Amazon invites Ocasio-Cortez for tour, calls worker claims untrue

February 15, 2019
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior Amazon.com Inc executive on Friday disputed claims raised by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Amazon workers face “dehumanizing conditions” as being untrue and invited her to take a tour of company facilities.
Ocasio-Cortez, a newly elected progressive Democrat who was an outspoken critic of the plans to locate Amazon’s second headquarters in a New York City neighborhood near her congressional district, asked on Twitter if Amazon’s culture of “strict performance” is “why Amazon workers have to urinate in bottles & work while on food stamps to meet ‘targets?’ Performance shouldn’t come at the cost of dehumanizing conditions.”
She cited a September Newsweek story that raised those claims.
Dave Clark, Amazon’s senior vice president of worldwide operations, responded on Twitter that the claims “simply aren’t true. We are proud of our jobs with excellent pay ($15 min), benefits from day 1, & lots of other benefits like our Career Choice pre-paid educational programs.” He invited her to take a tour of Amazon’s operations.
A spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond to a request for comment.
Ocasio-Cortez was among progressive New York Democrats who had objected to the $2.8 billion in incentives from the city and New York state to woo Amazon to build a new headquarters in the city’s borough of Queens. Amazon abruptly canceled the plan on Thursday.
“When the community wanted to negotiate, Amazon said ‘all or nothing.’ They bailed when they didn’t get 100% of what they wanted,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Google came into NYC just fine. Amazon wanted to be Foxconn.”
Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Co won $4 billion in state and local incentives from Wisconsin in exchange for a promise to build a $10 billion development.
Earlier this month, Foxconn said it would still build a factory in Wisconsin even as it shifts more of the focus of the investment away from manufacturing. Reuters reported Foxconn was reconsidering making liquid crystal display panels and intended to hire mostly engineers and researchers there.

Conservative lawmakers praise the President’s decision to declare a National Emergency

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 10:27 AM PT — Friday, February 15, 2019

Top conservatives are praising the president’s decision to declare a National Emergency at the southern border.
Representative Mark Meadows tweeted Friday, saying he is seeing speculation Congress could override a presidential veto with GOP votes. However, he said that will not happen, because the votes aren’t there.

Given Congress will try to block this executive action, I'm seeing speculation Congress could override a POTUS veto w/ GOP votes. They will not. The votes will not be there. There is broad GOP + American support for POTUS taking legal, constitutional action to protect families.

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) February 15, 2019

Meadows also said there is broad Republican and American support for the president to take legal action to protect families.
Meanwhile Representative Jim Jordan also chimed in by simply tweeting out “of course it’s a national emergency.” He then listed reasons why, which included caravans and angel families losing loved ones.
The lawmaker also asked what will it take for the left to acknowledge the crisis at the border.

Of course it’s a national emergency.

-Largest fentanyl bust in history, enough to kill 57 million Americans
-The caravans keep coming
-Angel families losing loved ones to violent criminals
What will it take for the Left to acknowledge the crisis on our border? #DoWhatWeSaid
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 15, 2019

 

 

 

National Emergencies not unprecedented

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 1:32 PM PT — Friday, February 15, 2019

The first declaration under the National Emergencies Act of 1974 came during the Iran hostage crisis, which is a national emergency that is still active today. Former President Jimmy Carter blocked Iranian government property from entering the country, a move which has been renewed each year by all presidents since then.
“The steps I’ve taken today are those that are necessary now, other action may become necessary if these steps don’t produce the prompt release of the hostages,” President Carter stated the day he declared it.
President Trump has already issued three national emergency declarations during his tenure. The most prominent one is meant to punish foreign actors who interfere in U.S. elections. He’s also invoked his emergency powers to slap sanctions of human rights abusers around the world as well as on members of the Nicaraguan government amid corruption charges.
In his eight years office, former President Barack Obama declared 12 states of national emergency. These declarations touched on subjects from the H1N1 virus and blocking property transfers to people with connections to certain countries. Nearly all of his national emergencies are still active today.
Before that, former President George W. Bush declared 13 emergencies and former President Clinton declared 17 national emergencies, most of which are still active today.
In President Trump’s case, there’s two statutes that come to mind which allow the redirection of military construction funds. Questions remain as to whether building a border wall is actually a military construction project or whether the president can declare eminent domain over private property. However, even Democrat lawmakers have said he does, indeed, have the power to do so.
“Well unfortunately, the short answer is yeah, there is a provision in law that says the president can declare an emergency, its been done a number of times, but primarily its been done to build facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq,” stated Representative Adam Smith.
The problem for Democrats is many legal scholars aren’t sure who, if anyone, would have the legal standing to challenge such a declaration with a lawsuit.

House Democrats attempt to block president’s National Emergency declaration

 

OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:20 AM PT — Friday, February 15, 2019

Two Democrat representatives said they are co-sponsoring a bill to stop President Trump’s National Emergency declaration. The proposal by New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Texas congressman Joaqin Castro is an attempt to block the president’s move to secure additional border funding.
On Thursday, Castro called the declaration a “fake emergency,” saying he would be filing a joint-resolution under the National Emergency Act to terminate the declaration.
“There have been very critical comments that have been made by senators, including Republican senators, about the president’s ability and wisdom of declaring a National Emergency for this purpose,” he stated.
In a recent tweet, Ocasio-Cortez said she and Castro aren’t going to let the president declare an emergency without a fight.

