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, © 2015 by Andrew K. Dart

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:

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:

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 learns the price of virtue-signaling, now must install needle-disposal boxes in bathrooms 'open to all'.  The expression "clueless liberal" now has an emblem:  the Starbucks logo.  The coffee chain has discovered what anyone who understands human nature could have predicted — as many of us did.  When the chain announced last May that it was opening its bathrooms to non-customers and allowing them to stay in its stores as long as they want without paying for anything, it was utterly predictable that all sorts of troubled people with nowhere else to shoot up, turn tricks, or bathe would start using the restrooms of the virtue-signaling chain.

Remember When Starbucks Caved And Opened Their Bathrooms To Non-Customers?  Here's How That Worked Out.  There are so many contrived outrages in a given week, let alone a year, that it can be hard to recall any individual instance of outrage after it has already passed.  But the infamous Starbucks bathroom outrage was so phony, so absurd, and so disconnected from anything resembling logic or reason, that it deserves to be remembered.

Drugs and syringes have become a problem in Starbucks bathrooms.  Starbucks is installing boxes for safe disposal of syringes in the bathrooms of certain locations, following workers' reports of discarded needles and sometimes concerning conditions.  The coffee giant is exploring remedies after employees expressed fears about being pricked by uncapped needles and experiencing related health risks.  Starbucks is testing solutions, including installing sharps-disposal boxes, using heavier-duty trash bags to prevent needle pokes, and removing trash cans from certain bathrooms.

Starbucks' new bathroom policy not working out as hoped.  It has been 7 months since the famous purveyor of caffeinated confection, Starbucks, declared their bathrooms "open to the public" without the need to purchase their products.  Data suggests that the virtue signaling isn't working out as well as hoped by the corporate leaders.  A New York Post team investigated several Manhattan bathrooms and found that there wasn't an open stall.

Starbucks bathrooms may be open to all, but good luck finding a free stall.  Seven months after the coffee kingdom declared its toilets open to all — no purchase necessary! — visitors who hear nature's call are finding it isn't always easy to lighten their loads.  Finding a usable Starbucks toilet in the Big Apple might actually have gotten harder since last spring's announcement — and not just for non-customers.  Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson declared the open-toilets policy after two black men were infamously arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks.  They asked to used the toilet and were told it was for customers only.  When they sat to wait for a friend, they were handcuffed and charged with "trespassing."  But a [New York] Post survey found some supposedly liberated loos in different Manhattan neighborhoods closed to everyone.

Will they also provide clean needles?
Starbucks chairman announces free bathrooms and table space for the homeless.  The ever well meaning Starbucks chairman, Howie Schultz, more terrified of bad publicity and claims of racism than anything in the world, has just announced a rather customer-unfriendly policy of opening Starbucks bathrooms (as well as table space) to all comers, including people who won't spring for a $4 cup of coffee. [...] If you open the bathrooms to all comers, including non-paying customers, you're turning Starbucks into a public bathroom.  How stupid do you think we are?  For those of us who do buy Starbucks coffee, we know what this policy change means:  an open invitation to the homeless to bring in hepatitis, trash, used syringes, solicitations for spare change, and all the other detritus of their uncured condition to Starbucks bathrooms.

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 "feminine side."  Writes PR Newswire, "HeForShe, UN Women's global solidarity movement for gender equality has teamed up with start-up company ... Boy Story to launch two special edition action dolls named Billy and Mason.  The action dolls challenges [sic] current prejudice surrounding boys playing with dolls, and promotes the notion that both boys and girls should have the same opportunity to bond with a special playmate, and that all children, regardless of their gender, need to learn nurturing, emotional intelligence, and empathy."

Air Force says words like 'boy' and 'girl' could be offensive.  The Air Force fears that words like boy, girl, colonial and blacklist might offend people, according to an email sent to Airmen at Joint Base San Antonio.  An outraged Airman sent me a copy of the email — as evidence the military is still infected with Obama-era political correctness.  The email included an attachment that listed a number of words and phrases that might be construed as offensive.  Now, to be fair there were some legitimately offensive and racially charged words and phrases on the list.  But also included on the list were the words boy and girl.

School changes name of 'Father-Daughter' dance to be more inclusive.  It's wasn't until recently the PTA president heard concerns the Crocker/Riverside Elementary School's Father-Daughter Dance and Mother-Son Hike aren't traditions everyone cherishes.  "We got a request from a couple parents to be more inclusive and change the name," said Kuske.  The school now wants to redefine the PTA fundraising events.  The Father-Daughter dance will be promoted as a family dance.

How the Media Create the Culture.  In the February 2017 issue of Family Circle, the advertisement right after opening the cover of the magazine shows two interracial men resting together on a couch.  One sports a tattoo on his arm and they are in a home setting with the words "All homes are created equal."  The advertisement comes from IKEA and, clearly, the ad is about much more than the listed $399 price tag for the Hennes glass-door-cabinet.  It involves the acceptance of tattoos, a wholehearted acceptance of gay relationships, the distinct possibility of a same-sex marital status, the importance of saving the environment through sustainability, making dreams come true in all arenas of life, and, ultimately, love and affection.

Coca-Cola serves up gay-friendly ad for all genders, generations.  Soft drinks maker Coca-Cola Co has launched a gay-friendly ad featuring a brother and sister vying for the attention of a handsome pool boy in the campaign that has won praise for diversity and inclusion.  "Sibling rivalry never looked more inclusive," Out Magazine said of the commercial that debuted last week.  Marketing Week also approved.  While gay-themed movies and television shows are commonplace, advertising has been slower to embrace same-sex couples, especially among marquee brands.

The Left's Romance with Violence.  Modern liberal culture has built an educational system politicizing every study of nature and human value, a system of intellectual slavery that is good only for the master.  The system binds generations of students to an ideological post; and their ability to reason effectively extends no further than the length of their chains, for their instruction is the only truth they need to know.  It is the same for every cultish belief, whether religious or secular, and followers of the liberal faith exhibit their knowledge of that "truth" by memorizing and repeating the catechism in the protected spaces of university campuses and social media ghettos where no one may question his received wisdom.

Deployed US Navy Has A Pregnancy Problem, And It's Getting Worse.  A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Daily Caller News Foundation's Investigative Group.  That number is up 2 percent from 2015, representing hundreds more who have to cut their deployments short, taxing both their unit's manpower, military budgets and combat readiness.  Further, such increases cast a shadow over the lofty gender integration goals set by former President Barack Obama.  Overall, women unexpectedly leave their stations on Navy ships as much as 50% more frequently to return to land duty, according to documents obtained from the Navy.

Socialism Revisited.  [Scroll down]  I do not think Venezuela has an immigration problem.  It is a modern demonstration of what happens in a socialist country when the coffers eventually run dry, when the lower middle classes can no longer be milked.  That and huge oil reserves to boot.  How long before the coffers run dry in Sweden?  Whilst the right kind of immigrant can bring financial benefits, the wrong kind can be a financial disaster.  The religious (all are equal) side of socialism cannot see the difference of course, and justifies the bringing in of financial parasites by quoting historical data about bona fide immigrants.

I Told You Testosterone Would Make Women's Sports More Interesting.  As has been widely reported recently, a female wrestler in Texas — Mack Beggs — has won the state championship in her division largely due to the fact that she has a significant competitive advantage:  she's taking steroids (testosterone).  Once upon a time, such behavior was widely considered cheating.  In fact, some of the biggest scandals in sports history involve behavior virtually identical to that of Mack Beggs.  (Alex Rodriguez took testosterone.)  In fact, due to the widespread problem of "doping" (taking performance-enhancing drugs) in the world of athletics, in 1999, the World Anti-Doping Agency was created.  Clearly (and always) on the list of banned substances:  testosterone.  In spite of being an endogenous (naturally occurring) anabolic androgenic (promotes male characteristics) steroid, testosterone use among athletes is prohibited if administered from outside the body.

Philly's soda tax is crushing the city's beverage business.  If you live in Philadelphia, that bloated feeling you get from consuming carbonated beverages may be coming from the soda price itself.  Last summer, the city passed a Bloomberg-esque 1.5 cent per ounce tax on soda and other sweetened and diet beverages, a move opposed by beverage distributors and retailers.  Since this tax has gone into effect on Jan. 1, consumption of the sweet drinks is off by as much as 50 percent, according to retailers, and companies involved in getting these drinks to consumers are reporting huge losses and announcing layoffs.

Soda companies, supermarkets report 30-50 pct. sales drop from soda tax.  Two months into the city's sweetened-beverage tax, supermarkets and distributors are reporting a 30 percent to 50 percent drop in beverage sales and are planning for layoffs.  One of the city's largest distributors says it will cut 20 percent of its workforce in March, and an owner of six ShopRite stores in Philadelphia says he expects to shed 300 workers this spring.  "People are seeing sales decline larger than anything they've seen up to this point in the city," said Alex Baloga, vice president of external relations at the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association.

This Is How Free Speech Slowly Dies.  [Scroll down]  The result is a world like many Americans live in today, where they keep their mouths shut at work, they keep a tight rein on their social-media feeds, and they confine their true opinions to the most private forms of communication.  This culture isn't everywhere, of course, but ask conservative employees in entire areas of public- and private-sector employment if they're as free to speak as their progressive colleagues, and the answer is a resounding "No."  How free are they to disagree with their diversity trainer?  Can they argue against same-sex marriage with the same vehemence that their colleagues ask for "marriage equality"?  Are they as free to discuss, say, the border wall or Trump's executive order on immigration as their progressive friends?  One thing I can say for certain, I have conservative friends who are afraid to test the proposition.  They have mortgages to pay.

Billionaire Pritzker Tells Men to Use Women's Bathrooms to Protest Trump.  A billionaire Democratic megadonor, who is exploring a run for governor, encouraged men to use women's bathrooms on Wednesday sparking criticism from transgender advocates and politicians.  J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire heir whose father co-founded Hyatt hotels, floated the idea of switching bathrooms in the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order reversing an Obama policy that could have stripped federal funds from schools that maintain separate bathroom facilities based on sex.

Venezuelans Now On A Forced Starvation Diet — Thanks, Socialism!  A new study of Venezuela's stunning decline under Hugo Chavez's socialist model, still followed faithfully by his lap dog successor, Nicolas Maduro, reports that the average Venezuelan lost 19 pounds in the last year.  Today, the 2016 Living Conditions Survey finds, 32.5% of Venezuelans eat only once or twice a day, up from 11.3% just one year ago.  And 93.3% of all people don't earn enough to buy sufficient food.

Oregon's Euthanasia Bill Is Intentionally Ambiguous.  Oregon, which in 1997 became the first state in the U.S. to legalize assisted suicide, is considering tweaking the laws surrounding advance directives, the legal documents by means of which a person can dictate ahead of time his desires for end-of-life care.  The innocuous-seeming changes that Senate Bill 494 proposes would permit the state to starve certain patients to death.  Under current state law, "artificially administered nutrition and hydration" — intravenous feeding by tubes — does not include food administered normally:  "by cup, hand, bottle, drinking straw or eating utensil."  The latter category, unlike the former, is considered part of the basic provision of care required for the sick, and required by law as long as the patient is mentally incompetent to say otherwise.

Publishers now hiring 'sensitivity readers' to ensure political correctness.  If you ever worried about what the student snowflakes at American universities would be qualified to do after graduation, this is the perfect job for them.  Publishers are hiring "sensitivity readers" to check book manuscripts to make sure they adhere to politically correct standards.

Democrats' Real Global Warming Fraud Revealed.
  •   Europe overpays for Russian gas, and so is burning more coal than ever.  London's new smog is created by burning wood pellets instead of natural gas, because gas prices have tripled to pay "renewable" subsidies.
  •   South Australia has suffered five recent electrical black-outs because it closed its last coal-fired power plant.  (Their wind turbines don't turn when the wind dies.)  One blackout caused $1 billion in losses; molten steel hardened in the suddenly-dead furnaces.
  •   Millions of Third World women die from tending open fires in their huts, for lack of kerosene or electricity.  Their governments are denied financing for urgently needed coal-fired power plants when the world has ample coal.

Freedom or Football?  The National Football League has officially put the State of Texas on notice: if that state persists in denying men with peculiar sexual proclivities access to public rooms full of young girls with their pants down, then Texas may be denied the privilege of hosting any more Super Bowls.  To be precise, as you probably know, Texas lawmakers are proposing a law similar to North Carolina's, restricting access to public bathrooms and changing rooms to people of the actual biological sex for which those facilities were designed. [...] Why is this controversial?  Because it is "inconsistent with [the NFL's] values."  Really?  And when was this great table of NFL values etched in stone?  Would the NFL have taken up this issue as a matter of principle at any time prior to, say, five years ago?

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.

Rescind the Executive Order — And Replace It With Many Tougher Ones.  The president cannot lose here.  We must protect our borders; keep out the terrorists and rein in out-of-control immigration.  It is the signal issue that got him elected.  It is also the signal action needed to save this country from the Left's malevolent intentions.  The Left is attempting to subvert our country by simply replacing its population with a more malleable, sympathetic one.  Unlike the immigrants of yesteryear, today's are largely illiterate, welfare-dependent, unwilling to learn our language and definitely hostile to American culture and traditions.  And while they are in many cases fleeing conditions created by their countries' socialist policies, they nonetheless bring socialist ideas with them.  As our country has become more "multi-cultural", it has drifted ever leftward.

California Goes Confederate.  "Calexit" supporters brag that they will have enough signatures to qualify for a ballot measure calling for California's secession from the United States. [...] [California] hosts the largest numbers of impoverished and the greatest number of rich people of any state in the country.  Eager for cheap service labor, California has welcomed in nearly a quarter of the nation's undocumented immigrants.  California has more residents living in poverty than any other state.  It is home to one third of all the nation's welfare recipients.  The income of California's wealthy seems to make them immune from the effects of the highest basket of sales, income, and gas taxes in the nation.  The poor look to subsidies and social services to get by.  Over the last 30 years, California's middle classes have increasingly fled the state.

Sanitation Crews Search for Dead Bodies Amid Piles of Pipeline Protester Trash.  Authorities in North Dakota are working to prevent an environmental catastrophe caused by the massive amounts of trash left behind by anti-oil pipeline protesters, local media report.  State and tribal sanitation crews are rushing to remove piles of waste and debris left over from the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline before weather warms and the mountains of trash turn toxic.  According to cleaning crews, they're worried they might even find dead bodies among the piles of refuse that now pollute areas where anti-pipeline protesters camped out for months.

De Blasio's carefree spending is coming back to bite him — and NYC.  Since becoming mayor, he has grown the budget 18 percent (i.e., more than three times inflation) — handing out fat pay hikes to the municipal unions and taking the head count of city employees to an all-time high.  He's been able to do that only because a robust local economy has thrown off enough tax revenue to keep City Hall afloat.  Those days may now be over.

Philadelphia Goes Over the Tax Cliff.  Starting January 1st, Philadelphia implemented the first ever tax on all sweetened beverages, including those sweetened with artificial sweeteners.  The $0.015 tax is being levied on distributors of these beverages, even if the distributor is outside the city of Philadelphia. [...] To put this in context, if you buy a 12 pack of 12-ounce sodas you will be paying an additional $2.16 for the privilege — even if it's diet soda and contains no sugar.  Most of these beverages have an additional Pennsylvania Sales Tax of 6%.  If you are lucky enough to find a 12 pack of soda on sale for $3.00, your total cost will be $5.34.  Protein shakes which many seniors on fixed incomes drink to supplement their diet also contain sugar and will include this onerous tax.

The Left Holds Itself to Lower Standards of Behavior.  The nation's most dangerous big cities in 2012 were Detroit, Oakland, St.  Louis, Memphis, Stockton, Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Milwaukee.  The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations.  Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark, and Philadelphia — haven't elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century.  It's not just personal safety.  These Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite the fact that they have large and growing school budgets.

California Democrats propose adding third, nonbinary gender option for driver's licenses and other official documents.  California driver's licenses and birth certificates could have a third option for gender in addition to male or female under legislation unveiled Thursday [1/26/2017] by Democratic lawmakers.  The bill by state Sens. Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) would establish a new nonbinary gender marker for official state documents.  Lawmakers framed the measure as an expansion of rights for transgender, intersex and other people who do not identify as male or female.

Godless, hateful, and poorly educated simpletons have limited vocabularies and must express themselves with profanity.
Study:  New Jersey curses a lot.  Ah the Garden State.  Where four-letter words flow like the cheese on a ripper at Rutt's Hut.  No one curses quite like a New Jerseyan.  In many ways cursing is New Jersey, like Springsteen or full-service gas.  In fact, a study out of the Netherlands looked at Facebook convos and asked hundreds of people how often they curse.  New Jerseyans have the some of the highest cursing rates in the nation, second only to Delaware, according to researchers.

Deprogramming Snowflakes During Trump.  Somewhere along the line, most of us learn that if we do not behave as law-abiding citizens, the court system will intervene.  Failing that, thieves or other criminals continue to have an overwhelming sense of entitlement, and often, but not always, end up in jail.  But to many, as long as they are following the law, the old tried and true method of whining to others for their capricious wants is still the way to go.  To make things even more complicated for the spoiled brat, they may not have any means of determining right from wrong beyond Hollywood themes, or whatever is convenient for them.  Whether or not the young person becomes a functioning law-abiding citizen, they may have never been taught any spiritual responsibility through religious guidance.  Consequently, they are left with the Godless public education worldview of Darwinian survival of the fittest, and go off to journalism school to supposedly become an objective news reporter; so they can change the world to fit their own opinions.  The whining model of procurement, when applied to politics, is manifest in liberalism, and have-not community organization.  Their socialist sense of entitlement tells the liberal they have a right to dip into whoever's wallet that is necessary for "equality".

Transgender man tries to join a sorority at Northwestern.  As a transgender freshman trying to find his place at Northwestern University, Adam Davies thought joining a sorority would make his transition to college life a smoother one.  But the 18-year-old Wisconsin native — who said he was drawn to Greek life values of friendship, service and leadership — found out this month that he didn't get a bid from any sorority at the private university in Evanston, Ill., the Chicago Tribune reports.

Presidential protestors don't understand America.  It's time that Americans demand that their schools once again teach American history (so students know that the popular vote winner does not always win the presidential election), American government (so they know we are a republic and not a democracy), the Constitution (so they understand our bicameral federal and election system), and absolute truth (that personal opinion must submit to truth and reality).  If we don't make these changes, we will not want to imagine, much less experience, the horrifying results from Abraham Lincoln's warning that "the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."

Obama's last press conference:  What a victory lap.  What a mess.  Obama leaves office as an unrepentant progressive, unapologetic for much of anything, from unprecedented domestic divisions and disrespect for law enforcement to a shattered foreign policy, adversaries and allies doubting us.  From his decision to reject Israel at the United Nations to glibly upending traditional family values, from politicizing the Justice Department to commuting a 35-year sentence for treason, the president sees not what he has wrought.  This is why his Party has sent packing, why they have shed more than 1000 combined legislative, gubernatorial and congressional seats since Obama took office.

Before and After Obama: 10 Signs of a Diminished America.  No amount of Democrat spin can conceal the breathtaking disaster of ObamaCare, which spent $2 trillion to achieve the goose egg of net improvement in Gallup's poll.  Remember when the liars who foisted the Affordable Care Act on us claimed it would be revenue-neutral?  The same Democrats who spent the past six years resolutely ignoring the victims of ObamaCare — the millions who lost good health care plans, paid wildly inflated premiums and deductibles, or paid a hefty tax for the privilege of not buying a lousy product they didn't want — will now line up human shields and scream about how they'll lose coverage under any repeal plan.  Never has a more callous group of people pretended to be "compassionate" less convincingly.  ObamaCare is imploding, with so many insurers fleeing its mismanaged markets that many Americans are dealing with functional monopolies.  Nothing close to this desperate situation existed before Obama seized control of the health insurance industry.

Saul Alinsky Leaves the White House.  The very day after Obama was elected in 2008, I predicted in this space that his team would steal the Senate by hook and crook (see:  Al Franken); nuke the filibuster at least for judicial nominees; liberalize voting laws (or enforcement thereof) to make fraud easier while charging opponents with "vote suppression"; drum up spurious allegations of civil rights violations; punish anti-abortion protesters; enact "copious new regulations, especially environmental, to be used selectively to ensnare other conservative malcontents"; invasively use the IRS to harass conservative organizations; and tacitly encourage civil unrest in furtherance of Obamite goals.  All those predictions of course came true.

You'll never guess which political party leads in poverty and crime.  I'd be more a lot more snarky if the human toll wasn't so devastating.  The sad fact remains:  progressives don't get it and never will.  Their policies are based on emotion, not facts.  Feelings, not human experience.  Their policies are those of a cult, not a real political party.

Why Term-Limiting People Like John Lewis Would be Good for the Nation.  John Lewis has been a Representative for Georgia's 5th district for 28 years.  The 5th district of Georgia, which is mostly the city of Atlanta, has seen 5,203 commissions of violent crime in 2015, with 94 murders, 170 rapes, almost 2,000 robberies, almost 3,000 aggravated assaults and 25,556 total property crimes according to the FBI.  Trump is right, Atlanta is crime-ridden.  But not only is Atlanta a pretty dangerous city, it has become more dangerous since it has become a major drug-trafficking hub for Mexican drug cartels.

Want to Know Why Trump Won?  Just Ask His Supporters.  [Scroll down]  Half of Buffalo has moved out of the city since the 1950s?  A wave of suicide is decimating middle-aged white men?  Meth has taken over life in a small Wisconsin river town?  Divorced veterans are languishing in soup kitchens and homeless shelters across Tennessee?  Political correctness has no answers to these problems.  In fact, P.C. forbids answers to those problems, because acknowledging them as problems would take away from the focus on "hate."  Only "hate" matters, and none of those tribulations can be credibly attributed to hate.

Look at these mugs!.  Only twenty-four hours left in which to tell us how many gallons of water per minute the shower in our bathroom at home can pump, tell us what our eight-year-old can and cannot learn in third grade, who is allowed in what women's or men's room, the food our child has to eat for lunch, what doctor we can use, what religious conviction will be tolerated, and how many aliens will be dumped in our town square whom we have to pay for.

Dear Liberals:  Here Is Some Magnanimous Advice.  [Scroll down]  Do you notice the common denominator of these three groups?  All three are, or have been, the little darlings of the left.  Follow us, the left said to the workers, and we will bring you justice.  Follow us, the left said to African Americans, and we will defeat racism.  Follow us, the left said to women, and we will defeat sexism and the patriarchy.  And liberals and lefties have been doing nothing but protesting and marching and legislating on these three fronts for the last 150 years.  So why are your little darlings so demoralized, liberals?  Why is the working-class dying of despair despite your welfare state?  Why are blacks killing cops and burning cities again, 50 years after the Civil Rights Acts?  Why are women suffering sexual harassment on campus and huddling in safe spaces fifty years after the sexual revolution?

War of Words.  Obituaries used to employ the euphemism "longtime companion"; now they regularly say "partner." [...] As I've mentioned in these pages before, I grew up in one of the most politically correct places in America, Ann Arbor, Mich. — and at a very, very politically correct time.  This was a time when people were (seriously) saying "person-hole cover," instead of "manhole cover."  We got to replacing "man" with "person" automatically.

The American Indian Word for Woman Now Deemed "Offensive".  You may remember the term "squaw".  It's the Narragansett (American Indian) word for "woman" dating back to at least the 17th century.  Algonquian dialects also employed the word.  But now, your PC betters have deemed the term Offensive.

Why pay high ticket prices to see a circus with no elephants?
Ringling Bros. circus plans to shut down 'Greatest Show on Earth' after 146 years.  After 146 years, the curtain is coming down on "The Greatest Show on Earth."  The owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus told The Associated Press that the show will close forever in May.

Famed Ringling Bros. circus closing.  The Ringling Bros. circus is closing down after more than 100 years in operation, according to a press release from Feld Entertainment, which has owned the circus for the last 50 years.  "I have made the difficult business decision that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey® will hold its final performances in May of this year," CEO Kenneth Feld said.  High operating costs and the decline of ticket sales "made the circus an unsustainable business for the company," Feld said.

Animal rights activists claim major win in Ringling Bros. closing.  Animal rights activists claimed a major victory Sunday after Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus said it would halt its show in May after 146 years.  The move came as circuses and animal-performance shows across the country have struggled with declining attendance and shifting social pressure brought to bear by activists who argued the animals were sometimes poorly treated.  Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus removed elephants from its performances last May, and the company said ticket sales then dropped drastically.

Lesbian couple hired to co-pastor D.C. church.  A historic church in the heart of the nation's capital has hired a married lesbian couple as co-pastors.  Calvary Baptist Church in northwest D.C. announced the hiring of Sally Sarratt and Maria Swearingen on Jan. 8 during morning worship, where they were approved by the congregation.  "We have found it so easy to fall in love with Calvary and its longstanding commitment to be a voice of justice and compassion for those who perpetually find the wholeness of their humanity disregarded and maligned," the pastors said in a press release issued by the church.

Jersey City is 'Queerest City in America'.  Step aside New York, San Francisco and Miami:  Jersey City, New Jersey, has been given the title of the "Queerest City in America."  Campaign's municipal equality index, according to "The Advocate," the oldest and largest LGBT publication in the nation.

Chicago hate crime a microcosm of 'collapsing of civil society' under President Community Organizer.  Thursday evening [1/5/2017] on "The Mark Levin Show," Conservative Review's editor in chief addressed the "absolute, horrific inhumanity" of the racist torture attack on a developmentally disabled man in Chicago, stating it is but the latest example of the "collapsing of the civil society" in Chicago and other communities under Democratic policies.

Left's Mission Accomplished:  Blacks Torturing Whites.  While some on the left claim to be upset, this is exactly the hate and violence they hope to generate throughout Trump's entire presidency.  A farmer does not plant corn and then act surprised when stalks of corn begin to grow.  The left has been planting seeds of racial hate and division ever since white America elected Obama.  Why?  Because the left needed to be able to scream "racism" whenever anyone opposed Obama (their Trojan Horse) implementing their far-left-radical socialist/progressive agenda.

It's Still a Mad, Mad California.  Abstract idealism on behalf of the distant is a powerful psychological narcotic that allows caring progressives to dull the guilt they feel about their own privilege and riches.  Nowhere is this paradox truer than in California, a dysfunctional natural paradise in which a group of coastal and governing magnificoes virtue-signal from the world's most exclusive and beautiful enclaves.  The state is currently experiencing another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty.  All that is energized by a strapped middle class that is still fleeing the overregulated and overtaxed state, while the arriving poor take their places in hopes of generous entitlements, jobs servicing the elite, and government employment.

Liberals Awake From an 8-Year Moral Coma.  For eight years, the voices of what passes for morality on the left were utterly silent as the values of generations of Americans were flushed down the drain.  Those Americans whose desires, experiences and values differed from the leftist elite were treated as worthless garbage, no longer necessary to the imminent liberal utopia, except as a source of revenue.  Christianity was treated like a virus to be extinguished, or revised and controlled to accommodate leftist ideology.  Speech that offended the shameless was branded as hateful, and those daring to openly object to the onslaught of vice and immorality were falsely smeared with every vile epithet the liberals could conjure.

Giving Driver's Licenses to Illegal Aliens Makes Illegal Voting a Real Possibility.  A December 28 report in San Jose's Mercury News noted that two years after the implementation of AB 60, a controversial law allowing illegal aliens to obtain driver's licenses in California, an estimated 806,000 illegal residents have received driver's licenses, according to the latest Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) statistics.  However, the fallout from that law is even worse than allowing more than four-fifths of a million illegal aliens on the road.  On October 10, 2015, Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 1461, the New Motor Voter Act, which will automatically register people to vote through the DMV, and could result in illegal aliens voting.

Publishing's Latest Desperate Fad:  Dropping F-Bombs.  The other day, I happened to click on to Amazon and read their top 100 best-selling books for that hour.  As I read the list, I was shocked to note — fully understanding that as a conservative, time has passed me by — that 5 of the top 100 books had the f-word in the title. [...] Book publishing is a business, and I get that as much as anyone.  Unfortunately, it's also a bit of a dying business in search of a new business model or fad which will sell copies or downloads while preventing bankruptcies.

Mysterious illness tied to marijuana use on the rise in states with legal weed.  For more than two years, Lance Crowder was having severe abdominal pain and vomiting, and no local doctor could figure out why.  Finally, an emergency room physician in Indianapolis had an idea.  "The first question he asked was if I was taking hot showers to find relief.  When he asked me that question, I basically fell into tears because I knew he had an answer," Crowder said.  The answer was cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS.  It's caused by heavy, long-term use of various forms of marijuana.

The Vast Cognitive Gulf between the Left and the Right.  Everyone knows it is the self-appointed morally superior Left that is behind the tyrannies of multiculturalism, political correctness, a genderless society, man-made global warming, the promotion of homosexuality and gay marriage, the crusade against all religions but Isalm, the most violent and intolerant faith on the planet.

Warning to Democrats:  The rules have changed.  After decades of indoctrination in the public schools and universities, a population of newly minted liberals has filled the big cities and the coasts, feeling entitled to win elections, even when they don't vote.  Merely disagreeing with them incites them to anger, sometimes to violence.  Thus, they rarely if ever hear what we conservatives have to say.  They vilify middle America.  If you respect unborn life, they label you a woman-hater.  If you weary of your child's school being overcrowded with illegal (and illiterate) aliens, they call you a hater.  If you lose your job to a foreigner, they regard you as an angry white bigot.

Keywords: tantrum, petty, paroxysm, huffy.
Free therapy because Trump won?  According to the New York Post, Mayor Bill de Blasio is creating a citywide safe space for New York City's municipal workers and offering them psychotherapy sessions to deal with the results of the presidential election.  Taken literally (and we should), the mayor is telling citizens of New York City that they should indulge any potential weakness inside them that makes them believe they can't deal with the results of American democracy when the results don't go their way — that they're easily injured, inherently weak and don't have the personal fortitude to keep fighting for what they believe in.  See, there are politicians who will use any occasion to coax people into dependency on the state — whether for food, shelter, the raising of their children or hand-holding — when anything in life doesn't go their way.

Illinois has the Highest Black Unemployment Rate in the Country.  Illinois has maintained the horrible distinction of having the nation's highest black unemployment rate for the 15th month in a row, according to a new analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI.  Illinois' black unemployment rate is 14.2 percent, compared to the next highest state, Pennsylvania, at 11.8 percent.  Illinois' slow economic growth and weak industrial job creation, along with heavy regulations on occupational licensing and poor school options for many minority children have had a pronounced effect on black job opportunities.  Ironically, for almost the same duration of time that Illinois has had the highest black unemployment rate, Illinois' Democratic legislative leaders have insisted economic reforms are unnecessary for Illinois' economy, putting them at odds with Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Trump Election Saves Us From the Evil Party.  When health care and higher education and food and housing are "free" for so many, the cost borne by those who have the misfortune to be productive members of society (or, even more immorally, by our children), the economy struggles along with little growth or opportunity.  Indeed, Barack Obama will likely be the first president since the Great Depression not to preside over a single year with at least 3 percent GDP growth.

Broke and violent Chicago removes remaining Trump street signs.  Chicago's bonds are rated as junk.  So far over 700 people have been murdered this year — far more than in Los Angeles and New York, which are much more populous.  Last year Chicago taxpayers were punished with the city's largest tax hike in history — to pay for underfunded municipal worker pensions.  But city officials are have other priorities.

Why the Democrats Can't Stop Calling the GOP Racists.  Democrats don't debate Trump on the issues, because their agenda is a turn-off.  Under the leadership of Alinskyite Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has degenerated from liberalism to progressivism.  It has not been pretty.  A focus on preferential treatment for blacks has given way to a war on cops.  Caring about Hispanic Americans suddenly means America shouldn't have borders and should have sanctuary for rapists and killers — as long as they are here illegally.  Browbeating college kids by empowerring feminists and black activists with Title IX money has turned college campuses against freedom of thought and speech.  Women's issues have bizarrely turned into a war on masculinity.  Gay rights has morphed into men in women's bathrooms.  Pro-choice turned into third-trimester infanticide and lawsuits against the Little Sisters of the Poor.  Physical violence against Republicans is encouraged by President Obama and Clinton under the euphemism 'protest.'

