Liberalism, or progressivism, is a wide one-way road that leads to destruction.  Gas prices are high* because liberals are opposed to every practical source of energy,* including offshore oil drilling* and oil production in Alaska.*  Electricity is expensive because liberals are engaged in a war on coal.*  It's nearly impossible to run a business because of all the red tape generated by the EPA, IRS, ADA, EEOC, NLRB, and of course, Obamacare.  New York City has bedbugs because liberals got DDT banned in the 1970's.*  Unemployment is high because the minimum wage is too high,* and because it's easier just to live on food stamps and "disability" checks.*  Millions of children have never met their fathers, because the welfare state rewards illegitimacy.*  Many others have been abandoned* because of the belief that a baby is just a growth or piece of tissue that's part of a woman's body, which she can dispose of as she pleases.*  Over 54 million people have been killed (so far) because of that kind of thinking.*  That's why the Social Security ponzi scheme is falling apart — there are fewer young workers.*  Drunkenness and gluttony are now considered diseases instead of being evidence of bad decisions, because political correctness* has done away with stigma.*  The public schools are mass-producing dimwits who don't speak intelligible English*, can't write a coherent paragraph, don't know American history, don't know the difference between facts and opinions, can't make change without a cash register, and can't multiply or divide without a calculator.*  They are being taught that styrofoam, oil, guns and Christianity are bad,* but animal rights,* car pooling* and Islam* are good.  (Don't bother to bring your lunch to school.*  You can eat out of Big Brother's hand.*)  Billions of dollars are being wasted on solar panels* and windmills,* because of a baseless fear of "global warming"* — even though global warming stopped, all by itself, before the end of the 20th century.*.  The goal of progressivism is the abandonment and destruction of traditions, rules, standards, conventional wisdom, common sense and common knowledge.
This is a copyrighted original compilation, © 2020 by Andrew K. Dart

One glaring example of the Democrats' impact is the over-abundance of homeless bums in big cities, especially on the west coast.

And you would already know all this, except that the so-called news media are now just producing infomercials for big government.*  America is being destroyed from within (much like Detroit or California) by left-wing tax-and-spend socialist Democrats, and here are the results:

Overview articles:

(Scroll down for timely news, or click here.)

I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.  Here are some important things that I didn't know five years ago or now.
  •   There actually is a Deep State, and those who constitute it really do not honor the election results or the will of the people.
  •   There really appear to be lawless elements within the upper echelons of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who are not accountable for their crimes and are thus above the law.
  •   The fourth branch of government, the bureaucracy, really is unaccountable to the "unwashed masses."
  •   Many of our top military command, along with many in the military-industrial complex, don't always hate wars.  There's a lot of money and many promotions to be made during a time of war.  The last four years saw no new wars and even troops coming home.  For some, that is bad for business.
  •   Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm are no longer works of fiction, but prophecies.
  •   George Orwell was righter than Nostradamus.
  •   The news media centers of New York City and Washington, D.C. are not neutral arbitrators of the truth; rather, they uncomfortably resemble TASS and Pravda from the Soviet Union days.
  •   The old robber barons like Rockefeller, Carnegie, and J.P. Morgan are starting to look a whole lot better compared to the new robber barons like Dorsey, Zuckerberg, and Bezos.
  •   The United States Supreme Court would actually refuse to hear a legitimate case because it was frightened of violence.
  •   The left insists on conflating and equating evangelical Christians with White supremacists.  This should terrify the Christian community.
  •   Words such as mom, dad, aunt, uncle, brother, and sister are now not words of love and respect, but considered politically incorrect verbiage in Congress.
  •   Censorship, the cancel culture, and becoming a nonperson come from the left, not the right.
  •   The left, not the right, actually is going to try to deny citizens' rights afforded to all in the Bill of Rights.
  •   Violence from the left is regarded as free speech and noble, while violence from the right is classified as sedition and felonious by powerful institutions.
  •   It really is not Republicans vs. Democrats, but globalists vs. nationalists.
  •   The new McCarthyism, blacklists, history re-writers, and re-education camps are coming from the left, not the right.
  •   Fences and barriers are a good thing for our nation's capital but somehow a bad thing for our nation's borders.
  •   Our Founding Fathers of yesteryear would be called "domestic terrorists" by some today.
  •   Presidential elections really can be stolen by corrupting just a handful of precincts in just a handful of states.
  •   Calling into question the validity of the 2016 presidential election is patriotic, while calling into question the validity of the 2020 presidential election is treasonous.

The Time for Talking with the Left is Long, Long Past.  Conservatives must accept this hard reality and avoid the aforementioned instinctive, very human but in this case deadly habit:  projection. [...] Their no-holds-barred attitude is apparent to all with eyes to see.  They have
  •   continually attacked us traditionalists and fomented unrest at our political events while accusing us of authoring violence;
  •   visited career and reputational destruction upon those who dare speak unfashionable truths while accusing those truth-tellers of intolerance;
  •   used government agencies such as the IRS and FBI to persecute us while accusing us of endangering the republic;
  •   played the identity politics card and demonized whites while accusing conservatives of being divisive, racist and bigoted;
  •   conspired with foreign powers to undermine our nation while accusing us of treasonous behavior;
  •   enabled China, an imperialistic foe and a clear and present danger to our country;
  •   endeavored to steal an election after having wrongly accused conservatives of thus doing in 2016;
  •   abetted an invasion of our nation in order to raise an alien electoral army that can help them seize power;
  •   mismanaged a pandemic and caused death while using it as a pretext for stripping our liberties, "locking down" the country and destroying people's livelihoods;
  •   corrupted our children with perversion and scarred their bodies, minds and souls;
  •   facilitated the murder of the unborn while accusing us of indifference to the vulnerable;
  •   prosecuted conservatives on trumped up charges while shielding their co-ideologists from justice;
  •   called truth "hateful" or "misinformation" and censored it via Big Tech while presenting convenient lies as "fact";
  •   encouraged violent mobs to create mayhem and attempted to strip the imperiled of the capacity for self-defense while sometimes being protected themselves by armed details;
  •   attacked our history and heroes and destroyed our cultural heritage while effecting their own "Year Zero," dystopian transformation;
  •   indoctrinated the young in schools to transform them into foot soldiers in the leftist campaign of civilizational rape;
  •   attacked our nation's foundational faith, Christianity, while spreading corruptive moral relativism and destructive theologies; and
  •   degraded society with perverted science while accusing us of scientific obscurantism.

Revolution 2020.  [Scroll down]  The Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v.  Board of Education, which outlawed state-directed segregation, also gave impetus to all manner of efforts to re-form society by legal-administrative force.  The decision itself eliminated any chance that this could be done in a disinterested manner.  It was not based on the plain, unequivocal meaning of the 14th Amendment's "equal protection of the laws."  Back in 1896, Justice John Marshall Harlan had dissented from Plessy, arguing that any state establishment of racial preference whatever, regardless of its character or intention, violates those words.  But Thurgood Marshall based his decision on "science" — that is, on the variable opinions of the credentialed class.  A sociologist by the name of Kenneth Clark claimed he had proven that Negro children could feel and learn normally only in a racially mixed environment.  (The "black is beautiful" movement began countering this immediately.)  Quickly, "scientific" conventional wisdom made "benign" or "remedial discrimination" by race official U.S. government policy.  The Brown decision's reliance on "science" also confused legally established segregation with the segregation that results from personal choices.  This confusion was the basis for Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in "public accommodations" on the basis of race.  Thenceforth, Civil rights law was no longer about removing legal barriers to personal choices.  It had begun forcing personal choices.  The Supreme Court's approval of the law as a mere regulation of interstate commerce was thin pretense.  The Act turned out to be the little law that ate the Constitution and poisoned American society.  It was passed primarily by Republican votes.  Democrats, seeing the empowerment of a historic Republican constituency in the South as potential disaster, scrambled to avert it by out-pandering Republicans, while describing any reticence on their part as racial animosity and ascribing whatever ailed Negroes to the Republicans' racism.  Quickly, the dynamics of politics turned "civil rights" into a ruinous socioeconomic scam.

America needs a New Declaration of Equal Justice under the Law.  What has been allowed to grow in the American cultural and political petri dish over the last two generations is a mixture whose contagious influence is as harmful as it is riddled with absurdities.  A partial list would include: an unequal two-tiered justice system; open borders; preferential treatment of illegal aliens over American citizens; the dominance of political correctness and its de facto censorship of free expression; fake news; rewriting history; the 1619 project; renaming Columbus Day; the abolition of traditions of every size and shape; destruction of American historical monuments; trampling the American flag and other symbols of democracy; the eradication of family values while celebrating and elevating relationships counterproductive to procreation — an imperative for any civilization that wants to survive; election fraud and dismantlement of the electoral process; an attempted coup that would have nullified the Constitution and the peoples' sovereignty; a baseless and wasteful impeachment; the disgraceful character assassination of nominees to the Supreme Court; the pervasive infiltration of education with academics hostile to America; the adoption safe spaces and the prohibition of trigger words on college campuses; union control and influence on public school educational curricula whose net effect dumbs down students and often paints America as the great villain.

Resisting the Totalitarian Power of Politicization.  [Scroll down]  Consider a schoolteacher who will not bow to the ugly utilitarian aims of the Common Core, but who teaches great poetry for its own sake.  The automatism of her fellow teachers and her superiors will move to crush her.  Consider the secretary who declines to post a rainbow flag on the wall beside her.  The machine lurches into action.  Consider the curator of a small museum, who exhibits paintings he believes are beautiful and powerful, without regard to the sex or the race of the painters.  Juggernaut comes a-rolling.  The system is perpetually hungry.  It must be so because lies evacuate the soul.  The more you feed, the emptier and hungrier you become.  To the totalitarian mind, all things must be politicized; no region of life may remain untouched, unabsorbed, undevoured.  Choirs, knitting groups, groceries, elementary schools, day-care centers, libraries, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, congregations, bowling leagues, fast-food joints, department stores, florist shops, delicatessens, marriages, flirtation, love poetry — all must go down the vast assimilating gullet of Jabba the State, who belches up emptiness and rages for more.

Crash and Bernie.  The Democrat list of incompetence, just in the past 12 years, is a long and distinguished one.
  •   Cash for clunkers
  •   Obamacare
  •   The Obama care website
  •   Obama's EPA turning rivers orange in Colorado
  •   Sanctuary cities
  •   Allowing people to defecate on the street
  •   Allowing people to do drugs on the street
  •   Mismanagement of Forests
  •   Mismanagement of water
  •   Transvestites entertaining children in public libraries
  •   Impeachment without a crime

The Democratic Descent into Madness:  Super Tuesday Edition.  The Democratic Party [...] has pushed some of the worst ideas and most destructive policies ever seen, including its defense of slavery and the Confederacy during the Civil War; the creation of the KKK to harass and kill former slaves; the enactment of an intricate web of laws throughout the South to prevent former slaves and their descendants from exercising their full rights as citizens; calling in armed soldiers to prevent black kids from attending state college; using "progressive" policies to destroy great cities across the country (Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, and San Francisco among them); passing off a serial sexual predator as a champion defender of women; attempting to destroy the U.S. healthcare industry while lying through their teeth about it; nominating Hillary Clinton as its candidate for President; using the power of the federal government to spy on the rival party's presidential candidate; and Chuck Schumer. [...] This is a party that needs to be punished.  And the only way to punish a political party is to take away as much of its power as possible.

Crash and Bernie.  Democrats propose solutions to 'problems that don't or rarely exist' and their results are an embarrassment — many times causing problems that never existed in the first place.  The Democrat list of incompetence — just in the past 12 years — is a long and distinguished one.
  •   Cash for clunkers
  •   Obamacare
  •   The Obama care website
  •   Obama's EPA turning rivers orange in Colorado
  •   Sanctuary cities
  •   Allowing people to defecate on the street
  •   Allowing people to do drugs on the street
  •   Mismanagement of Forests
  •   Mismanagement of water
  •   Transvestites entertaining children in public libraries
  •   Impeachment without a crime [...]

Why Are Liberal Cities Such a Mess?  Many major U.S. cities run by liberal Democrats are in rough shape.  They are afflicted by the problems of homelessness, violent crime, gangs, and unemployment to a far greater degree than the country as a whole.  Liberal cities are governed by the guiding tenets of softness, misplaced "compassion," and individual unaccountability.  Examples include:
  •   Hands-off policing style (NYC has long since abandoned the highly successful stop-and-frisk practices of the Giuliani years that led to low street crime).
  •   Sanctuary cities, which give rise to higher incidents of crime, poverty, unemployment, and the wasting of taxpayer-funded public resources because of the undocumented population's draining effect on the community.
  •   The inexplicable decision of cities like Boston to no longer prosecute crimes such as shoplifting and breaking and entering, leading to urban stores not being able to remain open and be profitable (thus denying the community of a valuable resource).
  •   Widespread locally approved abuse of the SNAP/EBT program, allowing its acceptance for alcohol and other nonessential items.
  •   Explicit sanctioning of sleeping on the street or other common public areas and unrestricted public loitering.
Liberal policies have worked almost perfectly to degrade the quality of inner-city life for their residents to the point of abject unacceptability.

In the age of leftism:
  Canada elects a substitute drama teacher for prime minister.
  Calling someone an "illegal alien" (a legal term), carries a fine of up to $250,000.
  Teachers are required to present LGBT content to junior high school kids.
  Illegal aliens can obtain driver's licenses.
  A sharia law Islamist who married her brother to circumvent American laws is now an American congresswoman.
  A woman who fabricated a lie to gain entry to Harvard is at the top of the Democratic presidential candidacy polls.
  A man who endorsed the American Communist Party is running for president of the United States.
  In a time of surging stocks, record employment, record female work participation, and economic prosperity in the most capitalist country in the world, capitalism is scorned.

Thread Reader:  On Why Things Are So Screwed Up.  The Left (manifested by the Democrat Party) have effectively removed God from the public square and created the modern secular state with the following clichéd characteristics:
    a.  Anything goes.
    b.  Everything is relative.
    c.  Diversity over assimilation.
    d.  Rule of men replaces rule of law.
    e. [Ignore] the Constitution.
The results are the symptoms of a sick society that we observe every single day; here a just a few of them:
  •   Arbitrary law enforcement in service of the political class (hello, Jeffrey Epstein!)
  •   Open borders and the attendant crime and disease (thanks, Democrats!)
  •   Legacy media gone bonkers (anti-Trump #FakeNews 24x7)
  •   A thoroughly corrupted political class (two sides of the same coin)
  •   Hollywood producing filth (what does "R" mean anymore?)
  •   Perversion and immorality condoned (flagrant public LGBTQ demonstrations)
  •   Federal agencies weaponized against political enemies (the IRS, FBI, DoJ, EPA, etc.)
  •   Abrogation of oaths of office (the Obama regime's seditious cabal at DoJ, FBI, State Dept, CIA, etc.)
  •   Hyper-politicized public education (John Dewey's dream brought to life by Common Core)
  •   Hyper-politicized sports (think about soccer and the USWNT!)

Future Belongs to Those Who Oppose Drag Queen Story Hours.  A new kind of debate is now raging inside conservativism.  In times past, we discussed the strategic and tactical options by which we might work toward common goals inside the existing political framework.  Today, the framework itself is in question.  What is being discussed is the classical liberal foundation of the American political system.  Indeed, both left and right have worked inside this framework for much of our nation's history.  Rarely have we faced such a challenge to the way America resolves its problems.  However, liberalism is in crisis.  Our society is in shambles and drifting steadily leftward.  The most outlandish behaviors — political correctness, transgenderism and Satanism — are being mainstreamed.

Fruits yet to be harvested:
Do You Understand that Democrats will Destroy America?  The Green New Deal, renewed regulations, Medicare for All, free college, as well as the 70-90% tax rates proposed by Democrats, will tank the stock market and US economic growth, leading to higher unemployment and reduced wage gains.  All these programs require higher taxes and not just the soak the rich fantasy of the 70-90% rates.  Most of the Democratic candidates have pledged to roll back the 2017 Republican tax cuts that fueled the renewal of economic growth in the US.  Open borders will flood the US with poverty stricken immigrants and their competition for jobs will depress wages.  The social welfare needs of the immigrants will skyrocket government expenditures.  So while taxes receipts are falling due to slower economic growth rates, expenditures will be rising, leading to increased government debt and consequently higher interest rates.  If the Federal Reserve tries to keep interest rates low to prevent a deepening recession, then the increase in the money supply and the expanding deficit will eventually destroy the value of the dollar.

Mayor Pete and the Crackup of Christianity.  Consider what has changed already.  In the 19th century, blasphemy was a crime.  In the Roaring '20s the "vices" of booze and gambling were outlawed.  Now they are major sources of state revenue.  Divorce was a rarity.  Now half of all marriages are dissolved.  After the sexual revolution of the '60s, births out of wedlock rocketed to where 40 percent of all children are born without a father in the home, as are half of Hispanics and 70 percent of all black children.  Pornography, which used to bring a prison term, today dominates cable TV. Marijuana, once a social scourge, is the hot new product.  And Sen. Kamala Harris wants prostitution legalized.  In the lifetime of many Americans, homosexuality and abortion were still scandalous crimes.  They are now cherished constitutional rights.  Yet, Mayor Pete's assertion — that God made him gay, and God intended that he live his life this way, and that this life is moral and good — is another milestone on the road to a new America.

Why Do Most People in This Country Work, while Others Never Will?  [Scroll down]  In President Obama's home town, the south and west side neighborhoods of Chicago had long been decimated by the long-term effects of a stream of uninterrupted rule by Democratic mayors.  The people left behind in these neighborhoods long ago gave up hope of a better life and have been inevitably forced to rely on public assistance and making money in the underground economy, including an unlawful drug trade dominated by violent gangs.  The overwhelming loss of high-paying and often unionized manufacturing jobs previously located in these neighborhoods had devastating and permanently detrimental effects and was the main reason behind their rapid decline.  The Democrats focus on addressing the grievances of their coalition of constituent interest groups with the unfortunate effect of further dividing the American people by providing these groups with special privileges and extra attention.

Anarchy is Swallowing Up the Social Order.  [D]espite increased government controls of everyday life in education, policing and citizen surveillance (don't forget those traffic tickets based on surveillance cameras), and dictation of many aspects of everyday living, we do not observe increasing order.  We observe increasing social anarchy.  Let's look at a somewhat truncated list of what we have endured and are enduring as a society.  We have seen horrible onslaughts as follows:  the Fort Hood jihad massacre, the Boston Bombing jihad massacre, the San Bernardino jihad massacre, the Pulse Nightclub massacre, riots in Berkeley, Ferguson, and Baltimore, cop shootings in Dallas and New York City, the Sandy Hook massacre, the Las Vegas massacre, the Texas church massacre, the Florida HS massacre, the Chattanooga recruiting station attack, and the jihad attack in Garland, TX against Pamela Geller.  We see anarchy further revealed by regular and frequent breakdowns of mass transit systems in metropolitan New York City and elsewhere and massive infiltration of our country by illegals (reminiscent of flooding in of Germanic tribes leading to collapse of the Roman Empire).  The anarchy occasioned by mass illegal immigration is encouraged by sanctuary cities with the avowed policy of protecting illegals, even those with multiple illegal border crossings, from apprehension by ICE.  Also, there is a drug use and abuse health crisis of epidemic proportions.  Further, the family in America is also being ripped to shreds as the number of children born outside of the marriage bond was 5% in 1960 and is 40% for the last few years.

What a Socialist Really Wants.  Now we have the remarkable spectacle of Venezuela, one of the richest countries in the world, being reduced to poverty and hunger by a dimwitted socialist junta.  The whole thing is a public spectacle, like botched plastic surgery on a movie star.  The socialists in charge have all the answers.  They know what you need better than you do.  Unfortunately, that turns out to be every tragic, stupid outcome imaginable.  How does any other country dare to discuss socialism?

It is not Mr. Trump who is dividing America.  When Barack Obama commandeered one seventh of the U.S. economy in the name of making health insurance available to a small minority of Americans who did not have it, and he did so through political chicanery, with no support from the Republicans, and against the wishes of the majority of Americans, that was divisive.  When Mr. Obama tried to force schools to allow males who "identified as" females to use women's bathrooms (and vice versa), and he did so with no public debate of the matter and in the complete absence of credible scientific evidence that a biological male can in any psychologically healthy sense claim to identify as a female, that was divisive.  When white students at our best colleges (and even recruits to the U.S. Army) are taught that they have enjoyed undeserved advantages because they happen to have been born white in a nation founded and peopled mostly by whites, that's divisive.  And when our political and economic institutions are vilified as expressions of "white supremacy" because they were developed predominantly by the white majority, that's divisive.

The Pitiful Roots of Anti-Americanism.  The Progressives' failure is not a failure to enact their agenda.  They have dominated America politically for the past century.  FDR gave us really big government, and the federal government has become a scandal of fraud, waste, and abuse — a scandal that even the Big Government Press cannot keep hidden from us.  LBJ declared War on Poverty — and that war was lost.  Instead of eliminating poverty, the War on Poverty has made poverty more pathological, creating an underclass, often now described as "permanent," living on government handouts.  Even the Progressives' anti-Americanism was given free rein with the election of Barack Obama, who shared their obsession with "fundamentally transforming" America.  Yet wave after wave of electoral victory has not made American Progressives happy.  Whenever the voters put the Progressives in charge, the result is governmental metastasis and social catastrophe — by necessity.  The left is simply wrong about how things work.  It is easy to come up with programs that defy common sense.  It is also possible to use governmental power to impose those programs on society.  But the power of government can't make them work.

The Worst-Run States Have This One Thing In Common.  Four of the five worst-run states all have one thing in common — and it's exactly what you think it is.  That's right, states with the worst fiscal condition — according to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University — are almost universally run by Democrats.

Guns Aren't the Problem.  The Collapse of the Morality You Mock is the Problem.  God is not mocked and our society has been mocking him for some time.  From the collapse of the family; to a culture of death that champions abortion on demand; to a growing hostility towards people of faith; to championing deviancy while normalcy is defined a deviant; to attacks on the two parent, heterosexual nuclear household; to porn culture, our society is rotten and these things happen in rotting societies.  This has always been under the surface.  Now it is boiling out because God has handed us over to ourselves. [...] We have determined that mothers and fathers are interchangeable or don't even matter.  We have determined that sexual expression is the height of society.  We have determined that humanity and personhood are severable.  Frankly, even lax European cultures have less of a culture of death than we do.  We stand almost alone in the West in liberal abortion policy.

Minnesota Democrats wage war on God, faith and American history.  The further we've moved away from God in our schools, the more he's been replaced by the extreme indoctrination of our kids with teaching and programs that completely undercut what families teach their children at home.  Nobody seems to care that parents are offended that many schools are no longer interested in partnering with them and instead are undermining them as the primary authority in the lives of their children.  Political correctness has infected schools to the point where priorities are out of whack.  Our schools lack the security they desperately need, teachers are underpaid, and yet politicians ignore these real issues and, instead, pick fights with people of faith.

How Americans Got Hoodwinked.  [Scroll down]  By the 1980s, an entire new generation was disoriented.  School and media had turned young minds toward an ideology at odds with America's founding principles and values.  Americans progressively lost their moral bearings and their identity as Americans.  Marxist activists and other crusaders for a collectivist nation had by now taken positions of leadership in academia, government, and church.  Public schools were beginning to pit students against their parents and filling their heads with ideas calculated to undermine the core values of their country and heritage.  Americans who got all their news from the mainstream press or TV were unaware that a culture war had broken out across the country.  Mainstream media reporters, allegedly on the side of truth, were either ignorant or complicit.

Socialism's Gateway Drug.  There's open talk of a divorce between individualists and collectivists; i.e., a separation of the US into at least two separate countries.  Can chaos be far behind when so many see the corruption from top to bottom, and are giving up belief in The Great Experiment? [...] The corruption in government is not just for enrichment or power.  It's to sow the seeds of WHY BOTHER? among the population. [...] The flood of third-world immigrants is not just for "diversity".  It's to sow the seeds of violent civil unrest as the natives of America and Europe finally resist at the 11th hour. [...] The deficit spending of every Western government is not just to buy votes.  It's second-level intent is to sow the seeds of an inevitable financial collapse, leading to societal chaos. [...] Look around you at what's happening.  Look at everything — every single thing — the Left does, in the context of trying to precipitate chaos.

Has Giving Leftists What They Want Made America Better?  In 1962, the United States Supreme Court gave leftists what they wanted:  the removal of prayer from public schools.  So how has that worked out for us?  Since prayer was removed from schools in 1962, out-of-wedlock births for girls 15-19 years old has tripled.  Violent crimes have increased tenfold.  Single-parent female-headed households have grown from 5 million in 1962 to 12 million and growing.  Sexually transmitted diseases in kids 10-14 years old has skyrocketed, increasing 257% since 1962.  Fifteen-year-olds having sex since 1962 is up 1,000%.  For decades, divorce rates were declining.  Since 1962, divorce rates have increased 117%, making America number one in the world for divorce.

Of Course Children Prefer Liberalism.  Liberals knew well what they were doing as they worked for decades at destroying the family.  As generations of Americans have been raised in broken homes — often by broken people — it makes it easier to make them wards of the state.  After all, if you don't have parents who care much or provide much for you, why not look to Uncle Sam and his trillions?  One of the great lies of modern liberalism — perhaps the great lie — is that the world owes us something, and it's up to us to do whatever it takes to get it.  If one has the "right" to do whatever one wishes in the sexual realm, why take responsibility for an unplanned pregnancy?  And if we don't have to worry about sex leading to children, why get married at all?  And if we want to get married, why can't we define what is marriage?

Paying the price for breakdown of the country's bourgeois culture.  [Scroll down]  This cultural script began to break down in the late 1960s.  A combination of factors — prosperity, the Pill, the expansion of higher education, and the doubts surrounding the Vietnam War — encouraged an antiauthoritarian, adolescent, wish-fulfillment ideal — sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll — that was unworthy of, and unworkable for, a mature, prosperous adult society.  This era saw the beginnings of an identity politics that inverted the color-blind aspirations of civil rights leaders like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into an obsession with race, ethnicity, gender, and now sexual preference.  And those adults with influence over the culture, for a variety of reasons, abandoned their role as advocates for respectability, civility, and adult values.  As a consequence, the counterculture made great headway, particularly among the chattering classes — academics, writers, artists, actors, and journalists — who relished liberation from conventional constraints and turned condemning America and reviewing its crimes into a class marker of virtue and sophistication.

Anarchy Is Swallowing Up the Social Order.  [Scroll down]  Thus, despite increased government controls of everyday life in education, policing, and citizen surveillance (don't forget those traffic tickets based on surveillance cameras), we observe increasing social anarchy. [...] We see regular and frequent breakdowns of mass transit systems in metropolitan New York City and elsewhere, massive infiltration of our country by illegals (reminiscent of flooding in of Germanic tribes leading to collapse of the Roman Empire), and the drug use epidemic.  We see thirty-one "gender designations" by the City of New York with male and female demoted to being only two of the thirty-one.  Recently the mayor of Oakland, Calif. notified 1,000 illegal alien felons (yes, felons — not just nice men and women scrambling to make a living) that ICE was coming for them.  These developments suggest that anarchy is rife.  Thus, we see that the scope of government has grown and become more intrusive, but at the same time, anarchy seems to be racing forward at warp speed.  The leftists seem to think the anarchy is growing because government, despite its growth, has not been growing big enough or fast enough.  According to their thinking, growth in government power is the answer to anarchy.

Another Liberal-Created Failure.  According to professor William Gronfein at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, by 1955 there were nearly 560,000 patients housed in state mental institutions across the nation.  By 1977, the population of mental institutions had dropped to about 160,000 patients.  Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting. [... But] shutting down mental hospitals didn't turn out the way advocates promised.  Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings).  They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless. [...] Many innocent people have been assaulted, robbed and murdered by mentally ill people.  Businesspeople and their customers have had to cope with the nuisance created by the mentally ill.

The Left Is Reaping the Whirlwind of the Culture They Made.  [Scroll down]  It seems clear to me the sheriff was speaking about rap music with its hateful, violent and misogynistic lyrics, and video games like Grand Theft Auto, where you can have sex with a prostitute then strangle her or pull an innocent person out of a car, beat him, then steal his vehicle.  I am a First Amendment purist and don't want to see expression censored in any way.  And I don't argue that there's a straight line between any specific cultural creation and bad acts.  But surely, a culture in which those in authority approve of and argue for things like gangsta rap and GTA — and indeed for the use of violence to silence speech that offends them — well, such a culture becomes a machine for transforming madness into murder.

A Time for War.  Civil War.  It's here.  Now.  Thankfully this is not yet the blood in the streets kind of war, but war it is. [...] Examples of the current battles in the war:
    Racialism, black lives matter, NFL kneeling, and the war on being white.
    The new feminism, and the war on being male.
    The new feminism, and the war on the unborn.
    Turning sex into a cesspool.  Weinstein, Hollywood, preying on children, rampant unfaithfulness, broken families, transgenderism.
    Turning race baiting and sex allegation into weapons of mass destruction.
    Environmental catastrophism.
    Health care control.
    Spending our grandchildren's money.
    Allowing immigration to strangle what's left of our institutions.
    Pretending radical Islam is okay, but Judeo-Christian culture is not.
    Teaching that socialism is just another form of government and not a failure.
    Teaching that our country is inherently evil, and must be changed throughout.
There are many others.  But the important thing to understand is every one of these major battles is going on simultaneously.

No, I Am Not a Moron but Half the Country is Deranged.  Of all the crises plaguing the nation, who would ever consider gender identity and potty access as the most pressing issues yet we now have the unthinkable occurring.  Men allowed to enter ladies bathrooms whenever they like and dogs getting their own bathrooms at JFK airport.  Criminals getting their sex change operations paid for by taxpayers while in prison.  Transgender former males winning female sporting events ('quel surprise') like wrestling or weightlifting.  The language we all learned from day one has become weaponized by the gender militants in our Marxist academia.

The 6 Big Ways Liberals Are Destroying America's Culture.  [#1] The Politicization Of Everything:  Want to watch football?  There are players protesting the flag.  Turn on a Hollywood awards ceremony?  There are actors making political statements.  Want to go to the bathroom in peace?  Well, first, we need to know if you're okay with sharing it with someone who feels like the opposite gender today.  You're just a regular person telling an off-color joke you heard?  Better be careful; that could turn into a front page scandal if the wrong group gets offended.  Want to buy a Halloween costume for your kid?  Well, you better make sure it's someone of the same race or people will be upset.  Want to go on a date?  If you date someone of the same race, you may be racist.  Ready to marry your honey?  Then you better support gay marriage or you're a homophobe.  I can remember a time in America where you could just live your life without paying attention to politics at all if you wanted and that was a good thing.  Remember that old saying?  Never discuss race, religion or politics in polite company?  Well, because of liberals, you don't have a choice anymore.

How the Left Devalues American Citizenship.  In his relentless effort to devalue what it means to be an American, Obama exempted citizenship applicants from a major part of the Oath of Allegiance.  Applicants no longer have to pledge to defend our country. [...] While illegals are not official citizens, outrageously, they receive benefits unavailable to citizens — free attorneys, college tuition, checks, abortions, and more.  Democrats and fake news media are working to guilt-trip Americans into gifting illegals the right to vote (some are already voting).  So, illegals don't desire or need no stinkin' U.S. citizenship.  Obama's illegals have no desire to assimilate.

Dear Democrats:  Does Trump do anything that's not racist?  [Scroll down]  When you don't enforce immigration laws, you will get more illegal immigration.  When you don't hold people to account on sexual abuse like Bill Clinton, you will get more sexual abuse.  When you have a secret slush fund to pay off claims for congressmen and no disclosure, you will get more claims.  When you allow people like Clapper, Brennan, Comey, and Holder to lie to Congress with no repercussions, you will get more liars, and when you have a secretary of state who repeatedly lies and violates securities laws — who enriches her family and foundation with her political position, who repeatedly lies and not only doesn't get penalized, but gets rewarded with a presidential nomination — you will get more political corruption.

Rhode Island, Connecticut and Illinois are the 'worst possible states to live in' (but Louisiana and Mississippi aren't much better).  If you live in Illinois, Connecticut or Rhode Island, the chances are you know someone who is not happy.  Not happy at all.  Around a quarter of the population living in these regions have described them each as the 'worst possible state to live in', according to a Gallup survey.  The map data doesn't explain the nature of the residents' grievances.

Timely news and commentary:

Gay poly throuple makes history, lists 3 dads on a birth certificate.  A gay, polyamorous California throuple made history in 2017 when they became the first family in the state to list three parents on a birth certificate.  Their reproductive journey and legal battle to become fathers to Piper, now 3, is detailed in "Three Dads and a Baby" (out March 9, Cleis Press), written by one of her dads, Dr. Ian Jenkins.  Jenkins and his partners, Jeremy Hodges and Dr. Alan Mayfield, don't see their family — which now also includes their son, Parker, 1 — as unusual.

Trump Reloaded.  Former president Donald Trump emerged from 38 days of self-enforced silence for a lengthy speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, that was frequently interrupted with boisterous applause and chants from an adoring, mostly white and older crowd. [...] Conservatives will not disagree with Trump when it comes to the issues he mentioned.  These issues included Biden allowing more immigrants to unlawfully cross our southern border and resuming a so-called "catch-and-release" policy Trump ended, the killing of the Keystone XL pipeline, which has led to lost jobs and higher energy prices, rejoining the Paris climate agreement and withdrawing Trump's restoration of UN sanctions on Iran, and the reversal of his energy policies, which Trump claims caused gasoline prices to soar by "30 percent" since he left office.  He predicted a gallon of gas could eventually cost "$5 $6 $7" dollars unless those policies are reversed.

This Administration Is Already a Failure.  Obama's administration was a policy disaster, but it was at least a competently implemented disaster.  The Zombie Administration is a disaster in both form and substance.  What has this desiccated, old weirdo achieved in his six weeks of semiconsciousness in the Oval Office?  Well, there's putting tens of thousands of Americans out of jobs, including union guys who voted for him.  There's telling the American people that their kids can't go to school because public school teachers take priority over children because of science or something.  There's another war in the Middle East.  Those are kind of accomplishments, but not really good ones.  His administration had someone named "Ducklo" who was mean to women.  He had another who wants to be a woman and who wants to let your little boys be surgically turned into women.  And Neera Tanden's confirmation was blocked because she was a woman and totally not because she was an inept loudmouth.  If this is normalcy, what's a freak show look like?

Now's Our Chance To Create Public School Alternatives.  Throughout parts of the United States, children have not been in school for a year.  Instead, they are expected to daily attend zoom classes.  What that means in practical terms is that many kids sit somewhere at home, log in to class, turn off the camera, and go back to bed or play games on their phone throughout the "school" day.  One young man I know is one of only two students in his entire middle school class whose face appears in the zoom classroom — and that is because he is a disabled student whose mother sits with him.  The school district cannot force children to turn the camera on.  In my work counseling children, numerous children have complained to me of isolation, severe loneliness, and anger.  One formerly school-loving boy asserted that teachers don't care about their students and it makes no difference if he does his work or not.  He will carry that sentiment back into the classroom, should they ever open up.

California Bill Would Give $1,000 Fines to Retailers With Separate 'Girls' and 'Boys' Toy Sections.  Retail stores in most of California are only allowed to operate at 25 percent capacity.  A new bill in the state legislature would ensure that whatever part of their shop is allowed to be open is as inclusive as possible.  Last week, Assembly Members Evan Low (D-Cupertino) and Cristina Garcia (D-Los Angeles) introduced a bill that would require retailers to offer their toys and childcare products in a gender-neutral format.  Brick-and-mortar shops would have to display the majority of their products and clothing aimed at children in one undivided, unisex area on the sales floor.  They'd also be barred from putting up signage that would indicate whether a product was intended for a boy or girl.

Is this the dumbest state legislature in the country?  No state in the United States has had single-party political rule at the state level longer than this state.  The ruling party has held a majority in both houses of the state legislature for 81 of the last 91 years (thus eliminating Nebraska).  The last time the minority party held a majority on the state supreme court was in the 1920's.  The state has the worst ranked K-12 public education system in the country.  It has 7 state universities that grant four-year degrees but only one is ranked academically in the top 500 in the U.S. (#484).  It is estimated that an astounding 46% of the adults in the state are functional illiterates.  This state is ranked as having the highest property crime rate and the second highest violent crime rate in the country.  It has the 5th highest unemployment rate in the country and an incredible 43% of the population is on Medicaid.  It is ranked as the 5th worst-run state in the country.

We Are Living in the Ruins of Our Civilization.  It is evening, very late evening.  I am walking in the remains of what once was New York City.  Broken trash bags and discarded clothing, furniture and debris line the sidewalks, spilling out onto the streets, the bags' black plastic jerking and lurching as though some near-suffocated life within were struggling to break free of confinement.  But I know it is only rats, still moving quickly and fearfully out of habitual wariness of the humans no longer around to challenge them.  I traverse blocks of shuttered and abandoned storefronts, their housing-code-violating neon displays gone dark, the "For Rent" signs in the windows already faded and frayed.  The first higher species of being I come across is only a shadow of any such description — a teetering, drooling zombie barely maintaining the accustomed vertical orientation of humanity — its head, neck, and back doubling over further and further, heavy eyelids drooping down time and again on the remaining vestiges of any consciousness to which it only weakly clings.  I hear a dead moan as I pass.  Others around have already given up the fight.  In piles of rags and filth and the stench of their own excrement, they are laid out in corners and crevices.  I navigate around one such specimen transecting the middle of the sidewalk, with the telltale final bottle capping off its drunken stupor still clasped in its gnarled fingers.

The Chinese Communist Takeover of America Is Well Underway.  [Scroll down]  Popular culture has become a useful tool for the Communist Chinese to use.  Much of our society revolves around what we see on television, in movies, and what we listen to.  Sadly far too many people, especially young people, take at face value anything they see on the Internet, in social media, or the pronouncements of popular entertainment figures.  Unions have been infiltrated as well to the point that they no longer exist to protect the rights of and benefit American trades and workers, but to support a leftist political agenda instead.  The Communist Chinese have been subtlety indoctrinating young impressionable minds here on school campuses all across America with their Marxist ideology.  An effort that's been underway for years.  And an effort that has had a great deal of success, considering the level of self-loathing about America that they have been able to instill in a great many of America's youth for a couple of generations now.

The Great Reset Rubric:  Making Sense of Our Present Dystopia.  The Great Reset represents the best rubric we might find for grasping much of what's going on in the world today:  the prevalence of woke ideology and cancel culture; the draconian COVID responses; the seemingly endless Antifa/BLM riots; the supposed Biden presidential victory; Big Tech censorship; and the endless stream of propaganda, double think, and gaslighting propagated by mainstream and social media.  Even if not by design, as I will show, all of these seemingly disparate elements interlock in a way that support Great Reset objectives, and the Great Re-setters favor all of these developments.  Likewise, once we are able to grasp the contours of the Great Reset, we will be poised to understand the reason for the prevalence of these elements and how they all interconnect and function together to produce our present dystopia.

Warning for America:  The Four Steps of Marxist Takeover Were Activated in 2020.  Back in July 2020 Scott McKay at American Spectator wrote an amazing piece on the Four Stages of Marxist Takeover.  McKay's report is based on the words and warnings of Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov.  It's been seven months since the report was published and the situation today is even more dire than predicted.  Even McKay would never have predicted the antics of the Marxist left during the 2020 elections.  The Marxist takeover of America is well on its way.

By Offering Amnesty Now, Democrats Are Setting Up A Massive Immigration Crisis.  Perhaps Democrats could have picked a worse time to unveil their expansive immigration bill that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, but not much worse.  The legislation, introduced Thursday by congressional Democrats with the full support of the Biden administration, dubbed the "U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021," comes as President Biden is rolling back border security measures implemented under Trump and the number of illegal border crossings is surging.  Combined with the ongoing pandemic and shortages of food and water in Texas after freezing temperatures left millions of Texans without power last week, a perfect storm is brewing on the border.  Earlier this month, Mexico stopped accepting Central American children and families apprehended at the border.  They had previously been quickly "expelled" under emergency pandemic protocols.  Now, U.S. border officials are releasing them into communities across South Texas, often without conducting COVID-19 tests.

Mark Zuckerberg Worked to Free Criminals in Oklahoma.  A Monster Freed Early Ate a Woman's Heart and Killed a 4-Year-Old Girl.  Criminal justice reform is a euphemism for a horrifying nightmare in which criminals were set loose under pressure from billionaire activist donors to commit horrifying crimes, terrorizing cities, destroying communities, and taking lives. [...] Anderson's sentence was apparently commuted in June.  Oklahoma was a major target of an alliance between lefties and "conservatives" on criminal justice reform that predated the coronavirus mass jailbreak. [...] Anderson should have been kept locked up.  He was yet another obvious example of a monster who should never have been loose.  But he was.  And now a girl lies dead, stabbed in the eye, and a woman lies dead, her heart torn out.  The only question is how soon Anderson will be released this time.

Save the Rhino!  Today's environmental activists are so hostile to capitalism that they end up killing animals they want to protect.  Like the African rhinoceros.  Poachers kill them to get their horns, which can sell for as much as $300,000. [...] South Africa, home to the largest number of rhinos, once tried something similar.  For 20 years, they allowed people to own rhinos and sell their horns.  Rhino farmers put the rhinos to sleep with tranquilizer darts, sawed off their horns (the horns grow back) and sold the horn.  Farmers had an incentive to protect rhinos.  South Africa's rhino population quadrupled.  But in 2009, under pressure from "environmental" groups, South Africa banned sales of horn again.  The sad result:  Poaching increased sharply.  Poachers also killed park rangers who tried to protect rhinos.

Feudalism Is Coming to America, and You're the Serf.  Society is becoming more stratified, with decreasing chances of upward mobility for most of the population, whose well-being has been exacerbated by economic restrictions imposed as a response to COVID-19 pandemic, and which is to getting hit even harder with Biden's "progressive" policies.  Simultaneous with the new "aristocratic" ruling class rises a class of new clerisy that provides intellectual support of the emerging system — the media, academia, and celebrity influencers (pop culture).  The model of liberal capitalism is losing appeal around the globe for different reasons, and new doctrines are arising in its place, including ones that lend support to a kind of autocracy, elitism, and socialism that drastically curtail the capitalist methods and achievements.  They do not offer reform; they insist on a complete demolition.  The first structure of the "old" system to go is democracy.

A Word About The Biden Return To 'Normalcy'.  Less than a month into Biden's term, let's take a look at America's return to "normal":
  •   Is it our standard-operating procedure to call, without evidence, those we disagree with racists and white supremacists?
  •   Is being obsessed with, and bowing down before, identity politics who we are?
  •   Is letting males compete with female athletes playing it straight in the U.S.?
  •   Is a militarized zone around the U.S. Capitol a long-standing American custom?  What about a political witch hunt disguised as an effort to root out domestic terrorists?
  •   Is it normal for an administration to snub Israel, America's only natural and traditional ally in the Middle East?
  •   Is it routine for the president's family to conduct "corrupt business dealings in foreign countries"?
  •   Is it normal for public schools to be closed across the country because the teachers unions in a real sense own the party in power in Washington?
  •   Is it a time-honored American practice for the media to snuggle up to that party in power and treat the president as a celebrity, even a savior, and refuse to sufficiently fact-check him?

A Fifty-Year History of Anti-Patriotism in the United States.  Patriotism is under attack.  The idea of the cultural Marxists on the left is to replace traditional patriotism with a different vision of the meaning of American nationalism from the vision that has obtained since 1776, although that traditional understanding and vision of the USA has gone through modifications over decades.  Unwillingness to say the Pledge of Allegiance or even to stand for the Pledge is not a first step in that direction, but part of an endgame toward a revised understanding of what America is and what its role is in history.  The readers of this article should not be surprised if legislation for a revised American flag is offered in the halls of Congress in the near future.

An Insider Explains Why Texans Lost Their Power.  [Scroll down]  If this sounds outlandish, here's the head of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas:  ["]The fundamental decision made in the middle of the night on Monday to have outages imposed was a wise decision by the operators we have here, Magness said.  If we had waited and not done those outages ... we could have drifted to blackout.  That's not just outages, but we could lose all electricity on system, and it could take months or longer to repair that.["]  With a total ERCOT system failure, as many as 12 million customers and possibly 20 million Texans could be in the cold, in the dark, in their cars with nowhere to go — for months.  Wind power did this to Texas.  Be very afraid of the Green New Deal.

Texans Froze To Death Because Biden Admin Ordered ERCOT To Throttle Energy Output By Forcing It To Comply With Environmental Green Energy Standards.  The White House said on Thursday [2/18/2021] a severe winter storm engulfing Texas and nearby states was the type of extreme weather event that climate change is triggering, rejecting assertions by Texas officials that "green energy" caused widespread power outages.  The crisis in the largest U.S. oil- and gas-producing state has put Democratic President Joe Biden's White House squarely at odds with Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who initially did not acknowledge Biden's 2020 election win. [...] But Biden's "America last" agenda was again on full display.  After Texas Gov Abbott declared a state of emergency back on Feb 12 Biden administration ordered ERCOT to throttle energy output by forcing it to comply with environmental green energy standards, knowing full well Texans could freeze to death in their homes with zero electricity as temperatures plunged into the single digits.  Going into effect Sunday, Feb. 14, Emergency Order 202-21-1 shows the Energy Dept. was aware of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's statewide disaster declaration and that ERCOT was readying gas utilities in preparation for a demand surge.

Texas Gov Abbott Declared A State Of Disaster On Feb 12, Biden's Team Ordered Restrictions That Sent Texans Freezing In The Dark.  Governor Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for all 254 counties in Texas on Feb 12 as a winter storm struck the state. [...] Texas is the only one of the contiguous 48 states with its own stand-alone electricity grid, one of the three main grids in the U.S.:  the Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection, and Texas Interconnection.  The Texas Interconnection, which covers 213 of the 254 Texas counties, is managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.  Portions of Texas near the state's borders are covered by the eastern and western grids.  Texas produces more electricity than it consumes and maintains a buffer referred to as the "state's reserve margin."  This margin ensures that we should never have to suffer from rolling blackouts like California.  Then why are so [many] millions of Texans without power right now?  Why are we dealing with rolling blackouts?  The answer is all-too-familiar:  our relationship with the federal government.

Kroger says Seattle's hazard pay law has raised labor costs and is forcing it to close 2 more grocery stores.  Kroger has criticized Seattle's city's hazard pay law that requires grocers to temporarily pay workers an additional $4 per hour, saying the mandate is forcing the company to close two QFC stores in the city.  The QFC stores will remain operational until April 24, QFC said Friday in an emailed statement to Insider.  The company said that it will help workers with the transition and consider any transfer requests.  "City officials need to consider that grocery stores — in a pandemic — operate on razor-thin profit margins," Kroger said in a statement.  "The mandated extra pay makes it impossible to continue operating underperforming stores."

Minnesota Nasty.  Crime, homeless encampments, riots, crime, loopy left-wing government, crime, litter, violent protests, imperious left-wing activists seeing off mainstream liberal Democrats, boarded-up shops downtown, a vicious social-media-driven politics of personal destruction, crime, crime, and crime, to say nothing of the crime — today's Minneapolis is where Minnesota Nice turns into Minnesota Nasty.  Let's talk about the crime first.  Everybody does.  "We're moving," says one longtime resident of downtown Minneapolis.  "Prior to COVID, I walked to work every day and walked home.  You couldn't pay me enough to do that now — and it's only a mile.  It's a changed city."

Cadbury under fire for same-sex kiss in new Creme Egg commercial.  Cadbury is getting creamed by critics on social media, who say the British candy company is "selling sex to children." [...] "By choosing to feature a same-sex couple, Cadbury's are clearly hoping to cause controversy and escape criticism," the petitioner alleges, "by claiming that any objections must be rooted in 'homophobia,' but members of the LGBT community have also expressed their dislike of this campaign."  The author goes on to accuse the Cadbury campaign of using sexually explicit content to provoke viewers while "seeking to hide under cover of LGBT rights."

Conservatives Must Read Marx.  When Tucker Carlson defended Trump's Wall, his antagonists didn't collect evidence against his words.  No, they threatened his advertisers with boycotts.  When Jordan Peterson refused an Ontario law mandating pronoun usage, his critics didn't mount arguments against him.  They demanded the University of Toronto fire him.  Money, jobs, resources, access — that's the target now.  Academia requires that all job candidates compose a "diversity statement," essentially a loyalty oath that imposes leftist ideology onto the hiring process.  An honest conservative doesn't survive, and that's the point.

The Compound Fractures of Identity Politics.  Every citizen fatality in the custody of a government official — like George Floyd's excruciating death in Minneapolis — deserves a solemn response and ultimate accounting, including both criminal investigation and broader assessment.  The fear and fury flowing from recent law-enforcement casualties, however, have been inflamed and manipulated by opportunists to produce something much more sweeping.  Hard facts and data about our systems of law and policing are being ignored.  Emotional hysteria is increasingly substituted for reasoned problem-solving.  There is enormous pressure to conform to approved ideological assertions, and people expressing alternate views are often railroaded.  Broad attacks on social order, widespread destruction of public and private property, and new waves of street crime have unfolded.  There is open hostility toward the fundamentals of American justice and governance.  It is now routinely claimed that "the United States government was founded on racist intellectual premises and economic practices that institutionalized oppression of people of color that continues to the present day" (to quote the Seattle Public Schools). U.S. society as a whole is characterized as a "system of oppression."  In consequence, our classical liberal traditions of fierce competition of ideas, mutual tolerance, political compromise, and individual freedom are visibly withering.  Yet there is scant resistance to any of this among elites.  Journalists, social leaders, academics, clergy, businesspeople, and many politicians show little awareness that essential American principles are being washed away.

Are you feeling safer yet?  A New York Post editorial quotes New York City police commissioner Dermot Shea:  "We have made staggering numbers of gun arrests, taking guns off the streets from felons, but when you look, three days later, four days later, those individuals are back on the street committing more gun violence."  The editorial continues by saying that years of often ill conceived criminal justice reform has set up a revolving door that frees even repeat offenders almost instantly.  And "[w]orse, because everyone knows the perp will be back in the neighborhood again — and the no-bail law lets the defense know right away who has talked — witnesses are ever-harder to come by."  Well, that's in one Democrat-run state.  What about California?  According to Hotair.com:  "Through a series of measures starting back in 2014, the state of California has made it increasingly easy for people to commit property theft and get away with it[.] ... Even in cases where they do manage to catch somebody stealing, it's too often not worth the trouble of taking them down to the station because they'll just be released immediately without bail anyway."  One result of this is that California businesses are shutting down for good.

The Dirty Little Secret of Cancel Culture.  Cancel culture isn't a singular thing.  It's a collection of strategies and tactics, each designed to use the power of the collective against the individual.  Typically, the cancel mob starts with some attacks on Twitter or Facebook. [...] Sooner or later, and this is the goal, the news media gets involved, validating those attacks by taking them as legitimate.  The end result is someone gets fired, loses a contract, or a company has its products removed from shelves.  People get deplatformed from social media or lose their mass media platforms.  It's a 2021 village shunning with real consequences.  The medieval village mob is now a virtual mob but the hysteria is the same.  In today's cancel culture, the triggers for the cancel mob are often unpopular statements, actions, or decisions, but it doesn't stop there.  The cancel mob can put a target on your back for not speaking up.  For doing business with their primary target.

Gas Prices Have Already Spiked Under Biden (And They Could Go Much Higher).  After four years of stable gas prices under President Donald J. Trump, Americans may have to get used to some pain at the pump.  Former Vice President Joe Biden hasn't even been in the White House for a month and gas prices are already up a whopping 18 percent with at least one analyst predicting that they could hit $4 per gallon in the near future.  Biden's ideologically-driven decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and the expectation that his Green New Deal policies will place onerous regulatory burdens on domestic energy producers in the fossil fuel industry is already hitting Americans in their pocketbooks.  Sadly, the worst may be yet to come.

The Editor says...
Of course the worst is yet to come.  With Biden cutting off oil exploration anywhere he can, blocking pipeline projects, and dreaming of a world without carbon dioxide, the price of gasoline will only increase.  Biden and his minions, who oppose every practical source of energy, are responsible for this mess.

More businesses flee Seattle because of crime and violence.  TR International, a global chemical distributor, is moving from its home of more than two decades in downtown Seattle, crossing the county line to neighboring Edmonds.  The company is one of at least 160 businesses that have left Seattle since last March.  While some of the companies that have left Seattle is due to the coronavirus pandemic, business leaders have said that much of it could be traced back to a sense that no one is minding the store in Seattle anymore, and a lack of accountability from city leaders.

Oregon promotes teacher program that seeks to undo 'racism in mathematics'.  The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently encouraged teachers to register for training that encourages "ethnomathematics" and argues, among other things, that White supremacy manifests itself in the focus on finding the right answer.  An ODE newsletter sent last week advertises a Feb. 21 "Pathway to Math Equity Micro-Course," which is designed for middle school teachers to make use of a toolkit for "dismantling racism in mathematics."  The event website identifies the event as a partnership between California's San Mateo County Office of Education, The Education Trust-West and others.  Part of the toolkit includes a list of ways "white supremacy culture" allegedly "infiltrates math classrooms."  Those include "the focus is on getting the 'right' answer," students being "required to 'show their work,'" and other alleged manifestations.

Discouraged? Remember:  Truth Always Prevails.  In 2008, presidential candidate Obama promised to fundamentally transform America.  Well, "mission accomplished."  Perhaps I give the former president too much credit, as he didn't build that, but his philosophy and policies directed our culture onto a path such that now everything has become political.  It's infected our education, science, businesses, and even health care system.  Like attending a movie in 3-D, everyone uses a political lens in which to view the world.  Sadly, it is to the destruction of us all.  Politics is a zero-sum game of winners and losers — us versus them.  If politics is our governing mindset and prevailing worldview, then we will never have unity.  A divided house falls.

Oil rigs relocate from New Mexico to Texas over Biden's permitting freeze.  New Mexico is already paying the price for the Biden administration's freeze on agency-level approvals for permits on federal lands as oil rigs relocate to private property in Texas.  Sarah Cottrell Propst, New Mexico secretary of Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources, said operators are moving rigs out of state over the "confusion" surrounding the Interior Department's Jan. 20 order requiring top political appointees, instead of career staff, to approve permits for 60 days.  The order has had little impact on states such as Texas, where only 1.8% of the land is federally owned, but could prove devastating to New Mexico, which leads the nation in oil production on federal lands and depends heavily on oil-and-gas tax revenue to fund its budget.

Biden's Misery Index.  Stagflation and the resulting high misery index could return if Biden's stated economic policies are fully enacted.  The reason will be very simple:  business will not be able to respond to market conditions by expanding output.  Business will be forced to respond by raising prices.  In other words, Biden's push to give people free goods and services creates a greater demand in the market.  He wants to pay for those giveaways by eliminating the 2018 tax cuts and by further raising taxes on the highest income earners and on the wealthiest Americans.  Biden's policies will also result in much higher energy prices.  Energy is used in the entire business process meaning the increased cost will put upward pressure on all prices.  He wants to raise the top income tax bracket to at least 40%.  And he wants to raise the capital gains tax rate to 40%.  Biden says the wealthy should pay their fair share.  But the higher tax rates will force business to an undesired response to market conditions.

The Editor says...
If everyone should "pay their fair share," that's what percentages are for.  If everyone pays X percent of their income in the form of taxes, and that's a fair percentage, then fairness extends across the board.  When the percentage goes up and up, depending on one's income, that is patently unfair.  When the percentage goes below zero, as in the case of refundable tax credits, that's really unfair.

Our Tarnished Institutions and the Boy Who Cried Wolf.  Over the past few decades, a group of people with a particular political outlook have infested most of our cultural institutions with the goal of using those institutions to advance their cause(s).  Inherent in this effort is ignoring the nominal purposes of the institutions in favor of the overarching goal(s).  As a result, news outlets no longer worry about facts.  Judges no longer follow the law.  And, most surprisingly of all, sports leagues don't concern themselves primarily with playing sports.  There are numerous other examples, but you get the idea.  Beyond the obvious problems which arise from this situation, there is a longer-term issue.  These institutions are, in effect, lying to the public.  We can't trust the news media, the legal system, entertainment, sports, etc., anymore.  They have cried wolf too many times, and the wise move is just to ignore them.

The Science-Denying Woke War on Women and Girls Is Speeding up.  The war on men and boys has been underway for nearly two decades, and now the woke Left is waging war on women and girls.  The woke activists are determined to erase the lines that biology draws between men and women.  Decades of research documents physical, biological, genetic, and biochemical differences between the sexes, but woke activists expect us to ignore this evidence in service of the concept of gender.  Gender used to be a linguistic device to denote biological sex.  In several foreign languages, such as Spanish, the article for "the" has feminine and masculine versions.  "La" and "el" mean something.  Perhaps the woke will cancel the Spanish language next.  They have already tried with "Latinx," which only 4% of Hispanic Americans prefer.  Only 3% use it, and less than 25% are even aware of it.

Midwives told to stop using terms such as 'breastfeeding' and 'breastmilk'.  Midwives have been told to stop using terms including "breastfeeding" and "breastmilk" as part of a new trans-friendly policy at an NHS trust.  Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust is the first in the country to formally implement a gender inclusive language policy for its maternity services department — which will now be known as "perinatal services".  Staff have been told to avoid using the word "mothers" on its own and have been given a list of alternative terms to use when addressing patients including "mothers or birthing parents", "breast/chestfeeding" and "maternal and parental".

To Be Inclusive of Non-Binary Parents, Hospitals Nix the Terms 'Breast Milk' and 'Father'.  We're living in the age of inclusion.  To that end, nurses are being asked to think before speaking — about nursing.  As reported by the New York Post, on Monday [2/8/2021], two UK hospitals put the kibosh on "breast milk." Words matter, and the wrong ones hurt.  Hence, medical workers are being asked to reference "human milk" — in order to include transgender and non-binary parents.  In the prenatal units of Sussex and Brighton University Hospitals NHS Trust, staff should eliminate words such as "breastfeeding."

Our Illiberal Moment.  To be adequately maintained, classical liberalism demands three key virtues.  Humility, so that each of society's competing factions might comprehend that it will not always hold power.  Tolerance, so that the habitual reaction to a difference of opinion is the shrug rather than the bayonet.  And forbearance, so that the immediate rush of victory can be subordinated to longer-term ambition.  Little by little, we are losing all three and, as they go, forgetting the good practices that have built, sustained, and improved our remarkable society for generations.

Jake Tapper and Chris Hayes Lose Their Minds 'Inciting' Against GOP And Reveal Next Step to Control the Narrative.  [Scroll down]  The GOP got "hundred of thousands of Americans" killed?  When did that happen?  "Then helped a deadly attack on the Capitol."  No, as far as I know, the GOP denounced any violence and were themselves threatened with a bomb at the RNC.  No, actually there wasn't "unprecedented death" for a pandemic.  Unfortunately, there are deaths in a pandemic as there have been all over the world.  Had Trump not been in power, if Biden had been there, it would have been far worse.  Biden wouldn't have cut off travel with China and it would have been exponentially worse.  "Destruction and misery and mourning."  Yes, there was a lot of that from mostly Democratic lockdowns, where Democrats denied aid, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proved, until after the election, exacting the most harm to the economy believing it could adversely affect President Donald Trump.  There was also a lot of that during the BLM/Antifa riots that the Democrats not only failed to condemn, but actually embraced by donating to a rioter bail fund, supporting violent rioters over the people and the police being harmed, and attacking efforts to curtail the riots by law enforcement and the federal government.

The Betrayal of the American People by Biden and the Ruling Oligarchy.  The Biden Administration is willfully and permanently undermining the economy and the future well-being of the citizenry as well as trampling on the Constitution with an unprecedented avalanche of executive orders, proposed legislation and untenable regulations.  The current leader of the United States, safe in his plush bunker, is without a clue as he and his confederates in the ruling oligarchy are more interested in consolidating power and enriching themselves than they are in the long-term welfare of the nation and its citizenry.  In their mad and childish dash to purge the nation of all things associated with Donald Trump, this cabal is deliberately being oblivious to the fact that there is but one major responsibility of the leaders of a Constitutional Republic.  That is to be certain their country is capable, in the both the short and long-term, of successfully weathering a worst-case scenario such as global war, a massive economic downturn, or a catastrophic natural disaster.  Those currently entrenched in the ruling oligarchy are pursuing policies that will leave no margin for error in the event of an apocalyptic natural or man-made disaster.

Millions of Americans Projected to Remain Jobless as Biden Packs U.S. Labor Force with Foreign Workers.  Millions of Americans are projected to remain jobless for the next three to four years, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), though President Joe Biden is looking to fill American jobs with foreign workers.  In a report released this month, CBO analysts said the number of jobless Americans — all of whom want full-time jobs — will not return to pre-coronavirus levels until around 2024. [...] Before then, millions of Americans are projected to remain jobless though that has not kept the Biden administration from pursuing a labor policy that floods the United States labor market with millions of illegal aliens, foreign visa workers, and green card-holders.

California politicians demand grocery stores pay workers more; groceries close instead.  Every business operates at a risk, and the risk-reward ratio was obviously closed to the point that it didn't make sense to put effort into a store with declining profits.  Is this so hard to understand?  Apparently, it is, because an emotionally driven, fact-bereft city councilperson going by the name of Mary Zendejas, who sponsored the bill, said that "it really saddens me that they'd rather take away 200 jobs instead of doing the right thing, which is paying hazard pay for these local grocery store workers who risk their lives everyday they come in and who are putting their lives on the line every second they're working."  There is so much wrong with this sentiment.  In Zendejas's world, there is now a moral obligation of private companies to pay whatever rate is deemed appropriate by leftists on a given day.  Today it's a $4-an-hour boost because everyone is a hero.  Tomorrow it's a national $15-an-hour increase.  These are entirely arbitrary numbers, and by Biden's logic, if there is no evidence that they upset the balance of supply and demand, then why stop there?

Democratic Governors Have Devastated Their States.  Over the past year, there has been a pretty clear divide between liberal governors, who almost without exception imposed irrationally harsh covid lockdown measures, and conservative governors, who generally took a more nuanced and pro-freedom approach.  The data are now in, courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and they tell a story that cannot be misinterpreted.  My colleague Martha Njolomole created these charts.  First, job losses in December 2020.  She focused on the fact that Minnesota, shut down once more by feckless Governor Tim Walz, lost nearly 50,000 jobs in December alone, trailing only Michigan and California.  By contrast, Wisconsin, about as similar to Minnesota as a state can be, is on the way to recovery, adding 15,000 jobs in that month.  What state added the most jobs in December?  Texas, by far.

Former CBP Head:  Biden Has Decimated Border Protections With 'Stroke Of A Pen'.  Former Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan slammed the Biden administration Tuesday [2/2/2021] for undoing significant border protections put into place by President Trump.  Morgan first took aim at White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki for trashing Trump's efforts to secure the border, and attributing the infamous Obama/Biden 'kids in cages' and family separation policy to Trump.  After Psaki had spoken, calling Trump's border policies "horrific", Morgan stated that "There isn't enough time to address all the spin and misinformation that the Press Secretary just sent out."  Morgan outlined that agencies within the Trump administration have been "working tirelessly" to reunite families separated at the border.

Landlords in New York suffering from lack of rent payments amid pandemic.  78-year-old Donna Szucs says she has lost thousands in unpaid rent from the tenant of a home she owns in Wyoming County.  "It's very frustrating because I have to provide him with water, heat, and everything else even though he pays me nothing," Szucs said.  Szucs has no legal recourse.  The New York State moratorium on rent, aimed at helping those who lost jobs due to the pandemic, allows for people to miss rent payments and not face eviction.  For Szucs, that's meant almost 12 months of lost wages.

Governing Elites Are Destroying the Nation They're Supposed to Run.  Consider these facts:  [#1] Before Ted Kennedy's 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, nine tenths of all new immigrants to America came from Europe; after the act's passage, nine tenths of new immigrants have come from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.  [#2] Since the 1965 Act's passage, over sixty million new immigrants have arrived in the United States, and over a hundred million more are expected over the next half century.  [#3] In 1970, 4.7% of the American population was born outside of the United States; in 2017, 13.7% of the national population was born in a foreign country. [...] [#4] Eighty-four percent of Americans born between 1928 and 1945 identify as Christians, and 50% of them still attend religious services at least once a week.  In contrast, less than half of millennial Americans today identify as Christian, and 64% rarely, if at all, attend any kind of religious service.

Is This the Normal You Voted For?  We are being bombarded by a triangulation of disinformation from the Left's political hacks, complicit media, and crony corporations.  This deceitful trifecta is a psychological operation against Republicans, populists, and conservatives—the sane coalition that alone can and must save our republic from the tyranny of "[their] democracy."  Through this diaphanous prism of realization, one can starkly comprehend the Left's game and aims:
  •   The reckless misuse and mistreatment of National Guard troops to paint a false narrative that anyone, not a leftist is a white supremacist and terrorist; and the re-weaponization of the federal government against the Left's opponents for partisan advantage.
  •   The Democratic Congress' vindictive impeachment of a former president to decapitate a populist movement of over 74 million Americans; corrosive partisan lust to expand and pack the federal courts with judicial activists, including the Supreme Court; and angling to give the District of Columbia statehood to secure more Leftist senators and a representative.
  •   Our current executive sock puppet's record-breaking torrent of job-crushing, science-denying, citizenry dividing executive orders; his pretending there was no plan for distributing the COVID-19 vaccine, while cynically plagiarizing his predecessors' plan.
  •   And, lest we forget, Mr. Biden's mendacious invitations to "unity" — the rank hypocrisy of which gnaws at the fraying bonds of the elementary fairness that is one of the last shards of civic comity.

It's Not Just 'Gender Dysphoria.' It's Now 'Rapid Onset Marxism.'  The U.S. House of Representatives passed a new rules package that explicitly strikes "gendered language" from the official House rules.  The rules prohibit the use of terms that designate the gender of familial relationships — father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and so on — and replace them with gender-neutral terms.  Commentator Tammy Bruce, a radio and Fox Nation host, says this move Jan. 4 is "obscenely Marxist" because it "deconstructs what it means to be female."  She went on to say:  "It reduces all of us, it eliminates the value of the individual and our uniqueness as individuals."  The goal of social policing of our language is thought control, which epitomizes the Marxist agenda.

Biden's climate executive orders devastated these US workers in a day.  On the morning of Jan. 20, every room of the two-story Stroppel Hotel in Midland, SD, was filled with men and women who work on the Keystone XL pipeline.  Most of these union laborers, welders and pipefitters started their day over a cup of coffee in the hotel's common room before heading out to their jobs.  By 4 p.m., the entire place was cleared out, leaving the historic hotel silent for the first time since owners Laurie and Wally Cox took it over six months ago.  "Our whole world turned upside down with the stroke of a pen," Laurie said.  She is speaking of President Biden's executive order, signed on his first day in office, that halted work on the Keystone XL pipeline in South Dakota and immediately eliminated 1,000 union jobs.  TC Energy, the company that was developing the project, predicts that more than 10,000 jobs will be lost in 2021 due to the order.

One week in, Biden administration shows its exquisite cruelty.  [Scroll down]  So along with Biden's dictatorial executive orders comes Schumer's plan to further constrain our freedoms due to the "climate emergency."  But there is no climate emergency.  It's just another hoax, a fear-mongering ruse to create a global government.  The planet has survived all manner of climate changes.  We humans can no more affect the climate here than we can on Mars.  And even if we could, we are not responsible for the irresponsibility of nations like China and India re: filthy air.  The Paris Climate Accord is only about making U.S. taxpayers pay billions of dollars to those nations to equalize the quality of life on the planet.  Not a single prediction of the Gorist climate alarmists has come true.  Snow still falls from the sky; there are no more hurricanes than normal; polar bears are alive and thriving; droughts occur here and there as they have throughout the millennia.  But the Biden administration is going to use climate alarmism to continue restricting the American population from living their lives.  President Trump energized our economy, made us energy independent.  Biden has in the span of a week tanked it in order to make us dependent on Saudi Arabia again.  He is about to ban coal-mining, too.  What will happen to those miners?

Biden's normal is abnormal.  The media is peddling the narrative that Chairman Xiden is bringing back normalcy.  Well, let us see what the media and the rest of the Democrats consider normal.  The new normalcy is impeaching a president and trying him after his term ends and he has gone home to Mar-A-Lago.  The new normalcy is arresting and prosecuting a man for making memes on Twitter.  The new normalcy is 25,000 National Guard troops in Washington on Inauguration Day.  The new normalcy is replacing a viewing audience for the occasion with 100,000 American flags.  The new normalcy is cries of deprogramming political opponents.  The new normalcy is banning reporters who ask tough questions at press conferences.  The new normalcy is not deporting criminals.  The new normalcy is making women shower with men in the military.  The new normalcy is attempts to expel duly elected opponents from the Senate.

Environmental Extremism Is Creeping Into Every Domain of Public Policy.  Many on the left continue to place their ideology of environmental extremism above all other considerations, including economic growth, individual freedom, and the welfare of low-income Americans.  This worldview ignores critical tradeoffs and places environmental interests above even basic principles that have long served as a foundation of this nation.  Further, this extreme environmental movement has crept into almost every issue area imaginable.  There are certainly environmental issues that need attention, but sensible environmental policy doesn't address those issues in a vacuum without regard for other important concerns.  Yet, this extreme movement acts in such a manner.

Biden's Climate Orders Will Flip America's National Security on Its Head.  On Wednesday [1/27/2021], President Joe Biden signed two executive orders and issued a memorandum pushing the climate alarmist narrative and boosting the climate-industrial complex.  Biden claimed that his administration's climate boondoggle will create more jobs, but his first climate move — nixing the Keystone XL pipeline — cost 1,000 jobs right away, and an estimated 10,000 more.  His climate orders will upend America's national security as well as its economy.  "Today is 'climate day' at the White House, which means that today is 'jobs day' at the White House," Biden said as he introduced his new climate agenda.  The president repeated the canard that his transition to green technologies would create more jobs than it eliminates, without mentioning that creating this climate-industrial complex requires massive amounts of taxpayer money and more government intrusion into the economy.  Naturally, vocal criticism came quickly.

More about the Keystone XL pipeline.

Federal Reserve Warns Joe Biden Policies are Weakening US Economy.  The Federal Reserve panel sent a warning about the U.S. economy starting to suffer as the JoeBama administration starts to institute "America Last" policies.  The financial media will not directly point to the Biden policy agenda as the primary source of the issue, but the background context of a new administration is exactly the difference.  Even during the worst aspects of the 2020 COVID-19 impact during the Donald Trump administration, the underpinning of the U.S. economy remained strong.  However, now that JoeBama has taken office the 2021 COVID-19 impact is being used as an excuse.

The Editor says...
This might be Biden's goal.  Barack H. Obama had the same goal, and Biden is doing exactly what Obama would do, but with a heavier emphasis on China's benefit.

US Media Makes Heroes of Teens Who Betray Their Family Members and GoFundMe Makes It Profitable.  One of the elements in the Communist Manifesto, right before the abolition of the nation-state, is the abolition of the family.  We've seen a gradual chipping away at the health of the family under the guise of good intentions.  We've created a society where out-of-wedlock births are the norm rather than the exception.  Where state provided daycare and before- and after-school programs act in place of parents.  We have a school system that actually believes it knows best, and so you, the parent, can't send your kid to school with aspirin without the royal assent of school administrators, but school officials can arrange for your child to have access to birth control devices.  The hostility of the public school mafia to homeschooling is often packaged as one of competition for resources.  It isn't.  It is about control of what your child learns and what they imprint as values.

The push to decriminalize 'streetwalking' follows a deadly run of NYC 'reforms'.  Think Bill de Blasio's dumpster fire of a mayoralty can't get worse?  Think again:  Albany is planning to send him more street hookers.  Whoopee.  State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat now running for borough president, considers the notice police pay to transsexual streetwalkers to be a pressing civil-rights issue — and so he's pushing legislation that effectively would make street-walking of all sorts legal.  The bill appears fated to pass — and what could go wrong with that?  Plenty.  Blame for much of what makes New York City so difficult to navigate these days rests squarely with the normalization — and outright legalization — of anti-social, often dangerously aberrant, public personal behavior.

Why the Left has to suppress free speech.  Let us begin with this fact:  The left always suppresses speech.  Since Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, there has been no example of the left in control and not crushing dissent.  That is one of the important differences between liberal and left:  Liberalism and liberals believe in free speech.  (The present leftist threat to freedom in America, the greatest threat to freedom in American history, is made possible because liberals think they have more to fear from conservatives than from the left.  Liberals do not understand that the left regards liberals as their useful idiots.)  The left controls universities.  There is little or no dissent allowed at universities.  The left controls nearly every "news" medium.  There is little or no dissent in the mainstream media — not in the "news" sections and not in the opinion sections.  The left controls Hollywood.  No dissent is allowed in Hollywood.  That is why we have "cancel culture" — the silencing and firing of anyone who publicly dissents from the left, and even "publicly" is no longer necessary.

Obey, America, for Your Own Good!  So, just to be clear about where we now stand:  The Constitution's out sick because of Chinese Flu.  You still get to say and print what you want so long as what you have to say conforms to whatever CNN has to say.  If you stick up for the Founding Fathers who fought for our freedoms, you're likely a "white supremacist," but if you destroy monuments to the Founding Fathers, you're a freedom fighter.  It's patriotic to inform on your neighbors for violating government health decrees but unpatriotic to pray with your neighbors in church.  Rioters who destroy cities are protesting for democracy, but Americans protesting for free and fair elections are threatening democracy.  It's good and noble to burn down buildings around the White House when members of Congress promise to pay for arsonists' bail, but breaching the Capitol perimeter is no less tragic than Pearl Harbor.  Social media protect speech by silencing it.  News corporations protect freedom of the press by urging the censorship of points of view.  Americans can no longer be trusted with guns because they might use them to protect their natural rights.  The only person ever to receive more votes than Donald Trump is Joe Biden, but Americans are supposed to remember at all times that Donald Trump is immensely unpopular while Joe Biden is historically loved.  And so many Americans support the incoming president that he requires a standing army to ensure his safe installation.

Clarity in Trump's Wake.  In 2021, the laws, customs, and habits of the heart that had defined the American republic since the 18th century are things of the past.  Americans' movements and interactions are under strictures for which no one ever voted.  Government disarticulated society by penalizing ordinary social intercourse and precluding the rise of spontaneous opinion therefrom.  Together with corporate America, it smothers minds through the mass and social media with relentless, pervasive, identical, and ever-evolving directives.  In that way, these oligarchs have proclaimed themselves the arbiters of truth, entitled and obliged to censor whoever disagrees with them as systemically racist, adepts of conspiracy theories.  Corporations, and the government itself, require employees to attend meetings personally to acknowledge their guilt.  They solicit mutual accusations.  While violent felons are released from prison, anyone may be fired or otherwise have his life wrecked for questioning government/corporate sentiment.  Today's rulers don't try to convince.  They demand obedience, and they punish.

San Francisco's "Progressive" Drug Policies Kill Hundreds Annually.  Last year, 621 people died of drug overdoses in San Francisco.  To put this in perspective, 173 people died from COVID-19, which is identified as the primary public health crisis in the Bay Area.  For years, San Francisco has tacitly encouraged drug abuse with remarkably lenient policies, and those policies are now inadvertently killing hundreds of people annually.  San Francisco uses a policy approach called "harm reduction," which stresses "culturally competent, non-judgmental treatment that demonstrates respect and dignity for the individual."  But this approach, as it is practiced within San Francisco, is inhumane and cruel.  It is destroying the dignity of the lives that some could have with more sensible policies.  In addition to overdose deaths skyrocketing, drug abuse has increased in San Francisco, and it is becoming more difficult for addicts to affect positive change.

Everything Is Broken.  For seven decades, the country's intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions — universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc.  Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as "American" — conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country.  This wasn't a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.  But, beginning in the 1970s, the economic ground underneath this landscape began to come apart.

Welcome to Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer's new abnormal.  It is an article of faith for many Americans that the Donald Trump years were an aberration and that Joe Biden will usher in something close to normalcy.  I'll take the other side of that bet.  I believe the coming years are going to be at least as tumultuous as the Trump presidency.  Although Biden will not directly cause that tumult, his weakness as a leader, of his own party and the nation, will help fuel discord and make it impossible for him to forge anything resembling normalcy.  Most of those who think Biden can wave a magic wand blame Trump alone for the deep polarization gripping America.  They're wrong — Trump was elected precisely because the country already was deeply polarized.  Moreover, while Trump's personality is highly unorthodox, to say the least, he did not single-handedly set in motion the dangerous levels of strife engulfing our nation.  His successful policies on immigration, taxes and the Mideast were fairly conventional by Republican standards.

Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie.  [Scroll down]  The idea is almost too big for the mind to contain: a political class that has betrayed its country; a Supreme Court that effectively accepted and thus contributed to an unprecedented catastrophe by refusing to hear a suit filed by Texas and 17 other states alleging election law tampering; an education system that bears a disquieting resemblance to the German academy of the 1930s; a "free press" that is not a free press but a state propaganda network; a dedicated and effective president who has been discredited and attacked, including through incitement of political violence against him and his family; organizations like the Trump Accountability Project and the Lincoln Project compiling a "database of all Republicans who worked for President Donald Trump with the aim of ensuring they never land jobs in the private sector," a measure associated with Fascist and Communist dictatorships; and a nation demonstrably in the throes of destabilizing turmoil.

A message to RINOs — it's time to choose.  The Democrats and their fellow travelers on the left have some very disturbing aspirations.  Just a year ago, discussion of tyranny in America would have been considered crazy talk.  Not now.  The temperature on this pot has been turned up slowly, and now we're at the boiling point.  Just look at everything our ruling class has done in the past year.  Lockdowns have restricted our movement, commerce, and assembly.  Our rulers are not making us carry papers yet.  That would be an inconvenience for illegal aliens.  They are however, making us wear masks to demonstrate our obedience.  Big tech oligarchs are using censorship and deplatforming to censor dissenting views.  Conservative commentators such as Dan Bongino and The Conservative Treehouse have been evicted from their web servers or had their advertising revenue restricted.  Donald Trump and his followers have been banned from Twitter.  Conservative postings mysteriously disappear from Facebook.

The worst run cities in America.  The state of cities around the country is rapidly declining, leading to the greatest rates of emigration since the days of disorder and distress in the 1970s.  Eight cities stand out as the worst run in the country, when ranked with markers like costs of living, education, poverty, and crime.  These are New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Washington, Portland, Oakland and Chicago.  Despite billions of dollars doled out annually, every one of these cities has dire mismanagement issues.  Cities that use the most dollars per capita are some of the worst run cities.  Washington spends some $15,600 per citizen annually, over 12 times that of cities such as Miami.  New York has a budget hole of over $540 million.  Debt in many cities is driven mostly by pensions and public payrolls, with New York ranked first with its glaring $64,100 in debt per citizen, Chicago second with $36,000, Philadelphia third with $27,900, San Francisco fifth with $22,600, and Oakland in seventh with $21,100.

Here's a Perfect Explanation of Why the Capitol Hill Riot Happened.  In truth, it's been made clear to some Americans that attempting to talk it out and even take their grievances to the voting booth isn't working.  However, they flip on the news and see riots happening as those involved scream things like "black lives matter" or "defund the police."  They see this and then see politicians, media, and "experts" heap praise on these violent radicals, and politicians both defend and even encourage them.  For some Americans, they see violence get results and a dangerous idea begins to formulate in their head.

