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California

Schultz vs. Warren, Harris Goes Hard Left, California’s Pronoun Politics

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Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy watching Howard Schultz and Elizabeth Warren trade insults over Warren’s proposed wealth tax and shudder to think that Schultz might be the most sensible liberal considering a 2020 presidential run.  They also slam Kamala Harris for suggesting that lawmakers who don’t support gun control don’t care about the victims of mass shootings and contending that if Republicans saw photos of murdered children that they would vote differently.  And they laugh and cringe as the chairwoman of a California State Senate committee bans the use of gendered pronouns in committee – and then proceeds to violate her own rule over and over again.

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Hillary Pushes Debunked Lie, GOP Candidate Attacked, Scarborough’s Shame

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a kick out of Hillary Clinton trying to damage efforts to confirm Brett Kavanaugh by spreading a birth control lie that was thoroughly debunked days ago – even by liberals.  They also recoil as an angry anti-Trump voter tries to stab a Republican congressional candidate in California and the mainstream media largely ignore the incident.  And they blast MSNBC host Joe Scarborough for arguing, on 9/11, that President Trump is damaging the United States far more than any terrorist ever has or could.

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Liberal Policies Makes Wildfires Much Worse

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Firefighters spent much of the past week battling the largest wildfire in California history, but an environmental policy expert says things are not getting worse because of climate change but because California is dry and liberal forest policies are making fires bigger, making the air quality worse, and putting lives and homes in danger.

Earlier this week, California officials declared the Mendocino Complex fire the largest in state history, responsible for charring tens of thousands of acres.  Other fires threaten lives and property elsewhere in the state.

Environmental activists claim that human activity is leading to a more volatile climate that makes hurricanes more intense, heatwaves and droughts more intense and snowfalls deeper.

But what do the facts show?

“Climate does play a role in all of this, but not in a way that environmentalists would have you believe,” said Dr. Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Cohen says the California climate is always conducive for wildfires.

“The climate in California is arid.  It always has been and always will be.  At times it is subject to drought and sometimes even extreme droughts.  California has recently recovered from an extreme drought,” said Cohen, noting the drought was rates the eighth worst in the past century.

But Cohen says the arid nature of the state is only one major factor in the huge fires.

“This dry climate is exacerbated by strong winds.  There are strong winds in southern California – the infamous Santa Anna winds – and strong winds in northern California.  It is not uncommon for these winds to gust up to 60 or 70 miles per hour,” said Cohen.

He also points out the fires find plenty of additional fuel thanks to counterproductive environmental policies.

“California has a lot of public land, federal land and state land, and there are strict restrictions on a lot of that regarding logging and even removal of dead and diseased trees.

“You have tinderboxes brought to you courtesy of either the federal government, or the state government, or – tragically in some cases – both,” said Cohen.

Cohen adds that by bending over backwards on behalf of the environment, liberals are actually harming it.

“Fires are actually a normal and perfectly healthy way of dealing with overgrown forests, but when those forests are mismanaged as U.S. Forest Service land has been mismanaged, not for years but for decades with overgrown forests, these forests are an open invitation to the tragic wildfires that we’re seeing here now,” said Cohen.

The impact is not limited to the forests.  California’s already fragile air quality also suffers.

“You can tighten up the Clean Air act as much as you wish, but once you have these forest fires taking off the way they are out West, the quality of air suffers.  It is absolutely filthy.  You would think environmentalists would be deeply disturbed by this.  As a matter of fact, they show no signs of doing so whatsoever,” said Cohen.

Cohen says liberal policies are also why we see families and homes devastated in these fires.  Cohen says liberal policies consistently drive the cost of living higher and higher in big cities from San Francisco to Los Angeles to San Diego.  That forces middle class families into areas of the state far more prone to the fires.

According to Cohen, the Healthy Forest Initiative in the George W. Bush administration helped to move things in the right direction by allowing some thinning of forests on federal lands, but he says reforms need to go further.

“[They need to] make it easier for Forest Service personnel to thin trees that they know should be removed so that when the next wildfire comes along it will not enter a tinderbox and devastate thousands upon thousands of acres of land,” said Cohen.