Facts Trump the Left's National Tantrum.  The left's national tantrum over the Trump victory, evidenced by freeway blockages, street riots, internet rants, harassment of members of the Electoral College, and tasteless displays of moral superiority from the Hollywood elite, is appalling.  In traditional America, such petulant conduct does not find itself bleeding out so profusely among grown people because it is trained out of youngsters by parents who discipline their kids for throwing fits in the candy store after Mommy hasn't bought them an extra gumball.  Unfortunately, the modern left is populated with legions of adult brats who were raised without such disciplinary boundaries while concurrently having been coddled with participation trophies, self-esteem awards, and Ritalin.

Trump's Chance to Fix American Higher Education.  The culture on college campuses has descended to the point that some now refer to them as institutions of lower learning.  Hook-up culture, rape, STDs, drugs, and alcohol abuse are just the tip of this disastrous iceberg.  Below that lies a rejection of widely accepted moral values, dismissal of the noble traditions of Western Civilization and regular, unrepentant violation of the standard rules of human discourse, logic, and reasonable disagreement.  Wreckage is the result.  The refusal of academics to tolerate different points of view (or even recognize that there are other points of view) undermines their own professed obsession with "inclusion" and "diversity" to the point of absurd hypocrisy.

Bureaucratic Tyranny in Trump's Crosshairs.  We have a VA that purposely lets vets die without medical care.  We have an EPA at war with the energy industry.  The Department of Education threatens public schools with loss of federal funds and mandates progressive lies about American history, teaching generations of schoolchildren to be ashamed of America and ignorant of our Constitution and our forefathers.  Universities are forced by the DOJ to hire feminist and racialist thought police under an Obama bureaucrat's interpretation of the Civil Rights Act.  We have an IRS that has a political enemies list its employees punish at the behest of Democrats.  Homeland Security and FBI are under a gag order that forbids them to use the term jihad or Islamic extremism.  Everywhere we look, regulations are strangling business, intruding into the personal lives and property rights of ordinary citizens.

Christmastime Filth, Courtesy of Hollywood.  The corruption of American culture is evident in many ways, but few markers are more telling than the way Hollywood entertains us at Christmastime.  It was 70 years ago when "It's a Wonderful Life" was released.  NBC describes it as "a holiday classic and remains the movie people associate with Christmas more than any other.  Frank Capra's definitive film is a tearjerker that proves that, even in our darkest hours, the human spirit can and will rise triumphant."  Today, we are being treated to obscene lyrics, raw sex, misogyny, and violence.  Not one of the four Christmas-themed films released this season is worthy of being described as a family movie.  There are no guardian angels directing the lead characters to consider how the world would be without them; no triumph of self-sacrifice; no statement against greed; no childhood sweetheart to marry; no inspiration of any sort.  Just filth.

Blacks and Politicians.  Using 2012 data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Law Street Media offers some sobering statistics in an article titled "Crime in America:  Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities Over 200,000".  The nation's most dangerous big cities are Detroit, Oakland, St.  Louis, Memphis, Stockton, Birmingham, Baltimore, Cleveland, Atlanta and Milwaukee.  The most common characteristic of these cities is that they have predominantly black populations.  Another common characteristic is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations.  Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven't elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century.

The Obama Era Is Over.  Obama and his supporters loved talking about history.  His victory was historic.  They were on the right side of history.  History was an inevitable arc that bent their way.  The tidal force of demographics had made the old America irrelevant.  Any progressive policy agenda was now possible because we were no longer America.  We Were Obamerica.  A hip, happening place full of smiling gay couples, Muslim women in hijabs and transgender actors.  We were all going to live in a New York City coffee house and work at Green Jobs and live in the post-national future.  The past was gone.  We were falling into the gorgeous wonderful future of dot com instant deliveries and outsourced everything.  We would become more tolerant and guilty.  The future was Amazon and Disney.  It was hot and cold running social justice.  The Bill of Rights was done.  Ending the First and Second Amendments was just a clever campaign away.  Narratives on news sites drove everything.  Presidents were elected by Saturday Night Live skits.

Murder of Cops Via Ambush Up 167% This Year.  This won't get any better while the media continues to refer to rioters as protesters, or said rioters aren't arrested for fear of of a public outcry.  If cops remain skittish about doing their jobs when dealing with criminals (which rioters most definitely are) where does that leave the law abiding citizens?  How long before everyone is at the mercy of the lawless?

All the Queen's Men.  [Scroll down]  Lest we forget:  It was at a Manhattan LGBT Gala in September where Hillary Clinton proclaimed half of her opponent's supporters to be a basket of deplorables — a declaration met with resounding cheers from those whose lives stand for anti-complementary, anti-conjugal marriage.  Beyond that, these are the urbane pro-motherlessness and pro-fatherlessness elites.  Progressive elites — especially the males among them — are untroubled by motherlessness and fatherlessness.  This would have been horrifying ten years ago.  Today it is a badge of sophistication.  More troubling, it is an act of compliance with our new laws.  In the religion of the sexual revolution, adult access to sexual pleasure trumps everything else, including the best interests of children.  And leading the charge to destroy the American family and faith — dragging us deeper into the dark pit of chaos of the sexual revolution — are all the Queen's men.  Why are we deplorable to them?  Because we strive to maintain a degree of self control over our appetites.  And more than that, we have a conscience, especially concerning the loving care of children, and they have none.  They cannot bear our presence.

Hillary's Bright Shining Lies.  We conservatives and Alt-Right deplorables are acutely aware of the appalling corruption of the Clintons, from the pay-to-play Clinton Foundation money laundering scheme to the tens of thousands of deleted emails, and from the anti-Islam video as pretext for a riot in Benghazi, Libya to the trail of mysterious deaths of dozens of people who ran afoul of the Clintons.  But the most effective lies in Hillary's arsenal, the ones that could get her over the top and into the White House, may be the most conventional ones that are hiding in plain sight, the ones that are not criminally prosecutable; the platitudes and pejoratives that simply capitalize on the economic ignorance of the American people, thanks to fifty or more years of progressive dominance of our education system, and the transformation of our society away from business ownership and toward corporate or government employment.

A Baby With 3 Parents Has Been Born.  These Are the Dangers.  The first baby with three parents has been born this year, raising troubling questions about our culture's dedication to human dignity.  The U.S. Constitution is predicated on the principle of the inherent worth and dignity of the human individual.  Fundamental rights do not depend on any other fact than that each of us is a unique human being.  Thus, any proposed legal action or scientific endeavor is subordinate to those rights.  Often, however, we find that proposed scientific "advances" — particularly in areas like genetic engineering — trample on the rights and dignity of the individual.

The Dangers of Hillary Clinton.  The dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency are more familiar than Trump's authoritarian unknowns, because we live with them in our politics already.  They're the dangers of elite groupthink, of Beltway power worship, of a cult of presidential action in the service of dubious ideals.  They're the dangers of a recklessness and radicalism that doesn't recognize itself as either, because it's convinced that if an idea is mainstream and commonplace among the great and good then it cannot possibly be folly.  Almost every crisis that has come upon the West in the last 15 years has its roots in this establishmentarian type of folly.

STDs hit record high:  More Americans than ever are catching chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, CDC warns.  Infections from three sexually spread diseases have hit another record high.

An Establishment in Panic.  [Scroll down]  Establishment panic is traceable to another fear:  Its ideology, its political religion, is seen by growing millions as a golden calf, a 20th-century god that has failed.  Trump is "talking down our democracy," said a shocked Clinton.  After having expunged Christianity from our public life and public square, our establishment installed "democracy" as the new deity, at whose altars we should all worship.  And so our schools began to teach.

Hillary and the fundamental legal premise of tyranny.  [Scroll down]  "Disappointing" is a word we use to describe a result that might realistically have turned out otherwise.  Watching your favorite baseball team being eliminated from the playoffs is disappointing.  Finding out the new owners of your favorite restaurant have changed the recipes is disappointing.  But watching a glorious seven-hundred-year historical arc exhausting itself at last; seeing the immense intellectual achievements of philosophers and artists from Aquinas and Dante to Locke and Swift being snuffed out in favor of neo-Marxist critical theory and the nihilistic, infantilizing vulgarity of our popular entertainment; and observing in real time the final outcome of the civilized world's two-hundred-year submersion in the moral quicksand of government-controlled child-rearing (i.e., public school), is not "disappointing."  It is revelatory.  What has been revealed is that this age has tempted fate too long.

Limbaugh: 'Ironic That The Democrat Party Wants to Throw Down the Morality Card'.  The release of an 11-year-old videotape in which Donald Trump speaks in vulgar terms about trying to seduce women has prompted outrage among Democrats, some Republicans, and the liberal media, but it's hard to believe they're really offended, Rush Limbaugh said on Monday [10/10/2016].  "You know, I find it ironic that the Democrat Party wants to throw down the morality card.  The Democrat Party, which is responsible for the dissolution of morality in this country.  The Democrat Party, which is for all these progressive new attitudes in our culture, and now all of a sudden acting like a bunch of prudes, [...]"

Trumped-Up Outrage.  The sudden onset of Victorian vapors among the liberal intelligentsia and political class at the revelation of Trump's locker-room talk is part and parcel of the Left's hypocrisy when it comes to feminism and sexual liberation. [...] But the feminists can't have it both ways:  declaring that women should be equal to men in all things and then still demand a chivalric deference to female's delicate sensibilities.  Either women are the same as men or they're not.  It is particularly galling to see the selective resurrection of Victorian values from the same crowd that has been pushing transgender locker rooms on the world, in an effort to destroy the last shred of girls' innate sexual modesty.

Common Core Update:  Feelings are More Important than Accuracy in Math Answers.  "Any emotion, feeling, statement, or catchphrase is an acceptable answer to most of the problems in the new mathematics standards," a Common Core representative informed interested media outlets.  "As long as students are being sincere, genuine, authentic, and true to themselves at the time they are answering the question, that's all we can ask as educators."  "Who are we to tell anyone that their own mathematical truth is wrong?" the Common Core representative added.  The Babylon Bee reports that these same touch-feely standards will be added into the Common Core standards set for history, biology, and chemistry. English literature teachers apparently are already able to take the students' feelings into account when it comes to filling out report cards.

Columbus Day and what Native Americans really need.  The two million Indians in this country are the poorest racial group.  They have higher rates of gang violence than blacks or Hispanics.  Indian women are raped at 2.5 times the national average.  Indian children are abused at twice the national average.  And suicide is the leading cause of death for American Indian boys aged 10-14. [... But] the reason that American Indians are where they are today is not because of events that occurred 500 years ago or even a century ago.  It is because of policies perpetrated in Washington today.  American Indians are poor because people who live on reservation don't have property rights.  Their land is held in trust by the federal government — which means they cannot buy it or sell it or develop it as they wish.  They can't even get a mortgage to buy a home, which is why reservations that have hundreds of millions of acres also have housing shortages and why people are stuffed into overcrowded trailers.  Indian reservations contain almost 30 percent of the nation's coal reserves west of the Mississippi, 50 percent of potential uranium reserves, and 20 percent of known oil and gas reserves.  Those resources are estimated to be worth nearly $1.5 trillion.  But the vast majority of Indian lands with natural resources remain undeveloped because of federal regulations.  In fact, just about every aspect of the lives of people on reservations is micromanaged by the 9,000 employees at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Dunbar High School After 100 Years.  In 1899, when it was called "the M Street School," a test was given in Washington's four academic public high schools, three white and one black.  The black high school scored higher than two of the three white high schools.  Today, it would be considered Utopian even to set that as a goal, much less expect to see it happen.  The M Street School had neither of two so-called "prerequisites" for quality education.  There was no "diversity."  It was an all-black school from its beginning, and on through its life as a high quality institution under the name Dunbar High School.  But its days as a high quality institution ended abruptly in the middle of the 1950s.  After that, it became just another failing ghetto school.

The Sun Is Setting on America as Founded.  The authoritarian/socialist mindset most often identified with the Left is now overwhelmingly dominant in the United States of 2016.  The acceptance of a powerful central government and its attendant governing class dictating to all Americans what they can and cannot do has become the norm.  Beginning in the 1930's, but in earnest over the past five decades, a socialist Democratic Party, media/entertainment complex, and education establishment has effectively conditioned a majority of Americans to look to the government as the source of salvation, opportunity and rescue in times of difficulty.  Thus, there now exists a permanent ruling class or oligarchy in charge of all the levers of power in the government, including the Judiciary, and in a majority of all societal and educational institutions.

East Carolina University:  Future protests of national anthem 'will not be tolerated'.  East Carolina University said members of its marching band will not be allowed to kneel during the national anthem moving forward, after a protest during Saturday's [10/1/2016] game against the University of Central Florida was met with boos.  At least 19 members of the Marching Pirates took a knee while playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Greenville Saturday night.

The Editor says...
Public school students are pumped full of anti-American propaganda in class, so the protests could have been anticipated.  If the schools teach anything at all, they should teach young people to do their jobs without offering any unsolicited opinions.  In this case, just play the clarinet and march in sync with everybody else.  After you graduate with a worthless degree, just bring my lunch out to table 17 without spitting in it.

Hillary sneers at cowboys.  Is that allowed in America?  Was there ever a politician with a worse tin ear than Hillary Clinton? [...] "It is outrageous," Clinton incanted [10/3/2016], "that eight years after a cowboy culture on Wall Street wrecked our economy, we are still seeing powerful bankers playing fast and loose with the law."  Actually, wasn't the economy wrecked by government busybodies such as former Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., insisting that people with no money, no credit and no chance of repaying loans should become homeowners?

Potheads and Potty-mouths in Paradise.  Studies mentioned in my first column show that pot is a good recipe for poverty, poor education, brain abnormalities, pot-related traffic accidents and emergency room visits for toddlers who've accidentally ingested pot.

Socialist Venezuela New Food Police Unit Targeting People For Waiting In Supermarket Lines.  Venezuelans continue to fight for survival, as the nation's socialist experiment has all but collapsed.  Looting is commonplace.  Hunger is rampant, with Venezuelans of every economic class eating out of garbage cans for sustenance.  And a medical system that is so starved of supplies, like soap and gloves, that newborns are reportedly being put in cardboard boxes in maternity wards.  That's coupled with the spikes in infant deaths that began when the country started to falter.  The energy shortages haven't helped either.  The rapid inflation has rendered the nation's currency worthless, there's no real domestic food production, and all of this has led to empty shelves at supermarkets.

Cultural Marxism Is Destroying America.  How is it that eight years after Obama promised a post-racial America and fifty-two years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Americans are more divided by race than ever before?  It is certainly not for lack of resources being thrown at the problem.  American universities have Black Studies Departments, corporations have diversity trainers and racial staffing quotas and the mainstream media covers race issues constantly.  Despite all of this, the divisions keep worsening.  This trend is not being driven by white prejudice.  It is being driven by ideology.  The reason race relations in America continue to deteriorate is the cultural Marxist philosophies being taught relentlessly in schools and colleges across the nation.

Lester "Candy" Holt Moderates a Completely Useless Debate.  Nobody Won.  America Lost.  [Scroll down]  And the 1972 Justice Department suit against hundreds of Apartment owners was the beginnings of the whole "redlining" debacle that actually caused the housing crisis that crashed the economy in 2008.  And guess who played a big role in that crisis in the 1980's?  Tim Kaine, Hillary's running mate.  And while Hillary blamed Reagan's "Trickle Down" economics for the housing market crash (???) it was actually people like Tim Kaine.  Redlining, in case you don't know, was the term used to "prove" banks were practicing racial discrimination in lending by comparing the number of declined mortgage applications in poor areas to those in wealthy areas.  It seems that poor people were turned down more often than more affluent individuals.  And since the population in poor areas was heavily black and in wealthy areas heavily white, it must be racism.  Because poor people are just as good a borrower as wealthy, if you don't consider income.  This was nothing more than a case of banks turning down poor credit risks and loaning to good credit risks.  There was no racism involved.

Government Meddling Is Killing Affordable Housing In Seattle.  A few years ago, Seattle saw a boom in what is called "congregate housing."  Basically, this is the modern-day equivalent of boardinghouses, with tiny rooms — as small as 175 square feet — that include a bathroom and kitchenette, plus some common areas for residents to gather.  This is part of the trend in Seattle and elsewhere toward micro-housing: very small but affordable living spaces in trendy neighborhoods that appeal mainly to young people.

Socialism's left Venezuela a 'walking dead' nation.  Here's socialism at its finest:  Venezuela is now forced to import oil from the United States, the devil in the eyes of the regime.  Yes, the South American energy powerhouse is still pumping 2.4 million barrels a day on its own — but that's a million barrels below the level before Hugo Chavez took over in 1999, and down 350,000 barrels from just last year.  Worse, production in key fields has reduced the state to buying 50,000 barrels a day of US light crude to blend with the domestic petroleum for a product fit for export.  Under Chavez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, the government nationalized key petro companies — then failed to invest in basic maintenance, instead spending the cash on buying popularity.

Racial Issues.  Many things that are supposed to help blacks actually have a track record of making things worse.  Minimum wage laws have had a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher than it once was.

12 Hours of Terror:  Just Another Weekend in Leftist-run America.  We live in a country run by people who tell us that if a man puts on a dress and says he's a woman we are supposed to take him at his word.  But, if a man goes on a murderous rampage in the name of Allah, and ISIS claims responsibility, we shouldn't draw conclusions.  The weak and ridiculous position in which we find ourselves did not happen on its own.  Americans elected this band of leftist fools who have zero aptitude for dealing with terrorism.

Trump: 'Now, the Cars are Made in Mexico and You Can't Drink the Water in Flint'.  During Donald Trump's visit to Flint, Michigan on Wednesday [9/14/2016], the Republican nominee commented on how the automobile manufacturing industry has moved to Mexico — impacting trade — and how people in Flint can't drink the water, much like the water in Mexico.

What Can Discrimination Explain?  According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as The Nation's Report Card, nationally, the average black 12th-grader's test scores are either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science.  "Below basic" is the score received when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level.  "Basic" indicates only partial mastery.  Put another way, the average black 12th-grader has the academic achievement level of the average white seventh- or eighth-grader.  In some cities, there's even a larger achievement gap.  Is this a result of racial discrimination?  Hardly.  The cities where black academic achievement is the lowest are the very cities where Democrats have been in charge for decades and where blacks have been mayors, city councilors, superintendents, school principals and teachers.  Plus, these cities have large educational budgets.

Taxpayers are fleeing New York in droves.  Taxpaying New Yorkers are leaving in droves for other states, according to a new study.  In 2014, 126,000 New York tax filers fled to other places in the United States — more than from any other state, according to the study posted on newgeography.com by two demographers.  The Empire State also lost the most "high earners," who reported incomes of more than $200,000 a year.

The Dragon Comes With a Suitcase.  The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide.  If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it?  If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?  He promised "smart diplomacy" and the restoration of American prestige in the world.  How did it come to this?

Dems laboring under delusions.  [Scroll down]  Four years ago, Democrats passed legislation allowing home day care centers — mainly women-owned — to join a union if they accepted one child on a state voucher.  Large day care centers have lobbyists, so they were exempt from this thuggery.  The Democrats insisted the union could negotiate a better reimbursement rate for state vouchers.  But the Legislature could have just voted to increase the voucher amounts instead of this forced unionization.  Is that pro-worker?  Is that pro-women?  A strong economy creates a demand for employees which naturally increases wages and benefits.  Democrats have to turn to artificial, harmful means because their policies naturally dampen the economy.

The Democrats Own the Ills of the Inner Cities.  [Scroll down]  In her eight years in the U.S. House of Representatives Ms. [Marcia] Fudge has not improved the situation of her District-11 constituents.  Incredibly, it is possible that she does not recognize what is important to the people she represents.  On July 15, 2015 Fudge was quoted by Sabrina Eaton, Northeast Ohio Media Group Washington Correspondent, as saying that the issues that "matter to people in my district... [are] income equality, women's rights and universal voter registration."  The anecdotal evidence and the statistics collected by Dr. Goldstein tell a completely different story:  the issues that matter to the people in her and Fudge's district are a lack of jobs, leading to poverty and the inability to feed their families, along with the whole litany of social ills outlined above.  They are also concerned about providing a quality education for their children, and are overwhelmingly in favor of school choice.

Least affordable US cities revealed.  A report has revealed the wildly varying salaries needed to buy a home in different parts of the US.  Loan site HSH.com analyzed what salary families would require to snap up a property across 27 metro areas in the country.  The report assumed a buyer's down payment was 20 percent and used the lending standard that a monthly home payment should not be more than 28 percent of income.

Semi-Literate Mayor Of Bankrupt City Denounces Critics As Racists.  The Democratic mayor of Petersburg, Va., has denounced all critics of his leadership as racist Republicans in a bizarre email replete with many grammatical errors.  Petersburg, a city of just 32,000 people, is battling severe budgetary issues.  It has an expected budget deficit of $12 million and over $19 million in unpaid bills.  The city is even in danger of losing its garbage pick-up service because of missed payments to the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority.

The Worst Cities For Poverty All Have One Thing In Common.  Each of these places has been Democratic for many decades, some even longer.  And what do each of these places have in common?  That's right, they're all run by Democrats.  Big government, high taxes, lots of regulation, and plenty of welfare and poverty.  Yep, that's Democratville for ya.

How The Democrats Turned Milwaukee Into a Cesspool.  [Scroll down]  And indeed, wherever we look — Atlanta, Camden, Newark, St.  Louis, Chicago, Flint, Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington — we see one-party cities that are crumbling testaments to the awesome power of bad ideas.  Specifically, Trump referenced "the situation right here in Milwaukee, a city run by Democrats for decade after decade," citing its high rates of homicide, joblessness, poverty, and educational failure.  But Milwaukee wasn't always like this.  It was once a prosperous metropolis with a host of thriving industries, particularly renowned for its breweries and manufacturing.  Modern-day Democrats and their leftist allies, however, snuffed out those good-ol'-days like a jackboot on a cigarette butt.  Every mayor of Milwaukee since 1960 has been a Democrat, and the one who served just prior to 1960 was Frank Paul Zeidler, an open Socialist.

Obama, the Worst President Ever, Except Maybe for Hillary.  [Scroll down]  Liberals scoff at our supposed sensationalism in depicting Obama's record, but they are the ones in fantasyland — not us.  Their judgment is so skewed that they wouldn't recognize a disastrous, perennially sluggish economy if it hit them in the face — because it has.  They wouldn't see it if Islamists were waging war on the United States, because they are and they don't.  They wouldn't be alarmed if the Constitution and rule of law were under ongoing assault, because they are and they aren't.  They don't care that the nuclear family is in peril, because they favor diluting traditional and gender distinctions.  And they wouldn't care if the federal government were deliberately fostering dependency addiction among its citizenry and demonizing work, the work ethic, productivity and business, because it is and they enable it.

Manufactured Grievance:  The Engine of Progressivism.  Secular humanism takes a political form that regularly exploits the personal dissatisfaction that flows from its own broken philosophy.  That political form is called liberalism or progressivism — its "arc of history" set always promising better days, delivering worse and profiting from the manufactured villains it wrongly blames.  Given liberalism's elite, self-designated managerial class is on average no more competent than the rest of us, the policy failures are unsurprising.  However, the opportunistic blame shifting that follows and its resulting strife are appalling threats to the common good. [...] We've seen this before.  Communist regimes used fear to turn citizens against each other, consolidating control by dehumanizing people.  The goal was never the promised post-revolution utopia; it was just continued revolution, for the elite who benefitted from it.

Lamont Hill:  Just Because Poor Cities Are Run by Democrats, Doesn't Mean Democrats Are to Blame.  On Wednesday's [8/17/2016] CNN New Day, Chris Cuomo brought on CNN commentator, author and host of BET News Marc Lamont Hill and former Secret Service agent and current candidate for congress in Florida Dan Bongino, to discuss Trump polling poorly with African-Americans.  While Bongino argued that democrat run cities have failed black communities, Lamont Hill claimed that poverty and Democrat machines are connected, but that "doesn't mean" being a Democrat makes you poor.  After Cuomo brought up a new ABC News/WSJ poll that predicted only one percent of blacks would vote for Trump, he asked Bongino why Trump was unable to make the case to blacks that their Democrat-run communities would only keep them in poverty.

Milwaukee County Sheriff explains the cause of Milwaukee riots:  Failed Liberal Policies.  Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke explained on Fox Business that these riots, like we saw in Milwaukee over the weekend, are the result of "failed liberal urban policies" that have left many of these ghettos with inescapable poverty and terrible school systems:  [Video clip]

The Misinformation Age.  Consumers of mass media are not seeking to be informed, because they assume it is all nonsense.  They just want to be entertained.  It's probably why Trump is one nominee and Clinton is the other.  Everyone is looking forward to the brash bully tearing into the corrupt old cow.  It may be awful for the country, but it will make good TV.

Venezuela Reaches the End of the Road to Serfdom.  A lefty correspondent who believes that I have been unfair to Senator Bernie Sanders — specifically, that I have given insufficient attention to the "democratic" part of his so-called democratic socialism — writes:  "You should write about those millions of souls trapped in the Canadian, Icelandic, Danish, and other democratic-socialist gulags."  But, of course, there are no Canadian and Danish gulags.  Then again, Canada and Denmark are not socialist countries.  This is a truth the Left, and some of the Right, insists on refusing to learn.

Obama's news conference:  Everything wrong with Democrats, encapsulated.  In President Obama's news conference [8/4/2016], he was correct that so many young people going to prison has devastated communities, but he fails to recognize that many of the policies that he and the Democrats advocate contribute greatly to the problem.  The anti-poverty Great Society programs from the 1960s contributed greatly to the breakup of families, especially minority families.  The majority of minority children are born out of wedlock, and single parenthood is the greatest indicator of who will end up in poverty and dependent on government.  Democrats generally want to expand these programs, even with their terrible results.  It helps greatly to have two parents as role models.  Also, it is generally Democrats who block big box stores from building in inner cities.  This takes away opportunities for inner-city youth to start moving up the economic ladder.  This causes teens and young adults to be on the street more or join gangs, and this causes more young people to commit crimes and end up in prison.  Now Democrats want to massively increase the minimum wage which, along with other costly regulations like Obamacare, further takes away opportunities.

This is where socialism eventually leads:
Venezuelan Government:  You Are To Leave Your Jobs For 60 Days To Work In the Fields.  We all know that Venezuelan socialism has been a total disaster.  People were reportedly eating dogs, cats, and birds for sustenance.  Crime was spiking.  Inflation is out of control — and there is what could only be described as gladiatorial battles to get the most basic supplies at the supermarkets.  Energy shortages have led to rolling blackouts.  Toilet paper is now a luxury item.  Access to medicine has been a nightmare, with the country's entire hospital system operating in deplorable conditions.  It's so bad that some places don't have gloves or soap.  Of course, many Venezuelans have resorted to looting to survive.  As for food, hunger has gripped the nation, with shocking footage of people eating from the trash.

Bernie Is a Mainstream Democrat.  At this point, people who are willing, even eager, to support a full-blown Commie are legion — and growing.  This is not surprising, given the daily onslaught of left-wing propaganda from Hollywood and the media and the relentless indoctrination in our public schools and universities.

Massachusetts Voters Could Have Egg on Their Faces.  Ballot measure will decide in November whether to impose unwise, harmful, costly, and unconstitutional standards for raising a host of livestock animals.

Colorado town's water tainted by marijuana chemical, authorities say.  Residents of a small Colorado town were told Thursday not to drink, shower in or cook with their water because of evidence of THC, the intoxicating ingredient in marijuana.  The Lincoln County sheriff's office tweeted that bottled water was being brought to the community of Hugo, about 100 miles southeast of Denver.  Authorities added that there were no reports of any unusual symptoms.  The sheriff's office added that the contamination was discovered after testing brought about by "complaints", but did not elaborate further.

THC found in water of small Colorado town.  The water supply for a small Colorado town in Lincoln County is tainted with THC and residents are warned not to use it.  Residents in the town of Hugo are being told to not drink, cook or shower in it at this time, according to a tweet sent by a Lincoln County Sheriff's Office official.

Islamism Rises from Europe's Secularism.  In France, the Socialist government imposed a "secularism charter" in every school, banning Christianity from the educational system.  Municipalities have already changed the enrollment form for schoolchildren by eliminating the words "father" and "mother", replacing them with "legal manager 1" and "legal manager 2".  It is George Orwell's "Newspeak".  After two major terror attacks in 2015, France, instead of promoting a cultural "jihad" based on Western values, responded to Islamic fundamentalism with a ridiculous "Day of Secularism" to be celebrated every 9th of December.  This narrow secularism has also prevented France from openly supporting Eastern Christians under Islamist oppression.

The Anti-Cop President.  [The 1960s] sexual revolution removed the stigma from out-of-wedlock pregnancy.  An explosion of inner-city illegitimacy ensued, with between 70 and 90 percent of black children born to single mothers, depending on the city. [...] So by the early 1990s, murders in New York, for example — mostly by young black men killing other blacks — were occurring on average every four hours, every day.  The same spirit of elite racial contrition made generous welfare payments, with virtually no questions asked, seem like appropriate reparations for the long mistreatment of African Americans.  In this way, government ended up enabling the spread of out-of-wedlock childbearing, which the culture had legitimated.  But those fatherless welfare families proved far from ideal for raising successful, law-abiding children.  What came to be called the cycle of poverty — single parenthood, school dropout, drug use, crime, non-work, welfare dependency — went into overdrive.

Bringing Down the Left.  After nearly a century, with the tacit abetting by a feckless Republican Party over the past 30 years, the Left has succeeded in breaking nearly everything in the political china shop.  American society is calculatingly in shambles as race relations, ethnic assimilation and religious freedom have been the target of exploitation and condemnation.  The economy is mired in a permanent state of malaise as capitalism has been attacked, relentlessly vilified and hamstrung, resulting in a declining standard of living for the vast majority of citizens.  A preponderance of two generations of Americans, in an attempt to convert them into foot soldiers for the cause, have been defrauded and deluded as they know nothing of their country's history and expect as their birthright guaranteed income and a life without adversity.

America's Worst President?  [Scroll down]  Believing that welfare payments constituted well-deserved reparations for 300 years of slavery and oppression, we New Yorkers created a come-and-get-it dole that ended up with one in eight of our neighbors on the welfare rolls — paid for by the rest of us and resulting in a multi-generational underclass.  We entertained the foolish notion that black crime was a manly revolt against oppression — that black criminals were only protesting against the closure of all avenues of honest advancement for their race, as well as against the daily humiliation heaped on African-Americans.  The resulting depolicing of black neighborhoods and unwillingness of courts to punish black criminals drove crime to Hobbesian levels and turned minority neighborhoods into killing fields, where mothers put their kids to bed in the bathtub, trying to keep them safe from stray bullets.  They would never send them out for a bottle of milk or take them into the street to learn to ride a bike.

Comey and the Will to Power.  [Scroll down]  That is how vile these people are.  So determined to protect their own power, influence and affluence, they will lie, cheat, steal and blame innocent people for their own crimes.  They appoint and confirm people like James Comey and Loretta Lynch who know they must do their bidding to keep their jobs.  There is no honor in our government anymore.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we find ourselves at this moment in time.  We are a crippled America; crippled by the success of the Marxist left and their mission to inculcate our youth with their doctrine of moral relativism, entitlement and antiAmericanism.  Two generations of our youth know little or nothing about the Constitution or the men and women who brought it to fruition.

