Briefs are posted weekday mornings, M-F

The family of a Milwaukee police officer fatally shot in a gun battle with a robbery suspect praised him as they recalled him at his funeral Monday.

“I miss you,” Peter Jerving’s brother, Drew, said during the funeral at Elmbrook Church in Brookfield. “And for all of those who now stand watch on Earth in your place, I salute you.”

The 37-year-old officer was fatally shot in an exchange of gunfire early Feb. 7. The suspect also died from a gunshot wound, police said.

The officer’s mother asked God to bless Milwaukee police officers and their families and asked them to forgive the man who killed her son.

“I ask for you to wipe away any bitterness they may have in their hearts toward the young man that cut down Peter,” Patty Jerving said. “I also ask for you to please bless the family of that young man and especially his mother. She also lost a son on Feb. 7. Please, please help them to see that Peter was not their enemy, nor am I.”

Jerving’s father, Doug, told officers to grieve his son, “but then when your grieving is over, get up, wash your face and put on your uniform of your chosen profession.”

Miles of police vehicles joined the funeral procession for Jerving to his burial site in Wisconsin Memorial Park.

On the day of the shooting, Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said the suspect ignored officers’ commands and fled on foot after they arrived at the robbery scene about 1:15 a.m. on the city’s south side. Jerving then caught up with the suspect, a struggle ensued and both men fired their weapons.

Jerving, died at a hospital, Norman said.

Jerving had four years of experience with the Milwaukee Police Department, the chief said.

The suspect, 19-year-old Terrell Thompson, died at the scene.

—Wisconsin AP

Wisconsin taxpayers would provide $290 million for long-term improvements the Milwaukee Brewers say are needed at American Family Field under a new plan announced Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.

That provision will be part of Evers 2023-’25 state budget proposal, which taps the current state surplus of $6.6 billion.

In return, the Brewers would extend their current ballpark lease, which could expire by the end of 2030, and agree to stay in Milwaukee through 2043.

That’s the gist of a pending agreement between the baseball club and the Evers administration. It needs approval from Republicans who control the state Legislature − and who’ve expressed skepticism about such funding plans.

Evers, in a statement, called it a historic opportunity “to keep Major League Baseball here in Milwaukee for another 20 years. “

That helps maintain a business that creates a large number of jobs and generates a significant amount of tax revenue for Wisconsin, he said.

State income and sales taxes generated by the ball club would amount to an estimated $400 million through 2043, when the Brewers’ extended lease would end.

That means the $290 million spent by the state would be paid off within an estimated 11 to 14 years.

Also, by not borrowing the money, the state is saving an estimated $200 million in interest expenses, Evers said.

The Brewers would agree to not move the team to another city during that 20-year extended lease.

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin drivers would be automatically registered to vote under a proposal from Gov. Tony Evers that has been rejected before by Republicans writing the state budget.

The measure would be part of a package of policy changes for election administration and voting that includes some he has unsuccessfully proposed in previous budget plans, including expanding early voting and allowing clerks to count absentee ballots before election day — a measure that has bipartisan support and would provide faster election results in communities like Milwaukee that use a single location to count absentee ballots.

The timeframe a Wisconsin resident must live at an address in order to vote in its assigned precinct would be shortened under Evers’ proposal, from 28 days to 10 days — also an idea Evers proposed in his last budget that was deleted by Republican lawmakers.

Evers is releasing details of his 2023-25 state budget proposal ahead of a primetime speech he will make from the Wisconsin State Capitol on Wednesday sharing his ideas for the two-year spending plan.

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

When asked about White House criticism of his views on Social Security, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) said that Social Security is a legal Ponzi scheme but he never wanted “to cut it or end it.” He added that the federal government’s “out of control debt and deficit spending” are hurting the program.

On Fox Business Tonight, Feb. 10, co-host Elizabeth MacDonald asked Senator Johnson, “The White House is now attacking you for saying Social Security should be privatized. We had showed video of then-Senator Biden since 1975, demanding legislation to cut Social Security, Medicare, even VA benefits. The White House says you called Social Security a “legal Ponzi scheme.” What’s your reaction?”

Johnson replied, “Well, first of all, that’s true. I did call Social Security a legal Ponzi scheme, because it is. I’ve never talked about privatizing it. I’ve never said I wanted to cut it or end it or put it on the chopping block.”

“What I have said is the greatest threat to Social Security is our out of control debt and deficit spending,” added Johnson. “That is what we need to get under control and I have talked about what we ought to do is put everything together on the budget so we can start prioritizing spending and, of course, Social Security spending, Medicare, Medicaid, VA spending, Defense spending would be top priorities.”