A Daring Left and a Cowed Center.  The first fact of sociopolitical life in America today is this: liberals in elite positions are frightened of the Left.  A college president may direct an institution with a $900 million endowment, meet with legislators and business heads, and boast a 30-year record of academic honors, but the sight of eight African American undergrads marching toward his office with scowls on their faces alarms him like nothing else.  A CEO may draw a $3 million salary and manage 1,300 workers, but the threat of a boycott coming from a few networked Millennials with ties to Sleeping Giant calls for immediate emergency action.  They know what they're up against.  Leftists form digital mobs, shut down events, block access, cancel, and dox.  They show up at people's homes, harass employers, and ruin businesses.  They're ruthless, they're irrational, but the tantrums they throw muck up the works and clog the pipes.  That's the advantage they press — they will tear the system down if the people in power don't comply.

Indianapolis Has Fallen:  A Red State Capital City Degrades Itself to Blue City Levels.  I had known this mid-size metropolis since the seventies when I lived here as a medical student, attending the Indiana University School of Medicine.  Then, Indianapolis was referred to as India-no-place or Naptown. [...] This year, Monument Circle swarmed not with tourists and patrons but with a succession of homeless encampments, bedecked with tents, sleeping bags, blankets, cardboard shelters, and, of course, hundreds of vagrants sleeping or milling about.  What had been one of the cleanest, most scenic, and safe downtown centers in the country had deteriorated into a third-world, garbage-strewn, threatening urban nightmare.  The entrances to the Hilbert Circle Theater and the nearby Indiana Repertory Theater were boarded up and crammed with itinerants, trash, and debris.  It was demoralizing and disgusting, an urban cesspool of dystopia and vagrancy.

Radical Democrats Are Turning Minneapolis Into A Violent Wasteland.  The world witnessed in the streets of Minneapolis this spring and summer the feature presentation after many increasingly violent coming attractions, created, produced, and distributed by a one-party, radical left government.  If you want to know what the real-time self-destruction of a city looks like, Minneapolis offers the perfect model. [...] Downtown's ghost-town feel is taking a dystopian turn as empty streets are being taken over by a resurging homeless population openly using drugs and increasingly aggressive.  The mentally ill are left to similar fates, often found huddled in bus shelters.  A decline in police and mental health resources compounds the impending disaster as winter deepens and shelters fill.

We Don't Need To Accept The 'New Normal' The Left Is Forcing On Us.  All of us have seen and heard things during this past year that would have been unimaginable in 2019, but which today are almost a daily occurrence.  We call these transformative events "the new normal."  Examples of the new normal are all around us and affect all aspects of our lives.  Defunding the police while crime skyrockets is the new normal.  Prisoners being released back on the streets, while hairdressers and restaurant owners are fined and sometimes jailed, is the new normal.  Big tech and mainstream media shutting down all voices opposing their agenda, while extolling the virtues of democracy and free speech, is the new normal.  A CNN reporter describing demonstrators as "peaceful protesters," while behind him the skyline burns, is the new normal.  Closing down all restaurants, houses of worship, and small businesses while allowing protesters to burn, riot, and loot in the name of "social justice" is the new normal.  Prisoners in certain states receiving the COVID vaccine while vulnerable seniors must wait is the new normal.  The latest COVID Relief bill, which included only a paltry sum in relief for tens of millions of desperate Americans, while granting billions in foreign aid, is the new normal.

Hey, GOP: This is Your Do or Die Moment.  If Democrats, the corporate media, and foreign interests can steal a presidential election, they can steal any congressional or gubernatorial election, easily.  If a thief can rob Fort Knox with ease, any bank on Main Street will be child's play.  If they can weaponize the CIA, FBI, IRS, and DOJ to target their political enemies, without punishment, why won't they double down next time?  For the left, crime does pay.  There has been no reckoning or accountability for the stolen 2020 presidential election.  What's to stop every subsequent election from being stolen in the same way? [...] Does anyone seriously believe that the Biden FBI or DOJ will lift a finger to investigate voter fraud?

You're It.  If the communists gain control, it won't be long before you will not be able to travel as you always have.  Checkpoints will ensure that you are permitted to travel, especially to other states and the conditions of travel in those states might vary wildly.  In some, you might have to quarantine for a period of time upon arrival.  This rules out a lot of civilian transcontinental travel.  This is part of the Green New Deal imposed through other means.  It also gives the government the right to restrict travel for purposes of political demonstration.  Private property will be eliminated.  That sounds ridiculous as I write it, but then so did the idea of shutting down the powerful American economy all because of a virus based on intentionally inaccurate death rates and wildly speculative ideas of how the virus spread.  The communists don't want private property or a middle class.  Those are means of self-sufficiency they cannot tolerate.  It sets a bad example and encourages people to live outside of their control.  They need a population that is reliant on them, in close quarters where they can be monitored by other citizens; citizens who will inform on them for any violation.

Biden's 'Dark Winter' Is A Warning About His Economy, Not The Virus.  Should President Donald Trump's election challenges fail to keep Joe Biden out of the White House, it's a certainty that bleak days will be ahead.  We're staring into the barrel of at least four years of sclerotic economic growth.  Six days after the election, Biden, employing the Democratic Party strategy of sowing fear whenever possible, warned that the country is facing a long night.  "Before the surge in COVID cases we predicted, many predicted, and the deaths rise that we've seen in December ... we head into a very dark winter ahead," he said. [...] Apparently it never occurred to Biden and his handlers that government intervention, not the virus, caused 2020's downturn.  Nor have they even begun to understand that Democrats' economic policies, filled with steep, punitive taxes, and impossible-to-jump regulatory hurdles, are a slow-motion march of the economic lockdowns that almost instantly paralyzed the economy this year.

The Democrats' Road to Hell.  The ruling political class in Washington D.C. is always making matters worse through what appear to be appropriate solutions for serious problems facing the country.  Then when they don't work out as advertised many years after they've been implemented, they tell us that they've got the solutions for the newer, more serious problems that to the unsuspecting and unknowing public seem as if they came out of nowhere, and who are clueless as to how they began in the first place. [...] Government assistance has morphed from safety net to entitlement where there is no accountability for the failures of the ruling political class that perpetually creates problems, as well as government incentives to "right social wrongs" that do the same by distorting the marketplace in ways that are not good for anyone.

How Democrats are sneakily destroying the Electoral College.  Add the Electoral College to the list of American institutions that the Democrats have destroyed (along with education, media, entertainment, Silicon Valley, sports, big cities, the justice system, the family, the FBI-CIA, the Supreme Court, etc.).  By manufacturing massive fraudulent vote counts in the big cities they control, Democrats invalidate suburban and rural votes in key battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.  Elections simply become who can produce the most votes, which is most easily accomplished in large Democrat-run cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee.  The Democrat machines that control those cities can effortlessly run up large vote counts for Democrats without fear of being found out by manipulating the voting rules and by manufacturing ballots.  Local Democrat judges "on the payroll" look the other way, while Big Media leads in the cover-up with information blackouts.  Large Democrat donors, Silicon Valley bigwigs, and geopolitical rivals like China bankroll the operation.  By relying on big city votes to swing the national elections, our electoral system degenerates into a de facto direct voting structure, thus invalidating the Electoral College and violating the Constitution.

November 2020: The Good Points:  The Presidential election of November 2020 was an unmitigated disaster to any sane-thinking person concerned with the good of America.  While unintellectual, style-obsessed political simpletons cheer the outcome based strictly on emotional rooting interests, intelligent individuals who are more concerned with full employment, energy independence, military readiness and border security than identity politics, racial/gender quotas and the microaggression du jour realize that a "Biden" administration will set American economic prosperity and social progress back by decades.  If the Democrats come into power, the government will pick the winners and losers and the country will devolve from a meritocracy to a selectocracy. [...] Under a progressive administration:
  •   Crime will increase as the police are defunded and bail/sentencing standards are relaxed and eliminated
  •   We'll get higher taxes, and have less disposable income
  •   Energy costs will increase as exploration and production are intentionally curtailed, leading to higher consumer prices across the board
  •   Progressives will refuse to "allow" life to return to normal, even after widespread dispensation of the COVID vaccines
Voters will see this all quite clearly and that's good.

Christmas Message for a Broken Republic.  The left has done its utmost to air-brush God out of the Constitution, ban the Ten Commandments from every public square, and ostracize Christ from all public discourse, while at the same time expropriating Christ's words for their conceited, bewitching subterfuge, preached from every "progressive" altar and chanted as they burn restaurants and beat Trump supporters to a pulp.  All these acts of eradication were merely rehearsals for the final ransack and rapine of the electorate now taking place.

Portland police [officers are] resigning for jobs elsewhere making less money and it's not hard to see why.  Portland police officers are resigning from the force in unusually high numbers in the middle of their careers.  Many are seeking jobs in other cities where they will be paid less money and also lose some of their time toward retirement.  According to the Portland Tribune, it's unusual for the number of resignations to exceed the number of retirements but that's what's happening right now.

Nullification Isn't Just for Democrats, Anymore.  Since the 2016 election, Democrats have made all kinds of nullification standard fare, but more pernicious than displaying a disagreeable temperament, or contrary opinion; more than First Amendment-protected civil disobedience.  Instead, making that which is legitimate, illegitimate; making what is illegitimate, legitimate.  Making what is decent, abhorrent; making what is grotesque, glorious — all enjoying approbation from a fawning media.  Any and all tactics, now including election fraud, and covering up bribery of a president to-be, are used unapologetically, with no subterfuge, and with impunity.  Truth now is subjective, conditioned on identity and whether it will be canceled by the mob, or approved by the neo-aristocracy.

The Plot to Steal America.  [Video clip]

The reimagined police as servants of the left.  We back the blue, but will they back us?  Like most conservatives, I support the police and the vital role they serve in a civilized society.  But like many conservatives, watching them stand down on orders from blue-state mayors during months of riots was jarring.  (They even stood down during a Back the Blue rally in Denver when speakers were attacked.)  Many of us asked how the police could obey such orders and allow criminals to have free rein in our streets — criminals whose victims, I might add, included over 2,000 police officers.  Don't police officers swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution?  Well, yes, they do.  In fact, that is their paramount responsibility.  Perhaps this year, it seems we witnessed the rule and not the exception — the rule being that most people, including the police, will be cowards in the face of tyrants.

What's happening in Minnesota bodes ill for Democrats.  Across America, the Wuhan virus has allowed Democrats to implement some of their long desired plans for "reforming" America in a properly Marxist mold.  One of the most hallowed plans, which academia promotes, is "de-incarceration" (i.e., ending prisons).  The other one, although it's kept hush-hush, is to end that pesky, morality-driven, hardworking, freedom-loving middle class.  Minnesota's Governor Tim Walz is working on both issues, with disastrous results for good people.  That's why this arrogant societal manipulation could soon prove to be the Democrats' downfall. [...] For the crime of feeding her family, Walz, through the Minnesota attorney general's office, is filing documents to imprison [Larvita] McFarquhar for trying to stay afloat.

U.S. City May Pass "Duress Legislation" to Give Criminals "Poverty Defense".  Elected officials in a major U.S. city plan to pass a law that will allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for basic needs and trespassers to set up camp on private property when it is to obtain adequate shelter.  Dozens of other crimes — including assault and harassment — will be excused under the preposterous measure if suspects are poor, mentally ill or addicted to drugs.  It is being crafted as a poverty defense and will allow municipal court judges to dismiss a multitude of crimes if poverty, mental illness or a substance-abuse disorder drove the perpetrator to commit them.  Even for a famously liberal left coast city like Seattle it seems like a bit much.  The proposal was first introduced during the Seattle City Council's budget deliberations weeks ago, according to a local news report.  It was put on hold over a budget process bureaucracy but has gained incredible steam and appears to have enough support to alter the city code early next year.  "The idea could enormously impact the city — and set Seattle apart from the rest of the country in its approach to misdemeanor crimes," according to the news story, which includes the concerns of frustrated public safety advocates who say the law will essentially legalize most crimes in Seattle.

If the Media Doesn't Report on Crime, It Won't Exist.  The Nieman Foundation for Journalism was set up at Harvard.  Like everything touching old foundations and journalism, it's a toxic disaster.  And this one is right up there with In Defense of Looting. [...] No this stuff isn't marginal.  Nieman is influential and it's part of the larger pro-crime push.  And the reshaping of the legacy media.  Even at this late date, one of the few things the local news does anymore is sports, weather, and crime.  Lefty virtue signaling destroyed sports.  The push to make every weather report about global warmunism while firing any weatherman who doesn't go along has been underway for years.

Republican Mackenzie Kelly Wins Austin City Council Runoff.  Local Paper Declines to Cover It.  In a stunning upset, Republican Mackenzie Kelly defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in Austin's District 6 runoff Tuesday.  Kelly ran on a platform that includes restoring police department funding and ending the city's permissive homeless camping ordinance.  She won with 52% to Flannigan's 48%, a margin of just about 700 votes overall.  Kelly's win, and Republican Jennifer Virden's near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters' thinking.  The Democrat-dominated city was already up in arms over the homeless camping ordinance, which allows homeless people to camp just about anywhere they want all over the city (except city hall) since the council passed it unanimously in the summer of 2019.  That has led to encampments under overpasses and even on the fringes of neighborhoods all over Austin.

The 'kraken' is the sleeping giant now awakened within the GOP.  [Scroll down]  We're censored by big tech, smeared in the media, mocked in popular culture, and endure malicious political prosecution, as in the cases of Michael Flynn and Kyle Rittenhouse.  On the other side, Hillary Clinton destroyed 30,000 emails, federal bureaucrats broke countless laws in the Russian Collusion hoax, leftist radicals burned cities and attacked police, Obama weaponized the IRS against Republicans, and illegally imposed DACA.  The rules are clear:  Democrats can break the law whenever they want. [...] Can you imagine a country where Democrats can commit blatantly unconstitutional actions to enable voter fraud while simultaneously using the same Constitution to insist Republicans have no legal grounds to challenge them?  This is the America we're living in.

Can We Survive the Coming Socialism?  It's looking pretty grim right now regarding President Trump's chances of getting the four more years he deserves, and that he almost certainly would have received had the Democrats' cheating game not gone to all time high levels.  It's also looking like justice and honesty are going to play a diminishing role in the United States for the foreseeable future, as evidently about forty or so percent of the country is perfectly comfortable with massive voter fraud and willing to participate in it, all because they wanted to have their own way.  With that, it also looks like we are on our way towards a pretty heavy dose of socialism as the Left is now emboldened by their brazen acts of fraud and encouraged by the fact that even SCOTUS does not seem willing to challenge their crimes.

Republicans [are] Pushing Themselves Off the Cliff.  [Scroll down]  If Democrats can steal one presidential election, they can certainly steal another one, and enough Congressional elections for a permanent Democrat majority in the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government.  Elections will no longer matter as the winner will be preordained by the ruling class.  Democrats can add states to the union, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and a split California, giving them a solid Senate majority.  Eliminating the filibuster, as promised, will make Republican objections to any bill or nomination irrelevant.  A stacked Supreme Court, as also promised, will allow the left to rewrite the Constitution to suit Bernie, AOC, and George Soros, rather than Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison.  Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal will soon be the law of the land, as will open borders and tens of millions of new Democrat constituents.  Expect a carbon tax as we sign on to the Paris Climate Accord.  Iran will be back to building nukes and China will control of most of corporate America.

Seattle is considering making it legal to steal, as long as you're poor and plan on selling the items.  Remember over the summer when AOC blamed the spike in crime in New York City on parents stealing food to feed their families? [Tweet] She was roundly ridiculed for that, of course, but now Seattle hopes to make AOC's fantasy a reality by creating an affirmative defense for theft if you intended to sell the stolen items for "basic needs" like food or rent.  It's called "the poverty defense," and would not only make stealing legal, but apparently fencing items as well, and would cover over 100 misdemeanor crimes.

Judge to California's 3rd Largest County:  On Account of COVID, Release Half Your Convicts.  How do you empty a large county's jail system by half?  That's a question currently demanding an answer, as a West Coast judge has ordered that very thing.  As reported by The Daily Wire, on Friday, Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson dictated Sheriff Don Barnes must liquidate Orange County's jail system by 50%.  The decision comes following the American Civil Liberties Union's April lawsuit demanding the release of disabled and vulnerable inmates in light of the pandemic.

America's Two Plagues.  [Scroll down]  And I say, the inmates have taken over the asylum.  There is a madness loose in the society stemming from the collapse of classical, Biblical, sexual morality.  The US has become Sodom and Gomorrah and evidence of this is this latest lunacy.  In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, and the rest is history.  It led to the AIDS epidemic and to the tolerance of such low life millionaires such as Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophilia, with Bill Clinton their soulmate in sexual predation.  It led to this sexual degenerate in the Oval Office engaged in perverse sex games with a woman young enough to be his daughter.  Clinton's historic legacy will be a semen-stained dress.  Joe Biden may be supportive of so-called "transgenderism," but there is no such thing because there is no such thing as "gender," as the "Woke" misuse that word today.  The existence of "gender" as they understand it is nothing less than magical, not scientific, thinking.  No source for this sensation is known in the body or brain.

Our political opponents are vicious, but they're also crazy.  Leftists live in a world of racial hatred, gender confusion, white self-loathing, religious loathing, American loathing, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic feelings, misogyny, misandry, homophobia, transphobia, and so much more.  Everything is defined by hatred for others.  It's impossible to live in a world imbued with hate and still be happy.  These -isms and -phobias get pushed onto young people in public schools and in institutions of higher leftist learning.  Many of these people, when they leave college or university, continue to bathe in this fetid broth of self-loathing and paranoia.

Minneapolis delivers on its George Floyd promise to defund police and wipes $8m from force's budget.  Minneapolis City Council on Thursday [12/10/2020] approved a controversial budget which is set to move $8 million of funding from the police — despite record crime rates since the May death of George Floyd.  Mayor Jacob Frey, who had threatened to veto the entire budget if the council went ahead with a plan to cap police staffing, said the vote was a defining moment for the city which was the first to be hit by anti-police protests following the death of Floyd.  The city has been plagued by soaring violent crime since then — with homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and arson all up on last year's figures.

Alternate headline:  Democrats Abandon the War on Drugs
Drugs Declare Victory in War on Drugs.  The 2020 elections delivered a resounding victory for drug policy reformers, who won everywhere their proposals were put to a vote.  Across the country, in red and blue states, on both coasts and in between, in the Midwest and the Deep South, voters passed ballot initiatives that not only continued to reverse marijuana prohibition but also broke new ground in making drug laws less punitive and more tolerant.  New Jersey's approval of marijuana legalization was expected.  Preelection surveys consistently put public support above 60 percent, although the actual margin of victory was a few points bigger than the polls suggested.

Where's the Kraken?  Where's the Storm?  If Democrats control the federal government, there is zero chance any electoral fraud will be investigated.  The only investigations will be of Trump and his supporters.  Democrats will use the 2020 election as a pilot project, refining their ability to steal enough future elections to keep themselves in permanent majority.  Democrats will change the rules so that Republicans never have control of either branch of government again.  Added states will insure Democrat control of the Senate.  Institutionalized electoral fraud will make future elections as irrelevant as the outcome when the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals.  A good show with a predetermined result, banana republic style.  How do those countries end up?  A stacked Supreme Court will rewrite the Constitution and Bill of Rights to suit Bernie, AOC, and George Soros.  Masks, lockdowns, and censorship will become the norm.  The Mitt Romney's of the GOP will be yapping chihuahuas in cages, annoying but irrelevant.

If vote fraud wins in 2020, prepare for life to get ugly.  What kind of changes will we have to endure?  We will wear masks forever.  There will always be a medical crisis mandating them.  There will be a war on combustion.  We will be forced to drive electric cars or no car at all.  Barack Obama began this effort in 2009 with his "cash for clunkers" program.  Thanks to new regulations, we will pay much higher prices for technology and medical care.  We will have medical death panels.  It is already starting.  The first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will be health care workers and nursing home residents.  So far, the choice is palatable, but who will be the next one to be deemed worthy of survival? [...] The war on combustion means there will be no fossil fuel to heat our homes.  We will have to use heat pumps exclusively.  Heat pumps require refrigerant.  There is already a high price for refrigerant because of previous regulations.  Expect the price to go higher.  All of this will lead to rationing of electricity.  There will be either rolling blackouts or central control of the thermostat.

Car Jackings In Minneapolis Up 537 Percent.  Honestly, who with a functional brain didn't see this coming?  As I've noted before, even if you take every dime you remove from the police budget and put it toward crime prevention measures, it'll take years before any of them show any potential results.  Defunding law enforcement now is idiotic, and now we can quantify just how idiotic.  I mean, a 537 percent increase?  That's insane, but also think about how few carjackings there were during the lockdown.  For months, few people went anywhere, which meant fewer opportunities to jack someone's car.  It was also more difficult to mill about on foot while waiting for a potential target.  That means it's very likely these numbers have skyrocketed in just the last half of the year, making it even more insane.  It looks from here like the whole "defund the police" thing has turned into the trainwreck we all expected it to become.

Where We Are.  [Scroll down]  You cannot create a world of perfect equality because people are not equal, and the attempt to make them so requires taking away the freedom of most for the benefit of what turns out to be a few.  You cannot create a government that is socially "just" because the people who will run it are the same people whose lies, bigotries, selfishness and greed created the unjust world you are attempting to leave behind.  The new rulers, corrupt as ever, will have more power than ever.  You can only make things worse.  Much worse.  I learned these truths first in my work with the Black Panther Party, a murderous street gang whom we regarded as "the vanguard of the revolution."  We did so because the Panthers were the only leftists with guns who were willing to use them.  The Panthers preyed mainly on vulnerable blacks but also murdered a friend of mine who was white.  My second awakening came with the success of the New Left's "antiwar movement," which forced America out of Vietnam.  The New Left's claims to be "anti-war" in behalf of the Vietnamese were actually two dangerous lies.  When the movement succeeded in forcing America's withdrawal from Indo-China, the Communists proceeded to slaughter two and a half million peasants in Cambodia and Vietnam.  There wasn't a single demonstration against the slaughter.  Not one.  I realized then that it was never an "anti-war" movement.  It was an anti-American movement.  The Left wanted the Communists to win and didn't care how many innocent Asians were murdered in the process.

Seattle homicides [are the] highest in over a decade as council cuts police budget.  Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan plans to sign a new city budget that will reduce the police budget by 18% despite homicides reaching record highs not seen in a decade.  Council members overwhelmingly voted last week to cut funds for police training and overtime and to eliminate dozens of vacant positions within the Seattle Police Department after months of contentious talks.  The reductions fall short of the 50% that local activists demanded amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice.  The council also decided to transfer parking enforcement officers, mental health workers and 911 dispatchers out of the police department.

How Liberals Can Destroy Football with COVID, and Why They'd Want To.  Football has always been reviled by the left.  It is quintessentially American:  invented in this country; played by high-testosterone, masculine men; and operating almost entirely as a super-competitive meritocracy — i.e., the test of whether someone gets to play in the NFL is whether he can play, and play better than the other guy.  In the NFL in 2020, there's no time to humor racism or any other "ism" in fielding a winning team; there's only the all-defining imperative priority to put the best players on the field and "coach 'em up" to play the game well.  All of those attributes of the sport are precisely why it has been so popular in America; it has been aligned with American cultural norms and preferences for decades.  The sport's popularity is in fact proof that America as a whole is not racist — systemically or otherwise.  Americans don't root for their team or watch the NFL in huge numbers based on a team's compliance with racial hiring quotas; they root and watch because they appreciate the best playing the best using talents that most of us don't have, and deciding on a level playing field who wins a competitive game and who loses.

Seven Quotes to Lay Out a Totalitarian America.  [Scroll down]  We have lived through the decades of gradual transition of socialist sentiments and actions in our country, becoming more socialist every day through the transition.  We have seen universities, K-12 school systems, the media, large companies, philanthropic organizations, and other entities transition from idealistic to socialist, largely unnoticed — until now.  Would Biden's administration be a massive socialist revolution into a totalitarian state?  No.  But given what has happened already, it could be the straw that breaks democracy's back.  Our transformation to a totalitarian state must be resisted.  Buckle up and stand tall.  Do not fear Black Lives Matter, Antifa, social media, the press, your school's curricula, your employer, or any of these forces.

Racism is alive and well in America.  Leftism destroys everything — absolutely everything — that it touches:
  •   It took first and second wave feminism (right to vote, equal pay for equal work) and turned it into third wave man-hating feminism.
  •   It took the Great Society and welfare, and turned them into the destruction of the black family in America, with all the pathologies that follow.
  •   It took the concept of avoiding cruel and unusual punishment when dealing with criminals, and turned it into no punishment at all, which increases crime, destroys societal trust, and puts criminals at grave risk of vigilantism.
  •   It took the idea that the state cannot promote or interfere with religion and turned it into a state hostile to religion.
  •   It took the Civil Rights movement, one premised on the fact that we are all equal before God and the law, and turned it into a foundation for dangerous, divisive, and tragic anti-white hatred.

By Every Legal Means Necessary.  The Democrats began a comprehensive assault on the electoral system several years ago in many states; they consecrated great resources to electing the secretaries of state who effectively administer federal elections within their states; they agitated and litigated in many states to change voting practices and to facilitate ballot harvesting through unsolicited mass mailings to the entirety of the voter rolls and the collection and delivery of ballots with increasingly dubious verification that they represent the will of the voters ostensibly casting them.  Many of these processes were challenged and proved unsuccessful.  But the movement to alter the election process decisively in favor of those who could exploit mass mailings to the whole voters' lists, which inevitably include a great many people who have died or moved, was greatly strengthened by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

The War on Thanksgiving.  [Scroll down]  Here we see the fruits of a generation raised on [Howard] Zinn.  While it is likely pointless to convince the vandals who attack statues and businesses that their views are misguided, we need to take the propaganda that has undermined our country and driven fellow citizens to lunacy and extremism seriously.  Thanksgiving is in the beginning stages of receiving the Columbus Day treatment.  We can't underestimate the threat of a few militant voices amplified by America's elite culture-shaping institutions.  Columbus was once nearly universally admired in America, his holiday only questioned by an odd collection of left-wing radicals and, at an even early date, white nationalists who resented the celebration of a Catholic and Italian-born hero.  Now, the holiday has nearly collapsed.  Even his statues are going undefended by the descendants of Italian immigrants who helped construct them.

"Burn It Down".  American cities are entering a period of chaos.  Protests and riots have dominated headlines, but beneath the surface, activists are launching an unprecedented campaign to overthrow the traditional justice system and replace it with a new model based on a radical conception of social justice.  In Seattle, where this campaign may be most advanced, activists have crafted a narrative about police brutality, mass incarceration, and punitive justice that leads to a natural sequence of solutions:  "abolish the police," "divest from prisons," and "defund the courts."  Over the past three decades, the city's radical-progressives have seized control of municipal government — with the notable exception of the criminal-justice system, which they see as the final obstacle to total control.  If they can dismantle it, activists believe, they can bring about their transformation of society.

Redfin says 30% want to live 'somewhere else' because of protests.  In a new study, Seattle-based real estate service Redfin really gets to the heart of the matter of the summer's Capitol Hill occupied protest zone — condo prices:  "Seattle's condo market has really struggled in general during the pandemic, but the units that are closest to the CHOP have typically been selling even more slowly than other condos in Capitol Hill," said local Redfin real estate agent Forrest Moody.  "I had one listing that was a block away from the CHOP and across the street from a Ferrari dealership that had its windows smashed," Moody goes on to say.  "The condo actually sold within five days, but that's likely because we listed it for $25,000 less than we had planned to back in February."

A warning from the future:  The US may soon look like New Mexico.  If you don't believe that the United States can become very radical, very quickly under a Biden administration, you haven't been paying attention to New Mexico.  I know what you're thinking:  When it comes to radical liberal policies, California is the gold standard.  Yet, for the past two years, New Mexico has embarked on an unfortunate mission to become just like California, but faster.  The disastrous results speak for themselves. [...] Millions of people are justifiably worried about California's radical policies spreading nationwide, but don't sleep on New Mexico.  In less than two years, we've gone from a budget surplus and low unemployment to the disaster you see today.

Seattle's downward spiral — these city actions are driving the decline.  The city of Seattle may legalize most misdemeanor crimes.  This isn't an exaggeration.  It's arguably not even the most radical idea introduced by the Seattle City Council.  Rather, it's the latest move by politicians growing increasingly dangerous and aloof to concerns in a city spiraling dangerously out of control.  In the final week of October, the Council used the 2021 budget process to forward an updated plan installing heroin injection sites, replace a specialized police unit tackling homelessness, and lay off more Seattle police, which already has record low staffing.  Seeing the writing on the wall, some of the city's best paid residents are fleeing.

The California Elections Pandemic.  The once Golden State, renowned for creating and exporting much of what constitutes American popular culture, now exports a vote-fraud rich, elections-stealing contagion across the nation. [...] A consequence of Californizing elections will be rampant cynicism.  Sullen distrust will take hold.  Voters, in droves, may elect not to vote.  Yet nonparticipation may be the best case.  In time, the nation may devolve into warring political factions, who thuggishly vie to control the levers of power.  Does that seem surreal?  Investigate Latin America, where countries are colored with rigged elections and associated violence.

Looking to Solzhenitsyn for clues about the present.  Solzhenitsyn warned America and the West time and time again that abandoning its religious foundations and embracing secularism would in turn lead to total chaos, followed by a complete loss of freedom.  America and the rest of the West are already in chaos.  What follows is the people's determination and destiny.

The Chump Effect.  We all know the feeling: when you're inching forward in the freeway exit lane, say, and another driver flies past and swerves onto the ramp at the last second; when your child has to complete her college-entrance exams within a designated time period, but your neighbor's child gets twice as long because of a suddenly diagnosed "learning disability"; when you pay extra to have your pet travel in the airplane's cargo hold but the yipping poodle across the aisle, an "emotional-support animal," gets to ride on its owner's lap for free.  You didn't know that you could get an emotional-support card just by claiming an anxiety disorder and paying a fee to an online agency?  What are you — a chump?  What makes these indignities so infuriating isn't just that a few people game the system.  It's that their selfish gambits work only because the rest of us follow the rules.  If every driver mobbed the freeway exit from the passing lanes, traffic would come to a halt.  The student who fraudulently obtains extra test time gets a leg up only if most other students stick to the original time limit.  And if every pet were designated an emotional-support animal, airplanes and restaurants would become full-time menageries.  (Some airlines have begun tightening rules on support animals for just this reason.)

Conspiracy Theory, Or Stolen Election?  I have no opinion on whether the election was stolen by the Biden campaign or not.  I don't think there is any way to know, on the current evidence, whether, if only legal votes were counted, and each voter voted only once, Donald Trump or Joe Biden actually won the election.  I do know that if the United States is to avoid banana republic status, we need to institute more secure and reliable election procedures.  No more ballot harvesting, no more millions of mail-in votes, and some reasonable attention paid to the machines and software that ultimately count the votes. [...] One more thing:  liberals are quick to dub anything they don't like a conspiracy theory.  But four years ago, I wouldn't have imagined that top officials of the FBI and the CIA would collaborate with Hillary Clinton's campaign to propagate lies in order to try to swing the election to her, or failing that, to disable the incoming administration of the candidate that they didn't favor.  That scandal has greatly expanded my, and our, understanding of what may be possible.  This isn't your grandfather's United States of America.

It's a Coup.  Just Say It!  Political science types have a word for every happening.  One is the Overton Window.  Like lots of these terms, it is not too scientific, but it well describes things observed every day.  For instance, the idea that an eight-year-old boy decides to be a girl, because he feels like it, and is then medicated with hormone therapy to look as close to a girl as science enables was once a preposterous idea.  Then it was possible, then probable, and now, voilà!  A boy is now a girl, and if you use the wrong pronoun, you lose your job!  Meet the Overton Window:  that period of time when something seemingly quite impossible becomes mainstream.

Washington State is a worrisome window into the future.  [Scroll down]  Completing our state's social-engineering trifecta is the law originally passed in 2008, and subsequently endorsed by referendum, that allows physicians to write prescriptions for lethal doses of drugs for individuals who in their opinion have less than six months to live.  The measure applies to any patient over the age of 18 who can produce an accepted form of ID, which, thanks to the largesse of our state's SB 5023, specifically excuses the applicant from providing 'Proof of citizenship, a Social Security number, or command of the English language.'  If you happen to find yourself here in Washington, are aged 17 or over, can pass the not-demanding traffic safety test and sign your form with an X, the state will happily issue you with a driver's permit valid as photo ID, and you're good to go.  It may fail to surprise readers that Washington was also in the vanguard of the same-sex marriage crusade, or that the last local politician to openly question the ethics of providing publicly-funded abortions, a Republican assemblyman named John Koster, was roundly mocked for admitting that he was guided in such matters by his reading of the Bible.  This is what 'political debate' has come to in my state.

Minneapolis authorizes $500k to hire cops from OTHER forces after officers leave in wake of BLM protests.  The Minneapolis city council has authorized $500,000 in funding for the police department to hire cops from other forces, after several officers have quit and crime has soared since the start of the year.  Council members on Friday narrowly voted 7 to 6 in favor of approving $496,800 in extra funds for Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).  The money will be used to bring in 20 to 40 cops from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department and Metropolitan Council/Metro Transit Police to help the department tackle the recent crime wave across the city.

The Biden Threat to Law Enforcement.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were unambiguous throughout their presidential campaign: they believe that racism pervades policing and all other aspects of the criminal-justice system. [...] Biden's plan for "strengthening America's commitment to justice" reads like a Black Lives Matter wish list; there is no reason to think that a Biden-Harris Justice Department will not implement it.  Among its most consequential proposals, it calls for a return to the practice of imposing weakly-justified consent decrees on police departments.  During the Obama years, career attorneys in the Justice Department regularly opened civil rights investigations into police departments (called "pattern or practice" investigations) without credible evidence that an agency was systematically violating citizens' constitutional rights.  Those investigations almost invariably resulted in settlements (called consent decrees) that placed police departments under the control of a nonelected federal monitor and a federal judge; monitors collected millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded fees while they held police departments to draconian deadlines and mindless paper-pushing mandates for years on end.

Refund The Police?  Minneapolis Starts Begging For Outside Resources.  Old and busted:  We don't need our police in our city!  New hotness:  We need your police in our city!  Minneapolis' city council, which spent most of the summer and fall demanding the ability to dismantle its police force, has now started begging for police officers from neighboring jurisdictions to help them deal with skyrocketing crime.

The Editor says...
Let the city of Minneapolis rot!  Let the miserable residents contend with the fallout from their left-wing politicians' actions.

Let's Take Stock of Where We Are.  The 2020 election in particular, and our electoral process in general, have been badly compromised.  First there have been the successful efforts by Democrats to loosen electoral administration standards and practices by legalizing ballot harvesting (where partisan "volunteers" go out and collect ballots as well as "assist" voters in filling out their ballots), allowing same-day voter registration, mass mail-in voting, and the like.  On the flipside we have Democrats tenaciously fighting any efforts to shore up the integrity of the system, such as requiring ID and proof of citizenship to vote.  Couple all of this with unprecedented last minute rule changes on the eve of what was sure to be the most contested election in generations, if not in American history:  all changes designed to favor one side over the other.

A House Divided Along New Lines.  Americans used to agree on certain things.  They believed in God.  They believed that America was a force for good in the world.  They believed in the individual.  They believed in protecting the innocent.  They believed in the rule of law.  They believed that all men are created equal but are not guaranteed equal outcomes.  They believed in charity rather than subservience to government.  They hated communism and socialism, loved the challenge of innovating, and took delight in the market's response to their gifts.  They hunted and fished and went to church and minded their own business and helped their neighbors.  In the current political realignment, these beliefs are no longer universal.  Half the country holds them.  These citizens are derisively referred to national populists, but really they're the same old people who consider themselves patriotic Americans.  It's the other half of the country that has changed.  The Oligarchy of America is guided by New Age spirituality.  God is mutable, as is truth.  Abortion is a sacrament.  Individuality has given way to conformity of thought and ideas.

Why Shouldn't Black America Walk Away From The Democratic Party?  For years, Black America's absolute fidelity to the Democratic Party has been one of the bedrock assumptions of political calculations in the United States, with Democratic Presidential candidates regularly receiving some 90% of the black vote every four years.  The pattern was so pronounced that neither Republicans nor Democrats felt the need to aim campaign pitches at black Americans, Republicans because they felt it was useless and Democrats because they felt it was unnecessary.  During the same period, cities across American enjoyed uninterrupted Democratic Party control and uninterrupted decay.  Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia:  None has had a Republican mayor in the last half century.  Black Americans voted for Democrats in near-monolithic numbers since 1964 only to see the cities they lived in continue to get worse.  Now, thanks to President Donald Trump, that may all be changing.

Supporting Systemic Victimhood Is Not Caring.  Socialism has never worked.  It spreads misery wherever it has been tried.  Under the guise of caring, Biden's platform calls for new entitlements designed to meet all needs — healthcare, college tuition, guaranteed income, and the list goes on.  It's clear that those on the Left have no confidence in the minorities they claim to help.  To the left, minorities need a political Robin Hood ready to steal from their neighbor to give them what they deserve but can't earn.  What an affront to those they claim to help.  Unfortunately, the reality is that once a citizen is locked into government programs and funding, it's hard to get out.  They live too well.  To actually work and start at the bottom and work their way up in a real job means a cut in income.  They call it "The Cliff!"  Why work when being dependent can meet my needs.  Why be married when not having a husband or wife increases my benefits?

Last-Minute Voting Advice.  [Scroll down]  For me, the top issue is religious freedom/freedom of speech.  Far too many people are seemingly unaware of the threats undermining religious freedom and freedom of speech in this country.  Even with the riots and looting that have decimated many American cities this spring and summer, too many are not connecting the dots and are falling for the "mostly peaceful protests" line the media and the Democrats are promoting.  The political correctness movement has declared that people cannot speak truth about current events; only certain approved perceptions can be spoken.  Facts are irrelevant; there is "your truth" and "my truth."  The perceptions of an event or incident become the "fact" regardless of further investigation or other information that shows that distortion has occurred, such as when a person with a history of violent actions charges the police with a knife in hand and commits "suicide by cop."

Austin sees spikes in violent crime, officer retirements after defund police vote.  Austin has seen a spike in violent crime and officer retirements after the city council voted over the summer to immediately slash $20 million from the police department budget, becoming the first major Texas city to do so.  In August, Austin City Council members voted unanimously to cut about $150 million, or roughly one-third, from its police department and allocate those funds to areas like violence prevention, housing and mental health services.  Only about $21.5 million was immediately removed from the department's funding in part by canceling three upcoming cadet classes and slashing overtime expenses.  "It is demoralizing for the officers.  It is angering for the citizens because they're having to wait longer for officers to get the calls.  And it's unsafe for citizens and officers," Austin Police Association President Bill Cassidy told Fox News.

Will anti-lockdown sentiments spur the next populist revolt?  As the nation frets over the possibility of the "dark winter" that Joe Biden recently predicted, we're already seeing signs of renewed authoritarian lockdowns in many parts of the nation.  Curfews are being put back in place in a number of cities.  Orders forbidding gatherings of more than a certain number of people have accompanied them.  Far too many schools are still either closed or holding "virtual classes" that have been failing spectacularly.  There have already been signs of growing resentment toward yet another round of crippling restrictions on the activities of private citizens and businesses, along with the mounting damage these policies have done to what was one of the most thriving economies our nation has experienced prior to the arrival of the novel coronavirus.  So how much of this will people stand for before enough is declared to be enough?

Logically indisputable reasons why President Trump should be reelected.  [Scroll down]  The Democrats are tainted by their intimate dependence upon their corrupt urban political machines, personified by the grossly incompetent Democratic mayors of New York (de Blasio), Chicago (Lightfoot), Los Angeles (Garcetti), Washington (Bowser), Seattle (Durkan), and Portland, Ore. (Wheeler).  The Democrats are also severely compromised by having maintained total silence all summer as the worst rioting in America in over 50 years raged across the country and white-hating urban guerrillas and white hooligans burned and stole and vandalized billions of dollars of property and tried to destroy statues and monuments of inoffensive people such as Columbus, and of some America's greatest leaders, including those most dedicated to the advancement of African Americans:  Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant.

Anarchy in New York?  One late summer Sunday morning, Demetrius Harvard, a 30-year old Bronx man, stood on a subway platform in Greenwich Village and methodically threw construction material onto the tracks.  Bystanders tried to stop him, and someone even went into the train well to remove the debris, but Harvard persisted in his sabotage.  Eventually, he succeeded in derailing an uptown A train, injuring several passengers.  You had to read to the end of tabloid news reports to get the real story.  Two weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, Harvard had tossed a steel bench through a bus window.  He was arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and immediately "ROR'd" — released on his recognizance — with no bail.  This cycle is now all too common in New York, where public order and safety have been buffeted by chaotic forces.  Criminal-justice reform at the state level removed bail as an option for all but the most heinous charges.

China's Communist Party is backing the left's revolution, seeking our downfall and subjugation.  The demonization of U.S. police as racists killing black people, is a tactic designed to defang the police and give free rein to marauding mobs.  A breakdown of order serves the left's attempts to gain power.  It provides a crisis, something that must not be wasted according to Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.  Disorder scares [...] normal people and makes them vulnerable to accepting radical changes like abolishing the police, a move that would result in rule by leftist mobs.  It's pathetic how privileged youth fall for this lie about the police.  They are products of our educational system, one of the institutions that the left has been marching through for decades.  The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci and the German communist Rudi Dutschike are both credited with the idea of the left marching through institutions, like the schools and courts, as a means of stealthily imposing communism, probably renamed true democracy.

Exposing Liberals' 'Tiny Fraction' Lie.  [Scroll down]  [T]he threats from the left are anything but tiny fractions.  The cancel culture is not a tiny fraction.  The radicalized faculty at the university is not a tiny fraction.  The indoctrination of socialist ideas and identity politics and white privilege in schools is not a tiny fraction.  The falsehoods and half-truths spread by the media are not a tiny fraction.  The high-tech crackdown on dissenting speech is not a tiny fraction.  The division created by falsely accusing and demonizing one part of the population while exaggerating the malice and damage to provoke the rage of another heavily indoctrinated, hyper-sensitized part of the population is not a tiny fraction.  And it is self-perpetuating, since the isolated outlier incident serves as the basis for rioting and the bottomless pit of grievance and recrimination, which in turn continue to be dismissed by adversaries as tiny fractions.

San Francisco:  A string of drug stores close after shoplifters strip the shelves bare.  You'll be shocked to learn there are some serious problems in San Francisco with petty crime.  This week the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the seventh Walgreens drug store to announce it is closing in the city since last year.  The problem is a wave of shoplifting from retail locations that can add up to millions of dollars in lost merchandise. [...] The Walgreens clerks can't do anything about the theft because the company has a policy preventing them from interfering in shoplifting.  Allegedly this is for their safety but I suspect it's really because if they didn't have this policy and anyone got hurt, they would be sued.

Unemployment Figures Dramatically Favor Republican-Led States.  August's unemployment figures, just released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, paint a remarkably consistent picture that correlates — almost uncannily — between low unemployment rates in states led by Republican governors and high unemployment rates in states led by Democratic governors.  Drawing national conclusions from the unemployment statistics for all fifty states, those Republican-led states that have tried to follow President Trump's lead in reopening America are doing much better in terms of unemployment than are states likely to support Biden in November.  Former Vice President Biden, while repeatedly complaining about President Trump's actions in fighting COVID, has yet to articulate a coherent COVID policy.  Remarkably, these early-opening Republican-led states do not have a statistically-valid comparative rate of increase in COVID deaths, as presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though the three states with the lowest death per 100,000 population are led by Republican governors.

Uptown Apple store in Minneapolis closes permanently.  The Apple store in Uptown will close permanently, the latest in a growing list of shops and restaurants that have recently abandoned the beleaguered south Minneapolis retail center.  Apple has had a presence near the bustling corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street for the past decade.  It informed its approximately 60 employees Wednesday [10/21/2020] that the store would close.  The store had yet to reopen since March when the state's stay-at-home orders to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic forced many retail establishments to temporarily shutter.  Following the killing of George Floyd in May, the Apple store was one of nearly 40 businesses near the corner that was damaged by rioters.

The City is Killing America.  Welfare states don't create jobs.  They're what happens when there are too many people and no jobs.  We might be able to build our way out of this dead end, but we have to begin by questioning the urban model which is at the root of all of our national problems.  America doesn't need an expanding population.  Urban political machines do. [...] There is no shortage of cheap labor in America.  We don't need more of it.  Every major city is already choking on the unemployed cheap labor forces they have.  And unless we have a massive manufacturing boom, the only employment opportunities for them are in the gig economy where they can deliver pad thai and give rides to environmental consultants.  The urban model hasn't worked for America in sixty years.  The pandemic has put it on the verge of collapse as the wealthy industries that made cities their base flee into virtual workspaces.  It's time to rethink and defund cities as the hubs of our economy and our nation.

Houston Police Sgt. Killed By Repeat Offender After Soros-Funded D.A. Refused to Press Charges.  A police sergeant in Houston, Texas was shot dead Tuesday morning [10/20/2020] by a suspect who was in police custody just two days earlier, but was allowed to go free when the Democrat district attorney refused to press charges.  HPD Sergeant Harold Preston had been with the Houston Police Department for 41-years and was due to retire at the end of the year, according to the Montgomery County Police Reporter.  The local pro-police paper is urging voters to oust the D.A., whose campaign for office was bankrolled by left-wing billionaire George Soros.

My week with the baying antifa mob.  As one long-term [Portland] resident said to me last week: 'This used to be a very civil town.'  Not any more.  Of course, like every city in the West, the madnesses that already existed here have been exacerbated by the coronavirus and the ensuing decision to lock down the population and shutter the economy.  The businesses here are mainly closed, many for good.  Some were able to get through one lockdown but very few can get through multiple lockdowns or the depression to come.  As a result, downtown Portland is a desolate, dangerous place, populated by homeless people who flooded into the area over recent decades, incentivized by left-wing administrations that allowed them to pitch their tents wherever they liked.  In the main squares, unattended tables of food and drink are set out for them to pick at.  But it isn't just the virus or the reaction of the authorities that led to this wasteland.  The giveaway is the status of the few shops that are still open.  Almost all have hardboard affixed to their remaining windows.  Some have bullet-holes in them, not fired by the police.  The businesses that do still operate do so as in a city under siege.

"We want law and order": Minneapolis residents sue over shrinking police resources.  Who didn't see this moment coming for the Minneapolis city council and Mayor Jacob Frey?  The council's police-abolition posturing prompted an abrupt and widespread drain of sworn officers from the Minneapolis Police Department, through retirements, disability claims, and just plain old resignations.  The MPD canceled recruiting classes as well, while waiting to see whether their would be a force to expand or even maintain.  As police retreated, crime exploded.  And the people who have been paying the price for the city council's empty posturing ever since now want some accountability.  A group led by a former council member has launched a lawsuit against the council and Frey, essentially for dereliction of duty.

CHOP Zone Businesses Pursue Lawsuit Against Seattle.  The 21 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the city of Seattle for not enforcing the law against the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, will get their day in court, though the city's liability in such matters remains in question.  U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly of the Western District of Washington issued an opinion on Friday stating, "Plaintiffs plausibly allege that the City's actions — encouraging CHOP participants to wall off the area and agreeing to a 'no response' zone within and near CHOP's borders — foreseeably placed Plaintiffs in a worse position."  Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal.  The plaintiffs are 21 businesses in the area of the city that protesters declared an "autonomous zone" from June 8 to July 1 and used barriers to block off.  "Inhabitants" even declared the area was no longer part of the United States.

The Terrible Ten.  As of September 18, 2020, these are the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates in the country:  NE; UT; ID; SD; VT; ND; AL; GA; MT and OK.  The 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, all in excess of 10%, are:  PA; NJ; IL; MA; NM; CA; HI; NY; RI and NV.  See a pattern?  Of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates, only Montana has a Democrat governor.  Of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, only one, Massachusetts, has a Republican governor.  Additionally, of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, all have Democrat control of both houses of the state legislature except for Pennsylvania, with Republican control of both houses.  I live in deep blue New Mexico, one of the terrible ten with unemployment rates in excess of ten percent.  NM has had single-party Dem rule at the state level for most of the last 90 years.  In the state legislature, the last time Republicans held a majority in both houses at the same time was 1930.

'Banana Republic of America'.  We are living in times in which our leaders have intentionally cast doubt on the court.  Members of Congress have managed to earn the doubt of nearly 90% of America simply through childish partisan behavior.  They have intentionally cast doubt on the presidency through the abuse of the impeachment process.  Elected officials and the media have both cast doubt on law enforcement.  It seems nearly everyone even tangentially involved in politics now says or does whatever they think can win the moment regardless of the long-term consequences.  Bureaucrats in the state of Virginia have decided to ignore the law on the books regarding ballot postmarks.  The state legislature didn't change the law.  No.  Virginia administrative officials have simply made the choice to do something different.  On whose authority?  No one has that authority under the law, yet they insist anyway. [...] Stability no longer exists.  The rules change day to day.  The laws only apply sometimes and only to certain people.  Election results, the courts, the police and elected officials themselves are under a constant shadow of doubt.

Research Shows Critical Race Theory Is Actually Making People More Racist.  President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5 an end to critical race theory training in federal agencies.  As explained by Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, the policy change targets "training or propaganda" pertaining to "white privilege" and efforts to advance the claim that "the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or ... that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil."  On Sept. 22, the president extended this ban to companies doing business with the federal government.  He was right on both counts.  Critical race theory and similar academic left perspectives over the last decade stormed the political mainstream through a surge in news and popular media attention.  As a result, today politicians, celebrities, and corporations employ "critical," or woke, rhetoric.  Even comic books push critical themes despite hostile reactions from their readers.

There's Never Been a More Important Time to Choose Wisely.  This critical election is a choice between progressive government and its collective baggage and representative government and its free enterprise. [...] So-called "progressives" brought us such societal horrors as the War on Poverty.  Progressives are rooted in the intellectual arrogance of self-anointed "experts."  Not only are their theories proven 180 degrees wrong, but they never pay the price for their failures.  They just move on to "solve" the next problem, leaving their mess behind.  Exhibit 1 is the War on Poverty.  Contrary to good intentions, it devastated minority communities for generations and created fatherless homes for 70% of blacks without making a dent in actual poverty.  Progressives applaud "reducing" poverty from 19% of the population in 1964 to 14.8% in 2014.  But they ignore that much "improvement" simply moved people onto public support, building a dependency on welfare, food stamps, "free" lunches, and other subsidies.

Orwell Rears His Head.  On Monday of last week, to use the phrase "sexual preference" was completely acceptable.  As recently as last month, multiple gay rights publications used the phrase.  Leon Panetta had used the phrase in the past couple of years.  Joe Biden has used the phrase this year.  Merriam-Webster considered "sexual preference" to be just another version of "sexual orientation."  But then Tuesday happened.  On Tuesday, the village idiot from Hawaii masquerading as a senator, Mazie Hirono, attacked Amy Coney Barrett for using "sexual preference" instead of "sexual orientation."  By Tuesday evening, the employees of Merriam-Webster had changed the phrase in their online dictionary to note it was offensive.  No, I am not making that up.  The dictionary company literally changed it after Barrett's exchange with Hirono.  Steve Krakauer, a former CNN producer who now produces Megyn Kelly's podcast, documented the change on his social media feed.  Gay rights publications such as The Advocate went on the attack as well.  In just 18 days, "sexual preference" went from acceptable to a hate crime.

The Chinese Virus — Why We Panicked and Why We've Got to End the Panic Now.  [Scroll down]  The programmers have been busy making us, or enough of us, believe not that truth is optional, but that there is no truth, in the manner Pilate iterated.  There is only the convenience of the moment.  Who can doubt that we are being taught the truth no longer exists?  Examples are legion.  Let's take one.  A president denounces white supremacy dozens of times.  But the "truth" — the fake truth de jour — is that he has not.  How convenient!  Another beauty: many American cities were recently devastated by riots.  But the "truth" is that the rioters were "mostly peaceful."  How convenient!  It's not that the collective "we" are dumb.  "We" have been made to be dumb.  And they are trying to make us ever more dumb.  They require that we believe their fake "truth."  If we don't, we are deplorables.  At best.  Some now call for our physical destruction.  In other countries, similar things have occurred.  Perhaps even worse.  They are actively jailing people who express incorrect feelings.

Seattle mayor who praised CHOP, supported police cuts, is now 'deeply concerned' as more than 100 officers have left the force.  Democratic Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan — who once called the police-free autonomous zone in her city a "block party" amid a "summer of love" — is now "deeply concerned" over the mass exodus taking place within the city's police department.  KING-TV reported early Friday morning that a record number of officers had left the department in September, according to a new Seattle Budget Office report.  The report noted that 39 officers and officers-in-training "separated" from the department while an additional 14 officers extended their leaves.  The exodus is part of a continuing trend that has resulted in at least 118 officers leaving the force this year, KTTH-TV reporter Jason Rant said.  He added that "even this number is misleading" because "many officers are using their accrued sick time as they begin their escape to other agencies or wait for retirement."

The literally deadly results of "bail reform".  Last week, a 43-year-old Long Island man named William Farnum was being pursued in his vehicle by the NYPD. The suspect eventually crashed into a utility pole.  When the police arrived on the scene and approached to investigate they discovered that Farnum had slit his own throat in the driver's seat of his car and was dead.  The bad news didn't end there, however.  When officers attempted to notify his next of kin they discovered two dead bodies in his home.  They are believed to be the remains of Farnum's father and sister, reportedly killed by Farnum.  What's really got the local police and Republican lawmakers up in arms about this situation is the fact that Farnum never should have been out on the streets when all of this was taking place.  Scrolling through the man's recent history of engagements with law enforcement and the totality of his criminal record, he should have been behind bars.  But new bail reform laws in New York have tied the hands of judges and it was virtually impossible to keep Farnum locked up for more than a few hours at a time.

If Republican Senators Were Like Crazy Mazie.  [A] fair-minded observer cannot avoid recognizing that the poison and vitriol in American politics long preceded Donald Trump.  It was the Democrats who changed the landscape by murdering Judge Robert Bork's name and reputation for a generation.  While Republicans repeatedly treated Democrat Supreme Court nominees with kid gloves, the Democrats just assassinated one human being's character after another.  They destroyed Bork.  They came up with the most racist, stereotypical garbage imaginable against Clarence Thomas.  They lied about Brett Kavanaugh, defaming that very extraordinary man, a man who reflects so elegantly the Divine spirit that reposes within all of us.  In the presence of his dignified wife and innocent children, and before the eyes and ears of hundreds of millions of Americans, they proffered false accusations of rapes, attacks that never happened, fantasies of truly sick minds. [...] And then the Democrats pontificate and hypocritically ask why our democracy is no longer civilly bipartisan as it once was.

Destroying the Institutions We Inherited.  The annual Academy Awards were once among the most watched events in America.  In 2020, however, Oscar viewership crashed to its lowest level in history, due in large part to backlash against the left-wing politicking, sermonizing, and virtue-signaling of award winners.  Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, announced that it will adopt racial, gender, and sexual identity quotas for nominees — refuting the ancient idea of "art for art's sake[.]"  Such ideology has also infected, and thus tarnished, the Grammy and Emmy awards, and left-wing virtue-signaling has also become part of the NFL and the NBA.

Conservative Answers for Poverty.  It is an unfortunate fluke of history that in the 1960s, the time when the civil rights movement crystalized and black Americans achieved equal treatment politically — what should have long before been achieved morally — was a time of moral unraveling of the country.  Religion and moral principles were increasingly seen as a barrier to freedom, rather than its source.  Prayer was banished from school, abortion on demand legalized.  But the choice of man is not whether to believe.  The only choice is what to believe.  As religion was pushed out of the public square, the new religion became government.  Government programs were increasingly seen to be the path to salvation, rather than personal commitment to eternal truths.

Hawaii "Has Committed Suicide" — Local Rages "Hardly Anyone Is Sick, But We're All Broke".  While we have grown used to the people (well, at least those who are capable for thinking for themselves) of Michigan and California complaining that the tyrannical COVID lockdown rules imposed by Governors Whitmer and Newsom are arbitrary and capricious (if not downright unconstitutional), it is less often we hear from those living on the beautiful islands of Hawaii. [...] ["]The new travel requirements will trap Hawaii residents here as securely than if they were slaves.["]

Slaughter in the Cities.  Establishment voices are finally, grudgingly admitting that murders and shootings are up spectacularly in 2020.  But the reasons, they all agree, are immensely complicated and rather boring.  Perhaps, they muse, it has something to do with lockdowns?  Or there could be any number of other subtly interacting factors.  Who can tell?  In any case, this mysterious rise in violence is beyond the comprehension, much less the control, of politicians. [...] Did anything happen in late May that encouraged criminals and discouraged cops?  The data journalists appear stumped when they try to think back that far.  But, as you may recall (it was in the news at the time), George Floyd died in police custody on May 25, and three days later the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis let rioters burn down a police station.  From there, looting and rioting spread nationwide as the press and universities extolled the Mostly Peaceful Protesters.

Pay Attention To Local Elections, Because Whoever Wins Can Make Your Life Miserable.  This year, more than any other in recent memory, we got a bitter taste of the power of local officials to enable, and even promote, rioting and mayhem in America.  Many of us have watched aghast as mayors of blue cities like Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York turned a blind eye or even encouraged mob rule that resulted in wide-scale violence, vandalism, looting, injury, and, yes, murder.  They have flatly rejected all offers by President Trump to bring it under control by calling in the National Guard.  Let's not forget that these mayors — along with the many other officials close to them — were elected locally.  Recall, it's local elected prosecutors, district attorneys, state's attorneys, and attorneys general that have the power to allow violent criminals to roam free after an arrest.  We see this happening repeatedly in Democratic Party-run cities like Seattle and Portland where Antifa thugs caught on camera assaulting officers and citizens are immediately set free without bail.

Media Vs. The People:  The War Over Pedophilia.  The media has been working to normalize pedophilia, but the American people keep rejecting it.  Until recently, the pedophilia pushers suffered no serious consequences for their relentless campaign to sexualize children and groom them for adult exploitation.  But the recent indictment of Netflix for distribution of child pornography has changed the dynamics.  A grand jury in Texas has indicted Netflix, a streaming giant with $20 billion in annual revenue, for allegedly promoting "lewd visual material" of a child. [...] Almost unanimously, the major film critics adored the award-winning "Cuties," lavishing praise on it as "extraordinary," "inspired," and "empathetic and analytical."  These arbiters of cultural standards dismissed criticism of the film's sexualization of children as closed-minded tripe from right-wing "pearl-clutchers."  But the American people despised "Cuties" and launched a campaign to cancel Netflix subscriptions.

Why Some People Take Q-Anon's Pedophilia Allegations Seriously.  [Scroll down]  If charges of organized pedophilia at the highest ranks of society are so delusional, then why is Obama-connected Netflix doubling down on its support of child porn?  Why has California created a legal loophole for twenty-four year-olds to engage in "consensual" sodomy and oral sex with fourteen-year-olds in the name of LGBT equality? [...] When these issues were raised during the debates about gay adoption, the constant response we heard from the left was that "children don't need to be raised by their mother and father; they only need to be loved."  If you unpack that logic, you'll see the underlying evil.  Q-Anon has figured out that terrible things happen when adults think all children want their "love" all the time.  Stalking, molestation, grooming, trafficking, and harassment of underage people quickly become normalized when the left reserves the right to say the child wanted whatever strange treatment the adults believed they were entitled to force or press upon the child.

BLM rioters move into rich, liberal suburb as resident complains that they are supporters.  Affluent liberals deceive themselves that they will get a "pass" from violent radical revolutionaries if they sympathize enough with their causes.  The latest group to begin to learn the hard way lives in swing state Wisconsin.

Protesters want to defund police.  Homicides and violence are spiking.  The homicide rate is spiking, a troubled police department is reeling from street demonstrations seeking racial justice and accountability, and the city budget is ravaged by the coronavirus economy.  The push to reshape police departments is occurring in cities across the country, but it is perhaps nowhere more evident than here in Oakland, where veteran activists want to sharply reduce the police budget but much of the broader community is struggling with what that could mean.

NYC: The example America should not follow.  New York City is becoming an economic basket case.  "'We're at war': New York City Faces a Financial Abyss," screams a New York Times headline.  New York City's unemployment rate stands at 16%, double the nation's average.  Yet, even in the midst of a "financial abyss," the animosity of New York's liberal elite remains undeterred in its hostility toward free enterprise and entrepreneurship, the pillars of job creation and economic recovery.  In a latest example, commercial real estate development firms have pulled out of a proposed project, Industry City, that was estimated to bring 20,000 jobs and $100 million in tax revenue to New York City.  After several years of fighting opposition to get approval for rezoning that would have made the project possible, they threw in the towel.

The Art of Propaganda.  An ally of BLM posted a video of herself three months ago.  The young lady ("I'm gonna stab you" to the next person with the "Caucasity" to say "all lives matter") may well represent the majority attitude of our Ivy League — she is a Harvard grad — and of much of the left.  How did this come to pass?  Her intelligence is not small.  It's in the incessant propaganda, coming not only from academia and the schools, but from the mass media — especially television and film.  It's not just the overt message, it's in the subtext.  See a villain on the screen, there's a good chance you'll see an American flag in the background.  Propaganda is exponentially more potent than it was in 1922, when Mein Kampf was written.  The electronic media are pervasive, and their product, entertainment, almost always has a political message.  To a large extent it's not merely the art of propaganda but the propaganda of art.  As for the Harvard grad, even Hitler youth did not exhibit such ice-cold hatred.  She is no longer a free agent.  Her values are "fixed" — they will not change.  Nor will the politics and values of much, if not most, of her generation.  She is the future.

Red states are outperforming blue states economically.  Overall, Democratic-run states, particularly those in the Northeast and Midwest, had larger contractions in gross domestic product than Republican-run states in the Plains and the South, according to the latest state GDP data for the second quarter of 2020, released by the Commerce Department on Friday.  Of the 20 states with the smallest decrease in state GDP, 13 were run by Republican governors, while the bottom 25 states with the highest decrease in state GDP were predominantly Democratic-run states.

The Language of Privilege:  I can speak fluent wokese.  [Scroll down]  Or maybe you have by now read about the now-infamous wokese imposition of "Latinx" (pronounced Latin-ex) to name a group of people first designated by a Nixon administration-era census as an ethnicity, and whose members either haven't heard or don't want to be termed by that label rather than the supposedly problematic "Latino" or "Hispanic."  A recent New York Times essay by progressive strategists Ian Haney López and Tory Gavito found that, "Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well.  Certainly, we both once took that perspective for granted.  Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of color."  But pretend you don't know that.  Keep calling Hispanics people of color.  Use the phrase "people of color" often enough that you are inclined to shorten it to "POC."

Left Wing Governor Of Washington State Freaks Out As Boeing Moves Production To South Carolina.  Jay Inslee, the left wing governor of Washington State, is freaking out because Boeing has decided to move production of its 787 airplane to the more conservative and business friendly South Carolina.  Who can blame Boeing for making such a move, especially if it benefits them financially?  Besides, in Seattle, leaders have shown that they will allow mobs of left wingers to destroy businesses.

A Case Study in Punitive Liberalism.  Never mind small business and retail shops.  Big business in Seattle isn't very happy either.  Boeing announced today [10/1/2020] that it plans to discontinue manufacturing its 787 Dreamliner plane in Washington state and consolidate 787 production in (nonunion) South Carolina.  This shouldn't be a huge surprise to Seattle, given that Boeing already moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago a few years ago.  Let that sink in a moment: although Boeing said they wanted an HQ location closer to their global customer base, you really have to wonder that Chicago would be preferable to Seattle, given the parlous state (and higher taxes) of Illinois.  In other words, this should have been a wake up call for Seattle's political class.  Well, Boeing pulling its 787 production out of Washington isn't sitting well with Washington's dimwit Governor Jay Inslee.

Garbage In Garbage Out.  What is wrong with New York City?  Their streets are lined with garbage from Wall Street to Midtown Manhattan.  [Photos]  Garbage everywhere even though businesses remain closed and half the people normally working there haven't stepped foot in the city for months.

Formerly known as the Ferguson Effect:
US sees 710 additional homicides and 2,800 more shootings, attributed to 'Minneapolis effect'.  With police departments across America under siege, pushed back on their heels by the oft-violent Black Lives Matter movement, the Democratic Party and their media allies, violent crime is "skyrocketing."  That's the assessment of Paul Cassell, a professor at S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, who has dubbed the explosion of violence the "Minneapolis effect."  The professor is the author of a recent research paper titled, "Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S. Cities:  The 'Minneapolis Effect' and the Decline in Proactive Policing."  "I think what Minneapolis is seeing is the same thing we're seeing all over the country," Cassell told Fox 9.  "We're seeing a reduction in proactive policing, and as a result of that homicide and shootings are skyrocketing all over the country."

Colonizing Trump country.  90 minutes away from the maddened crowd in DC, the farmers of Rappahannock County and their neighbors live a bucolic life amid rolling hills and mountains.  The 7,252 residents face an invasion as DC residents, who having fouled their nests, seek new territory to destroy.  They are trouble makers who seek to turn the rural county into what they left behind. [...] [Mike] Massie didn't talk to the [Washington] Post.  I don't blame him.  Never talk to a cop without a lawyer, and never talk to a reporter at all.  But the Post reported, "For many who have been here, the objections to the hay bales were the breaking point.  They could tolerate the new wine bar — and the corner store that offers seven kinds of kombucha.  But they would not allow a farmer to be told what kind of sign he could erect on his land."

The Way to Perdition.  Encountering a certain segment of our society's acceptance of burning, looting, and execution of the police, not to mention the outrage prevalent when criminals or simple bad actors get their just desserts when police exercise their duty, I have been challenged to find any rhyme or reason to excuse such actions, not only in the permissiveness our leaders attach to such activity, but the actual encouragement they offer.  Indeed, you can find many who are so completely invested in this mindset to the point they cannot cope emotionally with any pushback or appeal to traditional law, justice, or morality.  Simply put, the traditional moral parameters of good behavior no longer apply. [...] This is simply the cost of doing business in a "woke" society.  Inevitably the chaos will submit to someone's organization, for good or ill.  Possibly, it will lead to even greater oppression and tyranny from a more pervasive, more powerful entity.  And where power alone regulates activity, perdition is the inevitable outcome.  This is the fate of a society that embraces such thinking in the first place.

The Progressive Medusa.  Large swaths of the downtowns of America's large cities — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland — are becoming unhygienic, unsafe, and uninhabitable.  Substantial corridors swarm with the homeless.  Crime is increasing but commensurately redefined as a sort of cry of the heart, no-bail social activism.  The cities are broke and yet demand more bailouts to spend more money that will ensure things get worse. [...] Stepping over human excrement, accepting that if mugged the assailant will either rarely be caught or if so, released shortly without bail, and resigned that "brick and mortar property" is not properly one's own are all no way to go through life.

Zimmerman woman paralyzed after missing window for urgent medical care during riots.  A 59-year-old Zimmerman woman told 5 Eyewitness News she had an extreme medical emergency May 29 but was delayed getting specialized treatment during Twin Cities riots and is now paralyzed from the waist down.  Retired Minnesota National Guard Master Sgt. Launette Figliuzzi said she had a spinal stroke and needed to be airlifted to a metro hospital that specializes in emergency stroke care, but airspace over the metropolitan area was restricted at the time and major highways were closed as well due to the rioting.

Civilization Requires Collective Common Sense.  Without common sense in government, civilization cannot continue.  After the summer protests and rioting in many large cities, activists demanded a defunding, or at least radical pullbacks, of the police.  So-called crime experts often concurred.  So some city governments ignored public warnings and diminished their police presence despite a sharp rise in crime in many cities.  Looting and arson were often ignored.  If you call 911 in a large American city, there is no guarantee that anyone will answer promptly and send out police to aid the endangered.  So gun sales have soared.  Some people who never before owned weapons, or even opposed the use of firearms, are now terrified to remain unarmed.  Self-protection often outweighs abstract ideology.  According to a recent Gallup poll, most black Americans favor maintaining or increasing police presence.  Often, city officials who support cutting back on law enforcement still expect their own homes and property to be constantly policed.  The same is often true of activist elites who live far from the inner city.

The War of All Men Against All Men.  [Scroll down]  With few exceptions, our culture has murdered the idea of objective truth, leaving us unable to agree on what is good, right, or true, even as regards fundamental issues.  Most of us, for example, oppose child abuse, but some critics have applauded the lewd film "Cuties" with its sexualized adolescents, and we tell children who are too young to vote, drive a car, or drink a beer that they can decide to change their gender.  Facts have also taken a nosedive in our society.  Look, for instance, at COVID-19.  Were the lockdowns necessary?  What is the actual death rate from the virus?  Why are we still wearing masks?  Has the fallout from this policy been more deadly than the virus?  It's almost impossible to answer such questions objectively, because instead of sticking to facts, we made the virus a political and emotional tennis ball.  Oppose closing schools, for example, and you risk being called a murderer.

America [is] in peril if RBG's SCOTUS seat is not filled before the election.  [Scroll down]  SCOTUS confirmation hearings used to be boring even by C-Span standards.  Senator Bob Dole once remarked that the toughest part of a confirmation hearing was for the Senate committee chairman to be able to "stare straight ahead at the witness while sleeping."  Presidents of both parties were given broad latitude to appoint whoever they liked to the courts and to their cabinet.  Unless a nominee had been guilty of serious malfeasance, they were easily confirmed.  Ideology was never a factor since it was expected that nominees shared the ideology of the president who nominated them.  This all changed in 1987.  Judge Robert Bork would have been the fifth vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.  Democrats decided that the ends justified the means.  Bork had to be personally destroyed.  Leading the charge against Bork were Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden.  Ideology alone became grounds for disqualification.  Democrats declared every liberal nominee to be mainstream and every conservative nominee to be extreme.  After torpedoing Bork, Democrats almost derailed Clarence Thomas.

Minneapolis' Guilty Whites Think BLM Lawn Signs Will Save Them When the Mob Comes.  It's a strange time to be staying in Downtown Minneapolis. [...] If I lacked purpose, I could go for days without seeing a soul, and even chance meetings near elevators or stairwells make people scurry away like frightened rats.  No one comes here anymore.  As I walked back from NoGo Minneapolis yesterday, a man rose from his little group of thieves to follow me as I passed, putting a scarf across his face as he approached to take whatever I had.  He was different from other men in other cities who have done the same, and knew in a heartbeat my reactions mattered in this moment, if I was to walk away unharmed.  This man had nothing to lose.  The streets are eerily empty too.  Its like the day after some kind of apocalypse where shocked survivors venture out to find water, only to quickly scurry away, hugging the outline of buildings in the shadows with their faces down to the curb.  Minneapolis is lost.

Shootings soar in Portland after mayor disbands police gun unit.  Shootings in Portland, Oregon, nearly tripled over the summer after Mayor Ted Wheeler disbanded the city's police gun crimes unit, according to new police data.  The city recorded 223 shootings in July and August, up from 77 over the same period in 2019.  And a little more than halfway through September the city already had 64 shootings, or double the shootings from the same month last year.  The numbers were released last week.

Minneapolis city councilors:  Residents are feeling 'terrorized,' say police 'nowhere to be seen'.  Minneapolis city councilors told the city police chief Tuesday [9/15/2020] that their residents are feeling "terrorized" and say police are "nowhere to be seen" months after the police killing of George Floyd set off protests against police brutality.  The Minneapolis City Council called on Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo to address constituents' reports of increased street racing, carjacking, robberies, assaults and shootings.  The meeting this week came months after the city council unanimously voted to amend the city's charter to allow the city police department to be dismantled.  The proposal, which would need to be voted on as a ballot measure, would replace the police department with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, "which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach."

San Francisco's Deathly Compassion.  San Francisco has a serious drug problem, particularly among its homeless population.  Roughly 8,000 people live on the city's sidewalks or in its alleyways, public parks, and playgrounds.  People with needles in their arms and legs, holding glass pipes and lighters, are a regular sight.  Users go limp in doorways and tents, or they career about, dazed and distraught, or angry and violent.  Dealers selling heroin, Fentanyl, methamphetamine, and crack are ubiquitous.  So, too, are the advocates for "harm reduction," which holds that widespread drug use should be accepted but its worst effects mitigated.  Organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Drug Users Union, and even the Department of Public Health, in partnership with The DOPE Project, focus almost exclusively on "safe drug use."  In fact, the Drug Users Union's goal is "to create a safe environment where people can use & enjoy drugs as well as receive services."  This attitude led to today's humanitarian crisis: thousands of people living on San Francisco's streets, languishing in an endless cycle of homelessness and addiction.

Blue States Slammed with Multiple Interlocking Crises.  Black lives (along with all other lives) are now more endangered by increased crime than they were before.  Violent crime is on the rise in the cities that rallied the hardest demanding racial justice — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Portland, D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, and Seattle.  These processes are superimposed on economic recession caused by the unnecessary shutdowns of businesses and schools.  The economy — President Trump's greatest achievement — has been hit hard and mercilessly.  [...] While all Democrats-run states went to lockdown, almost half of the Republic states remained opened, with closed states imposing fewer restrictions.  Still, the blue states got hit harder.

'Enter At Your Own Risk!': Texas Police Group Puts Up Billboards Warning Those Entering Austin That City Defunded Police.  People entering Austin, Texas, from Interstate 35 will see two billboards warning them that the city defunded police.  One billboard says, "Warning!  Austin defunded police.  Enter at your own risk!" CBS News reported.  The board is referring to the Austin city council's vote last month to cut the police budget.  The second billboard reads, "Limited support next 20 miles," the outlet reported.  The billboards were put up by the Texas Municipal Police Association, which announced its campaign Wednesday [9/9/2020] on Facebook.

Never-Trumpers Need A Lesson In Basic Math.  [Scroll down]  But a Joe Biden win?  That will harm the entire country.  And the damage will last a lifetime.  If you don't think so, look at the legacy of past Democrats who were able to shove their agendas through.  Now in place for 55 years, Lyndon Johnson's Medicare, Medicaid, and "Great Society" programs account for a third of the federal budget.  (And their fiercest defenders are often Republicans.)  ObamaCare costs close to $100 billion a year (after Republicans betrayed voters and failed to repeal it).  Welfare dependency — another of Johnson's legacies — is the main cause of the disintegration of families and the perpetuation of poverty, despite Republican efforts to mitigate the damage.  For 40 years the Jimmy Carter-created Department of Education has been pouring taxpayer dollars into schools, achieving nothing on standardized tests while massively fueling college tuition inflation.  Liberal judges with lifetime appointments make a mockery of the separation of powers.  The list goes on.

Oscars' woke quota will backfire on Hollywood spectacularly.  According to last February's ratings, 93 percent of us are already not watching the Academy Awards.  Now Oscar is wondering:  How do I whittle down that last 7 percent?  Answer: woke quotas.  That thunk you heard coming out of La-La Land on Tuesday [9/8/2020] was the sound of the Academy grandly planting its face in the sidewalk by announcing it was formally rejecting the pursuit of artistic quality in favor of a byzantine quota system.  Starting with 2024 films, your project can't even be considered for a Best Picture Oscar unless it meets a set of diversity targets of the kind you'd normally expect to see credited to the Oberlin Freshperson Student Social-Justice Initiative & Sustainable Vegan Hemp Co-Operative.  Good news, whoever staged that Rob-Lowe-meets-Snow-White dance number:  You're now the second-most embarrassing thing ever associated with the Academy Awards.

Oscars' Orwellian diversity quota throws out merit.  In the latest act of craven capitulation to the BLM-Antifa mob, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decreed Tuesday [9/8/2020] that no movie can win the top award unless it satisfies a set of genetically and sexually diverse quotas.  For example, lead actors must be from an "underrepresented racial or ethnic group ... Asian, Latinx, Black, Native American, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander."  At least 30 percent of the rest of the cast otherwise must be chosen from at least two of the following victim identities:  women, underrepresented racial or ethnic group, "LGBTQ+" and the disabled.  Or the Academy gets to dictate the content of the movie so that the "main storyline, theme or narrative of the film" must satisfy the same intersectionality requirements on gender, race, sexuality and disability.  And that is just Standard A, one of four labyrinthine prescriptions for creating Academy-sanctioned art.  They all read like satire.  You have to pinch yourself to make sure you're not having some dystopian dream.

Oscars announce that films will have to meet 'representation and inclusion' requirements if they are eligible to win Best Picture.  Actress Kirstie Alley raged at the Oscars' 'dictatorial' new diversity rules last night [9/8/2020] — claiming they were akin to 'telling Picasso what had to be in his [...] paintings'.  The Academy Awards shake-up means films hoping to win Best Picture from 2024 will have to hire more black, female, LGBT or disabled cast and crew or address themes that affect those communities.  Academy chiefs say the rules are intended to 'better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience', but critics accused 'Woke Hollywood' bosses of turning the Oscars into a 'weapon against anyone who disagreed with their politics'.

Liberals figure out a way to make the Oscars even worse.  I realize that many of you will read the title of this column and assume that it's just more fake news.  How could anyone possibly make the Oscars worse than they've been in recent years? [...] From now on, it won't be enough to simply make a good movie, or at least "good" as defined by the Hollywood elite.  Now the prospective nominees for the Best Picture Award will be judged on whether or not the people involved in every aspect of the production are "diverse" enough.  This is apparently Hollywood's latest nod to the Black Lives Matter movement, though we might at least hope that it will include Hispanics, Asians and Indigenous Americans as well.

Insufferable San Francisco.  Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the American city hardly exists at all. [...] I had figured I could stick around forever.  Then I took my daughter to see The Nutcracker.  The two blocks we had to walk from the train station to War Memorial Opera House made a greater impression on my nine-year-old than any magical offering from the SF Ballet.  The city greeted her with the army of cracked nuts, the ubiquitous 'zombies' who aimlessly roam our streets.  The need to be hyperaware of their presence while pirouetting to avoid discarded syringes and human excrement left her depressed and terrified for days.  My daughter refuses to go to the ballet at the War Zone Opera House ever again.

The True Cost of Riots.  A striking case against riots is clearly expressed in the findings of Professor Mary C. King whose research demonstrates "little relationship between regional progress for African Americans and relatively proximate race riots."  Riotous behavior often results in businesses fleeing minority communities, thus depriving residents of employment and income.  Racism is an extremely sensitive matter; however, sensitivity must be tempered by logic.  African Americans have experienced substantial progress over the past century.  Eroding these gains is a possibility if rational adults refrain from correcting misguided activists.  Such was the impact of the race riots of the 1960s.  Examining the effects of civil disorder on small businesses in inner cities, sociologists Howard Aldrich and Albert Reiss found that riots not only inflicted serious property damages but in the long term they made it prohibitive to operate in inner cities, hence driving up insurance costs.  As a result, businesses migrated to nurturing environments.  Low-income residents are the major beneficiaries of entrepreneurship in the inner city, so when emotions trump logic and businesses exit these communities, the losers are poor black people.

New York Had It Coming.  NYC's streets are now too dangerous and too disturbing for normal folks to tolerate.  If they're not being attacked, beset, robbed, or murdered, they're being disgusted.  The streets are the problem that must be fixed before we can consider a resurrection for NYC. The psychotics, thugs, panhandlers, loiterers, tent campers, muggers, and everyone else making life in the city a trial need to be removed and never tolerated again.  New York City was America's premier metropolis.  It should be reserved for "movers and shakers," ne'er-do-wells should reside elsewhere.  Last year when hoodlums started dousing NYC cops with buckets of water and little was done about it, NYC's fate was sealed.  Giuliani would never have allowed the streets of NYC to descend into the chaos that de Blasio has let happen; Rudy would have stopped it cold.  If New York is to be revived, then a new policy of zero tolerance for bad behavior must be instituted.  Panhandling, public urination and defecation, nudity, sex in the streets, loitering, malingering, tent encampments, etc. should no longer be tolerated.  If New Yorkers aren't willing to forbid such things, forget about the city coming back.