Will California Ever Thrive Again?  There was more of the same-old, same-old California news recently.  Some 62 percent of state roads have been rated poor or mediocre.  There were more predications of huge cost overruns and yearly losses on high-speed rail — before the first mile of track has been laid.  One-third of Bay Area residents were polled as hoping to leave the area soon.  Such pessimism is daily fare, and for good reason.  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 because of 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.

Denial Dies in Dallas.  The crime wave in Chicago illustrates how politicians trapped themselves in a vise of conflicting expectations from which there is no escape.  It has proved impossible to do something and its opposite simultaneously, in this case withdraw the police and protect the community.  It may prove just as impossible to require transgender bathrooms and guarantee no sexual harassment takes place or open the borders while promising there will be no terror attacks.

High School Girls Angry After Boy Is Crowned Prom Queen.  Teenage girls at one New York high school are upset after an 18-year-old boy who identifies as "nonbinary" — neither male nor female — was crowned prom queen earlier this month.  After Matthew Crisson was named prom queen of Manhattan's La Guardia High School, some of his female classmates took to social media to complain about the fact that both the prom king and queen were boys.

The Editor says...
Take it easy, boys and girls, as the case may be.  A prom queen is not really a man and probably will never be a man.  A culture that allows men to go into women's restrooms (and vice versa) can't be expected to ensure that the Prom Queen will always be a female.

City workers being trained on correct transgender pronouns.  Firefighters and medics will take their first "Trans 101" course on Tuesday [6/28/2016], learning the correct way to interact with transgender people — and even getting a lesson in what LGTBQI actually stands for, a city official said.  (It stands for lesbian gay trans bisexual queer/questioning and intersex.)  The two-hour sensitivity training was launched in March by the city Commission for Human Rights after Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order allowing people to use any public bathroom or locker room they identified with, regardless of their sexual anatomy.  The training at FDNY headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn will go over correct terminology and even how to ask for a person's preferred pronoun.

The Editor says...
If you're trapped upside down in a wrecked car, do you want to have a conversation about pronouns before any action is taken on your behalf?

Majority of Country's Most Lead Poisoned Cities Are Controlled by Democrats.  A majority of the cities with widespread lead poisoning in young children are run by Democrats, according to a new study published in the Journal of Pediatrics.  The six-year study, which took place from 2009 to 2015, was based on more than 5 million blood samples of children under the age of six across the 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The study found that 3 percent of children tested across the nation had blood lead levels categorized as "high."  It singled out six cities — Syracuse, Buffalo, and Poughkeepsie in New York, York and Oil City in Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati, Ohio — as especially troubled communities where more than 14 percent of children had high levels of lead in their blood.  Two thirds of those municipalities are controlled by Democrats and have been for some time.

Vox Quietly Reveals:  Democrat-Run Blue States Have About 50% More Mass Shootings Than Red States.  And what are Democrat-run states?  They're the ones with the most gun restrictions.

Progressive Outlet Accidentally Proves Blue States Have 42 Percent More Mass Shootings.  Blue states have 42 percent more mass shootings than red states after adjusting for population, according to data published by Vox, a progressive media outlet, and examined by The Daily Caller News Foundation.  Vox published its data after the Orlando terror attack last Sunday, and it suggests that blue states, which tend to have extremely strict gun laws, are ironically much more likely to have mass shootings than red states with less strict gun laws.

30 Blocks of Dog [Poop] and Sugar Taxes.  As I have documented in dozens of previous articles, the depravity, decay and degradation of West Philly cannot be overstated.  It has to be seen to be believed.  A once thriving neighborhood in the 1950s now looks worse than downtown Baghdad after shock and awe.  The picture below is representative of 75% of the houses along this stretch of squalor.  The occupied houses are crumbling hovels, with collapsing porch stoops, broken windows, leaking roofs, and a generally dilapidated state of repair.  The sidewalks and streets are in a similar state of disrepair, as the City of Philadelphia doesn't [care] about this part of Philly either.  The corrupt Democrat politicians spend their dwindling cash horde on union pensions and keeping the white people in Center City and Society Hill safe from the dregs in West Philly.  The funniest part is this section of West Philly has been declared an Obama Keystone Zone.  I guess I'm missing the revitalized part.

De Blasio approves bills making it easier to pee and drink in the street.  Mayor de Blasio signed off Monday [6/13/2016] on eight bills that make several quality-of-life crimes — including urinating, boozing and blasting music in public — civil rather than criminal offenses.  The new laws — known collectively as the "Criminal Justice Reform Act" — mean people cited for the offenses will face justice in administrative hearings rather than in criminal court.  Advocates claim that will divert 100,000 cases a year from the criminal-justice system.

The Editor says...
That's one way to put it.  Another way to put it is, it will let 100,000 misdemeanor offenses go unpunished every year, which will encourage even more uncivilized behavior.

Keynesian Triumph:  Americans Are Broke.  [Scroll down]  So, we are left with a huge irony.  We have low interest rates, but clearly the kind of long-term capital investment is not common in the US economy at the present time.  Firms and entrepreneurs are investing in long-term capital overseas, but not here, given that even while politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton are decrying that fact.  Of course, given the hostility of the American Political Class to private investment and given the fact that Sanders is running a campaign based on attacking and ultimately destroying private enterprise in the USA (with Clinton not far behind), investors are reading the tea leaves and taking their money elsewhere, something that infuriates the Political Class.

The Wages of Non-Judgmentalism.  There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of daily American life.  It's one that undermines the role that citizen sentinels are obliged to serve in the collective effort to combat low-tech aspiring terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign or domestic extremist network.  At once, Americans are supposed to be vigilant and unafraid to express to authorities their fears when they believe someone is behaving abnormally and may represent a threat.  At the same time, however, society frowns on those who are perceived as judgmental.  Since social pressures to avoid being seen as hypercritical, paranoid, or — worst of all — bigoted are acute, and the rewards for keeping an eye out for the next terrorist plot are virtually non-existent, the vigilant are often inclined to keep their concerns to themselves.

Left Has Blood On Its Hands For 3 Worst Terror Attacks Since 9/11.  Three of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 have been overtly caused by political correctness.
  •   In 2009, Nidal Hassan killed 13 people (as well as an unborn child) in an attack on Fort Hood.  CBS reported that "despite significant warning signs that he was an Islamic extremist bent on killing civilians," the FBI "was too concerned about political correctness and did not launch an investigation" into Hassan.
  •   Up until this weekend, the San Bernardino attack ranked as the deadliest display of terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11, killing 14 people and wounding another 17.  Neighbors of the shooters in this case reported that they failed to notify authorities of suspicious activity because they didn't want to be branded racists.  The Daily Mail reported neighbors noticed the San Bernardino terrorists 'acting suspiciously but did NOT report them for fear of racial profiling.'
  •   Omar Mateen, who killed 50 and wounded another 53 at the recent shooting at an Orlando nightclub, was reported by a co-worker for 'unhinged' behavior.  But their employer, GS4 Security, "did nothing because he (Mateen) was Muslim."

'Hope and change' hard for women to find under Dems.  Under President Obama's watch, over 2 million women have fallen into poverty, according to U.S. Census data released in the fall.  With an abysmal record like that, can women afford to give the president a proverbial "third term" by electing another lefty like Clinton?  The hard truth is, women have suffered the most under progressive policies, despite being spoon fed by the DNC and compliant media that progressives are the "party of women."  The sobering facts are after 7½ years of Democrats in power, there are 57 million women over the age of 16 out of work while median income and wages have declined.  The poverty rate among single mothers (39.8 percent) is nearly double that of single fathers (22 percent).

Oregon judge allows person to change gender from female to 'non-binary'.  An Oregon judge ruled Friday [6/10/2016] that a transgender individual can legally change their sex to "non-binary" rather than male or female in what is believed to be an unprecedented ruling.  The Oregonian reported that Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Amy Holmes Hehn legally changed Jamie Shupe's, 52, sex from female to non-binary. [...] Shupe is an Army veteran who retired in 2000 a sergeant first class.  She began transitioning in 2013 while living in Pittsburg and knew that neither the male or female gender label fit.

First-of-kind ruling changes Army vet's gender from female to nonbinary.  Oregon residents can now legally identify as having a nonbinary gender identity, according to a recent court ruling that legal experts say is the first of its kind in the US.  On Friday [6/10/2016], Judge Amy Holmes Hehn legally changed the sex of Army veteran Jamie Shupe from female to nonbinary.  Judge Hehn wrote in the ruling that Mx.  Shupe's "sexual reassignment has been completed," therefore complying with Oregon's law allowing for the change of a person's sex if a judge determines they have had surgical, hormonal, or other treatment related to gender transition.  "Oregon law has allowed for people to petition a court for a gender change for years, but the law doesn't specify that it has to be either male or female," said civil rights attorney Lake J. Perriguey, who filed Shupe's petition for gender change in April, to CNN.  "The law just says, 'change.' Historically, people have asked for a gender change from male to female and the other way around, but Jamie is the first to ask for the gender of 'nonbinary.'"

The Rise of the New Patriarchy and Title IX.  A teen boy runs, and wins, against teen girls in a high school level competition.  The winning part is not surprising.  Men have some biological reasons for being physically superior to women.  Testosterone increases their muscle mass, lung capacity, and upper body strength. [...] Put this boy with other boys and he wouldn't be competitive.  He would lose — not just in state-level competitions, but in local meets.  He's slow for a boy.  He runs with unfair physiological advantages against girls.  The playing field is grossly unequal.

Cowpoke in hot pants stirs transgender uproar at Texas BBQ joint.  When it comes to eating at a barbecue joint there's an unspoken code of conduct.  You don't order salad, you don't use a fork and if you're a cross-dressing cowboy with an affinity for stiletto heels — you don't use the ladies room.  And that brings me to a story from the pages of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about a small-town barbecue joint that inadvertently found itself right smack in the middle of the big debate over transgender bathrooms.

Two Rhode Island teens charged with groping girl in school bathroom.  Both boys were arraigned on charges of first-degree sexual assault and are being held at the Rhode Island Training School.  They are not being identified because they are juveniles.

Cross-Dressing Cowboy Told to Stay Out of Ladies' Bathroom at Texas BBQ Joint.  A Texas BBQ restaurant has made their transgender bathroom policy abundantly clear — "No Men Allowed in Women's Bathroom."  A cross-dressing cowboy truck driver has been stirring-up trouble in the Texas BBQ joint.  The trucker likes to come in dressed in a skirt or hot pants and a blouse and six-inch stilettos.  The sign in the small Texas town restaurant now politely warns, "No men allowed in the women's bathroom please."  The restaurant shares the building with a Texaco service station.

A New Transvaluation.  [Scroll down]  Today, the great muddled thought processes of the indoctrinated are presented with a multiplicity of genders before them like some sumptuous buffet: a veritable feast wherein an emancipated humanity might pick and choose their erotic flavor of the day.  Mood and inclination will now trump nature as we become sexual flies of a season, owing no quarter to God or man as our sexual identities spin like a carnival wheel — alighting on a moment's temporal fancy.  The only problem with this elitist idyll is that any man possessing a modicum of good sense knows this is a sham.  Those 31 hypothesized New York City genders are merely homosexuality's obfuscationist window dressing, and it makes little substantial difference whether an aging decathlete parades about in a push-up bra or a pathetic wretch submits his flesh to the horrors of surgical mutilation.

'It's Not Fair': Transgender Student's Success in Girls Track Causes Backlash.  An Alaska transgender student's success against female runners — including capturing all-state honors — is causing a backlash among parents and her rivals.  Haines High School senior Nattaphon Wangyot, who was born male and identifies as female, took fifth place in the Alaska high school girls 100-meter finals and third place in the 200-meter race on May 27.

The Editor says...
Of course he did well.  He's not a girl.  But what can the school do about the unfair competition between males and females when they've been trying for decades to teach the kids to think of gender as an imaginary "social construct"?

When Heroes Are Villains.  We have reached peak topsy-turvy.  Whatever is up is down, whatever is good is bad, and whatever you should be proud of should bring shame.  Heroes are villains in this day and age and shooting an ape that's about to kill a child needs an explanation.  If you rescue your wife from being raped, you will be arrested.  If you set aside a day to memorialize the fallen soldiers who fought for our freedom, we're going to use it to make you feel guilty about slavery.  Conversely, pedophiles deserve some respect.  Archaic cultures that abuse women and gays enrich our lives.  We get mentally ill drag queens in our bathrooms and Muslims are allowed to have "women-only" time in the pool where they wear so much burqa it changes the color of the water.  If you notice this pattern and speak out you're likely to lose your job, but the evidence is impossible to avoid.  Anything straight white male is villainous and anything non-straight white male is heroic.  In the case of the husband who beat the rapist to death, he's black.  However, he was behaving in a manner that mimics the white male patriarchy of yore so he needs to be punished as such.

The Message Of The San Jose Violence.  Politics is now a maelstrom of baying mobs with burning tires, shattered bottles, eggs hurled, shot-out tires, smashed in windshields, rocks hurled as cops stand around doing nothing.  Nor, if you are a Democrat, do you have a right to have your vote counted fairly — the establishment above you has named some pigs more equal than others and created a superdelegate system that makes a mockery of voter sentiment, and enforces the status quo.  What does it add up to?  A realization that democracy itself is under assault, far weaker than anyone realized.

Liberals Enable Sexual Predators to Hunt Women.  A recent Daily Signal article explained why a CNN poll about letting men use women's restrooms was flawed: the reality is, most people oppose letting men use women's restrooms.  While it's an excellent article, it implicitly buys into the liberal framing of the whole issue.  While "transgender" men who are attracted to women — as Bruce Jenner is — are a valid concern, the biggest problem with this liberal policy is that it allows any registered sex offender to use the women's bathroom with impunity.  The vast majority of the opposition to "gender-neutral" restrooms is based on the fact that liberals believe that since gender is fluid, a man could consider himself a woman any time he wanted to molest women.  Liberals don't require a man who uses a women's restroom to have a doctor's note; his word that at that moment he's feeling like a woman is enough.

Best-Run States Are Heavily Republican, Study Finds.  The ten most financially sound states in the country are all heavily Republican, while all but one of the ten worst states are heavily Democratic.  That's according to a ranking of states in a new report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University[.]  The report — "Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition" — used official government data to measure the states' ability to pay short-term bills and meet longer-term obligations, such as public pensions or health care costs, using five separate measures.

8 Lessons We Can Learn From the Epic Economic Meltdown In Venezuela.  We are watching an entire nation collapse right in front of our eyes.  As you read this article, there are severe shortages of just about anything you can imagine in Venezuela.  That includes food, toilet paper, medicine, electricity and even Coca-Cola.  All over the country, people are standing in extremely long lines for hours on end just hoping that they will be able to purchase some provisions for their hungry families.  At times when there hasn't been anything for the people that have waited in those long lines, full-blown riots have broken out.  All of this is happening even though Venezuela has not been hit by a war, a major natural disaster, a terror attack, an EMP burst or any other type of significant "black swan" event.  When debt spirals out of control, currency manipulation goes too far and government interference reaches ridiculous extremes, this is what can happen to an economy.

How the Democratic Party Ruined Atlanta.  Atlanta, Georgia has not been governed by a Republican mayor since 1879.  Most significant is the fact that the city has been led exclusively by Democrats since the 1960s and early '70s, the period when the Democratic Party emphatically broke away from centrist liberals and fell predominantly under the sway of its far left wing, a course which it still follows to this day. [...] Atlanta is merely one of many Democrat-run cities whose economies, school systems, and quality-of-life indicators have been run into the ground by their political leadership.  And yet, for decade upon decade, Atlanta voters have never questioned their blind devotion to the Democratic Party.

Trans-thinking: When 98 Percent of Students Would Let Men in Women's Sports.  Imagine a fairly muscular, athletic young man, acting like a man and dressed as a man, tells you he identifies as a woman and asks you to sign a petition supporting his effort to play on his college's women's basketball team.  Your response?  If you're like 49 out of 50 students approached at the University of Maryland recently, you may sign and say "You go, (girl?)!"  And, no, according to Campus Reform's Cabot Phillips, who masqueraded as the aspiring woman, he didn't show just the eyebrow-raising responses.  He says that he asked only 50 students for support, and 49 offered it.

Venezuela's Crisis Is the Latest Example of Why Socialism Doesn't Work.  It seems the "Socialism of the 21th Century" is really no different from socialism from the past.  Venezuela's current tragedy, simultaneously culminating in food shortages, a crime epidemic, and an energy collapse, is the latest example of why centralized planning economy does not work — and how it is indistinguishable from tyranny.  In the South American country, even the most basic services and products are becoming inaccessible as a result cronyism, interventionism, and a controlled prices policy.  The government now works only two days a week in order to diminish the constant electricity blackouts.  The inflation rate is the highest in the world: it is expected to be at 720 percent by the end of 2016.

Socialism for the Uninformed.  While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.  With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous.  But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.

New York City decriminalizes peeing in the street, drinking alcohol out of a bag and littering.  Peeing in the street, loitering, littering, drinking alcohol out of a bagged bottle and other quality of life crimes are to be decriminalized in New York City.  Under bills expected to be signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio soon, police will no longer automatically treat such crimes as criminal offenses, but instead serve civil summonses to pay a fine in court.  But not everyone is happy.

Who is Paying for Diversity?  Two emerging professions servicing the academic community are Title IX advisors and diversity consultants.  The former show university employees how not to run afoul of the federal law which was originally intended to bar discrimination by gender that has morphed into a cover for sexual harassment policies, whether or not evidence exists to support the charges.  The latter group of diverse professionals provides advice for university administrators wishing to remain politically correct, and most do.

Hillary Clinton's Village.  [Scroll down]  At the bottom of the barrel, public schools provide warm classrooms and decent food in the cafeteria.  They are shelters from chaotic, rough Section 8 warrens and ramshackle trailer parks.  The waifs and punks come in black, white, and every other shade, all disconnected from an economy that rewards academic skills and hard work, and few possessed of any promising attitudes or abilities.  Troublemakers flourish.  The custodial village that Hillary and the Village People tirelessly defend seems to breed sloths and sociopaths, and educational cesspools seem to be a major incubator.  Clinton's Village People are foundational to the Democratic Party.  They represent liberal assumptions, policies, and programs in place for decades that have proved incorrect, futile, or worse, and that are now complicated by rising race-based sensitivities about discipline, learning disabilities, and evaluation.

A nation of Peter Pans.  We have created a nation filled with too many perpetual children — Peter and Patty Pans — who were brought up getting trophies for participating in sports, instead of winning, protected from the supposed horrors of being ranked by grades and scores and sold corrosive message by the likes of Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton that everyone deserves every kind of support, regardless of the level of education they have or the work they put forward.  We have hobbled a generation, or two.  These Peter and Patty Pans are so addicted to drugs like Facebook and Twitter that blow up their egos and make them into fake celebrities that they can feel pretty good for a long time, even when their lives are going pretty badly.  They can live at home with their parents in Neverland and use Tinder to "hook up" sexually with a different partner every week, or, sometimes, a different partner every night.  They can watch the Kardashians and delude themselves into thinking everyone is content to vamp for cameras, taking lots of selfies and sleepwalking through life.

New York City Lets You Choose From 31 Different Gender Identities.  Individuals living in New York City can choose from a minimum of 31 different gender identities, many of which allow them to fluctuate between some version or combination of male or female identities.  Businesses that don't respect and accommodate an individual's chosen gender identity risk incurring six-figure fines under rules implemented by the city's Commission on Human Rights.

While in Detroit Hillary says Trump's policies will bankrupt America.  While pandering to union members in Detroit yesterday, Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed that the economic policies of Donald Trump will "bankrupt America."  Well, shortly after Detroit's last Republican mayor left office in 1962, liberal Democrat Jerome Cavanagh signed into law a commuter tax and a municipal income tax.  Detroit's first black mayor, Coleman Young, not only was a race-baiter he was a onetime member of the Communist Party.  His economic record made Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev look like a Yankee capitalist.  As for Clinton's old boss, Barack Obama, federal debt has doubled since he took office.

Evidence scant California's licensed illegal immigrant drivers getting insurance.  In the push to grant illegal immigrants driver's licenses, Californians had been assured that doing so would spur them to get safety training and insurance coverage.  Nearly a year-and-a-half later, there's no evidence it worked.

Burlington College.  [Scroll down]  Slightly north and east of the Windy City is a final example of leftist perfidy and incompetence for our list, which we would caution is anything but exhaustive.  You've undoubtedly heard about the Flint water crisis, which is a great example of how the Left is able to weaponized its failure in governance; somehow Flint is Republican governor Rick Snyder's fault despite the fact every single individual responsible for subjecting the residents to a poisoned water supply is a Democrat.

Hiring Hurdle:  Finding Workers Who Can Pass a Drug Test.  All over the country, employers say they see a disturbing downside of tighter labor markets as they try to rebuild from the worst recession since the Depression:  They are struggling to find workers who can pass a pre-employment drug test.  That hurdle partly stems from the growing ubiquity of drug testing, at corporations with big human resources departments, in industries like trucking where testing is mandated by federal law for safety reasons, and increasingly at smaller companies.  But data suggest employers' difficulties also reflect an increase in the use of drugs, especially marijuana — employers' main gripe — and also heroin and other opioid drugs much in the news.

Fatal accidents involving stoned drivers soared in Washington since pot was legalized.  Stoned driving can be as serious a problem as drunk driving.  Fatal accidents involving stoned drivers have soared in the state of Washington since marijuana was legalized there, according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.  But it's difficult to determine whether a high-on-pot driver is too impaired to drive, according to a separate study from the same group.

It Wasn't Supposed to Work This Way.  Local authorities in Pueblo, just 40 miles south of Colorado Springs, were recently alerted by a vigilant resident to a possible illegal marijuana grow operation.  Within days, on March 31, sheriff's deputies from the Special Investigations Narcotics Section raided a single-family home that was in the process of being converted into a "grow house."  Authorities discovered 127 marijuana plants, over $100,000 in growing equipment, and two Cuban nationals.  At first, no one seemed to take particular note of the individuals, Adriel Trujillo Daniel, 28, and Leosbel Ledesma Quintana, 41, who had recently moved to Colorado from Florida.  They were arrested on felony drug charges but local authorities initially believed it was an isolated event.  But in the span of the next week and a half, local authorities would arrest at least four more individuals in the Pueblo area in similar cases, with similar backgrounds.

Legal pot industry descends on Florida as voters consider medical marijuana.  Three thousand members of the nation's budding legal pot industry are visiting Florida this week — and not for the beaches.  "It has nothing to do with the climate or the attractions," said Chris Walsh, editorial director of Marijuana Business Daily, a trade publication that sponsors the twice-annual Marijuana Business Conference.  "There's a lot of excitement about the Florida market."  Medical cannabis in the nation's third-largest state could open up one of the biggest markets in the world, a potential cash cow for companies looking for innovative ways to produce the drug and a massive patient base for researchers.

The Editor says...
So-called "medical marijuana" is the key to legalizing recreational marijuana.  It has little or nothing to do with helping patients.  It is about legitimizing an industry in which a lot of people  will  already make a lot of money.

Stoned Drivers Are Killing More and More Innocent Victims.  Blake Gaston, 23, killed while riding his motorcycle in Seattle.  He played the piano, guitar, drums, wrote music, and developed websites.  Elizabeth Kemble, 46, was killed by a car while walking across the street in Portland, Ore.  She previously survived three kidney transplants, and dedicated her life to helping dialysis patients and hungry seniors.  Debra Majkut, 34, mother of two, killed while sitting on her couch with three children when a car smashed into her house.  And the list goes on and on.  Each person was killed by a person high on marijuana.  And it is only going to get worse, given the trend towards increased legalization and liberalization of marijuana laws in the United States.

I Identify as Barack Obama.  [Scroll down]  And be warned, we trans-statuses and transgenders will have many allies in our bonfire of the insanities.  Psychologists also define something called "species dysphoria," which is when an individual identifies as a different kind of creature.  Examples of people brave enough to live as their true animal selves may be Texas resident Wolfie Blackheart, who insists "I am a canine"; and a Norwegian woman called "Nano" who says she's a cat.  Note also, there's every bit as much scientific evidence of trans-status' and transgender's validity as there is of trans-species' validity.

Widespread Mental Illness Taking Over America, One Bathroom at a Time.  I feel as if the world around me is suffering from some undiagnosed, contagious mental illness, and the few of us trying not to contract it are being screamed at for not wanting to suffer, too.  Yes, I'm talking about the transgender bathroom hysteria.  Let's get this out of the way right now:  This is NOT about transgendered people using the restroom of their choice.  To my knowledge, they've been doing just that for years and years with no problems.  The number of transgendered people is so low that the chances that I've actually been in the bathroom at the same time as one of them are astronomically low.  But if I was, I had no idea and it doesn't bother me to think that I may have, at some point, shared a bathroom with a transgendered person.  That's not why America's mothers and fathers are up in arms.

Yellow fever:  World on brink of global emergency over deadly outbreak, academics warn.  Urgent action is needed to combat a yellow fever epidemic in Africa amid signs it is turning into a global health emergency and a severe shortage of the vaccine, academics have warned.  Africa and Latin America and the danger of an outbreak in Asia, immunologist Professor Daniel Lucey and Lawrence Gostin, a professor in global health law, called on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare an emergency saying delays over Ebola had "cost lives".  And they also said that because of the surge in new infectious diseases in recent years — thought to be driven in part by climate change — the world should now set up a permanent committee to decide how to respond as new threats emerge.

How is yellow fever transmitted?  Mosquitoes.  Why are mosquitoes still around?  Liberal environmentalists got DDT banned.

Gender Chaos in an XX-XY World.  We live in a country where people think it's okay for has-been rock stars to cancel concerts because of their beliefs but it's not okay for bakers, florists and photographers to do the same.  We also live in a nation controlled by very confused people who believe it's good to reinforce the abnormal behavior of a few by altering the normal behavior of the majority.  If you ever needed a definition of insanity, well, there you go.  So how did we get here?  It's pretty simple.  We no longer live in a society that filters the world through the Biblical prism of "right and wrong" or "good and evil."  In the absence of moral absolutes, people tend to make issues over non-issues and create wars defending non-victims.

Congratulations To Bolivarian Socialism:  Venezuela Is Now The Country With No Beer.  It seems that the economic management of Venezuela has just been able to chalk up another milestone.  We might have to give them a prize of some kind for this one:  in a week or so the country is going to run out of beer.  This isn't because no one wants beer, not at all.  There's been no mass outbreak of Islam or Mormonism to turn the population away from the locally highly popular drink.  It's not because people don't have the money to buy it:  Polar, the local manufacturer, can sell all it is able to make.  It's not because Polar can't make money doing so either:  the company makes a good profit making and selling beer.  Nope, it's purely and only because Maduro and the other Chavistas are entirely incompetent at the management of an economy.

City Council finalizes bills easing penalty for peeing in the street.  The City Council wants to slash maximum sentences for littering, drinking and peeing in public as part of a plan to go easy on quality-of-life violations — while trying to keep offenders out of criminal court altogether, The [New York] Post has learned.  A series of bills quietly finalized earlier this week calls for several city code violations to be prosecuted primarily as civil offenses, punishable by no more than monetary fines.  "We're creating a hybrid where the default will be a civil penalty," said Councilman Rory Lancman (D-Queens), who chairs the Courts and Legal Services Committee.

The fruits of national socialism:
Venezuela declares a 2-day workweek because of dire energy shortages.  In a desperate attempt to save electricity, drought-stricken Venezuela has introduced a new concept to the workplace calendar:  the five-day weekend.  President Nicolás Maduro will furlough the country's public employees — who account for a third of the labor force — for the bulk of the week, so they can sit through rolling blackouts at home rather than in the office.  "The public sector will work Monday and Tuesday, while we go through these critical and extreme weeks," he said on his regular presidential broadcast.

The official Venezuelan work-week is now only two days long.  Venezuela's government has announced enforced leave for public sector employees three workdays a week, in a bid to tackle an electricity shortage that is causing power cuts and protests.  "There will be no work in the public sector on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, except for fundamental and necessary tasks," Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz said on television Tuesday [4/26/2016].  It is the latest drastic measure by the government as it grapples with an economic crisis that has left Venezuelans queuing for hours in shops to buy scarce supplies.

UnAmerican ESPN.  What a joy it must be to be a leftist knucklehead.  There's your opinion — and then there's hate. [...] You never have to prove your point, you only have to bask in the glow of your own unassailable virtue.  You never have to explain how it is that, after decades of pure left-wing governance, Detroit is in ruins and Chicago is following after.  You never have to try to understand why, after living under your wonderful non-racist left-wing policies, black people are deserting your cities in droves.  You never have to confront the fact that after years of Feminism Triumphant, women are killing themselves in record numbers.

Minnesota Parents Sue To Get Trans Classes In Kindergarten.  Parents of a 5-year-old "transgender child" have filed a complaint against a St.  Paul charter school, alleging it failed to protect him from bullying and refused to teach all the students their preferred transgender-awareness curriculum.  David and Hannah Edwards, whose child was born a boy but now thinks he's a girl, has filed with the city's Department of Human Rights, claiming their child "wasn't able to take full advantage of Nova's educational opportunities because of her gender identity and expression.  This violated her rights."

America in Wonderland.  In 2016 the American people are seriously discussing, and acquiescing to, the wisdom of allowing men to freely use, under the guise of transgenderism, women's bathrooms and locker rooms.  Yet at the same time much of society is railing against a supposed rape and patriarchal culture. [...] If a Christian owner of a bakery refuses, due to religious convictions, to participate in a gay wedding, that person is subject to fines, jail time and political intimidation.  On the other hand, if a Muslim owner of a bakery refuses to do the same that person is left alone and afforded the right to do so solely based on their religious beliefs.

Hands Off the Ladies' Rooms.  If it concerns sex in any way, you can be sure that our culture will fixate on it and manage to defy common sense with hyperventilating indignation.  Same-sex marriage roiled the waters for decades, but now that the Supreme Court has big-footed that question, culture warriors are prowling for new realms of transgression to embrace.  So, coming soon to a bathroom near you:  transgenderism.

How the Democrats Destroyed Camden.  A century ago, Camden, New Jersey was a thriving model of prosperity.  Indeed, the city was home to 365 active industries that employed scores of thousands of people in companies like RCA Victor, Campbell's Soup, and the New York Shipbuilding Company.  But today, Camden is an economic and social basket case.  Virtually wherever one looks, one can readily see evidence of its decline:  abandoned houses with collapsing roofs, crumbling facades, missing or boarded-up windows, and "lawns" choked with several years worth of weeds and brambles; churches with bullet holes in their stained glass windows; walls of buildings defaced by all manner of graffiti; the stench of sewage pervading run-down streets and avenues; and small, melancholy shrines (often adorned with empty liquor bottles) marking the spots where someone was once murdered.  Camden has not had a Republican mayor since 1936.

Federal Court:  Schools May Not Provide Separate Bathrooms Based on Biology.  On Tuesday [4/19/2016], the Fourth Circuit Court ruled against a Virginia school district that sought to accommodate a transgender student while also protecting the privacy rights of other students.  The court concluded that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex — should be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as a Department of Education letter suggested in 2015.  The ruling allows a lawsuit brought by a transgender student to proceed.

Appeals Court Favors Transgender Student in Virginia Restroom Case.  Weeks after a new North Carolina law put transgender bathroom access at the heart of the nation's culture wars, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday [4/19/2016] in favor of a transgender student who was born female and wishes to use the boys' restroom at his rural Virginia high school.  Advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people note that the ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit applies to North Carolina, where the controversial law approved last month limits transgender people to bathrooms in government buildings, including public schools, that correspond with the gender listed on their birth certificates.

You Will Be Compelled to Agree.  The rules of bigotry according to the left represent a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of nonsense.  This week, we learned that if you don't want your small daughter peeing next to a giant man who thinks he is a woman, you are a bigot; if you are a woman who is uncomfortable with a man who thinks he is a woman whipping out his male genitalia to urinate in front of you, you are a bigot; if you are a religious person who doesn't want to participate in an activity you consider sinful, you are a bigot.