As for the environmentalists, Cohen says they won’t allow any common sense intervention in the forests, despite the impact fires are having on the air and land.

“Their reaction is very simple.  Leave it alone.  Don’t harm nature.  Don’t interfere.  Let nature take its course.  That’s as far as they are willing to go.

“It’s an interesting way of looking at the world, in which you place a higher value on a nature that really doesn’t exist in a way in which they mean it at the expense of human beings who are caught up in the grotesque mismanagement of nature,” said Cohen.

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Progress for Imprisoned Pastor, GOP’s Popular Governors, Silly Straws

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome the news that American pastor Andrew Brunson was moved from a Turkish prison to house arrest, and they condemn the bogus allegations that Brunson provided aid for the failed coup.  They also welcome the news that the ten most popular governors in America are Republican— great news in a year when most governorships are on the ballot. And they condemn the insanity of Santa Barbara, California, threatening fines and jail time for restaurant servers handing out plastic drinking straws without being asked, but Jim also sees a fantastic business opportunity there.

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Dems Disown Feinstein, Putin Summit Disaster, Ocasio-Cortez Embarrassed

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America analyze the California Democratic Party’s decision to endorse California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s rival in the general election, Democratic state Sen. Kevin de Leon. They also criticize President Donald Trump for his inability to confront Russian president Vladimir Putin about multiple issues, especially election meddling, noting that the president seems more worried about defending his 2016 win than exposing the truth. And they laugh as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, stumbles her way through an explanation about why Israel is an occupying force on “Firing Line.” They also finally resolve the biggest question in film: “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?”

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California Bill Lets Foster Care Children Choose Transgender Treatment

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By: Joshua Paladino

A bill in the California State Legislature would mandate puberty-blocking drugs and sex change operations for transgender minors in the foster care system.

Assembly Bill 2119, the Foster Care Gender Affirming Health Care and Behavioral Health Services Act, advanced to the Senate Human Services Committee on Tuesday.

The bill bans counselors, parents, foster parents, and social workers from guiding children toward identification with their biological gender. The bill states, “A licensed professional, or any other individual, shall not subject a foster child or nonminor dependent to any treatment, intervention, or conduct that seeks to change the foster child’s or nonminor dependent gender identity.”

It mandates three broad plans of treatment for transgender or gender non-conforming children, including interventions to suppress the development of internal secondary sex characteristics, interventions to align the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity, and interventions to alleviate symptoms of clinically significant distress resulting from gender dysphoria.

The bill states that 12-year-old children “have established rights to privately seek and consent to outpatient mental health counseling and treatment.”

According to the bill’s sponsors, its purpose is to counteract the biased treatment that transgender and non-gender conforming children face.

The bill already succeeded in the lower chamber, passing on May 22 by a 46-22 vote.

 

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Trump’s Memorial Day Tweet, Media’s ‘Never Mind’ Moment, California Voter Mess

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America return with three crazy martinis.  First, they shake their heads as President Trump tweets that those who died for our country would be really proud of his economic record.  They also roll their eyes as liberal politicians and media figures express outrage over images of illegal immigrant children being confined to cages – until they learn the images are from 2014 during the Obama administration  and then delete their tweets.  And they react to California scrambling to find records for tens of thousands of voters who were mistakenly enrolled twice, all of this just a week before primary day in the state.

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Florida Senate Slugfest, Twitter CEO’s Real Agenda? Seeing Government as Parents

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America have fun with three different headlines, starting with the news that Florida GOP Gov. Rick Scott will run for U.S. Senate this year, possibly giving Republicans their best chance of winning that race.  They also scratch their heads as Twitter CEO and supposed free speech champion Jack Dorsey describes a Medium article as a “great read” after it calls for all of America to follow the progressive path of California, says that conservatism must be thoroughly defeated, and labels Republicans as “bad guys on the wrong side of history.”  And they fume after former First Lady Michelle Obama likens the presidencies of her husband and Donald Trump to parenting children.  They also get a kick out of Mrs. Obama saying we shouldn’t look to make someone president just because they give a good speech.

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Senate Dems on the Ropes, Sanctuary State Showdown, Let’s Try Socialism?