.@JoaquinCastrotx and I aren’t going to let the President declare a fake national emergency without a fight. https://t.co/iPlcVVsm6U

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 15, 2019

The House would have to vote on the resolution before it headed to the Senate.
When the bill would be introduced is still unknown as Congress has already adjourned, and will be out next week for the President’s Day holiday.

Stupid Gun Control Cartoons

Riot breaks out at migrant shelter across border from Eagle Pass, Texas (OANN.Com)

Do Americans really want these kinds of people into our country?

 

Migrants clash with security agents at a provisional shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on Feb. 13, 2019.

Violence recently broke out at a migrant shelter located across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
About two dozen rioters attacked Mexican police on Wednesday after they broke through a security barrier at the shelter. They were throwing pipes, tables, and chairs at the officers.
This is the second riot to break out at the facility this week. The migrants said they are upset at policies, which bar them from leaving the shelter without a humanitarian visa approved by Mexico.
The migrants claim they just want to go into town to buy extra food, clothes and medical supplies when the shelter runs low.

“All we want to do is go into town on foot to buy something, but no, they won’t even let us do that. People have been waiting in line since 6:00 a.m. and nothing happens and its provoking these clashes.” — Joel Sanchez, Honduran migrant 

About 2,000 Central American migrants from the latest caravan are living in the shelter while they wait to have their asylum applications processed by the U.S.

Pelosi says a Democratic president could declare gun violence a national emergency

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Thursday theorized that if President Trump can declare a national emergency in order to bypass Congress to fund a border wall, there's no reason that a Democratic president in the future can't employ the same measure to deal with gun violence in the country.
Pelosi made the remarks during a press conference in the Capitol Thursday – the anniversary of the Parkland massacre in Florida that left 17 people dead.
"Let's talk about today: The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America," Pelosi said. "That's a national emergency. Why don't you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would. "But a Democratic president can do that."
Pelosi reportedly said she was not calling for Democrats to declare a national emergency.
HOUSE REPUBLICAN WORRIES TRUMP'S EMERGENCY DECLARATION COULD HELP FUTURE DEM PRESIDENT ENACT GREEN NEW DEAL
A source told Fox News late Thursday that Trump will declare a national emergency in order to fund his long-promised border wall that will enable his administration to move $8 billion from various federal agencies to fund the project.
"A Democratic president can declare emergencies, as well," Pelosi said. "So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans."

Dem presidential candidates act like they're in a high school election

Sen. Kamala Harris of California says she loved to smoke the Devil’s Lettuce in college, especially while jamming to Tupac and Snoop Doggy Dogg.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has little or no Native American ancestry, despite decades of claiming American Indian heritage for professional advantage, but she believes strongly in “the importance of lifting up and celebrating Native voices,” as she herself will tell you ad nauseam.
Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey wants you to adopt his faddish diet lest the world’s upwardly mobile hordes “destroy our planet” by eating meat.
MICHAEL KNOWLES: TRUMP AND THOSE SELF-OBSESSED, FRIVOLOUS DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMEN
And when former U.S. House member and defeated Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke isn’t skateboarding through fast food parking lots, he passes his unemployed hours writing angsty public diary entries. He’s “been stuck lately,” you see, “in and out of a funk.”
These puerile Democratic politicians appear more inclined to run for president of their high school class than president of the United States. Yet Harris, Warren and Booker have announced their candidacies for the White House, while O’Rourke continues to ponder whether to run.
Has Harris ever tried marijuana? Her “memories” of smoking pot include listening to Tupac and Snoop while studying at Howard University, where she graduated in 1986 – five and seven years, respectively, before Tupac and Snoop released their debut albums.
More likely, the tough-minded Harris spent her years at Howard listening to Brahms and studying for law school. But her campaign spends precious little time advertising the candidate’s nearly three-decade career as a prosecutor, preferring to focus instead on “mood mixes” and marijuana.
Racial fraud aside, Warren could make a substantive case for her presidential qualifications. She was a tenured professor at two of the most prestigious law schools in the country. And she has influenced significant matters of public policy, from the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the founding of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Yet instead of launching her presidential bid on her progressive policy accomplishments, Warren chose release a DNA test that suggested she might be 1/1,024th Native American.
Booker, a Rhodes scholar educated at some of the world’s finest universities, chose to make his opening argument for office not on his accomplishments as mayor of Newark or senator from New Jersey, but rather through a series of carefully choreographed temper tantrums in which he “cried tears of rage” and compared himself to Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator from the late Roman Republic.
Beto O’Rourke served in Congress and on the El Paso City Council for a dozen years before trying and failing to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. Has he even once referred to his actual record in elected office in his quest for national office?
A bug and feature of democracy is that the people get what they want. Our elected officials reflect the people who put them in office.
For Democrats seeking the 2020 presidential nomination, that means even potentially substantive candidates must abase themselves to appeal to their childish primary base.
Former prosecutor Harris needs the support of a party that complains about law enforcement in our cities and at our border.
Booker must energize leftists who increasingly reject factual correctness – to borrow a phrase from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. – for subjective feeling and “lived experience.”
Warren needs to attract primary voters in the throes of intersectional identity politics.
Beto O’Rourke – whose real name is Robert Francis O’Rourke – must appeal to voters at a time when women and minority candidates are enjoying great popularity.
So the candidates try on new identities and talk like schoolchildren about their favorite music, diets, drugs and feelings.
The sophomoric contest is only a prelude to the real battle. Whoever wins the Democratic presidential nomination is expected to face President Trump in November 2020.
The presidential nominees will debate economic growth, border security, trade, war, late-term abortion and other issues. Unfortunately for the eventual Democratic nominee – and to the incumbent’s advantage – general elections are no child’s play.