In the Market for Fetal Body Parts, a Baby's Brain Sells for $3,340.  Republicans on the special House panel investigating the transfer of fetal tissue from aborted babies will present evidence in a hearing today that breaks down the price per body part.  With release of this evidence, Republicans say, they have enough documentation to show that several abortion clinics and middleman procurement businesses may have violated federal law.  "It is just horrifying," Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who leads the House's investigation of the fetal tissue industry, told The Daily Signal.  "They are putting a dollar value on these organs from these children — unborn children that have been aborted.  It is just beyond belief."

Turning American Law Upside Down for the Transgendered.  Our nation's centuries-old commitment to free speech and religious liberty was already under threat.  But it took men wanting to use women's bathrooms and vice versa for the Left to truly show its hand, plainly and unequivocally declaring that American legal traditions should be set ablaze.  Yesterday [4/18/2016], the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights published a "Statement Condemning Recent State Laws and Pending Proposals Targeting the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community" — a statement motivated by new Mississippi laws protecting religious freedom and by North Carolina's much-discussed "bathroom law.  The Commission claims that any law requiring men and women to use bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex "jeopardizes not only the dignity, but also the actual physical safety, of transgender people whose appearances may not match societal expectations of the sex specified on their identification documents."

A Murder Provides a Lesson in Evil at the University of Texas.  The evil responsible for [Haruka] Weiser's death at 18 years old is brutal and ugly — right out of what might be called inner-city ghetto subculture with all its violence, dysfunction, and its many children who grow up without fathers.  And it is embodied in Weiser's alleged killer:  a troubled black 17-year-old named Meechaiel Criner — a ticking time bomb, as some described him — who was the youngest of five siblings of a drug addict mother.  Criner never knew his father. [...] Criner had recently been in foster care and was attending high school, but he ran away; and like many in Texas who are homeless (or who embrace the homeless lifestyle) he gravitated to politically liberal Austin, a Democratic mecca well-known for its tolerant attitudes and reputation for providing easy pickings for panhandlers, drifters, and illegal immigrants.

Salon: Democrat-Run Education System Responsible for Our "Disgraceful State Of Politics".  Salon is one of the main websites to head to when you want to see what the nutter Democratic Party base really thinks.  Er, feels.  Every once in a while, they unintentionally land on a real truth.  In this case, how bad the education system is.  Obviously, they fail to assign blame, which lands almost entirely upon the Democratic Party.  Poll after poll after poll, article after article, protest after protest, they all show that the vast majority of teachers vote Democrat.  Sure, not all of them are the nutters creating songs about Obama and forcing students to do exercises that make them "understand radical Islam", and aren't freaking out about water pistols and finger pistols, but, they vote Democrat.  Their unions are chock full of the more hardcore Progressives, which vote Democrat.

God Determines Sex, Not Legislators.  There is no doubt in my mind and I am totally convinced that our society has gone completely mad.  The lack of common sense these days just boggles my mind.  When someone is born they are either a male or a female, God decides what we are, now it seems the politicians are trying to tell us what a persons physical sex actually is.  We now have states around the country trying to pass legislation to allow restrooms to be used by people who say they" identify" with a different biological sex then they were born to.  Which means that your 10 year old daughter or granddaughter will be using the same restroom as a 40 year old man, just because that man feels like a woman that day?  Is there a person out there with half a brain that thinks that is right?

Sexual predators take advantage of transgender laws.  It may not have been intended, but it was predictable.  This video spells out case after case of sexual predators entering women's locker rooms and dressing rooms and other private places that are speedily becoming "unprivate," demanding to shower and change with them.  [Video clip]

America Is In The Age Of Stupidity.  For me America stopped being America with the passage of Obama-Care.  The thought that the federal government can force people to buy a product would have been incomprehensible to our founders.  What will they force us to buy next?  Just look at the news everyday, we see things like; laws being passed that allows men and women to use the same restrooms and shower facilities, that's stupidity.  In Colorado they hand out satanic and atheist literature without parental consent to middle school children, that's stupidity.  We have schools that will not suspend students of color no matter what they do, because people of color get suspended more than whites.  Instead of teaching students of color how to behave, they just ignore it, that's stupidity.  We have a president who believes that global warming is a bigger threat than Muslim Terrorists, that's stupidity.

Tax Happy Vermont Becoming A State Where Only The Rich Can Afford To Live.  High taxes, heavy regulations and other policies that depress economic growth have made Bernie Sanders' home state of Vermont a difficult place to create jobs, earn a living and raise a family.  Underscoring this is the fact that Vermont saw a net outmigration of more than 5,000 residents over the last decade.  Now Gov. Peter Shumlin (D) and state lawmakers are looking to double down on their anti-growth policies with the state house's approval last week of another round of tax hikes of individuals, families and employers in the Green Mountain State.  The Vermont House of Representatives recently approved $48 million in higher taxes and fees.  Levies were raised on home heating oil, mutual funds, banks, drivers, and the Employer Health Assessment Tax on businesses who don't provide health insurance for employees was hiked.

The Editor says...
I challenge you to find "outmigration" in a dictionary -- meaning a big heavy book that contains every valid English word.  The online dictionaries have it, but even there the word is hyphenated.

Progressives Muscle into the Restroom.  [Scroll down]  These misleading actions, words, and ideas are how the marginal have managed to gain despotic dominance over the majority.  A prime example of how the minority dominates the majority happens when liberals foster the idea that gender fluidity determines which public restroom members of the LGBTQQIAP2S community should have permission to use.  In other words, if liberals have their way, a new level of tolerance will be realized by sharing a public bathroom with every manner of sexually confused individual.  Despite a handful of open-minded heterosexuals, who wouldn't mind sharing a urinal cake with Chaz Bono, or tinkling while Caitlyn Jenner eavesdrops, the goal to establish gender-neutral bathrooms will likely have to be accomplished under public duress.

America 1956 vs.  America 2016.  Is America a better place today than it was back in 1956?  Of course many Americans living right now couldn't even imagine a world without cell phones, Facebook or cable television, but was life really so bad back then?  60 years ago, families would actually spend time on their front porches and people would actually have dinner with their neighbors.  60 years ago, cars were still cars, football was still football and it still meant something to be an American.  In our country today, it is considered odd to greet someone as they are walking down the street, and if someone tries to be helpful it is usually because they want something from you.  But things were very different in the middle of the last century.  Men aspired to be gentlemen and women aspired to be ladies, and nobody had ever heard of "bling", "sexting" or "twerking".  Of course life was far from perfect, but people actually had standards and they tried to live up to them.  So how did it all go so wrong?

DEA to decide within months whether to change federal status of marijuana.  The Drug Enforcement Administration says it plans to decide within the next several months whether to change the federal status of marijuana, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.  Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, alongside the likes of LSD and heroin, which means it is deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no current accepted medical use.  Rescheduling of marijuana could open the floodgates for research on potential medical uses of the drug, a move that would be cheered by medical marijuana advocates.

When Did It Become Controversial To Keep Men Out Of The Women's Bathroom?  Determining what percentage of the population is actually transgender is very difficult.  For example, would Bruce Jenner have counted before he started dressing in women's clothes or not?  But, the best estimate puts transgenders at about .3% of the population.  However, if you're talking about people who've had hormones and surgery and also dress in the opposite gender's clothes as opposed to simply "feeling like a woman," it's most certainly lower.  On the other hand, roughly 50.4% of Americans really are women.  That means there are 168 women for every transgender person in America.  Even if we accept that a transgender man dressed like a woman would be embarrassed to go into a men's bathroom, doesn't it make more sense for him to be uncomfortable than all those women?

Words 'illegal' and 'alien' banished from public libraries.  Pro-immigration groups have successfully pressured the United States Library of Congress to remove the words "illegal" and "alien" from materials because the words are considered "pejorative" to people who enter the country illegally.  The move will affect all U.S.  libraries.  Fusion reported that the change was made in response to a group of illegal alien students at Dartmouth College:  "If you visit your local library today to research undocumented immigrants, you'll probably find the books are housed in a section with the subject heading "illegal aliens" — a term that immigrant-rights groups say is racially charged and dehumanizing.  The nation's leading news organizations, including this one, have banned the phrase unless it's used in a quote.  But soon that's going to change, thanks to a group of undocumented students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire."

Colorado Comes Down on Fake Service Dogs.  Service animal fraud is a growing problem in dog-friendly Colorado, says [Angela] Eaton, who has been training service dogs for 35 years.  State legislators agree; the Colorado House unanimously passed a bill on Monday that would make it a crime to misrepresent a pet as a service animal in the state.  But vague service dog guidelines and a growing acceptance of "emotional support dogs" have blurred the line between pet and working animal.

Killing Christianity in America.  The radical fringe of the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s coincided and was parallel with the Civil Rights movement, gradually poisoning and then determining to kill outright the Christian religious conscience that was and still is the backbone of reform in America.  The radicals behind the sexual revolution substituted in the place of Christian conscience answerable to God a militant view of self-determination that held to no god but the inner god of human will and power.  In an astonishing perversion of the Quaker idea of the inner voice of conscience answerable to God, the inner voice of the individual human being was determined to be infallible in matters of sex and practice — "If it feels good; do it."  What any individual believed to be his or her inner voice granted unqualified authority to remold the world according to the latest revolutionary fatwa concerning sexual freedom.

The Questions Liberals Never Have to Answer.  [Question #3]  Why do you support legally persecuting millions of Christians who quite correctly believe that they cannot live in accordance with their faith if they participate in a gay wedding?  Who's a worse person, a Christian cake maker who happily serves gay customers, but believes it's wrong for her to cater a gay wedding or a gay couple that deliberately searches out a Christian cake maker who can't participate in their wedding so they can sue her?  Why should little girls be forced to share a bathroom with grown men who claim they "feel like" women?  What about their safety?  What about the fact that many of them don't feel comfortable sharing a bathroom with someone with male genitalia?  Are you helping people or hurting them by falsely telling them they can change their sex and encouraging them to mutilate themselves through surgery instead of encouraging them to get psychiatric treatment?

Stop Subsidizing Terrorists.  All along, liberals have been playing with fire. Their conceit has been that they could control the tribalism in the latest immigrant wave in the same way that firefighters think they can fight wildfires with controlled burns.  But the liberal record isn't so great.  Liberals legislated monopoly rights for unions, and the unions burned down big steel and big auto.  How did that help the workers?  Liberals encouraged African Americans with race quotas and tolerance for gangs, and blacks burned down their ghettos.  Liberals vowed to smash the patriarchy by devaluing marriage and made a generation of women angry and desperate.  Hey, why not encourage Muslims in their religious ghettos and no-go areas!  What could go wrong?

Michigan Schools To Let Students Choose Gender, Name And Bathroom.  Michigan's State Board of Education has drafted a guidance that would push the state's schools to allow all students, regardless of parental or doctoral input, to choose their gender, name, pronouns, and bathrooms.  Spearheaded by board president John C. Austin and signed by state superintendent Brian Whiston, the guidance informs Michigan public schools that only the students themselves — i.e. not their parents or doctors — can determine what their individual gender identities are.  "The responsibility for determining a student's gender identity rests with the student.  Outside confirmation from medical or mental health professionals, or documentation of legal changes, is not needed," the guidance states.

President Obama's collateral damage.  Mr. Obama's stubborn devotion to his agenda of change reveals a closed mind with lethal consequences.  There are more than a hundred Americans who should be alive but are not, along with thousands of surviving victims of lesser crimes, the grim result of the president's determination to keep the nation's southern border porous.  He may consider that a small price to pay for reshaping the nation to match his vision, but he's not the one who must pay.

De Blasio orders city workers to allow people use NYC restrooms based on their gender identity.  Mayor de Blasio signed an executive order Monday [3/7/2016] requiring workers in city-owned buildings to let people use bathrooms based on their gender identity, regardless of their anatomy.  The executive order, which seeks to clarify existing rules issued by the city's Commission on Human Rights, also mandates training for municipal workers on the policy, which is designed to help 25,000 transgender New Yorkers.

Learning from New Jersey's Bad Tax Policy.  Just fifty years ago, New Jersey was like New Hampshire with no income tax and no sales tax.  It was a fast-growing and prosperous refuge for people escaping high tax burdens in New York and elsewhere.  But then a state sales tax was adopted in 1966, followed by the enactment of a state income tax in 1976.  Not surprisingly, politicians used those revenue sources to finance an orgy of new spending, to such an extent that New Jersey is now in last place in a ranking of state fiscal conditions.  And ever since new taxes were adopted, politicians have routinely and repeatedly increased the rates, diverting ever-greater amounts of money from the state's private sector.

Obamanism Is the Real Enemy.  Fact 1.  Obama and the hard left are deadly foreign toxins imported into the American body politic, pumped into us by the remnants of the hard left that seemed to be defeated after 1990 due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. [...] Fact 2.  Obama, Hillary, Bernie, and their kind show us that the virus has survived in the shadows, while we have dropped our guard.  The hard left now dominates the Democrats and their one-party media.  Fact 3.  The hard left here and in Europe has built a malignant power axis with jihad, which rose to global prominence with OPEC around 1970. [...] Fact 4.  Obama, Hillary, and Jarrett are in close alliance with our enemies, jihad and the hard left, after penetrating the Democratic Party and therefore the one-party media.

Get out of NYC while you can.  New York City is one of the worst most populous places to live in America, barely edging out dusty hellholes like Fresno, a study of the nation's choicest urban enclaves revealed Wednesday [3/2/2016].  US News & World Report analyzed 100 cities from the nation's largest metro areas, basing evaluations on the local job market, affordability and quality-of-life measures that included crime, education and transit measures.  New York was ranked No. 96 — just ahead of Fresno, Stockton, Modesto and No. 100 San Juan, Puerto Rico — largely because of the city's sky high housing prices.

Franklin Graham rips 'wicked and filthy' transgender ordinance.  A state lawmaker in North Carolina is warning that the city of Charlotte has blown privacy to "smithereens" and the speaker of the state House says there's support for a special legislative session to correct that.  The fight is over the recent vote by council members in Charlotte, where the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is headquartered, that will allow "people to use the bathroom of their choice."  The issue has played out in several other major venues across the U.S., most recently in Houston, where voters rejected out of hand a lesbian mayor's imposition of the same transgender protection plan.

Grown Man Pervs On Girls In Changing Room Because 'He's Allowed To Be There'.  According to [a recent news report], a grown man walked into a women's changing room at a public swimming pool in Seattle where a girls' swim team was changing.  Their mothers and other women in the locker room asked the man to leave, but he refused, saying that he was allowed to be there.  He didn't claim to be a trans-woman or anything like that.  He just sat there and watched the women change — though eventually he did finally leave.

Flint Has A Chance To Improve More Than Its Water.  As we drove through the north side of this flat, sprawling city, Monica Villarreal, the pastor at Salem Lutheran Church, pointed out landmarks.  There was the Lawrence E. Moon Funeral Home, where online obituaries included a 24-year-old man who was recently gunned down in a restaurant parking lot.  There was D&H, a liquor store that neighbors only half-jokingly refer to as "death and homicide."  There was the house less than half a block from the church with the porch caving in.  After a conversation in her office back at Salem Lutheran, Villarreal handed me a parting gift: a plastic bottle filled with rust-colored water freshly drawn from the church's bathroom.

30 Blocks of Ya Gotta See It to Believe It.  I got frustrated Monday morning [2/29/2016] on the Schuylkill Expressway when traffic ground to a halt just before City Line Avenue.  I impulsively got off at City Line Avenue and traveled up to Belmont Ave.  I took Belmont through Fairmount Park (where dead bodies are found on a regular basis) to Girard Avenue.  After making the left on Girard, you enter a land time forgot, along with hammers, brooms, paint brushes, trash cans, marriage licenses, school books or condoms.  This stretch of West Philly makes the area around the zoo seem like paradise.  The vacant, trash strewn, weed infested lots along this decaying stretch of squalor are the highlight of the trip.  There are a couple bars, nail salons, and daycare centers (can you imagine the "care" the children receive).  But for the most part it's unadulterated ghetto, with garbage blowing along the ancient trolley tracks like sage brush in the old west.

America is on the Road to Declinistan.  Several years ago I began accumulating data to support the thesis that we are living through America's decline.  My premise was initially based upon my distress over the degradation and corruption of our moral fiber.  I watched Miley Cyrus twerk on stage, Janet Jackson expose her breast on national television, and near-naked panhandlers run rampant through Times Square.  On the heels of a philandering POTUS who swore to the nation, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" before being impeached for lying under oath and spending his retirement years with rumors of untold numbers of affairs, I have to remind myself that I'm not living in France.  Hillary standing by her man in Mao-style pantsuits makes it easy.  The legalization of marijuana and footage of people smoking across Denver made this mother of three sick.  Bob Dylan's "Everybody must get stoned" was a song from the 60's, not the law of the land.  Speaking of the law, with a Supreme Court that legislated out of thin air constitutional rights to abortion and gay marriage, we shouldn't be surprised that our current president ignores constitutional restraints imposing everything from the destruction of the coal industry to socialized medicine.

Gratuitous Hatred Is Destroying Republicans — Just as It Did the Ancient Israelites.  Most Republicans view this election as the last chance to save America from becoming the opposite of what it was founded to be.  The Left has been eating away at America's foundational values for nearly a century, and it has been largely successful.  Two examples:  Seventy percent of college students do not believe in freedom of speech if the speech might hurt someone's feelings, and many young Americans support a socialist for president.

Report: N.J. had record $153.5 billion in outstanding debt last July.  New Jersey faced $153.5 billion in outstanding debt obligations last July, hitting a new record, according to a report released by state officials Friday [2/26/2016].  The cost of public employee benefits, school construction and transportation projects drove the 6.9 percent, or $9.9 billion, increase for fiscal 2015.

30 Blocks of Democrat Governance.  I've written dozens of articles about the 30 Blocks of Squalor over the years.  The 30 blocks are essentially from 69th Street to 39th Street encompassing the wretched potholed route from unsafe Upper Darby through the killing fields of West Philly.  The fine union government workers in the Streets Department have consistently maintained Chestnut Street in a constant state of disrepair.  Not that drivers notice.  When there is an accident on the Schuylkill Expressway in the morning I'm forced to run the 30 Blocks gauntlet down Chestnut Street.  I've had to do it a few times in recent days.  The expletives flowed in waves as I hit four unmarked craters in the center lane.

De Blasio administration mixing a toxic brew of class and racial warfare.  The prospect of unanticipated destructive consequences from a de Blasio mayoralty emerges through recent developments.  They include a new campaign to close Rikers Island and a push to extend municipal voting rights to noncitizens, including illegal immigrants.  Coming on top of City Hall's efforts to handcuff police and decriminalize low-level infractions, to incentivize welfare and homelessness, to dumb down schools and impose burdensome wage and benefit packages on private businesses, the latest measures amount to another round of body blows against the city's social and economic fabric.

San Francisco homeless crisis sparks bitter debate over the tents lining its streets.  "A city of tents" — that is how a local government official chose to describe San Francisco, fuelling a bitter divide in a city that is dealing with a mounting number of homeless people.  Scott Wiener, who is on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, is determined to close down the tents for homeless people on the city pavements.  Homeless charities, however, say these inhabitants have nowhere else to go.  In a Medium blog, Mr Wiener said:  "Permitting these encampments is neither humane nor progressive."

Mayor wants to open supervised injection facility for heroin in NY city.  One upstate New York city is planning an unconventional approach to combating a growing heroin epidemic:  Letting addicts shoot up on government property under the supervision of medical professionals.  Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick unveiled his controversial proposal to open a supervised injection facility during an interview with The Associated Press released Monday [2/22/2016].  The facility would provide a space for users to inject pre-purchased drugs with clean needles under the watchful eye of healthcare professionals who could, in theory, keep them safe and direct them to addiction services.

The Editor asks...
Who provides the heroin?  Is this facility strictly BYOH?  If the state is providing heroin to addicts, why isn't it also providing whiskey to drunks, or cigarettes to smokers who can't quit?  If the state is providing supervisory medical professionals, why aren't the professionals administering the dope?  If somebody injects something other than heroin, and subsequently dies on the spot, is the state liable?

Man Undressing in Women's Room Cites Transgender Rule.  The Seattle Parks and Recreation department is facing an obstacle regarding gender bathroom rules.  According to KING-TV, a man undressed in a women's locker room on February 8, citing a new state rule that allows people to choose a bathroom based on gender identity.  Seattle Parks and Recreation says a man wearing shorts entered the women's locker room at Evans Pool and took off his shirt.  Women alerted staff, who told the man to leave, but he said, "the law has changed and I have a right to be here."

Emails: Despite knowing of lead in water, EPA planned to let Flint keep drinking it into 2016.  Four months after being notified about high lead levels in a Flint home, the Environmental Protection Agency was prepared to let the city continue giving lead-contaminated water to customers until at least 2016, emails released Friday [2/12/2016] show.  Jennifer Crooks, the Michigan program manager for the EPA's Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, sent out an agenda on June 8, 2015, for a planned call with Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials.

Indenturing Students.  Young voters should be very cautious in accepting Bernie Sanders' idea that college should be free.  Anybody who thinks this socialist-spun fantasy is a responsible plan should look at the rising student loan debt.  It is now at $1.3 trillion and is stifling the finances of young people who want to get married, buy a house, buy a car, or pursue any other financial goals.  Socialism is a millstone around the necks of America's middle class and poor.  Anyone who disagrees with this should look at how the cost of a college education has risen much faster than wages.  This was only possible because student loans became a substitute for incomes.  They seemed to make college more affordable but that was not only an illusion:  it was a hurtful, intentional fraud.

The United States at the Point of No Return.  Beginning in the late 1980's, the cognoscenti declared that expansive government spending, globalization and free trade, combined with a comprehensive and overarching regulatory regime determined to root out so-called corruption and inequality as well as save the planet from the over blown evils of global warming, would be the course the nation should pursue.  The result of this foolhardy and myopic scheme:  [#1] In 1988 the national debt of the United States stood at $2.6 Trillion, today it is over $19.0 Trillion — an increase of 635% (and projected to reach $29.0 Trillion by 2026). [...] [#2] Since November of 2008 the working age population has increased by over 18 million.  However, the number of those employed has increased just 5.5 million.  Meanwhile those unemployed or no longer in the work force has ballooned by 12.4 million to a staggering total of 102 million or 40.4% of the working age population.  [#3] Another factor impacting on the economic health of the American people is immigration.  In 1988 there were 16 million immigrants (including less than a million illegal aliens) living in the United States.  Today that number has skyrocketed to 42.4 million (including an estimated 12 million illegal aliens).

City workers in San Diego barred from uttering 'biased' term 'Founding Fathers'.  The traditional reference to America's patriotic patriarchs is considered gender biased, and a city manual banning the term was reinforced this week with verbal orders, according to legal watchdog group, Pacific Justice Institute.  "At a time set aside to honor American icons to whom we owe our constitutional freedoms, it is offensive and indefensible that the City of San Diego is directing employees not to even mention the Founding Fathers," Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, said in a statement provided to FoxNews.com.  The warning against referring to Washington, Jefferson, Adams and company as "Founding Fathers" first appeared in a section of a city-issued manual titled, "Bias-Free Language."

The Peasant King of Crass Leads the Field.  [Scroll down]  It is the vulgarization of American politics.  The GOP's open embrace of Trump, much like the Left's continued infatuation with Bill Clinton, is clear evidence that many, if not perhaps most, Americans no longer hold the Office of President as above the lowest common denominator.  These men do not represent the very best of American ideals, but closer to the very worst; that it is okay to engage in perverted sex acts in the Oval Office, it's okay to lie, it's okay to insult people individually and as a group, it's okay to brag about buying-off politicians for personal gain, it's okay to use vulgar language in public because — to these people and to their enablers among the voting population and the media — such conduct sells and, after all, simply reflects the "people's culture."  Vulgarity and baseness has become the New Normal.

New York is falling down.  Tonight I walked onto the subway and saw the car was half-empty because a stinking bum was lying on a seat, and no one wanted to smell him.  Rome fell.  New York is falling down.  It is filled with illegalities and filth as a result of the good intentions and failed ideas of liberals.  Politicians pretend to want the best while they deliver the worst.  De Blasio and New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Mark-Vivirito have decriminalized public urination and quality-of-life offenses.  Are they kidding?  De-civilizing a beautiful city is not a positive.  It is a fall from grace.

Donald Trump's foul mouth is just a cover for his ignorance.  We are a culture conditioned by cable television, which has made the language of sailors, mobsters and New York real estate developers available to any digitally literate 11-year-old.  Even the cable channels you don't pay for have taken to constant, blindingly obvious bleeping, in a wink and nod to their perception of modern usage.  This, after all, is the way "real life" sounds.  Let us hope not.  In real life, expletives are often used as a form of aggression or cruelty.  A co-worker who tells you to Trump yourself is usually being unpleasant.  A co-worker who does this every day is often creating a hostile or demeaning work environment.  Language suitable for decent company is a form of politeness, which is a species of respect, which is an expression of morality.

Lessons from Flint.  Flint, Michigan is the poster child of one-party, generational Democratic rule.  Flint, Michigan's City Council is all Democratic.  A generation of Flint's mayors have been Democratic.  Rick Snyder's immediate predecessor as governor was Obama darling Jennifer Granholm — a Democrat.  The federal bureaucratic agencies — including the EPA — are all Democratic.

Bad Water and Wedgies.  It's hard to get the truth on anything from anybody anymore.  Take the Flint, Michigan water crisis:  now we know the rest of the story.  Here is the Cliff notes version:  The Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.  Who could have figured that switching to a parallel water pipeline being built by a private company might actually cost more than staying with the Detroit water system?

Amid denials, state workers in Flint got clean water.  In January of 2015, when state officials were telling worried Flint residents their water was safe to drink, they also were arranging for coolers of purified water in Flint's State Office Building so employees wouldn't have to drink from the taps, according to state government e-mails released Thursday [1/28/2016] by the liberal group Progress Michigan.  A Jan. 7, 2015, notice from the state Department of Technology, Management and Budget, which oversees state office buildings, references a notice about a violation of drinking water standards that had recently been sent out by the City of Flint.

Obama's Hug-A-Thug Policies Backfire In NYC, St. Paul Schools.  New York public schools are dealing with escalating classroom chaos after adopting minority-friendly discipline policies that the Education Department pushed to close so-called "racial disparities" in suspensions and expulsions.  Educrats have been threatening school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds disparities.  High-school kids are getting "warning cards" for offenses that normally would result in a criminal summons and suspension, such as drug possession and disorderly conduct.  Liberal New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says crime is down in the schools, but it's not.  It's just that schools are ignoring it.  The only thing that's down is suspensions.

In 2024 retirees will cost Illinois more than teachers in the classroom.  Public-sector unions and their enablers, mainly but not exclusively Democratic politicians, have ruined Illinois.

The Flint water crisis is the result of a stimulus project gone wrong.  [Scroll down]  All of this shows two things:  One, the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.  Two, emergency managers are not always a panacea for fiscally mismanaged cities.  The assumption behind handing them control of city finances is that they are grown-ups who, unlike politicians, are immune from special interest pressure and therefore more capable of making tough cuts.  In reality, they can have their own political grand plans that don't always overlap with the city's fiscal interest.  But to add insult to Flint's injury, while the rest of the Genesee County continued to be served by DWSA before the new system became operational, Flint was switched to its old, moribund facility.  That's not because Detroit refused to cut off Flint, as the governor's office and local authorities have suggested.  It's because Kurtz and the then Flint mayor, Dayne Walling, sources say, believed that this facility was an underutilized asset that ought to be put to good use to save money.

Drug traffickers secretly shipping mass quantities of weed out of Colorado.  Seeking a safe haven in Colorado's legal marijuana marketplace, illegal drug traffickers are growing weed among the state's sanctioned pot warehouses and farms, then covertly shipping it elsewhere and pocketing millions of dollars from the sale, according to law enforcement officials and court records consulted by The Associated Press.

Sexual Assault Victims Speak Out Against Washington's Transgender Bathroom Policies.  A group of women who say they are former victims of sexual assault are making an emotional plea to Washington state legislators to reverse a bathroom policy that they say leaves them and their young children vulnerable, exposed and unsafe.

The Contempt That Poisoned Flint's Water.  Even before the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was found to be tainted with lead — before water from some areas tested at more than twice the level considered to be toxic waste, and public-health officials said that every last child in the city should be treated as if the child had been poisoned — the governor's office knew that the water was discolored, tasted bad, smelled strange, and was rife with "organic matter."  They knew, as one memo sent to Governor Rick Snyder in February, 2015, noted, that "residents have attended meetings with jugs of brownish water."

Hope — and clean water — remains elusive for the people of Flint.  The residents of this battered city have lived for years under some of the worst conditions in urban America:  soaring levels of violent crime, poverty, unemployment and blight.  Now, for many, the catastrophe of a water supply that may be poisoned indefinitely appears to be the final insult.  Many are desperate to escape the city, but some don't have the means to do so.  The old and poor, especially, are stuck.

Michigan officials poisoned Flint's drinking water and the EPA covered it up.  The latest indignity to plague this city of nearly 100,000 is lead poisoning via their drinking water, a man-made disaster created by the arrogance and incompetence of government officials in Flint, Lansing, and Washington — Democrats as well as Republicans.  Anybody angry enough to call for GOP Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation should also want the scalp of an Obama appointee at the Environmental Protection Agency who sat on lead test results.  "The EPA buried this," said Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards, whose water analysis in 2015 helped expose Flint's contamination.

First City in America to be Muslim-majority; can Sharia law be far behind?  In November, the blue-collar city that has been home to Polish Catholic immigrants and their descendents for more than a century became what demographers think is the first jurisdiction in the nation to elect a majority-Muslim council.  It's the second tipping for Hamtramck, which in 2013 earned the distinction of becoming what appears to be the first majority-Muslim city in the United States following the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Yemen, Bangladesh and Bosnia over a decade.  The once-thriving factory town now struggles with one of the highest poverty rates in Michigan.

Flint Water Crisis Caused by Toxic Levels of Bureaucracy.  The Environmental Protection Agency has found itself at the center of another environmental crisis.  The epicenter of this particular disaster is Flint, Michigan.  It's [sic] drinking water has been contaminated with elevated levels of lead, a fact known to several regulatory agencies for many months.  Tragically, instead of protecting people, these officials opted to wring their hands and kick the can down the bureaucratic road.

Pictures of drinking water Flint, MI residents were told was safe to drink.  Flint, Michigan is one of many blue hell-holes infamous for forced unionism, easy access to welfare, and outrageously expensive benefits for public sector workers.  Its economy imploded decades ago and the pain still continues for the dazed retinue unable to move away.  The latest debacle?  To save money, the bankrupt city government switched its water supply from Detroit's system to one sourced by the Flint River.  The Flint River water was found to contain lead that had leached from ancient plumbing systems.

Political Poison.  Flint, Mich., has been poisoning its residents. The city, in an attempt to save money, planned to stop buying water from Detroit and sign up with a regional water system; in the interim, it was getting its municipal water from the Flint River, which is as much a garbage dump as it is a body of water.  Residents complained that the water smells of chemicals, that it isn't the right color, etc.  Children's lead levels are dangerously high, and an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease may also be linked to city water.  The city knew about this, and did approximately nothing in response until the problem was well advanced.  A word that is curiously scarce in coverage of this disaster:  Democrat.  Flint, like big brother Detroit down the way, has a long history of political dominance by the Democratic party.

Why Liberals Are Foaming At The Mouth Over 'New York Values'.  Senator Cruz was talking about cultural and political values.  Duck Dynasty values versus Bill de Blasio values.  He was referring to the permissive New York values celebrating public debauchery that would make the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah blush.  Just ask the families from the Heartland who've been accosted by topless women in Times Square.  Remember Occupy Wall Street — turning public parks into human cesspools — people defecating on police cars?  He was talking about those values, too.  Along with the values that propelled citizens into the streets to justify violence against police officers.