Don't Be a Victim of Democrat Abuse and Voter Endangerment.  If you have been surviving in a pocket of America where Democrats have forced you into unemployment over a virus that is proving less lethal by the day, robbed your kids of an education while using teachers' unions as political weapons, turned your elderly parents' nursing home into a death camp for disease transmission, fire-bombed your favorite restaurant or neighborhood drugstore because you've been deemed insufficiently "woke" and irredeemably racist, and now deprived you of any sports or entertainment shows that don't first take a moment to tell you how awful and evil you are, then you are a victim of Democrat abuse and voter endangerment.  American cities didn't kill themselves, after all.  Democrats did that.  All this mayhem and violence in the streets — the Democrats built that, too.  Democrats have had an absolute monopoly on the way most American cities are governed for fifty to a hundred years.  They run those cities' police departments.  They control the national news media housed in those cities.  They sit on the boards of all the "woke" corporations that fuel their wealth.  They've taken over the sports leagues and replaced entertainment with sermons from the perpetually aggrieved.  They have the backing of the Chamber of Commerce, an organization that prefers Wall Street to Main Street and cashing checks from Chinese communists to aiding American workers.  And the Democrats are Hollywood.

Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best steps down, claims cuts left her 'destined to fail'.  Carmen Best, the first Black police chief in Seattle's history, left her post Wednesday, saying on her way out that the city council's police budget cuts had put her in a "position destined to fail," according to a report.  Best, 55, announced her resignation Aug 10, after the council made good on its promise to approve sweeping proposals that would slash the police department budget by $4 million and cut as many as 100 officers from the force.  "I believe 100% that they were putting me in a position destined to fail.  Cutting a police department that already had low staffing numbers, that was already struggling to keep up with the demand," Best told NPR on Wednesday.  "How are we going to provide for adequate public safety in that environment?"

The coming blue-city exodus.  While the election isn't until November 3, it looks like lots of people and businesses are, in a sense, "voting" early — with their feet.  In pre-pandemic January, I wrote here about the blue-state exodus in which thousands of blue-state residents, fed up with high taxes, heavy regulations and "woker-than-thou" policies, are fleeing the sinking blue ships and moving to red states.  Now it appears we are seeing a blue-city exodus as well.  Begin with the fact that virtually every large city in the country is run by liberals.  World Population Review lists the 20 most liberal U.S. cities, with San Francisco leading the way, followed by Washington, DC, Seattle, Oakland, Boston, Minneapolis, Detroit and New York City.  Chicago comes in at 11 and Portland at 12.

Must See Video Shows Democrats Continually Called for Uprisings and Violence.  Democrats and the media have made a sudden turn the last few days.  After months of excusing the riots and even actively encouraging them, the new narrative is that it's all Trump's fault.  They ignore that Trump has offered assistance to Portland, for example, and has been viciously rebuffed even as the city continues to suffer chaos.  They also ignore that when Gov. Evers did accept Trump's help in Kenosha, the violence dwindled almost immediately.  No matter, though.  The media believe they are the vanguards of information and the Democrats know they have them in their pocket.  So you get insanity like this must-see video which succinctly shows just who has really been stoking the flames.  [Video clip]

Cultural Suicide Is Painless.  It is not all that hard to blow up a culture.  You can do it in a summer if you haven't much worry about others.  When you loot and burn a Target in an hour, it takes months to realize there are no more neighborhood Target-stocked groceries, toilet paper, and Advil to buy this winter.  You can in a night assault the police, spit at them, hope to infect them with the coronavirus, and even burn them alive.  But when you call 911 in a few weeks after your car is vandalized, your wallet is stolen, and your spouse is violent, and no one comes, only then do you sense that you earlier were voting for a pre-civilized wilderness.  You can burn down a Burger King in half an hour.  But it will take years to find anyone at Burger King, Inc., who would ever be dumb enough to rebuild atop the charred ruins — to prepare for the next round of arson in 2021 or 2023.

Eviction Moratoriums Cause Big Problems for Mom-and-Pop Landlords.  Mom-and-pop landlords across the United States are coming under increasing pressure as a patchwork of regulations and eviction moratoriums passed by the federal government, states, counties, and municipalities in the wake of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus crisis have strongly curtailed their ability to enforce their property rights.  In addition, The Epoch Times has received reports that a small number of tenants are abusing moratoriums by choosing to withhold payment of their rent — and in some cases without claiming coronavirus-related hardship.

Portland mayor piously turns down Trump's offer of police aid, finds his apartment's lobby overrun by protestors.  Portland's mayor, Ted Wheeler, has already made his city a punchline internationally, vacuously mouthing the platitudes of Black Lives Matter, and watching mobs riot and burn his city for 92 days straight, with no effort to contain it.  Democrats bristle at Republican efforts to pin rioting on poor Democrat rule, but are cut off at the pass when Portland is brought up.  Nobody can argue about the incompetence there.  Even the people in Minneapolis console themselves with the thought that as bad as their city is, at least it's not Portland.

New Yorkers keep moving out of the city to suburbs, other states.  The move is on — to leave New York City.  The exodus that began at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, with many New Yorkers departing to their beach and country homes, has continued unabated as more leave for good, according to city moving companies overwhelmed by the avalanche of would-be expats.  "People are fleeing the city in droves," says Moon Salahie, owner of Elite Moving & Storing in Yonkers, who has been working nonstop since the city began Phase 1 of its reopening in June.  Salahie said 90 percent of the moves are to the suburbs and mostly families with kids worried about the school year.  He's packed people out of neighborhoods all over Manhattan.

California Apocalypto.  Note the synergism of the California postmodern apocalypse:  The hotter it gets, the more fires burn on ecological fuel and hillside natural "compost," the smokier the air becomes, the less efficiently California's solar pathway to the future generates, the more power outages ensue, the more real people are put in danger from either being incinerated by fire or suffocated by smoke or boiled inside without air conditioning.  Last week, I asked an elderly patient at the allergy clinic whether, in the 108-degree heat, he preferred to stay outside to breathe smoke and haze, or stay inside his uncooled apartment.  He gave a novel answer:  He didn't care about the power outages since he couldn't pay the exorbitant electricity charges anyway to turn on his air conditioner.  And he added that, in California these days, you can't tell whether mask wearers are fighting the virus, the smoke, or the police.

Portlanders in Need Had to Fend for Themselves, and You Won't Believe Just One Night's Crime.  You've seen the violence in Portland.  You've witnessed the chaos caught on tape.  The cops have their hands full.  So what happens, then, when people outside the chaos need police?  It turns out they have to go it alone.  As reported by The Daily Caller, on Sunday night, 35 officers had to abandon patrol duty after a riot was declared.  That led to 80 other emergency calls being put on hold.  [Video clip]  On Monday [8/24/2020], the Portland Police Bureau issued a statement detailing the night's insanity.  Twenty-three people ages 19 [to] 44 were arrested, for crimes including assaulting a public safety officer, interfering with a peace officer, and escape in the third degree.

Why I Am No Longer a Social Worker.  A social worker who wants to continue working had better understand that he or she has to support all aspects of LGBT platforms, has to facilitate partial-birth abortions, and has to eliminate any and all references to God — no matter what he or she believes.  Alternative therapies are acceptable so long as they are goddess-driven and support mandatory vaccination.  All therapies have to pass their "ethical" (i.e. political) means testing... and they all revolve around the exaltation of the Self, even when that "self" has the emotional stability of packing peanuts.  The essential problem is this:  the Self can only be exalted in this manner once the Creator Himself has been ejected.  And that is precisely what has happened... slowly and cunningly, but steadily.

Reclaiming Our Culture from the Left.  [Scroll down]  But the education most of the rioters have received has made them abjectly incapable of thinking rationally and evaluating claims on the basis of their logical coherence and supporting evidence.  No amount of careful reasoning, no amount of evidence is going to convince most of the rioters that their rage is based on false premises, because they have been carefully educated throughout their lives to feel rather than think, and to believe that America is a nation of deep injustice with a shameful history and an equally condemnable present.  It doesn't matter that the claims that the rioters and their defenders are making are false.  It doesn't matter that police brutality affects people of all races.  It doesn't matter that thoroughgoing civil rights legislation has made "systemic racism" a thing of the distant past.  The rioters know America is evil because they have been taught it all their lives by virtually every authority they have encountered, and those authorities have also taught them that those who tell them otherwise are stupid, contemptible, and operating out of ulterior motives.  This is true of the establishment media as well as the educational system — not to mention the corporate culture, the entertainment industry, and more.

Multiple Portland companies plan to move out of downtown office spaces because ongoing BLM protests have made the area 'unsafe'.  A number of companies based in downtown Portland are set to vacate or sell their offices because on-going protests in the city against police brutality have led to 'unsafe' conditions in the area, reports suggest.  Activists have taken to the city streets for the last 82 consecutive nights to demonstrate under the banner of Black Lives Matter, but some of the rallies have descended into chaos, resulting in violent clashes with police or widespread acts of vandalism.

The Thin Veneer of American Civilization.  Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed, metropolis.  It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as the global nexus of finance and capital.  The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from the effects of a neutron bomb.  Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco — the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America.  Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in 1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former.  At the present increasing rate of police defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation's aneurysm.  That is, after the "recovery," it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the country reroutes around them.

New York City is 'dead forever,' according to this proud New Yorker.  Will the city that never sleeps ever wake up?  Not according to James Altucher, a best-selling author and former hedge-fund manager (and a former MarketWatch columnist), who says that New York City is "dead forever" as its residents come to grips with the reality of the coronavirus pandemic and what it means for the fate of the Big Apple.  "I love NYC.  When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream come true.  Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me.  So much personality, so many stories," he wrote in a blog post explaining why his temporary relocation might become more permanent.

How Race Politics Burns Out.  [Scroll down]  The kind of racialized violence now taking place reflects what historian Fred Siegel called "the riot ideology", which has been deleterious to the progress of African Americans.  The rioting in the 1960s weakened urban economies and led to devastating losses for minority property owners and businesses.  Even today many areas burned down in the 1960s in Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit have never recovered.  Indeed despite massive expenditures to redress huge past inequities, high-poverty areas in cities have grown steadily, doubling in population between 1980 and 2018.  Looting and mayhem, long-term, don't work.  After the 1992 riots, there were pledges of massive corporate and government support for south Los Angeles.  Now, almost three decades later, the area, site of two of the worst riots in American history, has experienced a growing gap with the rest of the county in terms of homeownership, income and educational attainment.  The more recent disorders also are unlikely to spark much long-term inner-city investment.

Hollywood Apocalypse.  Gold's Gym has become synonymous with the Hollywood Dream. [...] Yet today Gold's sits amid post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people are fleeing in droves.  A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on all sides.  Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like zombies — all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific.  Stolen bicycles are piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes.  TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their front gardens.

The State of Our Cities That Our Media Is Hiding From You.  [Quoting Mike Doran:]  I've been exchanging messages with friends about what what's happening in our cities:  NY, Philadelphia and LA especially.  A lot of disturbing things are not making the news.  Even Republicans aren't drawing attention to it.  Here's a message from a friend about life in NY today:  "Here's my neighborhood, Mike:  An elderly man, enjoying dinner w/his wife at an outdoor restaurant, punched in the face.  A woman waiting for the subway to come stabbed in the back.  An older neighbor pausing to catch his breath told to pay two dollars in protection money or get [...] off that particular street corner.  This is just the ten block radius from where I live in the last six days."  Other friends from NY talk about shattered business districts, drugstores with locked shelves, and hundreds of homeless people and parolees, including sex offenders, being moved into hotels on the Upper West Side adjacent to schools and playgrounds, which are filled with needles again like in the 1970s.  Friends in Philadelphia report large homeless encampments in the city center and being robbed at gunpoint.  Friends in LA talk about squatters taking over empty homes in professional class neighborhoods whose residents fantasize about emigrating to Canada.

Retail and Restaurants Flee Democrat-Run New York Forever.  Crime, taxes, disease, and an anti-science approach to social distancing have chased a number of big retailers and restaurateurs out of New York forever, reports the far-left New York Times.  "In the heart of Manhattan, national chains including J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway and Le Pain Quotidien have shuttered branches for good," per the Times, which adds other big box retailers, like Victoria's Secret and the Gap, have chosen to reopen in other states while their Manhattan locations remain shuttered.

New York City's Downward Spiral.  On a return visit this weekend to the Upper West Side neighborhood where I've lived for more than a quarter of a century, the fear in the air was palpable.  The population seemed to be reduced by about half.  New Yorkers steer around each other on the sidewalks, some of them walking in the street to avoid passing near a stranger.  A lady declined to ride the elevator with me and my children.  People are especially terrified of the subway, whose ridership is down 80 percent from normal levels.  Friday night, at a time when there would ordinarily be 50 or more people riding on any given car of the 1 train, there were about seven.  Downtown was morose, grim, broken.  Graffiti was much in evidence.

A mad rush for the exits as New York City goes down the tubes.  It's not just a few Upper West Siders who are fleeing New York:  Moving companies say they're swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city — even though the COVID crisis has waned.  One likely reason:  The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo.  On Sunday [8/9/2020], The [New York] Post highlighted families who've given up on the Upper West Side — now teeming with junkies, the homeless, convicts and others — and are headed for greener pastures outside Gotham.

In Colorado, the police are canceling themselves.  The state of Colorado has been experiencing the same twin dilemmas that have been plaguing much of the country for the past several months and this has had a rather drastic impact on police forces across the board.  They're dealing with the pandemic like everyone else, and police officers have jobs that put them in constant contact with the public.  At the same time, protests and demonstrations blaming the police for many of society's ills have led the state to eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement officers.  This puts them a greater personal risk of civil suits or criminal charges if an arrest of an uncooperative suspect goes awry.  What's the upshot of all of this been?  Far fewer interactions with the public and a significant increase in police officers retiring early or simply quitting and seeking new types of employment.

When Government Encourages Victimhood, You Have an Alternative.  According to a report from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the number of officers in the Minneapolis Police Department has been reduced 10 percent since May and the department "could lose as much as a third of its workforce by the end of the year."  Some on the city council have sought to abolish the police department.  With this development, there has been a corresponding spike in violent crime.  Minnesota Public Radio reported that as of August 4 Minneapolis had experienced more than twice as many homicides in 2020 as during the same period in 2019.  Local CBS affiliate WCCO reported that through July 26 robberies in 2020 were up 36 percent over the same time period in 2019.

Insurance payouts fall far short of what's needed to rebuild Twin Cities.  Though Gov. Tim Walz has estimated that total losses will exceed $500 million, insurance companies have informed the Minnesota Department of Commerce that they will be covering a maximum of $240 million in riot-related damage.  In the 5-mile stretch of Minneapolis that sustained the heaviest destruction, uninsured losses among local small-business owners are at least $200 million, according to the Lake Street Council.

How Therapists Became Gods.  [Scroll down]  The youth suicide rate — 14.6 per 100,000 — appears to be the highest it's been since the government began collecting such statistics in 1960.  How can that be when we are surrounded with opportunities for self-gratification and encouraged by countless "authorities" to avail ourselves of them?  Why are we so sad, so lonely and isolated when there are so many socialization programs in our schools and everyone is so "connected" over social media?  Why the misery when you can even choose a new gender?  Or even marry your own pet?  (Truly, in California "whatever" has taken on a fantastical new meaning.)  If there is no longer a God, if His moral code is irrelevant, and if self-esteem boosting therapy is the answer (and the self-actualized therapist the oracle), why do so many people feel so empty even after years and years on the couch?

De Blasio's plan to destroy New York City is working wonderfully.  It's no longer news that, once the Wuhan virus descended on New York City, the rich did what rich people always have down when plague appears:  they packed up their goods and their money and left for comfortable country homes where they could wait out the disease.  The New Yorkers who remained in the city ranged from the upper-middle-class down to the homeless.  Mayor Bill de Blasio then had the bright idea to bring these two classes together, something that's working out about as well as you would expect.  It's also a preview of coming attractions for the rest of America should Biden win the White House and Democrats take full control of Congress.

Democrats Are Destroying Their Own Cities, and it all Makes Perfect Sense.  America's cities are dying, and no one in the Democrat Party seems to want to do anything to stop it from happening.  In fact, it is Democrats who are actively managing the chaos and destruction.  Ask yourselves why that is the case.  After all, the big cities represent almost the entire base of power for the Democrat Party.  That's why the county-by-county presidential election maps always look like a sea of red with little blue islands sprinkled onto it.  Most of those islands are the counties where the big cities are.  The sea of red is where they aren't.  This isn't complicated.  Yet, right now, as we sit isolated in our homes today thinking about which useless, virtue-signaling mask we will wear when we venture out to the grocery store, Democrat mayors and city councils all over the country are willingly presiding over the complete destruction of their centers of power.

Trucking Company Owner:  Cities That Defund Police Are in for a Big Surprise.  Cities that decide to cut their police funding could be cutting their own supply lines, too.  That was the message a trucking executive carried to "Fox & Friends First" on Wednesday [8/5/2020], and it's something urban politicians — in the thrall of Black Lives Matter rioters and antifa anarchists — should be seriously considering unless they think citizens can start growing their own food.  Because if it's not safe for truckers to carry goods — they just might not do it.  And trucking companies won't be willing to risk the business.

Minneapolis Downtown Council says up to 10,000 jobs could be lost over 'public safety concerns'.  Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, told [KSTP] concerns over public safety and the future of the city's police department have some companies looking to leave downtown.  "Almost overnight the brakes went on in downtown," Cramer said.  "The point where it all started to change was the day the City Council announced it supported defunding the police department."  Cramer said in a six-week period from that day there were 45 companies that indicated they were either moving out of downtown or were a business that was no longer moving downtown, and there were 13 companies in that group with 100 or more employees and one with 600.

Dozens Of Minneapolis Businesses Consider Leaving, Cite Possibility Of Police Being Dismantled.  Dozens of Minneapolis businesses are considering leaving downtown, citing concerns about the possibility of the police department being dismantled, CBS Minnesota reported.  A survey by the Downtown Council shows 45 business owners say they are considering leaving downtown Minneapolis because of the lack of people working and socializing in the area and also the idea that the police department could be dismantled, CBS reported.  One of the surveyed businesses that is considering leaving employs 600 people, deepening fears that the city could take another major blow to employment, which was hit by the coronavirus pandemic.  The Council did not divulge which businesses are considering leaving.

How the Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong.  I spoke last week to executives, TV hosts and election analysts across leading American newsrooms, and I was struck by the blithe confidence among some top managers and hosts, who generally said they've handled complicated elections before and can do so again.  And I was alarmed by the near panic among some of the people paying the closest attention — the analysts and producers trying, and often failing, to get answers from state election officials about how and when they will count the ballots and report results.  "The nerds are freaking out," said Brandon Finnigan, the founder of Decision Desk HQ, which delivers election results to media outlets.  "I don't think it's penetrated enough in the average viewer's mind that there's not going to be an election night.  The usual razzmatazz of a panel sitting around discussing election results — that's dead," he said.

Woke Mobs Demand You Must Now Explain Why You Stand For The Anthem.  Kneeling for the national anthem at sporting events used to be the occasional episode of player activism protesting the United States as an evil racist empire.  Amid the new 21st century woke revolution however, kneeling has become a key signifier for players and teams to declare which side of the culture wars one sits on.  It's those who love America versus those who hate it, the latter of which despises the American flag and all that it represents as a relic of white supremacy that must be condemned.  Those who still stand out of respect for the nation's ideals and the uniformed men and women who protect it are now the outliers forced to defend themselves in a new age of no dissent, because dissent is racist, racism is oppression, oppression is violence, and violence is not to be tolerated, even if it isn't real.

Antifa Is the Natural Product of Our Educational System.  [Scroll down]  For decades, our schools have been self-replicating machines, preaching to college students, directly or indirectly, the left-wing gospel according to Howard Zinn (and the Frankfurt School and so forth) and sending them out in turn to preach this junior varsity, critical theory Marxism themselves as teachers at whatever level at all manner of institutions throughout the country.  The youngest of those levels is perhaps the most dangerous because it's the most impressionable.  Antifa members are therefore only doing what they have been taught all along, getting rid of a cancer called the United States.  This connection between Antifa and the teaching profession is so profound that some insist the majority of those hidden behind the black masks are indeed teachers.  Others, needless to say including the liberal media, have denied this.  It's impossible to know for certain.  Antifa, like some Islamic terror groups, doesn't have a formal leadership structure; why would they need it?  They also don't keep records.  This, however, is probably a case where the cliché about smoke and fire applies.  Whether Antifa is 50 percent teachers or 20 percent teachers, it's a lot of teachers.

The Bus Never Stops.  First they told us that homosexuality was normal and that there was no need for anyone to be afraid of the ramifications of treating them as normal, even though only about 2 percent of the population are homosexual — giving new meaning to the word "normal."  About 1 percent of babies are born with a heart defect, but we don't call that normal.  Doubters said that treating as normal people as different as homosexuals would have consequences.  First thing — or maybe second thing — they would want to get "married" and have their "marriages" treated as normal. [...] What's next?  What's wrong, really, with having children watch pornography?  It's everywhere, and there's essentially no effort to eliminate it.  How do we know that?  Because there is no serious effort by Republicans to stop it.  And if children can watch it, why shouldn't they do it?  What's the effective difference?  And what's wrong, really, with sex with children, so long as there's an adult in the room?  "Don't be absurd," you say.  But you said that years ago when homosexuality was normalized.  And again when homosexual marriage was normalized.  Now when polyamorous relationships are normalized, are you saying that we have reached the terminus:  that the bus stops here?  Please.  The bus never stops.  Unless someone stops it.

This did not happen to America overnight.  These days, one of the most frequent laments of conservatives is that so much damage has been inflicted on our nation in such a short amount of time.  With the economy humming along and the nation brimming with optimism as recently as the spring of this year, it seems that our world has been transformed almost overnight into an unrecognizable cauldron of chaos, despair, and even death.  However, while the Wuhan virus, the riots, and the raging lawlessness of the last five months are a major calamity, they are really only the inevitable culmination of attacks being waged against America for several decades.  The level of these attacks has been increasing in intensity and audacity the entire time.  But although Americans found it too easy to retreat from the mayhem for much of that period, the boldness and extent of the leftist onslaught have increased to the point that no more room for surrender exists.

The Trans Cult.  A few years ago, three things happened in the course of a single week in my life.  First, a friend told me about a letter her daughter, then 11, had received from her closest summer-camp friend.  The girl had some big news:  She was now a boy.  Then, another mother told me she and her daughter were sitting at a synagogue lunch when they were joined by a man who "presented" as a woman.  And I received a lengthy email from my daughter's swim coach at the local YWCA — a man whose missives had never included anything besides practice times and requests for volunteer timers — explaining that someone on the team had come out as transgender; the coach attached an entire Washington Post article explaining how we should treat the child and the proper pronouns we should use to refer to "them."

Nearly half of 258 surveyed police agencies' budgets [have been] cut: report.  A soon to be released survey of 258 police departments nationwide shows almost half have had their budgets cut amid calls for police to be defunded despite increases in gun violence and otherwise violent crime in some parts of the country, according to USA Today.  The outlet was first to report that the Police Executive Research Forum publication, which is expected to be released in the coming days, shows cuts in the police budgets are largely being made to training, equipment.  Protesters are pushing to "defund the police" over the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans killed by law enforcement.

Let Portland and Seattle burn.  [Scroll down]  My theory regarding this flight from reality in Portland and Seattle (where I lived for a couple of years) is that those cities have long suffered from an inferiority complex vis-a-vis San Francisco.  The big city to the south makes Portland and Seattle feel like a timber mill and a fishing harbor.  Every policy decision is consequently animated with the unspoken sentiment, "What would San Fran do?  Let's outdo that!"  Congratulations, Portland and Seattle, you've managed to outdo even San Francisco in violence, vagrancy and anarchy.  Now you can live in the festering filth and feces of sociopaths who have nothing but cynical contempt for your self-indulgent self-righteousness.  But at least you feel really good about yourselves.

We're at War.  Attacking Trump's Tweet in the NYT While the Democrats Foment Riots & Ruin to Defeat Him is Treason.  [Scroll down]  The people trying to destroy us stopped caring about the rules ages ago.  They faked Russian cyber-espionage against the Clinton Campaign to discredit WikiLeaks revelations about her corruption and incompetence.  They tried to frame Trump as part of their phony Russian plot.  They used the FBI to illegally spy on Trump's campaign.  They gave Robert Mueller power and an unlimited budget to destroy Trump and as many of his allies as possible.  They organized and promoted Christine Blasey Ford's perjurous hoax.  They tried to remove Trump from office for his patently reasonable attempt to get Ukrainian authorities to investigate Joe Biden's obvious corruption.  They've caused an economic catastrophe that could very well wind up being worse than the Great Depression, gaslit the entire nation into months of debilitating fear and panic, and caused the deaths of countless Americans by lying and withholding information about a virus that all the data literally says is less harmful than the flu.  They've fomented riots across the nation and caused the murder of American police officers and ordinary citizens alike by promoting the poisonous false narrative that American cops start their day fervently hoping they'll get a chance to kill someone who isn't white.  And that's just the egregious, defamatory and destructive mass deceptions the Democrats and their allies in the corporate press have perpetrated.

The Implosion of the Left's Language Circus.  Right now, the left's power consists mostly of power over the English language.  The left has sway over education, the media, law, arts, and entertainment, especially in English-speaking countries: the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand.  Liberal-dominated industries shape the understanding and use of words.  Since the English-speaking world defines discourse for the whole world and the English-speaking left defines English words, the left now has global hegemony.  For two reasons, I believe that this will not last very long.  First, the history of Spanish, French, and German shows that language communities reach their downfall when one party's prevalence distorts communication.  Second, the three most prominent left-wing slogans in recent history — "it gets better," "me too," and "black lives matter" — cancel each other.  Eventually, skeptics will notice, or the folly will cause a social disaster.

Seattle police chief:  New limits on anti-protest gear will mean 'adjusted' law enforcement.  Seattle's police officers will now respond to protests and rioting through "adjusted deployment" methods because of a new city law that bans them from using some crowd-control tools, the city's police chief said Friday [7/24/2020].  The new law, which takes effect Sunday, "bans Seattle Police officers the use of less lethal tools, including pepper spray that is commonly used to disperse crowds that have turned violent," police Chief Carmen Best said in a statement.  "Simply put," Best added, "the legislation gives officers NO ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd."

Downtown Portland businesses, derailed by pandemic, say protests present a new challenge.  Restaurants and retailers throughout Oregon have struggled to stay afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic.  Some businesses have already closed permanently.  Others say their futures are uncertain.  But downtown Portland business owners say they are facing unique challenges as they try to recover from the economic devastation brought on by the pandemic.  Many point to the raucous protests downtown and the controversial federal response, which have put the city atop national headlines.  While most of downtown is tranquil, and nearly all confrontations between protestors and police take place late at night, the nightly protests have given Portland a reputation for upheaval that businesses say is keeping shoppers away.  Office buildings remain empty because of the pandemic and tourists have yet to return, taking away a large customer base for many downtown businesses.

The Editor says...
The tourism industry in Portland and Seattle is finished, for at least a decade.  The governors and the mayors should have thought of that possibility before letting rioters have their way in the streets, night after night, week after week.

These are the innocuous words progressives want to ban you from using.  Trying desperately not to get canceled, bosses are trying to think ahead about what words might create a fake Duraflame firestorm of anger, and preemptively ruling ordinary words out of bounds.  At the Los Angeles Times, for instance, an editor has said the word "looters," which has been used many times in the paper, now has "a pejorative and racist connotation" and that anyone who is inclined to use the word should "talk to your immediate supervisor."  Translation:  Best not use the word at all, if you want to stay employed.  So what to call looters?  Non-paying shoppers?  That doesn't quite tell the story:  Ordinary shoplifters don't usually bust up all the windows.  How about self-appointed retail-justice-commandos?  Revolutionary mass goods-redistribution agents?

Cancel Culture's Dual Meaning Is a War for America's Soul.  The rabid Left is actively rewriting American history as being inherently bad from the start, as it has no excuse to change our culture if there is anything arguably good about it.  Therefore, our values, historical narrative, monuments, and anything that makes us uniquely American must be disparaged and destroyed.  Tyrants throughout history have practiced cancel culture by forcibly suppressing opposition to their authoritarianism with methods similar to what the American Left is using today.  In 2001, Americans were horrified when the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddha statues along Afghanistan's silk road despite objections from 54 Islamic countries.  Equal outrage occurred in 2015 when ISIS destroyed statues and other irreplaceable artifacts dating back to Iraq's seventh-century BC culture.  Nazis stole countless billions in art, historical, and religious treasures from Jewish families to eliminate Jewish culture.

The cleanup from the riots in Denver isn't going quickly, or cheaply.  We've spent plenty of time over the past month or two looking at the seemingly endless series of riots consuming many of the nation's larger cities.  While the violence, injuries, assaults and even deaths capture many of the headlines, the staggering amount of property damage taking place is also a part of the equation.  The question is, what do these cities do in the aftermath when downtown storefront windows have all been replaced with graffiti-covered plywood sheets, walls and roads are festooned with paint and lights, statues and other public property has been destroyed?  That's a problem that the City of Denver has been wrestling with for quite a while now.  When the worst of the riots first broke out in the Mile High City, the community and the government teamed up to try to keep up with repairs.  They no doubt hoped that the worst of the rioting would fade quickly and order would be restored.  That hasn't happened, however.  Cleanup efforts have been stymied by repeating offenses and the costs have been spiraling out of control.

Goodbye, Washington DC.  [Scroll down]  I did my part, too.  My role in the fabric of urban society, overlooked but essential, was to spend my money.  Eat, drink, shop, spend, tip, pay.  And man, did I pay: taxes, rents, then a mortgage and HOA fees.  I paid taxes on things the government deemed "bad" for me, like alcohol and cigarettes; taxes on services which organized labor deemed "bad" for them, like rideshare.  I paid gas tax, cable tax, cell phone tax, and, of course, income tax.  Lots of income tax.  All I asked in return was relative safety and to be left alone to enjoy the city.  City-living in America, for decades, meant tolerating mild inconveniences so that you could be left alone, alongside millions of others.  That was the tacit pact.  And DC broke it.

Why This Revolution Isn't Like the '60s.  The '60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies, communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music, and high divorce rates to the war on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action, and race/gender/ethnic college curricula. [...] A half-century after the earlier revolution, today's cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more dangerous.  Government and debt have grown.  Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer federal programs.  The "Great Society" inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state.  Divorce rates soared.  The nuclear family waned.  Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed.  Thus, America is far less resilient, and a far more divided, indebted, and vulnerable target than it was in 1965.

The accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America.  St. Louis, famously known as the Gateway to the West, has become America's reigning murder capital and a symbol of urban decay — trends accelerated in recent years by a soft-on-crime mayor and a social justice-minded prosecutor.  Last month, the images of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, both armed, confronting protesters in front of their restored mansion in the historic Central West End district of downtown St. Louis previewed what a defund-the-police era may look like.  In the aftermath of George Floyd's death in police custody in Minneapolis, St. Louis, like other American cities, faced a crisis of public order.  Businesses were burned to the ground, and looters roamed freely.  Four St. Louis police officers were shot in one night.  Civic unrest was so widespread that first responders took nearly 30 minutes to reach a 7-Eleven set aflame by rioters.  The city's elected leaders have seemingly abandoned the police.  St. Louis's current condition reflects a decades-long tumble from growth and prosperity to decline and disorder.

Harris Faulkner presses Marie Harf to name a single GOP-run city in chaos: 'It's a yes or no question'.  Fox News' Harris Faulkner challenged network contributor Marie Harf to name a Republican-run city that is currently under siege by rioters during an "Outnumbered" segment on Thursday [7/23/2020].  The discussion began with co-host Dagen McDowell ticking off a list of shootings in Chicago, long a Democratic stronghold, just in the past few days as the panel discussed Mayor Lori Lightfoot's decision to accept federal assistance in bringing order to chaotic parts of the city, a reversal of her earlier position.  "What if it works in Chicago?  What if the police in that city can stop the daily murders?" McDowell said before ticking off a list of shootings and killings in just the past few days.  "What if this partnership actually works?" she added, decrying the use by some so-called "peaceful protesters" who "carry Molotov cocktails, metal pipes and hammers — is that where we are in this nation?"

One Nation Under Anarcho-Tyranny.  The America you grew up in is not the America we live in now. [...] It's not "socialism" or "communism" under which we suffer.  Our dangerously chaotic, selectively oppressive predicament is more accurately described as "anarcho-tyranny."  The late conservative columnist Sam Francis first coined the term in 1992 to diagnose a condition of "both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny — the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes."  The "criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent," Francis expounded, is achieved in such a state through: "exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation; the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through 'sensitivity training' and multiculturalist curricula; 'hate crime' laws; gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally; and a vast labyrinth of other measures."

Chicago Police Statistics Destroy Black Lives Matter Narrative.  Last week in Chicago, a protest of sorts obediently marched to the tune of hackneyed charges of systemic injustice.  The tired narrative droned on about bad policing, police targeting of the black community, and too much jail or prison time.  This kept the crowd from considering alternatives to their afternoon work, such as offering a token of gratitude to thankless peacekeepers in their own backyard, the murder capital of America.  One wonders if they know that out of the 560 homicides, 475 victims were black, killed not by the police or whites, but by other blacks.  By all means, protest.  But when people complain about the system being rigged, they need to remember they voted for their system, and they've been voting for the same system for quite a while.  The mayoral offices have been run by Democrats since before the Great Depression, which means only about 2 million out of 350 million total Americans were alive the last time the city voted for a Republican.  Most recently, Obama acolyte Rahm Emanuel helmed the city between 2011 and 2019, and currently a woman by the name of Lori Lightfoot, whose sole victory in the role comes from being the first openly gay, black mayor of the town, presides over the carnage.

Trump Has Already Won the 2020 Election.  Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot — and maybe I am.  (I've been called worse.)  But I can't help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they're printed on, digital or otherwise, they're about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler.  No one sensible is talking about their political allegiance these days in public — especially to an anonymous pollster.  Instead, they're buying guns, in record numbers.  Why wouldn't they?  Calling 911 has become about as useful as calling tech support for a transistor radio run over by the same six-wheeler.  The destroyed statues are the least of it.  They're inanimate.  The actual people of Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and on and on are living a nightmare.  Violence stalks the streets of all our major cities whose murder rates are going up stratospherically.  (As I type this, the news is reporting 9 more shot in D.C.)  Have there ever been remotely as many stores and businesses smashed, many still not operating, from the Atlantic to the Pacific?  America isn't in the midst of a civil war.  It's in the midst of a national meltdown with the banana-brained neo-Marxists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, stoned like sophomores (if that) on Foucault or some other self-important "critical theorist," leading the way to oblivion and mutual hatred (actually a return to tribalism).

Portland Goes To Hell:  The Death Of An American City.  Portland, Oregon, was once known as the quintessentially nice Northwestern city.  Its nickname, "The Rose City," was given to it by a Baptist group that held a convention there over a century ago.  Sadly, today, riot-riven Portland smells like anything but roses.  The city has been the locus of nonstop violent protests for 51 days and counting.  And really, calling them protests is incorrect:  They are acts of outright rebellion, with many participants openly calling for the dismantling of the United States. [...] Who's behind all this?  Antifa and Black Lives Matter, of course.  But they aren't the only ones.  There are lots of other leftists of various affiliations agitating the crowds. [...] This is part of a pattern of how the left works:  Destroy the rule of law, the backbone of our free republic.  Intimidate ordinary citizens into silence.  Then support and elevate rule by power of unelected street thugs in Antifa and BLM.

Here's what I saw in the first half of 2020.  [Scroll down] 
8. Liberals worked hard to manufacture "social unrest," report on it as if it were spontaneous, and "defund the police."  Libs think the solution to a breakdown in law & order is less law & order.
9. Liberals evidently figured out this "social unrest" they were manufacturing from nothing, had an effect on the election in their favor.  They may have figured this out before they started manufacturing it.  At any rate, the places run by liberals began to make silly concessions to the protestor-terrorists, that the protestor-terrorists never even requested.  Statues, dairy company emblems, rice brands, syrup brands, etc.  Evidently these apologies, changes and removals were supposed to deter the protestor-terrorists from protesting and terrorizing.  They did not.
10. Places run by liberals also had more violence, more COVID infections, more COVID casualties, more deaths and injuries from protests, and more unemployment.  These places run by liberals also had less freedom.  Their lockdowns were more stringent and the harm done to their business communities were much greater.
11. While all this was going on, our mainstream media, run by liberals, began hemorrhaging its credibility even faster than it had been hemorrhaging it in recent years... which is really saying a lot.  They began to use the phrase "mostly peaceful protests" to excess, applying it in places where it clearly didn't apply.  One anchorman even waxed lyrically about these "peaceful protests" in front of a burning liquor store.  This proves the media thinks we're all stupid.  Well who can blame them.
12. Liberals don't have a clue what all this looks like to grown ups because they never have doubts about anything and can't be told anything.

Can a Whole Country Go Mad?  This is what happens when God has been evicted from a culture.  It is indeed a strange thing that is happening to western civilization.  In the earlier stages of our culture, the existence of things unseen was hardly questioned.  Today, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist at all.  The locus of control has moved from a universe of the Divine to the essential singularity:  One's Self.  As a result of this tectonic shift, there are things happening in our culture that are truly insane.  Period.  As a result of this increasing insanity I have resigned from the National Association of Social Workers.  I am taking down the shingle that used to stand for compassion and righteousness, but now stands for nothing more than social indoctrination and lunacy, an organization that protests against the death penalty for serial killers but rallies in favor of partial birth abortion.

The Big Apple Is Being Destroyed, and Billy De Blasio Is More Concerned About a BLM Mural.  Like the Dallas Cowboys, you just need to give it time; they'll disappoint. [...] In politics, the same mindset can be applied to Democrats; give it time — they'll destroy whatever they takeover.  The Left took over the cities, and nothing has changed for residents, especially black Americans.  These cities are now nothing more than Democratic powerbases that lie, cheat, and steal from residents who keep voting leftists into power.  In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio is doing his part in destroying the city.  [Paywall]

It's not just police:  Public servants of all stripes are now under assault.  'Is it just me, or is it getting crazier out there?" So asks Joaquin Phoenix's Joker while meeting his social worker, motioning to Gotham outside the window.  It isn't just you or the stuff of superhero thrillers.  Gotham — the real Gotham — is in chaos, and disrespect for authority, and not just police authority, is sinking it deeper.  New York is suffering a serious slide in livability.  Those who can have already fled the city, and it's a big question mark whether they are coming back.  Each day brings a new barrage of online-message-board pleas, from people wondering if they can get out.

Are We In The First Days Of A Lawless Era?  A nation founded on the rule of law appears to be yielding to the rule of the mob.  Not everyone has surrendered.  The trend, though, is worrisome.  Too many of our "leaders" and institutions are failing us.  In 2020, law enforcement officers in this country are being treated not just with disrespect but in many instances are being abused verbally and physically.  Rioters and looters are going unpunished, not because they can't be identified or the cases against them are weak but because prosecutors (several of them backed by George Soros) refuse to uphold the law and charge the offenders.  Violent gangs have been allowed, almost encouraged, to take over city streets, sidewalks, and private property; shut down the free movement of others; and topple public monuments.

Death of a Nation.  America and Britain are under attack by anarchists and thugs, while media pimps and opportunistic politicians are excusing the mobs.  Worse, the media is in cahoots with those who say that words are a form of violence that has to be regulated.  Who would have thought it would come to this?  Our First Amendment, our most precious freedom of speech, challenged by smear artists who lust for power and control.  Unlike what Hollywood depicts as wartime Berlin, Germans bitched to high heaven over the bombing and lack of food, as did Russians during Stalin's time.  But just try to not kneel nowadays and watch your career fly out the window quicker than you can say "BLM."  Is this why we fought the wars, to not to be able to say out loud what we believe?  To be silenced by unelected street thugs, dandruff-covered academics, and spittle-flecked media leftists?

Descending into Chaos.  [Scroll down]  We have remarked the gradual, now accelerated encroachment of the socialist nightmare on the American dream, the rapid breakdown of public order following the COVID pandemic so egregiously mismanaged by our political and medical classes, the destructive riots of various groups of domestic terrorists joined by the unproductive elements of society, and the racist hysteria leading to the eruption of social violence and hatred of whites.  We have watched good people being "cancelled" by their moral inferiors.  And we have seen our political authorities either foment the mayhem or retreat into their bunkers of silence and inactivity.  These are the people descending the chain of being into the terrain occupied by the rabble, sinking from the realm of communal order into the realm of turbid misrule.

Why It [is Bad] to be a Democrat in 2020.  The Democratic Party is the oldest voter-based political party globally and the longest existing one in the United States.  You'd think wisdom would come with time.  Instead, look at them.  All you see is negativity. [...] Democrats destroy everything they touch.  Consider their accomplishments:  They banned school prayer, legalized abortion and support infanticide.  They've secularized society, replaced God with government and personal charity with social justice.  They've substituted religion for reason, blurred the lines between males and females and destroyed the nuclear family.  They've lorded over the destruction of America's youth, brainwashing kids to the point they hate America, their parents and themselves.  Look at their cities:  Democrats' cities burn as the stench of human feces fills the air.  During the pandemic, pot shops thrive while businesses and churches stay closed.  Lawlessness prevails as mobs mete out a perverted form of justice where good people get punished and criminals get rewarded.  Black-on-black murders rise.  Babies get shot without a whisper, while anarchists decimate whole city blocks because of the murder of one man.

Nightmare in New York.  This Nightmare in New York is brought to you courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Mayor Bill de Blasio; and a cast of thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters, anarchists, and street thugs.  The once vibrant city is turning into a virtual no-go zone of looted shops, shuttered store windows, and skyrocketing murder rates.  The number of shooting victims is up 51% this year so far, and that tragic trend is accelerating.  In June of this year, there were 250 shootings, as opposed to 97 in June of 2019.  New York was already reeling from the highest coronavirus death toll in the (formerly) United States, due in large part to Gov. Cuomo approving the transfer of thousands of recovering COVID-19 patients to nursing homes at the height of the pandemic.  Then the rioting began, and Mayor de Blasio's response was to shame cops and propose cutting his city's police department budget by more than one billion dollars.

NYPD limits retirement applications amid 400 percent surge this week.  New York's Finest are putting in for retirement faster than the NYPD can handle — while citing a lack of respect and the loss of overtime pay, The [New York] Post has learned.  A surge of city cops filing papers during the past week more than quadrupled last year's number — as the city grapples with a surge of shootings — and the stampede caused a bottleneck that's forcing others to delay putting in their papers, officials and sources said.  The NYPD said Wednesday that 179 cops filed for retirement between June 29 and Monday, an astounding 411-percent increase over the 35 who filed during the same time period in 2019.

Lawlessness, the Murder of Our Children, and the Soul of America.  BLM, Inc., Joe Biden and the DNC own the death and destruction of this past weekend, in cities like, Atlanta, New York and Cleveland!  Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have surrendered to the Radical Left (Black Lives Matter, Inc., Antifa, etc.).  The Democratic Party(DNC) has had decades to fulfill its promises to black Americans, but all it's delivered is crime-ridden cities bereft of economic opportunity.  It's time to shake things up, show the extent of DNC failure and expose BLM, Inc. for the fraud it is.  For weeks Americans have watched radical leftist anarchists and Antifa thugs engage in extreme violence and murder that will haunt many people for the rest of their lives.  Dozens of innocent civilians and police officers have been killed, hundreds of civilians brutally beaten, and more than 700 police officers were injured nationwide.  Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed as businesses and communities in more than 42 states were devastated by arson, looting, and mayhem that activists quickly followed with a call to defund the police.

BLM's Violence & the Death of America's Cities.  The police-hating rhetoric of the openly and proudly Marxist "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) movement is doing exactly what it did five years ago — creating a massive increase in violent crime and homicide throughout urban America.  You may recall that back in 2015-16, BLM's anti-police protests and riots — particularly in the aftermath of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri — intimidated officers nationwide into becoming much less proactive in dealing with criminal suspects.  A Pew Research Center report titled "Behind the Badge" — which tabulated the results of a questionnaire that was sent to thousands of officers — confirmed that 85 to 95 percent of law-enforcement officers in large police departments became highly reluctant to engage criminals except where absolutely necessary.  The consequences of the new timidity of law-enforcement were monumental:
  •   In 2015, America's 56 largest cities experienced a 17% rise in homicides.
  •   Twelve cities with large black populations saw their murder totals spike even more dramatically — e.g., by 54% in D.C., 60% in Newark, 72% in Milwaukee, 83% in Nashville, and 90% in Cleveland.
  •   Robberies surged in America's 81 largest cities during the 12 months that followed the shooting of Michael Brown.
  •   During the first quarter of 2016, homicides in America's 63 largest cities increased by 9%, while nonfatal shootings were up 21%.

Could IT Happen Here?  [Scroll down]  One reason Hitler wasn't taken seriously during the early 1930s was because the world media presented Hitler (and Mussolini) as caricatures to be laughed at more than feared. [...] Most law-abiding Americans shake their heads in disgust at what is happening.  Some view anarchist antics as more comical than threatening.  For instance:
  •   Weirdly designed pink [...] hats that look like props from a 1950s sci-fi movie.
  •   Garage door pull that had been used for months suddenly seen as a KKK noose.
  •   Bizarrely named autonomous zones that are declared separate countries.
  •   Young white girls yelling at older black cops that the black cops do not understand racism.

Six Weeks, Six Cities, 600 Murders.  The single most important issue, affecting some of the largest swaths of populations in America, is the scandal the media ignores even as it explodes in our faces.  In only six weeks, city after city operated by entrenched Democrats have seen a massive expansion in lawlessness, violence, and murder.  Stunningly, many news outlets seem gobsmacked and mystified at how or why such an explosion of lawlessness has occurred. [...] So why did all of these cities take such violent turns?  Is it because their leadership capitulated to the anger of the mobs as opposed to thinking clearly and strategically about an effective response?  Or do these Democrat-run towns literally operate with denial in good and evil?  How else can you explain that in the city of Minneapolis (where a nation watched in horror and subsequently responded to the murder of an innocent man) that within 30 days they would record 1,600 shots fired?  But then respond by voting to dismantle its police operations all together?

The Devil's Pitchfork:  Seeking the Origin of Our Present Troubles.  The progressivist campaign to destroy America is three-pronged, the tines of the devil's pitchfork, namely:  de-individuation, de-historicizing, and what I'm tempted to call pre-eminent domain (the power of the state to take more than one's physical property).  In other words, it is a war against three intimately related phenomena:  self-governing personhood, historical memory, and the possession of property, whether intellectual or private property as understood by John Locke.  Thus our ideas are no longer our own but state-injected bromides, history has been co-opted in the service of a political fantasy, and ownership is the prerogative of the state.  It is clear that the entire sensibility of the age, and certainly of the coming era, has changed dramatically, not only as the result of the onslaught of lethal political and cultural viruses like democratic socialism, "social justice," postmodern relativism and radical feminism, but of the "Information Revolution" and its carrier, the Internet, in particular the social media platforms run by a cabal of corporate oligarchs.

Saving America From the Mob.  In just six weeks, violence has increased in many cities throughout the nation.  This is the result of police officers either resigning, taking sick days, or showing less interest in challenging the criminal element.  It is an exceedingly difficult time for anyone to be a police officer today.  Police recruitment has become extremely challenging in an environment where violence toward police is increasing and police are not supported by weak politicians following the orders from the mob.  It is not only police that activists are trying to destroy.  In the past six weeks, movies have been removed, police shows have been cancelled, even cartoons have been adjusted.  In addition, countless monuments have been toppled, flags have been changed, amusement rides have been altered, product packages are undergoing a politically correct overhaul.  Other products are changing their supposedly offensive names, all to satisfy the mob.

Covid-19, BLM protests and a liberal mayor are turning the city into a no-go zone as murders skyrocket, shops are looted.  Two bullet-ridden bodies lay sprawled on bloodstained concrete steps.  Alongside, relatives of the victims are wailing and collapse to the ground.  In another part of the city, a gang of youths use spray paint to disable security cameras before robbing a corner store.  Later, video footage captures police officers sitting helplessly in their patrol car as a baying crowd hurls glass bottles at them.  This is lawless New York — a city that was once America's glittering crown jewel but which risks descending into mob rule.  Murder figures have skyrocketed and a combination of the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and weak political leadership is in danger of achieving what Osama Bin Laden never could: bringing the Big Apple to its knees.

CNN: Shootings, Murder Surge in Democrat-Controlled Cities.  Shootings and murder are surging in Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, and Philadelphia, all of which are Democrat-controlled cities.  CNN reports murders in Milwaukee are up 95 percent this year.  They note murders in Philadelphia rose 24 percent as shootings rose 57 percent, and Los Angeles witnessed a 250 percent increase in murders during the first week of June alone.  Shootings have surged by 44 percent in NYC, compared to the number of shootings at this same point in time last year, and murder is up 23 percent.

Yoga studio implodes in brutal, yet classic case of 'progressives' eating their own.  Yoga is officially canceled.  Or at least it is at Kindness Yoga, a set of yoga studios in Denver that had striven so diligently to cater to left-wing extremists but has since been eaten alive by those same zealots.  Prior to its cancellation, owner Patrick Harrington's Kindness Yoga had offered far-left zealots a utopia of so-called "progressive" ideals, according to The Colorado Sun.  "Kindness Yoga, which began in 2001 with one Cherry Creek studio called Yoga Energi, had an outward reputation of inclusivity — with its earthy studios in Capitol Hill and Hilltop, gender-neutral bathrooms and person-of-color yoga nights where 'white friends and allies' were asked to 'respectfully refrain from attending.' Kindness held an LGBTQ yoga workshop just weeks before the pandemic forced the studios to close," the Sun reported Monday. [...] Yet despite all the hoops that Harrington had jumped through to build and maintain his rep with left-wing extremists, it wasn't enough for yoga teachers Jordan Smiley, who's reportedly indigenous and transgender, and Davidia Turner, who's black.  According to them, Harrington still wasn't doing enough to bring about so-called meaningful racial "change."

Calling Racism a Public Health Crisis Can Kill Black People.  Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh are among the cities that have officially declared that racism is a public health crisis.  A number of states are also moving in that direction.  Senator Sherrod Brown intends to push a similar resolution in the Senate.  The medicalization of racism has been backed by the American Medical Association, whose heads have called on "health institutions and physician organizations to explicitly denounce police violence" and urged "clinics, hospital and healthcare providers to review and reconsider their policies and relationships with law enforcement".  Considering the already fraught state of emergency rooms in urban areas where the victims and perpetrators of gang violence show up every weekend, that would be catastrophic.  It would lead to fewer doctors, fewer ERs, and worse outcomes for black patients in urban areas.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams:  Republicans will be hunted if Biden is elected.  Comic strip creator Scott Adams said there's a "good chance" Republicans will be killed if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected.  Adams, who created Dilbert in 1989, sent out tweets Wednesday claiming conservatives would be targeted with violence should the presumptive Democratic nominee win the 2020 election.  "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year," Adams warned in a tweet.  "Police will stand down.  Republicans will be hunted," he added.  Police will stand down.  [Tweets]  After some social media users questioned his claim, Adams said he spoke with a woman who told him she was fired from her job because her colleagues suspected she supported President Trump.  "Just interviewed a woman who was fired for suspicion of liking President Trump.  Suspicion.  Fired," Adams wrote.

The Coming Collapse of the Republic.  [Scroll down]  As I warned in 2012, there no longer is a culture war.  "What is occurring now is a pacification effort."  Its progress is why corporate America, including the now-absorbed Chick-fil-A and NASCAR, has turned decidedly to the dark side (shifted "left").  It's why prominent people, including Republicans such as Indiana senator Mike Braun, are bowing before terrorist group Black Lives Matter.  It's why mobs are enabled and good people hobbled for defending themselves from the mobs.  It's why we're seeing a complete cultural collapse — portending a political collapse.  This is partially due to a new "woke" generation having entered the corporate sphere and others of influence.  But what did you expect?  The apocryphal saying (no, it's not Lincoln's) informs, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."  Did you really think the Left could completely control academia for generations and that, somehow, it all would "stay in college"?

Breakdown.  [Scroll down]  To be sure, the first manifestation of the Black Lives Matter movement had a mouthpiece in the Oval Office, lacking now.  It doesn't matter.  Presidential imprimatur or no, the reborn Black Lives Matter has gained billions of dollars in corporate support, more billions in free round-the-clock media promotion, and a ruthless power to crush dissent from the now-universal narrative about murderous police bigots.  During the two weeks of national anarchy that followed the death of George Floyd, cops were shot, slashed, and assaulted; their vehicles and station houses were firebombed and destroyed.  American elites stayed silent.  Since then, police have continued to be shot at and attacked; the elites remain silent.  Monuments to America's greatest leaders are being defaced with impunity; anarchists took over a significant swathe of a major American city, including a police precinct, without resistance from the authorities.  And a push to defund the police gains traction by the day.

Get Ready to Be Canceled.  If you thought you could evade the tentacles of political correctness by avoiding a campus or classroom, steering clear of political protests, or self-censoring your Facebook posts, think again. [...] The label of "white privilege" is currently used by leftists and progressives to discount or deny speech and data that contradict the narrative of whatever movement they seek to justify.  Recently, it has been used to dispel the criticism of the violent looting and riots that followed peaceful protests decrying the murder of George Floyd.  One Minneapolis councilwoman used it to justify dismantling the police, even when private homes are broken into.  It is now a basis for dismantling statues and desecrating historical monuments.  Whether seeking to silence whites or even hurt successful communities as a means to balance or make reparations for perceived injustices, this social weapon is gaining strength and credibility.

Apocalyptic science:  How the West is destroying itself.  The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia but its visceral disgust with itself.  A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.  Critical Theory opposes everything that makes the West work.  Unlike traditional academic inquiry, which seeks to explain and understand with logic, analysis and the scientific method, these doctrines are less theories than programs.  Their purpose is to condemn cultural norms, tear down existing orders and transform society.  It all starts with Marx.

Violence rises in Minneapolis, as debate over role of police rages.  Minneapolis officials have described an unprecedented burst of violence following George Floyd's Memorial Day death, after an officer held him down with a knee to his neck, sparking worldwide fury and massive protests.  At least 113 people have been shot since May 25, eight fatally, according to Minneapolis police, with hundreds of reports of gunfire across the city, including several shootings in broad daylight.  The spike in violence has come amid a raging debate over the role the Minneapolis Police Department should play in addressing crime in this city.  Public confidence has so deteriorated that a majority of the City Council has pledged to dismantle the agency.  Some residents have accused officers of purposefully curbing response to crime, which police deny.  Others have decided to stop using the agency's services altogether.

Nearly 300 NYPD Officers File for Retirement as Violent Crime Surges.  Close to 300 New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers have filed for retirement over the last month amid riots against the police and as violent crime keeps surging.  According to figures released to the New York Post, about 272 NYPD uniformed officers have filed for retirement since riots over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd began in late May.  At the same time last year, about 183 officers had filed for retirement, indicating a nearly 50 percent spike in retirements this year.

Conservatives Are Treated like Second-Class Citizens, and That's Dangerous.  What use is a federal government that refuses to protect our basic constitutional rights? [...] Democrat mayors and governors are bankrupting American citizens by preventing them from engaging in simple commerce, and they're getting away with it.  Street mobs across America are causing millions of dollars in property damage, destroying priceless historical monuments; killing police officers; and targeting random, unlucky citizens based on the color of their skin, and the press cheerlead the madness and defend the murderers and arsonists as heroes.  John Kerry just the other day threatened the United States by declaring that if Democrats don't win the election in November, they will insist on "revolution."  Revolution?  How else can you describe this incendiary cocktail of mob violence and flagrant denial of conservatives' constitutional rights, aided and abetted and kept volatile by Democrat mayors who applaud the mayhem, Democrat prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law, and Democrat-aligned corporations who happily treat conservatives as second-class citizens?

De Blasio's performance grows worse by the day, making NYC unlivable.  The New York that survived 9/11 and bounced back stronger than ever is now being brought to its knees.  The coronavirus, the economic shutdowns and the frequent street protests, mixed with pillaging and vandalism, are no ordinary hurdles, but they are surmountable — with courageous leadership.  Tragically, that's exactly what New York doesn't have.  The crises pile up like dead leaves, but leadership is nowhere to be found.  Without it, the city is fast becoming unlivable.  The slow exodus of recent years has quickened in recent months, with natives, long-timers and recent arrivals clogging the exits.

NYPD retirement filings surged 49 percent amid protests.  The New York City Police Department has experienced a significant surge in the number of officers looking to retire following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minnesota that sparked national protests and calls for police reform.  The NYPD told Fox News that 272 of New York's finest have filed for retirement during the period between Floyd's death and June 23, a number that the outlet said represents a 49 percent jump compared to the same timeframe in 2019.  While retirements so far this year have been about the same — 135 in 2020 compared to 131 over the same timespan in 2019 — the department indicated to Fox that the recent cluster of retirement filings still awaits processing.

272 uniformed NYPD cops file for retirement after George Floyd death.  Cops are hanging up their handcuffs in huge numbers.  The flurry of Finest farewells began after the police-involved killing of George Floyd on May 25, with 272 uniformed cops putting in retirement papers from then through June 24, the NYPD says.  That's a 49 percent spike from the 183 officers who filed during the same period last year, according to the department.  An NYPD source suggested the recent departures could signal a coming crisis for the 36,000-member department, which also faces a $1 billion budget reduction amid the "defund the police" furor.

Washington Post:  It doesn't matter that the most violent cities in America are run by Democrats.  Usually, we elect mayors to do the job of running things and one of the most important parts of their job is public safety.  Especially in cities with higher crime rates, crime reduction is often a major point of discussion during election season.  For instance, Memphis, Tennessee is at the top of the per capita crime list. [...] Why would the fact that the winner is almost always going to be a Democrat not matter?  Don't Democrats tend to have certain specific views about crime, policing, mass incarceration, etc.?  Don't Republicans have a reputation for being tougher on crime, more friendly to police and prosecutors, etc.?  How can this not matter?

Anarchists and Trump's Reelection.  I love my country.  America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to pursue their dreams.  The BLM movement has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with empowering blacks.  Leftists are exploiting blacks as useful idiots to implement their transformation of America away from the divinely inspired vision of our Founding Fathers.  For decades, public education, Hollywood, Democrats and fake news media have infected youths with a poisonous lie that America is a hellhole of racism and the greatest source of evil on the planet.  Our passivity allowed leftists to transform our kids into their social-justice army of anarchists.

2020 Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry.  For nearly a month, the nation has been consumed by massive protests and chronic riots, looting, and arson.  The catalyst for the demonstrations — the violent and wrongful death of African American George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police — is itself fading from connections with the ensuing upheavals.  Statues are toppled.  Names are abruptly changed.  Careers canceled.  Police are both reviled — and walking off the job.  Retired generals are no longer seen as conservative traditionalists but radicals themselves who dare to take on the commander-in-chief.  Downtown Seattle is no longer in the control of the city government.  The internet is aflame with self-appointed sleuths.  They scour hours of video and millions of words, searching for an indiscreet past remark — as fodder to take out a political opponent, a rival for a job, or a personal enemy.

Liberalism is dangerous to your wallet and your health.  The most recent jobs report found that nine of the 10 states with unemployment rates above 14% are in liberal blue states.  Ranked from highest to lowest, they are Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island (16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois (15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), and Washington state (15.1%).  I call this the "blue state jobs depression." [...] It is hardly shocking news.  Liberals are anti-business, and their policies are especially hostile to small businesses.

Why Are We Letting Democrats Steal from Us?  Brainwashed, radicalized liberals have been using Trump's election as a reason to take over our streets, college campuses, corporate America, and other traditional American institutions in ways we could not have imagined.  Putting aside the Resistance movement, which began the day Trump won, these frustrated anarchists are now acting like rabid dogs let loose on innocent populations who wish to live and prosper in peace.  They have stolen livelihoods from the same people they purportedly care so much about.  They have stolen the lives of officers and individuals who seek only to instill law and order in the midst of chaos.  They are pilfering much of what has made America unique and special — including our glorious history and traditions.  From Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth's, Uncle Ben's, Cream of Wheat, and Eskimo Pie to Land O'Lakes, corporate logos that existed for over a century are now gone or soon to be removed from grocery store shelves.  When leftists see racism in Snap, Crackle and Pop, where does the insanity end?

RNC ad puts a spotlight on Dem tactics that bolster 'Marxist' attack on America.  The Republican National Committee released a new ad this Tuesday designed to highlight how "left-wing anarchists are using chaos to destroy America" as Democrats watch sometimes with tacit approval and other times with beaming support. [...] [T]he video links the ongoing madness being perpetrated across the country by Black Lives Matter extremists — think police cruisers being burnt, police officers being run down, statues being toppled, etc. — with the incendiary rhetoric of Democrat political figures ranging from Nancy Pelosi to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

The Movement to Destroy a Nation.  Nation-wide protests weeks after George Floyd's murder turned into a movement to destroy a nation.  Parading as an attack on racial injustice, the movement has turned into an obliteration of history.  This week that devastation set its eyes on faith.  Less than one week ago, protesters rekindled the call for removing confederate statues.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in a show of solidarity with the protest mob, removed two portraits of former House speakers who were part of the Confederacy.  From there, the momentum quickly shifted to anyone whose statue is seen as offensive, who may have held racist or politically incorrect views of another era, or who may (or may not) have owned slaves or supported slavery at any time.  Never mind that the qualifiers of what constitutes "offensive" is blurred; the momentum of eradicating history is ruled by emotion, not reason.

2020 Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry.  For nearly a month, the nation has been consumed by massive protests and chronic riots, looting and arson.  The catalyst for the demonstrations — the violent and wrongful death of an African American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police — is itself fading from connections with the ensuing upheavals.  Statues are toppled.  Names are abruptly changed.  Careers are canceled.  Police are both reviled — and walking off the job.  Retired generals are no longer seen as conservative traditionalists but radicals themselves who dare to take on the commander-in-chief.  Downtown Seattle is no longer in the control of the city government.  The internet is aflame with self-appointed sleuths.  They scour hours of video and millions of words, searching for an indiscreet past remark — as fodder to take out a political opponent, a rival for a job or a personal enemy.  The people's energy, tranquilized by a two-month national quarantine and the terror of the coronavirus, has suddenly exploded in both massive protests and silent seething at the lawlessness.  The result is that for good or evil, the 2020 election is no longer really about Biden and Trump, Democratic or Republican policies, or progressive and conservative agendas.

Minneapolis Police Department Reports Increased Hostility Toward Officers.  The Minneapolis Police Department says officers are routinely walking into hostile situations and crime scenes where they are not welcome.  It happened at least twice last night [6/21/2020] alone.  Now, police officers are pleading for cooperation, as others double down asking for systematic change.  When Minneapolis police were called to a shooting near the George Floyd memorial Friday night, officers were met with resistance, and had trouble getting to the man who needed help.  And police say this is not an isolated incident.

America's Jews and Christians Are Failing the Test of Their Lives.  America is being taken over by violent mobs; a vast amount of destruction and stealing has taken place (with little police intervention and the apathy of our political leaders).  Why aren't all clergy delivering thundering sermons about the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal"?  Does it now come with an asterisk?  A central part of a major American city has been seized and occupied by people who hate America and its values, including its Judeo-Christian values.  Heard any clergy (aside from some evangelical Christians) speaking out against it?  And most ominous by far, for the first time in American history, free speech — the mother of all freedoms — is being widely suppressed, not by the government but by the press, the universities, the high schools, the elementary schools, all the giant internet media, Hollywood and virtually every major business in America.  Christians and Jews place repentance at the center of their theologies, yet there is no place for repentance if you did or said one insensitive thing — real or alleged — even if it was 20 or more years ago.  Yet all we get from American religious leaders on this matter is ... silence.

Obeying The Law Is For Suckers.  If you watch the news, national or local, there is a disturbing percentage of our fellow Americans doing whatever [...] they want to do with little or no concern for the law.  And the law has little or no concern for itself, at least when it comes to those charged with enforcing it.  Across the country, charges are being dropped against rioters and looters.  Why?  Many of those people in position to prosecute the guilty have no interest in doing so.  [Indeed], many of them ran on the idea of not prosecuting people.  What kind of idiot would vote for a district attorney who promised to let people get away with more?  Well, from San Francisco to St. Louis, they did just that.

'If Brooklyn Can't Sleep, Bill de Blasio Can't Sleep,' New Yorkers Hold Noise Demo Near Mayor's Mansion Over Fireworks and Lawlessness.  New Yorkers are fed up with Mayor Bill de Blasio allowing the lawlessness continue on their streets, which includes shooting off fireworks at all hours of the night.  To enact their revenge, protesters lined up their cars and held down their horns for a noise demonstration near the Gracie Mansion late Monday night.

NYC sees staggering shooting numbers; top cops warn of 'storm on the horizon'.  The New York Police Department has reported a staggering increase in shooting numbers, and injuries, as officials warn there's "a storm on the horizon" — and say changes must be made.  An estimated 72 people were wounded in 53 shootings citywide from June 15 through Sunday night, an NYPD spokesperson said Monday morning.  The department saw 14 shooting victims in 12 shootings for the same time period last year, data shows.

What Happens When the Madness Ends?  At some point, tonight's hero on YouTube torching Wendy's or kicking a downed policeman on CNN, becomes tomorrow's commonplace, unnoticed felon — with a new warrant issued out on his head, and about whose fate and lengthy CV no one other than his parents much cares.  Governors and mayors can demand masks and all sorts of social distancing measures.  But once they declared that only those not demonstrating — the non-looting and nonviolent — were subject to their rules, while millions both peacefully protesting and violently looting were exempt, then their words meant nothing.  It will be impossible for them ever to be seen as credible again.  Virus or no virus, crowded freeways, and busy malls will soon be referenda on the bond of governors like Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer.

Thoughtcrimes Now Prosecuted in the Land of the Free.  [Scroll down]  Practically anything, any piece of fact, statistics, sentiments like "all lives matter," any picture, any opinion expressed as civilly as possible, may cost you your job, reputation, and even life.  "Social justice warriors" are torching traditional liberal beliefs about free speech and tolerance with ideas so toxic and destructive that they shut the debate down, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation — all while calling for a "discussion" about race.  Evidently, only unarguable support is allowed. [...] We're witnessing organization after organization being bullied into searching out thoughtcrime.  We're talking about not some KKK proclamations, but cases where people were punished for common sense that was found offensive.  Even a UCLA professor may be placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to his students, or his colleague could be suspended from his job after refusing a student's request to effectively cancel final exams for black students amid protests over the death of George Floyd.  There's a data scientist who once worked for President Obama's re-election campaign who was fired from a research firm for retweeting an academic study suggesting that nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones.  We're seeing conservative media — Zero Hedge and the Federalist — being pressed by Google to censor their content by barring them from Google's ad platform.  We're seeing corporations changing logos of their products dubbed racist on Twitter.

The City They Voted For.  Thousands of kids awaken in Crown Heights terrified & traumatized from 2 weeks of nonstop fireworks at night.  Seniors haven't slept in weeks.  Residents don't walk Eastern Parkway past 10pm to avoid being hit by fireworks.  [Video clip]

The 'cancel' crew will come for you someday soon.  A moral panic is sweeping the nation.  How we react to the pitchfork hordes will determine the fate of our country for a generation or longer.  We call what the hordes do to our fellow citizens "cancel culture," but the term is far too cute to capture the cruel, mindless and life-destroying process taking place all around us in the name of "fighting racism."  The tendency has been with us for some time, but the current, extra-crazed moment has accelerated its malignant energies:  Locked in for months due to COVID-19, we re-emerged into a society more enraged and at war with itself than ever before.  Then the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis took the ideological madness to the next level.  The great majority of Americans agreed that Floyd's death was horrific and that the police officers responsible for it must be held to account.  But that sane consensus wasn't enough, as far as the cancel left was concerned:  Enemies had to be found and eradicated.  And if there weren't enough racist enemies, then more of them had to be invented.

Flyers call for NYPD strike on July 4 so cops can show city what 'independence' from police looks like.  The chasm between the NYPD and a mayor and city who have sided with Black Lives Matter and other Left-wing groups seeking to "defund" or "disband" them has grown wider since the death of George Floyd, as police officers around the country suddenly feel under siege like never before.  Cops in New York may be planning a department-wide strike on July 4 to give the city and its pandering Democratic leaders a look at what it's like to have their 'independence' from police, as many have said they want, according to the New York Post.  The news outlet reports that cops have said flyers that are being circulated among NYPD rank-and-file officers are urging them to call in sick en masse on Independence Day as pushback against Mayor Bill de Blasio's pledge to scale back police funding amid a growing anti-law enforcement environment both in the city and around the country.

The Silent Majority can be silent no more.  This year has been one body blow after another to the nation we love.  First, there was the coronavirus, and we thought, "How can this get any worse?"  Then came the economic shutdown and the incalculable pain and suffering it brought.  Next were the riots, the radicals' unopposed seizure of a section of Seattle and the maniacal efforts throughout the country to defund the police.  Now a series of rulings from the "conservative" Supreme Court are wreaking untold havoc on the Constitution and the rule of law.  It wouldn't take a Christian fanatic or an excitable conspiracist to conclude that America is now the target of an intense spiritual onslaught — brought on by its own rampant descent into decadence.  The left has been at war with America as founded for decades, and it has made great progress in transforming our culture and institutions.

Democrats Have Failed the Black Community for Too Long.  In recent weeks, Americans have watched radical leftist anarchists and Antifa thugs engage in extreme violence and murder that will haunt many people for the rest of their lives.  Fifteen innocent civilians and two police officers were shot and killed, hundreds of civilians were savagely and brutally beaten, and more than 700 police officers were injured nationwide.  Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed as businesses and communities in more than 42 states were devastated by arson, looting, and mayhem that activists quickly followed with a call to defund the police.  With each passing day, both of us asked ourselves the same question: where are the governors and mayors of these cities who took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States and keep residents safe from harm?  Instead of upholding law and order — also known as doing their jobs — they turned a blind eye to the violence while praising the demonstrations that the radicals were using as cover.

Free Speech is Under Full Assault.  Increasingly, we see people holding unpopular views being attacked and refused a forum in which to speak.  Through the threat of force and censorship to control people's speech, free speech is under full assault.  History is replete with others using similar tactics.  As in the times before the Nazi rise to power, the Soviet gulag era, and Mao's revolution, similar trends are prevalent today.  Freedom of speech is engaging in unrestricted speaking of one's mind without fear of retaliation or censorship.  It is the freedom to use one's natural rights to engage in complex thought and speech.  This is not a new concept.  Freedom of speech has a history centuries old, long predating the founding of this country.  Some want to control these natural abilities.  This is where the dispute lies.  One does not have to look far to find multiple examples of the threat of violence and censorship.  This ranges from online mobs to technology company and media censorship and peer attacks.  Those with differing opinions are blackballed, blacklisted, attacked, and censored out of existence.

What Type of Fool Shoots a Cop With a Taser or Wrestles Him for His Gun?  [Scroll down]  Something is very wrong and broken in America.  It is not "systemic racism" because the System is not racist.  But it is Systemic Left Propaganda.  That systemic plague endangers our culture, our values, and our civilization — and it endangers Black lives, too.  Any leftist narrative that makes heroes and icons of people who break loose from peacefully arresting cops and then shoot tasers at them, or that idolizes thugs who wrestle police officers for their guns, endangers impressionable people who believe the lies and falsehoods so propagated.  Forty-two years ago The Deerhunter, a movie set in the era of the Vietnam War, contributed to scores of accidental suicides caused by idiots playing Russian roulette after watching the film.  Today the Left media advances a new insanity, inspiring fools and idiots to shoot at cops and wrestle them for their guns, offering instant fame and martyrdom.

We Must Stop the Great Unraveling.  Across the United States, a great unraveling is in progress.  A rolling crime wave, under the guise of social activism, has left city after American city shattered and smoldering. [...] Social-justice mobs have taken aim at freedom of expression, inventing new heresies daily and ruining the lives of those who unwittingly give voice to them.  Forced confessions and language proscriptions are the order of the day.  Poetry, fiction, movies, and television shows — including children's cartoons — are canceled and excised from history.  Indeed, all art and opinion are now subject to the chopping block lest they prove insufficiently propagandistic.  To rewrite the present, the mob has rewritten the past.  They have forced upon us a distorted and grotesque version of American history.  With the support of corporations and education boards, school textbooks and curricula tell of an unredeemable America founded not on the promise of human liberty but human bondage.  What's more, this history discounts the transformative progress on racial equality for which Americans — black and white — have given their lives.

The Democrats' Corruption of America's Inner Cities.  What are the real problems in America's inner cities?  Is it all about racism, or could it be a combination of several factors?  According to a survey of Chicago parents by the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, poverty, violence, and crime are also some of the biggest concerns in their neighborhoods.  Good jobs and capitalism could solve the poverty part of the problem, but if cities make it hard for businesses to come into town or for a local person to start a small business, citizens with little mobility stay poor.  Why wouldn't these cities want the freest, most business-friendly laws and policies imaginable for their citizens?  The answer is often that politicians care very little about their constituents but care deeply about their own power and money.  High taxes, crony capitalism (meaning favors for politicians and others who have the power to give the "right" companies the contracts), excessive regulations, and a culture of "it's who you know" combine to crush entrepreneurs and small business owners who are not among those favored by the powers that be.

At Least 7 Minneapolis Police Officers Resign — 7 More in Process of Resigning.  Leftists rioted and looted over 270 businesses in Minneapolis in the last three weeks following the death of George Floyd during an arrest in the city last month.  The Minneapolis City Council voted to replace the police department last week with a "community-led public safety system."  The Minneapolis police have been abused by city officials and violent protesters.  So it should come as no surprise that seven police officers have resigned and several more are in the process of leaving.

Detroit's recent move to defund police had serious consequences, reporter finds: 'Children are dying'.  Over the last week, following the May 25 police custody killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, communities nationwide have faced calls from critics to disband police agencies or redirect funding from law enforcement operations to community development programs.  Detroit, according to a report, has seen this decade an uptick in crime because of defunding the city's police department.  The city cut back its police force and funding during a historic bankruptcy in 2014.  Funding for the police department has fallen 20 percent in the last six years.  Starting salary is $40,000 a year.  Wages for cops were cut 10 percent and have never recovered, accounting for inflation.  Health benefits for retired cops were stopped and pension payments postponed.

The Summer of our Discontent.  We are entering the summer of our discontent.  The season promises to be a long, hot struggle to maintain the integrity of our founding principles that are increasingly compromised with the best and worst of intentions.  The worst intentions are those of the rabble whose objectives we shouldn't underestimate.  They will instigate and inflame chaos and anarchy to achieve what a former president promised: "to fundamentally transform America."  They will opportunistically take advantage of the nation's weakened status from overreaction by government to COVID-19, compounded by the well-intentioned but ultimately destructive flood of trillions of dollars in "temporary" cash benefits.  The street scenes of Minneapolis and Seattle promise to play out across the country all summer, leading to November's election.

Baltimore Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence.  For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md., has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017.  Some residents attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality.  Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested.  The Rev. Kinji Scott, a pastor in Baltimore who's held positions in local city government, says the opposite needs to happen.  "We wanted the police there," Scott says.

Atlanta riot shows the left's downhill in slide in racializing police incidents.  As tragic as officer-involved shootings of anyone is, not all of them are worth burning down a Wendy's for.  For radical activists and their enablers, this act is getting old fast. [...] [I]n contrast to the George Floyd case, where the victim died pleading to breathe on video with a bad cop's knee on his neck for 8 minutes, we now have someone who was driving while intoxicated (hello, MADD), sleeping on the grounds of a fast food joint, grabbing an officer's taser while under arrest, and using the taser against police.  And Wendy's is the bad guy?  Police are the bad guys?  This looks like the sort of nonsense that goes on at every fast food joint in inner cities every week.  Transients and drug users are often found at these establishments because of the low-cost food and availability of public restrooms.  Just read the Yelp! reviews of any inner-city McDonald's or In-N-Out burger, there will always be mentions of homeless as part of the user experience.

Anarchy, Seattle, and All That CHAZ.  Three cities, all supremely liberal, represent an American descent into anarchy against which no one is standing.  After New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he wanted to slash the police budget, the New York City Council is going about cutting $1 billion from that budget, about 16%. That will inevitably cause a reduction of police presence around the city and, with equal inevitability, result in an increase in crime.  President Trump has said that if Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Durkan didn't restore order in Seattle, he would.  But he has done precisely nothing.  In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25, the city council plans to disband its police force entirely.  On Friday, the city council voted to replace the police with a "community-led public safety system."  What [...] is a "community-led public safety system"?  And then there's Seattle.

The Protests May Have Started Out Legitimate, but They've Been Hijacked.  This mayhem has thus far taken the lives of at least 11 people, many of whom are black Americans.  Hundreds of others have been injured in the chaos, with police officers getting shot and protesters struck with rubber bullets.  As the carnage, looting, arson, and assaults have been allowed to continue in Democrat-controlled states and municipalities, it has become undeniably evident that the wrongful death of George Floyd has morphed into anarchism.  As lives, businesses, and personal property have been driven asunder, the criminal perpetrators are buoyed by pusillanimous Democrat politicians too timid to take back their own streets.  Whether it be Crown Heights, August 1991; Rodney King, May 1992; Ferguson Missouri, August 2014; Baltimore, April 2015; or one of many others, the script has remained the same.  In concordance with fawning state and local officials, a legitimate protest is hijacked by a throng of anarchists.

Where Black Lives Don't Matter.  Milwaukee and every other big blue city in America have been marked by a decades-long murder merry-go-round that has nothing to do with the police.  The overwhelming majority of the murdered — and the murderers — in America's cities are young black men who were cheated out of a decent education by the inexcusably substandard Democrat-run public schools they had no choice but to attend.  Because many were functionally illiterate and afflicted with arrested psychological development, they lacked the skills to hold down even the most basic entry-level job.  So what did these frustrated and angry young men do?  Most turned to a life of drugs and crime, with many ending up dead or in prison before reaching their 20th birthdays.  For generations on end, black-on-black homicides in Democrat-run cities have been an ongoing calamity for the black community.  On May 31, Chicago experienced a record 18 homicides in a single day.  Year to date, the city has chalked up 264 murders, with young black men a solid majority of the victims, which raises the question: are those black lives any less important than George Floyd's, any less deserving of our outrage?  Chicago is the poster child for urban carnage, but every big blue city in America has overseen a breeding ground for black-on-black havoc, and they've done it for the last half-century.

The True Plight of Black Americans.  While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called "systemic racism." Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.  Some of the most dangerous big cities are:  St.  Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia.  The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats.  Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven't elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century.  On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools. [...] The bottom line is that today's black Americans have significant political power at all levels of government.  Yet, what has that meant for a large segment of the black population?  Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets.  Consider Baltimore, Maryland.  In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore's 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state's math exam.  In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math.  Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state's English test. [...] It's the same story of academic disaster in other cities run by Democrats.

Communism Is Reborn with a New Name in America.  Do some people really think that the impeachment, the corona-gulag, and the pogroms all occurred in America one after another in a completely random pattern of events?  Why did pre-planned and synchronized riots and looting suddenly arise?  Because the adventure with the coronavirus hysteria failed.  Why did the coronavirus hysteria suddenly lead to a corona-gulag being created?  Because the impeachment failed.  Why did impeachment suddenly arise?  Because "Russiagate" (or, rather, Obamagate) failed.  Why did "Russiagate" arise?  Because leftism was defeated in the 2016 elections.