“So we’ve got to get spending under control,” said Johnson. “We have to reduce deficits, we have to take our debt seriously. And, quite honestly, we’ve got to be looking at everything and start prioritizing spending.”

—CNS News

This is not the time to relax. Here is an early warning for the GOP: Today is the day you must begin securing 2024’s election. Not a year from now. Not six months from now. Not next week. Today. Make voting much, much harder for everyone.

Not nearly enough was done by Americans to secure the midterms. We barely took the House and came this close > < to losing it. Why? Because we didn’t take Democrat cheating seriously enough to do anything about it years ago or even in 2016. We were vocal, yes, but did we actually do anything?

GOP voters must infiltrate every election office in the country — legally. We must clean the voter rolls of dead people. “Voters” who live at addresses that are really vacant lots should not be allowed to vote mail-in or in person, which means addresses must be validated. Voter integrity must take priority before 2024 rolls around.

Vote harvesting must end. No one should be permitted to submit ballots in any other person’s name. Thousands of “harvested” ballots were submitted by live people on behalf of dead ones, people who were coerced into voting a certain way, and people who were paid for their Democrat votes. We learned via Dinesh D’Souza’s expose, 2000 Mules, that drop boxes were being stuffed with phony ballots to a degree that would make Chicago blush.

Suspect machines and printers were used in Arizona, no doubt tampered with so that wait times to “fix” the machines were often several hours long, disallowing a voter to vote. In this way, votes were suppressed. Kari Lake should have won her election, but her voters were turned away and told to go to another precinct sometimes hours away and with long waits once again. This was deliberate and obvious fraud in only her heavily Republican county. All voting machines should be tested a week before the elections, again on voting day before polls open, and any anomalies fixed before polls open.

Republicans are only now learning that their “polite” way of doing politics only emboldens Democrat cheaters because the latter don’t believe we are serious opponents. Disabusing them of this notion will be hard, but with the feisty new House members, maybe they will make the difference.

I feel obliged to put to rest the absurd notion of making voting easier. American citizenship is a pearl of great price. Its voting privilege should be closely guarded. It should not be farmed out to mail-in ballots where people who don’t exist, people who are not citizens, imprisoned felons, and foreign nationals, all of whom seem eager to vote, can. Worse, they are allowed to vote. Voting in America should be made harder, not easier. It should be mandatory that:

• Voting should be on a single day and in person

• Photo ID must be required to vote

• Signature and address must be checked against a database. If the address is not valid, no vote.

• Mail in ballots should be permitted only for the disabled, those overseas, and the military. Proof of any of those things must be required before sending a ballot.

• Oversight at every polling place by registered overseers of both parties should be zealously administered.

• Paper ballots; we know enough now to realize that electronic voting presents myriad validation problems and in fact, flips votes from Republican to Democrat if so programmed, which is not hard for any 14-year-old miscreant to do. This was unearthed in the last election by hundreds of disenfranchised voters who were told to “file a form.”

• No votes will be counted after midnight of election day, and no halting or slowing of the vote count for any reason other than an H-bomb shall take place.

• In the event that mail-in voting doesn’t go away, the GOP should mobilize a D-Day-sized operation to use mail-ins to their advantage. They had better learn how now, not six months from now.

They know they can walk all over us. Make no mistake that the Left is at this moment thinking up new ways to queer 2024, regardless if Trump runs or not.

The notoriously procrastinating GOP needs to get off its knees and off its collective ass. We need the blood lust to win what Democrats already have – passion. We must act today or be ridiculed once again by our own people, who are already gagging on Republican ineffectualness. We are being called “The Stupid Party” by our enemies. Worse, our own people are now doing so.

America deserves better.

—M.B. Mathews writing on The American Thinker

Here we are again with the 2024 presidential race kicking into low gear, and the RINOs remain convinced that they can manipulate the Republican electorate into doing their bidding. Paul Ryan is on a mission to tell anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot of his nasal scoldings that Donald Trump is too old, too toxic, too much of a loser to be the Republicans’ nominee again. If anyone knows anything about being a toxic loser, it is surely Paul Ryan; it took Donald Trump to actually carry the state of Wisconsin for Republicans in 2016, after native son Ryan was embarrassingly rejected by his neighbors four years earlier. (Is that why Ryan hightailed it to C-suite offices in New York City, where he could be around like-minded friends?)