Is the Left Even on America's Side Anymore?  [Scroll down]  The Left is blind to the responsibility of inner-city populations for their off-the-charts violent-crime rates.  The failure to embrace the responsibilities of parenthood is as characteristic of the progressive attitude as is its blindness to the betrayal of inner-city communities by Democrats, responsible almost entirely for the disgraceful condition of America's cities.  Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, and numerous other centers of out-of-control black poverty, failed public-school systems, and black-on-black violence are 100 percent controlled by the Democratic party and have been so for 50 to 100 years.  Yet 95 percent of the black vote and 100 percent of the progressive vote continues to go to Democrats who oppress African Americans.

Out of (gun) control.  As noted by many other commentators, American states and cities with the most restrictive laws are also places with some of the highest levels of crimes involving firearms.  A side note:  these jurisdictions are run by Democratic politicians, though the major media rarely note the connection.  And the police, who feel under constant attack, have pulled back in some cities, like Baltimore, contributing to the upsurge in gun crimes by thugs who don't think they will be caught.

Obama and the Insanity of the Liberal Mind.  History will look back at an America that won the Cold War under Reagan only to reignite it under Obama.  Our descendants will ponder how their ancestors abandoned American supremacy, ingenuity, and civility due to ignorance, idealism, and an irrational obsession with politically correct progressivism that led to the transformation — and decline — of this once great nation.

The American Left and the Death of Political Discourse.  The majority of the American people, asleep during the past sixty years of overwhelming peace and prosperity, are gradually waking up to the massive deception that has been perpetrated by the Left and their inability to solve the almost insolvable problems they, in large part, have created.  Thus the tone and nature of political discourse has become more strident as the Left, in an effort to protect their gains, status and self-image, will do or say anything regardless of the damage it may inflict on the country including demanding the de facto repeal of the First Amendment.

America Doesn't Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Democrat Problem.  America's mass shooting capital isn't somewhere out west where you can get a gun at the corner store.  It's in Obama's own hometown.  Chicago is America's mass shooting capital.  There were over 400 shootings with more than one victim.  In 95 of those shootings, 3 or more people were shot.  2,995 people were shot in Chicago last year.  Shootings were up, way up, in Baltimore.  With an assist from Al Sharpton and #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore beat out Detroit.  But Detroit is still in the running.  Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit all have something in common, they're all run by the party of gun control which somehow can't seem to manage to control the criminals who have the guns.

Rahm Emanuel's Cuban Vacation.  No doubt you, too, spent the holidays relishing the humiliation of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the overrated and obnoxious Democratic Party hack who, finally, is teetering on the brink of political oblivion. [...] How bad is Rahm Emanuel?  He makes Bill De Blasio look good.  He was forced into an unprecedented runoff before winning a second term last spring.  In early December his approval rating was 18 percent.  Protestors, including Democratic powerbroker Al Sharpton, want him to resign for the city's withholding of video in the case of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager killed by a police officer in 2014.  Gang violence is pervasive.  Municipal finances are a wreck.  Normally one might be inclined to sympathize, however faintly, with a city manager out of his depth and at the mercy of events.  Not in this case.

The Fall of Chicago.  What our Marxist friends call "internal contradictions" are bringing down Chicago, as they have already bankrupted Detroit. [...] There are some exceptions (San Francisco being the most prominent, with Oakland close behind — where the tech boom has led to in-migration of affluent techies), but most large Democrat-run cities are following this path to disaster, with a shrinking base of taxpayers supporting a growing population of dependents, as municipal employees consume ever greater portions of tax revenue for their retirements and health care benefits.  The money runs out, services decline, and the dependents get angry and unruly.  Even more taxpayers flee, until the bills cannot be paid.

Homelessness Is the Fault of Liberals.  Every major city in the country has seen a dramatic uptick in homelessness and the common denominator are always leftists.  Whether it is at the federal, state or local level, liberals in government are the cause of the homeless disaster.  In downtown Los Angeles, the famous homeless area known as Skid Row now spans 50 city blocks.  Reverend Andy Bales is the chief executive of the Union Rescue Mission, who help those on Skid Row.  He says what is happening there is, "the worst man-made disaster in the U.S."  The Reverend is indeed correct.  Rampant homelessness is entirely man-made.

The Left's Retreat to Fantasy.  The left's slide into irrationality in recent years should come as no surprise.  There is no way the ideology — in particular regarding its record — can be rationally defended any longer. [...] The UK, Sweden, France, and all other social democratic states have been forced to admit defeat.  The same occurred in the U.S. with the Great Society and its underpinning programs — federal welfare, urban renewal, the War on Poverty.  All were based on the most rigorous rationality, and all were abject failures.  Which doesn't mean that leftists have given up.  True believers don't.  Instead, the collapse of the liberal/leftist program following the 60s led to a retreat into romantic fatuity — evanescent claims of "compassion" and decency that were considered to be beyond debate.  But these are no longer tenable either, after 65 million abortions, mass murder and outrage in the inner cities, and the piles of dead generated by the left-supported "Arab Spring," to mention only three outcomes of leftist policy.

NYC Will Fine You $250,000 For 'Misgendering' A Transsexual.  Did you call a transsexual person "he" or "she" when they preferred to be called "zhe?" According to a newly updated anti-discrimination law in New York City, you could be fined an eye-watering $250,000.  In the latest, astonishing act of draconian political correctness, the NYC Commission on Human Rights have updated a law on "Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Expression" to threaten staggering financial penalties against property owners who "misgender" employees or tenants.

The Liberal Christmas from Hell.  [Scroll down]  Look, it all makes sense.  Everything that liberals built is broken.  The economy is a mess; health care is a mess; the universities are broken; K-12 education is wrecked; welfare is out of control; the Middle East has been torched.  And liberals did it.  Then there is the wife of my 60ish friend who's wondering about all that women's liberation of which she'd heard tell back when she was young.  Or the college women screaming for safe spaces, not from the so-called "rape culture" but really from the anti-woman squalor of the hook-up culture.  Or the "mismatched" African American college students protesting on campus in a rage of disappointed hope.

Chicago's police scandal fueled by decades of one-party rule.  Monopolistic political machines breed contempt for voters, animosity toward policy innovation and even minimal notions of transparency.  Ending one-party rule in Chicago and other big cities won't solve all of their problems, but it can force a more honest conversation about what those problems are.

The Gay Agenda and the Real World.  There's just one problem with the gay agenda:  it's based on a lie.  Homosexuals are not like heterosexuals, nor is the practice of homosexuality innocuous.  The single largest problem for the gay agenda is medical science.  In 2014, the CDC found that men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM), about 1 percent of the population, accounted for 83 percent of syphilis cases in the U.S.  Syphilis, a disease that was once on the verge of eradication, is spreading like wildfire.  According to the CDC, syphilis rates "are increasing at an alarming rate."  The statistics for AIDS are similar.  In 2010, MSM were responsible for 63 percent of new AIDS cases in the US.  The rate of anal cancer among MSM is seventeen times higher than among heterosexuals.  It is alarming that the gay community exhibits no restraint and cannot be self-policing.  Even school children know about condoms, yet venereal diseases rage unchecked through the population of gay men.  A recent report in the medical literature found that infection rates for both gonorrhea and chlamydia are increasing among MSM.  The fact that about two-thirds of syphilis and AIDS cases occur amongst one percent of the population tells us something that is immediate and unambiguous:  that homosexuality is not an innocuous choice.  What gay men do behind closed doors is fundamentally different from what heterosexuals usually do in their bedrooms.  It's also more dangerous.

In a rational world, this demented fruitcake would be locked in a rubber room.
Transgender father Stefonknee Wolschtt leaves family in Toronto to start new life as six-year-old girl.  Stefonknee (pronounced 'Stephanie') Wolschtt, 46, had been married for 23 years when she realised she was transgender.  She's now living with an adoptive family, and says she does not "want to be an adult right now".

If not overnight, when?  President Obama has done great damage to to the rule of law, to American national security, to race relations, and to our health care system.  We are mired in an era of pitiful economic growth that feels like stagnation.  He has vastly expanded government dependency, but he counts this an accomplishment.  Obamacare is a Rube Goldberg contraption of untold destruction.  It's hard to assess where Obama has done the most damage.  The damage may not be irreparable, but it won't be repaired any time soon.

San Bernardino: The American left has reached a point where everything is politicized.  Islamic radicals, including a husband and wife, shot up a Christmas party.  On CNN, an analyst of some sort actually suggested that perhaps the Muslim man was upset that it was a holiday party.  The American political left has reached a point where everything is politicized.  Shows get awards based on how faithful they are to the LGBTQ community.  Bruce Jenner gets applauded as a hero for becoming a woman.  Christians get mocked for praying.  Republicans get attacked because Islamists shoot up a holiday party.  When shootings happen in America, conservatives immediately conclude it must be a mentally unstable person or an Islamic terrorist.  For the American political left, they always conclude it was a white, Christian, Republican.  It is the default of normal Americans to assume the best about their neighbor and fellow American.  It is the default of the political left to assume any bad act is the result of conservatives, including the awful tragedy in California.

Democrats Empower Citizens to Restrict Constitutional Rights.  The contempt President Obama has for established order in Federal government, particularly in the manner in which he has ignored Congress, is well known.  He has also stated that if he doesn't like a law written by Congress, such as any law dealing with immigration, he will just ignore their proposed bills and declare his own by Executive Order.  Democrats have now empowered citizens to decide when and where other citizens may exercise their constitutional rights.  This is most clearly illustrated in how government treats the rights of storeowners with regard to same sex marriage and concealed carry laws.  Examples abound.  In Colorado when a bakery refused to bake a cake for a same sex wedding, the state court ruled against the baker.  The government has made sure that no bakery, florist or pizza place may refuse to serve a same sex couple.

Neuter Employee Sues Company for $518,682 for Not Acknowledging its Lack of Gender.  It's not gay rights.  It's not even LGBT which includes men who dress up like women.  It's actually LGBTQIA which includes a bunch of people who don't know what they are, including "Queer" and "Asexual". [...] The supervisors chose not to waste everyone's time with the insanity of a crazy person.  And here comes the lawsuit because the catering company chose not to manufacture a single new gender consisting entirely of "Jones".  This whole thing [disproves] the notion that you can just sign on to gay marriage and be done with it.

Planned Parenthood Killer Was a Deranged Pothead.  The liberals were quick to blame conservative Christians, Republicans, and others on the right for the carnage in the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic.  It turns out the killer was a paranoid pothead who probably moved to Colorado because it offered him plenty of legal weed.  The murders were just the latest example of President Obama's pro-pot policies causing "active shooter" cases in which innocent people get maimed and killed.  While "progressives" hope to capitalize on the killings by stopping investigations into Planned Parenthood, the case of Robert Lewis Dear has backfired on them in more ways than one.  Dear, who looks stoned out of his mind in his mugshot, looks like another case of a cold-blooded killer whose actions may be attributed to his heavy use of a substance that many progressives deem harmless and safe.  It's time for the major media to quit making jokes about marijuana and instead examine its harmful and deadly effects.

Crazy People Are Dangerous, Part 7.  How many times do I have to explain this?  You let enough kooks run around loose — as has been the policy in this country since we de-institutionalized the mentally ill in the 1970s — and people adjust their expectations.  People become accustomed to encountering weirdos, freaks and lunatics, jabbering madness to themselves on street corners or posting deranged nonsense on Tumblr blogs.  You're not even supposed to notice there is anything strange about these wild-eyed nutjobs roaming around with facial piercings, tattoos and purple hair.

There Is No Bigger Threat to Millennials Than Liberalism.  From raising the minimum wage, to Obamacare, to the negative emotional and intellectual effects of "political correctness" on college campuses, liberalism is harming the young and decreasing their chances of rising in the world.  According to Salon's Amanda Marcotte, "Young people are under assault from reactionary forces and most of their grievances are not about imagined slights, but about very serious problems they are facing, on and off campus."  Ironically, Marcotte is right — but the "reactionary forces" truly at fault are those of the left, not of the right.

The Surging Anti-American Sentiment of the Left.  As one of the former leaders of the New Left who has now turned into a fierce proponent for conservatism, David Horowitz, explains that the Democratic "party apparatus feeds off the entitlements of the welfare state:  social workers, university intellectuals, trial lawyers, bureaucrats, and government unions are all clients of the big-government programs the party promotes".  The more the individual is given entitlements, the longer the individual is kept dependent upon the program in which the party promotes.  Today it has resulted in more than 23 percent of Americans being dependent on some form of welfare while the American workforce has become demoralized as millions have given up searching for jobs.  Moreover, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percent of Americans in the workforce — either working or seeking work under the Obama presidency has plummeted from 65.7 percent the month he took office in January 2009 to just 62.8 percent in November of 2014.  That translates to more than 7 million fewer workers in the workforce.

California's Carbon Restrictions Hurt Poor, Minorities.  Jonathan A. Lesser, in his paper, "Less Carbon, Higher Prices: How California's Climate Policies Affect Lower-Income Residents," examines a number of California's environmental policies and how they impact electricity prices at the county and household level.  Lesser finds three significant economic results from the state's renewable-energy mandates and carbon cap-and-trade program:  Rising prices, a hidden regressive tax, and increasing energy poverty.  California's renewable-energy mandates and carbon cap-and-trade program have caused household electricity prices to rise, and Lesser estimates they will likely continue to rise at an even faster rate in coming years.

Chicago Deserves Riots Over The Laquan McDonald Shooting And Coverup.  Chicago suffers from the classic big-city dysfunction that results when the police view themselves as alien from a hostile population: the callous and excessive use of force, yet without any actual benefit in the reduction of crime.  So if there are any people who have a right to be lividly angry at their city government, it's the people of Chicago — even more so because they have voted lockstep for the Democrats for 50 years, and this is the thanks they get.  Ah, but there's the rub.  If the city is about to get the riots it deserves, the protesters have to admit they have gotten the city government they asked for.  It's not just that they have voted for politicians from the Democratic Party.  It's that they have uncritically embraced that party's ideology.  As they have suffered under the yoke of a big, intrusive, corrupt, callous, and indifferent government, they have clamored for more of it.

Yesterday's Communist Is Today's Progressive.  The new American morning shadowed with trepidation; what new crisis will emerge wholly created by this administration that pits one group of Americans against each other?  New morals, values, laws and rights are established at the benefit of a few to the detriment of the majority.  All the while this is happening we meaninglessly drift away from the norms established in the past as our own history fades away from popular discourse.  In the blink of an eye, or in a generation, society itself unravels as it seems today to have lost the ability to retain the qualities that once made America exceptional.  Liberty, freedom, truth, and the Constitution have given way to ideology, entitlement, and moral relativism.  What we are left with is a pervasive atmosphere of decadence and moral bankruptcy that stands no chance in fighting an ideology that is consuming us.

America's Toxic Brew: "Diversity".  Logic evidently does not exist among the "diverse" crowd.  Parents are being urged by various PC groups to raise their children in a "gender-neutral" way so the child may "select" which gender they feel "comfortable" with.  This "select-your-own-gender" idiocy has led to schools dealing with "select-your-own-restroom" students who evidently are finding legal support from the Justice Department.  The real tragedy is that childhood can be confusing enough for children trying to understand themselves and the realities of growing up, without a bunch of politically correct manufactured "choices" being thrust upon them in the process.  Ultimately, these children will suffer, as will society.

Terrorism Deaths Quadruple Under Obama.  The worldwide number of annual terrorist deaths has more than quadrupled since President Barack Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.  Deaths from terrorism increased 80 percent last year to an all-time-record of 32,658 people killed, compared to 18,111 in 2013.  The number is up about 426 percent from the 7,654 killed by terrorists in 2008 under President Bush, according to the latest report from 'Vision of Humanity.'

Pew: 65% say the news media has a 'negative effect' on America.  An extensive new Pew Research Center survey finds that 65 percent believe that the news media "has a negative effect on the way things are going in the country."  Some 56 percent said the entertainment industry has a negative effect.  For comparison, 51 percent believe that the Obama administration has a negative effect and 40 percent say labor unions do too.

The Chickens of Communism Have Come Home to Roost.  The urban dictionary defines cultural Marxism as "The gradual process of destroying all traditions, languages, religions, individuality, government, family, law and order in order to re-assemble society in the future as a communist utopia.  This utopia will have no notion of gender, traditions, morality, God or even family or the state."  There is no shortage of Lenin's "useful idiots" with brains addled by drugs and agitated by paid Alinsky-style community organizers.  "Useful idiots" are easily manipulated individuals without a compass, without a country, with allegiance to global citizenship and Mother Gaia, humans ruled by emotion and devoid of rational thinking.  They are used skillfully to implement cultural Marxism, to disseminate poisonous ideas, chaos, decadence, and worthless entertainment parading as art.

N.J. has worst business tax climate in U.S.: study.  New Jersey's high property and income taxes contribute to its standing as the nation's least attractive tax climate for businesses, according to a Washington tax policy group's annual ranking of the 50 states.  The Tax Foundation, a public policy group that has two former Republican lawmakers on its board of directors, considered five metrics, including corporate, individual income, sales, unemployment and property taxes to arrive at an overall rank.  New Jersey ranks dead last — a distinction the Garden State has had since at least 2013.

Half of New Yorkers Say They Are Barely or Not Getting By, Poll Shows.  Half of New York City residents say they are struggling economically, making ends meet just barely, if at all, and most feel sharp uncertainty about the future of the city's next generation, a new poll shows.  The poll, conducted by The New York Times and Siena College, shows great disparities in quality of life among the city's five boroughs.  The stresses weighing on New Yorkers vary widely, from the Bronx, where residents feel acute concern about access to jobs and educational opportunity, to Staten Island, where one in five report recently experiencing vandalism or theft.

Coming Next? Men as Mothers.  There has long been a subversive "anything goes" streak in bioethics. [...] Biologically male mothers would be unethical and immoral from every angle one looks at the issue; whether the potential fatal harm to the man, treating new life as a mere experiment, and the obliteration of the concept of societal norms.

A ruined generation (or two).  Neil Cavuto interviewed Keely Mullen this week.  Mullen is the organizer of the Million Student March, which she described as "a movement for a more equitable and fair system of education as opposed to the really corporate model that we have right now."  They have three core demands:  (1) free public college, (2) cancelation of student debt, and (3) a $15/hr minimum wage for students who work on campus.  Cavuto asked her how all of that would be paid for.  Her answer (wait for it):  the top 1% of people who are hoarding all the wealth!

The White Working Class is in Trouble.  In the TV sitcom, "All in the Family", with Archie Bunker, liberals gave themselves permission to hate on the white working class and stigmatize Archie and the millions like him as racists, sexists, and bigots.  This dovetailed with the liberal agenda because, with the cultural Marxist turn to race politics and gender politics, somebody was going to have to pay the price of Affirmative Action for blacks and women in the government bureaucracies, and it wasn't going to be educated and evolved white liberals.  Ditto when it came time to create sanctuary cities for illegal immigrant Hispanics and bake wedding cakes for gays or else.

Years of socialist indoctrination in the public schools are now paying off:
Million Student March aims to fight for free college tuition and cancellation of student debt.  On a recent Tuesday at the City College of New York in Manhattan, a handful of students, activists and professors sat in a small circle casually planning a revolution.  Surrounded by other students typing on their laptops in a basement lounge a few escalator rides down from street level, the group's conversation flowed easily from the mundane — how many fliers each could hand out in 15 minutes — to their lofty goals:  The cancellation of all student debt, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and getting campus workers a minimum wage of $15 an hour.

Christian Daycare Workers Fired for Refusing to Call a Little Girl a Boy.  Two daycare workers have been fired for refusing to go along with the center's transgender agenda.  Madeline Kirksey, one of the workers who is an author of a Christian book, says her religious liberty rights have been violated.  The two were fired after refusing to call a little girl a boy.

Christian Daycare Workers Fighting Back After Being Fired For Refusing to Call a Girl a Boy.  Two Christian daycare workers fired for refusing to call a six-year-old girl a boy are fighting back.  They have hired legal counsel and are going to sue.  One of the workers was fired from a Houston area school the day the Houston "bathroom ordinance" was soundly defeated by voters.  The other worker was fired the Thursday before.

I'm Listing the 18 Mayors That Told Obama They Want To Take In Syrian Refugees So People Will Know Who To Tar and Feather.  Here are 18 mayors that signed a letter letting Obama know that that they have the welcome mat out for Syrian refugees.  (Most are not from Syria.)

Mayors Of Eighteen U.S. Cities Tell Obama They Are Ready To Take More Syrian Refugees.  Mayors from eighteen U.S. cities signed a letter to President Obama saying they are willing to take even more refugees than what has been proposed by the administration.  "We will welcome the Syrian families to make homes and new lives in our cities," wrote the mayors, all of whom are part of the Cities United for Immigration Action coalition.

Proof that the big game is a political lever:
'Rumblings' of Super Bowl Boycott After Houston Equal Rights Measure Rejected.  The controversial measure would have established nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people in the city, among other groups.  "I fear that this will have stained Houston's reputation as a tolerant, welcoming, global city," Houston Mayor Annise Parker said at an election night watch part in downtown Houston.  "I absolutely fear that there will be a direct economic backlash as a result of this ordinance going into defeat and that's sad for Houston."

The Editor says...
Quite the reverse is true:  Tourists aren't going to visit any city where there is no difference between the men's restroom and the ladies' restroom.

Conservatives win on election night as voters elect GOP governors, reject 'bathroom bill,' pot.  With 30 percent of precincts counted, The Associated Press declared that Houston's Proposition 1 had gone down to defeat. [...] The vote capped a pitched 18-month battle between Houston pastors and Mayor Annise Parker, the first openly lesbian mayor of a major city, who had championed the ordinance allowing people to use restrooms, showers and other public accommodations based on their gender identity, not their biological sex.

HERO fails by wide margin.  Houston's controversial equal rights ordinance failed by a wide margin Tuesday [11/3/2015], with voters opting to repeal the law that offered broad non-discrimination protections, according to incomplete and unofficial returns.  The hotly contested election has spurred national attention, drawing comment from the White House and the state's top officials.  Largely conservative opponents of the law allege that it would allow men dressed as women, including sexual predators, to enter women's restrooms.  Supporters of the law, including Mayor Annise Parker, argue that it extends an important local recourse for a range of protected classes to respond to discrimination.

The Editor says...
When you choose to do your business in the men's room or the ladies' room, as appropriate, is that an act of malicious discrimination, or is it just plain common sense, such as we have all experienced for as long as public restrooms have existed?  And why does "a range of protected classes" exist in this country?  It is because socialist Democrats categorize everyone.  Republicans (theoretically) are in Washington to protect and defend traditional conservative ideas and values (individual liberty, capitalism, freedom), while the Democrats are there to protect and defend classes and categories of voters (homosexuals, baby killers, illegal aliens, welfare addicts).

Couple seeks right to marry. The hitch? They're legally father and son.  The legalization of same-sex marriage has given way to a new problem for a Pennsylvania couple, who technically are father and son.  Before states across the country began striking down bans on same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court ultimately decided the issue nationwide, some gay couples used adoption laws as a way to gain legal recognition as a family, and the related benefits such as inheritance and hospital visitation rights.

The DOE is now in the High School Girl's Shower.  The Civil Rights Division of the DoE declared a new cultural battleground when it sent a letter to Dr. Daniel Cates, Superintendent of the Township High School District 211, a school district near Palentine, Illinois, accusing the district violating anti-discrimination laws when it did not allow a transgender student who identifies as a girl to change and shower with the girls in the girls' locker room without restrictions.  The DoE gave the district 30 days to accommodate the transgender student or lose its Title IX funding.  The problem began when the transgender student's family filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), because the student was not allowed to shower with the female students.  The student filing the complaint is biologically male, but self-identifies as female.  The school made arrangements to accommodate transgender students by providing separate, private facilities for the student to use to use.  This was not satisfactory for this student.

Office of Civil Rights says disguised boy has right to shower with girls.  The Department of Education's office of civil rights says that a disguised boy has been discriminated against because he is not allowed to shower naked with girls. [...] This is an enormous opening for Republicans.  Who is waging the "war on women" now?  It is radical Democrats pushing for girls to be exposed to naked men.  Now Hillary Clinton has become a born-again transvestite supporter.  Would it really be hard for a Republican in a debate to turn to her and say, "Mrs. Clinton, do you really want girls to be forced to expose themselves to boys in locker rooms?"  It's indefensible.

Could America Elect a Mentally Ill President?  Political taboos, campaign dealbreakers and electoral glass ceilings are crumbling.  Members of Congress are openly gay and bisexual, there's a black man in the White House, and a woman may be next.  Voters have accepted all sorts of behavioral warts and missteps in their political candidates, too.  DUIs?  A mistake of their youth.  Draft dodgers?  There's a long list.  Womanizers?  A much longer list.  Illegal drugs?  In just a few short elections, we've gone from a president who "didn't inhale" to one who openly admits using cocaine in his youth.

Feds back transgender teenager in school restroom dispute.  Schools can't prevent transgender students from using the restrooms that correspond with their gender identities without violating federal law, the Obama administration says.

It is Liberalism that killed NYPD Officer Randolph Holder.  It takes a Liberal mindset the ability to think giving a drug diversion program for a career criminal instead of jail a good idea.  This how Liberals think, stupidly!  Unfortunately, for NYPD Officer Randolph Holder, a piece of filth was allowed to walk the streets of New York City free to commit more crimes thanks to the Liberal mindset that knows better.  He had easier access to guns, again thanks to the Liberal mindset that declared Stop and Frisk was an ineffective crime tactic.  Do you see a pattern of dumb thinking here?

Five Myths About Marijuana and You.  [C]laiming or implying that smoking or eating only marijuana can relieve suffering, the legalizers also manipulate people's natural compassion on those who suffer with diseases and pain.  But here again science does not support their claims.  Of course any substance that tweaks the brain is bound to provide some relief, but smoking or eating it is not a wise and safe delivery system.  Therefore, states that have legalized marijuana for recreational or medical purposes must reverse their course.  And states contemplating doing so must not go down this smoky path.

Five myths about marijuana and society.  Myth 1: Tax revenues from marijuana sales will benefit government budgets [...] Nationally, by taxing tobacco and alcohol, we collect $40 billion annually, but we about lose $400 billion annually from lost productivity, premature illness, accidents and death.  So it is true that Colorado has collected an estimated $12 million to $21 million from January to July 2014, from marijuana sales (the figures vary).  But it is not difficult to predict, from the numbers for alcohol and tobacco, that the social monetary costs will far exceed the taxes.

Hawaii Declares State of Emergency for Homelessness — Guess What Their Solution Is.  Hawaii [...] now has the worst homeless problem in the country.  What do you suppose causes that?  With the highest cost of living in the nation, it is small wonder that if someone falls on hard times that they wind up on the street.  It's also a magnet, climate wise, for those who know they will be on the streets.  The Hawaiian government is notoriously controlled by Democrats.  Their progressive policies have created this mess.  But, never fear, they've come up with a solution!

Hawaii declares state of emergency for homelessness crisis.  Hawaii Gov. David Ige has declared a state of emergency to deal with the state's homelessness crisis just days after city and state officials cleared one of the nation's largest homeless encampments.

Obama's Tragic Legacy for Black Americans.  At the urging of labor unions, President Obama has pushed for higher minimum wages that price a disproportionate percentage of blacks out of the labor force.  At the urging of teachers unions, he has fought voucher programs that give ghetto children access to better schools.  Both policies have a lengthy track record of keeping millions of blacks ill-educated and unemployed.

100 Facts About The Moral Collapse Of America That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe: 
[#1] Approximately one-third of the entire population of the United States (110 million people) currently has a sexually transmitted disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[#2] Every single year, there are 20 million new STD cases in America.
[#3] America has the highest STD infection rate in the entire industrialized world.
[#4] Americans in the 15 to 24-year-old age group account for about 50 percent of all new STD cases each year.
[#5] It costs our nation approximately 16 billion dollars a year to treat our sexually transmitted diseases.
[#6] According to one survey, 24 percent of all U.S. teens that have STDs say that they still have unprotected sex.
[#7] In Chicago, public school kindergarten teachers are now required to set aside 30 minutes a month for sex education.
[#8] The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the entire industrialized world.
[#10] At this point, one out of every four teen girls in the U.S. has at least one sexually transmitted disease.
[#11] According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, there are 747,408 registered sex offenders in the United States.
[#12] There are 106,216 registered sex offenders in the state of California alone.

How Dr. Spock Destroyed America.  In the last 50 years, our nation has taken a moral nosedive.  Since 1960, the rate of violent crimes has more than tripled.  Every day there are news reports of heinous crimes unheard of in America a generation ago.  Children murder their playmates, their teachers and their parents.  Teenage mothers abandon their newborn babies in trashcans, and every year students commit carnage on their classmates.  Our culture has sunk so low that children are no longer safe with their teachers in school or at church — scores of men and women are arrested every year for preying on the children under their care.

Americans Are Devoid of Critical Thinking Skills.  Never has there been a time in history requiring that an individual be equipped with critical thinking skills more than now.  The biggest problem that America is facing today is the inability of the vast majority of the citizenry to think critically.  Matt Drudge went so far as to say that Americans are sick.  Lack of the ability to think critically is a mental symptom that affects all people regardless of their level of education, economic status, age, race, ethnicity, sex, or political party (although it appears that liberals are more likely to lack such skills).  If we are to ever bring America back to the point where she is great again, the majority of the citizens are going to have to acquire and hone critical thinking skills.

Bay State Dems: Let Transgender Men Into Ladies' Rooms.  The leader of a group calling itself the Mass. Transgender Political Coalition told a reporter that "advocates would not stand" for any attempts to deny men full access to toilets and locker rooms that have always been restricted to females.  Transgenders are already protected by a 2011 state law against discrimination in housing, employment, public education and lending.  Now they are pushing what is known as "the bathroom bill" — allowing males who at that moment claim to be female total access to areas traditionally reserved for females.

Houston bathroom bill debate centers on differing definitions of 'men'.  The noisy debate over this city's Proposition 1 has centered on whether it would allow men to use women's public restrooms, which boils down to how you define "men" and "women."  In a battle that has ranged from bathroom etiquette to gender rights to constitutional debates over religious freedom, a key skirmish broke out after former Houston Astros baseball all-star Lance Berkman appeared in an ad saying that the Nov. 3 ballot measure would "allow troubled men who claim to be women to enter women's bathrooms, showers and locker rooms," and the Yes on 1 campaign fired back.

The Center Holds.  While the Republicans will not nominate an extremist, the Democrats will.  Like Wilson before him, Obama has taken his party far to the left, too far. [...] Gay marriage is the tip of the iceberg of the homosexual agenda.  They will always want more.  They want their lifestyle celebrated, and the D's will gladly comply.  Forcing little girls to share a bathroom with some confused little boy will not win many votes.

How 7 years of Obama brought the world from Kumbaya to chaos.  [S]even years into Obama's presidency, the promised worldwide Kumbaya is instead global chaos — caused in large measure by his willful retreat from America's position of leadership.  Washington's traditional allies increasingly feel abandoned, its enemies emboldened.  The United States isn't even leading from behind — it's cowering in weakness.

California mom claims retailer booted her for complaining about man in girls' restroom.  A California mom who says she was recently kicked out of a sporting goods store after alerting a manager that man had frightened her young daughter in the women's restroom is demanding answers — and a policy change — from the Washington-based chain.  The woman, who spoke to FoxNews.com but asked not to be identified, said she was shopping with her 12-year-old daughter and the girl's younger friend when her daughter told her what had happened moments earlier at an REI sporting goods store during a shopping trip in late August.

Group gets judge's OK to parade nude in S.F..  It's illegal to go naked in public in San Francisco, unless you're part of an event with a city permit, like a parade.  And that's what 50 to 100 nudists plan to do on city streets Saturday [9/26/2015], with an assist from a federal judge.