Obama to the Rescue.  For three years, Resistance Media and a set of political operatives who tag-team with their allies inside the federal bureaucracy have laid siege to the American public through their proxy war against the president they hate — and the country elected.  What the resistance yearned for was the kind of imagery that galvanizes resistance movements from Latin America to the Middle East:  a spectacular act of martyrdom that would crown their campaign of new age political warfare, which began with the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which was followed by a fraudulent impeachment process staged by the same political operatives, CIA officers, and media personalities who pushed "collusion" into the public sphere, to the three-month-long coronavirus lockdowns that were portrayed as matters of life and death only to be magically lifted to combat racism, after leaving nearly 20 million Americans jobless.  The successive failures of the campaign to destroy Donald Trump and undo the 2016 election have only made the American left angrier and more willing to take desperate measures[.]

Why You No Longer Recognize Your Country.  Mass looting throughout the nation.  Police precincts burned to the ground.  Murdered cops.  An historic church in Lafayette Park set on fire.  Video after horrifying video of innocent Americans being beaten senseless by gangs of thugs, as one political party demands:  "DEFUND THE POLICE!"  Everyone is saying it:  I no longer recognize my country.  You don't recognize your country because it's not the same country.  What you're seeing is the third-world hellhole the left has been quietly assembling for us since 1970.  Minnesota, the crucible of the riots, has gone from having 2.6% foreign-born in 1990 to nearly 10% foreign-born today — and that's not including their children or illegals.  Instead of liberal but non-rioting Scandinavians and Germans, the new immigrants are overwhelmingly African, Asian and Hispanic.  In fact, Minnesota now has a much larger proportion of Asian and African immigrants than the nation as a whole.  Although the state has always leaned Democratic, thanks to its German and Scandinavian immigrants (Ben Franklin was right about them), the Norsemen elected Walter Mondale.  Recent immigrants elected Rep. Ilhan Omar.  Hey, Republicans!  Tell me again that immigration is just a "single issue."

Democrat Cities:  Fourth-World Scourges.  When the terrorists become bored and cease terrorizing, when the flames are extinguished, when those who died in the riots are buried and cremated, when the shards of glass from storefronts are disposed of, and when livelihoods are permanently lost, Democrats will still run the vast majority of the deadliest and most dangerous cities in the U.S.  Death and destruction always follow Democrat policies and culture.  Stagnant local economies.  Unsafe streets for children.  Gun crime.  Failing schools.  Breathtaking corruption.  Problems with the police.  Property crime.  Poverty.  Poor public health.  Single- or no-parent homes.  All are found in abundance in Democrat-run cities, and found overwhelmingly in majority-black neighborhoods.  So who are the true "racists"?  By every objective measure and metric, Democrat-run cities are the unequivocal worst places in America to live.

Shaun King:  Democrats Run The Cities With [the] Worst Police Brutality.  As debates about police brutality and systemic racism rock the country in the wake of George Floyd's horrific death at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King let himself utter an uncomfortable truth that other activists have been ignoring:  Democrats control all the major cities where black people are experiencing the most police brutality and systemic racism.  In a tweet on Friday [6/5/2020], the activist scolded those who tell black Americans to affect change through voting, asserting that such blind thinking may not exactly be the panacea people are talking about.

What Do They Really Want?  [Scroll down]  The New York Times reports that Minneapolis, like all the other places on fire, is one of the most liberal cities in the nation.  Surpassing even Seattle, Minneapolis has black people on the City Council.  Two of these black council members are transgender.  None of them is a Republican.  Juneteenth gets a yearly parade, and the police chief, until this week, was a black man.  They're so devoted to fighting racism that you can't zone for single-family housing anymore — ostensibly to make the housing cheaper for blacks and to keep richer whites from having better neighborhoods to move to.  This means that Minneapolis and all the other left-wing cities on fire already do everything they can to police the police — and if they go any farther, they'll have to get rid of them altogether.

Democrats Want to Abolish the Police and Confiscate Our Guns.  [T]o those of you who think this idea of abolishing the police and the Second Amendment is insane and can therefore never happen, you need to remove your head from the sand.  Here are some more facts:
  •   We went from zero to gay marriage in less than ten years.
  •   We went from zero to drag queen story hour in about ten seconds.
  •   The left is blacklisting us for referring to biological men as "he."
  •   The corporate media are now describing the burning and looting of cities as "political speech."
  •   This same media are describing peaceful protests by Tea Partiers and those ravaged by anti-science lockdowns as "dangerous" and "violent."
  •   Lego is blacklisting its own toys.
  •   The NFL just committed suicide.
  •   Drew Brees is now on his third 1984-ish public confession, a full-blown grovel tour, for the sin of expressing respect for the American flag.
  •   Legions of white people are kneeling to ask forgiveness for something they had no part of.
  •   Healthcare "experts" are telling us the coronavirus is lethal if you want to go to work, school, or your grandmother's funeral, but not so lethal if you are out en masse to support "approved" causes.
The Democrat Party has been completely radicalized, emboldened, and is currently eating itself alive in the kind of cultish moral panic we have not seen since McCarthyism or the McMartin preschool scandal.

Minneapolis Mayor Asks Trump For Aid After Riots Cause At Least $55 million In Damage.  The Minneapolis mayor is asking for federal help cleaning up and rebuilding his city after rioters caused at least $55 million worth of damage through looting, burning, and defacing public and private property.  That cost estimate is likely to increase in the coming days as government officials continue to tally the damage done in the wake of George Floyd's death, Mayor Jacob Frey said according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state's congressional delegation are also pushing the Trump administration and Congress for funding.

The Editor says...
If the mayor had done everything in his power to quench the riots and incarcerate the perpetrators, he might have a case.  Instead, he is asking the federal government to clean up his mess.  Let the city of Minneapolis rot!

Minneapolis Mayor Now Asking Trump for Relief Money After He Let His City Burn.  You've gotta admire the brazenness someone has to operate with to not protect their own city from riots, trash the President in the process, and then go running to the federal government for money.  Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who bears a striking resemblance to Canada's Justin Trudeau, has managed it though.  According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the damages are already at $55 million and climbing. [...] Yeah, that's not what FEMA is for, as evidenced by the fact that Maryland was denied such assistance by the Obama administration in 2015 after the Baltimore riots.  These politicians sat idly by and let their cities be destroyed.  They need to be the ones to pay for it.  These people had ample opporutnity, including usage of the National Guard, to stop the rioting, burning of buildings, and looting.  They instead chose to appease the mob for purely political reasons.  That's on them.

Liberal Mayors, Racial Politics, and Fake News.  There are three things you need to know about the unrest associated with the killing of George Floyd.  First, almost all major cities these days are governed by Democrats, usually liberal Democrats.  Second, black Americans have suffered because of the public policies these cities have adopted.  Third, the reason why city governments adopt policies harmful to black families is not because they are racists; it's because they are liberal.  In city after city, all too often black families are forced to send their children to the worst schools; they are forced to live in the worst housing; they receive the worst city services (including policing); and they are subject to the worst environmental harms.  The politicians who run these cities are Democrats.  Many of them are black themselves.  Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, is an example.

During This Spate of Racial Outrage, Here Are Some Deeply Uncomfortable Facts for the Press, the Activists, and Even Ben & Jerry's.  [Scroll down]  This is the language we normally see attached to the messaging of "Systemic racism".  The problem, however, is one of location.  While it sounds great to attribute Floyd's death to the racism built into the culture, what few are willing to do is analyze that culture.  So why don't we look into the system where this crime took place?  To start, you have as the city Mayor, Jacob Frey, an avowed leftist who follows a string of Democratic liberal leaders.  The last time a Republican was elected to run the city was 1957.  The police chief of Minneapolis is Medaria Arradondo, a black police official.  The federal representative for the city, in Washington, is the famed female POC Ilhan Omar, and the top cop for the state is another POC and former head of the DNC, Attorney General Keith Ellison.  Are these the leaders perpetuating the culture of white supremacy?  Just to add to the list, you have Minnesota headed by Democrat Tim Walz, the state is served by two Democrat senators, including Amy Klobuchar who spent years as an acting state attorney in a few offices, and even the sister city of Saint Paul has as its Mayor, Melvin Carter, another POC leader.  These would be the people operating the "racist and prejudicial system and culture".

Bill De Blasio Is A Cowardly Tyrant Fueling New York's Demise.  The grave injustice inflicted upon one person is now being compounded into a grave injustice for millions of New Yorkers.  It took decades to bring New York City back from the brink — facing crime, squalor, and bankruptcy — to the peace and prosperity that has marked it since Mayor Rudy Giuliani's tenure.  Today, Mayor Bill de Blasio seems intent on sending the city back to the bad old days, threatening to undo decades of progress while operating under the banner of "progressivism."  The twin crises of the Chinese coronavirus and the present rioting and looting have created the perfect storm for the city's demise.

Riots, Brought To You By District Attorneys Who Won't Prosecute.  adicalized district attorneys in cities across America are putting violent rioters and looters back on the streets, and letting other hardened criminals walk.  More than anyone, one man is responsible for this outrage:  Billionaire socialist George Soros.  St. Louis is a case in point.  There, prosecutor Kim Gardner let 36 people arrested for looting and rioting go scot-free, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  Gardner's office used the pathetic excuse that it needed "essential evidence" from the police, implying it had none.  One wonders how people caught in flagrante delicto could simply be released.  The answer is, Gardner is a far-left acolyte of Soros, having been the recipient during her 2016 election of no fewer than three separate donations from a Soros-backed political-action committee.

The Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country.  I haven't had much time to reflect on the looting and riots that swept mostly (but not exclusively) large Democrat cities.  It was a wilding on a scale we've never seen.  It was a bloodletting and release of criminal fury.  We should be clear what is happening.  It is not protest over the death of George Floyd.  That is the spark, but not the fire.  This has been a long time coming.  At least a generation, maybe two.  The left methodically has taken control of key institutions to implement an anti-American, anti-Capitalist agenda.  You send your kids to public schools and college, where they are taught from their earliest years that America and capitalism are the sources of evil in the world, that we are a systemically racist society that consumes 'black and brown bodies,' while socialist and communist systems are more equal and fair.  It's all a lie, but it's a lie told by the teachers, professors, and administrators with power.  The real racists are the people who obsess about race, and who judge people based on the color of their skin.  When your kids emerge from the social justice warfare meat grinder, you don't recognize them anymore.

NYC Arsonists to Be Instantly Freed from Jail Thanks to 'Bail Reform' Law.  Arsonists who set fires in New York City, New York, during multiple nights of riots will be instantly freed from jail if ever arrested thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D-NY) bail reform law.  For many nights now, arsonists have set ablaze New York City Police Department (NYPD) vehicles, city dumpsters, and rubble on the streets of New York City.  Those arrested for arson, if arrests are made, will spend less than 24 hours in jail.

Nearly All Rioters Freed from Jail in D.C., Most Avoid Felony Riot Charges.  Nearly all rioters have been freed from jail in Washington, D.C. and most have had felony riot charges dropped against them, and now they are only facing burglary, destruction of property, and curfew violation charges.  Arrest records obtained by WUSA 9 reveal that hundreds of rioters have been arrested over the last week in riots and looting sprees across the nation's capital.

Riots, looting and America burning — the end of the progressive dream.  There is a big debate about designating Antifa a terrorist group and what if any steps the federal government can take to stop the rioting.  But we all know who the real culprits are for turning America's streets into a war zone:  progressives and liberals.  They have filled the mind of America's youth with ideological nitroglycerine that is now exploding in our streets, while also setting the conditions that make it almost impossible to stop it.  The terrible events that have unfolded in the wake of the death of George Floyd represent the systematic failure of five decades of progressivism and liberalism.  The end of the progressive dream has now brought us all to the brink in three ways. [...]

How to destroy civilization.  The violence that is exploding across the country now has almost nothing to doing with the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Derek Chauvin, a white policeman.  That was merely the catalyst for a process that has deep roots in American culture.  The moral is:  ideas matter.  For decades now, our colleges and universities (and increasingly our grades schools) have been preaching a gospel of cultural self-hatred.  America, according to this gospel, is evil.  The country is inextricably racist and beholden to an irredeemably exploitative economic system.  The latest retelling of this creation myth is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning '1619 Project' whose fundamental message is that America was started as a 'slavocracy.'  According to this malignant fantasy, the Revolutionary War was fought primarily 'to protect the institution of slavery.'  At last count, elements of this disgusting bit of historical revisionism were being adopted in the curricula of some 4,000 school districts.

Democrats' Chickens Come Home to Roost.  Conservatives have been warning about the dangers of Antifa and other left-wing groups for years.  No one in the Democrat media listened.  More than that, they cheered them on; defended them.  Why not?  After all, they were chanting the right things and targeting the right people, from the left's perspective.  No progressive group would condemn them:  Black Lives Matter didn't, the Women's March didn't, CNN didn't.  They were helpful in beefing up numbers and energy at protests and marches Democrats deemed helpful.  What did it matter if they threw a few rocks or Molotov cocktails?  They were throwing them at police, a group those silent partner groups had declared the enemy[.]

How do we explain the many thousands of Americans who believe they are entitled to steal?  Night after night, we have watched thieving thugs break windows of small and large businesses, charge into them, and run out with as much merchandise as they can carry.  They stuff their booty into large SUVs, many of which have the license plates removed.  They are wearing masks so [they] do not fear facial recognition software.  These riots seem to prove that, despite our protestations to the contrary, we do live in something of a third-world nation.  When that many people in as many cities that are under siege right now feel no allegiance to the law, to their families, to their neighbors, to civil society, we are indeed a nation in need of a reboot.  Fifty-plus years of the left's smearing of American values, their opposition to the nuclear family, the promotion of the idea that out-of-wedlock births are just another lifestyle choice have, as we see now, made for a population sullied by the acceptance of abject criminality.  That is what we are all seeing on our TV screens.  This is not about race; it is all about respect or the lack of it and values.

What's Trump Got To Do With The George Floyd Riots?  Almost everything connected George Floyd's tragic death and the subsequent riots involve Democratic leaders.  So naturally, President Donald Trump is taking the blame.  Start at the beginning.  George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, a liberal city (the New York Times calls it "one of America's most liberal cities") in a liberal state (that hasn't voted for a Republican for president since 1972).  In 2017, Larry Jacobs, a professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, observed that "In Minneapolis, we have one of the most liberal activist agendas in the U.S.  They are seeking to accomplish at the municipal level what isn't being done at the federal level."  Even that wasn't liberal enough for city dwellers, who booted out a liberal mayor in November 2017 for an even more leftist mayor, Jacob Frey.  He ran promising more affordable housing and, if you can believe it, improved police-community relations.

Who is recruiting, moving and paying the professional anarcho-rioters?  [Scroll down]  Is it really the citizens of Minneapolis who have set the city on fire, burning down small businesses as well as the police precinct building, libraries, etc.?  Who are those masked men in black with secret-service quality ear-pieces, military grade gas masks and backpacks full of Molotov cocktails?  They are very likely professional rioters, recruited, transported and paid by the likes of some George Soros front group or other anonymous Cloward-Piven devotees who share Soros' hatred of America and want to see this nation bought to its knees. [...] These are not protests.  What we are seeing is mass thievery under color of protest.  Chances are if the looters in Los Angeles were asked "who was George Floyd," they would not have a clue nor would they care.  Democrat-run cities have long valued "social justice" (different standards for different groups) and identity politics over lawfulness and basic values.  This is what you get when deviancy has been defined down so egregiously that we have citizens behaving like animals.

This is a Result of Democrat Governance.  The outrage we are seeing manifested over the past few days, is focused on the wrong target(s).  We are getting wall to wall coverage of the aftermath of the in-custody death of George Floyd.  Riots in major cities, property damage and even a few deaths are just part of that aftermath.  Innocent people are being harmed, while at the same time, some are attempting to affix cause and blame for Mr. Floyd's death on the wrong parties.  As usual, using admittedly disturbing video, there are some who in a rush to judgement and to take advantage of this terrible tragedy for their own political ends, cannot seem to wait for the facts to come out.  Instead, they instigate violence and property damage and actually harm the very folks they purport to care about.  Also as usual, the more time that passes, the more information comes out that increases our knowledge and subsequently alters our perception of exactly what happened.  Two critical pieces of such information have just come to light.

Big City Schools:  Where America's Most Vulnerable Kids Languish.  In 2010-2011, public schools in the nation's capital spent $29,345 per pupil — nearly $600,000 per each classroom of 20 students — yet the District's 8th graders finished dead last in a nationwide proficiency test in math and reading.  According to a 2015 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 96 percent of 8th graders in Detroit's public schools tested not proficient in math, and 93 percent tested not proficient in reading.  According to a 2017 investigation by Project Baltimore, 13 of the city's 39 public high schools had zero students who tested proficient in math.  Zero!  Of the 3,841 students in the remaining 26 high schools, only 14 tested at or above proficiency in math, less than one-third of one percent.  For a half-century running, Democrat-run urban schools have robbed minority children of a realistic chance for a decent education.

California's Budget Bust-Up.  Every state and municipal budget in America will take a big hit because of the coronavirus lockdowns, but no public purse is in as much trouble as California's.  Its Department of Finance recently estimated that the Golden State could face a $54 billion shortfall in the fiscal year beginning July 1, which surely must be the largest deficit any state has ever accumulated, surpassing the $40 billion hole that nearly swallowed Sacramento in 2008.  Still, though Governor Gavin Newsome said last weekend that the staggering deficit was "a direct result of Covid-19," that's clearly not true.  Critics have long warned that the state's tax base is volatile, being increasingly reliant on wealthy residents and vulnerable to sharp contraction in the next recession.  Combine that with California's spending spree — including expenditures to fix problems that the state's own bad policies have worsened — and the swing from prosperity to penury isn't hard to understand.

Nurses give inside look at 'nightmare' NYC-run adult-care center.  Out-of-state nurses brought to Manhattan to fight the coronavirus say they found hellish conditions at the city-run adult-care center on Roosevelt Island — from patients with horrific bed sores to feces-smeared walls.  "It was just heartbreaking," said one of the RNs, a mom of four from Wisconsin who spent about 17 days at the Coler Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center.  "Patients were in deplorable conditions — very, very dirty, bed sores, terrible odors," the FEMA-contracted nurse, 38, told The [New York] Post.

A tale of two governors.  Alas, the early "science," the early facts and analysis of COVID-19 suggests that those states controlled by the urban left are flunking by any fair mark up.  A New York (D) versus Florida (R) comparison, blue versus red, provides an early template for judging who gets high marks for crisis management.  By any measure New York is not just the national Covid hot spot, it is an international disaster area.  Andrew Cuomo's (D) state leads the nation in all statistical categories from infection to morbidity rates.  New York City (D) is now the toxic nexus for the nation.  The Big Apple is hands down the necrotic 2020 spoiler in the larger American barrel.  Badgering Washington for more of everything from the start, it turns out that team Mario miscalculated the need for damn near everything, including beds, hospitals, rescue ships, and respirators.  Mario Cuomo pushed city mayor de Blasio (D) aside and seized control of metro policy with hype and bombast, if not hysteria.  Incredibly, Cuomo was lionized by the media as "the only adult" in the room as he presided over the worst state or city medical crisis in America, if not the world.

Common Sense and Self-Evident Truth in a Post-Truth World.  Many Americans today go far beyond simply rejecting the ideas of the American founders, the claims of the Declaration, and the Constitution.  They reject the very idea of truth.  These Americans were taught in American universities that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is an outmoded concept, that we now live in a post-truth reality.  The belief that the concept of truth is outmoded is no longer confined to academia.  It has invaded the world outside academia and won a great victory there; the Oxford Dictionaries selected "post-truth" as the Word of the Year for 2016.  And a great victory it is.  Convincing Americans that there is no such thing as truth defeats the very foundation of the American idea.

Democrats seem to be enjoying this authoritarian moment.  Various Democrat politicians are competing to be the most proactive in enforcing social distancing in their communities, so the internet is awash with stories of decidedly anti-American government behavior.  This post will bring you up to date on some of the more egregious things that are happening in Democrat-run communities across America.  For sheer shock value, there's really nothing to equal a short video that's come out of Philadelphia.  The video, which has been viewed almost five million times, shows a rider being forcibly torn from a bus in Philadelphia, although not arrested, because he was not wearing a mask [...] The Daily Caller notes the irony that this violent attack "comes after Philadelphia police announced that due to coronavirus, they would stop arresting people for 'non-violent' crimes including burglary and drug offenses."  Within a short while of the video going viral, Philadelphia's Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority announced that it was no longer enforcing its short-lived mask policy.  Philadelphia is a Democrat-run city.

Did Trump Ruin Our Economy for Nothing?  Except for foreign travel, Trump didn't shut down anything.  Where did this economic halt come from?  It started in states and cities with Democratic elected officials.  Perhaps they were influenced by the fake news media during "Trump is ignoring the crisis" and overreacted themselves, or perhaps they wanted to show up Trump by taking action.  Either way, they used their favorite tool, the power of government, without any regard as to what it might do to their people.  It should be obvious from their focus on Trump, but Democrats care only about power, and so they focus on those in power.

Bet Your Life — Vote for Democrats.  New York City and California's loony politicos are hooked on identity politics and see racism everywhere, ignoring objective science.  The consequences of ignoring reality: overwhelmed medical facilities, lack of proper medical equipment, and soaring death rates. [...] In brief, Mayor de Blasio's City Health Commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, is a radical who previously served as Health Commissioner of Baltimore where she "had given the city's race rioters 'space to destroy.'"  Space which continues after her move to New York to result in a soaring murder rate.  She boasted of seeing health policy through a "racial equity lens," a lens so fogged that she concentrated on discouraging those arriving from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine and encouraging New Yorkers to attend the Lunar New Year celebrations in the city.

What the left is destroying goes far beyond politics and the economy.  It is clear that reconciliation with the left is a pipedream!  They reject reciprocal respect, based on a mutual agreement about human nature.  They can't have it both ways.  They can't demand our politeness while we are insulted by them.  They can't fabricate "crimes", knock together "evidence" and call it "justice", as Sidney Powell exposes. [...] They can't butcher the record to fit in with their slanted ideology and pretend it's "history".  They can't stake out adolescent absurdity as the correct response to the world, and expect us not to interrogate their wisdom.  If honorableness in communication is the shining standard we aim for between human beings, it has suffered the same fate as every other aspect of culture the left touches.  It's been destroyed.

Another Pandemic Known as Social Justice.  To achieve their aims, universities are watering down requirements in order to attract more women and minorities.  This portends "disastrous [repercussions] for scientific innovation and American competitiveness" not to mention the care of sick people.  Consequently, [a recent National Association of Scholars] report asserts that "social justice movement's political goals include increased federal and state taxation; increased minimum wage; increased environmental regulation; increased government health care spending and regulation; restrictions on free speech; restrictions on due process protections; maximizing the number of legislative districts that will elect racial minorities; support for the Black Lives Matter movement; mass release of criminals from prison; decriminalizing drugs; ending enforcement of our immigration laws; amnesty for illegal aliens; open borders; race and sex preferences in education and employment..." to name only a few.  Support for the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement is also part of their movement and mob violence is advocated to enforce any and all of these objectives.  The traditional mode of teaching students how to think has been replaced with teaching them what to think.

Not enough hospital beds in New Hampshire?  Blame needless regulations.  One regulation forces anyone who wants to open a hospital to have a 24 hour per day, seven day per week emergency department.  Given that emergency departments are the most expensive and toughest to staff part of any hospital, this is a huge barrier to opening a new facility.  And, like most cronyism, existing hospitals made sure this requirement doesn't apply to any hospital that had its license before the law was passed.  Another regulation forces any new hospital to take reimbursement from all payers, regardless of whether doing so makes sense for that hospital's business model.  Across the country, cash-only facilities are thriving, providing lower cost alternatives to patients.  But, under state law, they can't operate in the Granite State.  Finally, one state regulation provides for a 15-mile radius monopoly zone around smaller hospitals in more rural areas.  This guarantees that anyone outside of the southeastern part of New Hampshire will never see another hospital being built in their community, or anywhere near them.

Life in the Time of Wuhan.  [Scroll down]  Mayors who let thousands of homeless people tent out on their streets where they relieved themselves daily amid piles of rat-ridden heaps of trash and drug paraphernalia, will learn some lessons about public health.  Nancy Pelosi, who for three and a half years accused the president of treason and exceeding his constitutional powers, now begs him to assume dictatorial powers.  The mainstream media is almost entirely discounted as a source of reliable news and is reduced to posing ignorantly framed gotcha questions at the conclusions of transparent first-class White House briefings.  The notion that cities like Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, whose leaders have undermined the rule of law and law enforcement, will suddenly be able to get the will and manpower to enforce lockdown of the residents defies all probability.

Left's Pet Issues Like Mass Transit, Reusable Bags Prove Deadly During Coronavirus Crisis.  With some experts predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18 months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and outsourcing to China look now?

Greening Our Way to Infection.  The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those "sustainable" shopping bags that politicians and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public.  These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and flu viruses — and spread the viruses throughout the store.  Researchers have been warning for years about the risks of these bags spreading deadly viral and bacterial diseases, but public officials have ignored their concerns, determined to eliminate single-use bags and other plastic products despite their obvious advantages in reducing the spread of pathogens.  In New York State, a new law took effect this month banning single-use plastic bags in most retail businesses, and this week Democratic state legislators advanced a bill that would force coffee shops to accept consumers' reusable cups — a practice that Starbucks and other chains have wisely suspended to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.

Also posted under Banning plastic bags.

Major crimes in NYC unexpectedly surge after bail reform law.  We recently looked at some new proposals for fixing New York's disastrous new "bail reform" law or at least mitigating some of the damage it's causing.  They may want to get off the stick and start looking at those suggestions in a hurry because a newly released report shows that major crimes in New York City took a very sharp turn upward in February as compared to the same period of time last year.  And the police have the data to show that the bail reform policies are playing a significant role in this very bad development.

America's Declining Sexual Morality.  Today's "sexual revolution" is expressed by our being told by the highest court in the land that homosexual marriage can and must be married and by women being encouraged to abort children as a "right."  In today's society, drag queens reading to little children in libraries is considered delightful by many.  Further, vast numbers of people consider one's sex designation psychological and not biological, and, increasingly, parents encourage their little children to "choose" which sex/gender they want to be.  As additional evidence of the "sexual revolution," the overall percentage of children born out of wedlock has risen from 5% in 1960 to about 40% the last three or four years (albeit much higher among black and Hispanic persons).

The Law That Ate the Constitution.  The Civil Rights Act passed under President Lyndon Johnson was meant to address an emergency situation that most Americans, even most white Americans, recognized as a national disgrace.  Over the following decades, those emergency measures would be revealed as a permanent apparatus combining "surveillance by volunteers, litigation by lawyers, and enforcement by bureaucrats."  Civil rights offered "new grounds for overruling and overriding legislatures and voters on any question that could be cast as a matter of discrimination.  That was coming to mean all questions."  If you doubt the infinite adaptability of civil rights to any subject under the sun, consider the multifarious uses to which it has been put. [...] There are pavilion-sized homeless encampments on the streets of Los Angeles, employers can hire illegal immigrants with relative impunity, gay marriage is the law of the land — all because of civil rights law, directly or indirectly.

California's Gig Law Comes For the Scooters, Destroys Independent "Juicers".  California's "gig economy" law — AB5 — continues to have disastrous consequences across the state.  The list of jobs affected or outright destroyed is huge and growing every day.  The wedding industry is collapsing.  Festivals are closing.  Theaters and music venues are closing.  A nursing shortage is now upon us because qualified nurses can no longer pick up extra side-jobs in areas like hospice care.  The law has even killed Christmas:  mall Santas can no longer contract their services.

Progressive Big Lies.  These days, fake news is the first draft of fake history.  Worse yet, today's progressives believe lies to be true despite their egregious falsehood.  Then progressive state governments act on beliefs that biological sex can be changed by choice, that an aborted human being isn't a human being, that infants surviving abortion can still be killed, that the modern industrial world can run on solar panels and windmills, that money can be endlessly appropriated and redistributed, that a region like California should dump precious water to protect a bait fish, that hordes of bums and hobos polluting public spaces require no action, and that our enemies can be mollified by soothing words and foreign aid rather than by mind-concentrating deeds.  These lies and their dangers have been worsened over the last few decades by the degeneration of education from grammar school to university.

As Trump wins praise for effective coronavirus response, blue cities do opposite, threatening its spread it through homelessness.  The left's blue cities do all they can to encourage and reward homelessness, amounting to the country's great enabler of homelessness as a lifestyle.  Blue cities employ and are expanding gargantuan bureaucracies dedicated to "servicing" the homelessness, which encourages a hunt for more "clients."  San Francisco alone spends $77,000 per homeless "client."  They also refuse to enforce quality of life laws, such as those against vagrancy, public camping, drug use, public alcohol consumption, prostitution, and public urination and defecation, promoting homelessness even more.  Some are encouraging squatting on private property.  Others are permitting the homeless to take over public parks and spaces.  Some, such as Bill de Blasio's New York, are secretly busing the homeless to other cities to keep them from creating problems in their own cities.  It's a massive tax on those who own the overpriced homes in those cities, but taxes are the left's bread and butter.  It's a money merry-go-round, all done in the name of "compassion."

Black-on-Jewish attacks in NY, black-on-Asian attacks in SF: Same progressive rule.  [Scroll down]  The second thing we see is that this person has no fear of the police, no fear of the feds, and no fear of punishment, no matter what he does.  That's the work of leftist politics that in San Francisco now requires a dollar value of $951 in thievery before any police action can take place.  Thieves know they get the first $950 free in that city.  Cash bail has been eliminated, and San Francisco's district attorney has a pinned tweet praising Bernie Sanders for praising that.  That crazed leftist "serving" as district attorney, one Chesa Boudin, is the son of a terrorist killer, raised by Bill Ayers, last seen "serving" as Hugo Chávez's translator, whose big selling point is "decarceration," and ending "mass incarceration," and who refuses to prosecute quality-of-life crimes such as public urination.  The cops in that city are throwing up their hands at having this creep at the prosecutorial helm, effectively making all street crimes get-out-of-jail-free cards.

Sorry, Democrats:  Party's Over.  It makes me smile to know that fewer people are watching CNN than have fled from California in the last few years.  These days even Jed Clampett wouldn't be convinced that Californy is the place he ought to be.  He would have the sense to take his money to Texas where the taxes are reasonable and you won't be flash-mobbed by SJWs chanting that you're an eco-criminal for striking it rich in the energy sector.  Modest as Jed's education may have been, I think he would have understood that energy is a good thing and letting junkies poop in the aisle at Costco is a bad thing.  Even cousin Jethro would have winced at the mountain of filth that Pelosi and her party have made.

Canada:  A Dead Country Walking.  Canada is presently in the throes of social and political disintegration.  A left-leaning electorate has once again empowered a socialist government promoting all the lunatic ideological shibboleths of the day: global warming or "climate change," radical feminism, indigenous sovereignty, expansionary government, environmental strangulation of energy production, and the presumed efficiency of totalitarian legislation.  Industry and manufacturing are abandoning the country in droves and heading south.  Canada is now reaping the whirlwind.  The Red-Green Axis consisting of social justice warriors, hereditary band chiefs, renewable energy cronies, cultural Marxists, and their political and media enablers have effectively shut down the country.  The economy is at a standstill, legislatures and City Halls have been barricaded, blockades dot the landscape, roads and bridges have been sabotaged, trains have been derailed (three crude-by-rail spillages in the last two months), goods are rotting in warehouses, heating supplies remain undelivered, violent protests and demonstrations continue to wreak havoc — and the hapless Prime Minister, who spent a week swanning around Africa as the crisis unfolded, is clearly out of his depth and has no idea how to control the mayhem.

On Leaving the Golden State.  [Scroll down]  Let us talk about the authorities for a moment.  What exactly are they doing to help?  First, they threw open the borders and created sanctuary cities so that people that do not belong here can not be molested by law enforcement.  Next, they decriminalized camping in public.  People camping in public need something to do to while away the hours so they decriminalized drugs even going so far as to give away free needles.  If that were not enough, they decriminalized theft up to $950 per day.  This way any homeless person can walk into any business and brazenly steal whatever they wish without any fear of being sent to jail.  Finally, they've arranged things such that the police will no longer respond to 911 calls pertaining to vandalism or burglary.  You can watch from your bedroom window as a homeless person smashes your car windshield with a rock so as to ransack your car and if you call 911 it will be YOU that is in trouble for tying up their emergency line as someone vandalizing and robbing your car is a non-emergency and not worthy of any kind of response.

Bright Lights, Blighted City.  [Scroll down]  New Yorkers didn't bargain for what they're seeing these days.  They don't want the subways to break down so often or to spot a rat scurrying along with a pizza crust or to get slugged on the platform or shoved on the tracks by some mumbling paranoid nut.  They don't want to hurry under the construction platforms that leave the sidewalks permanently in gloom, and they don't want pieces of buildings to fall on them or their grandchildren.  They don't want to be confronted by a phalanx of panhandlers on the prime shopping blocks of Fifth Avenue or groped by a moocher costumed as Captain America in Times Square.  Or see men peeing on the sidewalk. [...] Other cities have bigger problems.  Homelessness is now endemic in Los Angeles and, especially, San Francisco.  Violent crime rates in St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, and other places dwarf New York's.

Heightening the Contradictions.  How often does the Left come up with ideas that, on the face of it, appear absurd, irrational, or utterly insane?  The answer, is, of course, all the time.  The general response is bewilderment or incomprehension — a shrug and an assertion that "those lefties are crazy."  But in truth, they're no such thing.  There's nothing irrational about it.  It's all part of the program. [...] The same is true of any other "senseless" or "irrational" leftist program.  None of them, whether they involve introducing transsexualism to schools or placing jihadis in Congress, occurred by accident.  They were meant to happen exactly the way they did, to heighten the contradictions.

As the media focuses on Democrat candidates, Democrats are looking at Trump.  Democrats will no doubt be distressed to learn that the progressive habit of politicizing absolutely everything is giving new weight to the law of unintended consequences.  A New Hampshire woman, horrified by the uproar in the knitting world a few months ago when woke knitters went on a rampage, found herself at the Trump rally in New Hampshire and went public about the pleasant surprises she found there. [...] People who were enjoying their craft were suddenly lambasted as racist cultural appropriators and worse.  Conservative knitters fled the knitting sites, and they were joined by Independent and Democrat knitters who found it offensive to have politics invade their peaceful, creative hobby.

Decriminalization of drugs fueling meth and homelessness in California.  The same people who demand that Congress and state governments spend even more money to "combat" the twin drug and homelessness crises never seem to connect the dots back to their decriminalization policies or admit that they are causing a rise in crime.  One journalist in California is not scared to pin the tail on the donkey — in the case of the Golden State, the infamous Prop 47.  Right around 2014-2015 is when the drug crisis exploded nationwide, including in California, roughly around the same time homelessness soared, particularly in the Golden State, along with the rise in theft and other crimes.  What else happened around the same time?  California passed Prop 47, which downgraded drug and theft crimes.  The result was a logical consequence to an illogical policy.  Bill Lamb, VP and general manager of Fox 11 in Los Angeles, delivered a TV commentary last week pinning the blame for the homeless and drug problems squarely on Prop 47.

Trump's Presidency Reveals 7 Undeniable Facts About The Swamp.  [#6] Identity politics and the legislation of social justice policies have stifled the rights of free speech and freedom of association throughout the democratic nations of the western world.  And they materialized as the result of language manipulation.  Remember when gender used to represent male or female?  Yet, in that example, the word "identity" was added after "gender" thus opening a verifiable Pandora's Box of Orwellian Newspeak.  Today in formerly free societies, men and women are forced to navigate Genderqueer and Non-Binary Identities, consisting of an entirely new lexicon including neo-designations such as Agender, Cisgender, Ceterosexual, Ceteroromantic, Demigender, Enby, and Epicene; just to name a few.  Political Correctness is a means of thought control in the bubble, designed to protect imaginary victims from the societal sins of xenophobia, sexism, homophobism, and racism.

Number of THC positive drivers in fatal crashes has doubled in Wash. state.  A new study shows the number of Washington state drivers involved in deadly crashes who tested positive for THC has doubled.  According to research by AAA between 2008 and 2012, an estimated eight percent of Washington drivers involved in fatal crashes were positive for THC.  That rate now is more than double since weed became legal in Washington.  In the five years before legislation, an average of 56 Washington drivers involved in fatal crashes each year were THC positive.  In the five years after legislation, that average jumped to 130.

Democrats Don't Care About American Lives.  Democrats' vision for the perfect America includes transforming her into a wild, wild west of sex, a society in which every perversion is legalized and citizens are forced to celebrate.  A memo exposed Obama's DoJ plan to legalize 12 perversions including pedophilia and bestiality.  Colleges are laying the groundwork by scolding us about our bigoted intolerance of pedophiles.  Democrats are sexualizing children beginning in pre-k with a mandatory LGBTQ curriculum.  I Am Jazz, a book about a boy whose parents began his so-called sex change at age three, is required reading.  Once you realize that Democrats only care about furthering their agenda and American lives do-not- matter, you understand their behavior.  U.S. students are sick with strange diseases due to untested illegal alien children being sent to public schools.  Transsexuals who regret having sex change surgery are blocked from media.

Guess the State:  Democrat-Run Fiasco Edition.  The last time Republicans held a majority on this state's Supreme Court was in the 1920s.  Its Court of Appeals has never had a Republican majority.  The last time Republicans held a majority in both houses of the state Legislature at the same time was 1930.  In the 89 years from 1931 to the present, Democrats have held a majority of both houses of the state Legislature for 79 of the 89 years.  Since 1931, Democrats have held the governor's office for 69 of the 89 years.  Even when a Republican has been governor, his powers have been greatly limited because he has never held a majority in both houses of the state legislature while in office.  What state am I?  If you guessed CA, IL, NY, NJ, or MA, you're wrong.  If you guessed NM, go to the head of the class.  Since 1931, no other state has had single-party Dem rule at the state level as long as New Mexico.  And how has New Mexico fared under the stewardship of single party Democrat rule?  As we shall see, not so well.

Liberalism Causes Achievement Gaps.  This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster.  It is titled:  "The Secret Shame:  How America's Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All."  Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities' left-wing public schools have some of the country's worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students.  Stewart compared achievement by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative.  The results didn't surprise me, but they shocked Stewart.  Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently did a better job of closing student achievement gaps — sometimes, to zero — than progressive cities.

A Peek at America before 1950 and the Assault by the Left.  Picture a neighborhood composed of low and middle income families, each with two parents, no homeless people, no street drugs, safe to walk the streets at night.  Is this the figment of an overactive imagination? [...] This typical school of 1940s New York City had higher standards and grade profile than any counterpart today and operated on a budget far smaller in equivalent dollars than any current public school budget.  In these "backward" times, the schools were free of substance abuse problems, sexual promiscuity, and identity problems.  There was an abiding respect for the authority of teachers and parents and for the dignity of every person regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity.  There were clubs in my school for religion, for foreign languages (including Latin).  A Reporters' Club recorded significant events for the school paper.  There were toy drives for a local hospital...  The list of extracurricular engagements was long.

We Have Miseducated Boys and Girls Alike.  [Scroll down]  Why wouldn't a culture that worships promiscuous sex send the message to young men that their entire value revolves around sex?  And consider the stated — and hidden — messages that young men get every day:  Women should be able to sleep with as many men as possible.  (Your girlfriend won't be faithful to you.)  Divorce should be easy.  (If your own father left and you're hurt by that, who cares?  Men won't stay in a marriage.  You shouldn't expect to stay in a marriage.)  Dads are "deadbeats" or buffoons.  (Mothers are more important than fathers.)  Abortion is a constitutional right, and men should have no say.  (Your children shouldn't mean anything to you.  They can be destroyed whether you want that or not.  You don't matter.)  It isn't that every negative, oppressive trend affecting American boys is an after-effect of the sexual revolution.  Some problems Orenstein mentions — difficulty expressing emotions; fear of failure; "jock culture," with its bullying and vicious coaches — have been around much longer.

San Francisco, solid blue city of — empty storefronts and missing young people.  San Francisco is getting to be a hellhole and not just because crooks are having a field day, or a vast homeless army has prompted new tech 'innovations' in poop-map apps.  It's actually becoming a city with a hollowed out look, redolent of some place like Steubenville, Ohio or maybe Utica, New York, during the bad years, empty storefronts and missing young people.  So much for the trope that leftwing cities, with their walkable boulevards full of food trucks, handmade crafts, knitting shops, bookstores, artisan cheese shops, gourmet restaurants, and cafes are more lively and liveable than rightwing places.  For awhile, that did seem to be the story.  But it's coming to an end.  Sure, there's vast wealth.  But despite California being in an economic boom, the place is starting to look like Venezuela.

The Left's Endless Commercial Has Weaponized Popular Culture.  American consumers understand that most forms of popular culture have become nothing more than commercials for the Democrat party.  Movies, television, and music focus less on entertainment than on influencing the next election.  They have gone beyond mere leftist bias.  Artists, writers, and musicians subordinate their craft in order to present one endless Democrat commercial.  This trend is equally egregious in the case of books.  In modern bookstores, the Democrat commercial spreads far beyond the "politics" shelf.  "The gardening books advocate hiring illegal aliens.  The sports books reminisce about Vietnam."  A telling example of this trend appears in a 2018 book about the design of General Motors automobiles from the 1920s through the 1950s.  Fins, by William Knoedelseder, appears to be credible, informative, and interesting until it reaches Chapter 9.  In Chapter 9, the author apparently loses interest in classic cars and decides, instead, to tell the reader that President Trump is just like Hitler.

Democrats Have Become a Disfigured Reflection of the Party They Once Were.  [Scroll down]  We see in their contempt for federal marijuana laws, the institution of sanctuary cities, and their hostility to border enforcement a deranged lack of perspective regarding the health of our citizens, many of whom are struggling with or dying from drug usage.  The opioid epidemic we face is clearly connected to the opioid supply, and that, in turn, is clearly a border issue.  Yet they put aside the well-being of so many poor souls caught by the hook of addiction into ignoring border enforcement in order to score political hate points against the president.  Instead of looking at border issues in terms of law and national health, they turn enforcement into an ugly, defamatory argument about American and Trumpian racism.  Only 14 years ago, they were able to agree with Republicans on the need for stronger border enforcement, whereas now they try to block every Trump attempt — mandated by the American people — to bring order out of chaos on our southern border.

Chile's Collapse Foreshadows America's If Dems Win.  America's economic growth under Barack Obama was anemic, and the economy would have been even worse had the Democrats enjoyed control over Congress during his two terms.  Were the Democrats to return to the White House in 2020, all the economic gains under Trump would vanish.  All of the potential Democratic presidential nominees favor flirtations with economy-sapping socialism of one kind or another.  In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Axel Kaiser, a scholar at Adolfo Ibañez University in Santiago, warned Americans that Chile's collapse could be theirs if they too consume socialism's poisonous cocktail of high taxes, increased government spending, and excessive regulation.

Guess Who Runs the Rudest Cities in America.  Recently, an oft-cited Business Insider survey ranked the rudest cities in America.  The top 10 are all bastions of misguided liberalism.  They are sanctuaries to illegal aliens and often hostile towards law-abiding citizens by imposing oppressive taxes and silly regulations and by encouraging lawlessness by handcuffing law enforcement.

Mayhem on the Streets of NY.  Beginning on the first of this year, New York's "no bail no jail" law, enacted by the Democratic legislature and put into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo went into effect. [...] It may be true that some low-level crimes for which poorer arrestees cannot afford bail, means they languish in jail until trial, but this law is so poorly crafted that it includes crimes for which bail is warranted no matter what the economic condition of the person arrested, for otherwise there is no penalty for immediately repeating the criminal acts.  Criminals learn there are no consequences for their actions.  Of course, it won't much affect the rich, who glide about in chauffeured cars and live in gated communities or buildings guarded by doormen, but the middle class surely are impacted.  Once, again these misguided efforts to coddle the underclass have the effect of remaking our cities and states on a feudal model where the rich are protected and serfs who work and pay taxes are in constant danger from brigands and murderers.

Man accused of driving drunk, killing pedestrian freed due to new criminal justice reforms.  A man who allegedly hit and killed a pedestrian while driving drunk in East Harlem is back on the streets for now — thanks to the state's new criminal justice reforms, authorities said Thursday [1/2/2020].  Farkell Hopkins, 23, was arrested on charges of vehicular manslaughter and DWI at the scene of the deadly New Year's Eve collision, but was cut loose before he was even arraigned.  The Manhattan District Attorney's office said prosecutors still intend to pursue the case, but they now have to ensure they're able to turn over all their evidence to Hopkins' defense team within a tight 15-day time-frame, thanks to new soft-on-crime laws that went into effect Jan. 1.

Topics We Aren't Allowed to Talk About.  Baltimore may be the most depressing big city on the eastern seaboard.  Have you been there?  Everyone in Washington has.  If you want to take a train from Washington to New York, you have to pass through Baltimore.  This summer, the president told the rest of the world what it's like.  Baltimore, he said, is "rodent infested, not to mention a corrupt mess."  Why is Baltimore so bad?  How did it get so poor and hopeless?  Part of the answer is 50 years of uninterrupted Democratic Party rule.  But saying that would be embarrassing to the Democratic Party, so the party's apologists don't want to have the conversation.

Back to the pre-Giuliani era:  Serious crime up 31% in NYC's Central Park this year.  NYPD crime stats recently reported by the New York Post show that violent crime incidents in Central Park, Manhattan, have spiked 31 percent in 2018. [...] The cleanup of Central Park was one of the milestones of the era of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York that jump-started a two-decade decline in crime throughout the city.  Those gains are now being reduced due to the abolishing of pretrial bail, reduced sentencing, early release, and almost no deterrent against juvenile criminals.  The subways have already returned to pre-Giuliani-era crime levels.  According to NYPD data, there were 1,185 transit misdemeanor assaults citywide from Jan. 1 to Nov. 17, which reflects a 10.9 percent increase from the same time last year.

American Society and the Stretched Rubber Band.  [Scroll down]  Regressives have been successful in fostering a censored, politically correct environment in politics and entertainment.  They've accomplished this by resorting to character assassinations, engaging in identity politics on the basis of one's external traits, deplatforming media and entertainment personalities, and rioting in the streets in order to enforce their new code of ethics and engrain their postmodern ideology into the fabric of American culture.  Naturally, this oppressive behavior has led to a counterculture that rejects what Regressives laud and embraces what they hate.  This includes distrust of the media elite, which is intentionally dishonest, self-censoring, and heavily biased; a desire to promote patriotism and protect national heritage; and, most importantly, a yearning for politicians to fire from the hip and not worry about the laws of political correctness that devalue freedom of speech.  This brings us to President Trump, who may appear like a buffoon whose presidency is a fluke.  However, his ascendency is no accident — Trump correctly identified this counterculture as a sleeping giant waiting to be riled up.

A Liberal Order That Seeks To Shut Down Christian Charities Doesn't Deserve To Survive.  Even without full control over the government, the left has been aggressive in its use of government power against Christians who believe traditional teachings on human sexuality.  The left seems to target particularly those engaged in charitable work, rather than protecting them on account of their good works.  The left's legal wing is trying to compel Christian hospitals to perform abortions and sex-change surgeries, Christian schools to affirm same-sex relationships, and Christian charities such as women's shelters to pretend men can be women.  A purportedly serious Democratic presidential candidate wanted to tax dissenting Christian organizations, including churches, into oblivion.  The left won't even spare elderly nuns.  When the Trump administration ended Barack Obama's legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, various Democratic attorneys general made a point of continuing that unholy effort.

The Destructiveness of the Liberal Child Mind.  The Left's takeover of our schools and media has brainwashed a whole generation.  We've got millions of befuddled biological adults walking about with the minds of kids, cheering on the likes of foolish teen Greta, who should be at home practicing for her soccer meet or piano recital.  Give any of these kinderlings or their kind the reins of adult power, and what you get is an utter economic and societal wreckage.  You get the squalor, poverty, and degradation of the socialism of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela.  You do get nice slogans and cool tee-shirts emblazoned with "Health Care Is a Human Right" and "Medicare for All," but such things won't put food, let alone an MRI scanner or anti-cancer drug, on the table.

How Social Work Became the Pit of Despair It Is Today.  [Scroll down]  Without a "fundamental transformation" of the mass media's constant condemnation of personal moral judgments — without a drastic change in its lionizing of hedonistic pursuits that "push the envelope" beyond every prior boundary of decency — without a rejection of its reflexive division of society into privileged and victim groups — without a massive intellectual and moral shift on the part of educators, the entertainment industry, prominent intellectuals, and folks in electronic communications, the prospect for significant improvement in the culture at large, including its ever expanding social services arena, seems bleak.

Cook County Christmas shopping, Kim Foxx style.  When state's attorney Kim Foxx announced no prosecution for shoplifting under a thousand dollars, the results were fully predictable.  Chicago and Cook County, Illinois are leading the headlong American rush toward lawlessness and the loss of civil order.  The election of Kim Foxx as Cook County state's attorney, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in backing by George Soros, has been a further disaster — with not just the scandalously lenient treatment of Jussie Smollett after convulsing Chicago and the entire country with a fake hate crime caper, but the virtual abolition of laws against felony shoplifting under one thousand dollars.

Operation Mockingbird's Racial Destructive Lies.  In a recent article, I explained that Operation Mockingbird is a program founded by the CIA in the 1950s to use journalists and front groups to spread propaganda.  Today's version of Operation Mockingbird uses intelligence agencies, academia, Hollywood, and the Democratic party to spread hatred for Christians, traditional values, law-abiding gun owners, straight white men, pro-lifers, police and the 63 million who voted for Trump.  I am encouraged that a growing number of young Americans realize they are being propagandized 24/7.  Young people are fed up with SJWs (social justice warriors) demonizing whites, anyone who is happy, successful, thin, and enjoying life.  Youths are angry for being branded an "ist" or "phobe" for everything they say or do.  These three Operation Mockingbird lies continue to wreak havoc, igniting racial hatred, division and violence.

Will Dems Leave Their Irreligious Party?  The average Democrat I know does not believe that infanticide is a right nor do they accept the nonsense that there are more than two genders.  They do not believe that open borders that allow drugs and murderous gangs into our country should be our policy.  Those that have jobs do not approve of their wages taxed to give benefits to those who are here unlawfully.  They are also outraged that children are being subjected to progressive stunts like having drag queens read to them in public while exposing their crotches.  (Don't believe this?  Google it).  They do not approve of grown men being allowed to use women's bathrooms especially when they are being occupied by young girls.  Yet all of that is being pushed by the Democrats running for president in 2020.

America's real disease is toxic ignorance.  Many factors have combined over the last 50 years to remove the moral scaffolding into which we fit incoming information and prioritize it.  Judeo-Christian values have been demonized and replaced with relativism.  Relativism implies that nothing is all good or all bad, all wrong or all right.  There are no justified priorities.  Live and let live.  Once this took hold, toxic education stepped into the breach and indoctrinated students with substitutes for what used to be "right" and "wrong."  The only truth is your own personal well-being.  So teachers set about redefining history and interpreting ideas with which the left disagrees as harm to one's person.  This makes it a small step to say "speech is violence."

New York Times puts bad light on murdered Barnard teen and exculpates the city.  The disturbingly horrible stabbing murder of Barnard freshman Tessa Majors over a cheap robbery by one-to-three thugs is an awful story.  The victim was an 18 year old female freshman, a very young-looking teenager, walking to campus around 7 or 8 p.m. when it would have been dark. [...] Unpopular Mayor Bill de Blasio, who's excused these kinds of crimes in the past has made the right noises, but it remains to be seen if he's serious.  But the Times seems to be eager to minimize the crime, cast a negative light on the victim, and exculpate the now-socialist city. [...] In any case, the Times has a big problem now that the reality of blue-city politics has hit New York in a dramatic turnaround from the Giuliani era — kids are now being murdered.  That's why they're doing their best within decency to put the victim down and insist that the city remains safe even with crime now a free for all in New York.

A Safe Space Society Is A Totalitarian Nightmare.  As the undisputed star of the new film No Safe Spaces — the hit documentary on academia's descent into Orwellian tyranny features a quick shot of a lawyer letter I wrote to some collegiate gulag apparatchiks — I wholeheartedly recommend that you go see it.  Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager take you on a guided tour of the insanity and evil that has gripped academia, and it's utterly terrifying.  You need to see it not merely to gape at the freak show but to learn what's coming for society as a whole.  The dreary conformity factories that pretend to be providing our next generation of leaders with a higher education have instead embarked on a campaign of indoctrination designed to manufacture a generation of goose-stepping creeps who use their bizarre collection of buzzwords and fetishes as weapons to suppress any kind of dissent.  And the problem is that this PC Nazism is not just limited to academia.  Eventually, these daddy-issue cadres are going to get out into the world and contaminate all of our institutions even worse than they are contaminated now.

Why Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast?  On a local level in many cities and communities, Democrats in power are by their actions undermining the rule of law.  For example, expected compliance with the law in several of our leading cities run by Democratic Party leaders, including most notably New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, is now often based on a person's economic and immigration status, race, sex, sexual orientation, and increasingly an indication of a person's political and religious affiliations.  The reason for these exemptions being granted is based on the dual ideologies of identity politics and social justice.  The creation of an implied multi-tier justice system expressly violates our fundamental value of the law applying equally to citizens from all walks of life and most importantly results in the increasingly intolerable and dangerous conditions existing on the streets of these cities and an overall perception of communities in decline.

Republicans Will Live to Regret Joining Climate Alarmists.  [Scroll down]  The data are overwhelming that implementing the proposals of climate alarmists — i.e., drastically cutting down or eliminating fossil fuels — will devastate Western economies.  According to a recent report by the conservative American Action Forum, the Green New Deal will cost up to $93 trillion.  Canada has instituted policies that severely constricted the ability of Western Canada to market its oil and gas.  Eric Denhoff, a former deputy minister of Alberta wrote:  "With more than 150,000 unemployed in a persistent, unbelievably long-running recession, Alberta has faced thousands of bankruptcies, a huge increase in suicides, and a tremendous loss of long-term capital investment that scares the bejesus out of the business community." Kevin O'Leary, founder of the O'Leary financial group, said Alberta and the West "don't have their engine of growth anymore" because "Trudeau hates energy."  Canada, he notes, has been the the poorest place of all the G7 countries to invest your money over the last four years.

Millennials Are Fleeing Cities For Refuge From Democrats' Disasters.  [Scroll down]  My home city of Philadelphia is a prime example.  Here, 60,000 residents leave per year, and half of them are 18 to 34 years old.  The reason?  Urban centers like Philadelphia are bent on destroying the very conveniences that drew millennials to the city in the first place.  Here, the combined effect of sky-high taxes and outdated regulations add up to an all-out war on millennials.  Or at least a war on the things they love the most.  Brunch, for example.  In Pennsylvania, where I live, the number of available liquor licenses is restricted by our state liquor monopoly.  These restrictions and the fact that licenses are sold at auction (seriously!) make selling booze way too expensive for business owners.

The obsessive, intolerant, despicable do-nothing-but-obstruct Democrats.  It is the Left that has undone the tenets of Martin Luther King.  It is the Left that has branded any words they don't like as hate speech and destroyed higher education in America with trigger warnings and safe spaces.  Universities have infantilized college students for a couple of decades now.  Our pseudo-professorial class has indoctrinated its students and taught them nothing but intolerance for the slightest word of opposition to their prescribed, permitted speech with which they've been inculcated.  They have severely handicapped many thousands of young people.  Ask one of them who Mao was?  Stalin?  The Holocaust?  Socialism?  About America's founding?  They know nothing, by design and what they think they know is so wrong.  But ask them about transgenderism, institutional racism, homosexuality, white privilege, etc.  They will wax rhapsodic with their infinite knowledge of those topics, each of which is relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of this once great nation.

Revolution as a Mental Disease.  Illegal immigration has a negative impact on the labor market, especially low-income Americans, by keeping wages down.  Nevertheless, half of our fellow citizens believe that any action taken against illegals is tantamount to sending them to concentration camps.  Medicare for all would lead to long waiting times, with the problem being compound by the coverage provided to an undetermined number of illegals.  In a country where 85% of people have access to quality health care, this would represent a major downgrade.  Socialism is another major electoral theme, and rejecting it in an affluent society would normally be a matter of common sense.  However, part of the secular pietist mission is to fight inequality, even if that leads to worse living conditions for the majority, provided that the object of their envy is also harmed.

After the Impeachment.  [I]f the Democrats win this sham of an impeachment proceeding and the 2020 election, we should be very frightened, because a victory will usher in an era of governance that will lead to a timeline similar to what happened to Venezuela. [...] Many of today's advocates for socialism have no recollection of Venezuela in 1992 as the third-richest country in the world.  Nor do they understand that Venezuela's socialist president ran on "income inequality" in 2001 and shortly afterward put into place the same list of "reforms" as the ones now being advocated by today's Democratic candidates and some of their more radical allies — healthcare under government control, free higher education, guns confiscated, opposition leaders imprisoned, elections suspended, etc.

Trump is 100% on His Game.  I thank God that President Trump is not like other Republicans. [...] If Trump is not reelected in 2020, Democrats will kill healthy babies even after they are born.  Sixteen-year-old girls will have double mastectomies without parental consent or knowledge in absurd attempts to become men.  Democrats will roll out the red carpet to drug dealing, murderous illegals along with illegal alien children carrying strange diseases being admitted into our schools.  The Democrats' Green New Deal promises to stop air travel, kill the fossil fuel industry, and implement a long list of insane job-killing and economy crushing initiatives.  You cannot imagine the huge number of jobs Democrats will kill or force overseas.  Trump has our economy booming.  Black unemployment has hit a new historic low.  All of Trump's unprecedented remarkable successes for America will be flushed down the toilet if Democrats take the White House.

Liberals and the Moral Compass.  [Scroll down]  All of this wandering around the darkened moral landscape is simply an inevitable consequence of tying one's values to one fashionably righteous cause after another.  In the early part of the 20th century, the progenitors of today's progressives were all for eugenics and forced sterilization.  Now they like androgyny and political censorship.  Tomorrow, perhaps pedophilia and concentration camps will be all the rage.  It depends on what novelty proves the most expedient.  Ultimately, the essence of the Left is a cynical and unaccountable leadership leading people around by their desire to feel good about themselves — as cheaply and as painlessly as possible.  It thrives on intellectual laziness and low standards of integrity.  While it is nothing really new, and these people have always been with us, there are more of them now than any healthy society can possibly support.

Report: Hollywood Adds More LGBT Characters to TV, Cable, Streaming — Now 488 Total.  GLAAD, an organization that seeks to accelerate "acceptance of the LGBT community" in American culture, released its 2019 report, Where We Are on TV, and applauded the TV and cable entertainment industries for adding more LGBT characters to their programs.  "Of the 879 regular characters scheduled to appear on broadcast scripted primetime television this season, 90 (10.2 percent) are LGBTQ," states the report.  There are also some 30 recurring LGBTQ characters, making a total of 120.  That's up from last year's 113 regular and recurring LGBTQ roles.

The Editor says...
If you haven't done so already, you should take all of the television sets out of your house and leave them at the curb for the next garbage truck.  When I got rid of my last TV in 1980, it was the programming was boring, shallow, insipid, and a waste of time.  Now, almost 40 years later, the programming is offensive, demeaning, pernicious, blasphemous, and destructive.  The commercials are nearly as bad, and the so-called "local news" is nothing but an infomercial for big government.

Feeding the Fat Green Pigs.  Land that once fed horses is now used to produce biodiesel and ethanol for cars, so food prices must go up.  Forests are felled to burn in green power stations and for green-tick buildings while grasslands are invaded by feral pests and woody weeds from the ever-growing parks and Kyoto Protocol Forests.  Birds and bats are being sliced by wind turbines, flatlands are being smothered by solar panels, access roads and transmission lines.  But electricity costs soar, supply is rationed while reliability crashes.  Behind every one of these modern maladies are troughs of Big Green Pigs getting fatter on market mandates, subsidies from consumers or tax payers, and special tax treatments.  In the background, governments fund an academic/media industry promoting climate alarmism, energy rationing and intermittent energy.  Electric cars and penny farthings were pushed off the roads by Henry Ford's petrol engines, but politicians are trying to put them back — a Tesla for the rich and a bicycle for the poor.  Consumers and industry don't count and taxpayers are there to be milked.  In this Greentopia no one needs miners, farmers or fishermen.  All are lost for a fake global warming Emergency.

Why Trump is the Black Voters' Clear Choice in 2020.  Tragically, blacks have voted monolithically for Democrats for 60 years with nothing to show for it.  Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, and every other city controlled by Democrats are hellholes of black misery; black-on-black homicides, out-of-wedlock births (fatherless households), high incarceration, genocidal numbers of abortions, and school dropouts.  And yet, Democrats are still deceiving blacks with their tired old lie that every issue plaguing black Americans is the result of white racism.  My stomach turned upon hearing Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren promising to end environmental racism.  I thought, "Here we go again with another Democrat attempting to fill blacks with more victim nonsense while trashing America, claiming that even the weather in the U.S. victimizes blacks."

No Safe Spaces:  What Happens When Common Sense and Values Disappear.  The new documentary No Safe Spaces, starring conservative thinker, radio host, and writer Dennis Prager and liberal, comedian, and podcast host Adam Carolla, is a must-see for anyone concerned with the long-term viability of the First Amendment's free speech protections.  While primarily focusing on the hostility to free speech laying siege to America's college campuses, vividly illustrated with compelling clips of violent protests and civil unrest by students from Berkeley to Yale, No Safe Spaces powerfully illustrates how the movement to limit speech has moved into mainstream arenas as well.  Prager and Carolla recognize that "common sense and values" are disappearing for the first time since our country's founding.

The Source of the Media's Post-Truth Analysis.  The source of the left-liberal bias in journalism is no mystery.  You need look no further than the faculty of any journalism or communications department at any American university.  But what really needs to be understood is how the people in the fake news business came to be liberated from feeling any obligation to tell the truth. [...] For some time now, something called postmodernism has ruled on American campuses, and a core idea of the postmodernists is that claims to truth are meaningless.

Reclaiming Common Sense.  How has it come to pass that in America, a man can identify as a woman, and his linguistic affirmation by itself, at least in New York City, obligates others to refer to him as "her"?  And why is it increasingly considered mandatory to declare that men taking female hormones can compete against women in sporting events?  What aberrant philosophical doctrine, you may ask, is behind the assertion that there are sixty-three genders or that marriage must no longer be considered the union of a man and a woman?  The answer to these and other absurdities can be found in Robert Curry's new book, Reclaiming Common Sense:  Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World.

A Great Awakening to the Fight is Upon Us.  [Scroll down]  No more compromise, no more calls for bipartisanship.  Republicans have been outfoxed on that score every time. [...] The old liberal promises of compromise and conciliation were and are false (remember the pledge that when we get same-sex marriage we'll be done with sex and gender issues?).  Barack Obama's reasonableness was a disguise, Joe Biden's Scranton liberalism a pose.  Obergefell was but a step in the never-ending reduction of traditional sex roles.  The inclusion of minority literature and history in the curriculum during the 1970s and '80s wasn't to serve the ideals of diversity.  It was to redefine America as a racist creation from 1619 to the present.  The Left has been making war by other means for 50 years, changing history textbooks, peddling films that mock fatherhood and faith, designing bogus studies that show pay gaps and systemic racism.  But it's been a war nonetheless, and a successful one because conservative leaders and intellectuals have failed to assess the other side.

Lies catch up with Democrats.  For years, Democrats brushed aside concerns that by giving them an inch they would seek a mile.  But Obamacare did lead to a demand for Government Health Care For All.  Gay civil unions did lead to gay marriage and now transgendering (castrating) boys.  Beto O'Rourke wants to use gay marriage to regulate religions via the tax code.  His call for gun confiscation drew calls to shut up and not give the store away.  Democrats lie about their goals.

Fairfax County, Virginia Presents Dire Warning to America.  Fairfax's descent into its current state started with a wave immigration, much of it illegal, into the area which washed away Republican political viability.  Fairfax County became a nullification (sanctuary) county in 2018 and now puts a significant chunk of money into its budget to defend noncitizens from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, although the problem started long before that.  By 2015, 30% of the county was foreign-born.  MI-13, [sic] a brutal criminal gang, is now more active than ever, and the once marquee schools have started what will be a long slide through mediocrity to abysmal.  Fairfax just ranked seventh among the highest-crime sanctuary jurisdictions, ranking just below Chicago and tied with a nearby Maryland county that has had at least nine illegal alien sexual assaults since its sanctuary policy was declared in late July.  That's staggering.  Fairfax County now is on a list of shame with Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco.

We need to fight for the values that made America great.  The left railed against our soldiers during the Vietnam War.  The left calls those who believe in a supreme being or the commitment of marriage uninformed and anachronistic.  They're now openly saying that churches that hold traditional values should lose their tax-exempt status.  The Left doesn't care about our enormous debt, pushes for socialism, and criticizes the Boy Scouts.  The Left thinks it's OK that our schools don't teach about the founding fathers or free markets.  They want you to think America was never great.  To a degree, the pressure from the Left is working.  Americans under 30 are less interested in joining the military.  Church attendance is at an all-time-low, participation in the Boy Scouts, even after allowing girls in, has shrunk, and many are choosing not to have families.  Socialism, the single most discredited idea of the last century, an idea that led millions into poverty and tyranny around the globe, has gained a foothold in one of our two political parties.

How to Bring Down the Ideology of the Left.  The ideology of the Left is integral to the Left's power.  Democrats seek to codify political correctness into legislation as settled verities admitting no further debate.  This is despite the abject failure of their policies to solve the problems they contend need fixing.  The welfare state has spawned intergenerational dependence and misery as well as national debt.  Their self-appointed victims have not been healed by un-gendered bathrooms.

Trickle-Down Bureaucracy Is Destroying Vermont.  So much money is spent on reports, studies, and employment for state workers that Vermont's property tax rates are some of the highest in the nation.  To the extent that any of the money does come back down, it is indeed a mere trickle.  Vermont demonstrates the government bloat that plagues many states, and the effects are becoming apparent.  Vermont now has fewer than 700 conventional dairy farms — but the Vermont Department of Agriculture and the UVM Extension Service steadily increase employees, and salaries.  This is quite typical of the virus-like quality of the Vermont bureaucracy — it grows, and citizens lose wealth or leave.  Vermont has nearly twice as many full-time state employees per 10,000 residents as New Hampshire, yet Vermonters are struggling much more than their thriving neighbors.  There is no growth, and the governor has infamously offered $10,000 bribes to out-of-state earners to reside in Vermont.

Eco madness may be reason for disastrous Boeing 737 MAX safety issues.  Air travel, which accounts for 2 percent of global emissions, has become the great bogeyman for climate alarmists, sparking a backlash against airlines.  Punitive eco-taxes, aviation regulations, activist investors, green NGOs and climate-aware passengers conspire to force airlines and manufacturers to lower CO2 emissions by using less fuel, which accounts for 99 percent of aviation's carbon footprint.  No one has said it explicitly yet, but this relentless pressure to reduce emissions appears to have been a significant factor in the disastrous safety failures of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, which resulted in two fatal crashes in the past year, claiming 346 lives.  The warning from Boeing's catastrophes is that climate ideology can have fatal consequences.

The Derangement Syndromes of Our Time.  Who doesn't feel compassion?  Who wouldn't do whatever they can to help someone in need?  But there are intractable problems with compassion gone wild.  In practice, misguided compassion breeds debauchery and dependence.  Anyone wishing to see the former is invited to drive the streets of San Francisco, where they may smell human excrement, tons of which are deposited each week on the sidewalks and gutters by the city's nearly 10,000 homeless.  They may witness thousands of intravenous drug addicts buying and injecting this poison in state-sanctioned acts of slow-motion suicide.  Anyone wishing to see the latter is invited to tour pretty much any legacy housing project in America, where welfare checks and free rent made the presence of a father not merely unnecessary but economically disadvantageous.

NYC is 'Spiraling Down to Chaos' Following Attack on 20-Year-Old EMT Worker.  A union boss representing First Responders across New York City slammed Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday [10/23/2019]; saying his policies have led to "chaos" that is nearing "the point of no return."  "Mayor Bill de Blasio is being asked to do more to protect first responders in the wake of an attack on a 20-year-old emergency medical technician as he was transporting an emotional disturbed person to the hospital," reports CBS New York.

Moral Relativism Taking Over Everything:  Sports, Politics, Libraries.  Portland liberals are so far removed from the truth that they've decided to ban urinals in their $195-million remodel of the Portland Building, which houses the city's administrative offices.  In an email to city employees explaining this ignorant decision, Portland chief administrative officer Tom Rinehart said, "I am convinced that this is the right way to ensure success as your employer, remove arbitrary barriers in our community, and provide leadership that is reflective of our shared values."  Similar perverse "leadership" and "values" recently led insurance giant Kaiser Permanente to promote the evil "Drag Queen Story Time."  The television ad shows a grown man dressed as a woman laughing and dancing with small children.  As Tyler O'Neil rightly notes, this is a "clear attempt to normalize Drag Queen Story Hour.  The smiling, laughing children are a subliminal message that full-grown men dressing up like women and acting sexual around children is fun, not disturbing."

Of Electricity and Ideology.  [Scroll down]  "For decades," [Kay] Grimes wrote, "traditional forest management was scientific and successful — that is until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the 're-wilding, no-use movement.'"  U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from "well-established and time-tested forest management practices."  "We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be described as a doctrine of benign neglect," McClintock explained.  "Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to 'save the environment.'  The advocates of this doctrine have dominated our law, our policies, our courts, and our federal agencies ever since."

Political correctness versus common sense.  Not long ago, everyone understood the unchanging commonsense reality that human beings are either male or female.  Today in New York City, the rules have been changed — and failure to keep up can have dire consequences.  New York City's special 31 genders are surrounded by special legal protections.  Businesses can now be fined as much as $250,000 for refusing to address someone by his preferred pronoun.  As we have seen in the news, even in cities that have not yet have caught up with New York City in terms of imposing legal penalties, failing a test of political correctness about genders can result in public shaming or the loss of a job. [...] The important thing to understand is that the masters of political correctness are not done yet.  They have given us a glimpse of the future they have planned for us.  If they continue to have their way, more and more will be required of us, and the penalties will eventually go beyond mere fines and public humiliation.

Social and Political Disintegration Is Accelerating.  In 1960, 5% of the nation's children were born out of wedlock; but in the last few years, the percentage is hovering around 40%.  Sexual immorality is further intensified by promotion of sexual activity in our public schools.  Free condoms are regularly distributed in our educational institutions.  Some states have clinics where, after a ten-minute interview, young girls are given referrals to get an abortion (no parental or caregiver consent, for example, is needed in New York State as well as other states).  In many states, at least one parent must be informed, but consent is not required.  Little children are sitting on the laps of drag queens in library "readings" and some of those drag queens have records of pedophilia.  Homosexual marriage is now the law of the land.  Trashy exhibitionists are singing on youtube.com and throughout the media.  A million babies are aborted a year, not for "women's health" in 90+% of the cases, but because of women's priorities.  These changes in our sexual mores have led to the disintegration of the family.

Air Canada to stop announcing 'ladies and gentlemen' in recognition of gender fluidity.  Employees aboard Air Canada flights will no longer greet guests by referring to them as "ladies and gentlemen" or "mesdames et messieurs," which has been typical protocol for years, in an effort to be conscious of gender fluidity.  Flight attendants and other staff will not use the language in boarding announcements, and the company instead plans to replace the standard greetings with neutral words, such as "everybody" or "tout le monde."

Crazy and Woke on the Western Front of Progressive Insanity.  Thanks to progressive ideology as expressed in laws and court rulings, in California today you cannot arrest and hold vagrants for petty theft or possession of hard drugs; you cannot move them out of public spaces unless you can provide them with free and "permanent supportive housing;" you cannot commit demonstrably insane people to asylums; and publicly funded shelters must offer food and urgent care without any preconditions whatsoever.  Testimonials from residents of Venice Beach provide ample evidence of what happens when you impose these progressive policies on an urban area bordered on the west by some of the most inviting beaches and agreeable weather in the world.  An estimated 1,200 homeless people have set up permanent encampments in this three square mile beach town.  They almost never use actual toilets.

Disposable Humans and the Downfall of Civilization.  How has the progressive movement made evil a common occurrence?  Lack of morality, ethics, and the inability to determine what is a valued life; and what is viewed a mere inconvenience, to be removed, much like a dermatological imperfection.  Over the years I have watched the erosion of society, and the uprising of "wokeness."  Nothing has prepared me for the utter lack of regard for life as we currently see in today's world.  Serial abortion as a form of birth control, and in some cases an appalling sexual fetish is being seen more as society degrades and crumbles, before our very eyes, each passing day.

Imagining Chelsea Clinton's America.  [Scroll down]  In city after city, draconian ordinances overrode zoning laws with decades of precedence.  Investors could demolish single family homes and erect fourplexes, or more units, where one household had previously stood.  Rent control laws, combined with mandated conservation retrofits (to prevent climate change), made it hard for anyone apart from large institutional investors to maintain rental properties.  Single family homes became worth more to buyers if they were demolished and replaced with apartments.  New laws made it obligatory to accept Section 8 renters whose rent would be paid by taxpayers.  Corporate behemoths busted block after block, in city after city, turning communities into government housing projects.  Those who objected were branded as racists, deniers, xenophobes, and NIMBYs.  They were silenced.  Chelsea Clinton, of course, along with all the politically connected, well fed animals in this new Animal Farm called America, resided in a gated community.

Can we keep our Republic?  Starting with Woodrow Wilson, and continuing through FDR's New Deal, LBJ's Great Society programs, and Barack Obama's further expansion of entitlement programs and take-over of the health care industry, the country has been moving relentlessly toward more and more centralization of federal power, expansion of the federal regulatory regime, and encroachment on the freedom of states, civil society, families, and individuals.  And don't forget, along the way Republican elites have supported and abetted this weakening of the Republic.  They have created or expanded intrusive regulatory agencies like the EPA and the Department of Education, illiberal programs like race-conscious set-asides, and increased the number and scope of redistributionist programs like Medicaid and Social Security.  More recently they have joined forces with the identity-politics left to support amnesty for illegal aliens and laxer immigration protocols.  Worse yet, they have frequently endorsed and legitimized the politicized, illiberal ideology of race, "gender," ethnicity, and sexual identity that provides Democrats with tools for leveraging political power and influence in order to achieve "social justice."

Dismaying Dumbed-down Discourse.  I see the crowds cheering the 2020 Democrat candidates and wonder if they're being paid to appear, or are they really, really ignorant about what this party had become?  It is now the party of open borders, socialism, atheism, infanticide and is offering lots of free stuff that's being paid by taxpayers.  It is also the party that is completely committed to everything the "alphabet people" espouse.  The LGBQT, aka the alphabet people (dubbed by the brave comedian Dave Chapelle), has the Left convinced that there are more than two genders and thus it is perfectly fine that men claiming to be women can now compete against women in sports events and can use women's toilets — where little girls can no longer feel safe.  This is pure insanity but if the progressive left certifies it, the mentally deficient will accept it.

Progressing toward Extinction.  [Scroll down]  Many young people live in random little groups — making a semi-permanent lifestyle of the arrangements one finds in college dorms.  In our particular brave new world, people are free to lavish their attention either on themselves or, if they have some nagging concerns about posterity, on the latest attempt to save the planet.  Banning of plastic straws is both easier and apparently more noble than nurturing new human beings.  Though still shackled to some semblance of their animal desires through myriad and faddish varieties of sex, today's young people are, at least, unshackled from the animal consequences.  This is what is now called progress.  People can hope to binge-watch some anesthetic pablum to the end of their days, uninterrupted by the squeal of their progenies' voices or the irritating patter of their tiny unshod feet.  Children are an inconvenience, and grandchildren are worse.

The Left to America's Children:  Your Past Is Terrible, and Your Future Is Terrible.  A rule of life is that everything the left touches it ruins: art, music, Christianity, Judaism, race relations, male-female relations, universities, high schools, elementary schools, late-night comedy, sports, liberty, journalism, the Boy Scouts, national economies, language and everything else it influences. [...] To this list, we can now add childhood and children.

Portland Bans Urinals In $195M 'Gender-Neutral' Remodel of Government Building.  The City of Portland has banned urinals in the $195 million remodel of the Portland Building, which houses administrative offices for the city.  While urinals use less water than toilets, they are a relic of a bygone era when men and women were recognized as biologically different.  A spokeswoman told NBC affiliate KGW News that she could not estimate how much it will cost to remove the urinals, which have been a feature of the building since its construction in 1982.  Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart explained the urinal ban in an email to employees last February.

'The Leprosy of Unreality' and the Demise of the Left.  Evidence of the splintering social fabric is already apparent.  Rumors of crimes at the hands of the Democrat-controlled Deep State abound and undermine public trust.  Snowflakes demand places safe from the real world.  Children are recruited into the fairy tale of rescuing the planet from an imaginary dragon.  Through childish games of dressing up as boys when they are women and wearing lipstick despite being men, our youths are indoctrinated into insanity.

The 50 most miserable cities in America.  Not the worst, just the most miserable.  We've identified the 50 most miserable cities in the US, using census data from 1,000 cities across the country, taking into consideration population change (because if people are leaving it's usually for a good reason), the percentage of people working, median household incomes, the percentage of people without healthcare, median commute times, and the number of people living in poverty.  Often, these cities have been devastated by natural disasters.  They've had to deal with blight, and with high crime rates.  Economies have struggled after industry has collapsed.  These cities also tend to have high rates of addiction.  The state with the most miserable cities was California, with 10 in the top 50.  New Jersey was second with nine, and Florida had six.

California Shocked To Find Bill Decriminalizing Retail Theft Resulted In... More Retail Theft.  A few years ago, California passed one in a series of bills aimed at emptying the jails and prisons.  Proposition 47 carried the disingenuous name of "the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act and its stated purpose was to keep non-violent offenders out of jail.  To achieve this goal, the state decriminalized a number of lesser offenses, including retail theft.  The law raised the value of the amount of merchandise someone could steal while still only being charged with a misdemeanor to nearly one thousand dollars.  To the great surprise of the government, people noticed this change and began taking advantage of it.  They have now recorded multiple years of steadily increasing, organized robbery.  These plots are known as "mass grab and dash" thefts and they generally involve large numbers of young people all entering a store at the same time, grabbing armfuls of merchandise and dashing back out to their vehicles and hitting the highway.  Not only are robberies on the rise, but arrests and prosecutions are down.  Who could possibly have predicted this?

Gun Control:  Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem.  When liberals spend years telling people that life isn't sacred, should they really be surprised that more people treat life as not being sacred?  There have been more than 61 million abortions since Roe v.  Wade in 1973. Every single Democrat candidate in contention is applying the Pete Buttigieg "breath" standard, meaning they all support abortion up to, and perhaps beyond, birth.  When you make an effort to devalue life in the interest of political expedience, people will be affected in tragic, horrible, and surprising ways.  Mother Teresa once said "the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.  And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?"  That's a mighty good question.

The American Left Is Completely Insane.  It isn't just elected Democrats at the national level.  Cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles and San Francisco — run by Democratic mayors and city councils — have high rates of crime and homelessness.  San Francisco and Los Angeles have growing cases of typhoid fever, tuberculosis and other diseases borne by fleas and human feces, piles of which coat the streets.  California's legislature has not been able to solve those grave problems.  But it has banned plastic straws in restaurants.