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome a new Axios/Survey Monkey poll showing five incumbent Senate Democrats losing to specific or unnamed Republicans right now and a few others barely ahead.  They also rip California for brazenly impeding efforts of federal immigration officials and wonder where all the liberal love for states’ rights was when Arizona wanted to enforce federal laws when the federal government refused to do it.  And they swat down a Washington Post columnist for suggesting the U.S. pursue a socialist system and dig deeper into why so many people are not satisfied with the way things are going right now.

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GOP Senate Hopeful Believes California Winnable

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Conventional wisdom suggests 2018 will be a good year for Democrats but one GOP candidate believes not only that Republicans can win but that he can win in California – one of the bluest states in the U.S.

John Estrada is challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is seeking a fifth full term and her sixth overall election to the U.S. Senate.  Estrada is a U.S. Navy veteran, a small business owner, and a decades-long activist in California Republican politics.

He ran twice for Congress in the 1990’s and once for lieutenant governor in 2014, bowing in the primary each time.

Estrada says his reasons for getting in the Senate race are simple.

“I care about America.  I want to help the America First agenda.  I have been in the military and I care about my fellow veterans and the people in the military that are trying to keep us safe,” said Estrada.

He says his Navy service showed him just how special the United States is.

“During that time, I got a chance to travel to a lot of foreign destinations which were pretty incredible.  I learned how great America is and how great it has to continue to be,” said Estrada.

There’s a reason that sounds similar to Make America Great Again.  Estrada is running as an unabashed pro-Trump Republican.

“I think Donald Trump has really put a strong message to America and the world that America needs to be first, so I will work with the president,” said Estrada.

Estrada is also clear about why he thinks Feinstein ought to lose her job.

“If somebody has been in office for 25 years and hasn’t done her job yet, I think it’s time to move on.  I think California and America needs a change,” said Estrada.

He points specifically to Feinstein’s work as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee and what he sees as her lack of effort into determining the role of the FBI during the 2016 campaign.

“I hold her as one of the responsible parties.  She isn’t overseeing the process of what’s going on with the FBI and why they’re going rogue on us,” he said.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in California by nearly a two-to-one margin.  On that same ballot, two Democrats faced off in the general election as a result of the state’s primary system that advances the top two vote-getters to the general election.

Since 2016, California effectively became a sanctuary state and passed laws making it a crime to call someone by the “wrong” gender pronouns while significantly lessening the penalties for knowingly infecting someone with HIV.  This year Democrats are pushing legislation to raise state taxes on corporations and jail waiters for giving plastic straws to customers without being asked.

So is winning in California beyond hope for Republicans?

“Not at all,” said Estrada, who believes he can win votes other Republicans cannot.

“I truly believe I have the ability to cross over party lines, get conservatives and independents and make it a very competitive race,” said Estrada.

Estrada says Republicans just need to address what really matters in California.

“I think (former House Speaker) Tip O’Neill said is greatly many years ago, and that’s that all politics is local.  What I have found is that the problems in California can be solved by the federal government,” said Estrada.

He says water access is a good example of this.

“We have a great opportunity to bring  sustainable, safe, clean, water for our residents.  Unfortunately, environmentalists have allowed so much of this fresh water to go into the Pacific Ocean and we keep losing opportunities to save that in water storage facilities,” said Estrada.

“With federal dollars, I think we can build enough water storage facilities to help everybody out, all water users,” said Estrada.

Estrada would also take aim at the Endangered Species Act, which he says California and the federal government are using to stifle economic development and even the construction of low-income housing, which he says is a major contributor to the growing problem of homelessness in the Golden State.

But while Estrada has issues he is most passionate about, he says his actions will be dictated by what the people of his state want from him.

“I will take my personal views, being a conservative and take a look, case by case, at how we can help the people of California, because really, it belongs to them.  It’s their state and I’ll be working for them,” said Estrada.

But he is quick to add that when he serves the people of California, he means the citizens of California.

“We have to help our citizens first.  America is a very generous nation.  When there’s disasters across the world, we’re there helping everybody, but there’s a lot of corrupt administrations around the world – a lot of dictators and a lot of corruption – and America’s got to lead,” said Estrada.

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