Sex Reassignment Is Latest Company Benefit in Equality Push.  U.S. companies are swiftly adding health insurance benefits for employees who want to transition to another gender, a fairly inexpensive way to show they're serious about a diverse workforce because so few people actually use them.  More than 415 of about 780 firms surveyed for their friendliness toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers now cover related procedures, including hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgeries, according to the Human Rights Campaign.  That's more than double the number in 2012, and up from just 49 in 2009.

Left-wingers swear more, Twitter study claims.  Left-wingers are more likely to use swear words than their right-leaning counterparts, a study of thousands of Twitter accounts has suggested.  While conservative-leaning individuals are, perhaps unsuprisingly, more likely to use religious terms such as "God" and "psalm", those on the liberal end of the political spectrum are heavy users of "f***" and "s***" online.  Researchers at Queen Mary University in London analysed more than 10,000 Twitter users who follow either the Republican or Democrat party Twitter accounts.

The Editor says...
It should come as no surprise that profanity naturally flows from the hearts and mouths of hopeless, godless humanists.

Anatomy of a failed liberal state.  [Scroll down]  Why should residents of other states care about this financial meltdown in Chicago and Springfield Illinois[?]  The answer is that Chicago is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to the government pension crisis.  Pensions to retired teachers and state employees are bleeding the state dry.  Since 2006, annual pension payments have grown tenfold, from $60 million to over $650 million.  A state budget office spokesman tells me that "nearly one of three state tax dollars now goes to paying pensions for retired municipal and state employees."  Meanwhile tax increases on the rich under the previous governor failed to raise much money, but did accelerate an exodus of money and talent out of the state.

Those Yellow-Stain Blues.  It's a lucky thing the driver wasn't crushed when a three-story-tall lamp post fell on top of a car stopped on the corner of Pine and Taylor Streets in San Francisco on a Monday evening last month.  The base of the lamp post had been corroded after countless soakings with urine from San Francisco's ubiquitous homeless, prompting a spokesman for the city's Public Utilities Commission to encourage people and dogs alike to water fire hydrants rather than light poles because the fire hydrants are made of stronger cast iron.  That collapsing lamp post is a perfect metaphor for urban Democrat governance.  If you want to know what inevitably results from allowing the Far Left to run cities cleared of middle-class voters over decades, picture vast armies of homeless bums gleefully micturating on public infrastructure, while public officials merely beg for more clichéd choices amid terror of alienating a prominent, if noisome and not quite sane, constituency, until that piddle-drenched infrastructure inevitably topples.  That is, after all, what Democrat cities ultimately put on display.

Everything Wrong with California in One Photo.  Nationwide gasoline prices are below $3 a gallon.  But here in California it is not unusual to see prices still over $4 a gallon.  So what do liberals here want to do?  Pass a law that mandates reducing gasoline consumption by 50 percent by the year 2030 — just 15 years from now.  This proved too much even for some Democrats — the ones who represent actual poor and (previously) working people in the Central Valley, unlike the West LA and Silicon Valley and San Francisco Democrats who represent smug rich people who drive Teslas.  These old-style Democrats said they would not vote for the bill.

How Grown-Ups Deal With 'Microaggressions'.  Whenever I first heard the word "microaggression," sometime in the last five years, I'm sure I was unaware how big "micro" could get.  The accusation of a microaggression was about to become a pervasive feature of the Internet, and particularly social media.  An offense most of us didn't even know existed, suddenly we were all afraid of being accused of.  We used to call this "rudeness," "slights" or "ignorant remarks."  Mostly, people ignored them.  The elevation of microaggressions into a social phenomenon with a specific name and increasingly public redress marks a dramatic social change, and two sociologists, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, have a fascinating paper exploring what this shift looks like, and what it means.

The Progressive Crime Wave Grows.  Murder rates are skyrocketing in large U.S. cities, but President Obama's progressive pro-crime policies and endless racial provocations have nothing to do with it, the New York Times predictably declared in a recent article.  Nowadays Americans are being killed and maimed explicitly because of their race.  Execution-style cop killings are becoming distressingly common.  Killings and vicious assaults based on the skin color of the civilian victim are also becoming common.  That any of this is happening shouldn't surprise anyone who follows public events.  For years media outlets have acted as uncompensated publicists for the Obama administration's ongoing campaign to turn America into the progressive paradise that is Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.  And they're still doing it today.

Nine Signs of the Impending American Collapse.  Gender has come increasingly to be regarded not as a biological fact but as a social construct, and ultimately as an expression of one's "inner feelings" (as if there were any other kind) and affect-laden sense of sexual or personal identity.  A man is a woman is a trans is a tiger is a wolf — in other words, an idiosyncratic caricature of a normal human being. [...] Such aberrations follow from and go hand in hand with a longstanding, aggressive and doctrinaire feminism that has infected every important social and professional institution, leading to the legal and societal deprivileging and even the feminization of men, who must not only endure institutional inequities but must continually apologize for their existence — another recipe for social and cultural catastrophe.

President Obama's Peculiarity.  A year after President Obama vacates the White House almost any Republican president working with the Republican Congress will have cleaned up the mess — except for the debt.  That will take longer.  In foreign policy things may be even worse.  A nuclear Iran will have to be dealt with.  When the President without a shadow leaves office after withdrawing American power from every corner of the world, Americans will see how dangerous a community activist can be in the White House.

Fighting Back Against the Social Justice Warriors.  [Scroll down]  And now, after a century of their rule, we all live under the boot of their compulsory administrative government programs.  What are taxes at 33 percent of GDP but exploitation?  What is the vast apparatus of government entitlements but a vast coercive patriarchy?  What is the cruel politics of identity and diversity but racism?  Was there ever a government so oppressive and unjust?

Bums Bury San Francisco in Feces.  San Francisco is also a center of leftism.  The liberals running the city have laid out a red carpet for dysfunctional street people, who come from all over the country to collect their freebies and crap on the sidewalk.  Combined with the policy of no longer incarcerating any but the most obviously violent lunatics, this has reduced the city to a cross between a mental institution and a sewer.

The modern malleability of gender and race.  In the present postmodern world, we are told that there is no such thing as a biologically distinct gender.  Instead, gender is now socially constructed.  It can be defined by the individual in almost any way he or she sees fit.

Here ze comes.  Glenn Reynolds links to a Daily Mail article highlighting usage notes issued by a gay rights official at the University of Tennessee, where Glenn teaches.  The university official has advised staff and students to stop using "he" and "she" — and switch to "xe," "zir" and "xyr" instead.  The idea is to avoid any implication that mankind is divided into men and women.  This is discouraged as "binary" thinking.  In the brave new world, gender neutral pronouns are preferred to make the university "welcoming and inclusive" and to prevent feelings of marginalization.  I feel marginalized, however, when men can't recognize women and rules of grammar are destroyed.

The ridiculousness of 'Parent 1' and 'Parent 2'.  It is political correctness run amok.  That the courts would hold up the preference of the two-percent gay community in place of the zeitgeist of the majority-heterosexual society is an assault on democracy.  It is a linguistic trick to distort the gestalt of the majority.  It is political correctness leading to language perversion.  Communal, communist societies try to destroy the family structure.  Family values are against big bureaucracy and the left coddles big government.  Leftists are afraid of mothers and fathers.  They want robotic parents.  They want "Parent 1" and "Parent 2."

New York State cops descend upon Times Square in attempt to crackdown on naked painted panhandlers.  State Police descended on Times Square Saturday as the topless painted ladies and their male managers who have been preying on tourists for tips were questioned on whether their basic business practices are on the up and up.  One state officer was armed with a clipboard and grilled the women, trying perhaps to find a way to kick them out of the Crossroads of the World once and for all.

Derelicts Now Demanding To Live on the Streets As Matter of Right.  America's homeless are lawyering up to fight for a "right" to live on the street — your neighborhood and personal safety [notwithstanding].  From Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, cities are struggling with a surge in people living in cardboard boxes and doorways.  Local lawmakers are trying to ban "camping out" in public and ordering police to clear the fetid encampments.  Now lawyers for the homeless are pushing back.  They're demanding that "sleeping rough" be legally protected.  In Denver, where living on the street is outlawed, lawyers for the homeless want to guarantee vagrants "the right to use and move freely in public spaces without discrimination."

Chicago Politicians Double Down on Dangerous 'Sanctuary City' Policies.  Chicago politicians and advocates of mass immigration are pushing "sanctuary city" policies that allow criminal aliens to run rampant and resulted in the high-profile death of one city resident in 2011, according to Progress Illinois.  Many want to shield illegal aliens from immigration authorities.  Illegals with pending criminal cases should not have their information given to U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement (ICE) if they're stopped again by police, says one advocate.

Trickle of Companies Leaving Illinois Turning Into a Flood.  On Thursday [8/13/2015], Hoist Liftruck's announcement that it was moving more than 500 manufacturing jobs to Indiana was just the latest in a long and almost fevered list of other companies seeking to escape Illinois' outrageous workers compensation costs and high taxes.  On July 14 machine-maker DE-STA-CO said it was moving 100 jobs to Tennessee.  The next day energy processor Bunge North America said it was shutting down its plant in Bradley, Illinois, and laying off 210 workers.  The day after that General Mills pulled the plug on its manufacturing plant in West Chicago, terminating 500 workers.

Minimum-wage offensive could speed arrival of robot-powered restaurants.  [Scroll down]  The industry could be ready for another jolt as a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour nears in the District and as other campaigns to boost wages gain traction around the country.  About 30 percent of the restaurant industry's costs come from salaries, so burger-flipping robots — or at least super-fast ovens that expedite the process — become that much more cost-competitive if the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour is doubled.  "The problem with the minimum-wage offensive is that it throws the accounting of the restaurant industry totally upside down," said Harold Miller, vice president of franchise development for Persona Pizzeria, who also consults for other chains.

Yes, Target, I Do Want My Daughter To Conform To Her Gender.  You've likely heard by now that Target will be ending the segregated, Apartheid-like conditions in their stores, getting rid of gender labels on toys, games, and most other products.  They'll also ban the colors pink and blue, and tear down the barbed wire fence that separated the two areas, which apparently made it previously impossible for a girl to enter the boy's section or vice versa.  For the time being, there will still be girl and boy aisles in the clothing department, but they assure us they're keeping the labels because of "fitting and sizing differences," not because they would presume to insinuate that only girls should wear dresses.

What every parent knows (and Target doesn't) about boys and girls.  The girls' and boys' section of any store is rudimentary:  it caters to the majority of consumers who frequent the stores.  Parent whose children fall outside the norm are perfectly capable of buying their children whatever it is they're interested in.  They don't need Target to hold their hand and lead the way.  Target's new policy has nothing to do with making children feel better about themselves.  It looks like it's about the company making sure it doesn't get sued by parents who see injustice everywhere.

Mayor Wants to Make Seattle More Sharia-Friendly.  Edward B. Murray, the mayor of one of the most politically progressive cities in America — Seattle — wants to make it easier for the 30,000 practicing Muslims in his city to get home mortgages without violating religious Sharia law.  It is part of his plan to ease what he says is a "housing crisis."  A new company in Seattle wants to help that happen, along with allowing Muslims to invest in retirement plans without violating Sharia law.  But conservatives have been warning for years that doing business with Islam is the same as doing business with terrorists, and a Seattle radio talk show host wonders why progressives favor Muslims over Christians.

Where's The Beef? $15 Wage Means 36% Smaller Burger.  Would you pay the same price for a Mini Mac instead of a Big Mac?  Raising the average fast-food wage to $15 an hour could force restaurants to hike prices by 11% — or shrink the size of burgers by 36%, according to an IBD analysis of data from a recent Purdue University study.  Higher prices and smaller burgers are just two of the unappetizing menu of options facing fast-food chains and their customers as cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle and New York raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Why Liberals are Dangerous.  People in positions of power who place feelings above common sense, responsibility and reasoned thinking are dangerous.  They (liberals) must never be in charge.  Take sanctuary cities.  These are liberal-governed U.S. cities that have officially decided to disobey federal law by sheltering illegal aliens.  Liberalism has been described as a "mental disease."  For whatever reasons, liberals who run sanctuary cities feel it is unfair that we in America have so much.  Consequently, they roll out the red carpet to illegals; gifting them welfare, college tuition, and benefits unavailable to legal American citizens.

Reaction to the death of Cecil the lion is further proof of secular society's moral confusion.  In Western Europe and North America, we live in the first godless and religion-less generation in Western (and probably world) history, and without Judeo-Christian values, there is no compelling reason to hold human worth above animal worth.  Judeo-Christian values are based on the Bible, which asserts the fundamental principle that human beings, not animals, are created in God's image.  Therefore, human life is sacred; animal life is not.

Rabid job-killing environmentalism:
In coal-mining Kentucky, shock and dismay over Clean Power Plan's new targets.  It is a tense time in Kentucky.  The Environmental Protection Agency has just come out with its final rule on reducing carbon emissions — the strongest step ever taken to counter climate change in the United States — and this coal state is reeling.  Kentucky's energy secretary was in talks with EPA officials all afternoon on Tuesday [8/4/2015], trying to figure out what the rule means — and trying to understand how it was that the agency boosted the target that it had proposed for Kentucky last year.  A target that the state was on track to meet.

A want of sentiment.  This diminution of empathy may be why some younger people are committing crimes not seen in past centuries, and why there has been a notable absence of affect while doing them, or even while being sentenced.  Horror films, and their popularity, ought by now not to exist, since they artfully craft cruelty, ways to ingeniously make humans bleed and die.  Why would the genre not be done with by now?  Is the empathy button now on Off, replaced with "entertain me"?  The shrinkage augurs poorly for the development of solid relationships, it would seem.  Are the adolescents and millennials going into careers not necessitating empathy, such as medicine and rescue, emergency and fire squads, baby care, nursing, and therapy?

Guilt as Power.  [Scroll down]  In our modern, post-religious age society needs to know what ethical taboos, if any, remain.  What won't we do?  Now that we have resolved to live without God and must perforce live under men that is all the more reason to know what those men believe.  Sigmund Freud believed that the secular motives of "educated people and brain-workers" would be a reliable substitute for what was formerly regarded as natural law.  Can these educated people spare a moment then to explain what their secular motives are?  Besides money that is.

The Twitter Mob: Society's New Mechanism for Enforcing Morality.  [Scroll down]  Indeed, there's a tendency on the right to bemoan the fact that traditional morality is breaking down — and that's obviously true.  But the conclusion many take from it is that nothing is taking traditional morality's place.  I've been writing for years that this isn't true.  Society, like nature, abhors a vacuum; if you remove one moral dogma, another will rush in to take its place.  That's what much of political correctness is — an attempt to replace one system of customs, mores, values, and ethics with another.

This is satire, I hope.
I am royalty born in a commoner's body, and society is discriminating against me.  I was born in the body of a regular person, but in my mind, I feel I am royalty.  I can't help this feeling; it's just the way I am.  And it upsets me when people don't treat me according to my royal identity.  When men talk to me, they do not bend the knee; women do not bow or even curtsy.  And no one calls me "m'lord" or even apologizes for retreating from my royal presence without leave.  I didn't ask to be born this way; it's just the way I am.  And I feel very discriminated against by society, which treats me like a commoner.  When I go into a bathroom, everyone should leave so I can use it, but no one does.  That makes me very uncomfortable.  All I want to do is to go to the bathroom in peace!  I think every business should either make everyone leave when I enter the bathroom or have a bathroom that can be used only by royalty.

California college will now ask students to pick from 6 genders.  Beginning this fall, students at UC Irvine will have the option to self-identify about their sexual orientation on all university admissions forms, reports CBS Los Angeles.  The new form will ask students to pick one gender from six different choices.

The Editor says...
Why must an applicant select only one gender?  That sounds inflexible and exclusionary!

Guilt as Power.  The people who in the videos merrily describe the prices they can obtain for this or that body part may one day be old and as helpless as the infants they have dismembered.  Then they will be in the care of men like themselves.  And on that far day these young — then old — may want water.  On what grounds will they demand it?  On what basis will they ask for care, love or compassion?

Obama Carbon Regulations could leave Manatees out in the cold.  It's no secret the President's carbon regulations will force the premature retirement of coal-fired power plants across the U.S.  In fact the President seems wholly indifferent to the thousands of jobs and livelihoods he's destroying.  However what the President and EPA did not count on is that some of the power plants that will be shuttered are integral to the survival of hundreds of Florida manatees.  The issue stems from the fact that the warm-water discharge from some Florida coal-fired power plants, such as Florida's Big Bend Power Station, has become home to hundreds of West Indian manatees.  The manatees are drawn to the warm-water discharge for a nearly six-month period in the winter.

What's the Matter With San Francisco?  I moved to San Francisco for its radical politics.  Lots of people did, for generations.  Maybe it was like moving to Los Angeles if you wanted to be a movie star: If you wanted to be part of the grand project of reconstructing the American Left in the petri dish of a single city, San Francisco beckoned.  The quirky, counter-cultural San Francisco so many of us fell in love with is almost gone now, destroyed by high housing costs.  We've lost not only the politics, but all kinds of cultural experimentation that just doesn't thrive in places that are expensive.  We are watching the old San Francisco slip away before our eyes.  Every time a housing unit becomes vacant, it goes on the market at a price so high that no organizer, writer, teacher, activist or artist could dream of affording it.  Trying things that don't have monetary potential just isn't possible anymore.

Seattle sees fallout from $15 minimum wage, as other cities follow suit.  Seattle's $15 minimum wage law is supposed to lift workers out of poverty and move them off public assistance.  But there may be a hitch in the plan.  Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise — in a bid to keep overall income down so they don't lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.  Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.

Disastrous Consequences of Lib Indoctrination from the 60s to Obama.  Churchill said, "If you're not a socialist when you're 20, you have no heart.  If you're not a conservative by the time you're 40, you have no brain."  Churchill's point is youths are idealistic.  Liberals (Leftists) have been allowed to exploit the idealistic nature of our youths from kindergarten through college, making everything about fairness and not offending.  High school grads who cannot read their diplomas are well-schooled in guilt and anger over "White Privilege" and "Social Justice."

Thousands Of Violent Felons To Be Released In November Under New Sentencing Guidelines.  Thousands of dangerous federal prison inmates will be released in November as a result of the U.S. Sentencing Commission's decision to lower federal sentencing for all drug trafficking and distribution crimes.  According to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, the release will include inmates with violent criminal histories who committed crimes involving assault, firearms, and even murder.

The Dept. Of Energy's War Against Common Sense Continues.  Toilets that don't flush; washing machines that don't wash; light bulbs that don't illuminate; electric cars that don't drive; exploding windmills; useless solar panels, and now...

Appliance industry warns federal dishwasher regs would lead to dirty dishes.  The recent proposal from the Department of Energy is meant to boost dishwasher efficiency by setting stricter limits on the amount of water each dishwasher can use, among other changes.  Under the plan, washers could use only 3.1 gallons of water for a single load.  But an appliance industry group says the new measures would be counterproductive — as they'd force users to run their dishwashers more, and hand-wash, just to get the same results, in turn using more water.  "[The regulations] would result in dishwasher performance that is unacceptable to consumers, essentially turning back the clock to the days of hand-washing dishes," the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) said in a statement.

Trace terrorists to Ted Kennedy.  Every time another foreign terrorist murders Americans in cold blood, I think of Ted Kennedy.  It's still unclear how this latest Middle East monster infiltrated the United States.  But you can bet it involved his family taking advantage of one of Ted Kennedy's "landmark" laws — the Immigration Reform Act of 1965, perhaps, or the Refugee Act of 1980.  Or maybe his father utilized one of the "terrorist visas" enshrined by the Immigration Act of 1990.  That catastrophe, by the way, was signed into law by Juan Ellis Bush's father, Bush 41.  Teddy's fingerprints are all over each of these disastrous laws — as well as so many others.

The Editor says...
Mary Jo Kopechne is currently unable to offer any comment about murdering Americans in cold blood.

Updating the cliche that it's better to let '10 guilty men go free'.  The old liberal cliché that it's "better 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer" has been upended in recent years — at least when it comes to accusations of sexual assault.  The cliché has been replaced by:  "It's better 10 innocent persons suffer than one guilty escape."  The push to reduce campus sexual assault has bred this new sentiment, as policies purporting to make colleges and universities safer actually increase the likelihood that innocent students will be accused and punished.  The new policies broaden the definition of sexual assault while narrowing the definition of consent, and remove due process protections for accused students while severely limiting what constitutes "evidence" in their defense.

How's that Great Society working out?
For first time, black kids in poverty outnumber white.  The number of black children living in poverty in the U.S. has surpassed the number of poor white children for the first time since U.S. Census has tracked such numbers in 1974, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.  Overall, 20% of children in the U.S., or 14.7 million, lived in poverty in 2013 — down from 22%.  Of that, black children make up 4.2 million while white children account for 4.1 million.  Children make up 38.4% of all black people living in poverty; children make up 21.8% of all white people in poverty; children make up 42.5% of Hispanics in poverty; and children make up 20.6% of Asians in poverty, according to the Pew Research Center.  Poverty is classified as a family of four with a household income below $23,624.

The Democrats' doctrine of 'government is the solution' is in tatters.  People have lost faith in our politics and government.  The next president needs to work tirelessly to restore voters' faith in our government's ability to function.  What part of the federal government is working better than it did six years ago?

Seven Things the Left Should Apologize For.  At the macro level, the Left should apologize to America for their continued allegiance to European-style welfare statism.  At the micro level, they should apologize for their ongoing use of hateful division politics.  These two guiding ideologies of the Left have caused immeasurable poverty, misery and grief.  Their intent to divide us is leading to concertina-wire-reinforced borders among the individual race, gender, and religious silos that they have chosen for us.

DeBlasio presiding over rapid decline in NY city quality of life.  New York City has never been a paradise, but for 20 years previous to the election of Mayor Bill de Blasio, quality of life had risen dramatically as a result of what's known as "broken windows" policing — enforcing minor crimes to take people off the streets and prevent them from committing major offenses.  But now, with the far left wing mayor leading the charge, more and more minor crimes are not being enforced.  Predictably, this has led to a surge in violent crime and an invasion by vagrants and homeless people that hasn't been seen since the pre-Guiliana days.

Taxpayer-Funded Planned Parenthood Sells Baby Parts.  Planned Parenthood thinks it can put a price on a baby:  $30 to $100 per part.  An undercover investigative video released July 14 showed a Planned Parenthood executive confess that her taxpayer-funded organization sells the body parts of aborted babies by using the partial-birth abortion procedure to ensure the baby parts stay intact.  Pro-life leaders challenged the abortion giant after the Center for Medical Progress, a citizen journalist group focused on medical ethics, caught the scene on camera.

More about Planned Parenthood.

WashPost Hails Women's Clothes on Men: 'The End of Gender Is Near'.  Friday's [7/10/2015] Washington Post hyped a new trend in fashion on the front of the Style section.  The headline was "His. Hers. Theirs. Whoever's.   In an increasingly genderless fashion industry, if the blouse fits, wear it."  Fashion writer Robin Givhan championed designers who are asking "Why are clothes assigned a gender at all?"

The Editor says...
A few years further down this slippery slope, leftists will normalize nudity.

Oregon allowing 15-year-olds to get state-subsidized sex-change operations.  The list of things 15-year-olds are not legally allowed to do in Oregon is long:  Drive, smoke, donate blood, get a tattoo — even go to a tanning bed.  But, under a first-in-the-nation policy quietly enacted in January that many parents are only now finding out about, 15-year-olds are now allowed to get a sex-change operation.  Many residents are stunned to learn they can do it without parental notification — and the state will even pay for it through its Medicaid program, the Oregon Health Plan.  "It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children," said Lori Porter of Parents' Rights in Education.  "They're our children.  And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it's mindboggling."

The Coming Confrontation.  We now have a Democrat party that spreads half-truths, propaganda, and tells outright lies to its citizens.  In our schools, our children are being turned into good little Marxists with indoctrination into such areas as lifestyle, climate change, and immigration.  Together, with our media, they have slowly inculcated all aspects of our lives, both moral and political.  They further these ideas by encouraging a vast populace in this country to become dependent on government, and looking to one political party to bail them out, turning a challenging time into a hammock of irresponsibility where people can relax in Marxist splendor, while others work to pay for them.

Red States Outperform Blue In Managing Taxpayer Money.  A new report from George Mason University's Mercatus Center ranks all 50 states based on 14 measures designed to determine whether states can pay their short-term bills and meet their long-term obligations — debt, pension liabilities and such.  The data go through 2013.  The best-run states have enough cash to pay [their] current bills, enough revenue coming in to meet its fiscal year needs, a cushion for economic shocks, and management long-term liabilities.  The worst states, in contrast, have "tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities — constituting a significant risk to taxpayers in both the short and the long term."

What Obama Has Taught Us.  [Scroll down]  Try a thought experiment about changes in government. Say "the ______ under Obama" and then fill in the blank with what follows:  IRS, VA, NSA, GSA, EPA, TSA, DHS, ICE, Secret Service, NASA.  Have these agencies "changed" and do we have more "hope" because of their evolution?  Are any of these bureaucracies more transparent or efficient than in 2008? Do we associate their directors with skilled and honest leadership?  Or do we see these alphabet soups corrupted by cronyism and politics, immune from audit and accountability, led by incompetents, and now mostly social-welfare organizations bent on patronage and redistributive engineering?

Fiddling Away the Future.  Forty-three years ago, there were roughly 1,500 black elected officials nationwide.  According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, by 2011 there were roughly 10,500 black elected officials, including a black president.  But what were the fruits?  By most any measure, the problems are worse.  There is the greatest black poverty, poorest education, highest crime and greatest family instability in cities such as:  Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Calif., Memphis, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Baltimore, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Buffalo, N.Y.  The most common characteristic of these predominantly black cities is that, for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably liberal administrations.  What's more is that in most of these cities, blacks have been mayors, chiefs of police, school superintendents and principals and have dominated city councils.

The Penumbra School of Law.  I was watching in horror a series of Mark Dice videos of interviews in which passersby signed petitions to repeal the First Amendment to shut down criticism of Obama because it was all clearly racist[,] petitioned to repeal the Bill of Rights; revealed they didn't know when and why we celebrate the Fourth of July; signed up to ban the American flag and replace it with a New World Order one.  I wanted to believe the people responding were outliers — just ignorant San Diego beachgoers.  Unfortunately there are too many indications they are not, and that this disregard for the Constitution and its protections, this lack of knowledge of our history and how it shaped the Constitution, and why it is important to us, are rife in both the states and the federal government.

The Progressive Policies That Murdered Kate Steinle.  [Scroll down]  Although this violent thug pulled the trigger, progressives, through the laws they have enacted, put this man on the streets which allowed him to murder.  Federal authorities had Lopez-Sanchez in custody in March after he was set free from a federal prison.  They transferred him to San Francisco authorities because he was wanted by them on drug-related charges.  The feds filed what's called an "immigration detainer" requesting that the local authorities notify them before releasing the man.  But San Francisco, home of the most militant leftists in America, refused the request because local policy forbids it.  The prisoner in effect got a "get out of jail free card" from the left-wing open-borders movement which argues that keeping illegals in jail violates their constitutional rights.

Kate Steinle was Murdered by a Sanctuary City.  In San Francisco, city employees are barred from aiding ICE in raids, arrests or investigations unless "required by federal or state law, or a warrant."  Among those political figures who could feel the heat is the pro-sanctuary Kamala Harris, California's Democratic attorney general and possible replacement for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Kate Steinle Died Because of Democrat Policies.  The family of a California woman who was allegedly shot dead by an illegal Mexican immigrant have criticized officials who didn't hand him over after he was jailed just months before the attack.  Grieving relatives of Kathryn Steinle, 32, who was shot dead on San Francisco's Pier 14 Thursday night [7/2/2015], made the comments in light of revelations that alleged killer Francisco Sanchez, 45, had already been sent back over the border five times.

Obama, Brown, Harris Allowed S.F. Murderer To Stalk The Streets.  The senseless, random murder of 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle last week, allegedly by illegal alien Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, has shocked the city of San Francisco and outraged the nation.  The alleged murderer was free because of a local policy and state law that prevent cooperation with federal immigration detainers — and because of a federal government that encourages such disobedience.

More about California's sanctuary cities.

War on The Truth: It's a Progressive Disease.  You'd better think twice before you tell the truth about the emperor's new clothes.  Progressives are using the power of government to force society to go along with the insanity.  This goes on wherever progressives hold power.  Politically correct speech codes have been enforced on American college campuses for decades, where conservative and Christian students and faculty are routinely discriminated against and decried as "haters."  Now that progressives have taken over broad swaths of federal and state government, they have greatly enhanced power to enforce their will.  Bakers and florists who refuse to participate in same-sex ceremonies are driven out of business, despite the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion.  Religious liberty is under assault in America.  People who espouse Judeo-Christian values are being denied entry into graduate schools and driven from their jobs.  Just ask Wes Modder, the chaplain who recently was kicked out of the Navy for telling counselees the truth about what the Bible teaches about sexuality, including homosexual behavior.

No Truce With the Left.  Republicans are still trying to figure out a truce on gay marriage.  They retreated to civil unions, then accepted a full defeat on gay marriage and then acted baffled when Christian bakery owners were dragged into court for refusing to participate in gay weddings.  When the left insisted that gay marriage was a civil rights issue, they refused to take them at their word.  Now they're wondering how an accommodation can be made with tranny rights.  A brief look back at gay rights will show that the only possible accommodation is one in which men in dresses have a legal right to use the ladies room and every single closed female space and event.  And yes, that means your business will be shut down if you object to Steve using the female locker room.

Polygamous Montana trio applies for wedding license.  A Montana man said Wednesday [7/1/2015] that he was inspired by last week's U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage to apply for a marriage license so that he can legally wed his second wife.

America's Destiny in the Balance.  [Scroll down]  After nearly six and half years of the Obama administration and the ongoing rampage of the Left, it is clear for all to see what future lies in store for the United States under the long term reign of this cabal:
  [A]  The Supreme Court is one justice away from being dominated by politically motivated leftists, four of whom are already in place, bent on relegating the Constitution to the dustbin of history and replacing it with the Left's agenda.
  [B]  In due course, freedom of speech, religion and the press will be what the central government and courts, controlled by one party, allow it to be.
  [C]  All macro-economic activity will be determined by Washington D.C., and in order to continue to operate major corporations, their managements will have to be subservient to the central government per the basic tenets of fascism.  Small business formation will be severely curtailed as the federal regulatory state determines who and what business can be formed.
[...]
  [H]  Eventually this nation as we know it will cease to exist as a violent reaction to all the above will eventuate in a revolution and split the country into three or four independent nations.

The Hidden Message of Same-Sex Marriage.  The road to gay marriage began with feminism.  Feminists argued that there were no important differences between the sexes.  Thus, mothering and fathering were interchangeable.  The word "parent" became a verb.  If mothers and fathers bring nothing unique or complementary to their roles, then it logically follows that two mothers or two fathers should be just as good.  Talk of three or more parents misses the mark.  The relevant number is one.  If fathers are no different from mothers, then single women needn't pause before embarking on "parenthood" solo — and they aren't.  Along with feminism, the past few decades have featured a widespread retreat from the idea of family duty. [...] Marriage today is treated as optional by many parents, just one of many available paths.  As Alito noted in his dissent, fully 40 percent of American births are now to unmarried women.  Additionally, more than half of all children will spend some part of their childhoods in a non-nuclear family.

Time magazine says:
Now's the Time To End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions.  The Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage makes it clearer than ever that the government shouldn't be subsidizing religion and non-profits.

The Progressive Timeline.  Detroit collapses in on itself and Progressive are out in the streets protesting as if the city was run by a secret cabal of Free Masons.  They demand change and the implementation of their preferred solutions. Left out is the fact they were the ones in charge for fifty odd years and they had implemented all of their preferred polices, causing the collapse.  Race is the most obvious big social issue which has been totally controlled by Progressives.  Since the 1950's, the Left has had a free hand in trying to[ ]make the races get along.  They even control the definition of "getting along."