The Broken Promise of American Cities.  Hope for a better future in California is rapidly becoming a stillborn dream, as the connection between decay and the politics of progressivism becomes painfully clear.  The proponents of this secular theology may be getting a wakeup call soon, as the Golden State's cities teeter on the edge of bubonic oblivion, with rats teeming through the streets of Los Angeles, even forcing temporary, partial closures of City Hall.  Skid Row has unfurled its filthy tendrils into the halls of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division station, with officers falling ill as vermin lay siege to their precinct.  But the explosion of the rat population, catalyzed by the feculence of homeless encampments across the state, has not deterred lawmakers from advancing a bill to ban rat poison in the name of human health and environmental concerns.  In the progressive mind, even mentioning the risk of disease caused by these policies is somehow tantamount to racist dog-whistling.  San Francisco, the rainbow flagship of our brave new world, even has a "no-kill, catch-and-release" policy for rodents.

Bill would require gender 'X' option on all state documents.  Advocates for a gender "X" designation on state documentation say making people chose male or female is akin to making them lie, while opponents argue that a person's sex is a biological fact.  "If you look at your Massachusetts driver's license, it lists 'sex,' not 'gender,'" Andrew Beckwith of Massachusetts Family Institute told the Herald.  "The concept of 'gender identity' is based on internal feelings, but sex is binary (male or female) and grounded in biology, and we believe that a state ID should reflect that objective fact."  A bill that would require an "X" option on all state documents that ask for gender identification, including driver's licenses, birth certificates and voter registration, went before the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight on Tuesday [9/10/2019].

On Destroying America.  We are lied to, deceived, and manipulated constantly to believe what isn't so. [...] I can remember several generations back when common sense was common.  No longer.  Criminals are treated as victims.  White people are labeled as oppressors and must apologize for it.  Deranged people who need help are ignored, treated as normal, or just doing their thing.  And they are everywhere, creating chaos, as designed and expected.

The Left's determination to destroy us from within.  [Governor Newsom of California], and the rest of the Democrat governors and mayors that destroyed their own states and cities, have not only ruined the municipalities that they control, but have destroyed countless lives — namely, of those who barely subsist on the streets of these cities:  Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago.  (Chicago and Baltimore are the murder capitals of the nation.  Both have among the strictest gun control laws in the nation.)  They willingly promulgate the drug use of their homeless (they pass out free syringes) and seem to tolerate the vast homeless encampments and all they entail:  discarded needles, public defecation, crime, disease — in short, the destruction of the cities they've been allowed to take over and ruin.

Criminologists Mislead Us.  There is significant bias among criminologists.  The reason for that bias is that political leanings of academic criminologists are liberal.  Liberal criminologists outnumber their conservative counterparts by a ratio of 30-to-1. Ideology almost perfectly predicts the position of criminologists on issues from gun control to capital punishment to harsh sentencing.  Liberal criminologists march in step for gun control, oppose punitive prison sentences, and are vehemently against the death penalty.  In 2012, the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a study on the growth of incarceration.  It showed that from 1928 until 1960, crime rates rose slowly each year.  After the 1960s, crime rates exploded to unprecedented levels of violence until the 1990s.

The Ferguson Effect comes to New York:  NYPD arrests plummet in wake of officer firing in Garner case.  What is it about the Left that fails to understand that painting cops as racists has consequences?  In the wake of the firing of a police officer over the death of black cigarette street seller Eric Garner, New York's police are focused now on just playing it safe.

Countering Progressive Nihilism.  America's homeless epidemic, along with a shocking rise in deaths from drug overdoses, stem from the same root cause:  liberal progressive ideology.  The seductive power of this ideology, which brims in equal measure with overwrought compassion for the less fortunate alongside fuming resentment towards the "privileged," has earned it a dominant position in American culture. [...] While countless critical issues are being ignored or made worse thanks to the influence of progressives, two of them, homelessness and drug related deaths, stand out.

25 common sense truths that you're no longer supposed to say. 
  [#14]   Just because a white person criticizes or gets into a conflict with a minority doesn't mean it has anything to do with race.  In fact, the vast majority of the time it doesn't.
  [#15]   Drag queens are deviants and shouldn't be allowed near children, much less allowed to be part of story times for kids.
  [#16]   There are only two genders.
  [#17]   If America were oppressive for minorities, they'd be leaving the country, not coming here in droves.

The Left's Neverland.  Now, over 150 years after the Civil War, we find ourselves living in a world that has tucked reality away in a locked cupboard and our schools, our media, and many of our churches don't want it to get out.  We live in a TV-Internet-Smartphone world where our music is mostly canned, our connections with people are at least once-removed, and our children never look up.  The virtual has taken over to a point where people actually think we can alter history by removing statues and painting over murals, and they have to change history because Neverland has to have its own annals, its own chronicles.  Neverland is not America.  This explains why both Obama and Hillary could talk with such disdain about half of the population.  We aren't their people.  They were running to be president of Neverland, not of traditional America.

Vermont Is Going Insane.  Will the Rest of America Follow?  [Scroll down]  Thirty-plus years later, our youths have been corrupted by unhealthy food, limitless violence in television and pornography, phone and internet obsession that leaves them anxious and stressed, and Facebook that feeds toxicity. [...] Studies have found that 30% of college students don't know how to boil an egg; 52% of high school students don't know how to change a tire; 70% of young people have no clue how to sew on a button.  Yet we grown-up adolescents are yoking them with responsibility to "lead" us to solve our social ills while they can't find jobs, many require psychiatric medications, and the national deficit has exceeded the capacity of the human mind to comprehend.

Transgender insanity:  Another big battle in the war on common sense.  A women's shelter is being sued for turning away a man dressed in a nightgown.  Really.  According to the reports, a very large and very inebriated man dressed in a nightgown showed up at a women's shelter in downtown Anchorage, Alaska seeking entry.  He was not admitted to stay the night.  As a result, the shelter is now embroiled in a legal battle.  The Anchorage Equal Rights Commission (AERC), an administrative agency within the municipality of Anchorage, has brought a discrimination case against the shelter.

War on cops in Philadelphia.  Many people across the nation watched the hours-long standoff and shooting of Philadelphia Police Officers on TV.  Nine officers were injured and six were wounded by gunfire.  Thankfully, no officers were killed, and the gunman finally surrendered.  The following day I spoke to a Philly cop who had been on the scene.  He scoffed at the idea of Philadelphia Mayor James Kenny and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner arriving at the hospital to visit the injured cops.  He called the two "anti-cop liberals."

Terror without trust.  Already it has proved impossible to cap the number of genders.  The epithets "racist" and "Nazi" are applied to an ever-growing number of people who find themselves guilty of offenses that didn't even exist until recently.  It is so powerful it even knocks over the woke.

Missing the Point of Gun Ownership.  If there were ever a survey asking gun owners why they buy guns, I'd wager the majority of them would say that it basically is for protection.  The Second Amendment was not written for hunters but for the people's self-protection, including protection from tyranny.  The first thing smart dictators do is remove guns from registered owners. [...] There have always been guns in the country but mass shootings of innocents were rare until the 1960's. [...] Would there have been a Columbine massacre if God had not been removed from the schools?  Most of the mass shooters fit the same profile.  Most are single males and come from broken homes.  Nearly all have been under the influence of marijuana or psych drugs.  Not sure if any of these murderers were regular church goers but I doubt it.

U.S. Attorney Blasts Soros-Backed Philly D.A. For Putting Police in Danger With 'Culture of Disrespect'.  In a blistering statement Thursday [8/15/2019], United States Attorney William M. McSwain lashed out at the District Attorney of Philadelphia, saying his "vile rhetoric" and lax law enforcement policies were putting police in danger.  Larry Krasner, the Philly D.A., is a far-left former civil rights defense attorney who has sued police more than 75 times, and has defended far-left Occupy Philly activists and Black Lives Matter agitators.  Left-wing hedge fund billionaire George Soros helped put Krasner in office by donating an overwhelming $1.45 million to an independent political action committee backing his campaign in 2017.

Leaving the Democrats.  I have had a great life in the greatest country on earth.  All along the way, the Democrats have stepped on me, taxed me more, lied to me, called me names, and demand I give up my rights.  Democrats were the ones pushing environmental causes at the expense of humans and government takeover of healthcare.  They have mismanaged everything they get their hands on, and then blame others for their own deeds.  I watch them lie and cheat and twist words.  Democrats have alienated their own base to the point they have to argue for foreigners to come into this country illegally in order to vote for Democrats, mainly by calling those of us opposed to this "racist." [...] I am now called racist, homophobic, misogynist, and Islamaphobic.  A gun-toting, Bible-believing bitter clinger.  A deplorable.  A white nationalist.  Nazi.  I can't remember all of my Democrat party subtitles.

This Is What LGBTQ Organizations Are Doing to Society.  Virtually every week, there seems to be another issue that preoccupies the country.  But while our attention is focused on President Donald Trump, Google, Charlottesville, Russia, impeachment, Jeffrey Epstein, the next elections, racism, a trade war with China, the #MeToo movement or something else, LGBTQ organizations are quietly going about their work dismantling ethical norms, making a mockery of education, ruining innocent people's lives and destroying children's innocence.

Twilight Zone Nation.  How in the world did we get to this Rod Serling place where drag queens are reading to our children in our libraries?  How, in a rational universe, did four ignorant, left-wing, lunatic women attain breathtaking power in less than a year?  When did sex trafficking become such a huge crisis?  How is it that facts and evidence and law have no pull at all anymore?  We find ourselves, apparently all of a sudden, in a place where telling bald-faced lies about anyone we want to slander is acceptable behavior, where billions of dollars of government money is unaccountably missing and no one seems really upset by that malfeasance, where pedophilia is working its way into appropriate behavior.

Will Any Single Intervention Eliminate Mass Shootings?  [Scroll down]  The next part of this puzzle is the very definition of "mental illness."  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry has been modified many times.  The most recent revision has removed most of the "gender dysphoria" diagnoses, normalizing the alphabet soup of sexual preferences.  This is done in the face of the fact that LGBTQ-whatever "gender preferences" are associated with higher mortality than binary male/female identities.  Doctors are supposed to "first do no harm."  Normalizing a health risk creates harm.  This means that the DSM changes are not medical, they are political.

Where does politics meet the divide?  Does Rashida Tlaib's rhetoric inspire the protestors outside Mitch McConnell's home?  Is Elizabeth Warren responsible for the shooting in Dayton that left nine people dead?  Does Ilhan Omar own the anger of American's when she says that white men should be profiled?. [...] Is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her baseless environmental screeds responsible for El Paso?  The shooter's manifesto "An Inconvenient Truth" not echoing the President, but liberals, AOC, and Al Gore's claims that we will be dead as a result of dwindling resources within 12 years?  Does Joe Biden's latest gaffe comment mean he is a White Supremacist, believing that while he might work on behalf of the poor brown and black kids, white children are superior?

Trump administration seeks to juice dishwashers by scrubbing energy regulations.  For years, consumers have complained about slower, noisier dishwashers that produce dirtier dishes, the result of tighter federal efficiency regulations that the Trump administration is now seeking to unload.  The Energy Department last month proposed a rule to create a new dishwasher product class that would finish a normal cycle in an hour or less by using less stringent energy standards than permitted under the current rules.  Sam Kazman, general counsel of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, which led the charge for the regulatory clean-up, said the ever-tighter restrictions on energy and water have produced machines that take twice as long without getting dishes as scrubbed as earlier models.

Researchers: Crumbling family structures are contributing to mass shootings.  A study by the Family Research Council says that crumbling traditional family structures are contributing to a wave of mental health issues that often lead people to commit mass shootings and other violence.  "The fact that we have an epidemic of absentee fathers in the home and that we have a disintegrating family structure in America, which is brought about by a variety of things, is a major issue and a major cause for what we see happening in these mass shootings," Ret. Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Vice President of the FRC, told The Epoch Times.

El Paso Shooting:  Latest Atrocity Exploited by Democrats.  The deranged gunman's views are all over the ideological map.  However, his environmental views are clearly the result of progressives dominating public education and fake news media.  This quote from the manifesto exposes his insane progressive environmental views.

The link between pot and mass shootings may be closer than we think.  You can't walk through the streets of Manhattan these days without smelling weed.  Even as evidence mounts of the health problems associated with marijuana, New York has insisted on joining other greedy states scrambling to legalize this deceptively dangerous drug.  It makes no sense at a time when American youth is suffering from an unprecedented mental health crisis.  And, in all honesty, we cannot rule out a connection between increasing marijuana use, mental illness and the recent spate of mass shootings by disturbed young males.

The surprise isn't that we had two mass shootings in 24 hours, it's that we don't have many more.  After the El Paso and Dayton shootings at the end of last week, a friend of mine was asking how we can "pull young men out of the 4chan/8chan toxic cesspool." [...] The problem with this kind of thinking is that there are certainly toxic forums out there, but they're just toxic pools down river from our toxic culture.  I challenge you to listen to the kind of common rhetoric coming out of college campuses ("Hearing words I don't agree with is violence"), places like Twitter ("It sure would be a shame if something happened to your kids") and our standard political discourse ("You're a Nazi" for wearing that hat.)  and tell me that they're not toxic as well.

El Paso proves we live in a mean culture.  Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went on a one-of-a-kind rant Sunday on Fox television:  "What do we expect," he asked, "when kids play video games instead of going to church?"  One of the shooters reportedly was acting out in real life a violent video game character.  Children just entering grade school today are being exposed to a boatload of vile and venom.  To gratuitous killing.  To music that celebrates it.  "Garbage in, garbage out."  American children are being programmed in a culture that is vengeful, covetous, and mean.  When they put it all together and make it a reality, why are we so surprised?  They are simply doing what they've been taught.

An Open Letter to Democrats Who Insist Politicians "Just Do Something".  Thousands can die in America's impoverished inner cities every year — with illegally acquired guns — and Democrats are silent.  Perhaps it's because they're the ones running those cities, like Chicago, Baltimore and Destroyt.  And decades of Democrat leadership have enabled the worst breed of gangsters by criminalizing gun ownership by law-abiding citizens.

Social Media's Transition from Novelty to Malignancy.  [Scroll down]  The most recent and troubling development in social media is the mob mentality.  Often the sharing of an opinion elicits a storm of response, and vastly wider distribution, via a person's now-expanded network of friends and followers.  Far from sharing ideas and feelings frankly and spontaneously, many people now assiduously avoid triggers, anything remotely resembling judgments of others, and even witticisms that might offend. [...] We now have a kind of Online Stockholm Syndrome.  You tread lightly with your social media audience or risk caustic online retribution and even real-world consequences like shunning, loss of a job, having your business boycotted, or worse.

President Trump Shatters Left-Wing Myths.  President Trump is boldly providing much-needed relief to the American people. [...] And now he has pinpointed what we have all seen, namely:  decades of liberal-run major cities, whose liberal policies, corruption, and mismanagement have degraded these urban centers and harmed their inhabitants.  The liberal "icons" that have controlled these areas for decades have allowed them, through their enforced and sanctimonious liberalism, to degenerate from once great cities to districts akin to hellholes.  No, it is not about the race of the leaders, but their liberal policies:  witness what Bill DeBlasio is doing to New York.  Untouchable liberal icons such as Elijah Cummings are to blame, grandstanding about the U.S. southern border while remaining indifferent to what is happening within their own district, unless as an excuse to demand that more funds be channeled their way.

The Voters Do Deserve to be Neglected.  One hears pundits on the Republican conservative side of the discussion bewailing the misfortunes of the people of Baltimore in Elijah Cummings's rat-infested district.  They say, "The people of Baltimore deserve better.  The American People deserve better."  No, they don't.  They deserve exactly what they have.  They deserve their rats and their crime rate.  America still is, for now, a republic that operates on democratic principles of voting.  The people of Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, and St. Louis all have elected one Democrat after another to lead them.  St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since 1949.  Detroit since 1962.  Chicago since 1931.  Baltimore since 1967.  When people in a two-party country continue for more than half a century, without interruption, electing candidates from the same party to lead them, even as their once-great cities fade into rat-infested murder centers, then those voters do indeed deserve exactly, precisely what they have.  They do not deserve a whit better than they have chosen for themselves.

Baltimore Is Worse than Trump Thinks.  Democrats have gotten away with too much for too long in the cities they've super-majority controlled:  Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia; Detroit; Chicago; New Orleans; Newark; Oakland, on and on.  Children become permanently entangled in inter-generational familial poverty, squalor, drugs, guns, failing schools, juvenile violent crime, and lack of economic mobility.  The end results of Democrat dominance are more shocking and horrifying than most realize.  It's high time for reasonable Americans to accept an uncomfortable and deadly truth:  Democrats destroy everything and everywhere they attach their tentacles to.  The utter, abject failures of Democrat-run cities are the most egregious cover-up by the DMIC in American history.

Trump Speaks the Politically Incorrect Truth.  These majority-minority districts frequently elect useless demagogues, who deliver little, other than the rhetoric of flattery and blame.  Cummings and his colleagues Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) are all archetypal cases.  Not infrequently, extensive corruption is the handmaiden of these politicians — Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick comes to mind.  Trump's message in recent weeks is straightforward: those who purport to represent these poor and desperate people provide little in the way of good government or service to them.  The state of America's lost cities — Detroit, Baltimore, Birmingham — is familiar to anyone with eyes to see.  One boarded-up building after another.  Crime rates that rival Venezuela's.  Police insulted and attacked by shameless young people.

The Democratic Washing Machine.  The Democratic washing machine is so named because it was Democrats who decided to ruin a durable product in a mature industry.  In the name of saving electricity and saving water, they couldn't save just a little electricity and a little water.  No, they had to force manufacturers to create a product that used almost no water.  And to save electricity, they turned the control panel on the washing machine into something resembling the bridge of a starship, with so many options you have to study a detailed manual even to figure out how to turn on the device.

A failure to assimilate.  Decent Americans of all colors have silently watched out-of-control black criminals destroy city after city because raising any questions, doubts or objections bring down storms of career-destroying, job-ending accusations of white racism or Uncle Tomism.  This is the race conversation America has needed for so long, a conversation where black destructiveness and visceral hatred of anything not black gets called out and held to account rather than excused and let go.  For decades in the inner-city thugs have murdered, raped, and destroyed with impunity as beleaguered police come under attack for doing their jobs.

Why Do Democrats Run All of the Dangerous and Rodent Infested Cities?  Rep. Cummings, while being very obsessed with Russia, seems utterly bewildered with the idea that anyone could dare question why so many billions of federal dollars flow to places like West Baltimore when they are obviously doing no good.  Look at other cities in similar dilapidation and there holds a unique truth:  Democrats run them all.  How long will sewage run down the streets of San Francisco?  How long will St. Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore, continue to rotate as the nation's most dangerous crime infested metros?

A Spirit of Lawlessness Has Descended Upon America.  We have raised an entire generation of Americans who have no respect for the law, and now we are reaping what we have sown.  I cannot even begin to tell you how alarmed I am by some of the videos I have been watching lately.  As you will see below, all over the nation, young people are brazenly flouting the law, obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers and committing criminal acts in large groups.  I think "lawlessness" is perhaps the best word to describe what is happening, and many believe that what we have witnessed so far is just the beginning.

The Co-Conspirators in the American Left's Takeover of the Democratic Party.  Using the cudgel of the mainstream media, the entertainment complex and the education establishment combined with the apathy and cowardice of the Republican Establishment, the American Left had successfully, within 25 years after the Reagan landslides, inculcated into a plurality of the American people a belief that there are no moral absolutes and that the state, not God, is the source of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and thus the state can deny those rights to whomever it chooses.  They are creating the belief that this country's founding documents are arcane, racially insensitive and unsuitable for today.  They teach they young that this nation is and always has been racist and oppressive, that religious liberty, the right to bear arms, and unfettered freedom of speech are subject to the whims of the state.

Immorality Embraced by So-Called Christian Love.  Situation ethics — introduced in 1966 by Joseph F. Fletcher — came into vogue as a way to excuse pre-marital fornication by Christians, and anything that could be considered Christian judgmentalism was muted by the liberal churches.  In the name of love, increasing numbers of churches became tolerant of sin.  In the contemporary church world, tolerance of sin is no longer considered kind enough or loving enough.  Now, as seen by Joel Osteen's recent appearance at an LGBTQ event, celebration of sin is the step beyond tolerance.  A "woman's right to choose" is openly embraced by many members of the National Council of Churches.  Likewise, homosexuality among the clergy is acceptable.

The Left is following Communism's playbook for revolution.  This process continues and is manifested in the widespread antipathy for sexual propriety, faith, and all that is great and good — and in the lust for perversion, socialism, feminism, multiculturalism, "transgenderism," and anti-Americanism in general.  We see it in the tearing down of statues; removal of long present Christian symbols; leftist propaganda and decadence in schools and entertainment;, prioritizing of illegal aliens over citizens; revising of American history and impugning of whites; and in attacks on the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and all things traditional.  This destabilization of the American mind and moral compass now has begotten, as it must, societal destabilization.  This is reflected in, most obviously, the flooding of our nation with unassimilable foreigners via a purposely porous border.  This serves the Cloward-Piven goal of overloading the system to cause breakdown, necessitating replacement of it with, the theory goes, a socialist one.  Of course, this human flood strains schools, hospitals, and services and resources in general.

How Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society and Family Life.  The welfare state is another significant driver of the decline of the nuclear family.  Unsurprisingly, the black family is massively impacted.  In 1965, 25 percent of all black children were born out of wedlock.  In 2016, that rate had increased to 70 percent and even topped 80 percent in certain urban areas.  In the 1940s, this number was five percent, which was comparable to that of white children.  The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate in 2016 was 52 percent, while for whites it was 30 percent.  The rise in children born out of wedlock cannot be separated from the massive expansion of the welfare state under Johnson's Great Society.

The American Left Is Racist, Not President Trump.  The problem with silencing an entire generation of white people in the name of fighting racism is that while they have been silent, extreme environmentalism, anti-white racism, and creeping socialism have swept across American culture, taking over our schools, universities, entertainment and media industries, our corporations, and government at all levels.  Unchecked, this will destroy the country.

Trump is not a racist; he's pushing the Overton window to normal.  For the past 60 years, Leftists have been pushing the Overton window steadily (duh) left.  From the manic colors of the LGBTQRSTUV+ rainbow, to contending that people can magically use hormones and surgery to "change" their gender, to "shouting your abortion," Leftists are introducing entirely new (and frequently insane) ideas into the realm of acceptable public conversation. [...] Think of ideas that were normal just a decade ago:  using pronouns consistent with biological sex, worrying about Muslim-inspired terrorism, admiring the Founding Fathers, believing that a traditional male-female marriage is optimal for raising children, mentioning the Judeo-Christian God in public, questioning anthropogenic climate change, or being anything but mindlessly positive about a member of a "Progressive protected victim class."  Nowadays, thanks to relentless media, entertainment, political, and educational pressure, voicing those ideas creates the risk that the speaker will be shouted down, humiliated, fired, or even physically attacked.

How Bureaucrats Ruin Everything From Dishwashers To Gas Cans To Cars.  Have you ever wondered why dishwashers today take twice as long to do a worse job of cleaning dishes?  Or why it's so much harder to get gasoline out of a new gas can?  Or why cars made decades ago always turn heads, while today's are drab in the same way?  There's a simple answer to these modern-day mysteries:  Government regulators.  Take the dishwasher.  Earlier this month, the Department of Energy announced that it would revise its rules regarding dishwasher efficiency.  Why?  Because the existing rules — which set limits on how much electricity and water a dishwasher may use — are forcing manufacturers to build machines that are worse than ever.

Dallas Drag Queen Show Promoted to Infants.  The City of Dallas Public Library is currently advertising a controversial and divisive drag queen show to be held at the Grauwyler Park Branch location and that the show is appropriate for age groups from infants to 11 years old.  The drag queen performers for this public library event during the day are employees of an adult night club venue where children of this age are not permitted to enter.  The drag queen event is scheduled to take place at a public library Saturday [7/13/2019] at 1 pm where children will be able to "hear stories, sing, dance, and interact with these fabulous ladies" according to the library event page.  This Dallas event follows on the heels of a similar and controversial drag queen event that was canceled by the city government of Leander, and in Houston where two drag queens involved with these shows were discovered to be registered sex offenders.

Pelosi vs. AOC: It's a Beautiful Thing.  Everything about modern leftist ideology is extreme.  It is extreme in substance, and its practitioners are self-absorbed, sanctimonious, uncompromising and often irrational.  Intersectionality zealots are disciplining white feminists for their selfish advocacy.  Biological males are dominating female athletic events courtesy of the transgender movement.  Leftists of color and female gender are dissing old white men despite the men's long records of dedication to the sacred cause of progressivism.  Some women of color are being told they are not black enough to lead the cause.

Democrats are Officially the Party of Derangement.  If any of the 20 Democrats win in 2020, we can officially say goodbye to our democracy as we know it.  College campuses have already been destroyed.  The two left coasts are a disaster and demographic changes are leading to several purple states turning blue as the Democrats' refusal to address the immigration crisis proves successful in their quest for power.  More ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted representatives will be elected to Congress in the manner of AOC, Omar and Tlaib and Republicans will find themselves more and more marginalized.  We can only hope that the majority of Americans watching this disaster unfold wake up and realize that intolerance for thee ultimately leads to intolerance for me.  Democrats do not care about Americans' rights — they seek totalitarian power.  They need to be stopped.

Julian Castro Pounds the Table, Demanding Abortion for Men, Too.  [Scroll down]  In this case, I guess Julián Castro's support for transgender abortion contains some semblance of warped logic.  Not that this highly implausible and as yet scientifically impossible scenario is worth mentioning in a presidential debate when you are already limited by time and must choose your words wisely.  And not that there are other more practical, more pressing issues to be dealt with.  But that's what you get from a political party that wants to fund the kinds of procedures that could put babies inside men's bodies, while simultaneously fighting for laws that would allow these same babies to get ripped out again.

Mastercard to unleash massive identity theft wave across America by allowing "gender fluid" individuals to use any name they want on their credit cards.  A recent Mastercard company announcement explains that many members of the LGBTQIA+ community are experiencing "major pain" from having to use credit cards, debit cards, or prepaid cards that don't "reflect their true identity."  So, Mastercard plans to fix this by allowing LGBTQIA+s to use any made-up name they want — swinging wide open the door for mass identity theft.

The Editor says...
Identity theft is one thing, but this opens the door to fraud, most of all.  One cannot take advantage of credit if the customer, the merchant, and the bank can't even agree on the customer's name.  Anyone who is so confused and so mercurial about his or her own name should have a credit rating of zero.  Pay in cash or be gone.

Woman's 'Hail Satan' invocation prompts walkout from Alaska town meeting.  Several government officials and attendees walked out of an Alaska government meeting south of Anchorage this week when an official who's also a member of the Satanic Temple ended the opening prayer with "Hail Satan."  The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly's previous policy stated that those delivering the invocation must be a member of a recognized church, but the rules were changed last October when Alaska's Supreme Court decided in favor of the ACLU that the policy was unconstitutional, according to Alaskan Public Media.  Iris Fontana, the Satanic Temple member, was one of the plaintiffs in the case.  An atheist and a Jewish woman were also involved in the lawsuit.

'Hail Satan' opening prayer at Alaska government meeting prompts walkouts, protest.  Several attendees at a government meeting open to the public in Alaska walked out in protest after an opening prayer praised Satan.  The Associated Press reports the prayer, where a woman declared "Hail Satan," was given by Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana, who won the right to open the meeting with an invocation of her choice.

Student Gets Kicked Out of Class For Saying There's Only Male and Female.  This is just an amazing video to watch.  Hat tip to Rod Dreher for covering it.  The student, Murray, tells the teacher that there are only two genders, male and female.  The teacher tells him that the national authority says otherwise.  [Video clip]

Progressives Seek To Make Segregation Great Again.  The progressive left touts segregation on college campuses.  You have probably already heard of minority students requesting separate dorm facilities and safe spaces.  But there is another aspect of college life that the left wants to segregate:  Graduations.  Virginia Tech University recently started offering ten segregated graduation ceremonies that are separated by race, sexuality, and other identity groups.  Students are allowed to participate in the graduation of their choosing.  The ceremonies are open to anyone who wishes to attend, but the participants must fall into the right category.

Marijuana damages adolescent brains, health professionals write in op-ed.  Two health professionals penned an op-ed in The New York Times on Sunday that despite society's shift on marijuana use, it does not change the fact that the drug is not safe for high school and college students.  Kenneth L. Davis, the president and chief executive of the Mount Sinai Health System, and Mary Jeanne Kreek, the head of Laboratory of the Biology of Addictive Diseases at Rockefeller University, cited studies that show a "deleterious impact on cognitive development in adolescents."

San Francisco and Los Angeles.  If you are planning a visit to San Francisco or Los Angeles, may we ask why?  On a casual walk in downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles, tourists will encounter streets and sidewalks strewn with drug needles, garbage, and feces.  Gang activity is high in both cities.  Both cities find themselves saddled with liberal/progressive governmental policies.  As one serious result, living conditions for low-income residents of San Francisco and Los Angeles routinely reach toxic levels.

Reality is Not an Option.  What is "equality before the law" when some people are entitled to extra protections under hate crime laws?  What is "basic human decency" when, to be a victim, one must identify a group of people as oppressors and revile them publicly as a class? [...] There isn't the slightest evidence that illiterate third-worlders or a tattoo-defaced generation of the sexually confused are inclined to be either tolerant or productive citizens.  There is plenty of evidence that many of these disorderly creatures have good old-fashioned tribal axes to grind.

Texas town overrun with crime and disease.  The mayor has had enough.  Uvalde is a small town of 17,000 inhabitants, and they are now overrun by illegal immigrants and an international cartel smuggling operation.  Uvalde is 40-60 miles from the border, but it might as well be right at the border.  "We are in no man's land.  The state is not doing anything; the federal government is not doing anything," the mayor, who is begging the politicians to get involved, said.  "We are getting nothing.  I've lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this.  The people in the communities are getting scared.  What is coming that we don't see?  Who knows?  People up north and in D.C. have no clue what is going on here.  They don't realize that these people are not being screened for diseases.  We're fed up."  Situated at the crossroads of major highways coming up from border towns in the Laredo and Del Rio border sectors, Uvalde has now become a dumping ground for migrants coming north.  And they are not just coming from Central America.

Venezuela: hyperinflation leads to new banknotes for second time in a year.  Venezuela is releasing new banknotes for the second time in less than a year, the central bank said on Wednesday, after hyperinflation eroded the effects of an August 2018 monetary overhaul meant to improve availability of cash.  Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, last year cut five zeroes off the currency and prices.  The move was supposed to ease shortages of cash that pushed most of the economy toward debit and credit card operations and put heavy strain on digital commerce platforms.  Banknotes of 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 bolivar denominations will begin circulating on Thursday [6/13/2019] to "make the payment system more efficient and facilitate commercial transactions", the central bank said in statement.

Minneapolis' Sacred Stupidity.  [T]oday's generation of Democrat machine politicians in charge of our cities don't bother trying to sell themselves as capable administrators anymore.  How can they, when Los Angeles' trash piles rival those of Kinshasa, homeless bums micturate on passing taxicabs on New York streets, it's recommended that one wear galoshes on the streets of San Francisco so as to avoid ruining one's Ferragamos by stepping in freshly-lain human feculence, and New Orleans is inundated each time there's a hard rain because the city's pumps and drainage infrastructure are virtually untouched by improvement despite billions in spending for just that purpose?

Deep Blue Connecticut Is A Model For How Not To Run An Economy.  Connecticut is currently facing a $3.7 billion-plus deficit, but the problem is much worse than it looks.  Research found that Connecticut has the worst-funded pension system in the country for the second year in a row.  Unfunded pension liabilities amount to $117.7 billion and unfunded liabilities for other post-employment benefits (OPEB) amount to $36.7 billion.  While the 6.35 percent general sales tax rate isn't raised, the new budget expands the sales tax base to include more goods and services.  The sales tax would expand to include parking, dry cleaning, laundry, interior design services and safety apparel.

Brown and Out in Beverly Hills.  Leftists advance incrementally.  Their template is as simple as it is predictable:  Ask for a little, and swear that the demands will end there.  Most regular folks will give in because decent people generally seek compromise.  But to leftists, compromise is merely a temporary step, a strategy.  "We don't want gay marriage, we just want equal partner benefits!  Civil unions will shut us up."  "Don't Ask, Don't Tell is fine.  It's not like we want the military to pay for tranny surgeries!"  "Gender discrimination laws will not lead to the government forcing women to let men use their bathrooms."

Life In the Socialist Paradise of Bernie Sanders and AOC.  Venezuela is the latest chapter in the long story of socialist crimes against humanity.  Venezuela reminds us how long a country can circle the drain, destroyed by socialism but still hanging on by its fingernails.  Reuters, a liberal news source, has the latest on Venezuela's long goodbye, but never mentions the fact that it is socialism that destroyed what once was one of the world's richest countries.

Who Are the Big Babies Now.  This is the mediocracy at work.  They revile greatness to mask their own inadequacies.  Hence, contrived hate crimes, fat shaming, participation medals, identity politics, demand for rights already accrued, for lopsided equality, for affirmative action, resentment politics, no-platforming, and other corrosions of democratic health.

The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness.  Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness.  The number of people in the United States living alone has gone through the studio-apartment roof.  A study released by the insurance company Cigna last spring made headlines with its announcement:  "Only around half of Americans say they have meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions."  Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking.

California Is The Future The Liberal Elite Wants For You.  [Scroll down]  Already, petty crime has been effectively legalized.  Crooks get a free pass on the first $950 a day they steal. [...] And now pot's effectively legal here, which is spectacular.  Just what Cali needed — more people on a drug that makes them dumber and lazier.  Take a walk down the street and see the sights!  Look, there's a schizo with his cargo shorts around his ankles baying at the billboard informing you about how no human being is illegal!  Oh, and there's another homeless druggie muttering to himself about alien carrots stealing his vital essences as he pushes along his stolen shopping cart heaped with refuse.  If you're appalled or distressed by this, you're the bad guy.  Caring means letting lunatics and addicts wallow in the elements enslaved by their insanity and/or sickness.  Shame on you for wanting your kids to be able to play outside.  Hypodermic needles and piles of human waste on the sidewalk are just part of the price you must pay to dwell in the sun.

Law enforcement, media changed standards for Trump.  One of the more unfortunate effects of the Trump-Russia investigation — and there have been many — is the weakening of traditional standards of argument and proof in the public debate over allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election.  (Just for the record:  It didn't.)  In particular, angry disputes about the president have done terrible harm to the principle that an investigator, be it a journalist or a prosecutor, should meet at least some standard of proof before leveling an accusation.

Perfect storm brews in Portland Maine as Mayor, Council welcome illegals.  Currently, there are three major factors leading up to the storm in Portland.  All three involve illegal immigration:  [#1] Portland has had an incredible influx of illegal immigrants over the last few years.  [#2] Immigrants are supported by a heavily strained, taxpayer-funded city welfare system.  [#3] City officials are encouraging the situation while being unable to provide satisfactory solutions to the problems they have created.

Green Policies Turned California A Charred Black.  More than half of California's roughly 105 million acres are owned by the federal and state governments.  It is on these sprawling parcels that the wildfires tend to rage before devouring private land, homes, and businesses.  Public lands "have proved far more vulnerable to forest fires than properties owned by private groups," Hoover Institution scholar Richard Epstein wrote in California's Forest Fire Tragedy. [...] The loudest voices assign blame for the fires to man-made climate change.  But the human activity primarily responsible for the destructive spread of wildfires is public policy favoring burned timber over harvested timber.  While maybe well-intended, laws inspired by the 1970s environmentalist movement, which is determined to make sure saw blades and trees never meet, have stoked the furnaces.

San Francisco:  The Radical Left in Charge.  In America's largest coastal metropolises, Democrats rule.  For all intents and purposes, there are no Republicans.  Today, for instance, the New York City school commissioner is hard at work trying to destroy the city's public schools.  He is firing white administrators.  He is telling school principals to give special privileges to minority children.  He wants to dumb down New York's premier high schools, in the name of diversity.  And yet, New York is not quite in the league of San Francisco, now become America's urban basket case.  It is worth noting that the city is home to House Speaker Pelosi, who is hard at work slandering the president of the United States.

Leftist Heartbreak in San Francisco.  Like most big cities, San Francisco is poorly run, stridently progressive, and overly regulated.  Unlike many other big U.S. cities, it's located on one of the most scenic spots on Earth and has delightful year-round weather.  I take no pleasure in seeing such a glorious place run into the ground by bad leaders (and voters), even if I occasionally struggle with Schadenfreude.  But oddly enough, San Francisco's harshest critics these days are not on the Right.  To many progressives, San Francisco has turned from a source of their love and affection into a painful disappointment.

'Sky-High' Trash Piles Found In Los Angeles, Raising Concerns About Typhus.  Apparently, problems with waste are not limited to San Francisco.  NBC4 reported Monday [5/20/2019] that "sky-high" piles of rotting trash were found around Los Angeles, leading some to worry about a new typhus outbreak.  "Even the city's most notorious trash pile, located between downtown LA's busy Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up months ago.  The rodents can carry typhus-infected fleas, which can spread the disease to humans through bacteria rubbed into the eyes or cuts and scrapes on the skin, resulting in severe flu-like symptoms," the outlet reported.  [Video clip]

San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll.  San Francisco is the nation's leader in property crime.  Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included under this ugly umbrella.  The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed, and the current average is 51 per day.  Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.  Many in law enforcement blame the crime wave on Proposition 47, which in 2014 downgraded possession of illegal narcotics for personal use and theft of anything under $950 in value from felonies to misdemeanors.  Anti-incarceration advocates disagree with that argument, but theft is indisputably booming, and narcotics activity is exploding on sidewalks, parks, and playgrounds.  When compounded with other troubles for which the city is now infamous (human feces, filth, and homelessness, which is up 17 percent since 2017), San Franciscans find themselves surrounded by squalor and disorder.

Surprise! Learning about Cotton in School Is Racist Now.  I currently live in Arlington, Va., and do not vote in local elections.  It's not that I don't want to vote, but there is literally no one [...] on the ballots who could even pretend to be anywhere close to being a conservative.  The problem isn't my lack of desire, it's that I don't have anyone to vote for.  As one of the most progressively leftist communities in this country, my local government is completely devoid of any representation of my beliefs and values.  So, I was not surprised to read ARLNow's article about an Arlington elementary school teacher who has found herself in hot water for having her students study cotton.

Planting of Cotton at Arlington Elementary School Prompts Discussion.  A cotton plant growing at Campbell Elementary School drew criticism online today, but Arlington Public Schools said allegations that staff were going to make kids "pick cotton" was a misunderstanding.  "At no time, never, was the school going to have students pick cotton," said APS spokesman Frank Bellavia.

NY Times:  Venezuela's Economic Devastation Comparable To Countries Destroyed By War.  Democratic socialism is working in Venezuela.  It's working to make everyone miserable and hungry.  The sign in the photo [left] reads:  "Maduro is hunger."  The NY Times reports the economic decline Venezuelans are now experiencing is unsurpassed in the past 45 years outside of countries in the midst of war.

The Editor says...
Socialism doesn't work in Venezuela.  It also doesn't work in Zimbabwe or Cuba.

Death Always Follows Democrat Policies.  In my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child is Becoming a Democrat, I avoid policy and hone in on parenting.  I believe that if my playbook is followed, we can ensure that future generations of our youth don't grow up to be Democrats.  Substantive health care fixes, cures for cancer and AIDS, and the first man and woman on Mars will be as useless as a Willard Romney endorsement if we don't win the youth battle within the four walls of our homes.  I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the abhorrently increasing zeal for abortions during any stage of pregnancy.  The residual effects of Democrat polices, in addition to producing killer kids, also kill our unborn.  All of it is by design; nothing in politics is coincidental.

America's largest cities drowning in debt, with Chicago leading the way, study finds.  America's 10 largest cities, largely Democrat strongholds, are drowning in municipal debt, according to a new report from government watchdog Truth in Accounting.  The report sought out "to determine what ... overlapping financial entities mean for taxpayers' bottom line."  Truth in Accounting said its purpose was to "calculate the various bills (and surpluses, when available) at the city government level and divide them out to determine a per-Taxpayer Burden."  The two cities with the highest burden:  Chicago and New York City; Chicago's combined taxpayer burden:  $119,110; New York City's combined taxpayer burden:  $85,600.

Life if the Democrats take control.  Democrats back in power would continue to appoint Leftist Judges who would continue to limit Conservative speech in the open forum or on public media such as the Radio.  These same judges would continue to tear away our basic foundations where they find Religion an enemy of their goals.  Consider what life would be like if the face book options for gender become law.  Facebook gives its members the choice of 58 types of gender identification.  Are you ready to deal with that if the Democrats continue to push such that concept.  Marriage continues to be under assault.  TV shows are now glorifying the 3 person marriage.  Do not believe me?  Watch SWAT on CBS.

Why Have Department of Defense Suicides Spiked?  The Department of Defense has a suicide problem.  Thank Presidents Clinton and Obama[.]  Prior to 1993, the Department of Defense (DOD) used to screen recruits, officer candidates, and service academy entrants for mental, personality, and suicide behavior disorders.  Now they don't. [...] When men and women had enlistment physicals, they were evaluated by a physician for obvious physical defects and to also see if they had an apparent mental or personality disorder.  Any potential recruit screened with mental, personality, and suicide (and a range of other) behavior disorders were considered unfit for service.  Then President Clinton signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law.  DOD's policy that screened for personality disorders and mental illnesses during the pre-enlistment physical was terminated as a function of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law.  The law removed all screening for DSM categories of homosexuality, sexual and personality disorders and mental illnesses.

The Destructive Equality Act of 2019.  My dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality."  We now have a majority of members of Congress who are prepared to pass into law that the sex individuals are born with — their chromosomal and physical reality — will take a back seat to how those individuals choose to define their own sexual identity.  Henceforth, we'll be done with the idea that there is some objective reality independent of what of any particular individual decides it is.  I once complained that our society was denying morality — right and wrong.  Now we're beyond this.  We're denying reality in its entirety.

Why are so many Democrats so reprehensible in exactly the same way?  For the past fifty years, the imposition of multiculturalism and all that it has entailed, two generations have been taught that tolerance of all things must supersede all other values.  Ergo, we've arrived at a place in which the bulk of one of our two political parties has, if inadvertently, embraced evil in the name of tolerance — radical Islam, all variations of sexual orientation including pedophilia, the absolutist notion that all minorities are victims, all women are victims.  We must now accept the trope that all white men are bad, a blight on civilized society.  How destructive is this to our country?  It is devastating, and they do it purposefully, these Democrats.  They have become the embodiment of Cloward-Piven and Saul Alinsky.

New York Blocked A New Pipeline And Guess What They Just Found Out.  The "Keep it in the ground" crowd has a lot of influence with the Democrats who control the government.  That why, back in 2013, when the new Constitution Pipeline was proposed to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania's rich shale oil fields to New York, activists were able to block the construction despite it already having been approved by federal regulators.  Similarly, when National Grid (the local energy consortium) requested an extension to the Williams Co.  Transco pipeline, they were also tied up because of the outcry from environmental activists.  Here comes the surprise that nobody could have possibly seen coming.  The city and its surrounding downstate region are still expanding with new construction projects, but their energy suppliers have told them that they will not be able to supply natural gas to any new customers because they're already at capacity.

A World Without Morality.  If the theoretical end point of liberal democracy is a world without boundaries, physical or cultural, then it is a world without morality.  After all, morality is a world of fences and gates that control human behavior within the closed social system.  In order for there to be a moral order, there must be order and that must include boundaries.  Once the boundaries lose their purpose, the fences and gates are simply gravestones in a cemetery of a long forgotten people.  No one cares if the kids knock over the grave stones.  In fact, in a world without form, the hunt for something to level becomes increasingly urgent as there is less and less to knock over.  Once the statues of the great men of the past are removed, their names must be removed.  Once the basics of family life have been destroyed through divorce and feminism, the innocence of childhood is attacked via the degeneracy of transgenderism.

Sanctuary Laws and the Death of E Pluribus Unum.  "Sanctuary" laws that shield illegal aliens may have the veneer of compassion, but their implementation is setting the stage for confrontations between federal and local law enforcement officers with conflicting orders.  The short-term result could be dead or wounded officers.  In a broader context, these laws raise the specter of a constitutional crisis and a breakdown of social order.  Sanctuary laws are an existential threat to America and need to end. [...] Sanctuary laws are a gateway to chaos.  If such rebellion is allowed to stand, are there any limits at all?

'MeToo' Hysteria:  Handshakes In The Workplace Could Be Next On Chopping Block.  Employers seeking to avoid lawsuits in the hypersensitive age of the #MeToo movement are looking to ban even the most innocuous professional courtesies, including handshakes.  Last week, Kate Palmer, associate director of advisory at human resources consultancy Peninsula and an alleged "expert" on the matter, said that employers may soon seek to ban "all forms of physical contact to avoid confusion about what kind of touch is appropriate," according to The Sun of Britain.

Here's how many square feet you can afford to rent on a median income in these popular US cities.  You may make the big bucks in the big city, but that doesn't necessarily mean your pad is going to reflect that.  When it comes to finding the perfect spacious apartment, you have to take into account both your location and annual salary.  And in some cities, such as New York City, Boston or Los Angeles, you may just have to accept that you'll always feel a little cramped.

Watch Former Fed Prosecutor Smash Anti-Trump Commentator's Biased Version Of "Truth".  The facts are undeniable regarding the Mueller investigation.  After nearly two years and tens of millions of dollars wasted, there was no collusion and no obstruction — period.  The media is now working double-time to try and spin that reality into something else.  If they are allowed to do so this is no longer America because if a president isn't free to do his job then none of us are.  If you support attacking President Trump then you support attacking everything this country once stood for — namely freedom, liberty, and the right to self-expression.  And it has been the Democrat Party and the media who have created this very real division that is now tearing the nation apart.

A mysterious condition makes marijuana users violently ill.  Before the meal began, Moon joked with Jagger that it would be her last supper.  A few hours later, she was at home vomiting uncontrollably.  She'd spend the next few days in the hospital.  Moon had previously been diagnosed with a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS.  Very little is known about CHS, which was first identified in the early 2000s.  The recognized hallmarks of the condition are heavy, consistent marijuana use, violent vomiting and nausea, and a tendency to use extremely hot baths or showers for relief.

The Editor says...
Romans 6:23.

Transgender Rights:  Judge Warns Girls Have No Right to 'Visual Bodily Privacy'.  A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit against transgender facilities in a school district to proceed, but warned the student-plaintiffs that, if the government allows boys who claim to be female to use the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms, then the girls have no right to "visual bodily privacy."  Judge Jorge Alonso of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division is allowing a lawsuit to proceed against the school district that adopted the Obama-era transgender policy permitting boys claiming to be female to use the girls' bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms.

San Francisco's Slow-Motion Suicide.  The city's current concentration of wealth likely doesn't represent the beginning of a golden-if-sinful era, but the end.  Magnificent in the distance, San Francisco is now shockingly ugly up close.  In the decade I have lived here, the city has achieved the seemingly impossible:  It has combined the expensive and the bland and the appalling into a new form of decadence.

West Virginia Leads Nation in Homeownership Rate; New York and California Rank Last.  West Virginia ranked No. 1 among the 50 states for its homeownership rate in 2018, which was 74.7 percent, according to new housing data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.  New York and California ranked 50th and 49th with homeownership rates of 51.0 and 55.1, according to Table 15 in the Census Bureau's Annual Statistics on Housing Vacancies and Homeownership.  The Census Bureau calculates the homeownership rate by dividing the number of owner occupied housing units by the total number of occupied housing units.

How Chicago Democrats Created Trump's Border Wall Problem.  After World War II outmigration became a concern for all big northern Democrat-controlled cities since the growth of suburbs and the baby boom prompted young couples to leave big cities and seek more space for their families.  But this outmigration created a huge problem for the big Democratic cities from Boston to Los Angeles: how to restore and stabilize their city's population and keep control of Congress.  The solution was to allow illegal immigration and support them with benefits.  Providing illegal immigrants with benefits such as food stamps and housing were crucial, since illegal immigrants were not well educated and did not earn enough income to be self-sufficient.  This concern prompted President Lyndon Baines Johnson to establish the Great Society welfare programs, and he himself admitted the programs were intended to strengthen America's big cities.  LBJ stopped the agricultural guest worker program, called the Bracero program, just at the time he started the Great Society.  This allowed illegal immigrants to come to Chicago and not worry about being educated well enough to support themselves.  The lack of income was made up through free benefits.

Doctors Are Now Giving 8-Year-Old Girls Testosterone, Claiming They're 'Transgender'.  According to medical doctors and a parent of a gender non-conforming child speaking on a panel for the Heritage Foundation, their quest to stop dangerous transgender treatments on minors has exposed that "government-funded research now allows wrong sex hormones such as testosterone to be given to girls as young as 8," reported The Christian Post on Tuesday [4/2/2019].

I have my 'Trump 2020' cap!  Without fear of punishment for their crimes, the enraged Deep State is now trying to remove Trump by absurdly claiming he obstructed justice.  These people are relentless and evil.  If Trump is not re-elected, Democrats will pass a law to kill babies after they are born.  Sharia law will gain more strongholds in our culture.  Our economy will tank due to job-killing crazy green policies.  Single-payer health care will empower Democrats to dictate who lives and who dies.  The LGBTQ agenda will be forced down our throats.  Reading and quoting the Bible will be illegal.  These are not exaggerations, folks.  All of these anti-freedom and anti-Christian initiatives are being pushed right now by Democrats.  President Trump is the main obstacle, courageously standing in their way.  The Democrats have become the party of full-blown lawlessness.  Democrat-controlled sanctuary cities boldly break our immigration laws.  Democrats encourage illegals to break our immigration laws at the border.

One Bad Apple.  Globalism, multiculturalism, and socialism have done the trick:  destabilized traditional family values with all these new mores like same-sex marriage, gender-neutral bathrooms, and prepubescent transgender rights.  But basically people feel mocked and set aside by the elite who run this town, those in City Hall, the media, and the hatchet-faced women of glossy magazines.  Pseudo-lefty-trendy magazines like The New Yorker fail to address the fact that Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, even African-American societies are conservative by nature.  These phonies pretend to speak for the underdog, but converse only with each other.

'Seattle Is Dying' because Liberalism Is Killing It.  If you haven't seen the KOMO News special Seattle Is Dying, you need to.  The hour-long show does a sound job of depicting the ugly decline of one of the most beautiful places in America.  However, the piece misses the forest for the nasty, dirty, twisted trees.  Part of the root of the problem in Seattle is political, but Seattle Is Dying virtually ignores the liberal politics behind Seattle's foul decline.  As John Sexton at Hot Air put it, "[t]here's really no escaping the fact that the current situation is the result of political decisions."

Look at the science and stop the march toward legalized marijuana.  Despite myths to the contrary, marijuana is a serious health risk.  It does indeed result in unhealthy dependence among nearly one-third of users.  It is a definite risk (perhaps deadly) for lung health, and it is especially dangerous for heart health.  Some studies also show that it substantially increases risk for a form of testicular cancer.  To be specific on heart risks, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports:  "Limited evidence suggests that a person's risk of heart attack during the first hour after smoking marijuana is nearly five times his or her usual risk."  Meanwhile, the measurable consequences for states that have legalized recreational marijuana have been bracing.

Green Insanity Is Flooding Towns and Destroying Lives.  Having written extensively in these pages on the catastrophic flooding of the Missouri River basin in 2011, I believe that the occasion of this present flood disaster plaguing Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota has given rise to many questions.  Foremost, I have been asked if there is an environmentalist element, as there was in 2011, when the Corps of Engineers intentionally permitted the flooding of eight states in order to further their highest priority (as per the Master Water Control Manual) of "habitat restoration for riverine wildlife" at the expense of the original top priority, flood control, and the preservation of human life and property.

United Airlines Goes Gender-Neutral or Whatever.  In over a century of manned airflight, there's one nagging problem that has never been addressed:  Misgendering.  That ends today.

Leftists Have Turned San Francisco Into A Nightmare Of Drugs And Homelessness.  There's no denying that San Francisco is one of America's most beautiful and recognizable cities, but it has been racked with problems thanks to leftist policies that have driven drug addiction and homelessness through the roof.  The Daily Wire's Kassy Dillon and Colton Haas traveled to the city by the bay and spoke to experts and homeless people about the conditions that have encouraged the spread of drugs, disease, and more.  During their trip, they could see the awful condition the city is currently in.

More than a third of New Yorkers say they can't afford to live here.  More than a third of all city residents say they can't afford to live anywhere in the state — much less the Big Apple — and believe economic hardship will send them packing in five years or less, according to a dismal new poll.  That's 41 percent of city dwellers who say they can't cope with New York's high cost of living, according to a Quinnipiac poll published Wednesday [3/20/2019].  Separately, 41 percent fear they'll be "forced" to pull up stakes and seek greener pastures where the economic climate is more welcoming.

Changing the Rules.  The news cycle is so unnaturally shrill as if it was the status quo itself was screaming.  From unenacted policies to the automatic assignment of blame to Western civilization the news cycle has become one continuous rant.  Referring to the root causes of the Christchurch mosque massacre a Slate article argued: "we are a nation born of shame.  A white-majority Australia exists only as the result of a genocidal invasion."  Speech has never been more dangerous nor points of view more opposed.  When the demand isn't "why didn't you denounce this" or "why didn't you apologize for that" it is may be "why did you misgender me?"  You can go to jail for saying "he" instead of "she".

Major Science Journal Embraces 'Nature Rights' Movement.  Nature rights" is a hard-leftwing and anti-free market movement — once on the fringe but now growing increasingly mainstream within environmentalism — that doesn't seek tighter legal regulations over our use of the natural world, but rather, advocates personalizing nature toward the end of granting flora, fauna, ecosystems, and geological features human-type rights.  In a saner era, the idea of granting rights to "nature" would be laughed off the public stage.  But it's not funny.  The nature rights movement is serious, it is growing in power and influence, and it becoming alarmingly successful.  Indeed, the movement has made important strides in the last few years:  four rivers have been granted enforceable rights, including the Amazon and Ganges.  So too have glaciers.  An orangutan was declared a "non-human person" in Argentina and granted a writ of habeas corpus to be released from a zoo to a sanctuary.  Most recently, a special election in Toledo, Ohio passed that granted "rights" to Lake Erie.

President Trump Saves Thousands of Lives.  So what happened in 2015 and 2016 to cause the violent crime rate, including the homicide rate, to rise after decades of decline?  I can't think of any explanation other than the Black Lives Matter movement and the relentless attacks on law enforcement that it engendered, which were supported by the Obama administration.  But what happened when Donald Trump took over in the White House?  The homicide and violent crime rates began to fall again.  If the New York Times's projection is correct, the second year of the Trump administration saw a steeper decline in the homicide rate.  Again, what could possibly have caused this change?  I can't think of a plausible theory other than the Trump administration's renewed support for law enforcement and the waning of the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement.  Something happened beginning in 2017 that has saved thousands of lives.  If it wasn't the new administration in Washington, what was it?

The financial collapse of the Democratic mayors.  Recently, non-government organization Truth in Accounting published a report about the financial condition of the 75 largest cities of America.  As it turns out, 63 out of 75 cities in America were not able to pay bills at the end of the fiscal year of 2017.  The final result of this study was the calculation of the burden borne by taxpayers in these American cities.  The formula is simple:  the financial balance of the city (positive or negative) is divided by the number of inhabitants.  The result is a good assessment of how effectively the city authorities work, depending on the positive or negative financial balance of the city per capita.

KOMO News' Special: Seattle Is Dying.  "People didn't use to use the word embarrassing about Seattle, but they use it a lot now," the narrator to a new KOMO News special titled "Seattle is Dying" says.  The focus of the special is homelessness and the ways in which it has changed the city.  There's a section featuring angry residents of one area of the city who are screaming at their representatives for action.  They want the tent cities managed and they're tired of calling the police only to find out the police can arrest people but those same people will be back on the street, sometimes within hours.

7 Reasons Why the Equality Act Is Anything But.  [#1] It would penalize Americans who don't affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology.  Jack Phillips' case went all the way to the Supreme Court after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission accused the bakery owner of discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation when the self-described cake artist declined to create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding.  The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, but le the law in question, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, intact.  Until last week, Phillips was in court again defending himself against the same agency under the same law.  The day after the Supreme Court ruled in Phillips' case, Autumn Scardina, a lawyer who identifies as transgender, requested that he create a "gender transition cake."  After Phillips declined, the state Civil Rights Commission found probable cause under the law that the baker had discriminated on the basis of gender identity.  Thankfully, the commission last week dropped the case, and Phillips agreed to drop his own lawsuit accusing the state agency of harassing him for his Christian beliefs.

Antifa-Controlled Portland Police Bureau Faces Mass 'Exodus' As 50+ Officers Quit Over Insane and Dangerous Far Left Policies.  As Portland trends further and further from Democrat to Marxist, the rank-and-file officers of the Portland Police Bureau have been put in the unenviable position of being ordered by the mayor to cater to the far left protesters and rioters like Antifa.  At the same time the officers also face a more and more irate public, angry at the police bureau's propensity for ceding the city to the protesters on a regular basis.

From Democratic Socialism to Total Destruction in Venezuela.  During the 1970s, Venezuela's per capita income was higher than the sum of all other Andean nations, including Chile.  The country had the lowest taxes in the region, coupled with a stable democracy.  Since the US left the gold standard, only the Swiss franc and the Venezuelan bolivar managed to maintain their value.  In 1980 the Venezuelan bolivar was worth more against the U.S. dollar than in 1880.  It remained that way until the 1973 elections when both the legislative and executive branches came under the power of a single democratic socialist party, Acción Democrática, while simultaneously the Arab oil embargo that year produced a huge increase in oil prices.  [A]s a result government revenues increased by a factor of 4.  The government than embarked in "democratic socialism", systematically applying the same theories supported now in the USA by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Democrat Lawmaker and Teamster President: 'Chaos' in Schools Since Obama-Era Discipline Policy.  A Democrat state senator and a Teamsters president said the dramatic drop in school suspensions in New York City since the Obama-era policy urging more lenient forms of discipline for minority students has led to "chaos" and a lack of "accountability" for dangerous behavior.  New York state Sen. Leroy Comrie told CBS New York that schools in his Queens district are losing the confidence of parents.  "They're taking their children to other schools even if they have to pay for private schools," he said.  "They don't want to have to have their children in an environment where they're assaulted and there's no accountability."

Marxism, the Frankfurt School, and the Leftist Takeover of the College Campus.  When one observes the modern-day college campus, one observes nothing but the Marxist-leftist indoctrination of America's youth. [...] One has to look no farther than Boston University to find courses with titles such as "Dismantling White Privilege, Power, and Supremacy."  Any course that attempts to induce guilt for one's ethnicity is undeniably subjective in nature.  Consider the debates on sex, sexuality, and human physiology.  There is arguably mainstream societal acceptance that there are more than two "genders" and that sex and sexuality are in no way linked.  Furthermore, if one even questions the eligibility of male athletes in female-only sports, he will often be labeled a bigot, or at the very least old-fashioned.  No empirical research is needed to realize that much of American history is now scrutinized rather than honored.  American military involvement is commonly preached as oppression rather than liberation.  Everything from the nuclear family to supporting ICE is under scrutiny.  There is a systematic dismantling of American values that were once accepted as objectively good and now maligned as evil.  When objective truth and reality no longer exist, the Left can rewrite the rules to society — and it has.  Where do all of these ideas come from?  Primarily college campuses.

Blacks and the Democrats.  What has been the payoff to the black community for religiously voting for Democratic leadership?  To start, although blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population, they account for nearly 50% of the homicides.  According to the National Council for Home Safety and Security, the top 10 most dangerous cities in the United States for 2018 had Democrats as mayors, and according to the 2019 American Community Survey, 9 out of the top 10 poorest cities also have Democrats as mayors.  Many of these cities have the largest population of African-Americans in the country.

The Problem Is Legislative Overreach, Not Executive.  In 1975, two years after Richard Nixon negotiated the Paris Accords and ended the war in the Vietnam, the Communist North Vietnamese reneged and invaded South Vietnam.  Instead of defending the South as Nixon promised we would do in this event, President Gerald Ford looked on helplessly as the Democratic Congress would not permit it.  At the same time, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and turned the country into a death camp.  Because the Democrats hated Nixon and Republicans, and saw no political advantage to intervening, they permitted our allies to be slaughtered and enslaved.  A year later, in 1976, Ford signed the National Emergency Powers Act, which would allow special powers for the president should this kind of emergency arise and the legislature decides to play politics as people die or great injustices occur.  Trump Is Right on the Law and the Merits President Trump's recent decision to invoke this act and fund a border wall was in response to the Democrats in Congress refusing to cooperate.

Students Across US Now Majoring In Marijuana At Colleges.  Colleges are now adding cannabis to their curriculum.  Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she's majoring in marijuana.  "My friends make good-natured jokes about getting a degree in weed," said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University.  "I say, 'No, it's a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and foremost.  It's hard work.  Organic chemistry is a bear.'"

Socialism destroys prom:  School officials ban kids from riding in limos because everyone can't afford it.  Socialism invariably destroys everything it touches, including even proms.  Back in the day, some kids used to enjoy saving up enough money through the semester so they could rent a lavish limo for their year-end senior prom.  But thanks to the socialist mindset of one New Jersey school's officials, this tradition is no more.  According to Trenton radio station WKXW, officials at Lakeland Regional High School made a decision this year to ban students from driving to their prom or renting a limo.  Instead, every student must pay $15 to be driven to the prom at Rockleigh Country Club on a chaperoned bus.

Male Christian Wrestler Forfeits State Championship Spot Rather Than Wrestle Girls.  An 18-year-old high school wrestler in Colorado has given up a potential spot in the Colorado high school state championships because he chooses not to wrestle two young ladies saying it violates how he was raised to treat women.  Brendan Johnston of The Classical Academy in Colorado says those values — despite some light complaints from at least one of the young ladies he would have faced — are informed by his Christianity and, after a discussion with his coach and some deep thought on the subject, he's decided to stand behind his principles despite knowing it would mean a shortened competition.

Girls' sports being decimated by biological males claiming to be females.  There are only two genders in this world of ours, male and female, and it doesn't matter how someone "identifies," that biological fact is established and unalterable. [...] With that being said, the Left is nevertheless hard at work trying to convince us that gender is a 'fluid' thing and in some cases, an outright choice, so old societal constructs like "male" and "female" sports are no longer necessary or relevant.  That's why they go along with allowing biological males to participate in (and dominate) all-female events simply because they 'identify' as a girl, claiming — remarkably and unbelievably — that there are no physical differences between the sexes.

From Roy Rogers to Infanticide.  America has moved on.  Democrats, Hollywood, and fake news media say America no longer wants white guys like Roy Rogers on TV, infecting our kids with Christian morals and family values.  America has moved on from the biblical teaching that there are only two genders.  NYC recognizes 31 different genders.  Facebook gives customers 56 gender options.  Leftists believe they are far more sophisticated and intelligent than Bible believers and Americans living in flyover country.  Leftists say determining a baby's gender by its genitalia at birth is idiotic.  They say we must allow the child to evolve into the gender it wants to be.  This insane child abuse has led to hundreds of kids as young as four years old identifying as transgender and changing their sex.

If There's a Hair in Your Soup, Thank New York's Commission on Human Rights.  [Scroll down]  New York City had long ago rolled through the usual spectrum of legal protections for everyone from ex-cons to transgender men.  And the Commission has been desperately concocting new legal protections.  Its latest initiative declares that employers, including in the health care and food service industries, may not prevent employees, regardless of race, from wearing dreadlocks because that's racial discrimination.  The Commission's new guidelines insist that employees have "the right to keep hair in an uncut or untrimmed state."  Schools, public and private, are also forbidden from banning dreadlocks.

Emotional support pit bull mauled 5-year-old girl: suit.  A woman has filed a $1.1 million negligence lawsuit after her 5-year-old daughter was mauled by a pit bull — which was being used as an emotional support animal — at Portland International Airport when she petted it.  Mirna Gonzalez and her children were waiting for an Alaska Airlines flight to Texas on Dec. 18, 2017, when she stepped away to grab a coffee, the Washington Post reported.  While she was away, Gabriella asked if she could pet the dog, which suddenly bit her in the face and left her bloodied.

The Editor says...
The whole concept of "emotional support animals" came from the far left fringe.  Those whose only god is the government, and whose primary concern is their own feelings and emotions, must depend on warm and fuzzy animals to cope with situations that the rest of us consider routine.

Disarming Law Enforcement in Portland.  Portland today is much changed from the city that I grew up in.  Signs of urban decay and degradation are everywhere.  Streets are littered with trash, human feces, and drug needles.  Transient camps and villages dot the city.  Vagrants roam the streets and threaten pedestrians and businesses owners.  A Portland resident calls the police every 15 minutes to report an incident involving a homeless person.  Still, the city's progressive politicians and activists would like residents to believe that law-enforcement officials pose a greater threat than public anarchy.  Portland's attitude toward law enforcement has become so negative, in fact, that neighboring Washington County will no longer offer coordination or support to the Portland Police Bureau.

Based On 'Discrimination' Law, Iowa Jury Awards Trans Woman $120,000, Access To Male Prison Facilities.  A jury in Iowa has concluded that the state discriminated against a former Iowa Department of Corrections nurse because the employer wouldn't let her use the bathrooms with male employees.  The jury also said the Iowa Department of Corrections denied Jesse Vreogh health care coverage for "medically necessary surgery" — i.e. a double mastectomy to look more like a man.  The jury awarded Vreogh $120,000 for the "emotional distress" of both instances based on Iowa's sexual orientation and gender identity law, which was introduced in 2007 and signed by Democrat Gov. Chet Culver.

Venezuela Isn't Just a Failed State.  It's a Failure of the Left.  If we look at government spending as a percentage of GDP, Venezuela seems far from socialism.  In recent years government spending in Venezuela has been measured at about 40 percent of GDP, with the caveat that these statistics are not fully reliable.  For the U.S., the corresponding figure is about 37 percent.  Yet emerging economies typically cannot afford the same government programs as wealthier countries, and they cannot run them with the same efficacy.  Poorer countries that try to expand their governments to size of wealthier countries, such as Brazil and Venezuela, typically encounter sub-par economic performance.  These are indeed stories of big government run amok, as some of conservatives are suggesting.

The 5 Biggest Widely Accepted Lies in Politics.  [#5] Diversity is a strength:  While you might be able to make the argument that diversity of thought is a strength, diversity itself is a weakness.  In fact, much of the political infighting, hatred, and disagreement in modern American politics centers around diversity.  Every disagreement between a liberal minority and non-liberal white American is summed up as racism.  Every failing of a woman or female disagreement with a man is summed up as sexism.  We can't have a sane immigration policy because it's declared as racism against Hispanics.  Accusations of racism and sexism have almost completely replaced arguments and rational thought on the Left because who needs to have good ideas if you can just argue that your opponents' arguments are invalid because they're bad people? [...] All across the planet, the more diversity you see in culture, the more strife, bloodshed and, problems you see.

Venezuela was my home, and socialism destroyed it.  Slowly, it will destroy America, too.  The first time I couldn't buy food at the grocery store, I was 15 years old.  It was 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela, and I had spent more than an hour in line waiting.  When I got to the register I noticed I'd forgotten my ID that day.  Without the ID, the government rationing system would let the supermarket sell my family the full quota of food we needed.  It was four days until the government allowed me to buy more.  This was fairly normal for me.  All my life I lived under socialism in Venezuela until I left and came to the U.S. as a student in 2016. Since the regime in charge imposed price controls and nationalized the most important private industries, production plummeted.  No wonder I had to wait hours in lines to buy simple products such as toothpaste or flour.  And the shortages went far beyond the supermarket.  My family and I suffered from blackouts and lack of water.  The regime nationalized electricity in 2007 in an effort to make electricity "free."  Unsurprisingly, this resulted in underinvestment in the electrical grid.  By 2016, my home lost power roughly once a week.

Major League Baseball Ditches 'Disabled List' Over Social Justice Concerns.  Major League Baseball will replace the "disabled list" with the "injured list" for the 2019 season amid concerns that the term "disabled" was insensitive.  The "disabled list" has been part of professional baseball since the mid-1960s (though there are records of some teams using a "disabled list" as far back as the early 20th century), and it's become second nature to refer to an injured or exhausted player as "on the DL," but MLB has been reportedly playing around with the idea of renaming the injured roster in order to better reflect the condition of players who skip games for medical or physical reasons, according to ESPN.

Unisex toilets in schools are leaving girl pupils 'too afraid to use the loo'.  Schoolgirls are too afraid to use unisex toilets over fears of 'period shaming' from boys and sexual harassment, campaigners warn.  A growing number of schools are ditching separate-sex loos claiming they are not inclusive to transgender children and are a breeding ground for bullying.  But some girls are avoiding going to the toilet during school hours because of cruel taunts from boys and a lack of privacy, according to the Daily Express.

LGBT Activists Teaching Judges To Yank Kids From Parents Who Won't Transgender Them.  On Thursday [2/7/2019], the Health and Human Services committee of the South Dakota House killed a bill that would have protected the right of parents to refuse to consent to medical or psychological treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria if the treatment "would induce, confirm, or promote the child's belief that the child's sex or gender identity is different from the child's sex presented at birth."  Proposed House Bill 1205 also provided that "no public authority or official of this state may take any adverse action against a parent for exercising this right."  That such a simple affirmation of parental rights could not clear a committee in this solidly red state should terrify parents, as it lays bare transgender activists' plan:  use the government to force parents to affirm a false sex for their child, agree to hormone blockers, and accept a transition to their son or daughter's preferred gender.  If parents refuse?  Removal of the child from the family, due to alleged medical neglect.

Transgender Man Awarded $120,000 in Discrimination Case at Iowa Prison.  In 2015, Jesse Vroegh, a registered nurse working in an Iowa prison, asked his employers at the state Department of Corrections to allow him to use the men's restrooms and locker rooms at work because he was transitioning from female to male.  But the department denied his requests, citing its concerns about the "rights of the male officers" and saying that transgender issues were "too controversial," according to a lawsuit.

A Transgender Hero Breaks Ranks.  Even though it's still young, the transgender movement has occasioned many bizarre and horrific stories.  But even in that company, the saga of Jamie Shupe stands out.  Born in 1963, Shupe has been married to his wife, Sandy, for three decades; they have a daughter.  He spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in the U.S. Army.  In 2013 he began identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for years with a deep sense of being different and had been harassed in the military because he was perceived as gay.  After declaring that he was a woman, he "lived for a year in Pittsburgh, got hormone treatments and a name change," but never had a sex-change operation.  Finding Pittsburgh inhospitable for a trans woman, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he continued living as a woman for another two years.  In 2015, the New York Times profiled Shupe as part of a splashy, upbeat series celebrating "transgender lives."

Texas Dad Court-Ordered To Not Call 6-Yr-Old Son 'He' As Ex-Wife Transitions Him But Not His Twin Brother.  You think your ex-spouse issues are bad?  Well, they're probably not as intense as Jeffrey Younger's.  The Texas father's embroiled in a ferocious custody battle as his former wife attempts to raise their son — James — as their daughter, Luna.

Another Gift from Socialism in San Fran!  Syringes Everywhere.  San Francisco has more drug addicts than it has students enrolled in its public high schools, the city Health Department's latest estimates conclude, the SFChronicle reports.  There are about 24,500 injection drug users in San Francisco — that's about 8,500 more people than the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District's 15 high schools and illustrates the scope of the problem on the city's streets.  It represents an increase of 2,000 serious drug users, the article says, but doesn't mention how many non-serious drug users there are and what the definition entails.

San Francisco Has More Drug Users Than High School Students.  Most of the people shooting heroin in BART stations are doing it there because they have nowhere else to go.  Last year there were local news reports about the extent of drug use at BART stations.  Those reports embarrassed the city and led to some effort to clean up the public areas, but it remains an uphill battle.  Over time, the addicts wind up collapsed in a stupor inside the stations, on the streets, or on the trains themselves.

Typhus Epidemic Spreads Across Liberal Utopia of Los Angeles Due to Mountains of Trash, Growing Homeless Population.  A typhus epidemic is worsening in the liberal utopia of Los Angeles, California due to a growing homeless population and mountains of rat-infested trash.  Nothing says "progressive" more than a medieval infectious disease like typhus fever spreading through a city in the year 2019.

Typhus Is Spreading in Liberal, Rat-Infested LA County.  There are a lot of rats in LA, and, NO, for once we don't mean the politicians although many qualify.  We mean the little furry creatures who live in squalor and spread diseases.  Last September, a documentary called 'Rats' was screened as a Landmark Theatres Exclusive Midnight Event.  It was frightening because it's real.  Infestations of rats are seen in major cities and elsewhere, and when garbage is left to rot in homeless areas, they become a more serious threat to life.

The Ruling Class and an Undeclared Civil War.  Unlike any other period in the nation's history, one stratum of society, the American elites of the past half-century, by their control of education, entertainment, the media and politics, have totally dominated and overwhelmingly and negatively influenced the culture and national character.  They are chiefly responsible for what it is today.  This American aristocracy is now entirely made up of those who have no recall or firsthand experience of the years of adversity prior to 1940.  Their entire point of reference is never-ending affluence and the pursuit of pleasure within an overall framework of world peace.  Yet this assemblage is dominated by a comparatively few committed ideologues and so-called intellectuals who are dedicated to permanently altering the economy and American culture.  Nonetheless, they have been very successful in attracting many others by appealing to their vanity and avarice.  Thus entrance into this class is not entirely a factor of birth or wealth but rather that of developing a mindset of superiority similar to the evolution of cliques within a high school setting.

The Mayors of the Worst Cities in America are Running for President.  Newark is the most dangerous city in New Jersey, Tallahassee is the most dangerous city in Florida, and South Bend is the most dangerous city in Indiana.  But instead of fixing their failed cities, the current mayor of South Bend, and the former mayors of Newark and Tallahassee want to run for president.  Mayor Peter Buttigieg has announced that he's forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 run.  Media reports have focused on the possibility that he might become America's first gay millennial president, instead of on the fact that he's headed a city since 2011 which has double the national and statewide violent crime rates.  And a city where Hispanic poverty rates are 10% higher than the national average, African-American households have double the poverty rate, and Asian-American incomes are halved.  South Bend was recently rated one of the "worst cities" to live in.  The unemployment rates are higher than average, the property values are lower, and even the water quality is below average.  Gushing media reports about the gay millennial mayor, a Harvard grad and a Rhodes scholar, overlook South Bend's poverty rate of 24.7% and that 45% of households are living near the poverty level.

Levin: The Left is discouraging assimilation.  LevinTV host Mark Levin began his radio show Monday evening reacting to Tom Brokaw's comments on Meet the Press over the weekend, in which he said Hispanic immigrants should assimilate and learn English. [...] "They don't want assimilation on the Left.  It's not about Hispanics or any other group," Levin explained.  "They play to groups.  They require groups.  The progressive mindset requires groups."

Who Benefits From Democratic Control?  What cities are the deadliest for blacks?  The Trace, an independent nonprofit news organization, answers that question.  Using 2017 data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program, The Trace listed the 20 major U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates — factoring in both the number of people murdered in cities and their populations.  Chicago, with 589 murders in 2018 — one murder every 15 hours — is often called the nation's murder capital.  But that's dead wrong.  In 2017, St. Louis had the nation's highest murder rate, at 66.1 homicides per 100,000 residents.  Baltimore came in second, with 55.8 murders per 100,000 people.  Detroit was third, with 39.8 murders per 100,000 people.  Other cities with high murder rates included New Orleans; Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland; Memphis, Tennessee; and Newark, New Jersey.  With 24.1 murders per 100,000 residents, Chicago ranked ninth in the nation.  It was followed by Cincinnati and Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., was 17th.  Now here's the kicker.  Of the 20 most dangerous major cities, all but one had a Democratic mayor.  In many of these cities, the Democratic Party has ruled for a half-century or more.

I Have a Dream for Black History Month.  Democrats and fake news media do not view Black History Month as an opportunity to celebrate black achievements.  Instead, they exploit the holiday with old racial injustices experienced by few blacks alive today.  Their evil purpose is to make young blacks who have never experienced an ounce of racism hate our country, hate whites, and continue voting for Democrats to save them.  This great Democrat deception continues to devastate black communities.  Cities like Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore, controlled by Democrats for decades, are plagued with high black poverty and addictive government dependency, high black school dropouts, high black fatherless households, high black incarceration, and high black-on-black homicides.

Holes in the Map.  One more part of America has been allocated to another alien population — squatters who have been brought here to feed on us and to drive us out.  But where do we have left to go?  This isn't progress — though it is progressive.  This situation did not occur by accident.  It is the product of a premeditated and deliberate social policy.  When immigration is talked about on what sneeringly masquerades as news, it is always painted in fatalistic phrases that make it sound like an unstoppable force of nature — as though the people surging into America were a swarm of Mexican butterflies or a herd of East African wildebeests that had somehow overwhelmed the TSA.  This invasion is portrayed as if there were no plan involved at all — just some primal urge that arises spontaneously in third-worlders that can't be stopped.  This is the narrative fashioned for the convenience of the unaffected.  That they might feel good about themselves while enjoying a little schadenfreude at our expense.  They do not see the consequences.  They see the dream.

Britain's 'First Transgender Family' Now Transitioning Their 5-Year-Old Son To Female.  A family dubbed Britain's "first transgender family" has announced that they are encouraging the gender transition of their five-year-old son, Jayden.  According to the family, Jayden, a biological male, likes dresses and hates "everything about being a boy."  The little boy's "step-dad," Greg Rogers, is a 27-year-old biological female who now identifies as a male.  The child's mother is a 21-year-old woman named Jody.  Both Jodi and Greg are furious that concerned citizens (referred to as "trolls" by many U.K.-based outlets) have reported them to social services for apparent child abuse.  The couple, however, maintain Jayden — who is on track to medically "transition" in a few years — is properly cared for.

Pelosi's Equality Act Could Lead to More Parents Losing Custody of Kids Who Want 'Gender Transition'.  Americans have long understood that children are best cared for by their parents.  The state can only intervene in the family when there is demonstrable evidence of abuse and neglect.  This has long been established in our laws.  But now, transgender ideology is silencing doctors and challenging the way courts define parental abuse and neglect.  Last year in Ohio, a judge removed a biological girl from her parents' custody after they declined to help her "transition" to male with testosterone supplements.  The Cincinnati Children's gender clinic recommended these treatments for gender dysphoria (the condition of being distressed with one's biological sex).

The devil is using the Democratic Party to destroy America.  The brutal reality is that the Democratic Party is not the one of even a generation ago.  It has become radicalized; hostile to biblical values and religious freedoms; disrespectful to individuals and institutions; unashamed in using profanities and employing intimidation in the media and public square; increasingly irrational, lawless, dishonest, hypocritical, corrupt and mean-spirited (remember the Brett Kavanaugh hearing?); and finally, flippant in dismissing "due process" and our two foundational societal pillars of the sanctity of human life alongside the sanctity of man-woman marriage.  Here's the deal: as we've watched the difficult-to-believe destruction of the 108-year-old Boy Scouts of America because they capitulated to forces the Democratic Party championed, let us consecrate ourselves at this defining time to intercession, gospel proclamation, "salt and light" activism and courageous, uncompromising obedience to God.

On January 1, I became a criminal in my hometown of Boulder.  It's not the intolerance of progressives that is so insulting.  It is the denial of their intolerance that is so abusive.  When I was growing up it was the liberals who more often held the moral high-ground.  Those of us raised in the 1970's heard it all the time — "the end doesn't justify the means." [...] Progressives have not just rejected that proud tradition, they have remade it into the ugly opposite — the end justifies all:  Coercing speech with speech codes and forcing cake bakers to create statements against their core religious beliefs; social justice warfare and identity politics; the nanny state banning everything from plastic straws to tobacco products; and forcing private health insurance products at gun-point.