As for being too old, well, I have my doubts that P90X Paul could manage 90-minute speeches in the baking sun wearing a full suit as effortlessly as President Trump, but campaign season is just heating up. There will be no dearth of opportunities for Americans to judge for themselves who is “low energy” and who is not. Biden, for instance, is low-energy. That wretched excuse for a man looks like an assortment of old twigs that would struggle to keep a fire going. The doddering, corrupt fool cannot distinguish his life’s Jenga tower of lies from the hallucinations that plague him. Biden is who Paul Ryan pretends Trump to be. Trump, on the other hand, pretends to be no one — he is just himself — and Paul Ryan still fails to understand why voters find that quality so refreshing.

So Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney hate Donald Trump. Turtle Mcconnell and “Turd Blossom” Rove hate Donald Trump. Almost all of the Republicans in the U.S. Senate and probably two-thirds of the Republicans in the U.S. House hate Donald Trump. Every corporate board member and Wall Street chieftain committed to draining middle-class Americans’ pockets dry while singing sweet love songs to globalism’s crony capitalism all hate Donald Trump.

Mexican president AMLO, the drug cartels and sex-traffickers who control the Southern border, the cheap labor–loving U.S. Chamber of Commerce committed to sticking it to America’s blue-collar workforce, and the United Nations–World Economic Forum–U.S. Uniparty hydra-headed monster pushing for unlimited illegal immigration across America hate Donald Trump. Controlled opposition Fox News, taxpayer-funded PBS, the Sulzberger family’s New York Times, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, and all the Big Tech monopolists who conspire with the federal government to censor Americans and manipulate public opinion hate Donald Trump.

The millions of unelected bureaucratic agents of the permanent Deep State all hate Donald Trump. The Intelligence Community and Department of (in)Justice (any DOJ that persecutes America-loving J6 protesters as “terrorists” and “insurrectionists” is antithetical to notions of justice), which went out of their way to frame the America First president as a Russian spy, criminal, and traitor, definitely hate Donald Trump. America’s enemies in China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and wherever communism has reared its ugly head hate Donald Trump.

And I look at this magnificent collection of “elite” hatred toward President Trump, and I think, “My goodness, this man must be doing something right.”

When you consider that he spent four years doing everything he could to increase American prosperity, self-respect, and security while being constantly hounded by the entirety of the federal government — all while taking no salary for his troubles — it is difficult to name another American politician who has given so much of himself for so little in return. For his efforts, worms like Romney, Ryan, Rove, McConnell, and all the rest could never even muster a simple “thank you.”

All of this raises the question: why on Earth would those even slightly tainted by the reek of RINO stench think Republican voters will forget the last fifteen years of betrayals and do as they say?

Who would possibly want an endorsement from Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Rupert Murdoch…to be honest, those types of endorsements are now the “kiss of death.” That is why I like the guy with all the enemies — because he earned their ire well.

—Columnist J.B. Shurk

The Department of Defense has been releasing photos since last week of the military operation to recover the Chinese Communist Party’s spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

Initial recovery operations began on February 5, after the Air Force was finally given clearance to shoot it down. The balloon was able to fly over the country after it became publicly known when it was spotted by civilians in Montana. Since the balloon was spotted and shot down, there have been three other aerial objects that have penetrated U.S. and Canadian airspace. They have been shot down by the U.S. Air Force.

—Townhall

Every politician, from then President Donald Trump on down to some backbench Member of Congress no one has ever heard of talked tough about China and promised to move Heaven and Earth to bring at least critical components of our supply chain back home.

And then people moved on, as we do. Attentions shifted to the more immediate again; the more personal. We adapted. And the political class reverted to doing what they do best: nothing.

China caused COVID. Whether it was on purpose or by accident doesn’t really matter – do you care if the person who burned down your house was vindictive or indifferent when you’re standing among the embers? There’s actually a decent chance that person would apologize in the moment, even if their sincerity would be doubtful. China won’t even consider it, because even if it was an accident (and they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt), they don’t give a damn.

Why won’t our elected officials stand up to that and incentivize as many businesses as humanly possible to come back? Sure, we can’t compete with the slave labor costs China has, but we sure as hell can cut red tape and regulations to compete at the bottom line. Shipping something halfway around the world ain’t free, making it here eliminates all costs involved in that.

But they don’t even try.

—Columnist Derek Hunter

Among the policy catastrophes inflicted on Americans by the Biden administration, the rampant inflation of the last two years is the most devastating because its damaging effects are felt across the entire society. Yet a new study from the Media Research Center finds the overwhelming majority (84%) of TV news coverage of this inflation disaster failed to mention President Biden or his administration — and when reporters did discuss the President, they mostly depicted him as working to solve the problem, rather than blaming him for causing it.

