minimum Wage (SB 3)

California’s minimum wage will increase by 50 cents to $15.50 per hour for nearly all workers—regardless of the number of employees at a business.

This 3.33 percent increase is less than half of the 7.9 percent inflation increase between 2021 and 2022 calculated by California’s Department of Finance.

Although the latest minimum wage hike will happen on Jan. 1, the law was signed by then Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016. According to the law, if annual inflation increases by more than 7 percent, it triggers the minimum wage to increase.

Currently, the minimum wage is $15 per hour for companies with 25 or more employees and $14 per hour for those with 25 or fewer employees.

Epoch Times Photo — A pedestrian carries a shopping bag while crossing the street in San Francisco on Nov. 16, 2022. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Jaywalking (AB 2147)

Under the new “Freedom to Walk Act,” pedestrians will no longer be fined for crossing the street outside of designated intersections or crosswalks unless they cause a hazard on the street.

Supporters say the law will reduce inequitable policing toward certain racial groups. Some also suggest it will encourage more people to walk instead of drive.

Opponents worry that it will lead to more accidents and ultimately cause more pedestrian deaths.

In California, the base fine for jaywalking has been $25 to $250 per infraction.

COVID Misinformation (AB 2098)

This law allows doctors to face discipline for spreading so-called misinformation or disinformation about COVID-19—including information about vaccine effectiveness and other treatments—and categorizes such as unprofessional conduct.

Physicians and surgeons are regulated by the Medical Board. Under current law, the board is required to act against any licensed doctor who is charged with unprofessional conduct.

Criminal Records (SB 731)

At least 225,000 Californians with prior convictions or arrests will be able to have their records automatically sealed from criminal background checks due to this new law.

While the records will be automatically sealed once people complete their sentence and go four years without new arrests, others will now be able to petition a judge to have theirs sealed.

In California, there are around 8 million people that have criminal records, according to Californians for Safety and Justice.

Loitering (SB 357)

A new California law decriminalizes loitering for the intent to engage in prostitution.

Also known as the “Safer Streets for All Act,” the law was introduced last year by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco). In a statement, Wiener said it “eliminates an anti-loitering offense that leads to harmful treatment of people for simply ‘appearing’ to be a sex worker.”

However, opponents have said that the new law will encourage more public prostitution. Los Angeles Sheriff Department officials have also stated the law will take a major tool away from law enforcement, especially for targeting sex buyers.

Parking Requirements (AB 2097)

The law will prohibit cities across the state from enforcing a minimum number of parking spaces on a development project if it is located within a half-mile of public transit.

The law was established to support the development of affordable housing units by reducing the cost and land space required for development.

Critics of the law say that it will, instead, reduce developers’ efforts to build affordable housing, because many cities are already reducing parking requirements as an incentive for developers to include affordable units in their projects.

FAST Recovery Act (AB 257)

The new law applies to fast-food chains that have 100 or more locations nationally and creates a council that would set industry-wide minimum standards on wages, working hours, and other conditions.

Under the law, minimum wages could rise to as high as $22 an hour for 2023, with the option to increase further each year based on inflation.

Opponents have argued it will lead to higher food prices and job losses. Additionally, the effects of the law won’t be limited to just major fast-food chains, but small businesses as well—since they will be compelled to raise pay to compete for staff, some have said.

Abortion (SB 1375)

Starting January 1st, nurse practitioners will be able to perform first-trimester abortions without a doctor’s supervision under a new law.

The law was introduced in February by Sen. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and was intended to help expand access to abortion as California expects to see an influx of patients coming from other states.

In November, voters also passed Proposition 1 to change the California Constitution to say the state cannot deny or interfere with a person’s decision whether or not to have an abortion or whether to use contraceptives.

Salary Transparency (SB 1162)

The new law requires companies with more than 15 employees to start including pay scales in their job postings in 2023.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of state Sen. Scott Wiener. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/9-controversial-california-laws-taking-effect-on-jan-1_4952414.html

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