Political Correctness Is Ruining Sports.  For the second consecutive year, Mack Beggs, an 18-year-old transgender wrestler, has won the Texas girls' Class 6A 110-pound division.  Born a female, Beggs is in the process of transitioning to a male, or so she thinks.  Beggs, who takes a low dose of testosterone, had wanted to compete against boys, but Texas public high schools, which have yet to get with the progressive times, require athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate.  Last year two girls, not wanting to risk being injured by her, forfeited against Beggs.  So did a girl this year.  Whether they were compelled to undergo empathy training I don't know. [...] Transgenderism is a problem in the Olympics, too.  Per the latest rules, transgender "women" must test below a specified level of testosterone for more than one year in order to compete.  But while this is doubtless somewhat effective, aren't these athletes, with their still bigger, still stronger, and still more durable bodies, out of place even so?

The Worst Enemy of Black People.  Malcolm X was absolutely right about our finding solutions to our own problems.  The most devastating problems that black people face today have absolutely nothing to do with our history of slavery and discrimination.  Chief among them is the breakdown of the black family, wherein 75 percent of blacks are born to single, often young, mothers.  In some cities and neighborhoods, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births is over 80.  Actually, "breakdown" is the wrong term; the black family doesn't form in the first place.  This is entirely new among blacks.

Wealth, Poverty, and Flight:  The Same Old State of California.  [B]oth legal and illegal immigration have also radically changed the demography of the state.  It is not just that about 40 percent of the nation's 11 [to] 20 million immigrants live in California, a state in which now one in four residents was not born in the United States.  Rather, it is the result of two or three generations of mass influxes of impoverished residents who on average arrive without a high-school diploma, English proficiency, capital, or often legality.  California now hosts one of three Americans who are on some sort of federal, state, or local welfare supplement.  About a fifth of the state lives below the poverty level.  Half of all births in California were paid for by the state-run Medi-Cal program, and 30 percent of Medi-Cal births were to mothers of undocumented immigration status.  The San Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego is the world's busiest, where some 70 million people cross on foot and in cars into and out of California each year.

Transgender Man Goes Full Roid Rage after Being 'Misgendered' in GameStop.  It's an amazing time to be alive, full of wonder and terror and confusion all mixed together in a soup of "what could possibly happen next?" that keeps us all on our toes.  Today's dose of insanity comes from a viral video of a transgender man who had a testosterone-fueled meltdown because someone called him "sir" in a GameStop in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The minimum-wage employee who took the brunt of the all-male rage-a-thon should win Employee of the Year for trying his hardest to diffuse the situation.

The ILL-inois exodus continues.  Meanwhile, every state in the Midwest, including longtime laggards Kansas and South Dakota, are gaining population.  What does ILL-inois have that these other states don't?  One-party Democratic rule by state party boss and the state House speaker for over 30 years, Michael Madigan of Chicago, who will remain the most powerful politician in Illinois even though the Land of Mary Todd Lincoln Spending will have a Democrat governor in a few weeks.

Stand by for a wave of male prison inmates claiming to be transgender females.  Two federal judges now have ruled, setting the precedent of transferring a male prison inmate to a female prison because he claims to feel that he is a woman and poses as one, and, in the current instance, has undergone surgical mutilation of his reproductive organs.  The "transgender female" is referred to as a "woman" and "she" in the following report from the Associated Press:  ["]A transgender woman serving a 10-year sentence in Illinois for burglary has been moved from a men's to a women's prison in what could be a first for the state, her lawyers announced today.["]  The transfer was forced by a federal judge whom the AP does not wish to identify.  (Why?)  That judge evidently accepts the politically correct line that, contrary to settled science, sex is not determined by chromosomes.

Five homeless vagrants face no charges in attack on cop seen in viral video, says Manhattan DA.  Attacking a cop has joined fare beating and public urination on the list of subway misbehavior Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance won't bother prosecuting.  Officer Syed Ali — an Army combat vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — had no trouble fending off five homeless vagrants with his baton and his feet as they came at him one by one on Sunday night.  The attack, captured on video, was viewed 4 million times on Twitter.

NYPD officer fights off aggressive drunks in the subway but none of the attackers are charged.  While most of us were getting ready for Christmas, NYPD officer Syed Ali was working a transit beat in the NY subways Sunday night [12/23/2018].  This particular night, five intoxicated men were harassing a woman on the platform of the East Broadway station. [...] Officer Ali, who is a combat veteran, was praised by the Mayor and various NY authorities for dealing with the drunks without escalating the situation. [...] But some were upset that the men who harassed the subway rider and tried to fight a police officer were released and won't be charged with anything.

Seattle Under Siege.  Seattle is under siege.  Over the past five years, the Emerald City has seen an explosion of homelessness, crime, and addiction.  In its 2017 point-in-time count of the homeless, King County social-services agency All Home found 11,643 people sleeping in tents, cars, and emergency shelters.  Property crime has risen to a rate two and a half times higher than Los Angeles's and four times higher than New York City's.  Cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty needles from city streets and parks every year.

Remembering a Farm Christmas.  I realize today that we kids were what we now call "free-ranged," in the sense that we had no locks on any of the doors of our farmhouses.  Even at seven in the morning we simply took off into the orchard and vineyard and by late afternoon might end up anywhere we pleased on the farm, without much worry about checking in with our parents.  Everyone was a guardian of everyone else.  Certainly, there then were few of the problems — with gangs, chop shops, and meth labs — that characterize the Central Valley of today.

The exodus of New York City's endangered middle class.  New York City's shrinking middle class is now in full retreat, as masses of our most endangered population depart the city in numbers not seen since the Depression, according to analysts.  After decades of sharp income erosion in the face of relentless taxes, escalating living costs and wage reductions through technological changes, the full extent of this shocking exodus is laid bare in the latest US Census data.  That shows the city is losing 100 residents each day — with departures exceeding new arrivals.

New York leads nation in population loss.  New York State leads the country in an undesirable category.  New data from the U.S. Census Bureau says New York tops the nation in population loss.  The report says nine states saw a drop in population between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018.  New York led the way at a loss of 48,510 people.

Texas city featured in Al Gore film lost millions in green energy investments.  A green energy scheme to supply a small town in Texas with 100% of its electrical needs via cheap solar and wind power is, instead, costing the city almost $7 million.  Georgetown, Texas was featured in the sequel to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth as the "future" of American power generation.  But falling fossil fuel prices are making the scheme ruinously expensive for the town.

Least-Educated State:  California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates.  California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.  Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed [the] ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.  9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade.  Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.

'Let Them Come To Venezuela' And See Socialism For Themselves.  Venezuela was once the most prosperous country in Latin America, but today almost 90% of its population lives in poverty.  Venezuela's economy is in shambles.  Recently, Venezuela's own government released a report showing that its annual inflation rate accelerated to a whopping 833,000% in October alone.  In practical terms, Venezuela's misery means that it is not uncommon to see children rummaging through the garbage for food.  And as basic medical supplies and medicine run dangerously low, newborns and the elderly die unattended in Venezuelan hospitals.

As for Me and My House...  New York City has legalized a "third gender" on birth certificates.  Not that long ago, over 40 states passed resolutions supporting God's definition of marriage — between one man and one woman.  According to the Public Religious Research Institute, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, blacks, whites, Latinos, Catholics, and white mainline Protestant denominations support so-called "marriage" between people of the same sex.  The majority of evangelical Millennials support redefining marriage.  Years ago, LGBTQ activists claimed that openly homosexual leaders admitted into the Boy Scouts had no intention to change the organization from its founding on Christian principles.  As it turned out, first on the LGBTQ agenda was to remove "morally straight" from the Scout Oath.  We are living in a pretty sick time when "morally straight" is deemed hateful and offensive.

12-Year-Old Boy Named Trump Bullied, Ridiculed, Punched on Bus; Is Forced to Change his Name.  An 11-year-old Delaware boy named Joshua Trump was forced to change his last name after liberal indoctrinated children at the school bullied him and beat him.  Joshua's parents said it was so bad they decided to use the boy's father's name at the school from now on.

The Editor says...
Where are the "zero tolerance" anti-bullying enforcers?  On the other hand, why wasn't he known by his father's name in the first place?

James Comey, Menace to Society.  The intolerant progressives have virtually criminalized Christianity and Judaism while protecting Islam.  Even left-wing Jews are now openly anti-Semitic.  Progressives have been largely successful in outlawing the scientific notion of gender to embrace the sheer moonbattery of the "fluid gender" crowd.  So besieged with the desperate plight of LGBT persons, millennials actually think they make up 40% of our population when they are only about 4.5%.  For an even tinier percentage of people, elementary school bathrooms must be open to anyone and everyone, even men pretending to be women.

Does Freedom of Religion Mean Satanic Displays in State Capitols?  In the Illinois Capitol Rotunda this month, several traditions are being celebrated.  We find a nativity scene for Christmas; a menorah for Hanukkah; and, alongside these displays, an arm holding an apple, with a snake coiled around it.  This snake sculpture is a gift from the Chicago branch of The Satanic Temple.  Called "Snaketivity," the work also has a sign that reads, "Knowledge Is The Greatest Gift."  This revolting travesty is a result of decades of decisions pertaining to the non-establishment of religion asserted in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Starbucks sidebar:

Starbucks is a company that is apparently doing everything it can to go out of business.

Survey Shows 1 in 5 Millennials Sees U.S. Flag as 'Sign of Intolerance and Hatred'.  A survey released on Nov. 27 found that one in five millennials views the American flag as "a sign of intolerance and hatred," and two in five think it is okay to burn Old Glory.  The "State of American Patriotism Report," which was designed to assess the patriotism and historical knowledge of young Americans, also revealed that six in 10 millennials (ages 22-37) believe the United States is racist and sexist.

Jared:  The Birdbrain of Alcatraz.  As anyone with an amoeba's understanding of recent history knows, beginning in the early '60s, assorted [...] liberals jettisoned logic, common sense and a basic understanding of human nature by releasing criminals from the prisons where they belonged.  Instead of punishing criminals, we would give them social services, education and job training — with the implied understanding that they wouldn't move next door to any of the reformers.  The experts assured a disbelieving public that these policies would reduce crime.  As Thomas Sowell writes in The Vision of the Anointed:  Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, the stage was set.  Liberal criminologists' soft-on-crime policies were in place.  We only needed empirical evidence.  "THE RESULTS:  Crime rates skyrocketed.  Murder rates suddenly shot up until the murder rate in 1974 was more than twice as high as in 1961.  Between 1960 and 1976, a citizen's chances of becoming a victim of a major violent crime tripled."  Prior to this period, crime had been declining for three decades.

Why Are So Many Millennials Ignorant Anti-Americans?  A new YouGov poll asked more than 1,000 people aged 14 and up about their knowledge of the country's history and institutions, and their patriotic feelings toward the U.S. The nationwide survey, sponsored by the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, produced some alarming results.  Basically, it found younger generations — millennials (age 22-27) and Gen Z (age 14-21) — are less likely to love and respect the country.  And they're less informed about American history, and way more likely to embrace socialism.  Is that just evidence of youthful ignorance?  Or is it the result of a school system that indoctrinates children in leftist ideology?

Even California Cannot Defy Nature Forever.  [Scroll down]  Last year, we saw near-normal levels of precipitation.  If our life-giving reservoirs of the state's vast California Water Project and federal Central Valley Project are currently not full, it is mostly because millions of acre-feet of stored water were released to flow into the San Francisco Bay estuaries and the delta — contradicting most of the original mandates of the water projects of providing flood control, power generation, lake recreation, and irrigation for California residents. [...] Left unsaid is that more than 130 million trees died throughout the state's foothills and mountain ranges during the drought of 2011-2016 and were not removed from the forest floor, providing an immensity of natural kindling for fires.  To walk in a Sierra Nevada forest during summers requires navigating not just over fallen limbs and branches, but also rotting trees — all amid dead brush and dead but still-towering brown pines.  Gone are the periodic meadows and open spaces of the 1960s and 1970s, when logging companies harvested trees, thinned out the forests, replanted what was cut, and cleaned up the forest floor.  Yet given California's stringent anti-logging regulations of the last 20 years, there is no real California timber industry left, at least as it once was.  And scavenging even dead trees prompts a great debate, as environmentalists lecture on the advantages of letting the dead wood be.  Or, as Sierra Club organizer Daniel Barad put it in a January 2018 Sacramento Bee op-ed:  "Dead trees are vital components of the forest ecosystem and should be removed only when necessary."

Why is violent crime on BART on the rise?  San Fran is not a safe place to visit — tens of thousands of car break ins each year, and a 1.7% arrest rate.  The city gives out 4.4 million syringes for drug users — how do you think the druggies get the money for the drugs?  BART is a guaranteed crime zone.  You go on the system knowing you will be a crime victim.

Even Astronauts Fear the Left.  There are many reasons I pity today's younger generation of Americans.  Among them are:
  •   The unconscionable debt we are leaving them.
  •   The obliteration of male and female as separate and distinct categories — and the sexual confusion that is left in its wake.
  •   The emasculation of men and the de-feminization of women.
  •   The undermining of the value of marriage.
  •   The lack of God and religion in their lives — and the consequent search for meaning in the wrong places.
  •   The receiving of indoctrination, rather than education, in most schools from elementary through graduate.
  •   The inability to celebrate being American.
Tragically and ironically, each one of these was brought on by the very group many young people identify with:  the left.

The lowdown on the miscreant who got us into this mess:  Woodrow Wilson.  Claremont Review of Books, the brainiest and best publication in the conservative world, published my review of a new biography of America's first progressive president, Woodrow Wilson.  It's an honor to write for CRB, which kindly unlocked the paywall for my piece, entitled "The Great Resenter."  CRB is the only only political-intellectual journal that I read cover to cover.  If you don't subscribe, you should.  Progressive historians present Wilson as a paper saint, but the man was a monster.  He was an unreconstructed defender of slavery and a rancorous apologist for the Confederacy.  His whole academic and political life was devoted to tearing up the Constitution and replacing it with a progressive dictatorship.  This resentment against a Union that had crushed his native south in the Civil War drove his obsession with a world government with power to issue orders to the United States of America.

Democrats favor improving infrastructure as long as it takes longer and costs more.  Why can't the United States build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia?  Why can't we have all the nifty new airports, bridges, and trains that seem to spring up overnight in other parts of the world?  The answer, in one word, is Democrats.  Two groups that are virtually owned-and-operated subsidiaries of the Democratic party retard infrastructure progress here.  One is labor unions, and the other is environmental activists.

Colorado Will Soon Allow People To Select "Gender X" On Driver's Licenses.  Colorado residents who don't identify as a male or female will soon be able to select "Gender X" on their driver's licenses, thanks to recent court decisions.  The change will go into effect on Nov. 30 and comes from an emergency rule made by judges overseeing legal cases in which transgender individuals fought to change the sex listed on their driver's licenses from their biological sex to their preferred one.  "This is an important step for the state of Colorado that the state documents reflect our values," Colorado Department of Revenue executive director Michael Hartman told the Denver Post.  "People are people no matter their sex identification."

The Editor says...
I wonder how the judges decided this was an emergency.  But aside from that, I guess that means those Gender X people who get arrested can't complain about which jail they're sent to.  Until they make the state build special facilities just for them.

More People Are Leaving California.  But Still Not Enough.  California's Democrats have long held a stranglehold on the state's government.  Dianne Feinstein, who was born during the Great Depression and still doesn't have a single gray hair, is the one who unsuccessfully tried to screw up the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation.  She just won another Senate term over a Bernie Democrat who wanted to spend even more.  Gavin Newsom, another ex-San Francisco mayor, just got elected governor to replace another Democrat, Jerry Brown, who was term-limited twice.  So, voters are can expect to reap their reward.  California's governing party has never encountered any problem it couldn't let fester into a full-blown crisis.  For instance, the absence of reservoirs adequate for the growing population.  But, by golly, it's right on top of the high-cost, high-speed railroad to connect two minor cities in a state built around cars.  The government will then throw gobs of other people's money at any problem.

Why won't liberals admit their homeless policies don't work?  It's appropriate that the UN special rapporteur devoted to adequate housing has visited encampments in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Mumbai — and San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.  The homeless situation in those cities and others around the country is positively Third World, a blight that shows the persistence of human folly, and misery, despite what we take to be our steady progress to greater enlightenment and prosperity.  San Francisco is a crown jewel of the new economy, and a sink of vagrancy.

Movie review:  Roger & Me [Rated R]:  Michael Moore blames capitalism for the downfall of Flint, Michigan instead of the trade unions that bullied businesses & forced them to ship jobs overseas (due to excessive taxation) or the fact that Flint has been under Democratic leadership since 1973.

How Progressives Killed Birthright Citizenship.  Progressives may very well have set the table for the end of birthright citizenship by executive order or legislation during the 1990s.  This was not their intention, of course, but in their unprincipled pursuit of political power, they unwittingly might have choked off all attempts to cover birthright citizenship in a constitutional mantle.

More than half of movies have been R-rated in the past 50 years.  The MPAA is marking the 50th anniversary of its film ratings by releasing data on how movies have been rated over the last half-century.  The R rating has been placed on by far and away the majority of the movies since then, more than half of the almost 30,000 titles that have been given classifications.  The breakdown:  Since 1968, the first year of the rating classifications, there have been 17,202 movies rated R, 5,578 rated M/GP/PG, 4,913 rated PG-13 and 1,574 rated G.  Just 524 movies have been rated X or NC-17, reflecting the reluctance of exhibitors to carry those titles.

California Ranks as Poorest State, One of the Worst for Income Inequality.  Despite all the wealth in the state and the Democrat control of state government, California actually ranks as the poorest state in the country after costs of living are factored in.  A whopping 19 percent of Californians live below the poverty line.  While California represents just 12 percent of the nation's population, Californians represent a third of all Americans on welfare.  The average monthly cost of rent in the state is 43 percent higher than the national average.  Nearly a third of Californians spend more than half of their earnings on housing.  The situation is made worse by skyrocketing energy costs.  "Residents who can afford rent or a mortgage are on the hook for electricity rates burdened by green initiatives and regulation that grew 500 percent faster than the national average from 2011 to 2017."

The direct result of 1.6 gallon toilet mandates:
Exploding toilets force recall of pressure-assisted flushing system.  A pressure-assisted flushing system is being recalled because it can burst and cause the toilet tank to shatter.  According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the recall affects the Flushmate II 501-B pressure-assisted flushing system that was installed in 1.4 million toilet tanks between 1996 and 2013.  The system can burst at or near the vessel weld seam releasing stored pressure.  This pressure can lift the tank lid and shatter the tank, posing impact and laceration hazards to consumers and property damage.

More about low-flow toilets.

San Francisco:  Now so bad, it'll make you cry.  Twentieth-century San Francisco, Herb Caen's beloved Baghdad by the Bay, has ceased to exist.  It has been replaced by a city where the sidewalks around Market Street are, in places, caked in feces, urine, and vomit.  The stink as you emerge from the BART batters you like frozen sleet, shocking and overwhelming.  The hordes of homeless, sprawled in doorways and sleeping on the sidewalks, are a bitterly eclectic mixture of the mentally deranged; burnt out druggies; dead-eyed hippies; con artists; pickpockets; and hundreds of simply lost, forgotten souls. [...] As I walked the three blocks back to the BART, I was panhandled four times, plus two clumsy pickpocket attempts.  I didn't see a single cop in a car or on foot.  What could they do?  What finally broke my heart were the kids and women, also lying in the streets, drugged, shell-shocked, begging for food.

Legalized marijuana linked to a sharp rise in car crashes.  There has been an increase by up to 6 percent in the number of highway crashes in four of the states where the recreational use of marijuana has been legalized, according to a pair of new studies.  The new reports do not prove there's a direct risk caused by the use of marijuana among motorists, but they raise caution flags, especially since there is no easy way to test drivers to be sure if they are, in fact, under the influence of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, said David Harkey, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's Highway Loss Data Institute.

Driving And Smoking Pot Not Safe Combination; States With Legal Marijuana Have More Crashes.  Crashes are up in states that have legalized marijuana for recreational use compared to neighboring states that haven't, according to two new studies that examined data reported to insurers and police.  An analysis of collision insurance claims indicated that crashes rose by as much as 6% in Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, the first states to legalize retail sales of recreational marijuana.  A separate study of police-reported crashes found a 5.2% increase in the rate of crashes in Colorado, Oregon and Washington compared to nearby control states that didn't legalize marijuana sales.

Pedophile Arrests Soar Under Trump:  Media Silent.  Democrats love to talk about helping children.  That should scare most Americans, given that Democrats live in "Opposite World".  Sadly, most of the Democrat's policies hurt children in America.  The ideas seem good on paper.  However, they fail miserably in practice.  So America has a problem with children, as far too many fall prey to bad people.  For some, those bad people are their parents.  And when the parents fail, the government puts the children with foster parents who many times are just as bad.  Add to this the pressures of an over-sexualized society, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Fabricating Hate Crimes Is a Byproduct of Victimhood Ideology on College Campuses.  [Scroll down]  Incidents like this have become a strikingly common trend in the past few years, especially on college campuses.  While most alleged hate crimes on campus go unsolved, it is hard to ignore the fact that so many hoaxes have occurred.  A variety of motivations may prompt a student to make up a hate crime, but one thing is for certain:  The overwhelmingly dominant ideology on college campuses celebrates victimhood, even above achievement, and achievement itself is worthless without victimhood.  If one doesn't maintain some kind of victimhood status, your opinion is worth less, your accomplishments are dismissed, and your success is written off as the product of privilege.

100 ISIS Terrorists Caught in Guatemala as Central American Caravan Heads to U.S.  In a startling revelation, Guatemala's president announced in the country's largest newspaper that nearly 100 ISIS terrorists have been apprehended in the impoverished Central American nation.  Why should Americans care about this?  A caravan of Central American migrants is making its way north.  Let's not forget that Guatemala is one of the countries that bombarded the U.S. with illegal immigrant minors under Barack Obama's open border free-for-all.  They came in droves from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala through the Mexican border and for years Uncle Sam rolled out the welcome mat offering housing, food, medical treatment and a free education[.]  A terrorist could have easily slipped in considering the minors, coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), were not properly vetted and some turned out to be violent gangbangers who went on to commit heinous crimes in their adopted land of opportunity.  In fact, the nation's most violent street gang, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), was energized by the barrage of UACs.

One-party rule has left New York in a sorry state.  When it comes to businesses, the impacts of monopolies are well documented.  Lacking any of the benefits that flow from competition, customers can count on paying higher prices for the privilege of getting inferior service.  Alas, the same is true of government.  New Yorkers know too well that a political monopoly — one-party rule — yields some of America's highest taxes while services and results are mediocre at best.  Think public education and mass transit.

It's time to end women's sports.  It's time to end women's sports — especially since they're not just "women's" sports anymore.  A case in point is "Rachel" McKinnon, Ph.D., a man masquerading as a woman (MMW), or a "transgender," as the enlighteners say, who just won a women's masters cycling event.  As The Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft (almost) put it, he "whooped them little girls."  McKinnon isn't alone, as many MMW have won women's sporting events during the last decade.  To name just a few, a 55-year-old MMW won a women's long-drive competition (golf) in 2008.  Last year, a 39-year-old MMW won a women's weightlifting event.  Then there were the Connecticut's State Open track and field championships in June; the top two finishers in the 100-meter dash were both MMW (okay, being boys, they were BMG), with one of them setting the girls' state record in both the 100- and 200-meter runs.  Hey, you go...uh...girl.

Rage when you disagree:  How 'safe spaces' led to today's political mobs.  What's behind the recent spread of outraged mobs on US streets, wild-eyed and throwing violent fits because their favored political outcome didn't happen?  How did so many Americans give up on resolving disagreements through discussion and turn the fact that a disagreement exists into an excuse for a tantrum?  Campuses started setting up "safe spaces" well before 2015, when the news hit our media in earnest:  College students were literally taking shelter from the possibility of hearing opinions they might disagree with.  For all the mockery the idea received, we're seeing that principle extended to the real world.  The recent outbursts on our streets have their root in the idea that only one opinion is the correct one and all others must be shut down.

Female Transgender Says He's a Human Puppy.  According to the DailyMail, Tony McGinn, known as 'Tony Bark' to friends, has been into animal role-play all his entire life.  The 30-year old is s female transgender who calls himself a 'human pup'.  This has brought him closer to his husband, he says.

The Editor says...
In the good old days, seriously delusional sex perverts were institutionalized for the benefit and safety of the general public.  Today there is a world-wide contest underway to see who's the most outlandish freak, and monthly prizes are awarded by the news media in the form of (hopefully) temporary fame.

5-Year-Old Girl Allegedly Assaulted in School Bathroom, Transgender Policy Being Investigated.  A five-year-old girl allegedly was sexually assaulted at school in the girls' bathroom by a boy who identifies as gender-fluid, sparking an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) into the Decatur, Georgia school's transgender bathroom policy.  According to a legal complaint by Roger G. Brooks of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and Vernadette R. Broyles of Georgia Adoption & Family Law Practice, the boy, who was also five years old, reportedly assaulted the girl as she was leaving a bathroom stall at Oakhurst Elementary School in November 2017.

'Emotional support' squirrel gets passenger removed from Frontier flight.  A woman was removed from a Frontier Airlines flight Tuesday night [10/9/2018] after the airline refused to let her fly with her emotional support squirrel.  The airline said the woman noted in her reservation for Flight 1612 from Orlando, Fla., to Cleveland that she would be boarding with an emotional support animal, FOX8 Cleveland reported.

The Editor says...
If you need the constant presence of a squirrel to maintain your enotional stability in public places, you really should either stay home or have yourself locked up in a mental hospital.

Woman removed from flight bound for Cleveland due to 'emotional support' squirrel.  Frontier Airlines said a woman had to be escorted off a flight bound for Cleveland Tuesday night due to a squirrel.  Frontier said a passenger boarded Flight 1612 in Orlando, saying the squirrel was an emotional support animal.  The airline said the passenger noted in her reservation that she was bringing an emotional support animal, but it was not indicated the animal was a squirrel.  Frontier said "rodents, including squirrels are not allowed" on its flights.

The Editor continues...
Next time I fly, I should bring along a little box of my emotional support bedbugs.

What Do The Worst-Run States Have In Common?  They're Run By Tax-And-Spend Democrats.  Which political party is better at managing taxpayer dollars?  The latest ranking of states' fiscal condition offers an unequivocal answer.

San Francisco:  Land of the Living Dead.  Effectively, there's nothing in this news story that you don't know already.  Anyone who has followed the news and who reads this blog knows full well that downtown San Francisco has been given over to drug addicts and the homeless.  In the most liberal blue city in America, Nancy Pelosi's home town, you cannot walk the streets in many neighborhoods.  What's news is the place it appeared:  The New York Times.  The paper of record sent a reporter and a photographer out to document the nightmare that is the streets of San Francisco.  They did not pull any punches.  They told it like it is.

California's Socialist Oligarchy:  Making the State Unaffordable.  Nowhere are the consequences of California's oligarchical socialism more evident than in the cost of housing.  State legislation has made it nearly impossible for developers to construct new housing outside the so-called "urban growth boundary."  Instead, development is redirected into the footprint of existing urban areas.  While there is a natural tendency as population increases to see higher density redevelopment in urban cores, by restricting outward expansion of urban areas, the value of the limited remaining eligible land becomes artificially inflated.  But established landowners and large development firms benefit from these restrictions.  They are able to withstand years, if not decades, of expensive permitting delays and endless litigation.  They are able to afford millions in permit fees because these costs are offset by their ability to sell residence units — from high-rise condos to detached single family dwellings — at prices far beyond what they would cost in a normal market.  These billionaire business interests get richer, while ordinary Californians who want to own or develop land cannot afford to go through the permit process.

The One-Party State.  The state [of California] has the most liberal environmental laws and regulations in the country, which hamper the development of affordable housing.  A San Francisco Chronicle investigation in 2017 showed rising housing costs driving lower-income Californians out of their homes and into the streets.  Homelessness has skyrocketed in both the cities and the rural areas of the state.  While 12 percent of the U.S. population is in California, 25 percent of the country's homeless live there.  From Sacramento to San Diego, you can't help but notice the multitudes of people living on the street.  Look at the housing shortage and homelessness, the decline of manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs, and the growth of a tech economy that rewards disruption over predictability, and you see why some are suspicious of the California way.

Obama's Social Experiments Are Wreaking Havoc on America Today.  Democrats seem to be operating on the basis of "guilty until proven innocent," believing the accuser without any corroborating evidence.  This kind of sexual assault witch hunt actually began under former president Barack Obama — as did some of the other key social issues America is wrestling with today.  While the Left's advocacy on social issues and identity politics long predated Obama, the former president's policies supercharged many of the issues dividing America in 2018.  His administration helped launch the current liberal cultural wave that wreaks havoc on American politics — and extends far beyond politics.

Venezuela:  Socialism in Action.  [Scroll down]  Beyond increasing outflows, Venezuela's fundamental demographic balance sheet is worsening too.  Once-eradicated diseases, including diphtheria and malaria, are returning with a vengeance because of the collapse of Venezuela's health-care system alongside the flight of many people away from urban areas into ad hoc rural squatter communities.  Other diseases may crop up as well.  Partly as a result of this degraded health situation, the death rate appears to be rising.  Official data from 2017 reported 181,000 deaths, up from 170,000 two years earlier.  Since there were fewer people in the country in 2017, this means the death rate rose by even more.  While deaths are rising, births are falling.  In 2015 about 600,000 babies were born in Venezuela.  In 2017 it was just 561,000.  The decline has almost certainly continued into 2018.

Doctors Performing Mastectomies On Teen "Transgender" Girls.  This story never seems to end.  There are, apparently, doctors accepting cases of underage female children who "identify" as males and performing double mastectomies on them to avoid the trauma of developing breasts.

New York City Passes Bill Allowing Parents To Choose 'X' For Their Children's Gender.  New York's City Council passed a bill Wednesday allowing parents to choose "X" on their newborn babies' birth certificates.  The bill, passed in a 41-6 vote, also allows any adult living in the city to change his or her gender to "X" on their birth certificate.

Enemies Within.  Young corporate executives believe and pander to the left's negative view of America.  This is why we see corporate advertising supportive of lies such as that America is destroying the planet and that cops routinely murder blacks.  Leftists have instilled in our youths the lie that people around the world have too little because evil, greedy, and selfish Americans have too much.  This is why many youths believe that it is only fair that we open our borders to whoever wishes to enter.  And how dare we expect immigrants to assimilate, speak English, and embrace capitalism?  Youths believe that defending our borders against the invasion of illegals is racist and hateful.  Our kids have also been taught the lie that Christians, conservatives, and Republicans are haters obsessed with suppressing women and minorities.  Corporate executive operatives of the young enemies within movement believe that a majority of Americans share leftist disdain for their country.  This is why the NFL originally rallied behind [Colin] Kaepernick, leading the charge of pro football players taking a knee in protest against our National Anthem.

Is Your Library Inviting Drag Queens to Talk to Children?  Texas Values has been tracking a disturbing trend across the country which recently occurred in Houston as well.  Known as "Drag Queen Story Hour," public libraries are allowing men dressed as women, or drag queens, to read stories to young children.

Tourism Still Suffering After the Red Hen Denied Sanders.  A small town in Virginia is trying to recover its image after The Red Hen restaurant famously refused to serve President Donald Trump's spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

STDs continue rapid rise in U.S., setting new record, CDC says.  Sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in America, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  In fact, nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed in the U.S. in 2017, surpassing the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000, CDC scientists reported Tuesday [8/28/2018].

California's Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us.  In 2005 while a freshman California Assemblyman, I had the chance to visit Northern California and meet with the forest product industry professionals who grew, managed, and harvested trees on private and public lands.  They told me of a worrisome trend started years earlier where both federal and state regulators were making it more and more difficult for them to do their jobs.  As a result, timber industry employment gradually collapsed, falling in 2017 to half of what it was 20 years earlier, with imports from Canada, China, and other nations filling domestic need.  As timber harvesting permit fees went up and environmental challenges multiplied, the people who earned a living felling and planting trees looked for other lines of work.  The combustible fuel load in the forest predictably soared.  No longer were forest management professionals clearing brush and thinning trees.  But, fire suppression efforts continued.  The result was accurately forecast by my forest management industry hosts in Siskiyou County in 2005: larger, more devastating fires — fires so hot that they sterilized the soil, making regrowth difficult and altering the landscape.  More importantly, fires that increasingly threatened lives and homes as they became hotter and more difficult to bring under control.

Liberals are a Danger to All of Us.  Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America only 20 years ago.  That's when they practiced capitalism.  Then socialist Hugo Chavez took over.  He modeled Venezuela after the Cuban model.  Today there is no food on shelves, very little water, no gas available in an oil-rich country, no toilet paper.  The proud people of Venezuela are eating out of dumpsters and garbage cans.  Days ago, it got much worse.  The socialist president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro devalued the currency overnight by 96 percent.  This is one of the largest currency devaluations in world history.  Inflation is now officially 1 million percent in Venezuela.  But have no fear.  Venezuela's socialist leader introduced bold new policies to save the country.  His solutions to the unfolding disaster?  Higher taxes, subsidized gas prices and a massive minimum wage increase.  Do you recognize those solutions?  Those are the exact prescriptions of Democrat politicians in America.

Venezuela's great socialist experiment has brought a country to its knees.  Imagine if Theresa May suddenly announced that her government was going to devalue the pound by 96 percent; increase the minimum wage by 6,000 percent; pay the wage increases for millions of businesses for three months; tie the pound to a mythical cryptocurrency; prepared for petrol rationing; and impose a 0.7 percent tax on big financial transactions.  It would be seen either as an act of lunacy, of a collapsing country — or both.  For the long-suffering people of Venezuela, it's just the latest stage of their country's grand socialist experiment.  President Nicolás Maduro has just issued a new currency, called 'sovereign bolivars'.  The original idea was that the currency would be like the old one, but with three zeros lopped off.  But then hyperinflation got so out of hand that the government decided on five zeros.

A Perfect Storm Threatens America's Survival.  [V]iolent crime increased in many of the nation's largest cities in 2016 as metro areas saw jumps in homicide, robberies, and aggravated assaults.  Chicago shooting deaths are approaching war-like proportions, with 664 people killed in 2017.  So far in 2018, 360 homicides have been reported, most of them from gunfire.  The Democrats who run these cities, many of them sanctuary cities, have no clue how to deal with the situation other than to spend more money of taxpayers dumb enough to stay behind.  Democrat policies are leading to financial and social disaster.

Got Income Inequality? Least Affordable Cities Are Also the Bluest.  This week the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a report of the cities with the highest housing burden, that is to say, those who have to spend the most of their income just to live, which of course forces them to stretch their budgets on everything else.  Some are describing housing affordability as a crisis that is squeezing middle-class Americans out of what has historically been the standard of middle-class life (home ownership).  Of the 20 cities highlighted as the worst, 18 of them are in blue states and all of them picked Clinton over Trump.  Cities in the Bay Area — San Francisco and San Jose — top the list of housing burden (55.9 and 54.7 percent respectively) and also top the list for the highest share of Clinton voters (76.7 and 72.9 percent).

San Francisco creates 'Poop Patrol' to clean up city's feces-ridden sidewalks.  San Francisco's decrepit, feces-ridden sidewalks are the residents' No. 1 complaint — so the city's newly elected mayor is creating a new clean up patrol to deal with "No. 2."  The California city, which has been battling increasing homelessness over the last couple of years, launched a new pilot program called the "Poop Patrol," which is set to scour targeted neighborhoods looking for human waste.  The city's 311 service has received nearly 14,600 calls about piles of poop, other human waste and dog feces since the beginning of the year.

A Tale of Three Cities.  Detroit, in 1960, was the richest per capita city in America.  Fifty-some years later, in 2013, Detroit filed for bankruptcy.  Now it's a squatter's paradise.  Homes once owned by residents, then lost to foreclosure, are now owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority.  Today, it's first come, first served as to who lives in these abandoned homes.  The Detroit Free Press notes "[d]ead bodies, wild dogs, squatters in government-owned Detroit houses."

California Fires:  Government Policies, Not Global Warming.  As large swaths of California are yet again on fire, environmentalist groups, the leftist media, and Democratic California Governor Jerry Brown are quick to blame climate change.  But the burning in California has more to do with misguided and short-sighted environmental regulations than with weather or climate. [...] The Endangered Species Act has made it nearly impossible for private-property owners to clear dead brush from their own land because it may destroy habitats of protected species.  From 1993 until 2003, residents of Riverside County were prohibited from removing brush from their properties because such brush had become a habitat for the endangered kangaroo rat.  When a wildfire broke out there in 2003, the dry, dead brush served as kindling as the blaze destroyed 2,700 homes and killed 27 people.  The rat's habitat was also destroyed.  So, in what can charitably be described as a misguided attempt to save the environment from the ravages of human activities, government regulations have made the fires worse.

Death to the Rule of Law.  [Scroll down]  [Lyndon B.] Johnson quickly veered to the left at home, creating the Great Society, a grandiose welfare state that still hangs like an albatross around the necks of black people, women and other minorities.  His foreign policy, ostensibly anti-communist, led to having nearly half a million troops in the little country of Vietnam, and yet, ultimately losing the lives of 58,000 young Americans and the war.  Instead of trying to actually win, Johnson let civilians, not the military, run the war, and allowed the military/industrial complex that Eisenhower had warned about, to grow into an overwhelming behind-the-scenes power.

Anarchy Breaks Out in Portland, With the Mayor's Blessing.  Along the trolley tracks behind the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, a biohazard cleanup crew works under police protection.  It finds used needles and buckets of human waste simmering in nearly 100-degree heat.  The smell of urine and feces fills the block.  For more than five weeks, as many as 200 people had occupied the site to demand ICE's immediate abolition.  They're gone now, but a community is left reeling.  Thirty-eight days of government-sanctioned anarchy will do that.

K-12: Parallels with Venezuela.  Such a marvelous country.  Venezuela is twice the size of California, with a mix of tropical and temperate climates, with 1,500 miles of oceanfront and, guess what, more oil reserves than any other country in the world.  What could go wrong?  Venezuela has everything, unfortunately including a socialist government. [...] Venezuela has everything but is a basket case.  The American public school system has everything but, for most students, is a basket case.  Arguably, these two systems are fraternal twins battered into their present deformities by socialist deception and distraction.

How far can Venezuela go in raising price of world's cheapest gas?  In Venezuela's inflation-hit economy, a single US dollar can buy 3.5 million liters of gasoline — an absurdity that the government says it will tackle with a hike in the cost of state-subsidized fuel.  But just how far can President Nicolas Maduro go without getting his fingers burned?

It's time to hold Democrats responsible for Chicago's violence.  Most Americans are appalled to read that 63 people were shot in Chicago over the weekend, with 10 fatalities.  The numbers are huge, downright massacre-level.  News coverage says Chicago's hospital and emergency rooms are now crowd scenes.  Here in California, we are appalled at the death toll among firemen and other public workers in California's massive wildfires, brought about by eco-wackos and their environmental mismanagement, which have killed 7.  In Chicago, seven dead would be a good day.  What's going on?  All of these attacks are gang-related, according to this report, and are happening in the 6th, 10th, and 11th Districts, all led by Democrats.  What a massive sludge of corruption and thuggery rests behind that.

In silly San Francisco disease-ridden needles are A-OK but a plastic cocktail stirrer will soon be illegal.  San Francisco has long been a bastion of the far left — and now it's paying a high price for its extreme progressive policies, including once-beautiful streets filled with dangerous syringes and human waste, resembling Third World back alleys.  The city has embraced an open drug culture at the same time it spends hundreds of millions of dollars to combat a growing homelessness problem.  But no matter what the city does, it seems to have the opposite effect and make things worse.  Each year, San Francisco hands out millions of syringes to drug users — 4.45 million to be exact.  San Francisco officials do this because they believe this is cheaper than the medical costs associated with injectable drug users getting diseases from sharing needles.  Yet as always, politically correct progressive politicians never think about the law of unintended consequences.

The Republican Party:  Not Much of a Horse But the Only One in the Corral.  All over urban America, parents struggle to scrape together the money to buy a house in a neighborhood where the public schools have not been destroyed.  In small town America, parents warn their kids about drug pushers from South of the Border who have discovered and targeted the once-safe American countryside.  Illegal immigrants commit crimes at rates hugely in excess of those legally present.  For 2014 the Sentencing Commission of the US Justice Department reported that of all crimes for which convictions were obtained and sentences imposed, illegals made up 13% (if the 11.2 million figure for US illegals is correct, illegals constitute slightly more than 3% of the population)[.]  And on and on.  None of this reaches the neighborhoods of those who brought it to us.

Wise Giants and Arrogant Dwarves.  Marxism, of course, remains the premier example of the hubris of scientism and the belief that the imagined "laws" of history can be understood like the laws of physics, and that humans and society can then be improved by the skilled application of coercive power.  The toll of that arrogance was 100 million murdered not in wars, but in political violence sparked by the attempt to reengineer human nature.  Yet despite that instructive and monitory example, despite the more recent evidence, in Cuba and Venezuela, of collectivism's penchant for murder, misery, and tyranny, our sophisticated "bright" dwarves today are still touting the social and economic superiority of socialism, communism's offspring.  Of course, murderous tyranny has been a constant of human history, for it reflects the unalienable destructive flaws of humanity.

San Francisco Learns That There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.  This July, the city's minimum wage climbed to $15, up from $14, the result of a four-year series of hikes imposed by San Francisco voters in 2014.  The minimum wage will now be indexed to the Consumer Price Index.  Not surprisingly, the rapid increase in wages has hurt the city's businesses, particularly its restaurants.  As the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out recently, "Despite the anticipation for what has finally arrived, many (restaurateurs) continue to struggle with finding a balance, because tactics such as adjusting service models, cutting staff and raising prices can only go so far."  The paper quotes one restaurant owner saying "you can only charge so much for a burger ... before people are leaving to go find a better value.  It's the same challenge we've been facing for a while."  Which is why many restaurants have shut their doors.

More about The Minimum Wage.

The 10 Most Destructive Americans of My 8 Decades.  [#3] Lyndon Johnson:  Johnson turned the Vietnam conflict into a major war for America.  It could have ended early if he had listened to the generals instead of automaker Robert McNamara.  The ultimate result was:  1) 58,000 American military deaths and collaterally tens of thousands of American lives damaged; and 2) a war that badly divided America and created left wing groups that evaded the draft and eventually gained control of our education system.  Even worse, his so-called War on Poverty led to the destruction of American black families with a significant escalation of welfare and policies designed to keep poor families dependent on the government (and voting Democrat) for their well-being.  He deliberately created a racial holocaust that is still burning today.  A strong case could be made for putting him at the top of this list.

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#44] Comic Book Bias:  No I don't mean that the media is demeaning comic books, I mean that comic books are demeaning conservatives in yet another example of the media attacking the right.  For just a very few examples, we had the Captain America comic that portrayed the Tea Party movement as dangerous and anti-American, the Batman comic that portrayed Muslims as heroes, and the Archie Comic that introduced a gay character to the series.  Unfortunately, comic books have for a long time been filled with anti-conservative themes.

"Occupy ICE" Finally Ejected from Portland, But They Left a Nasty Surprise Behind.  Occupy ICE did have a clear goal: they wanted Immigration and Customs Enforcement abolished.  There's just one problem: that's never going to happen.  Even the Democrats who drafted a bill to abolish the agency voted no.  It was simply a stunt to get the liberal media riled up.  Occupy ICE was yet another waste of time and money.  Not to mention a massive burden on the city of Portland (and every other city in which they gathered).  Finally, after a month of nothing, Portland police have had enough.  The Occupy ICE encampment has become such a danger, police are forcing them to leave.  But, as in the case of the Dakota pipeline occupation and Zuccotti Park, these liberal "heroes" left behind a massive amount of waste.

Income Inequality is Much Worse in Blue States than Red States.  One reason Democrat politicians talk a lot about inequality may be that Democrat-dominated states have much higher levels income disparity.  Income inequality is higher in states that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 when measured by the average income of the top one percent against the average income of the bottom 99 percent, according to data from a new report by the Economic Policy Institute.  For Clinton states, the top incomes were on average 23.6 times the average income for the other 99 percent.

New SF mayor will try asking homeless to be nice, instead of penalizing them for pooping on the streets.  San Francisco has a brand new mayor, Ms. London Breed, the result of the untimely death of Mayor Ed Lee, and it does not look good for the city coming to grips with a crisis on its streets.  The accumulation of human waste and contaminated drug needles posing a severe threat to the health of its residents and visitors is also a challenge to the survival if the city's biggest industry in terms of employment:  tourism.  A huge medical convention has announced that it will no longer visit San Francisco owing to the health and safety hazards the streets now pose.

The Left-wing Paradise of San Francisco.  Represented in Congress by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and run for years by almost all Democrats, San Francisco should be a mecca for the left.  But the city is fast becoming one of the worst places in the U.S. to live.  The homeless problem is out of control.  Experts say it "could exceed some of the dirtiest slums in the world."  There are around 7,500 homeless people in the city.  Human feces is strewn across public areas.  The NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit examined over 150 blocks of downtown San Francisco and found 96 blocks littered with feces.  San Francisco's new mayor, London Breed, observed, "there are more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here."  She says that a cleaning crew will clean up an area, but "right after they leave, maybe an hour or two later, the place is filled with trash again."

Turning Luddite eco-imperialism into a virtue.  Banks and other carbon colonialists glorify limited wind and solar energy for poor villages, while denying financial support for fossil fuel electricity generation.  Anti-chemical fanatics promote bed nets and narrowly defined "integrated pest management," but bitterly oppose chemical pesticides and the spatial repellant DDT to kill mosquitoes, keep them out of homes and prevent deadly malaria.  Radical organic food groups battle any use of genetically engineered crops that multiply crop yields, survive droughts and slash pesticide spraying by 75% or more.  They even vilify Golden Rice, which enables malnourished children to avoid Vitamin A Deficiency, blindness and death.  Now their struggles are getting worse, as a coalition of well-financed malcontents, agitators and pressure groups once again prove the adage that power politics makes strange bedfellows.  Coalition members share a deep distaste for fossil fuels, petrochemicals (including chemical pesticides and fertilizers), modern agriculture, biotechnology, corporations and capitalism.

SF Mayor Says Her City is Drowning in Poop: 'There's More Feces - Than I've Ever Seen'.  San Francisco Mayor London Breed said the streets of her city are flooded with the excrement of the homeless in an interview Friday [7/13/2018].  Breed, a Democrat who was inaugurated as San Francisco's mayor Wednesday [7/11/2018], urged homeless advocacy groups that receive money from the city to teach homeless people to "clean up after themselves."  "There is more feces on the sidewalks than I've ever seen growing up here," Breed told KNTV.  "That is a huge problem and we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans."

San Francisco Is Absolutely Covered in Fecal Matter.  Recently elected San Francisco Mayor London Breed says that the city she loves is absolutely covered in fecal matter and "we are not just talking about from dogs — we're talking about from humans."  Talking about human feces, folks!  Particularly, feces from humans experiencing homelessness right now.  Apparently, the city is so overrun by poverty that people are using virtually all public spaces as their toilet because they cannot afford proper lavatories.  To this extent, Mayor Breed is asking that homelessness advocacy groups and non-profit encourage those they are helping to clean up after themselves.

San Francisco's crisis looks like New York's future.  What happened in San Francisco is obvious.  It stopped prosecuting quality-of-life offenses and, unsurprisingly, the quality of life for the city's residents and visitors decreased sharply.  In 2015, San Francisco courts stopped enforcing bench warrants for such offenses.  Police continued writing up tickets for public drunkenness or sleeping in parks, but when the accused failed to show up to their court appearance a judge simply dismissed the outstanding warrant.  New York started following San Francisco's lead in 2016 when Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr. announced his office would no longer be prosecuting offenses such as public urination.  Both cities have accepted that they'll continue to have a large number of people living on their streets and inevitably using their sidewalks as a toilet.

These states have the highest gas prices.  The national average this July 4 is $2.86 per gallon, according to AAA.  However, travelers on the West Coast could see prices well above that.  In California, drivers will pay $3.66 per gallon on Wednesday [7/4/2018].  In Washington, prices are only slightly lower, at $3.43 per gallon.  Meanwhile, gas in Oregon is averaging $3.32 per gallon.

San Francisco: Poster-Child For The Failure Of U.S. Cities' Blue Model.  By any standard, San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  So why has it suddenly become an unappealing place to visit and to live? [...] San Francisco proudly calls itself a "progressive" city.  It follows what writer and scholar Walter Russell Mead calls the progressive "Blue Model" of governance.  Yet, the policies it follows — high taxes, inane regulations, petty nanny-state authoritarianism, tolerance for rising lawlessness and disorder on its streets in the name of "compassion" — are the very ones that have driven middle-class and working-class citizens out.  Only the rich and the so-called homeless, who have been welcomed into the city and are a growing issue, can afford to live in the city.

San Francisco Logs Over 16,000 Feces Complaints in One Week.  A website and related app that allows local residents to request maintenance or non-emergency services from the city has received 16,015 complaints with the keyword 'feces' in the last week at the time of this writing, and many pertain to human waste in public places.  Additionally, words and phrases synonymous with 'feces' are found in thousands more grievances.  Many of the complaints also connect the fecal matter to vagrants and homeless encampments — a sight all too common now across California.

20 Pounds Of Human Feces Left On San Francisco Sidewalk.  According to the Fresno Bee, a trash bag filled with roughly 20 pounds of human feces was left sitting on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco.  "It's the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States," reports FB.  "The bags of human poop were said to be left in San Francisco's Tenderloin district."

Increasingly Putrid City by the Bay.  [Scroll down]  I love the city [of San Francisco] and find its decrepit situation depressing.  At least everyone is noticing its tawdriness.  "Trash bags full of approximately 20 pounds of human poop were left on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco," the Fresno Bee reported on Wednesday [7/4/2018].  "It's the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States."  Those smelly, possibly leaking bags were left in the downscale Tenderloin, but large swaths of upscale areas now resemble an outdoor sewer with human feces, open-air drug use, and other signs of the breakdown of civic order.  The problem of homelessness and drug abuse isn't confined to San Francisco, of course. [...] In fairness, I've seen similar situations throughout the country.  But in San Francisco the disorder isn't confined to alleys and bushes.  The encampments are in plain view and spreading.  The panhandlers can be frighteningly aggressive.

San Francisco Has Received Over 20,000 Feces Complaints in Last 7 Days.  In the last week, the city has received over 20,000 complaints of human waste needing cleanup trough its SF311 site. [...] There are 6705 complaints for the term "human waste" which pushes the total to well over 20,000 with additional complaints for [slang synonyms for] fecal matter and other related terms.

SF's appalling street life repels residents — now it's driven away a convention.  In a move that is alarming San Francisco's biggest industry, a major medical association is pulling its annual convention out of the city — saying its members no longer feel safe.  "It's the first time that we have had an out-and-out cancellation over the issue, and this is a group that has been coming here every three or four years since the 1980s," said Joe D'Alessandro, president and CEO of S.F. Travel, the city's convention bureau.  D'Alessandro declined to name the medical association, saying the bureau still hopes to bring the group back in the future.

The Editor says...
The Editor and Mrs. Editor went to San Antonio in mid-June for the Republican state convention, and it was surprisingly enjoyable.  It was rather hot outside, and there were some Austin-style eccentrics on the streets, but the area around the convention center is constantly patrolled by the police as well as a bunch of street-cleaning custodians like you'd see in an amusement park.  Forget California, people.  Bring your convention to Texas.

Left Coast Lawlessness.  Seattle's predicament is emblematic of the broader crises faced by many progressive West Coast cities, where local leaders have forced law enforcement to take a hands-off approach to policing unsanctioned tent cities and vagrancy at the expense of public safety and health.  San Francisco, long considered a model of progressive urban policy, is plagued by filth, chaos, and public-safety hazards.  Local leaders plan to spend an incredible $305 million on combatting homelessness for the current fiscal year alone, but disorder spreads as the city fails to enforce the rule of law and basic sanitary measures.  Block-by-block surveillance reveals the deterioration of downtown San Francisco.  Of 153 city blocks surveyed, 41 contained used drug needles and 96 had human feces present.  Tourists are dismayed to leave their downtown hotels, to be confronted by mentally ill and aggressive homeless people who are taking control of the streets.  University of California Berkeley professor Lee Riley, an expert on infectious disease, observes that some of San Francisco's streets are dirtier than Third World slums.

Seattle cops flee the force in 'mass exodus' due to frustrations with city's politics, report says.  At least 41 cops have left the Seattle Police Department this year, many of them reportedly citing frustration with the city's politics and a perceived lack of support from local officials. [...] "I've been here since 1980, I've never seen the city in the condition it is in.  It's because it's been allowed on many levels," [Seattle Police Officers Guild Vice President Richard] O'Neill said.

Anti-cop leftist politics spur Seattle police 'mass exodus'.  A "mass exodus" of 41 officers from the Seattle Police Department (SPD) has occurred in the first five months of this year, with union leaders blaming the city's ultra-left politics and anti-police policies.  Seattle Police Guild Vice President Rich O'Neill said the exodus from the Northwest's most populous city is unprecedented.  "I have never seen the number of officers who are leaving — and the way they are leaving," O'Neill asserted, according to Seattle's Q13 Fox News (KCPQ-TV).

Bill adding third gender choice for licenses, IDs nears passage.  A bill directing the Registry of Motor Vehicles to let people choose "X" for a gender instead of male or female passed the Senate nearly unanimously and could bring the change to state-issued IDs as soon as November.  The option — already available in Oregon, California, Maine and Washington, D.C. — addresses concerns by people who don't identify as solely male or female and consider themselves non-binary, meaning neither one nor the other gender.

Mad Max and Nancy Pelosi:  The twin faces of the Democratic Party.  It can be lost on no one that the Democrats care not one bit for American citizens.  Thousands of them have been murdered by criminal illegals, who are most often given a pass by the courts for numerous DUIs, drug crimes, and gun crimes for which Americans would be imprisoned.  The crimes of members of MS13 are not at all different from those of ISIS — vicious beyond imagination.  And yet the left defends them, seeks to embrace their arrival here.  The senseless murders of innocents like Kate Steinle mean nothing to Nancy Pelosi, and that murder happened on her watch, in her district.  Her city has been ravaged by her ruinous progressive policies.  Like Los Angeles, it is overrun with homeless people, drug addicts who urinate, defecate, and cast off their dirty needles anywhere they please, all over the city.  No one goes to San Francisco as a tourist anymore.  It's blighted and dangerous.  This is what the policies of our left hath wrought.

The Left and Children.  Tens of millions of U.S. children who are stuck in government schools are not only being taught that homosexuality and same-sex "marriage" are normal, but that biology doesn't determine a person's sex.  Because of liberalism, children are being read to by drag queens, "entertained" by drag queens, and even turned into drag queens!  Because of liberalism, children in government schools are being provided with a study guide on transgenderism that instructs kids that a gender-deluded lifestyle is just another choice for a young person to make.  Because of liberalism, children in government schools are being provided with a George Soros-funded "sexual health toolkit" that, among other immoralities, and in spite of the significant health disparities suffered by homosexual teens, instructs them on homosexual behavior, including sodomy.  Because of liberalism, those who wish to flee the immoral and unhealthy homosexual lifestyle are being hindered from doing so, and in this backwards process, liberals have banned the Bible.  Because of liberalism, in addition to invading girls' locker rooms and bathrooms, and as I warned would be the case, boys are taking trophies from girls.

Left Coast Lawlessness.  The anarchy and disorder dominating progressive cities across the West Coast recently hit a new low in Seattle.  King County officials are looking to roll out a "safe injection van," a legal venue at which addicts could shoot up illegal drugs unhindered and "safely."  The first of its kind in the United States, the van would manage to undermine further the rule of law while also doing little to help addicts.  Seattle's urban decay goes deeper, though, with skyrocketing rates of homelessness, an explosion in opioid usage and deaths, and spikes in violent crime.

Government removal of children from their parents didn't start with Trump.  The government has routinely taken children from their parents for the past 50 years; not in increments of 2,000 as indicated in the tabloid, but by the millions.  It began with the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which included sex on it its list of categories to receive discrimination protection.  This law neutered the American male in general, but the African-American community experienced its immediate implementation.  The government fostered unwed motherhood through financial inducements made possible by the welfare system, which gave women incentives to have children if they weren't married.  Even well-meaning young couples who planned to get married opted for the welfare system because it meant tens of thousands of dollars in increased income over the life of the young family.  Fathers lived with parents, other family members and friends, for if welfare workers found even a pair of pants hanging in the closet of the mother, she would lose her welfare payments.  This was the first step in separating children from parents.  The father was removed from the home.

Going Fatherless on Father's Day.  Gay Pride Month, if you somehow haven't noticed, is this June.  It happens to coincide with the Obergefell decision, June 26, 2015, when Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and a handful of robed liberals rendered unto themselves the ability to redefine the multi-millennial, Western, Judeo-Christian, human, Biblical, biological, natural conception of marriage between a man and a woman.  Obergefell is celebrated at the website of the official Gay Pride Calendar by the unforgettable image of President Barack Obama's White House illuminated in rainbow colors.  It's ironic that liberals at Google and the Obama White House would, without any sense of contradiction, celebrate both things; that is, Father's Day and Obergefell.  What's the irony?  The irony is that by redefining marriage in America, and forcibly imposing that redefinition upon all 50 states via judicial fiat, leftists from Barack Obama to Google's anonymous powers have pioneered a form of family that is, flatly, fatherless.  Think about it:  a family of two married women is a family without a father.  Why purposely create fatherless families?

Report:  Netflix Bans Employees from Looking at Each Other for More Than Five Seconds.  Netflix has reportedly banned workers from looking at each other for more than five seconds as part of its new anti-harassment rules.  The new policy also bans the company's film crews from asking their colleagues for their phone numbers, according to an article in the Sun.  "Senior staff went to a harassment meeting to learn what is and isn't appropriate," an on-set runner told the Sun.  "Looking at anyone longer than five seconds is considered creepy."

Black America Walking Off the Cliff.  The pre-welfare black society understood the necessity for respect and responsibility.  From slavery until LBJ's War on Poverty programs, intact black American families were the norm.  The church was the glue that sealed biblical bindings in the hearts and minds of the family.  Fathers governed their households, and young men were less likely to become criminals.  Fornicators and adulterers were unwelcomed parasites.  Premarital pregnancies were a rarity, as they were a cause for shame and reproach.  In 1950, eighty-five years after slavery, the two-parent black household was 78%.  By the mid-sixties, black lives started to matter much less under LBJ's Great Society.  Now, just fifty-three years after the War on Poverty began, the once stable two-parent black household has disintegrated to an abysmal 27%, and the black church is all but silent!  The roots of this catastrophe were sown the minute the black church started trusting in government instead of God.

Bourdain: Casualty of Leftist Mindset.  In 1798, founding father John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." Today, Christian politicians are branded "dangerous" by leftist-dominated mainstream media.  The Democrat party hijacked by leftists removed God from their platform.  When Democrats voted God back into their platform the convention floor erupted with angry boos.  Can you imagine a political party so wicked that they boo God?  Leftists laugh at Christians.  Leftists erroneously believe man is the ultimate power, capable of regulating equal outcomes.  They foolishly believe man can save or destroy the planet.  Michael Crichton brilliantly articulates leftist folly in his novel Jurassic Park.  Believing themselves to be wiser than God, leftists always fight to change God's original intent regarding biology, marriage, and gender.

McGowan and Argento inadvertantly [sic] explain Bourdain's suicide.  It was love, love unencumbered by borders, and free as a bird, so actress Rose McGowan would have us think.  What could be worse than borders, after all?  So don't go blaming actress Asia Argento for her lover Anthony Bourdain's suicide because the pair was involved in some kind of open-marriage-without-the-marriage hook-up, you see.  That's what's been reported as straight news lately, and what this Hollywood denizen would have you think in her bid to defend her friend Argento from criticism over the suicide of her lover.  In one way, she is right.  Obviously, both Argento and Bourdain bought into the idea that love was the same as sex, and sex, even in an exclusive relationship, shouldn't be exclusive to one person.  It wasn't just Argento, it was both of them.

Past Versus Present American.  Try this question to any one of [the] 50 million Americans who are 65 or older:  Do you recall any discussions about the need to hire armed guards to protect students and teachers against school shootings?  Do you remember school policemen patrolling the hallways?  How many students were shot to death during the time you were in school?  For me and those other Americans 65 or older, when we were in school, a conversation about hiring armed guards and having police patrol hallways would have been seen as lunacy.  There was no reason.  What's the difference between yesteryear and today?  The logic of the argument for those calling for stricter gun control laws, in the wake of recent school shootings, is that something has happened to guns.  Guns have behaved more poorly and become evil.

America's King of Poverty.  I know it is not a pleasant topic but let's take just a moment and think about poverty in this country.  Which state do you think has the highest poverty rate?  Must be Mississippi or Alabama or one of those Southern states.  No it ain't.  The state with the highest poverty rate is... wait for it, CALIFORNIA!!!  Yep, our progressive, income redistributing state which accounts for 12% of the country's population is home to about 1 in 3 of all U.S. welfare recipients.  Our poverty rate exceeds 20% when the national average is around 15%.  It is not as though California policy makers have neglected to wage their assault on poverty.  Since 1992 California has spent nearly $1 trillion on benefit programs.  Clearly it hasn't worked.  Then again paying poor people to be poor never does.

The lawless, porn-respecting, MS-13-loving, humorless American left.  [Nancy] Pelosi says the low unemployment is meaningless, the tax cuts are "crumbs," and that consumer confidence is low despite it being at an 18-year high.  They see, hear, think, and propagate what they want to be true, not what is true.  Even California voters made a tiny dent in the left's socialist grasp on the state.  No one expected Republican John Cox to come in second.  All Californians should be horrified by what has become of their once golden state.  Thanks to the polices of Gov. Brown, ex-senator Boxer, Feinstein, Kamala Harris, A.G. Becerra, etc.  (it is a one-party Marxist state), California is a disaster of incalculable proportions, drowning in the homeless, the illegal migrants, traffic, and the highest gas prices in the country.

Today's Two Main Political Camps Are Pro-Thought Versus Anti-Thought.  The war on speech is basically a war on thought.  Let's review just a few examples that confirm power elites' interest in abolishing freedom of thought:
  •   On college campuses:  Administrators increasingly permit and expect students to disrupt and even riot at talks by invited speakers and scholars some deem politically incorrect.
  •   At Google:  Software engineer James Damore was summarily fired for expressing a politically incorrect opinion, despite his copious citations of facts to back up his thesis.
  •   At The Atlantic Monthly:  Writer Kevin Williamson was quickly fired for publicly expressing a politically incorrect opinion despite the fact that his opinion was well known before his firing, and that he was actually hired in part for his reputation as a talented provocateur.
  •   At Mozilla:  Activists forced the resignation of CEO Brendan Eich when they discovered that he privately donated to a politically incorrect cause — California's Proposition 8, which in 2008 confirmed the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  Eich chose to resign rather than recant his thoughts.
  •   In New York City:  Fines of up to $250,000 if you "misgender" a person.

Violent crime and poverty place Detroit, Flint, St. Louis and Las Vegas as the Worst cities in America to live in.  Detroit, Michigan holds the dubious title of being the country's worst city to live in, according to a new report ranking America's 50 most unappealing places to call home.  Detroit has just the right combination of poverty, unemployment, crime and other factors to hold its first-place position, followed by Flint, Michigan and St. Louis, Missouri.  The rest of the cities that made the list span from New England to the Pacific Ocean and everywhere in between, 24/7 Wall Street reported.

The end of the swimsuit competition is part of the war on heterosexual men.  For years, feminists have battled heterosexual men on numerous fronts:  [#1] To label any attraction men show for women as "creepy."  Men being attracted to dangerous sexual activity with other men is never labeled as "creepy."  Neither is the idea of boys in girls' bathrooms.  But men showing attraction to women is called "creepy."  [#2] The "Me Too" movement includes criticism of men showing attraction to women. [...] [#3] The rape "epidemic" on college campuses. [...] And now we have the Miss America Pageant, which will no longer have a swimsuit competition (and no longer be called a pageant).

The end of the swimsuit competition is part of the war on heterosexual men.  [Scroll down]  Yet women spend billions of dollars on products and magazines to look attractive.  Millions of women have no problem with such a competition.  The problem lies with feminists, who are looking for new ways to attack the bond between men and women.  The Miss America Pageant no doubt believes that it is not dooming itself by canceling the swimsuit competition and making the event purely a virtue-signaling event.  Liberals are like that — so deluded by how they want the world to be that they are totally ignorant of human nature.

Erotic Manias and Disappearing Fathers.  Schools in NYC and elsewhere may not lead students in prayer, but they are allowed to lead students into paths of sexual expression such as ten-minute counseling before sending them for an abortion, lessons on how to put a condom on a cucumber or a banana, and the need to prevent STDs rather than uphold the sex, marriage, and love unity.  Divorce has skyrocketed during the post-WWII years; sexually transmitted disease has become rampant; cohabitation is becoming more popular with each passing year; the porno industry has captured the time, money, and imaginations of tens of millions of men on the internet; and there is a gossip feeding frenzy regarding the immoral habits of celebrities.  Pedophilia is being publicly defended as a legitimate activity, and being HIV-positive is something, according to signs on NYC subways, that can be handled by partnering with one's doctor and various city agencies.

Scenes of surrender against public drug use.  Junkies dump 5,000 used needles a week in Bronx parks — at St.  Mary's, they shoot up in broad daylight.  In Manhattan's Washington Square Park, crack is back.  In Brooklyn, scores of people have OD'd on K2.  Now Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to end arrests for public pot smoking.  Huh?  Is his goal to hand the city's public spaces to druggies of every kind?  On Thursday [5/24/2018], The [New York] Post reported that a Bronx economic-development project has turned into an outdoor shooting gallery.  The site's not far from St.  Mary's Park, where on Tuesday the paper filmed two men getting set to inject drugs — right across from an elementary school.

Leftists [are] Slowly Turning Off the Faucet of Free Speech.  [D]id you ever think a day would come when leftists would demand that we do not state the truth that there are only two sexes?  College student Lake Ingle was kicked out of class for saying biologists officially say there are only two sexes.  Leftists have decreed that there are 71 different "genders," including no-gender and gender-fluid.  Anyone caught publicly stating otherwise will suffer public humiliation and dire social, economic, and even physical consequences.  And yet leftists are praised as paragons of tolerance.

Liberalism's Impact on Abhorrent Behavior.  As a governing ideology, liberalism has mainstreamed all behavior no matter how bizarre it might be.  This enables crazy conduct that has no limitations — an era best described as "anything goes."  The reality is that conduct must have well defined and established borders.  We have become unmoored from community standards of decency and acceptable behavior.  This, in part, stems from cultural and political liberalism — where nothing is too extreme and no conduct or lifestyle can be judged in terms of acceptable societal norms.  Unbridled liberalism waged and won a culture war.  This has eroded societal norms in regard to behavior.  Cultural rot and degradation, liberalism tells us, has some redeeming quality that should be embraced by all.  Therefore, no consequences exist for unwanted behavior.  We are now paying the price for not having won this warped culture change, one that is playing out in mass shootings.

Parents Furious As Australia Seeks To Ban Use Of "Boy" Or "Girl" In Books.  The Herald Sun reports that the local government's justice warriors were inspired by research from the Australian National University that showed children were influenced by gender stereotyping, and urged a ban on the terms 'boy' and 'girl'.  The research suggests educators should "minimise the extent to which gender is labelled" and avoid telling children what girls and boys should do.

The Editor says...
This assumes that all stereotypes are harmful, and that raising children properly involves something better than "telling children what girls and boys should do."

Junkies are filling Bronx parks with over 5,000 used needles a week.  Junkies have been dumping some 5,000 used needles a week in parks across the Bronx — prompting desperate city officials to install dozens of syringe-disposal kiosks in hopes of cleaning up the dangerous mess.  There has been a dramatic gain in the number of syringes found in parks in the Bronx in recent years because of the ongoing opioid epidemic, city Health Department officials say.  The 60 kiosks, which will be locked trash boxes placed in the hardest-hit Bronx parks, are part of a $60 million HealingNYC program to combat the drug plague, announced Monday [5/21/2018].

Evergreen State College students host 'No Whites Allowed' event for second year in a row, but at what cost?  One year ago, members of the Evergreen State College community asked white people to leave the campus in a "day of absence."  Those who refused to give into such demands sparked uncontrollable outrage from event planners and a chain of events led to mass chaos, national media coverage, and the exit of a few faculty and staff.  You'll remember students stormed a faculty meeting, disrupted classes, roamed the campus with baseball bats, blocked students and staff from leaving the library, and successfully demanded that campus police give up their guns.  Eventually, the chief of police resigned, explaining that she had been given all of the responsibility, but none of the authority to keep people safe on campus.  Professors Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, who were endlessly stalked and harassed, resigned from their tenured positions and sued the school.  At least four others followed.

Report finds cases of STDs reach all-time high in California.  The number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in California reached a record high last year and officials are particularly concerned by a spike in stillbirths due to congenital syphilis, state health authorities said Monday [5/14/2018].

Florida Paper Torches Broward Officials For Allowing Nikolas Cruz To 'Slide' Thanks to Obama-Era Disciplinary Program.  Well, the Sun-Sentinel did not hold back in their piece about the Broward County school officials and their PROMISE program that shuns disciplinary actions for students that possibly commit felonious acts.  The program was enacted under the Obama era.  In 2011, the Obama White House wanted to keep more kids in schools, Broward Schools Superintendent Robert W. Runcie endorsed it and in 2013, PROMISE went into effect.  Paul Sperry wrote in RealClearInvestigations about how the program has created a climate of chaos in school districts, where discipline has become non-existent to the point where students know they can't be expelled, leading to assaults on teachers: [...]

California's Self-Inflicted Housing Disaster Couldn't Get Worse — Or Could It?  California is a virtual one-party state, and suffers for it.  A case in point:  At the final forum for gubernatorial candidates before the June 5 state primary, lavish promises were made by Democratic candidates to build "millions" of new homes to end the state's housing crisis.  But the fact is, California's far-left politicians created the problem, and don't have a clue about how to solve it.  As the headlines above show, the same politicians that vow to build "millions" of new homes to keep state citizens from leaving will now require solar panels on new houses.  They claim that'll add just $9,500 per house, but of course that's way low.  Making homes less affordable is no way to end a housing shortage.

Used Needles Littering San Francisco Streets As Heroin Crisis Grips NorCal.  San Francisco residents are complaining about a record number of used and discarded syringes littering the streets, as a growing heroin epidemic grips Northern California.  The city distributes nearly 5 million needles each year through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users who might otherwise share needles.

Let's Help Vagrants, Not Use And Enable Them.  Alcoholics go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and they can only leave on the wagon.  Obese people often go to camps where their caloric use and intake are closely monitored.  So why do we encourage vagrants with drug problems to visit "shoot-up parks" to descend deeper into their sewer of dangerous and addicting drugs?  For that matter, why do we encourage their vagrancy?  This isn't just a big city problem.  Here in the beautiful Roaring Fork Valley, we have vagrants.  The Glenwood Springs Post Independent recently reported that many vagrants illegally camp on private and public lands on the outskirts of town.  They litter the area, defecate and urinate on the ground, often start illegal campfires and frequently panhandle and worse.

About those needles littering the streets of San Francisco... The city gave them out.  For all of City Hall's tough talk of late about getting needles off the streets, the city itself is responsible for helping fuel the problem — handing out millions of syringes a year with little or no controls over their return.  And while the easy access to clean syringes is intended to protect public health, the city's residents are not happy with the situation.

Before and After Welfare Handouts.  There is virtually no material poverty in the U.S.  Eighty percent of households the Census Bureau labels as poor have air conditioning; nearly three-quarters have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more.  Two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.  Half have at least one computer.  Forty-two percent own their homes.  What we have in our nation is not material poverty but dependency and poverty of the spirit, with people making unwise choices and leading pathological lives, aided and abetted by the welfare state.

The Semantic Whoredom of the Left.  [Scroll down]  I realized it wasn't just their etymology that was faulty but that these people had in fact built themselves an entirely new language, with words that are in common use [...] voided of their signification and filled with meanings they were never meant to have, meanings that can only be understood if you share the basic assumptions of leftist liberals. [...] There are a few hundred other words that have similarly been beaten until they lose all self-respect and now are passed from mouth to mouth in leftist circles as a sad parody of the words they used to be.  Possibly the most common of those is "racist."

Minneapolis City Council Approves Dockless Bike Pilot Program.  On Friday morning [5/11/2018], the Minneapolis City Council approved a contract amendment with Nice Ride to operate the dockless bike pilot program.  "One of the biggest concerns that I have is how are we going to be able to keep the public right of way clear of bikes just laying all around the city," Councilmember Andrea Jenkins asked.  Seattle, San Diego, and Dallas have similar programs.  Each city has had to deal with bikes that are destroyed, piled up or end up in a river.

Look how the liberal drug culture has destroyed Eureka, California.  In normal circumstances, Eureka, California, would be a paradise.  It's situated in northern California on the Pacific Coast and is simply beautiful, sandwiched between rugged redwood forests and an implacable open sea.  The weather is perfect, constantly between 50 and 75 degrees year round.  It's isolated from other major cities, but some find value in the quiet of a more secluded lifestyle.  Unfortunately, Eureka, in Humboldt County, is in the center of a narco-state where marijuana is grown industrial-scale and drug use is rampant.  The situation has gotten so bad that even tourists avoid it.

Why the Media Are Mum About Comedy Central's 2011 Trump Roast.  In March 2011, the cable channel Comedy Central staged a celebrity roast of Donald Trump.  Hosted by Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, the show featured a crew of B- and C-list entertainers mocking each other and, of course, Trump, the subject of the roast. [...] In the not too distant past, celebrity roasts relied on sexual innuendo and double-entendre.  By 2011, the DMC had deeply undermined the culture and the celebrity roast with it.

The diseased streets of San Francisco spread to rest of California.  We recently took a look at the diseased streets of San Francisco, after local reporters revealed a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces spread throughout the city's downtown area.  Now, as the number of homeless camps across the state skyrocket, union officials for highway maintenance workers are demanding health and safety protections for state employees who are exposed to the biological detritus while cleaning up roadside encampments.

They Keep Telling Us Who They Are.  No Bible, no self-defense, no right to hold a dissenting opinion — only the right to say and do whatever our masters tell us we can say and do.  That's who they are, that's where they're coming from, and what's where they want to take the rest of us.  Please don't forget that the 2016 Democrat platform included a plank authorizing the Attorney General to "investigate" the newly-created crime of Climate Change Denial.  This is why liberals must never, never, ever again be allowed to take power in our country.  Because if they do, it won't be our country anymore.

Disneyland and Infantile Culture.  Disneyland appears to be more and more co-opted by untraditional, non-family values.  Gay Day (I'm not sure if it's called that) has been picking up momentum over the past few years, taking over the park and giving Tinker Bell a run for her money.  Eventually, I can only assume as Disneyland becomes more of a Dave & Buster's adult theme park instead of something for children, then Tinker Bell will be a fat male stripper wearing a dog collar scooping up fivers scattered along the cobblestone road.  The culture has been so steeped in the corrosive, acidic LBGTQ agenda for years now that the electrical anode posts no longer conduct further shock, even as the left adorably tries to connect the wires.

NYC restaurants propose surcharges for all diners.  Big Apple restaurants are at a tipping point.  With record hikes in wages over the past couple of years — on top of rising rent, food and other costs — restaurant owners pressed City Hall lawmakers to allow them to levy a surcharge on all diners to cover their bloated expenses.  Without the surcharge, which could range from 3 percent to 5 percent, or more, many owners said they will go out of business.

Broward Student Lays Out Devastating Case Against School Board For Neglecting School Safety.  On Thursday [4/26/2018], Broward County student Kenneth Preston, 19, published the findings of an in-depth investigation he has conducted over the last two months that has uncovered some alarming details about how the Broward County School Board neglected school safety leading up to the Parkland massacre.  Preston confronted the school board two weeks ago and gave his account of what he'd learned to The Hill.  In his initial findings, Preston said that he believed that since 2014, the school has only spent around 5% of the over $100 million available to it specifically for school safety.  In his new report, he details ways that the failure to invest in school safety may have led to the deaths of some of the students in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting.  The school board's embrace of progressive programs, including The Promise Program and the Behavior Intervention Program, Preston maintains, has protected problem students — like the student who eventually slaughtered 17 people in February — shielding them from effective disciplinary measures and thus allowing them to remain threats to their peers.

The great exodus out of America's blue cities.  Am I the only one in my spinning class at Equinox in Manhattan who's fed up paying $200 every month for a gym with clean showers, $3,000 in rent every month for an apartment without cockroaches and $8 every morning for a cup of coffee?  Am I the only one moving through the greater part of New York City boroughs and seeing an inexorable march of urban decay matched with the discomfort of crowding and inexplicable costs?  I know I am not.  New York is the most expensive city in America.  Its lower-cost neighborhoods are riddled with crime and homelessness.  Its public schools, some of which are among the worst in the nation, look more like prisons than places of learning.

Are There Any Adults Left in Washington, D.C.?  As America approaches her 250th birthday, her instruction manual, the U.S. Constitution, is under assault as never before.  The First Amendment is under attack by campus speech police and social media, censoring and deciding which political statements are welcomed and which are verboten.  The Second Amendment is threatened by leftist elitists happy to ban guns for the law-abiding as long as they can have armed guards protecting themselves and their families from the criminals who don't give a whit about whatever gun laws the left proposes.  It's not only the Bill of Rights under assault, but also Article Two of the Constitution — specifically, the first section, detailing how a president is elected to a four-year term.

Project Freedom.  Society, the new orthodoxy claimed, was to blame for the supposed lack of opportunity that discouraged black Americans from working and learning, for the rage and resentment that fueled disproportionate black criminality, and for the despair that heroin and crack served to dull.  Moreover, once out-of-wedlock sex lost its shame in the elite worldview, so did out-of-wedlock childbearing, widespread enough among black Americans a century ago to trouble W. E. B. Du Bois deeply, but astronomically higher after the cultural changes of the 1960s.

7 Forces Driving America Toward Civil War.  [#4] Moral Decline:  A large number of Americans have lost their principles, manners and virtue and it shows through from the sort of politicians they elect, to their rudeness online, to the sort of shallow hedonism and fame whoring they find appealing.  Americans are increasingly becoming a soft and decadent people which is problematic because the challenges may change, but we can be certain that Americans will face future challenges every bit as difficult as the ones past generations had to tackle.  This is frightening because if you look at the "principles, manners and virtue" of Americans today, they don't seem capable of dealing with monumental events like the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Depression or World War II.  Most people in their twenties probably couldn't tell you why all those events were such challenges in the first place.  When America faces a challenge bigger than we can handle because of ineffective politicians and our "amusing ourselves to death" population, there are no guarantees our republic will survive.

College Professor 'Happy To Be Retired' After Dealing With SJWs.  I was talking with an ex-university professor recently who told me that he was very happy to be retired.  He said he was glad to be out of the hornets' nest, away from a world so filled with political correctness that it was difficult to get through the day.  Life on campus, he said, is rife with so many non-issue "issues" that it's like walking barefoot on sidewalks littered with broken glass.  He related how he once told a fellow professor that she "looked very nice today," meaning that she had selected a particularly nice outfit.  Rather than thank him for the compliment, the professor took him to task for being sexist and going out of his way to objectify her as an object (a piece of meat) to be admired.  "You wouldn't say the same thing to a male colleague," she scolded.

California Has Highest Poverty Rate In America.  California under Democratic rule has seen a rapid decline in both its ability to sustain itself and the quality of life for most of their residents.  Their population of poverty stricken is vastly disproportionate to their overall population.  Policies which continue to flood the state with parasitic foreign nationals while continuing to raise taxes on the contributing population will only push more people out of the state, evaporating their tax base.