All three evening newscasts spent considerable airtime documenting the distress of American consumers…combined, that’s a hefty 542 minutes of airtime, an average of about an hour every month since last spring. But the networks rarely connected the widespread misery to the President and his policies. Out of the 542 minutes of coverage we documented, nearly 84 percent (454 minutes) omitted any reference to the Biden administration. So while there was a lot of coverage of consumers being harmed by inflation, there was far less scrutiny of the leaders responsible for it.

—Newsbusters

Cue the confetti. The Kansas City Chiefs aren’t the only ones with something to celebrate after Sunday night’s victory over the Philadelphia Eagles during Super Bowl LVII.

The telecast, which was broadcast on Fox and also aired on digital platforms, averaged 113 million viewers, according to early Nielsen data. That makes it the most-watched Super Bowl in six years, since 2017’s Patriots vs. Falcons matchup, which also aired on Fox.

The audience shot up to 118.7M viewers during Rihanna‘s Super Bowl Halftime Show, which is the most-watched halftime show since Katy Perry’s performance in 2015 and second most-watched Super Bowl halftime performance on record.

—The website Deadline

Strong or mild, full-bodied or mellow, white or yellow. Cheese is an iconic food that can be found in almost every culture across the globe.

It’s undeniably tasty and goes well with almost everything, but for years, cheese was thought to be the mortal enemy of cardiologists the world over.

But is it? Research conducted over the last few years has found cheese to be much healthier than originally thought.

Cheese in general, “is high in polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are essential fatty acids,” Dr. Mark Johnson, assistant director of the Center for Dairy Research, said in an interview with The Epoch Times. “They do have some of the other fats but they’re high in the good fats.”

Which cheese is “healthiest” will depend on an individual’s definition of healthy and what their health and wellness goals are.

Cheese with fewer calories and less salt

For people who are looking for cheese with fewer calories and less salt, consider softer white cheeses like mozzarella or cottage cheese, which boast a calorie count of around 85 per 1-ounce serving. These options are also lower in sodium, which can be important for those with high blood pressure.

Goat cheese can be low in calories, but watch out as some goat cheese will have added flavors that come with added calories.

Feta cheese has a similar profile and calorie count, but this cheese, which can be made from goat’s or sheep’s milk, is usually high in sodium thanks to its brine.

Cheese with dense nutrients

But what about those who are trying to gain weight, like those with chronic illnesses or the elderly?

According to Johnson, cheese is a great way for these people to get the nutrients they need.

“Ten pounds of milk makes one pound of cheese. I doubt anyone is going to drink 10 pounds of milk in a day, but someone could eat half a pound of cheese in a day,” he said.

“Some cheeses, like Swiss cheese, have a high amount of vitamin B12—it’s produced by the bacteria in the cheese.”

Cheeses that are nutrient or calorie dense include ricotta and blue cheese.

Ricotta cheese contains whey, a byproduct of the cheese-making process that’s famous for being high in protein. Blue cheese is packed with calcium, a key ingredient in bone health

—The Epoch Times

A German newspaper critic had animal feces smeared on her face in the city of Hannover by a ballet director who apparently took offense at a review she wrote.

The Hannover state opera house apologized for the incident and said Monday that it was suspending ballet director Marco Goecke with immediate effect.

The daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a furious Goecke approached its dance critic, Wiebke Huester, during the interval of a premiere at Hannover’s opera house on Saturday and asked what she was doing there. It said that the two didn’t know each other personally.

The newspaper said that Goecke, who apparently felt provoked by a recent review she wrote of a production he staged in the Dutch seat of government, The Hague, threatened to ban her from the ballet and accused her of being responsible for people canceling season tickets in Hannover.

He then pulled out a paper bag with animal feces and smeared her face with the contents before making off through a packed theater foyer, the newspaper said. Huester identified the substance as dog feces and said she had filed a criminal complaint, German news agency dpa reported.

In a statement on its website, the opera house said Huester’s “personal integrity” was violated “in an unspeakable way.” It said that it contacted her immediately after the incident to apologize.

The German journalists’ association DJV denounced the attack.

“An artist must tolerate criticism, even if it seems exaggerated,” the union’s regional head in Lower Saxony state, Frank Rieger, said. “Whoever reacts violently to criticism is unacceptable. The attack on the … journalist is also an attack on press freedom.”

—The Associated Press

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY – In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell applied for a patent for the telephone.