Politico: Has not the time come for polygamy, social liberals?  Faster than one can say "slippery slope," quicker than the echoes of Chief Justice John Roberts' warnings on the subject could dissipate, Politico Magazine published a rather lengthy appeal to the leaders of social liberalism to use the Obergefell decision to push for a constitutionally-recognized right for plural marriage.

You're What You Say You Are.  [Scroll down]  The bottom line is that modernity permits liberties previously unknown or unrecognized.  Today we're not held to reality.  For example, one does not have to accept the limitations of biology. [...] For example, Bruce Jenner, Olympic decathlon champion and reality show personality, has recently become Caitlyn Jenner.  People now are required to address him as her.  There is a condition known as species dysphoria, similar to gender dysphoria.  It is a condition in which people think they are animals trapped in human bodies.  I've been giving this option some serious thought.  I've been thinking of calling myself a springbok trapped in a human body.

LGBT Leaders: Gay Marriage Is Not Enough.  [Scroll down]  Poverty, contraception, and abortion might not seem like inherently LGBT issues but they are certainly intertwined with them.  According to the Center for American Progress, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women are more likely to live in poverty than their heterosexual and non-transgender counterparts.  They are also at increased risk of sexual assault, as the National Center for Lesbian Rights notes, which makes abortion access essential for lesbians and bisexual women.

Polygamy Attorney On Gay Marriage Decision: SCOTUS Opinion 'Resonates With Our Arguments'.  [Scroll down]  Academic Frederick deBoer writes in Politico Magazine how the Supreme Court's decision opens the doors for legal polygamous marriages.  "The marriage equality movement has been both the best and worst thing that could happen for legally sanctioned polygamy.  The best, because that movement has required a sustained and effective assault on 'traditional marriage' arguments that reflected no particular point of view other than that marriage should stay the same because it's always been the same."

American Transgender Student Forces Cambridge University To Alter 500 Year Old Dress Code.  St. Catherine's College at Cambridge University has decreed that men can wear skirts at formal dinners, following a campaign by a transgender-rights activist student.  The 542-year-old college has broken down its long-standing traditional dress code which Pink News claims said that men had to wear suits, whilst women had to wear dresses or a blouse and skirt to the events.

In Oregon, 15-Year-Olds Can Get Taxpayer-Funded Sex Changes Without Parental Consent.  The New York Times has an alarming article today [6/17/2015] about the movement to push sex change operations at earlier and earlier ages. [...] If Oregon's political leadership thinks that 15-year-olds are so capable of making monumental decisions like getting sex reassignment surgery all on their own that they're willing make taxpayers pay for it regardless of what parents or guardians think, why do the myriad of other age related restrictions remain in place?

Rachel Dolezal, America's Newest "Victim".  If you peruse the exhaustive press coverage since [Rachel] Dolezal was "outed," you'll enjoy various stuffy and serious-faced speculations on the social constructs surrounding race, the complex intersections of biology and modern identity, the similarities between Dolezal's "transracial" experiment and Caitlyn Jenner's transgender gambit, and the insistence that any comparison between the two is so offensive that we might all suddenly implode like a box of half-baked Chinese fireworks naively purchased from a backwoods Indiana roadside shed.  It is, to put it mildly, a lot to digest.  It's almost like auditing a class at Oberlin, but without the half-hearted drum circles, pilfered Xanax, and crippling piles of denial and student loan debt.

Lies about Sex.  Jesse Jackson said that we couldn't say "black" anymore.  All at once, university presidents, network anchors, United States congressmen and senators, corporate executives, even Republican politicians, said "African-American."  I think the last people to stop saying "black" were the black people themselves, who had not been consulted.  I don't know who the Jesse Jackson it was that stopped us from saying that men and women are equal and made us say that they are alike, but alike it is.  So we forgot about equality and pretended not to notice the differences, and, lo, now we can't figure out who is a man and who is a woman.

Progressive Academics Shocked That Their Creatures Turn on Them.  Recently several progressive professors have publicly complained that their students are hounding them for failing to consider their tender sensibilities by straying beyond the p.c. orthodoxy on sexual assault, sex identity, linguistic correctness, and a whole host of other progressive shibboleths. [...] These incidents follow the complaints of other progressives like Kirsten Powers and Jonathan Chait that the intolerant ideology at the heart of progressivism is now getting out of hand — something that many of us have been writing about for nearly 3 decades.  That these progressives should now be shocked at such intolerance and persecution after decades of speech codes, disruptions of conservative speakers, campus inquisitions which ignore Constitutional rights, cancellations of commencement speakers, and ideological litmus tests imposed on new hires and curricula, bespeaks not principle, but rather indignation that now they are on the receiving end of the bullying and harassment long inflicted on conservatives and people of faith.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the triumph of deviancy.  Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, writing in his 1993 article "Defining Deviancy Down" posits "... over the past generation, the amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can 'afford to recognize' and that, accordingly, we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the 'normal' level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard."  I think we've reached the point where we can say without fear of contradiction that Moynihan was both correct and, at the same time, crippled by a lack of imagination.

Our Nightmare of Reason.  Today an American conservative might well feel like a Kafkaesque protagonist, as the country appears to be drifting increasingly into absurdist territory under the leadership of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and leftist elites in the media and entertainment industries.  The lionization of Bruce Jenner's makeover into a pseudo-woman is but a symptom of this slide into mass irrationality. [...] The idea that some men, despite the obvious biological evidence, are in fact women, and vice versa, has become generally accepted by a large percentage of the country, and endorsed by none other than the president himself.  Rather than society sympathetically tolerating Jenner, or offering him mental health treatment, he and other so-called transsexuals (like convicted Army private Bradley Manning) can now medically mutilate themselves at public expense.  They can compel girls to use public bathrooms and showers with biological boys who claim to be female.

Feds: Transgender Bathroom Choice a Matter of 'Health and Safety'.  The Department of Labor (DOL) issued instructions for how private businesses should address a transgender individual who wants to use a different bathroom, arguing that allowing transwomen to use the ladies bathroom is a matter of "health and safety."  "The core belief underlying these policies is that all employees should be permitted to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity," according to the guidance, issued by the DOL's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  "For example, a person who identifies as a man should be permitted to use men's restrooms, and a person who identifies as a woman should be permitted to use women's restrooms."  "The employee should determine the most appropriate and safest option for him- or herself," the document said.

States with the Highest Minimum Wage.  Hourly earnings in the U.S. rose 0.3% in May to $24.96 a jump of 2.3% from the year-ago period.  However, those earning the minimum wage are still getting paid a lot less even in the 29 states paying above the federal minimum wage.

OSHA safety agency says women's bathrooms safer with creepy men in them.  OSHA is concerned with safety — i.e., chemical, biological, and physical hazards in the workplace, and everything from the dangers of toxic chemicals to dangerous machinery that can hurt workers.  That's why speaking out on the issue of letting men into women's bathrooms is clearly central to OSHA's mission.

Calling Bruce Jenner a Woman Is an Insult to Women.  Parents, be aware:  soon the magazine rack in the checkout line at the supermarket will feature this profoundly disturbing image of Bruce Jenner.  The picture is plastered right on the cover of the next Vanity Fair issue, and it shows Bruce dolled up in makeup and hair extensions, posing in a corset, with parts of his face, forehead, and throat shaved off for cosmetic reasons, and his chest enhanced by hormone pills, Photoshop, and silicone.  The idea is to make the 65-year-old grandfather look like a college girl, but the effect is that he looks like a distorted version of neither.  What he most closely resembles is a mentally disordered man who is being manipulated by disingenuous liberals and self-obsessed gay activists.  Far from having the appearance of a genuine woman, he reminds me of someone who is being abandoned to his delusions by a culture of narcissistic imbeciles.

Why Is America Moving Left?  Statistics from the most recent Gallup poll indicate that Americans' moral views have become increasingly liberal over the past 14 years, with U.S. citizens tending to approve of behavior they would have deemed immoral or sinful just a generation ago.  The biggest change percentage-wise has been in Americans' positive moral evaluation of polygamy and human cloning, both of which more than doubled since first measured by Gallup in the early 2000s.  In 2003, a mere 7% thought that polygamy was morally acceptable, whereas in 2015, the figure has grown to 16%.  Similarly, the recent poll found that 15% of Americans now accept human cloning, up from just 7% of the population in 2001.

'Ferguson Effect': America's New Crime Wave Is All Part of the Plan.  The Wall Street Journal is calling the dramatic end of America's two-decade-long drop in crime "The Ferguson Effect."  Led behind the scenes by President Obama, America's fraudulent civil rights leaders (Al Sharpton) and the mainstream media (especially CNN), worked together — starting with their lies in Ferguson — to launch hate campaigns against the police.  The result is an empowered criminal element and by extension a horrific increase in murders, shootings, and other violent crimes.

Pro-Crime Policies Work.  108 people were shot in New York, Baltimore and Chicago over the weekend.  Many of the casualties were saved from that terrible "school-to-prison pipeline" that bedevils promising young crack dealers and instead went straight to the morgue.  56 people were shot in Chicago including a 4-year-old girl.  That's quite a step up from last year in which only 17 people were shot.  It might actually be the most violent Chicago weekend in a while.  And that's saying something.

Puerto Rican legislators narrowly approve raising sales tax to highest level in U.S..  Gov. Alejandro Garc'a Padilla is expected to sign the bill that would increase the tax from 7 percent to 11.5 percent, as well as create a new 4 percent tax on professional services.

Blue state infrastructure.  A month ago, we spent a spring break week in southern California.  The weather was glorious, and we had a wonderful time.  But we were appalled by the third-world condition of California's roads and highways.  California's highways are not just decrepit and pocked with potholes, they are downright dangerous.  Billions of dollars would be required to bring California's roads, bridges, cloverleafs and related infrastructure up to the level that is taken for granted in, say, South Dakota.  But California's Democrats have higher priorities, whether it is doling out dollars to the party's supporters, funding environmental projects that will never see the light of day, or finding new ways to attract illegal immigrants.

God isn't making Transsexual children, lib-left politics is.  It's a politically correct fueled pop culture behind the sudden rush to Transsexual Transformation.  Within weeks of Bruce Jenner revealing 'SheHood' complete with an ABC Television announced Reality TV series about to show how it's done, it seems the whole world — including the Girls Scouts of America — is going Tranny.  In the U.S. boys wearing skirts will be welcome in the Girl Scouts tent.  In Britain, boarding schools have been told to adopt gender neutral uniform policies in order to avoid discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) pupils.

Police officer deaths in the line of duty double as morale sinks to new low.  Law enforcement morale is at an all-time low as uniformed officers endure increased pushback from the communities and politicians they're risking their lives to protect, and a new report released Monday [5/11/2015] shows on-duty law enforcement deaths in 2014 occurring at nearly twice the previous year's rate.  "One of the things that we've seen just lately, that we've never seen before, is police officers are telling their own families, and their own children, 'Don't go into this line of duty, this line of work, because it's not worth it any more,'" said Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations.

Law enforcement deaths double in 2014.  The atmosphere of hate being ginned up against the police has resulted in double the number of deaths in 2014 compared to 2013, according to a preliminary FBI report.  Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, says that the campaign of demonizing police has taken a toll on morale as well.

Homelessness up 12% in L.A. city and county.  The homeless population jumped 12% in the last two years in both the city and county of Los Angeles, driven by soaring rents, low wages and stubbornly high unemployment, according to a report released Monday [5/11/2015].  In one of the most striking findings, the number of tents, makeshift encampments and vehicles occupied by homeless people soared 85%, to 9,535, according to biennial figures from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

The Editor says...
High rent and low wages can be blamed on illegal aliens who should have been stopped at the Mexican border instead of being welcomed in.  High unemployment can be blamed on Obamacare and other red tape and regulations imposed by Barack H. Obama and his minions.  In other words, left-wing liberals are entirely to blame.

How Liberals Have Ruined College.  The root of nearly every free-speech infringement on campuses across the country is that someone — almost always a liberal — has been offended or has sniffed out a potential offense in the making.  Then, the silencing campaign begins.  The offender must be punished, not just for justice's sake, but also to send the message to anyone else on campus that should he or she stray off the leftist script, they too might find themselves investigated, harassed, ostracized, or even expelled.  If the illiberal left can preemptively silence opposing speakers or opposing groups — such as getting a speech or event canceled, or denying campus recognition for a group — even better.

Obama's Legacy: Urban Pathologies on Display.  President Obama is concerned with burnishing his legacy during this second term of his presidency.  One major part of his legacy will be the way his "divider and conqueror" political tactics have highlighted the many pathologies plaguing black urban culture in this country, and have brought about a massive deterioration in "race relations."  These pathologies did not originate with Obama.  They have been half a century in the making, and may be traced to the mid-1960s when the legitimate civil rights movement was co-opted by the Left under the twin rubrics of the "War on Poverty" and the "Great Society."  If indeed we have been engaged in a "war on poverty," it is long past time for us to acknowledge that poverty has been winning.

The Chains They Revere.  Why are so many of the young "misguided youth" in Baltimore so badly educated that they can barely speak English? [...] Believe it or not, in 2011, the public education system in Baltimore spent $15,483 per pupil... which was only second to NYC, which spent an incredible $19,770 to basically produce the same wretched results.  Of course, spending $15,483 per pupil is a total waste of money when most of those receiving it drop out of school because they place no value on it[,] just as the shattered "families" they come from see no value in it either, except to use it as an excuse for their failure to make anything out of it.  So there you have it, a complete Democrat run city (for decades) spending a huge amount of money on a public educational system that is totally controlled at every level by a key Democrat base group (the Teachers Union) which has instituted every single "educational reform" advocated by the academic left for the last 40 years[,] and all it has produced is yet another generation of semi-literate and illiterate, violent, utterly un-employable, lumpen-proletariat street thugs who only know how to make incoherent complaints for the cameras about a society they live in, but in which they have no idea how to succeed.

Prospects for Black America.  [Scroll down]  America has made no real, concerted effort to promote fatherhood, and part of the problem is feminism, with its refrain that "strong women" can rear children without men.  "Fathers," [Heather Mac Donald] said, "should not be seen as an optional add-on or frill."  Illegitimacy, she added, is such a disadvantage to children that we should come to grips with the idea that "it is not true that everybody has the right have a child."  [John] McWhorter agreed that it would be marvelous if blacks would marry each other, but noted that "after 50 years, there is no way to create a movement in black America to rebuild the family."  If even half the black leaders and columnists and preachers came out with a strong endorsement of fatherhood, the other half would call them vicious names for letting "institutional racism" off the hook.

Democrat: My party didn't cause the problems in Baltimore.  Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Wednesday [5/6/2015] rejected the idea that Democratic political leaders were responsible for problems in Baltimore. [...] Some conservatives have suggested that Baltimore, where riots broke out last week over police mistreatment of minorities, is the result of failed liberal policies.  Baltimore last had a Republican mayor in 1967.

Federal Workplace Safety Agency Takes On Transgender Restroom Access.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) isn't just about hard hats and safer machinery anymore.  The federal government agency charged with regulating workplace conditions has formed an "alliance" with a "national social justice advocacy organization for transgender people" primarily to promote gender-appropriate restroom access.  The agreement, signed on April 27, is part of a larger OSHA program to partner with groups "committed to worker safety and health to prevent workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses."

Feds Forcing Public Schools to Adopt 'Nondiscrimination' for Transgender Teachers and Students.  The U.S. Department of Education is demanding that the Fairfax County Public Schools, in the Virginia suburbs just outside Washington, D.C., "revise their non-discrimination policies to include gender identity" or risk losing the federal funds they receive for their schools.  The "nondiscrimination" would apply to transgender students and teachers.  The Fairfax County School Board is scheduled to vote on the new policy, a revision of its existing non-discrimination rule, Policy 1450, on Thursday, May 7.

Liberals' petri dish laid bare in Baltimore.  All the mayhem unfolding in Baltimore is nothing short of an unspeakable American tragedy.  Laid bare are the failures of cradle-to-grave social policies held so dear by politicians in both parties, but embraced and celebrated most lustily by Democrats.  These self-proclaimed Robin Hoods and do-gooders have issued open and unashamed invitations to the most vulnerable in society to become completely dependent upon government for everything from food to cellphones to home heating oil.  Left in the wake is the utter annihilation of families and the destruction of cohesive neighborhoods.  Complete dependency comes at such a high and bitter cost.  All in return for what really amounts to a sad pittance of welfare payments.  It is a twisted mockery of the American dream.

Baltimore's Self-Immolation: Democrats, You Built That.  It's really a tale of two cities, depending on who's telling the tale.  The borderline-Jacobins at Slate, who believe spanking is child abuse, and personal responsibility is out of fashion, try to explain looting away as a social phenomenon:  "Why would anyone burn down the only CVS in their neighborhood?"

Of Course Democrats Deserve the Blame for Baltimore.  If a person happens to point out that Baltimore's criminally inept government has been run exclusively by Democrats since 1967 (with one Republican mayor since 1947) and features not a single city councilor who isn't a liberal, he may be called a lazy apparatchik.  Because not everything, you see, is reducible to mere party politics.  Now, if an economic renaissance sparked by the progressive policies of Stephanie Rawlings-Blake had lifted Baltimore from poverty, I imagine Democrats would be eager to claim credit for the accomplishment.

The Left's Burning Cities.  Are the riots caused by the Baltimore Police Department's "documented history" of abuse?  Which party has run Baltimore and allowed its police officers to allegedly run amok? Going deeper, which American political movement lionizes public-employee unions, fiercely protecting them from even the most basic reform?  Public-employee unions render employee discipline difficult and often impossible.  Jobs are functionally guaranteed for life, and rogue officers can count on the best representation money can buy — courtesy of Blue America.

Riot-Plagued Baltimore Is a Catastrophe Entirely of the Democratic Party's Own Making.  St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since the 1940s, and in its most recent elections for the board of aldermen there was no Republican in the majority of the contests; the city is overwhelmingly Democratic, effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.  Baltimore has seen two Republicans sit in the mayor's office since the 1920s — and none since the 1960s.  Like St. Louis, it is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.  Philadelphia has not elected a Republican mayor since 1948.  The last Republican to be elected mayor of Detroit was congratulated on his victory by President Eisenhower.  Atlanta, a city so corrupt that its public schools are organized as a criminal conspiracy against its children, last had a Republican mayor in the 19th century.  Its municipal elections are officially nonpartisan, but the last Republican to run in Atlanta's 13th congressional district did not manage to secure even 30 percent of the vote; Atlanta is effectively a single-party political monopoly from its schools to its police department.

Baltimore Violence [is] the Fruit of Collectivism.  Granted, the violent faction achieved their presumed goal by garnering plenty of attention, but they created far more enemies than friends with their escapades.  In letting off steam in such a manner, they reinforced negative stereotypes, marred a legitimate protest, made people fear them, and necessitated a police crackdown, including 35 arrests.  Worst of all, they themselves acted on and perpetuated the conceptual root of racism:  collectivism.  Collectivism, both in its political and philosophical manifestations, places the importance of groups (collectives) above the rights of each individual.  Stemming from the fallacy that groups act, rather than individuals, collectivism also assigns responsibility to one's "people" — whatever group that may be — and fosters prejudices and division.

How Long Does America Have?  The riots followed a weekend in which GoFundMe shut down a fundraising page for a Christian-owned bakery that was hit with a huge fine for refusing to serve a gay wedding.  GoFundMe has said its policy precludes raising money "in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts."  The key word here is "hateful":  if you can expand or contract that word at will — which many people in this country can and do — you can accomplish anything.  Every week this country is consumed in a new distended orgy of polarized, mutual hatred, set against the backdrop of outrage mobs, race riots, shuttered businesses, scandals, Twitter-induced career ruination, gleeful smear parties, and partisan hackery.

Liberals against Perversion?  President Obama says that we are not at war with Islam but with those who have perverted Islam.  Since when have liberals been against perversion?  Name one other perversion they are against. [...] Liberals have ruined education.  They have turned civil rights into uncivil wrongs.  They have spoken power to truth.  They have politicized the churches.  They slaughter millions of birds with their [...] wind turbines.  They have turned reporters into propagandists.  They trick people into wearing ugly clothes and bizarre hairstyles.  They call noise music.  They design ugly buildings.  They even like weird furniture.  They don't mind perverting education, rights, truth, God's creatures, news, clothes, hair, music, architecture, furniture, anything, anything, anything, anything but Islam.

America's Decay Is Speeding Up.  There are no moral truths because there is no longer a religious basis for morality.  More than the Enlightenment, it was the Bible — especially the Hebrew Bible (which was one reason America's Christians were different from most European Christians) that guided the Founders' and other Americans' values.  Not anymore.  Instead of being guided by a code higher than themselves, Americans are taught to rely on their feelings to determine how to behave.  Instead of being given moral guidance, children are asked, "How do you feel about it?"

How the Baltimore Mayor's office explains her infamous 'space to destroy' remark.  With massive violence spreading in Baltimore on Monday, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is under fire for a statement she made over the weekend indicating that she ordered the city's police to give people the "space" to destroy property.  "I've made it very clear that I work with the police and instructed them to do everything that they could to make sure that the protesters were able to exercise their right to free speech," Rawlings-Blake said in a press conference.

Baltimore mayor's 'balancing act' gave protestors permission to turn violent.  "I wanted to give space to those who wished to destroy," that is how Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake described her policy Saturday [4/25/2015] at a press conference.  Her words, which effectively told police to stand down as those gathered to protest the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray smashed store windows, looted 7-Elevens and forced attendees at a Baltimore Oriole-Boston Red Sox baseball game to remain in the stadium because it wasn't safe outside.

Baltimore Is a Democrat Problem, Not America's Problem.  Contrary to the emotional blackmail some leftists are attempting to peddle, Baltimore is not America's problem or shame.  That failed city is solely and completely a Democrat problem.  Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor.

Colorado businessman blames 'stoned' workers for move to SC.  When workers at his Colorado business went to pot, Mark Brawner said it was enough for him to roll out of the Rockies and head for South Carolina.  Brawner, who ran Little Spider Creations out of an old Denver warehouse for years until this month, told KUSA-TV Thursday he moved because pot was hurting his company.  He said employees started to come to work stoned after the state legalized the drug for recreational use in 2012.

For the Left, Society's Death is Victory.  What can the left achieve when it no longer has to worry about a conservative opposition, budgets, democracy or any other obstacle to its great dreams?  Cities filled with old men and women who never had children.  Cities filled with young men and women who will never marry, who are still working on their fourth degree without ever having held a job.  Cities filled with multi-generational welfare recipients who are also the only ones having children.  Cities owned by foreign nations from their historic buildings to their imported booming populations.  That was the great accomplishment of a united Europe.  No children, no jobs and no future.  No great works, no civilizational progress and no golden age.

America's Soft Police State.  Even before 9-11, the Drug Enforcement Administration used judge-less warrants to harvest phone records.  How can this be?  Apologists for the federal administrative police state may cite the sometimes-inconsistent application of search and seizure practices at common law before the American Constitution was written.  Institutionalized bureaucratic violations of the Fourth Amendment, however, can be directly traced to the expansion of the administrative state under the New Deal.

This was unthinkable 50 years ago.  Thanks, liberals!
CA ballot initiative would keep boys out of girls' bathrooms.  A group called Privacy for All is trying to get enough signatures to create a ballot initiative in California that would prevent boys from going into girls' bathrooms and locker rooms, even if the boys wiggle when they walk and talk in high-pitched feminine voices.

When children are raised in godless, fatherless households, and morality is no longer taught in schools, stuff like this happens:
Defense Secretary: 10,400 Male Troops Subjected to 'Unwanted Sexual Contact' Last Year.  Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a group of ROTC cadets on Wednesday [4/22/2015] that sexual assault is a "particular challenge and a particular disgrace" to the U.S. military.  He noted that last year, far more men (10,400) than women (8,500) "experienced unwanted sexual contact."  "We've made some progress," Carter said.  "We seem to have seen some decrease in the estimated number of assaults, and we seem to have seen some increase in those reporting an assault.

These Blue States Have Tried the Elizabeth Warren Model. Their Residents Are Fleeing.  The blue states that try to lift up the poor with high taxes, high welfare benefits, high minimum wages and other Robin Hood policies tend to be the places where the rich end up the richest and the poor the poorest.

CPS' $228 million time bomb.  Even as it confronts a federal investigation that's embroiled its chief executive, Chicago's public school system is facing the prospect of having to make payments to four financial institutions that would largely wipe out its cash reserves.  And they could demand those payments with just 48 hours' notice, records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Chicago: Economic Death Spiral After 84 Years of Democratic Control.  Run by Democrats for more than eight decades, Chicago should serve as a showplace that reflects the wonderful world of "progressive policies."  Public schools are a mess, and the city's finances place their bonds at near junk level.  In 2013, the city averaged 36 homicides a month, with the majority of them unsolved. [...] Nationwide, 10 percent of all parents have their kids in private schools.  In Chicago, 39 percent of public school teachers with school-age children have their kids in private school.

Critics say California drought caused by misguided environment policies.  In an average year, California gets enough snow and rain to put 200 million acres under a foot of water, but environmental opposition to dams over the last several decades has allowed the majority of the freshwater to flow into the ocean, even as the state's population exploded to nearly 40 million people.  The current drought has left farms parched and residents under strict water consumption orders, but some say it didn't have to be that way.

Liberals blamed for California drought.  For California Gov. Jerry Brown to crack down on shower-taking and toilet-flushing to save precious quarts of water as millions of gallons flow into the Pacific Ocean doesn't make a lot of sense to Travis Allen. [...] With everyday Californians now on the hook for drastic conservation measures, Republicans say the time has come to focus on the real culprit:  a state and federal regulatory framework, fueled by environmental litigation, that requires a certain aquatic environment for at-risk fish while making it nearly impossible to build dams and other water-storage projects.

How the Environmentalists are Destroying California.  In 2007, they mobilized around saving the Delta Smelt, a three-inch baitfish, as an outgrowth of a policy that for decades put animal life and vegetation ahead of drinking water and food.  The Delta Smelt requires a rare and somewhat precise mixture of fresh and salt water.  It is by any measure a fragile species.  In August 2007, Federal Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the fresh water pumped into the Central Valley, the lifeblood of its economic base, threatened the survival of the Delta Smelt.  He ordered a severe reduction in the water directed to Central Valley agriculture.  The ruling (subsequently reversed for sloppy science and then upheld) resulted in a loss of thousands of jobs and acres of farmland. [...] The fight over the Delta Smelt [...] is a fight between people who value a baitfish over productive farmland and America's food resources.

Transgenderism: A Return to Pagan Mythology.  Declaring one's self to be other than what one is created is an assault on material and human reality — an exercise in magical thinking that is bound to run up against the reality of the created order, including the reality of humankind created as male and female.  Yet a recent article in the Daily Beast contains a complete glossary of gender options.  The glossary is currently comprised of 51 genders, among them an option to be "gender fluid," that is, having the ability to flit from one gender to another according to what the individual would like to be.  The idea is that though biologically one may be born with male or female parts, gender is a choice, not a fixed category.  Instead, gender is determined by how an individual feels about his or her self.

An Engineered Drought.  We're suffering the ramifications of the "small is beautiful," "spaceship earth" ideology of our cocooned elites.  Californians have adopted the ancient peasant mentality of a limited good, in which various interests must fight it out for the always scarce scraps.  Long ago we jettisoned the can-do visions of our agrarian forebears, who knew California far better than we do and trusted nature far less.  Now, like good peasants, we are at one another's throats for the last drops of a finite supply.

Moral Bullies and the Laws That Enable Them.  I think it's time to consider whether, in an effort to undo state mandated discrimination against blacks, we have gone too far afield and should scale back the push to regulate discrimination against a variety of protected groups in the private sphere.

Hash explosions prompt proposed changes in legal pot states.  Alarmed by a rash of explosions and injuries caused when amateurs make hash, lawmakers in Colorado and Washington are considering spelling out what's allowed when it comes to making the concentrated marijuana at home.

Stand Up for Indiana!  In what has been called the "Catholic moment" in America, in the late 1940s and 1950s, Catholics were admonished from pulpits to "live the faith" and "set an example" for others.  Public lives were to reflect moral beliefs. Christians were to avoid those "living in sin."  Christians who operated motels and hotels did not rent rooms to unmarried couples.  Fast forward to 21st-century America.  Indiana just enacted a law, as have 19 other states, to protect the rights of religious people to practice their beliefs in how they live their lives and conduct their businesses.  And the reaction?  Nearly hysterical.

The things professors say.  Colleges have been able to raise tuition at three times the rate of inflation for about half a century, thanks to massive subsidies and credit financed by the federal government, and their gatekeeper role as certifiers of intelligence for prospective employers.  Intelligence tests have been forbidden as a means of screening applicants, so as a means of screening, employers have had to rely on the certification provided by a college degree.  This has enabled prestigious colleges to act as the gatekeepers to high paying careers, and thereby extract crippling levels of tuition from parents desperate to launch their children on high-paying and prestigious careers.  Occidental College, for example, currently charges $47,522 a year for tuition.  Add in room and board, textbooks, travel and incidentals, and a parent must cough up a quarter million bucks or so to certify a child with an Oxy diploma.

Safety first.  Academia has given us so much for which not to be grateful — identity politics, race/gender studies and sundry unpleasantries. But it has topped itself now with one even better — the right to be treated as something quite fragile, always endangered and almost too precious to live.  Last December, the Boston Globe informed us that "students at Harvard Law School, joining their counterparts at a pair of other leading universities, have asked that final exams be postponed for students who have been 'traumatized' by recent grand jury decisions" in New York and Missouri, explaining "we cannot walk away from our pain."  In England, some female students suggested we move from clapping to hand waving to signal approval, as the sound of applause could be threatening.

Where God Loves Abortion and Hates Israel.  The Presbyterian Church (USA) is the Radio Shack of church denominations.  It's been in free fall for so long that it's sometimes difficult to believe the church is still around.  It makes news only when it makes bad news.  This is a church that has long embraced a culture of death by accepting abortion on demand.  Indeed, church materials have declared that abortion can even be "an act of faithfulness before God," and church policy states:  "The considered decision of a woman to terminate a pregnancy can be a morally acceptable, though certainly not the only or required, decision."

The fruits of multiculturalism:
British Girls Raped by Muslim Gangs on "Industrial Scale".  Nearly 400 British girls as young as eleven are believed to have been sexually exploited by Muslim rape gangs in Oxfordshire over the past 15 years, according to a chilling new report.  It charges local officials with repeatedly ignoring the abuse due to a "culture of denial."  The scale of the abuse in Oxfordshire, a county in southeast England, mirrors similarly shocking accounts of the sexual exploitation of white British girls by Muslim gangs in Bristol, Derby, Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford, and implies that the problem is not isolated, but endemic.

30 Blocks of Racism, Incompetence and Collapse.  Philadelphia's mayor is black.  Its previous mayor was black.  Its City Council is overwhelmingly black, with a few Hispanics and liberal union loving whites sprinkled in.  Its police chief is black.  Its fire commissioner is black.  Its school district is run by blacks.  The population of West Philly is 76% black.  And you know who is racist?  The black leadership of Philadelphia is racist.  Last week we had two ice/snowstorms that struck the Philadelphia area.  By the morning all of the roads in my northern suburban area were plowed and easily drivable.  When I got off the Schuylkill Expressway at Girard Avenue and entered West Philly, the land where snowplows and salt evidently don't exist, it was like I had arrived in a third world country where government services were nothing but a dream.

How liberal discipline policies are making schools less safe.  New York public-school students caught stealing, doing drugs or even attacking someone can avoid suspension under new "progressive" discipline rules adopted this month.  Most likely, they will be sent to a talking circle instead, where they can discuss their feelings.  Convinced traditional discipline is racist because blacks are suspended at higher rates than whites, New York City's Department of Education has in all but the most serious and dangerous offenses replaced out-of-school suspensions with a touchy-feely alternative punishment called "restorative justice," which isn't really punishment at all.  It's therapy.