Broward School Violence:  Cruz's Massacre Is Far From the Whole Story.  Broward County, Fla., school officials portray as a great success their Obama administration-inspired program offering counseling to students who break the law, instead of having them arrested or expelled.  They insist that it played no role in February's school massacre by Nikolas Cruz.  They also claim that in fact juvenile recidivism rates are down and school safety is up, thanks to the program.  The evidence tells a far different story.  Broward County juvenile justice division records, federal studies of Broward school district safety and the district's own internal reporting show that years of "intensive" counseling didn't just fail to reform repeat offender Cruz, who allegedly went on to shoot and kill 17 people at his high school.  Records show such policies have failed to curtail other campus violence and its effects now on the rise in district schools — including fighting, weapons use, bullying and related suicides.

The Norming of the Perverted.  Once a person's sexual proclivities were private to that person and those in their life that shared them or those friends one decided to tell.  Now one is required to declare their sexual tastes upon showing up at a hospital.  Somewhere there are teams of state-employed perverts who, every day, come to work in their state-furnished offices, hold meetings, create [things] like this, make them "mandatory," and then just spray them out [...].  It is said to be, by these sub-human and un-fireable office holders, because being sensitive to people of all kinds is "who we are as a people."  But it is not that.  It may once have been that but no more.  Now, with the arrival of sheets like the one [pictured], we can see the program as it really is:  The Norming of the Perverted.

The Surreal World of Teaching.  [D]id you know that in the inverted world of education today, if a student has a baby, then more financial aid is available?  Indeed!  Consequently, students are being told by their college advisers that they should get pregnant.  Even some of the students are appalled at this suggestion.  But then there are those who proclaim that "the money comes from the government," implying that it is not really problematic.  Deliberately unschooled in how things actually work, and already the recipients of financial assistance, these students see government as the ultimate security blanket.  There is no connection to the idea that government comprises taxpayers.  What a wonderful idea — to have a money tree somewhere pumping out financial aid ad infinitum!

Study:  Lesbians, bisexual girls at 'higher risk' of getting suspended, expelled from school.  A new study out of Princeton University says that "same-sex attracted teens" have a greater chance of being disciplined at school, with lesbians and bisexual females facing the biggest odds.  According to a Princeton press release, sociology PhD candidate Josh Mittleman's paper "Sexual Orientation and School Discipline:  New Evidence from a Population-Based Sample" (abstract only; subscription required for full paper) claims LGB teens have a "29 percent higher [chance] of experiencing exclusionary discipline," but girls' chances are a whopping 95% greater.  Mittleman utilized information from the "Fragile Families and Childhood Wellbeing Study" which studied kids born in the US between 1998 and 2000 — "roughly three-quarters of whom were born to unmarried parents" (emphasis added).

Did Lax Obama-Era School-Discipline Policies Enable the Parkland Shooter?  The closer you look at the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., the more you realize that it might have been one of the most preventable significant crimes in recent American history.  We're familiar by now with the government's sins of omission — how it failed to act time and again in the face of evidence that the shooter presented a clear and present danger to the public.  But how about a sin of commission?  Did an Obama-era policy designed to reduce the "school-to-prison pipeline" prevent police from using available tools that could have stopped the shooting?  One of the greatest challenges in American public life is to end mass incarceration without endangering the public.  How can reform efforts keep violent offenders off the streets while still decreasing America's extraordinarily high prison population?

The Four Terrible Things That Are Destroying Boys In Our Culture.  Let's imagine the world the average 13-year-old boy inhabits. [...] The boy cannot escape sex.  It is all over his computer.  All over his phone.  All over social media.  All over the TV.  All over the music he listens to.  He goes to school and his female classmates are dressed like strippers.  He goes anywhere and that's how the women are dressed.  It seems that everyone is doing everything they can to make a degenerate and a creep out of him, even as they demand that he control himself.

When this playground opened, no one told the parents about the sex predator on staff.  When a new playground popped up in the backyard of a storied LGBTQ community center in Wilton Manors, its directors hailed it as the first of its kind.  Backed by corporate sponsors JetBlue and Kaboom!, it was designed to be a "safe space" for same-sex couples and their children to play free from judgment or harassment, a statement to South Florida that "our families matter," as one board member told the Miami Herald in 2015.  But The Pride Center at Equality Park had a secret known only to the director and his confidants:  The janitor was a convicted sex predator.

The Battle of Woke Island.  [Scroll down]  Here, then, is yet another example of how the politics and rhetoric of the university have slowly colonized America's economic, cultural, and political institutions, how recent graduates are carrying with them into the workforce all the bad ideas they learned from their humanities courses, independent research, and campus programming.  I am talking about the modes and categories of identity politics, of viewing all human phenomena through the prism of race and gender (and sometimes, though rarely, of class), of robbing individual human beings of their moral agency and reducing them to membership in a group, and of organizing these groups into a hierarchy of victimization and grievance.

Perv Exposes Himself to Little Girl in Target Restroom in Chicago.  According to Chicago police, a mother entered the bathroom with her young daughter.  A man, insisting that he needed to use the restroom too, went into the women's room soon afterward.  The sicko pushed into the stall where the little girl was, exposed his genitals, used the facility, and then fled the scene, police said.  He was able to do this because of Target's "inclusive" policy of allowing biological men to enter the women's restroom if they self-identify as a woman, and vice versa.

Man Exposes Himself to Girl in Target Restroom.  Remember a couple of years ago how the left overflowed with rage when conservatives wanted to keep men in men's potties, women in women's potties?  The newest forefront in civil rights in 2016 was where one did their number twos.  I called it "the flush heard round the world."  Anyway, those of us who wanted to keep bathroom assignments the way they were, got called bigoted jackasses and the like, for daring to suggest some creepy guys might peep on little girls.  Because some creepy guys like peeping on little girls.  That was then.  Last week a creepy guy burst into a women's restroom in Target, and whipped out his mini-me for a little show and tell.  To a little girl.

Can America Survive the Latest Plague?  A mob of foreigners planning to march across the United States border knowing in advance that numerous sanctuary cities will break federal law and welcome them in.  Unidentified individuals being allowed to vote in U.S. elections, riots at universities with the intention of preventing any discussion that does not agree with theirs.  These realities are all happening now and are all symptoms of a political plague that has been visited upon America and most of Europe. [...] The primary vehicles used to spread this insidious cognitive disorder at alarming rates consist of a leftist propaganda network known as the mainstream media, and indoctrination to leftist ideals via an overpriced monopolized leftist education system.

Americans Grapple With Evil Amid Decline in Religious Faith.  Blaise Pascal once described a "God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man."  But in modern-day America, few statements can raise eyebrows more swiftly than expressing faith in the transcendent.  From Joy Behar mocking Vice President Mike Pence as mentally ill for believing that God guides him, to former President Barack Obama ridiculing "bitter" people who cling to guns or religion, the "enlightened" claim to have progressed past the simplistic explanations of those who still believe in the existence of good and evil.

Fake Crime Statistics Lead to 17 Murdered in Parkland.  It seems that every day more revelations come out about the collapse of the system in Parkland that failed to stop the murderer from roaming the halls of a high school with a gun he should never have had an opportunity to legally acquire.  Yet the tale of failure starts way before the fated day he entered the school.  This starts with the Superintendent of Broward County, Robert Runcie, who arrived in his position from Chicago where he worked with Arne Duncan.  Mr. Duncan went from there to serve as President Obama's Secretary of Education for seven years.  Runcie stated, in October 2011, "I arrived in the district and, shortly after that, began to dive into the data on student performance in the district.  We quickly recognized that Broward had a high number of arrests, suspensions and expulsions.  In fact, the highest number in the state.  We realized we were not going to be able to create equitable opportunities for success in our school system if our students are not in school."

Canada Legalizes Sex With Animals.  The west is becoming sicker and sicker.  The Canadian legislature process recently made international news after the Liberal Party, led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, introduced a new bill seeking to establish two year prison terms for people found guilty of transgender discrimination.

America doesn't have a gun violence epidemic.  Democrat cities do.  America does not have a gun crime epidemic.  There are, however, epidemics in many locales and cities.  Who do you think runs the vast majority of those cities?  NRA-funded Republicans?  No.  Lobbyists for firearm manufacturers?  No.  The vast majority of those cities have been run by Democrats for decades upon decades.  Here are the top 20 cities with the highest gun murder rates in the U.S. per capita. [...]

San Francisco Is Suffering From The Excesses Of Its Own Liberalism.  In November of 2017 alone, 6,211 needles were collected while via the 311 App, 1,498 requests were made to clean up human feces.  The public defecation problem has become so intolerable in San Francisco that private citizens have built an online map to track the concentrations of poop in the city, so that pedestrians may know to avoid certain areas.  And it's not just poop.  The overwhelming smell of urine on parts of Mission Street and Market Street would make your nose bleed.  I recall the first time I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit, San Francisco's subway system) and was nearly knocked over by the sheer stench of the station.  I was surprised to learn that exiting the station supplied little to no relief — the urine smell hangs heavy in the more populated areas of the city and is nearly inescapable.  In a dark twist of humor, the city has had to replace numerous different street poles due to urine eroding the foundation.  What drives a large part of the human waste issue is San Francisco's homeless population.  The homeless epidemic in San Francisco is tragic and frightening — in a 47-square mile city, we have around 7,500 homeless people, meaning there are approximately 160 homeless people per square mile.

Leftism and Degeneracy:  A Beautiful Thing.  The left's illegal sanctuary cities like San Francisco call themselves compassionate havens for angelic illegals — a beautiful thing.  The reality is that rejecting federal immigration law is destroying California.  In San Francisco, a map was created to help people avoid mounds of feces left by the homeless.  Sanctuary cites turn a blind eye to gangs of illegals terrorizing U.S. citizens by means of murders, rape, and robberies.  The San Francisco Bay area is experiencing a massive exodus due to crime, skyrocketing taxes, insanely high housing costs, and welfare benefits for illegals.  California is the poorest state in the USA. Still, leftists tell us sanctuary cities are saintly, beautiful things.

Here's What Your Children Are Learning Today.  Why on earth should kindergarten curricula include lessons on gender reassignments or anything to do with sex education?  Have you watched what children are watching on television today?  I remember when Saturday mornings would show cartoons on the local networks but cartoons are only available now on cable stations and are more inclined to represent liberal humor and social engineering rather than what appeals to children.  The very young child watching the series "Back at the Barnyard" will assume male bulls have udders like cows.  Although the character Lincoln on Nickelodeon's Loud family has ten sisters to watch over, his best friend also has two fathers. [...] Dora the Explorer is a big moneymaker for its creators but I've always thought that what we needed was Hispanic children learning English rather than the other way around plus is it really wise to encourage children that it's okay to befriend wild animals in the jungles?

California Has Become a Disgraceful State.  At one time, California was the envy of America, attracting people from around the nation to move to a state offering opportunity and the chance to pursue ambitious dreams.  With scenic beauty, the Pacific Ocean coastline, the major cities of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, California recruited entrepreneurs looking for economic growth.  As the home of Hollywood and multitudes of celebrities, California presented an enticing potential to enjoy "lifestyles of the rich and famous."  Today, California has become an economic and cultural disaster.  The state is home to over 114,000 homeless people, one quarter of the total in the nation.  In San Francisco, a health crisis has developed as the homeless have created a mess in the downtown area, littering it with fecal matter, spent needles and piles of trash.

Needles, debris, human waste tallied after cleanup of California homeless camp.  Gritty details from the cleanup of a homeless encampment in Southern California were revealed Thursday [3/8/2018] — and the numbers were stunning.  According to the figures, public works crews in Orange County collected 404 tons of debris, 13,950 needles, and 5,279 pounds of human waste during a massive overhaul between Jan. 22 and March 3, the Orange County Register reported.  The specter of the ever-increasing homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River Trail had drawn the ire of local residents, prompting city officials to take action.

Giving Government and Criminals a Monopoly on Violence.  Around 60% of gunmen in mass shootings in the United States [from] 1900 through 2017 have had documented mental problems.  In the United States, mental health has a serious treatment gap.  Also not discussed is that virtually all the perpetrators of the mass shootings are men.  But there are more issues as well, like state-backed policies, such as the destruction of the family as the key unit in our society.  We could also mention the disregard for life evinced by policies like abortion and euthanasia.  The continued campaign for drug liberalization without considering the consequences, particularly if someone with a mental disorder abuses them, adds yet another factor.  Addressing the "gun problem" without addressing these other issues that may provide an explanation for the rise in mass shootings is a huge mistake.  Examining all the data relating to mass shootings reveals a considerable spike during the sexual revolution years, so this is not a "gun only" problem.

U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners:  Obama-Era School Leniency Policy Brings 'Fear' and 'Danger'.  Two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights say the Obama-era school leniency policy that discourages reports of threatening behavior by minority students to law enforcement is dangerous.  "Many schools that have adopted lenient disciplinary policies — i.e., defining offenses down so that blacks and Hispanics aren't suspended or expelled at significantly higher rates than whites and Asians — have seen marked increases in the number and severity of offenses," attorney Peter Kirsanow, a Republican member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, tells Breitbart News.  "St. Paul is just one example, but numerous districts across the country have reported spikes in violence against teachers and students, as well as other forms of disruptive behavior."

The Broward County Superintendent's Corrupt and Dangerous Agenda.  There's little doubt Broward County Public Schools superintendent Robert Runcie's rabid implementation of his "no arrest" policy in 2011 helped Nikolas Cruz to stay "in the classroom and out of the courtroom," a phrase Runcie often repeated when touting his signature PROMISE program.  Runcie's plan served as an exemplary model for 50 participating school districts across the country, affecting 6.35 million children.  In a July 2015 White House conference attended by Runcie and his former boss in Chicago, education secretary Arne Duncan, the superintendent received high praise for leading the nation in reducing student arrests.  But according to many outside reports, by 2015, the Obama-directed school discipline guidelines were creating chaos in the country's classrooms.

Political Correctness Is to Blame for Parkland.  Before the blood had dried at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the left started its familiar blame game.  They moved fast to try gun culture, especially the AR-15 and the National Rifle Association, in the court of public opinion, for they understood well that true understanding of a tragedy takes time.  And the more time that passed, the more the facts would throw cold water on their anti-gun hysteria and attempts to circumvent the law of the land.  Now, some three weeks later, it's quite clear that the blame for the massacre in Parkland lay not primarily with the AR-15 or those that advocate for its existence, but rather with the left's dangerous obsession with political correctness.  And few shoulder the blame as does Sheriff Scott Israel, who was seemingly more interested in consecrating his reputation as a progressive than fulfilling his law enforcement duty to taxpayers.

9/11 and Parkland:  When Systems Fail.  Everyone paying attention knows now that the Parkland massacre by a severely troubled and dangerous young man was the result of a failure of a host of government institutions.  The FBI received several specific warnings and ignored them.  The Broward County sheriff's department also ignored countless notifications, as did the local police.  Much of the inefficiency was probably due to sheer incompetence, people not doing the jobs they were meant to do.  But much was the result of a truly ridiculous program invented by the Obama administration, the Promise policy.

Parkland school shooting is your government at rest.  It's becoming obvious as the investigation continues that rather than a random killing spree, the death toll is collateral damage resulting from Democrat efforts to introduce protected categories into the criminal justice system by ending the school to prison pipeline.  Instead of the NRA with blood on its hands, we find Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie and Sheriff Israel directly responsible for the death of 17 innocents.  Real Clear Investigations reports in 2013 — the year before the shooter entered high school — the Sheriff of Noddingham voluntarily signed a "collaborative agreement on school discipline."  This preemptive amnesty listed a series of misdemeanors that would no longer result in arrest.  The freebie offenses included vandalism, disorderly conduct, fighting, trespassing, criminal mischief, harassment, threats, alcohol infractions and possession of drug paraphernalia — all violations common to future valedictorians.

The Cascading Failures of Government.  As Judicial Watch has demonstrated countless times through its work, the operations of the government — at the federal, state, and local levels — and its failures are a direct threat to American lives, as we've ceded personal control to this growing monolith. [...] In the case of the Parkland high school shooting, the cascade of failures began at the very top of government, with Barack Obama and his push to reduce the number of disruptive students sent into the "school-to-prison pipeline."  Like so many feel-good leftist initiatives, the unintended consequences of this Obama policy contributed to disaster.

An Open Letter to David Hogg.  The ability of our citizens to keep the guns that our Federal law have given them without question are now under attack by many who are fearful of guns.  The progressive socialists and leftists quaintly call it "Gun Safety" with the full intent on working even further to confiscate the firearms that the citizens hold.  We find ourselves after another school shooting that the progressive socialists once again raise voices over the bidies of the victims.  Not mentioned is the total breakdown of federal and local enforcement that could have kept [the shooter] from getting any firearms.  We now have children who will be traumatized for the rest of their lives for something that could have been prevented.  It was the PROMISE ACT implemented by Obama and his contempt of court Attorney General that set this massacre in motion.  Because they were concerned about what they called a disproportionate number of blacks in prison they started the Promise Act to break the classroom to prison train.  All it did was require that schools in the country allow violent and mentally ill students to harass the other students without fear of arrest.  [The shooter] was one of those students.  All of this was done so that schools could get more federal funds.

Sperm Donors, Lesbians And Law Suits, Oh My!  In a report published at the Daily Beast you can read about a lesbian couple who made use of a sperm donation from a mutual friend to conceive a child.  This isn't all that unusual in the United States these days, including for traditional, heterosexual couples.  So the happy spouses were set for a bright future and a growing family, right?  Yeah... not really.  Things didn't work out very well at all.  The donor (and biological father) decided approximately seven months after the child was born that he wanted to be "more involved" in the baby girl's life.  With that, he went to court and sued for visitation rights.  This has dragged on for more than two years in the courts and now a judge has ruled against the biological father, saying that he can't even demand a paternity test to prove that he's the one who did the deed.

6 Points to Consider in the Debate About Homelessness.  Homelessness isn't just an Orange County problem, of course.  It's a growing mess throughout California and the nation.  I've seen communities of all sizes and political dispositions wrestle unsuccessfully with it for decades.  Cities such as San Francisco that throw money at the problem become magnets for homelessness, with sections of the city resembling an outdoor sewer.  Other communities, including Los Angeles, have tried to more aggressively roust the people sleeping under freeways, along riverbeds and in public parks.

'National disgrace': Community fights back as California overrun by homelessness, human waste, needles.  The specter of homeless encampments steadily expanding across the downtown streets of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco — bringing with them a public health crisis — has one southern California community taking tough action to dismantle a two-mile-long camp just a short drive from Disneyland.  In a departure from the approach taken by other local governments in the state, officials in Orange County, Calif., have started to clear out the camp — by moving occupants and hauling away literally tons of trash and hazardous waste.

The Politics of San Francisco's Homelessness Problem.  About a year ago, in January 2017, Leilani Farha visited the city of San Francisco and was appalled at the extent of the substandard housing conditions suffered by San Francisco's homeless population. [...] This is particularly disturbing when one considers that California is the most populous and the wealthiest state in the wealthiest country in the world.  San Francisco has made some effort to deal with homelessness.  The city spent $275 million on homelessness in the fiscal year that ended in June 2017 and is expanding that to $305 million for the year that ends in June 2018.  But that is not enough, since there is a long waiting list for nighttime shelters.  Visitors to San Francisco are appalled to see persons on sidewalks committing drug crimes such as injecting themselves with needles.  And the city has areas now fouled by the smell of human waste.

The Broward Sheriff's Juvenile Arrest Conspiracy Might Actually Be True.  If you're active on social media this month, you may have seen several articles and tweets touting a conspiracy theory related to the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.  The essence of these claims is that the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO), in collaboration with the Broward County School District (BCSD), had ordered their deputies not to arrest juveniles for a variety of crimes in order to artificially reduce their statistics and qualify for lucrative state and federal grants.  Both BSO and BCSD are controlled by Democrats, and this policy, the conspiracy believers claim, explains why the dozens of complaints about the Parkland school shooter [...] were ignored.  Here's the wild part: there may be some truth to this conspiracy theory.

Broward County Likely 'Inspiration' for Obama School Discipline Policy to Report Fewer Arrests, Suspensions.  The Broward County school district's adoption of a school discipline policy that was praised by the Obama administration for seeking to reduce the reported number of school suspensions, expulsions, and arrests may have played a role in the fact that [the shooter] remained under the radar until his shooting rampage in Parkland, Florida, on February 14.  "The facts pattern that has emerged strongly suggests it played a role," Manhattan Institute senior fellow Max Eden tells Breitbart News.  "It's not actually accurate to say that what Broward County did was the result of the Obama policy.  It might be more accurate to say that what Broward County did was in some way the inspiration for Obama's policy."

Jack Cashill:  "Incompetence Wasn't The Problem in Broward County".  In April of 2012 Jesse Jackson began to promote the principle:  "we must stop suspending our students".  Three months later, in July of 2012, President Obama signed an executive order establishing the basic outline of what later came to be known in Broward County as "The Promise Program".  President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder created the financial carrots.  In 2013 Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel and a hired Chicago transplant, School Superintendent Robert Runcie, simply formalized and executed the policy.

28 Years Of School Shootings?  Thank Democrats and Thank Joe Biden.  The fact is that there has been a sharp spike in school shootings since Joe Biden sponsored the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. [...] School shootings are preventable.  As much as Americans are reluctant to turn their schools into what critics might call armed camps, it would be a better situation than the free-fire zones that exist today.  Would allowing guns in school be dangerous?  We allow guns in schools right now by not having secure entrances; by not heeding warnings from those who did see something and did say something; and by not having adequate armed security on campus, including armed teachers.

Exposing the Deep Rot in the Deep State.  In fact, there were four armed deputies at the Parkland, Florida high school, none of whom entered to intervene when the shooting occurred.  Heroes like the JROTC students and the coach gave up their lives to protect others, while four armed cops did nothing to end the carnage. [...] After Columbine, the FBI training and tactical advice to local law enforcement officials was not to wait for a SWAT or tactical team to show up, but to immediately engage and disarm the shooter.

Policy and Consequence.  Last night [2/23/2018] Broward County Sheriff Union President Jeff Bell appeared on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show to discuss the Broward County deputy response to the Parkland Florida school shooting.  Within the conversation Mr. Bell points to the 2013 Broward County School Board policy known as the "Promise Program".  The Promise Program is the collaborative policy between all county officials the school superintendent, school board and law enforcement that instructs officers to not arrest high school students.  This policy sits at the center of understanding why [the shooter] was not intercepted by law enforcement.

Broward County Sheriff's Office Did Not "Miss Warning Signs" or Make "Mistakes".  The Broward County Sheriff's Office (BSO) didn't "miss warning signs" or make "mistakes" in not writing up reports.  The Sheriff's office did exactly what their internal policies, procedures and official training required them to do, they intentionally ignored the signs, and intentionally didn't generate documents. [...] It is important to understand the policy here.  Broward County law enforcement (Sheriff Israel), in conjunction with Broward County School Officials (Superintendent Runcie and School Board), have a standing policy to ignore any criminal engagement with High School students.  When the police are hiding current, actual and ongoing unlawful conduct as a matter of standard procedure on a regular basis, what do we expect the police would do with reports of potential unlawful conduct?  Of course they would ignore them.

Did the Progressive 'Broward County Solution' Cost 17 Student Lives?  "We're not compromising school safety.  We're really saving the lives of kids," boasted Michaelle Valbrun-Pope, executive director of Student Support Initiatives for Broward County Public Schools, in August 2017.  Valbrun-Pope was referring to what an article by Jeffrey Benzing in Public Source calls the "Broward County Solution."  As Benzing relates, Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state's juvenile justice system.  County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: "lower arrests by not making arrests."  Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones.  The results impressed the people who initiated the program.  Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.  One particular motivation behind programs like Broward County's was the pressure from multiple sources to reduce the statistical disparity between black and Hispanic student arrests on one hand and white and Asian student arrests on the other.

It's Too Late — Broward County School Board Beginning to Admit Their Mistakes?  Broward County schools intentionally created polices from 2011 through 2015 that culminated in the 2018 mass school shooting in Parkland.  We know this with great specificity because five years ago we warned Broward County Florida school board members this could happen.  In 2012 and 2013 while doing research into the Trayvon Martin shooting we discovered an alarming set of school policies being enacted in Miami-Dade and Broward County Florida.  The policies were called "diversionary programs" and were essentially about stopping High School students from being arrested.  Law enforcement was instructed to avoid arrests and defer criminal conduct to school administrators.  Students who engaged in violence, drug sales, robberies, burglaries, theft and other various crimes were intentionally kept out of the criminal justice system.  County administrators and School Superintendents told local and county law enforcement officers to stop arresting students.

Professor Amy Wax and the Brownshirts on Campus.  Recently a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in league with a professor at the University of San Diego Law School made bold to write an essay for the Philadelphia Inquirer. [...] She began by cataloguing the leading ills afflicting America:  "Too few Americans are qualified for the jobs available.  Male working-age labor-force participation is at Depression-era lows.  Opioid abuse is widespread.  Homicidal violence plagues inner cities.  Almost half of all children are born out of wedlock, and even more are raised by single mothers.  Many college students lack basic skills, and high school students rank below those from two dozen other countries."

Stop Mistaking Evil for Mental Illness.  As our culture grows more and more secularized, it has become a common practice to describe those who commit widespread acts of violence — especially if such violence involves the death of multiple human beings — as "crazy."  Some of this is tongue-in-cheek, but much of it is sincere.  I believe that this is the direct result of the psychiatric community attempting to redefine what is moral.  For decades, we have witnessed the psychiatric community taking acts long considered evil, or at least immoral and illegal, and deeming them a "psychological disorder" that needs to be cured.  It's good for business, I suppose.  However, it's a disaster for the culture.

A Weak and Crumbling Foundation.  It takes no moral courage to blame a thing, but it takes massive internal fortitude to look in the mirror and blame the unsustainable ideas we've held dear now for several generations.  It's hard to look at the slaughter of our children in a schoolyard, but we are still willing to kill them by the thousands in an abortion facility.  It's horrifying to see the damage wrought by social media, but we don't have the stomach to face down our spoiled children and deny them access.  It makes us sick to see the sexualization of our young children, but we're too spoiled ourselves to limit our own indulgence in nearly pornographic television.  We don't seem to have the national backbone to admit our part in the destruction of our offspring.  So we demand the banning of guns.

Diseased Streets.  How dirty is San Francisco?  An NBC Bay Area Investigation reveals a dangerous mix of drug needles, garbage, and feces throughout downtown San Francisco.

America's Problem is a Contempt for Life, Not a Love of Guns.  In a society that reveres human life, gun ownership isn't a chronic problem.  People who genuinely believe in the sanctity of human life won't take another life — by gun or any other means — unless it is absolutely necessary.  Not so in a society that views human life as subjective and revocable.  In a society that condones, funds, and promotes abortion and excuses euthanasia, human life is cheap.  When a woman has a right to kill an unwanted child growing inside her simply because it suits her to do so, life is robbed of its value.  In a society that believes that a woman has the power to change the child growing inside her into an inanimate blob of tissue simply by decreeing that it is so, human life is something that can be dismissed by mere whim.

Hero Aaron Feis, the Disarmed School Guard.  Aaron Feis was the right man in the right place at the right time, but he was legally prevented from using the right, constitutionally protected tool to do the job. [...] This raises the question of why only one person was trained and armed to fight back against an assailant.  One reason is that the "Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990," originally passed as part of the Budget Control Act of 1990, bars school personnel from arming themselves.  18 USC § 922(q)(2)(A) states:  ["]It shall be unlawful for any individual knowingly to possess a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce at a place that the individual knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, is a school zone.["] [...] Supposedly, these laws are to protect us from ourselves while assuring us that the government will do its job.

What causes mass shootings and how we stop them.  From 1940 to 1962, the top complaints from school teachers were:  students talking in class, chewing gum and running in the halls.  Since 1963 to the present, school officials have dealt with rape, robbery, assault and shootings.  So what happened in 1963?  "One can argue, and some have, that the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court — in a series of three decisions back in 1962 and 1963 — to remove Bible and prayer from our public schools, may be the most spiritually significant event in our nation's history over the course of the last 55 years," said William Jeynes, a professor of education at California State University, Long Beach, and senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, N.J.

Our society's tragic sickness can't be fixed with a Band-Aid.  [Scroll down]  Here's what we did in our all-too-finite wisdom:
  •   Ended school prayer and took the Bible out of schools: [...]
  •   Legalized abortion: [...]
  •   Celebrated divorce and diluted marriage: [...]
  •   Legalized street drugs and put legal drugs on the street: [...]
  •   Promoted the trivialization of sex and violence in our culture through popular culture: [...]
The common thread in all of these destructive changes is that they are defended as increasing our "freedom."

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.  Maybe someday we'll return to a time when simply getting attention required actually doing something, where people don't eat poison as part of a "challenge," where segregation is bad, where no one cares about the gender of animal beauty pageant winners, you can just go to the movies because you want to see the movie, and the government isn't wasting our money chasing down myths to discredit a president.  And maybe, one day, we'll all look back at this and laugh.  It's more likely, however, that none of that will happen; that things will only get worse.  That people like this are this country's future.

California East.  One thing I have noticed is that blue states are more expensive than red states.  From housing, taxes, and electricity to a slice of pizza, you are going to pay more for pretty much everything in a blue state.  The reason is that the cost of everything the government does is added to the price of everything you buy.  This explains a lot.

T-Mobile and Leftism.  Tabula rasa, or the mind as a blank slate, is central to the progressive creation mythos.  This fallacy asserts that everything human beings think, say, and do derives from what they learn in the environment, as controlled by society.  For example, an application of tabula rasa trending now is that male babies become boys and female babies become girls mainly because society tells them they have to, and requires they be given "gendered" clothes and toys.  This thesis is so at odds with natural phenomena it must be deemed insane.  Tabula rasa is dear to the left because it minimizes individuality and personal responsibility, while emphasizing the differences among groups rather than within groups. [...] Of course, "love who you want" is a dog whistle for the "LGBT" entitlement, and especially for same-sex marriage.

ICE confirms that deadly CA fires were set by illegal alien arrested & released 5 times by sanctuary city cops.  Liberalism kills!  The insane immigration policies of the sanctuary state of California have turned tragic once again.  The acting director of ICE has confirmed that not only is the individual responsible for setting many of the fires consuming California an illegal alien, he has been arrested by local Sonoma County police at least five times.  ICE submitted detainer requests to arrest and deport the individual, Jesus Fabian Gonzalez, all five times.  All five times the detainer requests were ignored by local police, Gonzalez being released to set more fires and kill more people without so much as a phone call to ICE to honor its detainer requests.

Vacant lots, empty homes and dying orchards on bullet train route attract squatters, vandals and thieves.  Charlene Hook cherished her home of 30 years north of Corcoran, where pomegranate and pistachio orchards stretched for miles.  So choosing to burn it down last year was a difficult decision.  She and her husband had no plans to leave their 2½ acres until the day the state bullet train authority said its rails would go through their bedroom.  Not long after the couple moved out, thieves broke into the house and stripped almost everything of value — even taking the doors off her husband's shop where he restored classic cars.  Soon her former longtime neighbor's homes were being burglarized and vandalized.

The Real Gender Gap:  Family Breakdown and Black Males.  Data from the state of Virginia shows a strong association between single parent households and violent crime. [...] According to the Heritage Foundation, black illegitimacy rose exponentially halfway through the 1960s.  This is precisely when the perverse incentives of Johnson's "War on Poverty" were being implemented.

Delusional Illinois Democratic gubernatorial candidates promising the moon to citizens.  The state of Illinois is in the worst financial mess of any state in the union.  The state owes billions in unpaid bills to vendors -- most of them small businesses.  The pension system is underfunded and is a ticking time bomb getting ready to explode.  The state income tax is among the highest in the nation, the recently "reformed" school funding formula heavily favors the Chicago public schools while shortchanging suburban and rural schools, and the state legislature proceeds as if nothing was wrong.  Democrats refused to enact any of Republican Governor Bruce Rauner's reforms, which included pension reform, tax cuts for the middle class, and property tax reform.  Rauner, looking to change the "pay to play" culture in Springfield, stood firm for his reforms.  But Democrats refused to vote a state budget for two years.  In the end, Democrats got their way and passed a budget with a hefty increase in taxes.  In short, the state is broke.

To Protect Illegals from Deportation, Denver Decriminalizes Pooping on the Pavement.  What's confusing for those who regularly use restrooms is that a better life was supposed to be the excuse undocumented travelers gave for coming to America, to begin with.  How does permitting people to leave human excrement on the sidewalk cultivate an environment unlike the one migrants came from?  And if the culture illegals left behind ends up being foisted upon America — how does that improve anyone's life?  Yet pro-illegal immigrant activist-types seem to believe it is "soft bigotry" to insist illegals assimilate by finding their way to a restroom like the rest of the civilized world.  Ironically, by allowing in Denver what is common for 40-million people in Pakistan, the left not only encourages unsanitary conditions, they also tacitly insinuate that people from certain countries are incapable of learning to use the bathroom.  And who's the bigot?

Seattle Tax Killing local Business so Let's Make it Statewide!  It's amusing to watch Seattle tell us that this tax is designed to get people to drink less sugary drinks, that is, to change their eating behavior, while at the same time saying that it won't change people's shopping behavior when it comes to shopping.  However that's not what local businesses are reporting.

Pizza shop owner says Seattle's soda tax is costing him business.  It hasn't been a full month since Seattle implemented its soda and sugary beverages tax, and one Seattle business owner has said that the tax is costing him his business.  Businesses and consumers saw sticker shock immediately when the tax went into effect in early January.

New York City, Chicago Top List of Cities with Worst Fiscal Health.  Spoiler alert:  almost none of the 75 most populous cities in America have enough money to pay their bills.  Overall, those cities have racked up an astounding $335.4 billion in unfunded liabilities.  Of that, over $210 billion consists of unfunded pension commitments.  That's the conclusion reached by Truth in Accounting, a non-partisan think tank that advocates for transparent and honest accounting in public finances.  They examined the finances of the top 75 most populous cities in the U.S. and found that 64 of them balanced their budgets only because "elected officials have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers."

Trump saves lives in Alaska.  Jimmy Carter signed legislation in 1980 creating the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.  This was to help save the black brant, a subspecies of the brant goose.  In the first 14 years of this refuge, 12 Alaskans died because the refuge reduced the access of King Cove, population 989, to the neighboring community of Cold Bay, where Medevac aircraft land.  We overdo saving species to the point where we are willing to let an Alaskan die every year because a few geese might be upset.  President Reagan could not undo this mess, nor could either President Bush.  Clinton and Obama could not care less about the people of Alaska.

Playgrounds for Elites.  Homelessness has been on the rise in virtually all large cities, including Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco, even as it declines elsewhere.  Despite numerous exposés on the growth of suburban poverty, the poverty rate in core cities remains twice as high; according to the 2010 census, more than 80 percent of all urban-core population growth in the previous decade was among the poor.  For all the talk about inner-city gentrification, concentrated urban poverty remains a persistent problem, with 75 percent of high-poverty neighborhoods in 1970 still classified that way four decades later.  Clearly, then, the urban renaissance has not lifted all, or even most, boats.

Accused of assaulting 3 young girls, man says he's boy trapped in adult's body.  A Chicago man accused of sexually assaulting three young girls told prosecutors he considered himself a boy in a man's body, according to Cook County court documents.  Joseph Roman, 38, is charged with predatory criminal sexual assault stemming from repeated attacks on three girls who were 6 to 8 years old at the time, according to prosecutors.

The Editor says...
If a man can self-identify as a woman, who's gonna tell this pervert that he can't self-identify as a boy?  Thanks, liberals!

Eek!  A man!  In the case of San Francisco city policy, it isn't so much how many heroin needles should be distributed outside the quinoa cafes, or what punishment to exact upon sippers of straws.  It isn't about what to do with car break-ins, which have spiked to fever proportions and are growing at 26% annually.  Nor is the debate about housing, where vibrantly successful Democrat policy has caused "inflation adjusted construction costs [to] increase in San Francisco over the last 16 years by 60% not including changes in land values."  All of these policies are right on the mark.  The trouble is the skin color and sex of the people in city hall.

Letting an 8-year-old be a drag queen isn't progressive, it's child abuse.  Move over transgender kids, there is a new trend in town.  Drag kids — kids dressed in full garb of their biologically opposite gender — are now joining the scene with transgender kids.  The parents, guardians, and advocates of transgender or drag kids are not only supportive, but seem to be encouraging the child's experience and publicity.  There's nothing politically correct about this new frontier; it's abuse, merely distorted and cloaked in progressivism.

Soda Tax Sticker Shock Grips Seattle.  On January 1, Seattle had several new progressive laws go into effect.  Along with mandatory paid sick leave, mandates for employers to post work schedules 14 days in advance, and severe restrictions on short-term rental platforms (Airbnb, VRBO, etc.), Seattle imposed a massive new soda tax — 1.75 cents per OUNCE on sugary drinks.  In response, at least one major retailer advertised in detail the reason for the significant increase in prices.

San Francisco Requires Poop Maps To Help Pedestrians Avoid Human Waste.  For those who have maintained that San Francisco is full of ... whatever, there is now living proof.  How much poop is there on the streets of the City by the Bay?  Would you believe there is an online map to track human feces on the city's streets?  There is.  According to Fox News, one area of the city reported a 140% rise in feces.  As Jay Caruso of RedState noted, "Public urination is so widespread it has damaged subway elevators and escalators, building walls and power poles."  When did the gleaming jewel that was San Francisco become a repository for poop?  Mayor Willie Brown terminated ordinances; city district Attorney Terence Hallinan would not prosecute "victimless" crimes involving drugs and prostitution.

Why California is the 'poverty capital of the America'.  An excellent op-ed in the L.A. Times today by Kerry Jackson is on why California — with its liberal politics and generous welfare system — is the "poverty capital of America."  According to the Census Bureau, one out of five California residents is poor.  This despite the state's per capita GDP rising twice as fast in the last five years as the national average.  From 1992 to 2015, state and local governments spent nearly $1 trillion to help the poor.  The state, with 12% of the American population, is home today to about one in three of the nation's welfare recipients.  Jackson then reaches the not so astonishing conclusion:  "The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse."

Why is liberal California the poverty capital of America?  Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country?  Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor.  That's according to the Census Bureau's Supplemental Poverty Measure, which factors in the cost of housing, food, utilities and clothing, and which includes noncash government assistance as a form of income.  Given robust job growth and the prosperity generated by several industries, it's worth asking why California has fallen behind, especially when the state's per-capita GDP increased approximately twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016 (12.5%, compared with 6.27%).

Illinois, New Jersey, and New York Are Top States For Outbound Moves in 2017.  Illinois, New Jersey, and New York were the top states in the nation for outbound moves in 2017, according to data from United Van Lines.  United Van Lines, which tracks state-to-state migration patterns, found that Illinois was the top state for outbound migration with 63 percent of moves going out of state.  "The Northeast continues to experience a moving deficit with New Jersey (63 percent outbound), New York (61 percent) and Connecticut (57 percent) making the list of top outbound states for the third consecutive year," the report states.  "Massachusetts (56 percent) also joined the top outbound list this year."  The other states that led the nation for the highest outbound migration were Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Utah, and Wisconsin.

The pathetic results of the NFL kneeling spree.  What, exactly, did the NFL "take-a-knee" protests by wealthy black football players protesting racial injustice accomplish? [...] [T]he protests show that the black community of today is profoundly lacking in leadership.  That might be attributed to black leaders buying into the entire Democratic Party package in large numbers, leaving the black community with failed, corrupt one-party cities such as Detroit; lousy schools due to teachers unions' grip on power; abortion targeting and hitting black communities hardest, weakening the family structure; and the absence of a significant black business community due to the massive regulations imposed from Democratic rule.

U-Haul Names Texas Leader for U.S. Growth.  U-Haul named Texas the nation's number one growth state for 2017, marking the second consecutive year the Lone Star State nabbed the top spot in the truck rental company's annual migration trends report which analyzes domestic relocation patterns.  According to U-Haul, the number of incoming truck rentals accounted for 50.3 percent of all one-way traffic into Texas last year.  The report noted that year-over-year arrivals of one-way truck rentals into the state only rose by one percent while departures climbed three percent compared to 2016's data.  U-Haul attributed some of 2017's outbound flow to Hurricane Harvey, which pounded the Houston area and the Texas Gulf Coast.  Despite these minor fluctuations, Texas remained the nation's top net-gain state, as it also was in 2016.

Doctor Questions Wisdom, Timing of Legalizing Marijuana.  The legalization of marijuana became a hot topic in the past week.  First, recreational use of the drug became legal in California at the start of 2018.  Next, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced he would allow U.S. attorneys to decide whether to enforce federal laws outlawing the use and sale of pot in states that have legalized the drug.  Sessions ended an Obama administration policy that discouraged federal prosecutors from enforcing federal marijuana laws in states that allow the drug's medical or recreational use.  It's not clear yet what impact the attorney general's action will have.

Americans Are Voting With Their Feet For Low Taxes, Less Regulation.  The latest bit of evidence comes from North American Moving Services, which annually reports where people are moving to, and from, within the U.S.  Its findings show that between 2011 and 2017, 10 states saw a net influx of people from other states in one or more of those years, while 9 suffered losses.  The rest of the states saw no net change in any of those years.  South Carolina, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina were net winners in most of those years.  New Jersey, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Michigan were consistent losers.

Red Robin will offset minimum wage hikes by canning busboys.  Restaurant busboys, in line to earn a little more dough this year as minimum wage hikes hit across the country, are instead losing their jobs as chains look to cut costs.  One chain axing jobs is Red Robin, which hopes to save about $8 million this year by eliminating busboys at each of its 570 restaurants, the company said Monday.  Red Robin restaurants are located mostly in Western states, where the minimum wage has risen more quickly.

Whose idea was it to raise the minimum wage?

Pot is dangerous, not funny — a doctor tells us why.  As a physician, my doctoring knowledge tells me that making marijuana legally available is a bad idea, except perhaps for certain medical conditions.  Marijuana is a potent mind-altering drug that can cause serious harm, as I explain below.  It will be just one more substance we have to warn our children to stay away from.  As we all know, many people use marijuana even where it remains illegal.  But legalization will lead to increased use and make many people believe it is not all that dangerous.  The growing acceptance of legalized pot is an alarming trend.  It has quickly spread in the past few years and today seven states and Washington, D.C., allow recreational marijuana.  A total of 29 states and the District of Columbia allow some form of medical marijuana.

Illinois city runs out of other people's money.  Elected officials in the City of Harvey, Illinois are going to be missing their paychecks, as the decades of over-spending and over-taxing finally come home for the politicians responsible for the crisis.

Settled science hates pot.  My psychotic friend Mike from high school calls me every now and then to say hello.  Mike was the smartest kid I ever knew — and also the most pot-smoking, acid-dropping, high-all-the-time kid.  Vulnerable boys usually have their first psychotic breaks around age 20, and Mike has had about one hospitalization every year.  He's incurable and can't hold a job or have a family, and his friendly phone calls are always the same weird word salad.

The Whore of Babylon Dances the Night Away.  I spent a restless night last night — thoughts of how far down the sewage tank this nation has gone — thinking of how polluted this nation has become and how the perverts — the Sodomites — the Lesbians — the child molesters — have infected this nation and so many in it How wicked — vile — deceitful — degenerate — depraved — Like Nineveh, like Rome — sin fills the air and open rebellion against God is everywhere. [...] They not only protect and defend sin as being how to live but they pound it into the faces of everyone day in and day out.  They have used the public school system to make sure that our children find nothing wrong in two mommies or two daddies or grade schoolers learning how to put on condoms or how to have anal sex or how to get an abortion.  Look at the media attention to the perverts and out of wedlock children by those whose only claim to fame is being able to read scripts and ACT.

Six Insane California Laws That Will Be Implemented On Monday.  [#5] You can make up your gender on official state IDs:  California will abolish its requirement that a person must go "clinically appropriate treatment for the purpose of gender transition" if they want to change the sex on their birth certicate, which means that men can say they're women, and vice-versa, on state IDs like driver's licenses.  Beginning in 2019, driver's licenses will have three options for sex:  male, female, and nonbinary.

Depictions of Moms in Traditional Roles Banned in Ads.  Cooking, cleaning mums will be banned in advertisements across the UK from next year, following a study which claimed traditional gender roles are "harmful and outdated".  The decision to tighten regulation was announced by the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) this week, after a report published in summer identified gender stereotypes in adverts as a driver of inequality between men and women.  "Wherever they appear or are reinforced, gender stereotypes can lead to mental, physical and social harm which can limit the potential of groups and individuals," the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) alleged in its study.

The Editor says...
A depiction of traditional gender roles, the way normal people live their customary lives and the way things are supposed to be is not a stereotype.  It may be ordinary, dull and routine, but it is not misleading.  Those who are constantly "pushing the envelope" to sell a product, a book, or a TV show are the only ones who find traditional behavior offensive.  Permit me to elaborate:  Advertising is constantly being used as propaganda.  In every TV commercial, the women are smart and the men are dumb.  The women are the problem solvers, and the men are the ones who brought the problem into the house.  The women are the savvy shoppers, and the men are helpless buffoons.  In some commercials, life is wonderful for Mom and the kids, because there's no man in sight.  Nearly everything you see in television advertising depicts an inversion of the truth.

Liberals Wrote the Book on Sexual Immorality.  Perhaps the most guarded tenet of all of modern liberalism is the idea that people should be able to do whatever they wish in the sexual realm.  Whether killing children in the womb; redefining the oldest institution in the history of humanity; fighting for the "right" of men to use women's restrooms — and for women to cheat at sports, and for men to take trophies from women — celebrating the sexualization of children; everything else in the perverse LGBT agenda; and so on, much of what modern liberals hold dear hinges on sexual hedonism. [...] Hollywood productions are now filled with graphic nudity and sex — what used to be called "pornography."  Adultery, fornication, pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, and virtually every other example sexual immorality imaginable have long been promoted and celebrated by the modern left.  Along with the entertainment, news, and political arenas, schools, corporations, and even churches are filled with, and being led by, those who are dangerously, and often tragically, sexually deceived.  Thus, if not directly debasing themselves by being personally involved in these wicked sexual activities, blind to the notion that some things don't even deserve a debate, millions of Americans have at least been misled into thinking that such behavior must be "tolerated."

'Christ' Purged from Christmas and the Left Rejoices.  Decades ago, Christians, conservatives and anyone against the insanity of political correctness ceded the three major megaphones of our nation to the far-left.  Those megaphones being the media, entertainment, and academia.  Once the far-left was essentially given absolute control of the megaphones of our nation, they made sure they kept control via a brutal and ongoing process of discrimination in hiring.  If you were conservative, Republican, Christian or simply someone who would dare to question the dogma of liberalism, you were not only looked down upon as unenlightened, but had your name permanently carved into a granite "Do Not Hire Ever" list.

Moral Values and Customs vs.  Laws.  It has always been considered a good idea to refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage or at least adulthood.  During the sexual revolution of the 1960s, lessons of abstinence were ridiculed, considered passe and replaced with lessons about condoms, birth control pills and abortion.  Out-of-wedlock childbirths are no longer seen as shameful and a disgrace.  As a result, the rate of illegitimate births among whites is over 30 percent, and among blacks, it's over 70 percent.  For over a half-century, the nation's liberals — along with the education establishment, pseudo-intellectuals and the courts — have waged war on traditions, customs and moral values.  Many in today's generation have been counseled to believe that there are no moral absolutes.  Instead, what's moral or immoral, right or wrong, is a matter of convenience, personal opinion or what is or is not criminal.

Portland's Disgraceful Anarchy.  The disorder that has long dominated the streets of Portland, Oregon reached a new low earlier this month, when Columbia Sportswear, a major retailer headquartered just outside of nearby Beaverton, had to close its flagship store downtown for a day after protestors blocked shoppers from entering.  The protestors were reacting to an op-ed by Tim Boyle, Columbia's CEO, in which he confessed that relocating his company to downtown Portland may have been a mistake, citing the crimes and indecencies his employees have endured, including "daily defecation" by transients in the store's lobby.  Certain repeat offenders of the city's vagrant population, along with other agitators, have issued death threats and broken into cars; one Columbia employee had to run into moving traffic after a stranger followed her and threatened to kill her.  Boyle, who is considering closing his store permanently, was right to call these events "outrageous and unacceptable," yet Portland mayor Ted Wheeler has offered excuses rather than confronting the issue.  On Thursday [12/14/2017], Wheeler blamed his city's wave of homelessness on the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, attacking Secretary Ben Carson for failing to "provide solutions."  Meanwhile, the city has been reluctant to deploy the crime-prevention resources that it already has at its disposal to address the homelessness wave.

A Homeless Camp Sparked The Fire That Ravaged LA's Wealthiest Zip Code.  An illegal cooking fire at a homeless camp started the blaze that engulfed more than 400 acres in Bel Air and the surrounding area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.  LAFD investigators said the Skirball Fire started at a homeless camp just north of Bel Air, which is ranked as Los Angeles' wealthiest zip code.  The blaze engulfed 422 acres and destroyed six structures, damaging 12 more since it began about six days ago.

Cooking fire at a homeless encampment sparked Bel-Air blaze that destroyed homes, officials say.  The blaze that swept through the hills of Bel-Air last week, destroying six homes and damaging a dozen others, was sparked by a cooking fire at a homeless encampment in a nearby ravine, Los Angeles officials said Tuesday.  The encampment was nestled in a canyon several hundred feet from Sepulveda Boulevard and the 405 Freeway, hidden from passing cars.  For several years, it had been home to an unknown number of people, officials said.  Investigators said the fire had not been set deliberately and they have not found any of the people who lived there.  The camp — one of scores of makeshift communities that have grown along freeways, rivers and open space across Los Angeles — was largely destroyed in the fire, leaving authorities with little evidence.

Christian Teacher Suspended for 'Misgendering' Trans Pupil Sues School.  A Christian teacher is suing his secondary school after being suspended for referring to a biologically female pupil as a "girl".  Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, from Oxford, argues that he was not trained in the new, quickly evolving, gender politics and should not be forced to accept transgender ideology as a Christian.  He says he was investigated and suspended after he said, "well done, girls" to a group of female pupils, including a pupil who "identified" as a boy.

Liberals Have Turned The FBI Into A Disgrace.  Add this infamy to all the other crimes of the liberal establishment — its poisonous influence has converted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the eyes of the American people, from a proud institution dedicated to upholding the law into just another suppurating bureaucratic pustule.  Where once we saw FBI agents as heroes — many of us ancients grew up watching Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., every Sunday night — now we see careerist hacks looking to suck-up to the Democrat elite while bending the law and subverting justice to do it.  Truly, everything liberals touch dies.

How NOT profiling someone led to breaking and entering.  A friend told me a true parable for our times:  Because she and others in her neighborhood were afraid of racist profiling, they failed to stop a robbery.

The Impending Death of Multiculturalism.  We are all familiar with the Democratic Party gambit of packing the electorate with poor, third-world immigrants, all but guaranteed to vote for the party who offers them a living on the taxpayers' largesse.  While progressives still roll their eyes at the suggestion that this is why third-world immigration has been encouraged — the point is no longer even worth arguing.  The fact that this immigration policy has, for many decades, had the effect of moving the country to the left is uncontestable.

LAPD Swamped by Sexual Harassment Investigations in Entertainment Industry.  The Los Angeles Police Department says it is swamped with the sheer volume of ever-growing sexual harassment and assault allegations and complaints against powerful men in the entertainment industry.  "It's an international phenomenon," NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told Southern California Public Radio (SCPR) when asked about investigations into mogul Harvey Weinstein and others.  "These ladies were sexually assaulted, harassed, and they acquired psychological damage, so we have to move very cautiously with anyone who comes in — and that's what we're doing."

The Wages of Inversion.  We live in an age in which things are no longer what they are supposed to be.  Words have come to denote the opposite of what they signify. [...] Thus a blood-saturated religion is rinsed for public consumption as the "religion of peace."  An insurgent army of fascist brownshirts calls itself Antifa.  "Inclusion" has come to mean the exclusion of those who do not conform to a prescribed ideology.  "Diversity" is an antonymic synonym for monolithic groupthink.  "Affirmative action" arms racism in the guise of anti-racism.

Sex, Uranium & Rock & Roll.  The collapse is underway, and it is awesome.  Liberalism is imploding everywhere.  But it is not without cost:  liberalism has destroyed so many institutions that were 'net positives' for America, and now they're just hollowed-out carcasses of their former 'family-friendly' selves:  Hollywood, the broadcast media, NFL and so on.  It's because liberalism always takes the low road, the easy road, the free stuff road — the road without morals or responsibility, and your Professional Liberals place political agenda above everything else.  Everything.  Truth isn't even on the list.  Even now, as they pretend to to take responsibility for the tsunami of liberal perverts being exposed, they're not.

Homeless Crisis in Los Angeles Worst Since Great Depression.  The number of homeless people living on Los Angeles's Skid Row is the worst the city has seen since the Great Depression.  This year, nearly 2,500 homeless and near-homeless men, women and children were served Thanksgiving lunch on Skid Row and in Pasadena and Canoga Park.  "We haven't seen numbers like this since the Great Depression," Georgia Berkovich, the director of The Midnight Mission's public affairs department, told the Los Angeles Times.

Homeless people defecating on LA streets fuels horror hepatitis outbreak, as city faulted.  An outbreak of hepatitis A is spreading through Los Angeles County after leaping from a large homeless contingent in San Diego, threatening thousands of people and fueling criticism that local officials have not done enough to contain the deadly liver disease.  Hundreds of cases have turned up in southern California as well as Michigan — but conditions in Los Angeles, where roughly 50,000 people live on the streets, have prompted deeper concerns.  Reports compiled by volunteer organizations have faulted city officials for not providing enough accessible toilets as the homeless population sharply increased by 23 percent this year.

Why The Left Hates Thanksgiving.  Why is it so hard for the left to be thankful?  The answer is as easy as pumpkin pie.  The left is a movement built on resentment.  And resentment and gratitude are opposing emotions.  That is why the left really hates Thanksgiving.  The revisionist autopsies of American history and the guides to sensitively calling your uncle a racist are about substituting resentment for thankfulness.  Whether it's a family getting together once a year, the Pilgrims and the Indian tribesmen breaking bread or the White House press corps being asked to talk about the good things in their lives, a moment of thankfulness has to be ruined with resentment.  Resentment is the force that gives the left meaning.

Filmmaker Visits UC Berkeley With Huge American And ISIS Flags.  Guess The Students' Reaction.  In a disturbing video which he made on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, filmmaker Ami Horowitz reveals how sick the leftists are on the campus with their fervent anti-Americanism.  Horowitz stood on the campus holding a huge American flag while calling out paeans to American greatness.  That elicited some shocking responses from some of the students, including: [...]

Church Tells Clergy To Stop Referring To 'The Lord' And 'He' Because God Is Gender Neutral.  In Sweden, Lutherans are imploring their clergy to use gender-neutral terms in reference to God, and using terms like "the Lord" and "He" aren't going to cut it anymore. [...] For those who are in the know, The Lord's Prayer commonly refers to God as "Our Father."  Apparently, Swedish Lutherans are being led away from such language, and are now encouraged to say "Our Parent who art in Heaven."

The Sultans of America and Their Harems.  Americans have been buried in the last six weeks by a blizzard of reports of sexual harassment, assault, misconduct and malfeasance from our politicians, journalists and Hollywood glitterati.  In the last week alone, we've seen a picture of Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., during his pre-senatorial days placing his hands over a sleeping woman's breasts; the suspension of New York Times journalist Glenn Thrush for allegedly harassing young female journalists; and eight women telling the Washington Post that fabled television host Charlie Rose had made unwanted sexual advances ranging from groping to lewd phone calls.  That follows on the heels of allegations of child molestation against Alabama Senate Republican nominee Roy Moore, confirmed accusations of unwanted exposure from comedian Louis C.K. and allegations of sexual assault against Russell Simmons.  Every day, it seems, a new member of the cultural aristocracy comes tumbling down.  What's behind all of it?

Does your gas and electricity cost too much?  You can thank liberals for that.  Looking at both gasoline and electric prices for the 48-contiguous states and weighting each the same shows that Louisiana and Oklahoma have the nation's lowest prices for these two essential energy staples.  Louisiana's combined gasoline and electricity prices were 37 percent below the national average while Oklahoma enjoyed a discount of 33 percent below the national average.  Paying the most for electricity and gasoline were Connecticut and California, at 76 percent and 75 percent above the national average, respectively.

The Failure to Launch.  For better or worse modern "helicopter parents" now frown on tree climbing, unsupervised river swims or risky activity.  Perhaps as a consequence a Scientific American article says "that since around 2000, teens have become considerably less likely to drive, have an after-school job and date. [...] But few seem to connect the Failure to Launch with the projects of the 20th century.  Nobody sees it as something we created or linked it with the dubious achievements of the progressive movement; specifically that ongoing endeavor of the late 20th and early 21st centuries:  the war on youth.  Look at the numbers.  Today's young people are the survivors of a long and murderous campaign of abortion and birth control which have decimated their ranks.  In Europe and in China the youth are simply gone, vanished, decimated.

Confused NYPD cops afraid of 'stopping anyone' under new stop-and-frisk policies.  NYPD cops are terrified of "stopping anyone" under new stop-and-frisk policies, fearing that the brass "won't have our backs," a court-appointed monitor reported.  Attorney Peter Zimroth, who is tasked with implementing court-ordered reforms to the NYPD's controversial stop-and-frisk program, said officers have been telling trainers that they are unsure "what's expected" of them.  "Officers have said, 'The law is confusing.  I don't know what's expected of me anymore,'" Zimroth wrote in a memo to Manhattan federal Judge Analisa Torres, outlining focus-group feedback ahead of new training procedures.

Survey Shows How Many Democrats Believe Your Gender Can Be Different Than Biological Sex.  Most of us didn't need a poll to show us that liberals have lost their grip on reality.  But Pew Research Center is providing one anyway.  In a survey that will probably leave you speechless about the radical bent of President Barack Obama's party, Pew asked Americans what they really think about gender identity.  If the results don't surprise you, check your pulse.  First, the good news.  A majority of Americans (though far less than one might guess, 54 percent) still believe that a person's gender is "determined at birth."  Fewer, 44 percent, think someone "can be a man or woman even if that is different than the sex they were assigned at birth."  That's right.  Only a 10 percent gap separates Americans on what, a decade ago, would have been a consensus issue.

Who Are the Real Fascists in American Politics?  [Scroll down]  [T]he Nazis wanted government ownership of all industry.  Is there anyone on the face of the earth who thinks that Trump wants that?  Rather, if anyone would opt for nationalization, it would be Democrats who insist on more and more regulations of industry, and more and more forms and accountability to government by individual citizens.  As regulation keeps growing and becomes excessive, it morphs into control.  Even if there is, technically-speaking, private ownership, the freedom that ownership normally implies is negated by the tight controls imposed and the accountability to governmental offices.  For example, technology now exists which would enable the regulation in private homes and businesses of heat and air conditioning from a remote location. [...] Under the guise of environmental concerns, stopping discrimination against "protected classes," paying a fair share, getting funds for dubious public programs, buying peace by attempting to bribe barbarous enemies like Iran and North Korea through various "deals," and enlarging public support of the supposed indigent to the point where 48% of Americans do not pay any tax at all, the tentacles of government growth keep expanding.

K-12: The Math You Need Is Not the Math You Get.  Common Core wants you to "to reason abstractly and quantitatively."  What could that mean?  Public schools do not teach fundamental skills, so students, after years in the classroom, can't do life's simple problems.  Instead, they can "use appropriate tools strategically."  Does anybody know what that would be?  Oh, maybe they mean a calculator.  That's pretty much the way all the kids end up:  calculator-dependent. [...] It's a total bait-and-switch, just like sight-word reading.  School officials promise to teach you superior methods that turn out to be vastly inferior.  Then you realize you've wasted years; at the end of it, you can't do simple arithmetic (just as you can't read).  Focus on the tsunami of waste for a few minutes, and you'll start to scorn our professors of education.

'Transracial' man born white feels like he is Filipino.  Riding in a flamboyant purple vehicle, Ja Du shows up to a coffee shop to open up about his new identity.  Ja Du, born a white male named Adam, now considers himself a Filipino.  Turns out the purple ride he drives around in is called a Tuk Tuk, an Asian-derived vehicle used for public transit in the Philippines he says.  Ja Du is part of a small, but growing community of people who considers themselves transracial.  It refers to someone born one race, but identifies with another.  Sound weird?  Not to them.

The Editor says...
I think the primary goal of the liberal agenda is to de-normalize everything, remove all traditions, and desensitize everyone, so nothing is ever considered abnormal or perverse, and nobody is ever suspected of being insane.

NYC Transit Is Waging A Politically Correct War Against Gender.  Imagine you're taking a ride on the bus or subway in New York City, and you hear an announcement that begins, "Ladies and gentleman."  Do you react in horror?  No, you do not.  Because such terminology is biologically correct and therefore, inoffensive.  For those who prefer gender-neutral language, though, these regular terms are the height of shocking, Because that's where we are in 2017.  We live in a world where Facebook has fifty-six custom gender options for the confused among us.  Forget biology and all that.  Feelings are what matter most.  It is out of this vein that the New York City transit system's new rule came about.

Endless Accusations Cloud the Truth.  [Scroll down]  I blame feminists and the media for this cloud of confusion, mostly because I hate feminists and the media, but also because they do bear some of the blame.  For instance, the New York Times, a former newspaper, now has a tip line where you can complain about something sexual someone famous did to you back in the day.  How is that not going to lead to abuse?  Liars will flock to it.  And if someone calls up and complains about Barack Obama, and someone else calls up and complains about Rush Limbaugh — which one do you think the Times will follow up on?

Delaware to Let Children Pick Their Own Gender and Race.  Now that objective biological reality has been subordinated to liberal ideology, children are whatever gender and race they say they are, according to the moonbats running Delaware.

Night of change for Minneapolis City Council as first transgender candidate wins.  The Minneapolis City Council was poised for historic change Tuesday as voters elected the city's first transgender council member, on a night that saw a handful of veteran council members from across the city struggling to hold on against strong challenges.  "I'm feeling elated.  Ecstatic.  Extraordinarily happy right now," Andrea Jenkins, who becomes the first transgender woman of color elected to public office in a major U.S. city, said from her election night party at Curran's Restaurant.  "I'm really, really deeply proud of my community."

Palm Springs City Council now entirely queer after election of transgender, bisexual women.  The Palm Springs, Calif., City Council is entirely LGBT or queer after two new members were elected to the council Tuesday [11/7/2017].  Lisa Middleton made history Tuesday as the first openly transgender candidate elected to a nonjudicial office in California.  Christy Holstege, who identifies as bisexual, won the second open seat on the city council.  They beat out four other candidates in Tuesday's election, the Desert Sun reported.  Middleton won about 31% of the vote while Holstege won with 30% of the vote in her favor, the Desert Sun reports.  Their election means that the council is now 100% LGBT or queer, according to Equality California, which endorsed both candidates, and contributed to their campaigns.

First openly transgender state legislator elected in Virginia.  Virginia House of Delegates candidate Danica Roem (D) has defeated longtime Del. Robert Marshall (R), becoming Virginia's first openly transgender elected official, according to The Washington Post.  Roem's win in Virginia's 13th District also means she is poised to become the first openly transgender person to be elected and seated in a state legislature, advocates say.

The Fatal Folly of Diversity.  Diversity refers not to a variety of ideas, as any conservative speaker trying to deliver a lecture on a college campus can attest, but instead to identity markers of skin color, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, traits which most Americans see through without discrimination.  As Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.  Diversity apparently applies to immigration too, specifically the Diversity Visa Lottery.  Something most Americans didn't even realize existed until last week's Manhattan terrorist attack.  The terrorist entering the U.S. from Uzbekistan via this so-called lottery.  Seeing how this played out suggests that this isn't a lottery, instead a game of Russian roulette.  Spin the cylinder and take your chances as to whether a law-abiding, productive citizen comes out of the gun or a radical Islamic terrorist.

No One Glorifies 'Gun Violence' More Than Hollywood.  How influential is Hollywood in promoting violence?  A December 2013 study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics revealed gun violence in PG-13-rated films more than tripled since the PG-13 rating's 1985 introduction.  Moreover, three-quarters of the same celebrities who signed or supported a letter saying they'd had enough of "unnecessary gun violence" following the terrorist attack in San Bernardino have no problem promoting violence in their own movies.  Celebrities like Jamie Foxx, who starred in "Law Abiding Citizen," described by IMDb as a movie with "strong bloody brutal violence and torture, a scene of rape, and pervasive language," as well as "Django Unchained," another highly violent movie directed by cop-basher Quentin Tarantino, whose entire career has been dedicated to the production of ultra-violent movies.  Celebrities like Jessica Alba, who stars in "Machete Kills," and Liam Neeson, who starred in the extremely violent "Taken" — and its two equally violent sequels, "Taken 2" and "Taken 3."  The same Liam Neeson [who Jimmy] Kimmel welcomed as a guest on his Sept. 27 show.  Or perhaps we could note Anthony Anderson, who played a role in the incredibly violent movie "The Departed."  Anderson was Kimmel's guest on Oct. 2 — the night Kimmel preached about "gun violence" after Las Vegas.

A Foundation of Nonsense.  It seems today that Western societies are painfully re-learning things that were common knowledge a few generations ago.  The old axiom, fences make good neighbors, was replaced with "diversity is our strength."  Every time a swarthy fellow blows up in the public square, we inch a bit closer to the realization that diversity is a nightmare.  That's the part we see.  The part we don't see, at least not yet, is the crumbling of the foundation stones of the modern West.

Do We Live in a Diseased Culture?  An article earlier this week discussing a recent Center for Disease Control report warns of "record high" numbers of sexually transmitted diseases.  Over two million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and primary and secondary syphilis were reported in 2016 — "the highest number ever" — with dramatic increases in each disease over the previous one-year period.  While most of these new infections (1.6 million) were cases of chlamydia — which continues to affect more women than men — the most significant uptick in gonorrhea infection rates was in gay and bisexual men, as were most new syphilis cases.  The CDC also reports that half of the men diagnosed with syphilis between 2015 and 2016 were already living with HIV.  CDC physicians expressed particular concern about the health implications for babies born with STDs, and about newer, antibiotic-resistant strains of gonorrhea.

Poll:  Millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country.  A new survey reveals that more millennials would prefer to live under a socialist regime than a capitalist one, though only about 1/3 of respondents were able to successfully define the term "socialism."  Only 36%, meanwhile, expressed a "very unfavorable" view of communism, and most said they wouldn't even be "insulted" to be called a communist.

A nation settles into depravity and madness.  In 2008, voters signed up for an untested junior Illinois senator who promised them racial harmony and a post-racial nation.  They got Black Lives Matter and a war on cops instead. [...] Middle America brushes daily against madness at the 7-Eleven or Wal-Mart.  Free spirits in 21st century America might include breakdancing Afro-crazies on the L train, your neighbor, or the school principal.  In trailer parks, beaten-down shacks, high-rise projects, and section 8 warrens, depravity and craziness have a field day.  Hollywood-Las Vegas style seediness is the beau ideal.  Tattooed, obese, shacked up, unemployed, possibly high and armed, deranged or completely unable to cope, this lumpen rabble has no incentive or capacity to change its ways.  Those most afflicted by the squalor are the striving native-born poor — often non-white — who live among them.  The influx of immigrants-with-no-intention-to-assimilate adds to social tension, as neighborhoods, jobs, schools, language, and signage go foreign. [...] The welfare state now manages a rainbow of human dysfunction, compounded by widespread drug addiction, waning industrial jobs, single-parent "families," and steep immigrant costs.

Has Promoting Mother Absence Spawned Campus Crybabies?  The reflective Mary Eberstadt has the latest Weekly Standard cover story, asserting that the late rise of identity politics especially among the young descends from the decline in family, despite myriad other theories. [...] She touches on some of the research that has become well-known among child psychologists and sociologists, referencing the dramatic increase in, for example, mental health problems, at a high point now on campuses and in the public at large.  Mental health problems are linked with family instability, as are reductions in the resources that can help alleviate them, such as church attendance and deeper, broader community relationships.  Divorce and failure to marry before bearing children also harm nearby families that do not themselves experience these maladies.  Private choices are in fact not private choices, after all.

Poll: 71% of Americans Say Political Correctness Has Silenced Discussions Society Needs to Have.  The Cato 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, a new national poll of 2,300 U.S. adults, finds that 71% Americans believe that political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have.  The consequences are personal — 58% of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs.  Democrats are unique, however, in that a slim majority (53%) do not feel the need to self-censor.  Conversely, strong majorities of Republicans (73%) and independents (58%) say they keep some political beliefs to themselves.

Still waiting for a liberal media epiphany.  We voters outside the seaboard citadels of snobbery are still waiting for the Press to return from their celebrated cerebral safari and come to an obvious conclusion; the Democratic Party is the sleazebag party.  The liars, the liars by omission, the sexual abusers, the Russian conspirators, and the cheaters are almost exclusively from the left.  This makes them contented fellow travelers with our sketchy mainstream media types.  The press has long been in bed with anyone or anything liberal. [...] For fifty years the Democrats have incapacitated minorities — see any ghetto in America.  The Democrats have abused women — see Harvey and Bill.  The Democrats have battered laws, rules, and procedures — see illegal immigrants and the AHCA.  And of course, all the while they have strung along an eager press.

The Lib Enablers of Perv Photographer.  If you wonder why Hollywood stayed so quiet so long about casting couch abuse behind closed doors, just look at how the entertainment industry enabled perverted sexual exploitation of women in front of the camera. [...] While they now rush to condemn backroom sexual harassment and the corporate "rape culture," they've capitalized on explicit sexual degradation to sell magazines, clothes and cosmetics.  They've commodified and normalized pedophilia, adultery, promiscuity and prostitution.  They are the culture.

DNC is Broke:  Donors Have Abandoned the Democrats.  Wherever you find Democrats in concentration, pestilence lies in the midst.  Look at the cities run by Democrats, and what do you have?  Rampant violent crime, poverty, unemployment, and corruption.  Do we really need another article showcase the Top 10, no 50, no 100 Worst Places to Live?  There won't be a Republican-run city among them.  The investment in Leftism failed.  Trillions spent on meaningless programs, that have made the country more divided than ever.

U.K. Government Blasts U.N. Because Treaty Says 'Pregnant Women' Instead Of 'Pregnant People'.  The U.K. government blasted the United Nations for using the term "pregnant women" in a new version of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, claiming the term excludes transgender people who have given birth, and is therefore disrespectful.

Saving the nation from the left's bullies.  As we've all been understandably focused on Hollywood's Weinstein dumpster fire, a number of stories have emerged exposing the left's continuing culture war, despite its meltdown in the film industry.  The Harvey Weinstein saga is but one symptom of a dangerous and destructive, yet smug and sanctimonious, liberal establishment.  While they butcher American culture, civil society and history, how better to keep us normals from interfering than by blaming their victims for society's ills?

Transgender Person Convicted Of Sexually Abusing 10-Year-Old Girl In Bathroom.  A biological man who identifies as a transgender woman has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old Wyoming girl in a bathroom.  Miguel Martinez, who goes by the name Michelle, was found guilty of first-degree and second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, the Casper Star Tribune reported.  Martinez faces up to 70 years in prison, according to the Tribune.

Transgender Man Was Arrested for Sexually Assaulting a 10-Year-Old Girl in the Bathroom.  A Wyoming man who identifies as a transgender woman is on trial for allegedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a bathroom.  The trial for Miguel Martinez, who goes by the name Michelle, began on Monday [10/16/2017], the Billings Gazette reported.  Martinez allegedly invited the young girl into the bathroom with him where he allegedly fondled the girl's breasts and genitalia, before penetrating her.  The girl told police that "it hurt inside" and she started to cry, the Casper Star Tribune reported.

When Truth Becomes Obscene.  The most appalling and troubling spectacle of the American Left's bag of tricks is their refusal to simply tell the truth. [...] The American Left's entire political discourse is built on false language.  Lies.  Trickery.  Fallacies.  Where words do not mean what they actually mean.  Where one cannot actually state the nature of an issue, in plain and common language, without being called a racist, white supremacist, fascist, homophobic, misogynist knuckle-dragger that deserves to have their head bashed with a threaded lead pipe.  Even though they are uncomfortable, facts are what we must have to survive as a country.

California first state to legally recognize third gender option.  California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Sunday [10/15/2017] signed new legislation that will allow state residents to choose a gender option other than male or female on official documents.  The legislation, a top priority of civil rights groups, also makes it easier for transgender people to change their gender identification on birth certificates or driver's licenses.

The Beginning Of The End Of Progressive Domination?  The two terms of Barack Obama seemed to be the crowning validation of the left's victory.  Despite Obama's "no blue state, no red state" campaign rhetoric, he governed as the most leftist — and ineffectual — president in history.  Deficits exploded, taxes were raised, new entitlements created, and government expanded far beyond the dreams of center-left Democrats.  Marriage and sex identities were redefined.  The narrative of permanent white racism was endorsed and promoted.  Tradition-minded Americans were scorned as "bitter clingers to guns and religion."  Hollywood and Silicon Valley became even more powerful cultural arbiters and left-wing publicists.  And cosmopolitan internationalism was privileged over patriotic nationalism, while American exceptionalism was reduced to an irrational parochial prejudice.

Study: Legal Cannabis Linked to 66% Rise in Traffic Deaths in Colorado.  There has been a huge push to legalize marijuana in states across the country, with Colorado frequently seen as the bellwether for the rest of the country, having already legalized cannabis.  But has the experiment in Colorado been a success?  Statistics show that legalization of cannabis in Colorado has been followed with an increase in traffic fatalities, emergency room stays, and crime.  Others have argued that the legalized marijuana in Colorado has made it easier for drug traffickers to ship it across the rest of the nation.  And the number of cannabis users has increased by 12%.

The Left's Sirens Are Already Hinting Our Culture Wars Will End In Another Civil War.  Is there anything left in American public life that isn't an occasion for political rancor and division?  NFL games are now nothing more than crude pieces of political theater.  On Sunday [10/8/2017] even Vice President Mike Pence got in on the act, showing up to a Colts-49ers game then leaving after a few players knelt during the national anthem.  Next day was Columbus Day, which the cities of Los Angeles and Austin decided this year to replace with "Indigenous Peoples' Day," because Christopher Columbus is apparently the new Robert E. Lee.  And it's only Tuesday.  It should be obvious by now that our culture wars will henceforth be constant and unending; the next battle could be triggered by almost anything.

Hollywood Homicide: 108 Automatic Weapons Blaze Away in 4 Top Movies.  Last week Stephen Paddock killed at least 59 Las Vegas concert-goers using automatic weapons.  Reportedly aided by "bump stocks" that made his semi-automatic rifles into automatic weapons, his killing spree was the worst in U.S. history.  People were understandably horrified that he was able to fire what amounted to machine guns into a crowd.  Yet similar weapons were being fired in movie theaters around the country.  Three of the top five movies at the box office featured characters blasting away with automatic weapons.  Two — Kingsman:  Golden Circle and American Assassin — included so many examples of such violence that the numbers were difficult even to count.  An analysis of the top five movies in theaters the week before the attack (Sept. 22-28) showed incredible big-screen carnage, including characters firing handguns and employing a wide range of other forms of violence.

Contradictions and Condescension.  [Scroll down]  Institutions fundamental to the nation-state, such as citizenship, have to be rendered meaningless — so that what matters in any immigration debate is not the citizens but the invaders, to the point where Nancy Pelosi thanks the parents of "Dreamers" for breaking American law and bringing them here, as a precious gift to a nation crying out for even more low-skilled immigrants.  As for institutions that pre-date the nation-state — institutions almost as old as humanity — they're as easy to redefine, so that marriage can no longer be confined to those of opposite sexes.  Speaking of the sexes, human biology can be vaporized, so that two sexes become 57 genders, and grade-school boys more interested in Barbie than GI Joe get to be pumped full of puberty blockers and directed to the girls' bathroom.  And after all that, religion has to be put on the back foot, so that any recalcitrant mom'n'pop bakery for whom two men atop a wedding cake is an abomination, must be hunted down, dragged into court and financially ruined pour encourager les autres.

Is prostitution about to become honest business in the District?  D.C. Councilmember David Grosso is behind a bill that would decriminalize prostitution, arguing it's in keeping with his advocacy for human rights and marginalized communities.  "We basically criminalize too many activities," Grosso argued in a recent news conference.  "It is time for the District of Columbia to reconsider the framework in which we handle commercial sex work, and move from one of criminalization to a focus on human rights, health and safety."  Grosso says he worked with the Sex Worker Advocates Coalition, and followed recommendations from a variety of human rights organizations from around the world as he drafted the bill.

New California law allows jail time for using wrong gender pronoun, sponsor denies that would happen.  California health care workers who "willfully and repeatedly" decline to use a senior transgender patient's "preferred name or pronouns" could face punishments ranging from a fine to jail time under a newly signed law. [...] The bill itself is aimed at protecting transgender and other LGBT individuals in hospitals, retirement homes and assisted living facilities.  The bill would ensure those facilities accommodate transgender people and their needs, including letting them decide which gender-specific bathroom they prefer to use.  "It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to take any of the following actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status," the bill reads.

Harvey Weinstein and the Slow-Motion Theft of American Culture.  [Scroll down]  "Saturday Night Live," which debuted in 1975, sprang more or less from the side of the National Lampoon, which, if anything, skewed right.  The show had a 1990s revival whose cast was arguably better than the original, and the show remained largely apolitical, at least until the emergence of Barack Obama/Sarah Palin.  For eight years the Obama humor was tepid and unfunny.  Today, the Trump humor is venomous and unfunny.  In comedy, only "South Park" maintains a niche on the anarchic right, but it is sufficiently vulgar the left doesn't notice.  On radio, Howard Stern has, if anything, upped the vulgarity.

Hugh Hefner's Real Legacy:  Disease, Despair, and Death.  Among many other tragic outcomes, the rampant rate of STDs in America is the real legacy of notorious sexual provocateur, Hugh Hefner.  Thanks to the desire to make our own rules when it comes to sex, following the lead of Hefner and his like-minded moral deviants, we find ourselves with STD rates in the U.S. at an all-time high.  According to the CDC, there are more than 20 million new cases of STDs in the United States every year.

Conrad Black:  What Protesting NFL Players Don't Get.  This controversy is the logical and nasty result of the long pursuit of identity politics, mainly by Democrats.  The country has been atomized into smaller and smaller constituencies, pandering to each in the approximate order of the militancy of their grievances.  This process, after a point, operates at the expense of the spirit of national unity and a common cause for all to make America better.  It is understandable that the president sees these acts of rank disrespect to the country and all who believe in the country despite its faults, as offensive.  He and all of civilized America are in common cause with Kaepernick and his followers in deploring racist oppression, but protesting it by slagging off the anthem and flag alienates the majority of Americans who would otherwise be on Kaepernick's side.  It is not surprising or unreasonable that Trump and millions of others find the spectacle of a few people with huge incomes for very short work-years, putting on the airs, not only of martyrs, but of martyrs claiming they represent the only wronged people in the country.

The bitter fruit of Hefner's life's work has helped poison American families.  Hugh Hefner didn't invent pornography, and it would no doubt be thriving today even if he hadn't founded Playboy magazine those many years ago.  After all, man is fallen, and somebody would have filled that depraved niche in American life.  Hefner, however, played his part, and the part he played was immensely destructive to our nation's cultural, moral, and spiritual fabric.  Hefner mainstreamed porn, he put it in millions of homes, and he even glamorized it — recasting one of America's most pathetic industries as the playground of the sophisticated rich.  He then grew to a ripe old age, consorting with women young enough to be his granddaughters.  He was America's most famous dirty old man.

Transsexual Allegedly Has First Amendment Right to Defecate in Other People's Yards.  If it is the constitutional right of knuckle-dragging Black Lives Matter types in the NFL to make public pageants of their hatred of America while they are on the job, as David French avers, then it could be the First Amendment right of a guy who calls himself "Shirley" to take a dump in your front yard.

Colorado's 'Mad Pooper' sorry, spokesman says.  A man claiming to be the "spokesman" of a jogger dubbed the "Mad Pooper" — who reportedly has been defecating on the lawns of Colorado homes — says the woman is struggling after gender reassignment surgery and as she battles a traumatic brain injury.  The unidentified man made the comments in a YouTube video that has since been removed, KRDO reported.  He said he was speaking on the behalf of Colorado Springs jogger "Shirley" and said she is sorry for her actions.  The man also said "Shirley" can no longer control herself after undergoing the reassignment surgery.

Judge Roy Moore:  We Removed God from Schools, Shootings and Death Filled the Void.  CNN is lamenting the fact that GOP frontrunner for the U.S. Senate in Alabama Judge Roy Moore told pastors and Christians in a speech last month that shootings and killings in American society are the result of removing God from schools.  Andrew Kaczynski's KFile on CNN dug up a video of Moore from late August speaking at Citizen Impact USA, making the comments that have CNN and the GOP establishment in Washington similarly freaked out.

NFL picked sides in the culture war, now it has to live with the consequences.  This is not an issue of freedom of speech.  These are private industries which, like other private industries, regulate the speech that is permitted to take place on the job.  That regulation takes place both officially through guidelines for employment conduct, and unofficially, as expressing a particular political opinion can result in social media and internal attacks leading to job loss.  Just ask Brendan Eich and James Damore.  I can't tell you how many times readers and potential/actual authors have told me they fear loss of job and career damage if they express non-liberal opinions at work or in a way that people at work could find out.  There is a reign of terror ongoing in this country, but it's not from the government, it's from social-media-empowered leftists who seek to impose the most intrusive political litmus tests in every aspect of our lives.

The Spreading Cloud.  Without anybody quite being aware of it identity politics has taken on a life of its own.  The campaign against Confederate statues has moved like a pullulating cloud of nanoparticles to the national anthem protest in the NFL.  One arm of the cloud has spread to major league baseball.  A tendril may soon make the jump to NASCAR racing.  There's no escape from the spreading politicization any more, not in the theater, stadium, school or social media.

The Destruction of the Individual.  The American Left makes a show of disapproving any but the most denatured, toothless and universalist religious beliefs.  They are suffused with a sexual ethos that is amoral and libertine by the standards of the recent past.  Their intellectual post-modernism specifically prevents any moral judgement or ethical framework.  In fact they pride themselves on the ability to"deconstruct" the traditions and values that under-pin our civilization.  Yet, they seem able to put aside their fractious identity politics in order to be unaccountably tolerant — even supportive of Radical Islam That political religion commits terror against the rest of the world and has spawned despotisms of religious elites of some degree in the entire Muslim world.  They also demand the killing of apostates, the torture and murder of homosexuals, the subjugation, rape and "honor" murder of women and children:  This begs for explanation.

Sucking the Joy Out of Everything.  Remember when people used to let things go?  When people would just get along, not hunt for secret meanings behind actions and ways to be offended for the sake of being offended?  Thanks to the progressive left that day is done.  These guys suck the joy out of everything.  The simple things, the complex things — everything is now fertile ground for being offended, for outrage, for an opportunity to attack Republicans, especially President Trump.  Being a victim is now a coveted status on the political left, so liberals aspire to it by creating asinine things such as "microaggressions."  A microaggression, for the sane among you who haven't heard of this form of self-martyrdom, is an affront (racist, sexist, homophobic, pick your liberal trope) so small neither the person committing it, nor the person on the receiving end of it, can notice it.

Military Career Destroyed After Reprimand of Lesbians Showing 'Inappropriate Behavior'.  On Monday, September 11, 2017, the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari asking the United States Supreme Court to correct the injustice done to Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Downey after the United States Army violated its own regulations, effectively ending his stellar career.

The Thought Police Strike Again.  Every revolution needs to master a new "language" to achieve uniformity of expression and thought.  George Orwell, in 1984, called the replacement language "Newspeak".  Cardiff Metropolitan University, one of the largest in Britain, compiled a list of 34 words that it "encouraged" teachers and students to stop using, and replaced them with "gender-neutral" terms.  "Fireman" should be replaced by "firefighter"; "mankind" should be replaced by banned "humanity", and so on.  Princeton University also expunged the word "man" in its various uses, in favor of supposedly more "inclusive" expressions.  City University of New York decided to ban "Mr." and "Mrs." California State University replaced commercial terms such as "businessman", "mailman", "manpower" and "salesman" to avoid that horrendous, forbidden word.  While at it, why not also purge Christianity's religious language?  Some of the most famous theological universities, such as Duke and Vanderbilt, invited professors and staff to use "inclusive" language even when they are referring to God, because the masculine pronouns are "a cornerstone of patriarchy".  This politically correct nonsense highlights even further the infantilization of our culture — such as the demand for "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings".

Hurricane Irma And How The Left Has Politicized Even The Weather.  A number of years ago, I sat down with the general manager of a major television news station.  He told me that in their own survey, viewers tuned in for "weather first, sports second, and news last."  Therefore he stressed, weather forecasters were the "cash cow" of the station.  He further explained that much of television weather forecasting was a "sham."  He said that decades ago, they would give a "one-day" forecast.  But then Station B across town went to a "two-day" forecast.  So then they countered with a "three-day" forecast," until everyone went to the "useless seven-day" forecasts.  He emphasized that it was all done for reasons of competition and ratings and that with a "seven-day" forecast, the station and the networks were playing viewers for "fools," because they normally "couldn't even get the forecast for tomorrow correct."

Your Beliefs Are No Longer Allowed.  American progressives have fnally gone all the way to a totalitarian vision, demanding control over not just your behavior, but your thoughts and beliefs.  This as the price of simply living without being attacked. [...] Do you believe in traditional marriage but don't care that gays marry?  Think it's OK teenagers take hormonal injections to swap genders but it's not right for your kids?  Don't really give a hoot about someone who identifies as "xe"?  Well, too bad, sucker.  The new dispensation doesn't care for your waffling.  Going forward, your private beliefs must align with your public stance.  No exceptions made or allowed.

The problem with DACA was President Obama.  President Obama's governing by executive pen was wrong and rather cynical for a couple of reasons.  First, President Obama knew that his "pen" would eventually be broken by a court decision.  Second, President Obama had to know that he'd be leaving a bunch of "DREAMers" stranded whenever his order was reversed.  Obama's DACA was the political equivalent of giving someone a check and knowing that there are no funds in the bank to cover it.  Super-cynical, to say the least.  The executive order was President Obama reacting to the 2014 midterm elections and hoping to energize Hispanics behind a Clinton candidacy.

California Crime Wave Follows Criminal Justice Reform.  In November 2014, California voters approved Proposition 47, which downgraded drug possession and many property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor.  As Debra Saunders reminds us, proponents argued that lesser punishment for low-level offenders would enhance public safety.  Unfortunately, this utterly counterintuitive notion has not panned out.  In San Francisco, according to a police spokesman, theft from cars is up 47 percent this year over the same period in 2014.  Auto theft is up by 17 percent.  Robberies are up 23 percent.  And aggravated assaults are up 2 percent.  (To be fair, burglaries are down 5 percent).  How about Los Angeles?  It has seen a 12.7 percent increase in the overall crime this year, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Violent offenses are up 20.6 percent; property crimes by 11 percent.

Traffic fatalities linked to pot are up sharply in Colorado.  Federal and state data show that the number of drivers involved in fatal crashes in Colorado who tested positive for marijuana has more than doubled since 2013.

First Grade Student Punished for 'Misgendering' Another Student.  If a child is dressed in pink dress with pigtails, you're probably going to assume they are a girl.  If the child is dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with short hair and possibly a ball cap, you will assume he is a boy.  First graders are no exception to that rule.  If they see someone acting in the manner of a certain gender, then thats the gender they will thank the person is.  It is a no-brainer to them.  A California charter school is confusing the children though, and then punishing them for the confusion.  In what is being considered a "pronoun mishap," a first grader allegedly "misgendered" another student.

California Could Start Jailing People Who Don't Use Transgender Pronouns.  A bill that passed the California state senate and is now moving through the Assembly could threaten jail time for anyone who refuses to use a transgender person's preferred pronoun.  The law is currently limited in its effects to nursing homes and intermediate-care facilities, but if passed, those who "willfully and repeatedly" refuse "to use a transgender resident's preferred name or pronouns" could be slapped with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison, according to the California Heath and Safety code.  The state senate passed the bill 26-12 at the end of May.  Since then, the Assembly Judiciary committee recommended the bill unanimously and the General Assembly held its first hearing on the legislation Wednesday [8/23/2017].

Starvation: It's a Small Price to Pay for Socialism!  This video is pretty entertaining.  Ami Horowitz interviewed New York millennials, asking about their views on the all-important question of income equality.  Actually, anyone who thinks about the subject for two minutes should be able to figure out that a society without income inequality would scarcely be worth living in.  But these people are without a clue.  Horowitz continues with questions about Venezuela, where starving people are fighting over dead rats.  New York millennials (the ones in the video, anyway) claim to believe that poverty is a small price to pay for socialism.  My guess, though, is that a few days of eating dead rats for dinner — if they're lucky — would change their views on socialism.  [Video clip]

Women Push Back Against Crossdressing Men in Female Prisons.  Surprise, surprise.  Women, whose interests liberals loudly claim to represent, don't like it that perverted men who dress in women's clothes have been forced upon them in prisons in order to advance the liberal agenda.

The Leftwing Media's Dangerous and Divisive Lie.  Something ugly is happening in America.  Something dangerous, divisive, and destructive.  And every day, the leftwing media help fan the flames of division, hatred and strife.  We must recognize and repudiate this before our nation is torn apart.  Certainly, we're feeling the effects of eight years of identity politics under the Obama administration.  During that time racial strife greatly increased in our land.  And there's no doubt that the campaign and presidency of Donald Trump have further exacerbated the divisions in our country.  But the leftwing media is adding fuel to this fire by peddling a very dangerous lie.  The lie equates the vast majority of Trump supporters with Nazis and white supremacists.  Liberal campuses are doing their part as well, declaring war on whiteness itself.

ACLU Apologizes For Tweeting Photo Of White Baby With U.S. Flag.  The American Civil Liberties Union is doing damage control after Twitter leftists denounced the group for sharing a picture of a white baby holding an American flag.  In a tweet sent Wednesday afternoon [8/23/2017], the ACLU captioned a photo of a Caucasian, blonde-haired child wearing a free speech onesie and waving a flag, "This is the future that ACLU members want."  Leftists were furious over the post because they believed it endorsed white supremacy.

Report: ESPN Removes College Football Announcer From Game Because He's Named 'Robert Lee'.  ESPN confirmed via emailed statement that they did, indeed, take Robert Lee off the UVA game over the fact that his name was close to that of a Confederate general.

ESPN Exec on Robert Lee Controversy: 'No Biggie Until Someone Leaked it to Embarrass Us and Him'.  ESPN is now in full blown damage control mode over what would seem to be one of the more ridiculous self-made controversies in recent times — the decision to pull a broadcaster from a University of Virginia football game telecast because his name happens to be Robert Lee.  With cable news and social media reaction nearly universal in their criticism of ESPN, the Worldwide Leader is looking to calm the outcry from those on the left and the right over the decision.

ESPN pulls announcer Robert Lee from covering a Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee.  An announcer by any other name would announce just as sweet.  In what is sure to be a controversial decision, ESPN has decided to pull college football announcer Robert Lee from covering a Virginia football game this season due to the simple fact his name is Robert Lee, the network announced on Tuesday.  Outkick the Coverage's Clay Travis was the first to report the questionable decision.

ESPN Just Took Political Correctness Way Too Far.  In the wake of the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, ESPN decided to pull one of its announcers from calling a University of Virginia football game — because his name is Robert Lee.  Lee, an Asian-American sportscaster who started with the network in 2016, was moved to a different game "simply because of the coincidence of his name," ESPN said, referencing the Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The Name/Statue Game Has Barely Begun!  One of my daughters asks, are Robert Lees across the country scrambling to change their names, lest they be discriminated against by their employers?  Is Robert the new Adolf?  I say, Yes!  And it's only right.  But why stop there?  Think how many Thomas Jacksons and James Stuarts there are in the U.S. Why shouldn't they be discriminated against, too?

ESPN, the worldwide leader in liberal idiocy.  So let me ask, "what if I told you that ESPN decided to pull an Asian-American announcer from calling a University of Virginia football game because his name is Robert Lee?"  Your answer would probably be, "you're making it up."  But I'm not.  It is reliably reported that Robert Lee was slated to call Virginia's game on September 2 against William and Mary, but because of events in Charlottesville, which originated with a dispute over removing a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, he has been reassigned.

ESPN Pulls Game Announcer Robert Lee Because His Name Is Too "Triggering".  If ever you doubted that ESPN was the sporting epicenter of liberalism, well, consider this the day you can put those doubts to rest.  In what can only be considered the most ridiculous, over-the-top, example of political correctness running amok ESPN has pulled a college football announcer from the game between William & Mary vs the University of Virginia because his name is Robert Lee.  Seriously, you just can't make this stuff up.  Oh, and Robert Lee is Asian (pictured left) but even his ethnicity couldn't save him from the executive level stupidity and delicate sensibilities of ESPN.

Gathering Storms And Threats to Liberty.  We're living in a very dangerous time.  Several things are coming together that pose a serious threat to the liberty of anyone who is right-of-center.  While there are many factors at work, I've been focused in recent days on three:  (1) Antifa becoming a part of the anti-Trump Resistance; (2) politically-motivated denial of access to the internet at the gatekeeper level; and (3) attempts to weaken free speech protections in the name of social justice.

China's one-child policy has a legacy of bereaved parents facing humiliation and despair.  A generation burdened with hunger, a lack of education and enforced family planning must now also face the plight of those who lost their only offspring and the emotional, social and financial consequences that entails.

All in:  The left is through messing around.  More and more, Charlottesville looks like a setup.  Jason Kessler, who organized the "Unite the Right" event, seems to have a history with the left.  Aside from his Occupy Wall Street past, it is convenient that he we went Alt-Right as soon as Donald Trump was elected.  When the Democrat mayor of Charlottesville and governor of Virginia directed law enforcement to actually funnel together the opposing sides of paid protesters and drooling mouth-breathers, a confrontation was inevitable.  Along with the tiki-torch parade (exactly what happened in Ukraine) and great photos of Nazi flags, Hollywood could not have done better.

California Can't Fix Its Housing Problems.  Even California's liberal Democrats are starting to understand that the state's housing crisis is fundamentally a supply-and-demand problem.  Home prices have soared to astronomical levels, with a median price above $750,000 in the nine-county Bay Area and nearly $700,000 in Orange County.  Years of growth controls and local regulations have restricted housing supply and added as much as 40 percent to the price of every new home that's built.  Housing is the key reason California has a 24 percent poverty rate (using the U.S. Census Bureau's new cost-of-living-adjusted index), the highest in the nation.

Functional Illiterates Trying to Erase History.  [Scroll down]  Why stop only in our country?  The Egyptian pyramids were built by slaves.  Should we tear those down?  If these are symbols of hatred and racism that must be destroyed, why do we never hear calls from the left for the destruction of the Nazi death camps.  Talk about symbols of hate.  Why would we want to remember the holocaust?  It couldn't be that it doesn't fit the left's narrative.  This Confederate monument narrative is designed by the left to provoke a backlash from whites who are tired of being scorned, ridiculed, belittled and called racists, rednecks and deplorables by so called open minded progressives.  It's working.  The cold race war is beginning to turn hot.  The president has no intention of trying to bring the two sides together because it's impossible at this point.  That's how Fourth Turnings roll.  The mood of the country will continue to darken.  Reactions to these types of events will intensify.  More blood will be shed.  It's too bad these functional illiterates didn't pay attention in history class or ever read a book.  They are going to learn some harsh lessons over the next decade.

Philly's Soda-Tax Fiasco.  So-called sin taxes, intended to make people pay extra for their unhealthy or socially undesirable habits, have always been popular.  Since people often feel guilty about their bad or unhealthful habits, it's often easy to tax them more for their "sins."  It was in this spirit that Philadelphia raised the tax on soda sky-high.  What taxpayers got was a lesson in unintended consequences.

Tacoma Looks To Spend $440,000 a Year To Protect Trespassing Immigrants.  [C]itizens of Tacoma, just like most cities, have problems that should come before protecting people who are unlawfully present in the U.S., who are, at a minimum, trespassing.

How the Liberal Media Created Charlottesville.  To begin with, the liberal media is almost entirely responsible for growing the Alt-Right merger of hate groups and internet trolls.  Most people are well aware of the stifling political correctness that reached an apex under Barack Obama.  People are sick and tired of being attacked and scolded by the humorless left-wing thought police every time they stray from the latest liberal doctrine.  That created a large group of people who enjoyed tweaking social justice warriors and some of them realized the easiest way to do that was with racial slurs.  Every time some doofus leaves a noose on a college campus or says the N-word, it's treated like a national crisis.  If you're an anonymous troll who enjoys getting people to react to everything you say, that's a FEATURE, not a bug.  All you have to do is say something racially offensive and all these people who studiously try to ignore you will go out of their minds.

Delighted with Trump.  [Scroll down]  The sheer entitled misery of losing with Hillary has ruined [the Democrats'] year.  Well, they deserve it, because they are responsible for just about all the chronic troubles in the world.  Yes, including Kim Jong-un and his whole family, who have been suckering the world with Democratic collusion for maybe thirty years.  Madeleine Albright was sent to that hellhole to "negotiate" with Kim II, waltzed with him like two cartoon hippos on the balcony of his palace while thousands of starving cadres marched by on the street below.  Then she came back flaunting a "treaty" with the Norks, promising they wouldn't build a plutonium bomb, because they were really planning on old-fashioned uranium.  They knew it, Bill and Maddy knew it, and the New York Times knew it, but they lied, lied, lied to us.  The American people were infinitely stupid, and the media celebrated Bill's big victory.

Let's Not Forget How the North Korea Crisis Originated.  Liberals are criticizing President Trump for belligerent language directed toward North Korea.  They think he should be more diplomatic, like other presidents have been for the last 25 years.  Because that worked so well, apparently.  This short video clip of President Clinton announcing the 1994 deal under which North Korea agreed not to develop nuclear weapons in return for a great deal of money is a great reminder of how we got where we are now.  The deal was incredibly incompetent, if you think Clinton was actually trying to prevent the North Koreans from obtaining nukes, as opposed to sweeping the problem under the rug for later presidents to handle:  [Video clip]

Socialists create youth shortages in California.  Socialism has long been associated with shortages, and nowhere is that more evident than in California, land of surf, sun, skiing, skateboarding, and other youth-oriented pursuits.  The socialists have managed to chase out the youth.

'Freedom of the Press' Doesn't Mean What You Think.  Progressive propaganda, relying on misdirection, misinterpretation, and outright falsehoods, permeates American life and touches or taints every topic.  The corporations that produce mass entertainment and news, the government bureaucracies that shape and fund education, the schools from kindergarten to college, and the tech firms that control the flow of information and ideas, are all subject to a groupthink that, for all intents and purposes, brooks absolutely no dissent from Leftist dogma.

Murders Continue to Escalate in Liberal Cities.  Cities around the country are breaking records.  Oh, it's not for job growth, graduation rates or anything hopeful like that.  They're breaking records for documented homicides and shootings.  It's gotten so bad that cities like Baltimore, in a desperate and dimwitted attempt to slow the number, have turned to calling for ceasefires. [...] Baltimore community leaders had called for a 72 hour ceasefire this past weekend using the hashtag #BaltimoreCeasefire on social media.  They received no affirmation of cooperation from anyone.  Yet this they hoped would do the trick.

Seattle set to prevent landlords from considering applicants' criminal records.  Seattle landlords would be almost completely prohibited from screening prospective tenants based on their criminal histories, under a proposed ordinance approved by a City Council committee Tuesday [8/8/2017].  The only people who could be denied housing based on their criminal histories would be those listed on sex-offender registries because of adult convictions.  And landlords denying housing to such sex offenders would still need to state a legitimate business reason for doing so.

Broke Chicago Public School System Lays Off 356 Teachers.  Officials with the perpetually insolvent Chicago Public School system laid off 356 teachers and nearly 600 school support staffers this week.  The teachers and other employees received their pink slips from the taxpayer-funded school district on Monday [8/7/2017], reports the Chicago Sun-Times.  Chicago's elementary schools will have 240 fewer teachers this fall.  Second City high schools will have 116 fewer teachers.  In addition to the 356 teachers, Chicago Public School officials also sacked 362 classroom aides and 221 employees who were security guards and special education aides.

Study: Philadelphia Tax Makes Soda More Expensive Than Beer.  Philadelphia's tax on sugary drinks has made soda more expensive than beer in the city.  The Tax Foundation released a new study on the excise tax last week, finding that the 1.5-cent per ounce tax has fallen short of revenue projections, cost jobs, and has forced some Philadelphians to drive outside the city to buy groceries.  The study finds that the tax is 24 times higher than the Pennsylvania tax rate on beer.

Transgender day camp among first to include 4-year-olds.  The camp in the San Francisco Bay Area city of El Cerrito caters to transgender and "gender fluid" children, ages 4 to 12, making it one of the only camps of its kind in the world open to preschoolers, experts say.

Illinois Has 63,000 Government Workers Making Over $100K.  Illinoisans are struggling under the highest property taxes in the nation, a declining population and the nation's worst income growth, but one group is still doing pretty well — government workers.  According to OpenTheBooks.com, Illinois has 63,000 public employees making more than $100,000, costing taxpayers $10 billion.  These government workers range from auto pound supervisors to corrections nurses to junior college presidents and more.  One of the most lucrative government fields is that of village and city managers, many of whom out-earn every U.S. governor.

Toxic waste from U.S. pot farms alarms experts.  Pollution from illegal marijuana farms deep in California's national forests is far worse than previously thought, and has turned thousands of acres into waste dumps so toxic that simply touching plants has landed law enforcement officers in the hospital.  The volume of banned or restricted pesticides and illegally applied fertilizers in the woods dwarfs estimates by the U.S. Forest Service in 2014, when a top enforcement official testified that the pollution was threatening forest land in California and other states.

Refuse to Accept the Lies — Before It Is Too Late.  A woman gave birth the other day, and the liberal media squeed in delight, which is weird — usually the media only cares about babies in the context of waxing them in the womb. [...] But this particular birth was celebrated because the mother was pretending to be a man, and her delusion was so intense that she apparently partook of surgical mutilation and chemical intervention to (not really) conform her body to her delusion.  I guess we're supposed to marvel at her physical transformation, but that would be a lie too.  She looks like a woman with some surgery and a scraggly goatee.  It's not beautiful.  It's sad.  But we're not supposed to tell that obvious truth.  We're supposed to join in the lie and praise the Emperor's New Secondary Sex Characteristics.

Slow Economic Growth Directly Tied to Health Care Mess.  Last year, the U.S. economy expanded by under two percent.  Over the last seven decades, gross domestic product (GDP) in the U.S. averaged 3.4 percent growth.  In the 21st century, annual GDP growth met or exceeded that average just once.  The president, not without reason, celebrated the 2.6 [percent] growth rate for 2017's second quarter.  Economists once regarded the figure we welcome now as a sign of underperformance.  The sclerotic new normal directly relates to the new normal of one in five dollars directed toward health care.

Cook County Continues to Tax Itself Into Oblivion.  The leftists who dominate Chicago have been spending the entire state of Illinois into insolvency.  But for true believers in liberalism, all is not lost so long as the moonbats responsible can still find new things to tax: [...] Liberals sell soda taxes with sugar hysteria.  The gullible dutifully believe that sugar is a drug and even a poison.  Note that the tax applies even to drinks that contain no sugar.  The taxes will remain, long after sugar hysteria has gone the way of fretting about global cooling and the hole in the ozone.

Resisting the Tranny State.  It's absolutely none of my business how any adult decides to express him/her/itself sexually.  But the thing is, these days trannies are not content to just go be trannies; they insist that we become accomplices to their fantasy.  We have to pretend to see what they see.  We have to use pronouns that we know are misapplied.  We have to allow dudes [...] to shower, change, and go to the bathroom alongside our daughters.  We have to foot the bill for sex change surgeries.  To even suggest that sex change operations are elective and not a "medical necessity" is to challenge the tranny illusion.

Naked illegal alien panhandlers turning Times Square into shocking anti-family zone.  A word of caution for folks planning a family-friendly vacation to New York City — we've been overrun by a horde of naked street performers.  The New York Post reports topless females and filthy costumed characters have turned Times Square into a haven for seedy shakedown artists.  The bare-naked broads are lewd and crude — harassing unsuspecting tourists — especially families.

Can New York City Be Saved?  Fortunately, the city made a huge comeback with Republican Rudy Giuliani's administration and New York City became one of the safest large cities in the country.  Mayor DeBlasio has whittled away at his quality-of-life law enforcement programs by now allowing public urination and other previous offenses to be reduced to meaningless incidents.  The squeegee wipers are back, the homeless and illegal immigrants are attacking innocent citizens; subway crime is at an all time high and our Marxist Mayor trots off to Germany to join anti-US protesters the day after an NYPD cop is assassinated sitting in her patrol car.  When a reporter confronted him about news that the homeless were cleared off the subway for a photo op with the mayor, he had the audacity to say, "Read my lips.  I don't care."

Horrific Crime by Dreamer in a Sanctuary City Leads To Backlash.  The crime by a so-called DREAMer in a Washington state sanctuary city was horrific.  The teen girl suffered a broken orbital bone, a broken jaw, her ear was dangling off, her lip was damaged, she had head injuries, she lost teeth, her nose was broken, she couldn't talk and she was raped.  Salvador Diaz-Garcia, 23 years of age, is charged with second-degree assault, second-degree rape and third-degree child molestation for perverted acts that occurred on June 25 at a kid's pool.  The woman's mother called police about 10 p.m. that night, reporting that her daughter came home with a bloody head, missing teeth and wearing only a tank top.

Costs of green electricity driving Aussies off the grid and into poverty.  When greenies get their way, poor people suffer.  Global warming hysteria tends to be an affliction of the affluent, who don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from or how they will keep the lights on at night.  But for those lacking the leisure to hypothesize a crisis that keeps getting stuck on pause, the costs of green energy can wreck lives.  It is happening in Australia, in the State of Queensland, ironcally rich in coal deposits.

Connecticut Is Circling The Drain Financially.  This is one of those situations where we might be able to take two seemingly incongruous facts and put them together to find a deeper meaning.  Ready?  Fact number one:  Connecticut is one of the richest states in the nation depending how you measure such things.  Fact number two:  Connecticut has managed to run up nearly $75B in debt and is teetering on the edge of being in worse financial shape than Puerto Rico.

The Left's War on the First Amendment.  [Scroll down]  This isn't just a media phenomenon.  It's what happened across the social spectrum when the people we used to call liberals became illiberal leftists.  It's why colleges censor controversial speakers and punish dissenting faculty.  It's why the environmental debate went from scientific discussions to calls to punish, fine and even jail those who question the left's Luddite alarmism on Global Warming.  It's why the debate over gay marriage shifted to punishing Christian bakers and florists, the arguments about Israel tilted to preventing musicians from performing in Tel Aviv and civil rights turned into a call to create "safe spaces" that ban everyone else.  Diversity is no longer dressed up as an expansion, but is now explicitly a contraction.  Don't read books by white authors.  Don't hire more men.  Kick Jews out of the gay rights rally.  Send the IRS after conservative groups.  Punch a Trump supporter in the face.  Nearly every leftist cause these days is expressed by punishing someone.  Arguments are won by force.

In a police state, everything that isn't mandatory is prohibited.
De Blasio:  Restaurants should be fined for electric bikes.  Business owners are the "people with the money" so they're the ones who should get fined for illegal electric bikes — and "not necessarily" the workers who ride them, Mayor de Blasio said Friday.  "You see a bunch of [e-bikes] outside a restaurant; it seems like there is a enforcement potential there — whether it's NYPD or [the Department of] Consumer Affairs or whatever, so I am intrigued to say the least," the mayor said on WNYC radio.  De Blasio was responding to a plea from Upper Upper West Side activist Matthew Shefler, who said the city "needs more leadership" to crack down on electric bikes that routinely break traffic laws.  He suggested targeting restaurant owners who rely on them for profit rather than their delivery people.

California Lesbian Couple Chemically Alter Their 11-Yr-Old Boy As Prep For Sex-Change Surgery.  I'm extremely disturbed by the fact that two women would adopt a little boy and begin forcing him to become a little girl via hormone therapy at the tender age of 11.  The fact that this is something that human beings would even consider is bothersome to me.  I don't think children at that age are equipped to make life-altering decisions such as this.  They don't have the capacity to understand the ramifications of their actions, which leads me to believe this is something that these ladies wanted for this young boy, potentially before they even adopted him.

Why people are getting [...] out of the Northeast.  Last year, three states in the Northeast — New Jersey, New York and Connecticut — landed in the top five places people were moving out of fastest, according to 2017 data from United Van Lines.  And data from Pew Charitable Trusts found that while people are all about moving to the South (their population grew by nearly 1.4 million people from 2014 to 2015) and the West (866,000 more people), the population growth in the Northeast is "sluggish."  The Northeastern exodus is particularly acute in many big cities like New York City.

The Islamophobia Industry Killed Justine Damond.  It is a cherished fiction on the Left that there exists an "Islamophobia Industry," a well-funded group of propagandists who spread hatred of Muslims solely to line their pockets.  This is as ridiculous as it is libelous, but there really is an Islamophobia Industry, and it is a group of well-funded propagandists.  In reality, however, it is not in the business of spreading "anti-Muslim bigotry."  Instead, it propagates the idea that Muslims in the U.S. are the recipients of widespread discrimination and harassment, and so must be accorded special accommodation and consideration.  That idea has just taken the life of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.

Statism's Violent Wages.  The distance between the government — state and local, but especially federal — and the people, as well as ordinary people's distrust and enmity toward one another, are the necessary, inescapable, result of 1) government having taken on, not to say usurped, outsized powers over individuals' lives; 2) having divided the people into groups to which politicians offer the favors they think these groups want, not least among which is the denigration of other groups.  Government nowadays tells you how your children will be educated.  You have almost no way of objecting.  Object too hard, and you're in trouble.  That goes for any number of regulations, including how much water you can have in your shower, what health care you may have at what cost.  Your business, or the one for which you work, must function by rules you can't do anything about.  Will you be able to retire?  That depends on the government.  Which party controls the White House, Congress, or the State House may or may not make a difference.

At this Indy library story hour, drag queens read to kids.  Forget pajamas and cartoons.  For Halle Pino, Ida Kay and Blair St. Clair, Saturday morning meant story time for a room of young kids — and dress-up story time at that.  The occasion?  Drag Queen Storytime at the Indianapolis Central Library.  The trio read tales with superhero themes to the kids who sprawled out on the floor, in the seats and on parents' laps in Clowes Auditorium.  On the program were "Ten Rules of Being a Superhero," "Princess Super Kitty," "My Mom Has X-ray Vision" and crafts that included mask-making and coloring.  The trio took turns reading the books, sprinkling color commentary throughout that appealed to the few dozen kids and adults.

Justine Damond:  Killed By "Islamophobia".  Mohamed Noor is a Somali Muslim.  He was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force.  In 2016, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges expressed her excitement about that fact: [...] Hodges wasn't excited because Mohamed Noor had the skills necessary to become a fine police officer.  She was only excited because he represented a religious and ethnic that she was anxious to court.  And it is increasingly clear, as we learn about Mohamed Noor's nervousness and jumpiness and lack of respect for women, and from his own account of events that he relayed to friends (that he was "startled" and reacted by opening fire), that Mohamed Noor was not cut out to be a policeman.  He did not have the temperament for it, and if he hadn't killed Justine Damond, he would likely have done something similar at some point.  So why was he on the force at all?  Because he was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force.  He was a symbol of our glorious multicultural mosaic.  He was a rebuke to "Islamophobes" and proof that what they say is false.  Minneapolis authorities placed a great deal of faith in Mohamed Noor.  He was for them the triumph of diversity, the victory of their worldview.

California is working to avoid a shortage of legalized marijuana, state pot czar says.  With Nevada suffering a shortage of legalized marijuana, California's state pot czar said Wednesday [7/19/2017] that efforts are being made in her state to make sure sufficient licenses go to farmers, testers and distributors to supply retailers.  Providing temporary, four-month licenses to support some businesses including growers is planned "so we don't have a break in the supply chain," Lori Ajax, chief of the Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, said in testimony at a legislative hearing.  Legal sales began July 1 in Nevada, but it immediately became clear there was not enough supply to meet demand, in part because unique rules provide alcohol wholesalers exclusive distributor rights.  California does not have the same limits on who can distribute cannabis.

How the Left Hijacked the American Psychiatric Association and Normalized Personality Disorders.  The evidence is clear — the American Left succeeded in lobbying the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to eliminate some of the sexual identity disorders from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). [...] With transvestitism finally voted out of the DSM, in June 2015 LGBT rights groups had one urgent agenda item for President Barack Obama:  End the ban on transgender people serving in the military.  It wasn't that transgender people were straining red rope barriers, lining up at recruiting stations to serve in the military in a rush of abject patriotism; no, acceptance into the military allowed transgenders free government-paid sexual reassignment surgery.  No longer was transvestitism considered a mental disorder, it was now considered a medically correctable condition, like a cleft lip and palate.  Medically-correctable conditions like cleft lip and palate correct physical birth defects.  Sexual identity disorders are not physical birth defects but mental defects.

The Left is Already Preparing Tomorrow's Fake News.  The American Left has relied on its mastery of the media — enthusiastically aided and abetted by the 90% of national political journalists today that are progressives of one stripe or another — for its political power for decades.  Ever since the 1950s, the left has been deliberately creating events in order to attract media attention that pushes a narrative confirming the justice of their demands.  It learned that the new medium of television was perfect for creating artificial dramas that would sway support its way. [...] It has worked on issue after issue.  And here we are today with transgender bathrooms and other ornaments of the progressive worldview imposed on the public.

Everyday Snowflakes.  The demand for recognition and nonrecognition at the same time is surely one of the reasons for the outbreak of mass self-mutilation in the Western world in an age of celebrity.  A person who treats his face and body like an ironmongery store can hardly desire or expect that you fail to notice it, but at the same time demands that you make no comment about it, draw no conclusions from it, express no aversion toward it, and treat him no differently because of it.  You must accept him as he is, however he is, because he has an inalienable right to such acceptance.  As a professional burglar once asked me, how could I expect him to give up burgling when he was a burglar and burglary was what he did?  I think the same dynamic (if I may call it such) is at work in the current vogue for transsexualism:  "You must recognize me and not recognize me at the same time."  In this way, people can simultaneously enjoy the fruits of being normal and very different.  To be merely the same as others is a wound to the ego in an age of celebrity, and yet we are herd animals who do not want to wander too far from the herd.

Colorado tries to fight homeless problem that may have been triggered by pot law.  The City of Denver is grappling with a growing homeless problem, and some people blame marijuana legalization for attracting a growing number of drug users now living on the street.  Colorado's homeless population jumped 13 percent from 2015 to 2016, despite that nationally, homelessness declined by 3 percent during the same time period, according the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Alfred Kinsey: The American Lysenko.  Kinsey's admirers already regularly compare him to Darwin and Einstein.  With Liam Neeson in the film's starring role, we will doubtless soon be hearing that Kinsey was also a sexual Oskar Schindler, selflessly risking life and reputation to save us from evil Victorian forces.  A new PBS documentary on Kinsey also premiered this month. [...] What's obvious to anyone who examines Kinsey's life and work dispassionately — indeed, obvious to anyone who watches the documentary itself and sifts the facts it reports from the breathless hagiography — isn't conceded for a moment:  that Kinsey was a fraud whose work did absolutely nothing to provide a genuinely scientific or rational justification for the revolution in morals he nevertheless helped foster.

Mental health sick days [are] a sign of America's wussification.  There's this story that's been going around the media for a few days now that paints a picture of a sympathetic boss gently cheering on his absent employee for letting him know she's missing work due to "focus" on her "mental health."  Let's just nip this crazy in the bud.  This is a mark of America's wussification — nothing to cheer.  Taking a day off because you're feeling depressed or anxious or otherwise unhappy and distressed is the stuff of Millennial Madness.

Board urges more training after cop ID'd transgender woman as male on traffic ticket.  The entire Fort Lauderdale Police Department should undergo extra training on how to properly treat transgender people, a city panel has decided.  The suggestion came Monday [7/10/2017] during a Citizens Police Review Board hearing for a police officer who categorized a transgender woman as male on a citation.  The board, which serves as a watchdog group over police, also decided the officer should receive a written reprimand for the incident.

The Editor says...
The person who will not accept what he is (and act like it) is entirely responsible for any subsequent misidentification, including the use of "incorrect" pronouns.  One cannot claim to be the victim of the circumstances he or she has created.

33 Percent of American Welfare Recipients Live in California.  The liberal state of California is a prime example of why liberal policies must not be adopted anywhere around the country as one-third of America's welfare recipients reside in the state.

America's Long March toward a Secular Socialist Democracy.  Property rights are the bedrock of the American political system; without that foundation, there is no freedom.  The Founders held that property rights encompass not just physical property but also one's life, labor and livelihood, as individuals own their own lives; therefore, they must own the products of that life that can be traded in free exchange with others.  They further believed that the primary role of government is to guarantee and protect these property rights, and further, that these property rights are natural, or God given rights. [...] Nonetheless, since the 1930's the Progressives have been extraordinarily successful in gradually transforming the country into what the Founders feared:  a nation dominated by an all-powerful central government running roughshod over man's inalienable rights.

Welcome to Baltimore — City Destroyed by the Democratic Party.  Baltimore isn't the only major city destroyed by the Democratic party.  They are just one of many.  Baltimore is just as bad as Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City or Philadelphia.

Nevada Just Issued A 'Statement of Emergency' over Marijuana Shortage.  Between July 1 and 4, dispensaries made roughly $3 million in sales and generated as much as $1 million in tax revenue.  But the green rush has come with a shortage — one almost certainly created because of the way the law was written and, as a result, the government's willingness to grant liquor vendors an 18-month monopoly on distribution.

Best-Run States Are Low-Tax Republican, Worst-Run Are High-Tax Democratic, Study Finds.  According to the latest ranking of states by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the most fiscally sound states in the nation are all low-tax, GOP strongholds, while the 10 least-solvent states are almost all high-tax and heavily Democratic.  The rankings in the fourth-annual "Ranking of the States by Fiscal Condition" report, which was released this morning, are based on a review of audited financial statements for 2015 covering five measures that gauge the states' ability to pay bills, avoid budget deficits, and meet long-term spending needs and cover pension liabilities.

Will California Ever Thrive Again?  The basket of California state taxes — sales, income and gasoline — rates among the highest in the U.S. Yet California roads and K-12 education rank near the bottom.  After years of drought, California has not built a single new reservoir.  Instead, scarce fresh aqueduct water is still being diverted to sea.  Thousands of rural central California homes, in Dust Bowl fashion, have been abandoned due to a sinking aquifer and dry wells.  One in three American welfare recipients resides in California.  Almost a quarter of the state population lives below or near the poverty line.  Yet the state's gas and electricity prices are among the nation's highest.  One in four state residents was not born in the U.S.

The Left's Breaking Point?  The Left is still firmly in control of the institutions which shape American culture despite the hard-to-deny truth that very few if any men or women of the Left are any good at anything they do.  This is why Hollywood makes mostly brainless, propagandistic and under-performing movies, it's why journalism has reached its nadir, it's why American public (and higher) education is descending into quicksand, and it's why the Democratic Party presides over the ruin of every jurisdiction it controls.  They control the culture and they destroy it.

WHO warns of imminent spread of untreatable superbug gonorrhoea.  At least three people worldwide are infected with totally untreatable "superbug" strains of gonorrhoea which they are likely to be spreading to others through sex, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday [7/7/2017].  Giving details of studies showing a "very serious situation" with regard to highly drug-resistant forms of the sexually-transmitted disease (STD), WHO experts said it was "only a matter of time" before last-resort gonorrhoea antibiotics would be of no use.  "Gonorrhoea is a very smart bug," said Teodora Wi, a human reproduction specialist at the Geneva-based U.N. health agency.  "Every time you introduce a new type of antibiotic to treat it, this bug develops resistance to it."

France to 'ban all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040'.  France will outlaw the sale of all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, its new environment minister, Nicolas Hulot, has announced.  It will also ban any "new project to use petrol, gas or coal", as well as shale oil, by that date.  The radical measures were unveiled at a press conference as part of French president Emmanuel Macron's pledge to "make the planet great again".  Mr Hulot, a former star wildlife TV presenter, announced "the end of the sale of petrol or vehicles between now and 2040" and a pledge to make France carbon neutral by 2050.  "The carbon neutral objective will force us to make the necessary investments," he added.

The Editor says...
"The carbon neutral objective" will not fix anything.  Much of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources, like volcanos, cows, and termites.  If all industrial activity stopped today, those natural sources would continue to pump CO2 into the air.

How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated the Field of Pediatrics and Produced Large-Scale Child Abuse.  Transgender politics have taken Americans by surprise, and caught some lawmakers off guard.  Just a few short years ago, not many could have imagined a high-profile showdown over transgender men and women's access to single-sex bathrooms in North Carolina.  But transgender ideology is not just infecting our laws.  It is intruding into the lives of the most innocent among us — children — and with the apparent growing support of the professional medical community.

Global elites celebrate divorce of birth records from biology.  What is it about "gender issues" that drives the media/political elites mad?  The government of Canada handed gender activists the crucial precedent they need. [...] So serious are the issues of child abuse here that I must put them aside, possibly for another time.  I want to confine myself to the manner in which what has to be called fantasy has permeated the ruling class when it comes to the denial of biology.  Now, it must be kept in mind is that this is an identity card, not a birth certificate.  That struggle is coming.

Congressional Staffer Could have Stopped Baseball Field Attack, but Second Amendment Rights were Chilled by D.C. law.  In the aftermath of the baseball field assassination attempt on several Republican Congressmen and their staff, we are finding that District of Columbia infringements on the Second Amendment played a significant role in hampering defense against the attack. [...] Several Congressmen have said that having personal weapons at the ball field could have mitigated or shortened the attack.  Representative Mo Brooks from Alabama said that he could have mounted an effective defensive action.

It's okay to decorate a police car with rainbow flags, but not Bible verses.  It's permissible in the United States to decorate police cars with rainbow flags to celebrate gay pride, but it's not permissible to decorate police cars with Bible verses honoring law enforcement officers.  The Houston Police Dept. is debuting a "Pride Car" for the city's gay pride parade, the Houston Chronicle reports.  Police Chief Art Acevedo is downright giddy about the new rainbow cruiser and the parade.

Doctors Back NHS-Funded 'Womb Transplants' for Transgender People.  Leading doctors have said they back NHS-funded womb transplants for biological males who identify as women, a procedure which experts say will be possible within 10 years.  It is believed that medical funding and advances will make the procedure possible within a decade, after pioneering operations at the University of Gothenburg on womb-less women have seen at least five children born as a result of a procedure similar to the one doctors are working towards.

Government hostility to religion spiked under Obama, new report finds.  It's hard to believe American teenagers could be arrested for delivering a prayer, but that's the kind of nation we live in — a nation that was fundamentally transformed by the previous presidential administration.  In 2011, the class president at Hampton High School in Tennessee wanted to deliver a pray at graduation.  The principal issued an edict that any child who attempted to pray would be stopped, escorted from the building by police and arrested.  That incident was one of dozens included in a stunning new Family Research Council report documenting a significant upsurge in government hostility to religion.

Obamacare Is Killing People.  Opiate deaths have been on the steady increase, with fatal drug overdoses tripling since 1999.  Much of that growth has come in the last few years.  From 2010 to 2015, the opiate death rate in the U.S. increased from 12.3 per 100,000 population in 2010 to 16.3 in 2015, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control.  Of the 52,404 fatal US drug overdoses in 2015, 63 percent of them involved an opioid.  Obamacare's Medicaid expansion and individual insurance exchanges both went into effect in 2014.  In just the next year, the fatal opioid overdose rate increased by 15.6 percent, CDC found.  Correlation, of course, is not causation, but the pattern is persistent.  The increase isn't uniform.  It's clearly happening in 30 states, most of which accepted the Medicaid expansion.  But overdose deaths have remained steady in 19 other states, according to the CDC.

Rights of Conscience Besieged by Sexual Activists.  Mississippi's House Bill 1523 establishes badly needed protections for those Americans whose faith forbids them to participate in same-sex wedding ceremonies or to treat a person's gender as a matter of preference rather than an immutable, God-given characteristic.  The law precludes the state from taking discriminatory actions against those who reject the latest fruits of the sexual revolution — who choose instead to live in light of the knowledge that God created people "male" or "female," and to abide by the timeless moral law reserving sexual intimacy for the permanent, exclusive bond of marriage between a man and a woman.  The statute also creates a legal defense for citizens who refuse to violate these core beliefs.  The plaintiffs who challenged the statute argued that they are "stigmatized" by the very existence of these religious tenets.  I wonder if they've stopped to consider the "stigma" experienced by devout individuals who have, due to a sickening erosion of First Amendment principles, actually been prosecuted for refusing to forfeit their faith to someone else's ideas about human sexuality.

Are Illinois and Puerto Rico Our Future?  If Gov. Bruce Rauner and his legislature in Springfield do not put a budget together by Friday [6/30/2017], the Land of Lincoln will be the first state in the Union to see its debt plunge into junk-bond status.  Illinois has $14.5 billion in overdue bills, $130 billion in unfunded pension obligations and no budget.  "We can't manage our money," says Rauner.  "We're like a banana republic." [...] According to the New York Times, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Northern Marianas and Guam are in the same boat.

The Culture Police.  Recently at Evergreen College in Washington state, students demanded that white people leave the campus on a "Day of Absence."  One liberal white professor protested.  His classroom was stormed as he was teaching.  He was shouted down with "F" bombs and accusations of racism by the mob that invaded his lecture.  In public schools, a single complaint about the "Pledge of Allegiance" in class or the recitation of a prayer at a sports event is enough to overcome the majority who value these American traditions.  The mere hint of disagreement with gay marriage or abortion in any government, corporate, or professional setting will probably cost you your livelihood.  Questioning climate change gets you labeled a "denier," associating you with those who deny the Holocaust.  Nor is it enough to accept the scientific data; you must interpret it in line with the prescribed hysteria or you are an enemy of the environment.  What we are witnessing is not state dictatorship but a new phenomenon — the rise of a totalitarian culture which seeks to control everything and everybody.

The Banana Republic of Illinois.  Last week, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan endorsed a $5 billion annual income tax hike.  This would be the largest tax increase of any state in years.  Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner has blocked new taxes for three years but is now under intense pressure from the Springfield political machine to agree to the revenue heist.  Anyone who thinks this soak-the-rich scheme will solve Illinois' long-term budget crisis should have their head examined.  Illinois already ranks in the top three among the 50 states in state-local tax burden, so if raising taxes were any kind of solution here, the Land of Lincoln would be a Garden of Eden.

Auto crashes are on the rise in marijuana states.  A new study finds an increase in accident insurance claims in three states that have approved the sale of marijuana for recreational use.  According the Highway Loss Data Institute, the number of vehicle collisions reported to insurance companies in Colorado, Oregon and Washington is 3 percent higher than what would have been expected if those states had not made it legal to buy pot.  "We're concerned about what we're seeing," said Matt Moore, the institute's senior vice president.  "We see strong evidence of an increased crash risk in states that have approved recreational marijuana sales."

What to do with a broken Illinois:  Dissolve the Land of Lincoln.  [L]et's finally admit that after decade upon decade of taxing and spending and borrowing, Illinois has finally run out of other people's money.  Those "other people" include taxpayers who've abandoned the state.  And now Illinois faces doomsday.

Illinois' Unpaid Bill Backlog Grows to more than $15 Billion.  At some point Illinois' unpaid bills will have to be refinanced to save money, but that can't happen until the state gets its spending problem under control — otherwise lawmakers will continue recklessly wasting tax dollars.

The Left Is Rotting From Within.  The Democrat Party has no substantive platform any longer other than obstruction, "resist," foul-mouthed vulgarity, violence, anger, and excessive whining.  This rot is manifesting itself in some very public displays:  Campus snowflakes are working overtime at colleges and universities across the country to shut down speech.  They are rioting, destroying property, and openly fighting professors whose curriculum offends their sense of social justice.  If that isn't enough scurrilous behavior, these pathetic snowflakes are now demanding racially segregated graduation ceremonies, dormitories, and white students and professors are told to leave campuses for a "day without whites."

Why you might see more people peeing on the streets of NYC this summer.  New Yorkers should prepare for a loud, smelly summer.  As of Tuesday, scofflaws who commit certain quality-of-life violations — including urinating, boozing or blasting loud music in public — will get little more than a slap on the wrist.  The change is the result of the City Council's controversial Criminal Justice Reform Act, which allows law breakers who've been cited for those and other low-level offenses to face justice in administrative hearings rather than in criminal court.

What Would Happen If Liberals Got the World They Wanted Here on Earth?  I sometimes wonder how the mainstream media, judicial system, sanctuary cities and liberal politicians would fare in the kind of world they are trying to bring about:  a world without borders, a world without morals, a socialist society ruled by an all-powerful, central government that would control the distribution and quality of health care, the parameters of abortion, the length of people's lives through euthanasia and the population's practice of religion.  Probably the first thing to go, as is always the case in totalitarian regimes, would be freedom of the press.  Then most of the rest of our personal freedoms would follow:  abolition of privately owned firearms, the caliber and content of education, the outlawing of homeschooling, restrictions on what can be said from the pulpits of the nation and close control of academic curriculum.

Thanks to Barack H. Obama:
Report: Global Terrorism Has Tripled Since 2011, Now at an All-Time High.  This is quite a turnaround from this time last year during the presidential campaign — when the media was trumpeting supposed major declines in terrorism: [...] Going back to April 2013, senior Obama State Department officials had been telling us that the "War on Terror" was over, and the primary reason was that Obama's "Arab Spring" had unleashed the forces of democracy.  In reality, it encouraged hardcore Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood to take power in several critical countries in the Middle East.

A Week Of Surfing On A Sea Of Liberal Tears.  [L]iberals' misery is an important teaching aid that might succeed in instructing them in the folly of their poisonous, ridiculous ideology, since reason doesn't work.  And they had better learn and change their dangerous course before we all end up here.

Federal Court Sides with Transgender Student in High School Bathroom Case.  Ash Whitaker, a transgender high school senior, sued his school district for not allowing him to use the boys' restroom at school because he was born female.  Whitaker claimed that the school violated Title IX regulations against gender discrimination, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  On Tuesday [5/30/2017], the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Whitaker, upholding a preliminary injunction that allowed him to keep using his preferred facilities.  Whitaker, who according to court documents first identified publicly as a boy going into his freshman year, claims that the school's bathroom policy, which was not written in any codified guidelines or regulations, was harmful to him both physically, in the sense that he would get dehydrated (and faint) as a result of limiting water in trying to avoid using the bathroom, and emotionally, to the extent that he had suicidal thoughts.

The Editor says...
Title IX regulations may guard against gender discrimination, but I doubt if the authors of Title IX gave any thought to the prevention of discrimination based on "gender identity" issues or any other self-induced gender problems.  We may have reached the point at which any new law should now include a disclaimer exempting the enforcement of the law from "rights" yet to be invented by activist judges.

How Obama's 'smart power' helped seed the Manchester attack.  South Manchester is home to one of the world's largest Libyan expatriate communities, which in recent years has become a prime recruiting ground for young jihadists.  And Libya itself is the base for an ISIS external-operations wing tasked with plotting terrorist attacks in Europe.  Indeed, since the fall of Moammar Khadafy, Libya has become a haven for Islamist terrorist groups.  Such is the result of Barack Obama's failed policy — which he so confidently announced would prove smarter than his predecessor's mistakes in Iraq, only to be proved horribly wrong.

The Democrats' Second Secession & America's New Civil War.  [Scroll down]  The left has created a term of art — "people of color" — to promote its collectivist views on ethnicity and race.  "People of color" is not grammatical English — we do not refer to "crayons of color" or "televisions of color."  It is a French construction, reflecting the way French people speak.  "People of color" is an invention of ideologues to serve an ideological purpose, which is to organize the world into the categories of cultural Marxism — into oppressors and oppressed. [...] The whole world is people of color except white people — the designated oppressors.

The Left's Road Leads To Manchester.  I hadn't heard of Salman Abedi before he murdered all those little girls and their friends and family members at the Ariana Grande concert, but when I recently spoke at Truman State University in Missouri, the University at Buffalo, and Gettysburg College, and then at an event in Iceland, I discussed the belief system that incites people such as Salman Abedi to violence.  I explored the ways in which jihad terrorists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, and the texts of the Qur'an and Islamic law that call upon Muslims to wage war against those who do not believe in Islam.  For this, the three universities and the Icelandic press treated my presence in the country as if Josef Goebbels had stopped by for a visit.

What Happens to an Economy When Forced to Use Renewable Energy?  Some of America's most prominent politicians want national mandates for renewable electricity.  In addition, over the past seven months, three states — California, New York, and Oregon — have instituted plans that will require utilities to produce 50 percent of the electricity that they sell to customers from renewables.  The politicians backing these measures claim that such mandates will help reduce customers' bills and create jobs.  Had these politicians considered the surge in electricity costs that have occurred in Europe in recent years, they might have been less eager to push such mandates.  Indeed, the three EU countries that have been the most aggressive in pursuit of renewable energy — Germany, Spain, and the U.K. — have all seen their electricity rates increase more than other EU countries.  Further, Germany and the U.K. are seeing job losses due to high energy prices.

It's a Coup!  Not a day goes by without an accusation by Democrats in search of a crime.  When President Trump used an Executive Order to initiate his travel ban from countries known to be hotbeds of Islamic terrorism, the Left used the courts to stop his ban from taking effect.  Although President Trump had the statutory authority to execute the ban pursuant to section 1182(f) and 1185(a) of Title 8, they succeeded in halting the ban by filing their lawsuits in Federal District Court within the far left 9th Circuit (the most overturned court in the country), dominated by Clinton and Obama appointed judges, well known for its judicial activism and disregard of Constitutional principles.  Consequently, Muslim refugees who cannot be vetted for lack of documentation continue to stream onto our shores and increase the risk of terror attacks on the mainland.

Overdoses and crime skyrocket at downtown library.  [Denver]'s main library has become a centralized hub for crime and drug abuse, resulting in significant spikes in emergency calls for overdoses, fights and sexual assaults, a 9Wants to Know investigation found.  A review of city records revealed that in the first four months of this year, emergency dispatchers received 44 calls for overdoses at the Denver Public Library's central branch, located at 10 W. 14th Ave.  There were no such calls in that category during the same time frame last year.

Legalized marijuana turns Colorado resort town into homeless magnet.  From his sidewalk vantage point in front of an outdoor equipment store in downtown Durango, Colo., Matthew Marinseck has seen a transformation in this mountain resort town.  The picturesque town near the New Mexico border, once a vibrant, upscale community dotted with luxury hotels, is being overrun by panhandlers — thanks, in part, to the legalization of marijuana.  The town suddenly became a haven for recreational pot users, drawing in transients, panhandlers and a large number of homeless drug addicts, according to officials and business owners.  Many are coming from New Mexico, Arizona and even New York.

Sponsored Links by Black and Muslim Women Are Invisible to the Feminist Movement.  From its beginnings in the 1970s, the feminist movement has been dominated by professional women.  As a result, it has focused on sexual liberation and glass ceilings while the majority of black and white women alike reject abortion on demand and favor traditional marriage.  This schism continues today:  The Women's March on Washington excluded feminists who support abortion restrictions, and subsequently, the Democratic leadership announced it would support only pro-choice candidates.  In the movement's early years, feminist activism on violence against women was roadblocked by black activists who feared it would be used as an attack on black men.  As a result, there was a virtual silence on the disproportionately high rates of domestic violence experienced by black women.

Library brings drag queens, kids together for story hour.  It takes a certain something to be a good storyteller: enthusiasm, timing and a flair for the dramatic.  Performers at a children's story hour at a New York City library have all that and then some — they're drag queens.

The Left Might Be Literally Crazy.  Given the tendencies of these people, it starts to become obvious why the country is in the shape it's in (increasing national security threats, unemployment rate at 4.7% as of May 2016, underemployment rate at 13.7%, internal civil discord resembling the 1960s) after 8 years of their intellectual leader, Barack Obama.  These people exhibit not only bad leadership skills but their behavior is tinged with what appears to be clinical mania.  They are having a seriously hard time holding it together.  So much so, that the election of a one-time reality TV star begins to look sane and reasonable by comparison.

Minnesota Dept of Health needs $5 million to fight infectious diseases in immigrant population.  Hey, since many of the refugees and other immigrants now causing expensive infectious diseases to spread in the state are a result of Obama's migration policy, maybe he could contribute his $3 million speaking fee to Minnesota as a partial payment to handle the crisis!  Here is the latest news generated by the recent Measles epidemic in Minnesota.  As of Tuesday there were 50 diagnosed cases, most (45) are in the 'Somali community.'  And, we are told that refugees don't cost state and local taxpayers a dime!

How Leftism and the U.S. Government Corrupted American Art.  In the last century, few crafts have changed as radically as the visual arts.  Painting and sculpture was transformed by a radical shift in style.  Traditionalism and aestheticism disappeared, replaced by abstract expressionism and postmodernity.  But this didn't happen by accident, or even organically:  it was, at least in part, the deliberate product of social engineering.  In 1947, the U.S. State Department organised an international modern art exhibition titled, "Advancing American Art."  The purpose was to disprove Soviet claims that America was culturally inferior.  One such Soviet claim was the phrase, "Загнивающий запад" which meant, "rotting West" and was used to describe the moral and social decline of the United States in particular.

America's Islam Trance.  This inversion of Americans' traditional core values, which causes us, for example, to glorify and celebrate immorality, perversion and mental illness (like troubled people amputating healthy body parts and pretending to be the opposite sex) while reviling and punishing virtue (like the Christian county clerk jailed for conscientiously objecting to signing a marriage license for two homosexuals) is the same inversion of values that inspires us to enthusiastically import into our country as many people as possible who are steeped in a religious and political ideology dedicated to crushing our own.  It's as though we're living in a hypnotic trance, in a dream state, wherein we are moving in slow motion toward certain destruction.

Oregon planning to be first state with a 'no gender' option on its driving licenses which could be available from this summer.  Transgender residents say the change would make them feel safer as they hand over their licenses at restaurants, health clinics and airports.  The Oregonian reports the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't oppose the change and will hold a hearing Wednesday [5/10/2017] in Portland.

What Ever Happened to the Civil Rights Movement?  If Obama saw in school-discipline data "evidence of black boys being suspended at substantially higher rates than white boys for the same behavior," as he claimed while mandating fewer suspensions, he obviously was not examining the numbers as clear-sightedly as City Journal's Heather Mac Donald.  No, the behavior is not the same.  If black boys aged 14 through 17 commit murder at ten times the rate of Hispanic and white boys combined, Mac Donald reasonably asks, is it likely that their classroom behavior is any less disproportionately unruly?  Since the Obama administration's anti-discipline edicts, student assaults on St.  Paul, Minnesota, teachers have tripled.  Seattle, which, in compliance with administration diktats, has cut school expulsions by 77 percent from 2013 through 2016, now has seen several students murdered, plus an alleged gang rape.  Teachers from Gotham to Des Moines to Fresno are up in arms over Washington's anti-discipline push, which their unions say has produced classroom anarchy.

Baltimore Has Become A Rotting, Decaying War Zone.  It is hard to believe that Baltimore was once one of the greatest cities in the entire world.  Unlike nearby Washington D.C., Baltimore is a blue collar city that is home to some of the hardest working people in America.  When I was in high school, my brother and I were huge fans of the Baltimore Orioles, and once in a while our parents would drive us from our home in Virginia all the way up to Baltimore to see them play.  As an adult, I spent a number of years living near D.C., and I would take frequent trips up to Baltimore.  To say that the city is in a state of decline would be a major understatement.  Everywhere you look there are abandoned buildings and homes, and as you drive through some of the worst areas you can actually see drug addicts just lying in the streets.  Just like so many other communities all over this country, decades of liberal policies have taken a brutal toll, and now the city is just a rotting, decaying shell of the glorious metropolis that it once was.

You Gotta Lie.  Red/blue, conservative/liberal, and Republican/Democrat mark traditional American divides.  But one fault line is not so 50/50 — that of the contemporary hard progressive movement versus traditional politics, values, and customs.  The entire menu of race, class, and gender identity politics, lead-from-behind foreign policy, political correctness, and radical environmentalism so far have not won over most Americans.  Proof of that fact are the serial reliance of their supporters on deception, and the erosion of language on campus and in politics and the media.  The progressive movement requires both deceit and euphemism to mask its apparently unpopular agenda.

Darkness at the Heart of Liberal Progressivism.  The Constitution excluded mention of God, not because the Founders were irreligious, but quite to the contrary, they were all members of various and sundry religious establishments, and wished to keep it that way.  They reasonably feared that if the government were allowed to define God, then religious freedom would be lost.  This is why the Establishment clause of the First Amendment is balanced against the Free Exercise clause.  Both are necessary, not for the exclusion of religion, but for its protection.  The Founders rightly insisted upon both principles.  Each of them protects the other.  That history has been turned on its head.  Liberal Progressives now interpret the Establishment clause so expansively that, in their view, it crowds out Free Exercise so completely as to render it of no effect.

ALEC: Mostly Democratic-run States Are A Total Disaster, Have The Worst Economies.  The American Legislative Exchange Council released their "Rich States, Poor States" report last week and shocker — mostly Democratic-run states are a disaster concerning economic performance and competitiveness.  ALEC included the top and bottom ten states in the press release announcing the 10th edition of the report.  NTK Network broke down who controls what in the respective state legislatures of these low performing states as well.

The Greatest Threat to America Isn't Islam — It's the Left.  For more than a century, the left has waged a relentless jihad on the West.  In the 19th century, Karl Marx saw Christianity as the cultural carrier and defender of capitalism and launched an intentional attack on religion in general, and Christianity in particular.  He believed that, if Christian values could be undermined, it would be much easier to replace capitalism with utopian socialism.  As an articulate intellectual, Karl Marx attracted many academics to his cause, and gradually left-wing radicals took over western universities.  From this position of intellectual power, they were slowly able to poison the minds of most young people by feeding them lies that effectually turned them into enemies of their own civilization.  The left has been insidious in accomplishing this feat by subtly rewriting academic history textbooks.

The Ugly Face of Socialism.  Recall how so many entertainment elites flocked to Venezuela when the tyrant and socialist dictator Hugo Chavez came to power.  Folks like Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Harry Belafonte, and others celebrated and dreamed of this utopia.  However, if these individuals had taken the time to read and study political philosophy they would have realized that socialism is rooted in five basic principles, tenets — wealth redistribution, nationalizing of production, expansion of the welfare state, social egalitarianism, and secular humanism.  In my estimation, these are principles not to be admired but feared.

Glamorization of Transsexual Derangement Ruins Young Lives.  Gender confusion is normally temporary; the damage inflicted by hormone blockers is not.  Many chemically deformed children go on to receive horrific sex-change surgery.  Unsurprisingly, the attempted suicide rate among transgenders is not far short of 50% — and no, this is not due to "discrimination," liberal dogma notwithstanding.

The American Dream Hinges on Family.  The American family has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last 50 years.  The number of single parents in America has increased threefold since 1960.  Nearly one-third of households are now headed by single parents, most of whom are mothers, although the number of single fathers is on the rise.

Australia's green delusions:  A diesel in the shed.  Today, after Aussies have enjoyed decades of abundant reliable cheap electricity from coal, green energy gambling has taken Australia back to the era that kept a diesel in the shed.  Tasmania is the greenest state in Australia.  It once had a vibrant economy that created mines, sawmills, farms, orchards, oil and metal refineries, dams, hydro-power, and railways.  It is now a green no-go land.  Greens have stopped new hydro developments, opposed mining, crippled the timber industry, prevented new wood chip developments, and will probably celebrate when the last refinery closes.

Could sodomy be to blame?  Could promiscuity be to blame?
Syphilis surges in Philadelphia.  Could mobile apps be to blame?  Syphilis, on the rise across the United States for more than a decade, surged in Philadelphia last year, a worrisome signal that yet-to-be reported national numbers might reflect a similar pattern.  Infections rose 36 percent in 2016, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported Wednesday, driven largely by men who have sex with men.  National numbers lag a year behind, but other big cities are experiencing similar spikes, said Caroline Johnson, acting deputy commissioner, who oversees disease control.  "It's going on all over," she said.

State of Modern Sports:  Boy Identifies as Girl, Boy Competes as Girl, Boy Wins Everything.  A high school in Connecticut has accepted a new boy on their track team.  Except, he won't be going to the boys track team, he'll be going to the girls team.  Andraya Yearwood, a freshman and biological male from Cromwell High School in Connecticut, identifies as a girl and recently received permission to join the girls track team after competing as a boy in middle school.  Not surprisingly, Yearwood has been extremely successful as a male competing against females.

Animal Rights Radicals Wreck Ringling Brothers Circus.  By ending the elephants in the show in 2016, Feld Entertainment abandoned the signature Ringling Brothers act.  Whenever the circus train rolled into a town in the 20th century, the elephants would parade from the railyard to the venue.  Some towns would shut down entirely, and thousands would line the streets for the Ringling elephant parade.  After the elephants left the show last year, so did many customers.  Ringling Brothers without elephants is like the Indianapolis 500 without cars.

Forcing Political Correctness On Employees And Characters Is Killing Marvel Comics.  [Scroll down]  Over a period of two weeks, I dug through the Twitter accounts of every current Marvel writer listed on marvel.com's new releases page, to see where they stood on politics.  What I found would have been shocking, if I hadn't already seen the extreme left-wing preaching posing as superhero adventures from their products.  Even with that, the sheer lockstep and groupthink that these social media profiles display is unthinkable.  Out of 30 writers, every single one made bitter posts attacking President Trump and conservatives.  There were no dissenters.  Not one had a difference of opinion, not one even saw the sense in refraining from posting about politics.

Why Do Leftists Hate America?  Leftists put untested illegals in public schools, infecting our kids with old eradicated diseases.  Leftists advocate totally opening our borders to any and all who wish to come here to get on welfare.  Leftists celebrate extreme environmental restrictions on America while giving the world a pass.  Leftists approved of Obama gifting Iran, our enemy and a chief sponsor of terrorism, $150 billion.  Anything beneficial to America or that portrays America in a good light is despised and shouted down by leftists.

A Federal Court Rewrites the Civil Rights Act.  At what point do we declare that the judiciary is facing a credibility crisis?  When do we finally decide that laws passed by Congress have no meaning and that judges are able to rewrite them at will, often using the most laughably specious reasoning?  Yesterday [4/4/2017], the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals unilaterally revised that the Civil Rights Act's ban on employment discrimination on the basis of "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" so that it now includes a ban on sexual-orientation discrimination as well.  Never mind the actual words on the page.  Never mind the common meaning of the words then or now.  All that matters is the right result — the triumph of the social-justice "super clause" that is hidden in every law, regulation, or constitutional provision.

Obergefell's Toxic Judicial Legacy.  The cultural, legal, and political consequences of establishing a right to same-sex marriage have dominated discussions regarding Justice Kennedy's Obergefell decision.  Will religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage lose their tax-exempt status?  What will happen to vendors whose consciences prohibit them from participating in same-sex weddings?  How and when will schools address same-sex marriage?  Those consequences are important and merit serious discussion.  However, another aspect of the case — Justice Kennedy's instructions regarding judges' authority to create new "rights" — will prove equally important in the long run.  In Obergefell, Justice Kennedy did far more than merely discover a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.  He wrote that judges have an ongoing "duty" to identify and protect new "fundamental rights."  He maintained that judges should institute new rights whenever their "reasoned judgment" suggests that it is appropriate to do so.

Socialist indoctrination in the public schools is paying off:
Poll: Most young people say gov't should pay for health care.  A GenForward poll says a majority of people ages 18 to 30 think the federal government should be responsible for making sure Americans have health insurance. [...] The most popular element of the law is allowing young adults to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26, which is favored by 75 percent of 18-30 year olds.

Gender Educator:  It's Offensive to Ask Pregnant Women Whether They're Having a Boy or Girl.  A gender educator-turned-blogger is aghast that people would dare ask pregnant women about their baby's gender.  Writing on the progressive parenting website Romper, Reaca Pearl bemoans how even strangers are nosy about her pregnancy.  That's a common enough complaint, but the gender question especially sticks in her craw.  She doesn't just consider it just obnoxious; it's "actually a hurtful, damaging question," as well as an "archaic and misogynist" one, she writes.

The Editor says...
Why does the world need "gender educators," and how does one make a living as such?

Self-Busting Myths.  The American Left's myth-making and invention of useful narratives starting in the middle of the 20th century and running to about 2010 will go down as one of the more successful efforts at shaping culture, both political and otherwise, in human history.  Controlling the discussion, amid abject failure in government, education, and business (Detroit, for example, or Solyndra, or what they've done to Yale or the motion picture industry), has been a feat defying proper explanation.  They're to be congratulated for their skill in masking, if not weaponizing, their failure through narrative.  Democrats can't run an inner city?  Accuse everyone else of racism — including the middle class, white and black, who run screaming to the suburbs to escape the failing public schools, rampant crime, cratering infrastructure, and naked corruption.  Can't compete in business?  Inflate a "green energy" bubble by concocting the global warming crisis and demonizing fossil fuels as bringing on the apocalypse — and then pump billions of taxpayer dollars into absurdly unsustainable business models manufactured by major political donors as little more than payoffs.

Santa Claus to appear as gay black man in new children's book.  Santa Claus will be depicted in a forthcoming children's book as a gay black man in an interracial relationship, its publisher confirmed.  Harper Design said the picture book, "Santa's Husband," will go on sale Oct. 10 just in time for Christmas, Time reported Tuesday [3/28/2017].  The book will tell "the true story of a Black Santa and his White husband (who often fills in for him at malls)," according to a preview shared on Twitter this week by its author, Daniel Kibblesmith.

People are fleeing New York at an alarming rate.  More people are leaving the New York region than any other major metropolitan area in the country.  More than 1 million people moved out of the New York area to other parts of the country since 2010, a rate of 4.4 percent — the highest negative net migration rate among the nation's large population centers, US Census records show.

These are the 30 posh hotels where NYC places its homeless.  The city has used 30 Manhattan hotels to house the homeless, including the iconic New Yorker, the upscale Excelsior and the tourist-friendly The Manhattan at Times Square.  The city's use of Manhattan hotels shot up 58 percent in the last year as bookings expanded from the outer boroughs to prime tourist destinations in Midtown and Soho.  And the homeless lodging has reached beyond fleabag flophouses to boutique hotels and brand names sought by visitors who don't necessarily want to mingle with the down-and-out.  "We rode the elevator up to our room with homeless people who were barefoot," one guest at the Art Deco New Yorker hotel griped on the site Trip Advisor in August.

Berkeley killing renews debate over gender pronouns.  Pablo Gomez Jr. was a University of California, Berkeley, senior majoring in Latino studies and a prominent campus activist when authorities say he stabbed to death a popular elementary-school teacher.  Soon, the crime that police described as "very brutal and unusual" in a city that reported just two homicides last year was sucked up into the debate over gender identity when it was reported that Gomez preferred to be called "they" rather than "he."

Bumblebee Halts SW Metro Road Project.  The Rusty Patched Bumblebee was just put on the endangered species list.  Experts say their numbers have been dropping over the years.  And that decision has halted work on a busy stretch of Flying Cloud Drive near Highway 101 in Eden Prairie and Chanhassen.  Project managers said that while the bee hasn't been spotted in the work area, the lay of the land makes it prime habitat for the pollinator.

The Civil War Is Here.  This civil war is very different than the last one.  There are no cannons or cavalry charges.  The left doesn't want to secede.  It wants to rule.  Political conflicts become civil wars when one side refuses to accept the existing authority.  The left has rejected all forms of authority that it doesn't control.  The left has rejected the outcome of the last two presidential elections won by Republicans.  It has rejected the judicial authority of the Supreme Court when it decisions don't accord with its agenda.  It rejects the legislative authority of Congress when it is not dominated by the left.  It rejected the Constitution so long ago that it hardly bears mentioning.  It was for total unilateral executive authority under Obama.  And now it's for states unilaterally deciding what laws they will follow.

Judge OK's Petition for America's First 'Genderless' Person.  A Portland student has become the first American to gain legal designation as "genderless", following a ruling by a Multnomah County judge.  The March 10 decision, reported for the first time on Thursday, involved a 27-year-old who was born male but claimed to identify with no gender whatsoever.  Judge Amy Holmes, who approved the petition, also last year approved a "non-binary" gender designation for another Portland resident.

What does it take to be a librarian in San Francisco?  1) You have to know how to shelve books.  2) You have to know how to check out books.  and 3) You have to know how to inject heroin addicts with anti-narcotics drugs.

Today's Riot-Prone Mobs Are A Product Of America's Cult-Like Education System.  Today's street theater is the culmination of decades of radical education revision.  The radical Left's systematic attack on the study of Western Civilization has essentially been an attack against the study of any and all civil societies.  It is an attack on the features that make a society civil and free.  Those features include freedom of expression, civil discourse, the Socratic method of figuring out truth, value of the individual, and a common knowledge of the classics of history and literature that help us understand what's universal in the human experience.  All of that had to go.  Now, as we see students marching to demonize as "fascists" proponents of free speech, their ignorance is in full view.  This is really a full frontal attack on the rule of law, the Constitution, and a system of checks and balances that guards against the consolidation of centralized power.  That's the whole point of the education these students have been fed.

Transgenderism and Cancer:  Every cell in the human body has a sexual fingerprint in the sex chromosome (allosome) pairs.  The born male has a XY pair.  The born female an XX.  These chromosomes do serve a function beyond mere reproduction. [...] Protein synthesis, so necessary for life, is controlled by these chromosomes.  We would be foolish not to conjecture that Y chromosomes were not designed to act properly in cell floating in a bath of female hormones; neither an XX pair in cell floating under a bath of male hormones.  Since these hormones might conceivably cause cells to go awry in protein production, as well as in cell reproduction, we should not be surprised to see unusual problems of transgenders with cancers.  Add in that transgenders, even after surgery, will retain residue tissue unique to one gender, and noting that those specific tissues will be subjected to hormone levels they were not designed to process, and the possible outcomes become frightening.

After School Satan Club' Gets Tax Exempt Status in 10 Days.  The Internal Revenue Service granted an "After School Satan Club" their tax exempt status.  The approval process for the group's non-profit status took only 10 days, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch on Friday [3/17/2017].  The satanic club was started by Reason Alliance, a Somerville, Mass. based non-profit organization that operates the Satanic Temple of Seattle.  The director of Reason Alliance, Lilith X. Starr, founded the club at Point Defiance Elementary in Tacoma, Wash.  The Point Defiance Elementary Satanic club is run by adults that have been cleared by the "Executive Ministry" of the Seattle Satanic Temple.  The group is focused on children from 5-12 and is intended to develop character, problem solving, critical reasoning, and other qualities.

How did Illinois finances get this bad?  It wasn't by Chance.  I don't have the space to write a comprehensive history, but Illinois' troubles began over 100 years ago.  A 1917 study concluded that state pension systems were essentially insolvent.  Instead of fixing the problem, the government allowed it to fester.  More than 50 years later, delegates to the state's constitutional convention were so alarmed that they borrowed a scare tactic from New York:  Lock in promised pension benefits with an ironclad lifetime guarantee to force the state's leaders to finally put a lid on costs and provide enough money to sustain the pension funds.  It didn't work.  Benefits kept being added, funding kept being shorted.  Meanwhile, our courts decided that another new constitutional provision declaring the state had the "primary responsibility" for funding education didn't mean the state was actually required to provide over half of all funding.  The state's share plummeted while local property taxes rose, and rose, and rose, putting the squeeze on homeowners and businesses alike.

Another American City Destroyed by the Democrats.  [As Peter Collier] points out, the vast majority of America's voiceless, powerless, and impoverished people are concentrated in cities that have been run exclusively by Democrats for decades — even generations — without interruption.  These are cities where stratospheric rates of crime, poverty, unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, homes without fathers and failed school systems have become a way of life — along with oppressive and confiscatory taxes whose only discernible achievement is to keep the leaky ship of city government afloat for as long as possible before it is inevitably capsized by economic and social calamity.  Minneapolis, Minnesota is perhaps the least likely case in point.  Camouflaged by the state as a whole, a synonym for plainspoken stability, it is just one of the many American cities that were once thriving centers of industry, prosperity and optimism — until Democrats took them over.

Judge gives custody of child to 1 dad and 2 moms.  An unconventional family produced a child before becoming tangled in a lengthy custody battle that ended last week when a New York judge awarded shared custody of the boy to his dad and two mothers.  The boy in the case is the biological child of a man and one of his neighbors.  Both the man and his wife had a longstanding, intimate relationship with the birth mother, according to court documents.

Parents, quit caring more about the White House than your own house.  Right now in America our greatest strength and weakness is the family unit.  What happens in the American cornerstone, our house, will be the foremost factor that determines our nation's ascent or decline.  Divorce rates hover around 50 percent.  The United States pornography industry brings in more money than the NFL, NBA and MLB combined and has infiltrated the institution of marriage, morality and adolescent minds.  Children raised in single-parent homes are on the rise.  Many of our inner cities are becoming the dens of crime due to lack of discipline and leadership from parents.  Absentee fathers are the norm.  Disregard for law and public servants is not only commonplace but also celebrated.  Racism, on both sides of the fence, has become rampant.

Twitter Photo of Drag Queen and Niqab-Wearing Muslim Woman Hailed by Liberals as 'What We Want'.  A photo has been making the rounds of gay-left-twitter this week that is being praised as perfectly encapsulating "what liberals want" and I agree 100% with that claim, though it doesn't prove the same point the liberals think it proves.  The photo was taken of two riders on a New York subway car, one a drag queen in full glam and the other a Muslim woman hidden behind a full niqab, only her eyes seen behind the slit in her head covering.  The caption of the Tweet reads, "This is the future that liberals want."

40% of households in Philadelphia can't pay their water bill.  America is in the midst of an "invisible water crisis" as the post-war water infrastructure reaches the end of its duty-cycle and cash-strapped public utilities struggle to find the money to rebuild it.  In cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, Seattle, and Detroit, families increasingly find themselves in water debt, and in Detroit, 50,000 households have had their running water cut off because of delinquency.  The estimated bill for upgrading the end-of-lifed American urban water infrastructure is $1 trillion.  Cities that have tried privatization as a means of pushing the bill onto investors have been shocked by the bills:  in Atlanta, the private water provider charges $325.52 a month, which only qualifies as "affordable" if your household income tops $87K.

United Nations Pushes "HeforShe" Dolls for Boys.  There certainly have to be some intermediate steps between your son's birth and his ingestion of puberty-blocking drugs and subsequent "gender-reassignment surgery," and the United Nations is on the case.  It has joined forces with a new company to push dolls for boys so your child can get in touch with his