Judges Order Sheriff to Remove American Flag From Courthouse.  By now you've all heard about the flag controversy at the University of California-Irvine, where the student government voted to ban flags, including the American flag, in student government offices.  While a higher student body vetoed that measure, the debate on the university's campus is not over.  Now, on the East Coast, we're seeing a similar controversy brewing at a courthouse in Virginia.

The Left's Destruction of Inner-City Communities.  Progressives and Democrats control every major city of any size and every major inner city of any size in America, as you've heard me say before.  Everything's that's wrong with the inner cities of America, that policy can affect progressives, leftists, Democrats are responsible for.  They have monopoly control in all these cities:  Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis.  There's not a Republican in sight.  Progressive welfare policies destroyed the black family beginning in the 1960s.  Seventy-five percent of African American children were born to two parents at that time.  Now, 80 percent in the inner cities are born out of wedlock.  The absence of a father and authority figure in the home, often complicated when the mother works as well as raising her children, has produced a series of pathologies which we summarize as the underclass, which were predicted by Daniel Moynihan in 1965, of violence, drug abuse, and criminality.

Ruinous 'Compassion': New Minimum Wage Laws Kick In.  It is fascinating to see brilliant people belatedly discover the obvious — and to see an even larger number of brilliant people never discover the obvious.  A recent story in a San Francisco newspaper says that some restaurants and grocery stores in Oakland's Chinatown have closed after the city's minimum wage was raised.  Other small businesses there are not sure they are going to survive, since many depend on a thin profit margin and a high volume of sales.

Seattle's New $15 Minimum Wage Law Causing Restaurants to Close All Over the City.  Since Seattle forced a raise in its minimum wage to $15 small businesses, especially restaurants, have been closing all across the city because they just can't afford the new wage and stay open.  Higher minimum wages always seem like a great idea to people as a general idea.  Unfortunately, in real life forced higher minimum wages are disastrous for all small businesses and Seattle is a perfect example of why it is a bad, bad idea.

Seattle restaurants going dark as $15 an hour minimum wage goes into effect.  Seattle is about to embark on a civic experiment that most experts predict will be an economic disaster; a $15 an hour minimum wage is set to go into effect on April 1st.  And some restuarants in the city have already shuttered their doors and are either going out of business or moving to friendlier climes.  This was entirely predictable — and was predicted when the measure passed the Seattle city council.

Decades of "self esteem" building in the public schools are paying off!
The Parenting Style That Turns Kids Into Narcissists.  Rearing kids to become adult narcissists seems easier today than at any other point in human history.  Just give them a smartphone, a few social media accounts, and a trophy for participation.  Right?  It's a reasonable presumption, but researchers at the University of Amsterdam took a more methodical approach to determine what kind of parenting yields narcissistic kids — those who "feel superior to others, fantasize about personal success, and believe they deserve special treatment."  The team studied 565 kids and 705 parents over two years and tested two hypotheses for what makes kids narcissists:  parental worship or a lack of parental warmth.

Whaddya Know: The Participation Trophy Era is Producing Kids Who Are Raging Narcissists.  When childhood is spent being rewarded for nothing, adulthood can be a bit difficult to navigate.  There seems to be no balance between avoiding damage to children's psyches and coddling them to the point of inducing neuroses.  Yes, psychotic, screaming parents at sporting events are awful, but last Saturday I saw pre-season parade for a Little League, celebrating merely getting through the registration process, I guess.  Narcissism is at the core of progressivism.  The sense of entitlement inherent in leftist ideology is being nurtured in public schools that decades ago began prioritizing feelings over achievement.

Planet Fitness cancels woman's membership after her complaints of transgender woman in locker room.  Yvette Cormier said the incident occurred Saturday, Feb. 28, when she entered the women's locker room at the Planet Fitness location at 701 Joe Mann Boulevard in Midland.  "I was blocked, because a man was standing there," Cormier said.  "It freaked me out because, why is a man in here?"  Cormier said an employee at the front desk told her that the individual identifies as a woman.  After taking her complaints to Planet Fitness' corporate office, Cormier said she was told that the gym was a "no judgement zone" and they would not tell the individual in question to stay out of the women's locker room.  The person has not been identified.

The Editor says...
A disgusting sex pervert shows up at the health club, and if you complain, you're the troublemaker.

No judging allowed: Planet Fitness drops member after gender identity complaint.  [Scroll down]  "I was stunned and shocked.  He looked like a man.  He did not look like a woman," says Cormier.  Cormier is talking about a person who walked into the woman's locker room while she was getting undressed.  She says she couldn't believe her eyes.  "This is very unprofessional.  This is very scary," continues Cormier.  Cormier says she immediately complained to the front desk and eventually to corporate offices.  "They told me the same thing, that he was allowed in there because that's the sex he wants to be," says Cormier.

Michigan gym reportedly bans woman over gender identity complaint.  A Michigan gym reportedly canceled a woman's membership after she refused to stop telling other members that "a man" was using the women's locker room.  Yvette Cormier told MLive.com that the incident occurred at a Planet Fitness on Feb. 28 when she walked into the woman's locker room and was "freaked out" because there was "a man" in there.  When Cormier told the front desk, employees told her that the person identifies as a woman.  Cormier took her case to the gym's corporate office, but was told that they would not tell the person to stay out of the women's locker room because the gym is a "no judgment zone."

The Editor says...
A normal person would reasonably surmise that a "no judgment zone" is a place where the gym rats won't make fun of a beginner because he can only bench-press 40 pounds, because at least he's trying to get in better shape.  Instead, this is a "no judgment zone" in liberal dystopia, where you no longer have the right to object to perversion, and you can no longer assume that only women are in the women's showers.

You Will Be Made To Accept.  [Scroll down]  Planet Fitness cancelled her membership because of this event... not because she didn't want a man in the women's locker room, but because of the way she expressed her feelings.  Planet Fitness, in other words, gets to play thought police.  There is, of course, a difference in what a private business does and what a government does — you have alternatives to Planet Fitness (and you really should choose them, not just because of this story) — but it is still an issue for those in the world who are not transgendered or believe that you can use whichever bathroom/dressing room/locker room you want based on how you feel.  The vocal minority wins the game because businesses are so afraid of the PR hit of being seen as bullies.  As a result, they cave to those vocal minorities and completely ignore the silent majorities that aren't comfortable with the change.

Facebook Now Allows Users to Create Their Own Gender Identity.  Facebook is now allowing users who find it hard to express their sex with the 58 existing field options to create their own gender identity by making the option fill-in-the-blank.  While the network's form originally offered two options, male or female, in February of 2014 it was updated to include alternatives for agender, androgenous, bigender, cisgender, non-binary, and many more.

Indian Country looks to marijuana as new moneymaker.  After making hundreds of billions of dollars running casinos, American Indian tribes are getting a good whiff of another potential moneymaker:  marijuana.  The first Tribal Marijuana Conference is set for Friday [2/27/2015] on the Tulalip Indian Reservation in Washington state as Indian Country gets ready to capitalize on the nation's expanding pot industry.  Organizers said representatives from more than 50 tribes in at least 20 states have registered, with total attendance expected to surpass 300.

36 Million Americans Lack Basic Work Skills.  A report conducted by the OECD and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education entitled Time for the U.S. to Reskill? has found that a staggering 36 million adults in the U.S. are "low-skilled."  That is, they lack the most basic skills in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving deemed minimally necessary for meaningful employment in a high-tech global economy.  According to the OECD, black and Hispanics are "three to four times more likely to have low skills than whites."

The Liberal Circus.  The liberal left got what it wanted in 2009 with a supermajority in the Senate and large majority in the House, a subservient mainstream media, the good will of the American people, and the most liberal president in American history.  It only took that liberal hierarchy six years to erode the Democratic Party to levels that we have not seen since the 1920s.  Almost every policy initiative we have seen — whether climate change, foreign policy, health care, or race relations — has imploded.  The answer to these failures has not been introspection, humility, or reevaluation why the liberal agenda proved unpopular and unworkable, but in paranoid fashion to double-down on it, convinced that its exalted aims must allow any means necessary — however farcical — to achieve them.  The logical result is the present circus.

Britain becomes first to allow babies with 3 genetic parents.  Britain has became the first country in the world to allow babies to be created with the DNA of three parents.  The House of Lords voted Tuesday to approve the use of a groundbreaking and controversial in-vitro fertilization technique known as three-parent IVF.  That followed a similar vote in the House of Commons earlier this month.  The technique would likely only be used in about a dozen cases a year in the U.K. involving women with faulty mitochondria, the energy-producing structures outside a cell's nucleus.

The Scorching of California by the Green Radical Left.  In the 1970s, coastal elites squelched California's near-century-long commitment to building dams, reservoirs, and canals, even as the Golden State's population ballooned.  Court-ordered drainage of man-made lakes, meant to restore fish to the 1,100-square-mile Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, partly caused central California's reservoir water to dry up.  Not content with preventing construction of new water infrastructure, environmentalists reverse-engineered existing projects to divert precious water away from agriculture, privileging the needs of fish over the needs of people.  Then they alleged that global warming, not their own foolish policies, had caused the current crisis.

More Obamacare victims noticing that they're on the hook to the IRS.  [W]hen these people realize that they have to give back money (around 53%, according to the above link and the Jackson Hewitt company), they are not going to react positively to the Democratic message of You should have known better.  Yes, perhaps they should have known better than to vote for Democratic politicians that pushed the policies that are now forcing taxpayers to pay out to the IRS... what, that's not what the Democrats meant?

Obama, Jon Stewart and Progressivism's Bodyguard of Lies.  The traditional courtroom oath used to require the witness to state "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God."  To emphasize God's role in this oath, the witness would place his hand on the Bible.  When a witness took that oath, even if he was only a moderately religious person, he could not escape the knowledge that he had put his soul on the line.  If he got creative in his testimony, he wasn't just lying to the court, he was lying to his Maker.  That's serious stuff.  For the past many years, though, the oath has been abbreviated in American courtrooms.  Now, witnesses about to testify keep their hands in their laps and state only "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."  The end.

If Marijuana Causes Lots Of Crashes, Why Are They So Hard To Count?  Last year, during a congressional hearing on the threat posed by stoned drivers, a representative of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was asked how many crash fatalities are caused by marijuana each year.  "That's difficult to say," replied Jeff Michael, NHTSA's associate administrator for research and program development.  "We don't have a precise estimate."  The most he was willing to affirm was that the number is "probably not" zero.

More Cities Following D.C.-Area Lead, Debating Non-Citizen Voting Rights.  More cities are trying to follow in the footsteps of D.C.-area jurisdictions to give non-citizens the right to vote in municipal elections.  Though many of these proposals have failed, the Washington Post notes that activists in Amherst, Massachusetts, Madison, Wisconsin, and Burlington, Vermont are also clamoring to give voting rights to non-citizens.

Hard work of fixing the Deadbeat State begins with confronting unions.  Thanks to years of poor and corrupt rule and an equally corrupt judicial branch, Illinois has become nearly ungovernable.  Its revenues are now insufficient to cover its operating expenses, and so the state was forced last year to pay $7 billion in IOUs instead of cash to its vendors.  Yet Illinois tax rates — ratcheted up in 2011 in a futile effort to end the state's status as a deadbeat — are already so high that businesses are fleeing to neighboring Indiana and Wisconsin.

LensCrafters Offers Nine Marital Status Choices.  If you list your marital status as "Interlocutory," LensCrafters wants you to feel included.  Polygamists, too.  Today at LensCrafters I was handed an iPad and instructed to "update my medical history" prior to my eye exam.  Purportedly for the sake of greater efficiency and accuracy, I was confronted with screen after screen of repetitive requests for information, most of which should have already been in their database. [...] In addition to the repetitive requests for my address and phone number(s!!) were more intrusive demographic questions, including an inquisition about my race and ethnic background.  And right there on the very first screen was a mini-interrogation about the intimate details of my marital status.  Am I married?  Divorced?  Widowed?  Never Married?  Interlocutory?

Minimum Wage Hike Closes San Francisco Bookstore.  An independent San Francisco bookstore says it will be closing its doors by March 31, despite having its best year ever in 2014.  And it's pointing at San Francisco's newly enacted minimum wage law as the reason.

Minimum Wage Hike Hits Home in SF.  This is a bookstore that has survived the doubling of rent in San Francisco, the impact of Amazon and other online retailers on book sales, and the recession.  But despite all of that, it is the city's new $15 an hour minimum wage that will finally put them over the edge.

Only one in 10 pupils at east London primary speaks English as first language.  A fly-on-the-wall television documentary reveals that in 1997 at Gascoigne Primary School in Barking, East London, 90 percent of pupils spoke English as their first language.  That figure has now fallen to ten percent.  More than 60 different languages are spoken by the youngsters, according to the four-part series.  The documentary shows foreign children struggling to cope because they do not speak English, while teachers and even other pupils devote time during lessons to helping them.

The Editor says...
The scattering of the nations, imposed as punishment at the Tower of Babel, is now being reversed by multiculturalism, and this is the result.

N.J. property taxes top $8,000 per home after rising 2.2 percent last year.  New Jersey's sky-high property taxes rose to new heights last year, from an average $7,988 in 2013 to $8,161 in 2014, according to data from the Department of Community Affairs.  The nearly 2.2 percent increase breaks down to an extra $173 for the average property taxpayer, on top of what were already the highest property taxes in the country.

Colorado considers ban on welfare cards at pot shops.  Welfare money or food stamps for marijuana?  It's an urban legend that won't go away in Colorado, and state lawmakers this year are poised to pass a law clarifying that public benefit cards can't be used at dispensary ATMs.

The Left Realizes Too Late that Political Correctness Is a Virus.  It is enormous fun for conservatives to write long essays that rail against and mock the scourge of "political correctness," and yet, as I am coming to learn, it is also a monumental waste of our time.  As a genuine "liberal" in the classical sense of the word, I have no particular objections if people wish to descend into surrealism and intolerance.  But I am under no obligation to indulge them either.

This is a byproduct of rabid environmentalism:
Seattle government now going through citizens' trash for public shaming, revenue.  Sure, the incentive to compost is the putative reason for this regulation, but exactly how is it enforced?  In order for city officials and trash collectors to know you have committed the civic sin of disposing of leftover food in your trashcan, they have to examine the contents of your trashcan.  Let's hope the citizens of Seattle and trash collectors can come to some kind of silent truce over this.

This is a byproduct of same-sex marriage:
Houston woman marries herself in elaborate ceremony.  A woman who vowed that if she didn't find love by the time she turned 40 married herself earlier this month in a lavish ceremony here in Houston, according to reports.  Yasmin Eleby married herself at the Houston Museum of African American Culture on January 3 in a lavish ceremony with 10 bridesmaids in attendance, plus family and other guests on hand to celebrate the event.  For this ceremony, Eleby's minister sister performed the spiritual service, as it's not legal to marry yourself.

The Editor says...
What does that mean?  It isn't legal, unless your sister officiates?

Pennsylvania's new physician general brings an LGBT point of view.  Rachel Levine stood tall in the doorway, offered a polite handshake, and took a seat at the L-shaped desk in her drab, blank slate of an office.  The room, with its empty bookshelves, dual computer screens, and not much else, seemed appropriately open to possibility as the headquarters for a woman about to chart new territory.  Levine, who has just been named Pennsylvania's physician general, spent most of her 57 years — at least outwardly — as a man.

Transsexual Weirdo Rachel Levine Nominated to Be Pennsylvania Physician General.  No, Tiny Tim did not come back from the dead with a bleach job.  That's actually a woman — or at least, the media expects us to regard him as a woman. [...] Governor Wolf says that Levine was chosen not because he shows up for work in women's clothes, but in part because of his "extensive background" in "behavioral health."

Liberals Exploit Race & Gender.  The growth and impoverishment of the black underclass in cities governed for decades by Democrats is our greatest domestic tragedy.  Blaming it on mostly mythical white racism obscures the real causes, prevents solutions.  But if liberals acknowledged the progress that's been made, more blacks might wonder why all the "help" they've gotten from Democrats has done them so little good.  So they pretend every year is 1963.

Governor: Legalizing pot was bad idea.  Colorado's decision to legalize marijuana was a bad idea, the state's governor said Friday [1/23/2015].  Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat who opposed the 2012 decision by voters to make pot legal, said the state still doesn't fully know what the unintended consequences of the move will be.

Colorado governor explains why legalizing marijuana in the state was a bad idea.  Speaking on CBNC's 'Squawk Box', the 62-year-old Democrat said:  'If I could've waved a wand the day after the election, I would've reversed the election and said, "This was a bad idea".'  Gov Hickenlooper, who opposed the 55 percent 'yes' decision by voters to make marijuana legal, warned the state still does not fully know what the unintended consequences of the ruling will be.

Odd Byproduct of Legal Marijuana: Homes That Blow Up.  When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses.  But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the state are confronting these days:  amateur marijuana alchemists who are turning their kitchens and basements into "Breaking Bad"-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.

People are fleeing N.J. faster than any other state, moving company says.  Nearly two of every three families making an interstate move involving New Jersey last year were leaving the Garden State, the highest rate in the country.  New Jersey had the greatest percentage of outbound moves of any state nationally last year with almost 65 percent departing, according to a company which bills itself as the largest transporter of household goods in the country.  The Garden State has led the nation in outward migration for the fourth time in five years.  In all, United said it tracked 4,003 moves out of New Jersey in 2014 compared to 2,169 inbound.

15 Statistics That Destroy Liberal Narratives.  [#13] The more progressive the city, the worse a place it is to be poor and/or black.  The most pronounced economic inequality in the United States is not in some Republican redoubt in Texas but in San Francisco, an extraordinarily expensive city in which half of all black households make do with less than $25,000 a year.  Blacks in San Francisco are arrested on drug felonies at ten times their share of the general population.  At 6 percent of the population, they represent 40 percent of those arrested for homicides.  Whether you believe that that is the result of a racially biased criminal-justice system or the result of higher crime incidence related to socioeconomic conditions within black communities (or some combination of those factors) what is undeniable is that results for black Americans are far worse in our most progressive, Democrat-dominated cities than they are elsewhere.  The progressives have had the run of things for a generation in these cities, and the results are precisely what you see.

The fruits of cowardice and appeasement.  Aside from murderous attacks primarily directed against Jews in Europe over recent months, there have been ongoing massacres and atrocities committed by Islamic terrorists throughout the world.  To name a few:  the butchering of 2,000 Nigerians in the wake of the Boko Haram enslavement of 300 schoolgirls; the murder of 130 schoolchildren in Peshawar, Pakistan, by the Taliban; the barbaric videos broadcast of hostages being decapitated; ongoing mass murder in Syria and Iraq; oppression of women; and gruesome persecution, expulsion and murder of Christians in the Middle East.  Today, as the global impact of Islamic fundamentalism grows exponentially, with increasing manifestations of brutal terrorism, Western leaders lack the courage to even identify the enemy.

The Obama Economic Record is Even Worse than You Realize.  Six years ago this month, America cast its lot toward a young, first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois to lead the greatest nation in the world.  His mesmerizing words and bold promises drew folks in by the millions.  However, unless you're a bleeding heart liberal, you realize the social experiment of electing an unqualified, former professional antagonizer has been an economic disaster.  The quantitative evidence, and it abundant, is overwhelming and ever-growing.

Youth Misery Index Grows More Than 50% Under Obama Adminstration.  Young America's Foundation has released its Youth Misery Index (YMI) numbers for 2014, and it's a record high of 106.5.  The Youth Misery Index (YMI) is calculated by adding youth unemployment, student loan debt, and national debt (per capita) numbers.  Young people are experiencing hardships like never before under the Obama administration, and this generation is especially suffering the consequences of this administration's leftist policies.

'Walking Dead,' the Constitution and the Roman Empire.  Thanks in part to President Barack Obama and his pledge to fundamentally transform the United States, and in even larger measure to the lethargic indifference of the citizens of the country to what is being done to them, the constitutional republic founded in 1787 has more or less ceased to exist. [...] This disaster did not happen overnight like the one on the TV series.  It's been under way for more than 50 years, maybe ever since 1914 when Woodrow Wilson was president and the progressives started to make "minor" adjustments in how the Constitution was interpreted.

America Is Being Transformed Into Brazil.  Our dishwasher broke just after Christmas.  The timer stopped working, and a new one costs about $100.  My wife suggested that since the dishwasher is nineteen years old, we should buy a new one.  Up until now it was working very quietly and efficiently, washing and drying a full load in about an hour.  We visited the appliance shop where we had recently purchased a new clothes washing machine a few months earlier.  I mentioned to the salesman that our new washer was very slow, taking nearly two hours to finish a large load compared to our old one, which took about 35 minutes.  With a bright smile, he explained that that was because of the new federal energy efficiency standards for clothes washers enacted by the Obama administration's Department of Energy in May 2012.

N.J. is a terrible place for small businesses, analysis finds.  Less than two months after a report was released that declared New Jersey has the worst tax climate for business owners, the state received more unwanted recognition.  The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council recently released rankings of how friendly each state is for the organization's constituents.  Not surprisingly, the Garden State fared poorly.  In fact, only California finished with a worse score in the rankings the SBE&C compiled.

Colorado voters may allow pot smokers to carry concealed firearms.  Colorado was the first state to legalize recreational marijuana sales.  Now the state's voters may consider a ballot measure to allow pot smokers to carry a concealed firearm.  The Colorado Campaign for Equal Gun Rights is working to put a question on the November 2016 ballot to have Colorado ignore guidelines from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about firearms and pot.  The measure would change state law to prevent sheriffs from denying concealed-carry permits because of marijuana use.

The Race Card's Steep Cost.  The cold-blooded murder of two New York City policemen as they sat in their car is not only an outrage but also a wake-up call.  It shows, in the most painful way, the high cost of having demagogues, politicians, mobs, and the media constantly taking cheap shots at the police.  Those cheap shots are in fact very expensive shots, not only to the police themselves but to the whole society.  Someone once said that civilization is a thin crust over a volcano.  The police are part of that thin crust.

Sheriff Clarke: Obama, Holder, Blasio Made 'Pathway That Contributes to Unjustifiable Hatred' of Police.  President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have fueled animosity towards the police through political rhetoric and "created a pathway that contributes to an unjustifiable hatred of law enforcement officers across the country," said Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr., now in his 37th year of law enforcement and who was named the 2013 Sheriff of the Year.

As Police Die, Racism Narrative Unravels.  After four months of non-stop condemnations of the police and the justice system for both racism and deliberately targeting African Americans for violence, it is time for the race hucksters and their political enablers such as President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to stop the campaign of incitement against the police.

Neighboring States Sue Colorado Over Marijuana Legalization.  The Attorneys General of two neighboring states, Nebraska and Oklahoma, are suing Colorado in order to have their marijuana legalization policy declared unconstitutional.  Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said in a statement that Colorado's policy has "injured Oklahoma's ability to enforce our policies against marijuana."

Transgender Student Files Federal Complaint Against School District For Banning Him From The Boys Restroom.  A transgender teenager in rural Virginia is taking his case to the U.S. Department of Justice, arguing in a complaint that the Gloucester County School Board violated his rights by approving a policy this month prohibiting students from using restrooms that do not correspond to their "biological genders."  The complaint, sent Thursday, argues the school board ran afoul of Title IX, a 1972 law that bans gender-based discrimination, which has been interpreted recently to protect students from discrimination based on their gender identify.

DOJ: Employers Can't Discriminate Against Transgendered.  On Thursday, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new interpretation of the Civil Rights Act meant to prevent employers from discriminating against people who claim the status of a transgendered person.  Holder announced in a memo that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to the transgendered.  "This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status," Holder said in the announcement.

Holder Decrees Crossdressing Protected Under Federal Law.  Attorney General Eric Holder has issued an edict, through a memorandum, that cross dressing and transsexualism is now protected under federal civil rights laws which were designed to protect women from sex discrimination.  Existing federal law provides no statutory support for treating cross-dressers and transsexuals as the law treats female victims of discrimination.  This means that the Justice Department could now, for example, consider the decision by a school or church to not hire a transvestite as a violation of federal law.

Politically Intimidated Police Afraid to Shoot Maniac Who Chased Them With Butcher Knife.  The insane consequences of the fabricated "police brutality" spectacle that began in Ferguson are already putting lives at risk.

Income Inequality Is Greatest In the Most Liberal States.  The list of worst-run states — compiled by the news site 24/7 Wall St. using things like pension funding, credit ratings, unemployment, poverty, crime and high school graduation rates — shows that three of the bottom five are liberal.  Illinois ranks dead last, followed by New Mexico, with Rhode Island coming in at No. 5.  At the other end of the spectrum, only one of the top 5 best-run states — Minnesota — is liberal.  North Dakota comes in first, followed by Wyoming, Nebraska and Iowa.  Liberal states also show up, amazingly enough, as having the greatest levels of income inequality.

This is what "inclusion" and "multiculturalism" and unrestricted immigration will bring:
Muhammad is [the] Most Popular Name in Britain for New-born Boys.  Muhammad is the most popular name for boys in Britain, pushing the traditional British names of Oliver and Jack into second and third place respectively, according to the website BabyCentre.  There is a surge in Arabic names generally, with Nur a new entry in the girls' top 100, jumping straight to number 29, and Maryam rising 59 places to number 35.  Omar, Ali, and Ibrahim are new to the boys' top 100.

Not working for the working class.  [Scroll down]  So if Democrats want to win back the white working class — and they kind of need to, if they want to win elections, because it's an enormous demographic — maybe they need to start thinking about honoring and encouraging work, rather than talking about race or class.  One person who has some ideas in this direction is Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who suggests that the government invest heavily in infrastructure, which would create a lot of blue-collar jobs.  That was actually an original part of Barack Obama's stimulus plan, but it was derailed by feminists within the Obama coalition who thought it would produce too many jobs for men.

More about feminism and anti-masculinism.

EPA's goofy green-energy rules.  The EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan regulations are the most expansive and economically disruptive rules in four decades from an agency that is notorious for its reckless disregard for the financial consequences of regulation under the Clean Air Act.  The EPA's rule aims to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 30 percent.  That's an enormous and costly burden on our power generating utilities.  According to Energy Ventures Analysis, an energy research firm, the annual costs for residential, commercial and industrial energy customers in America would be about $173 billion higher in 2020 — a 37 percent increase.  Average annual household gas and power bills would increase by $680 or 35 percent.

More about the Democrats' war on coal.

Minnesota churches go gluten-free for communion.  The communion host, the centerpiece of Christian religious services, is undergoing a 21st-century transformation to match the growing food sensitivities of folks in the pews.  Alongside the white and whole wheat bread, gluten-free wafers are making their way into churches across Minnesota.

The Editor says...
If the gluten content of a communion wafer is your foremost thought at church, you are wasting your time there.

Airline: 'Emotional support' pig kicked off flight for being 'disruptive'.  A woman was kicked off a US Airways flight after the pig she brought for "emotional support" became disruptive, an airline spokeswoman told CNN.  The passenger and her large pig were booted from the flight before it left Connecticut's Bradley International Airport on Wednesday, spokeswoman Laura Masvidal said.  "After the animal became disruptive, the passenger was asked to deplane," she said.  How disruptive?  Fellow passengers told the Hartford Courant that the pig stank up the cabin of the tiny DC-bound aircraft.

The Editor says...
There's not one person in a million who would complain about a guide dog for a blind passenger, even if the dog smelled bad.  This business of taking a pig everywhere (as a sidekick for the emotionally disturbed) is a very recent development.  I suspect the idea must have originated on one of the many TV talk shows that specialize in hypochondria, and now the animal rights and "special needs" activists are seeing how much the public will tolerate.  It's one thing to sit in the park and mumble to yourself, but if you are so close to a breakdown that you need to cradle a pig on a commercial airline flight, you should be locked away in a rubber room.

GA:"We is teenagers, don't shoot me".  Has the use of the word "teenager" by the old media given criminal teens a sense of immunity?  You see it again and again.  Trayvon Martin is constantly referred to as a teenager, as though that somehow absolved him of his crimes.  Most male children, who are brought up in intact families, do not become predatory creatures in their teens.  But for those who do not have strong, moral, male role models in their lives, especially if this is the default position in their community, predation is a common role. [...] The "progressive" position seems to be that "children" are inherently good.  That is not true.  Children are inherently selfish and amoral.  In Christianity, this is recognized as original sin.  Each child is a wild animal that must be civilized and taught moral virtues.  This is much harder to do in a single parent home.

Descriptive versus Prescriptive: Another Left-Wing Scam.  Teaching is typically prescriptive, and that's how it should be.  Schools should teach the right ways to do things.  (This approach has got to be far more efficient than what many public schools are now doing:  teach no ways at all, or teach all the ways as if none is preferable.)  Bottom line, what newspapers call Standard English should be taught first.  That seems to be what our left-wing professors are eager to stop.

Obama Shreds Constitution.  [Scroll down]  Nothing was done to stem the tide of the Democrat Party's Sanctuary Movement, and other cities in the U.S. followed Chicago's example.  A few months later New York's mayor Ed Koch distributed a "memo" to city agencies specifically stating that all city benefits and privileges be given to residents regardless of citizenship status.  What has followed has been an avalanche of illegal immigrant entries into the U.S.  From 1990 to 2000 the U.S. grew by 30 million persons, the most ever in a ten-year period, and the majority of these persons are illegal immigrants and their children.  Illegal immigration is the greatest scheme of political corruption in history and is already the most expensive.

It's Time to Save the American Family; A Joyless Experiment Strained to the Limit.  While it's true that a Conservative wave just swept the USA in the 2014 elections, the accumulated damage of progressive theory upon the American culture has been nothing short of devastating.  The list of areas where Americans are now struggling because of the importation of foreign ideas against American ideals is staggering.  The family is probably the most endangered because of the incursion against traditional, biblical and common sense practice.  Anti-Americanism has been institutionalized for decades, as a result of creeping Marxism affecting our teachers, instructional materials, and in the minds of the mandarin elites, daily spewing their contempt for tradition into the media, academia, and Hollywood.

Marijuana Patient Sues After Firm Won't Hire Her.  A graduate student has sued a textile company for refusing to hire her for a two-month internship because she uses medical marijuana to treat frequent and debilitating migraine headaches, a decision her lawyer calls discrimination.

Trouble In Transtopia: Murmurs Of Sex Change Regret.  Everyone has regrets.  Some of us have big regrets. Most everyone has some place to go to get help dealing with them.  Except for, say, a guy who had sex-change surgery and now would like to have his penis back.  (The one God gave him.)  Our culture seems pretty much "to each his own" when it comes to elective bodily mutilation and the regret thereof.  And there's a lot of regret out there.

Schools propose: Let boys into girls locker rooms.  If you live in Minnesota, your high-school daughter might soon be showering next to a male after athletic practice if a "transgender" policy being considered by the Minnesota State High School League is approved next month.  And beyond Minnesota? Such a policy could be coming to other states, too, if there is not already one in place.

National Cathedral to Host First Muslim Prayer.  Washington National Cathedral is hosting a Muslim prayer service for the first time on Friday [11/14/2014].  Planners say they hope Friday's service at the historic cathedral will foster more understanding and acceptance between Christians and Muslims around the world.

Gay Activists on Transgender 8-Year-Old 'Coming Out': 'Pint-Size Hero'.  Gay activists are hailing an eight-year-old girl for "coming out" to her mother as transgender in a video filmed at Camp Aranu'tiq, a camp for "transgender and gender variant youth."  In the video, the girl — dressed like a boy — tells her mother that she is her son.  "It looks like we just found our new pint-size hero," an article posted on Huffington Post's Gay Voices section stated.  "Alex hasn't even left elementary school but he already has a firm grasp on his identity and what it means to be transgender."

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea,
than that he should offend one of these little ones."

— Luke 17:2                              

Minneapolis School District Announces "Raced Based Discipline" — Whites Will Be Suspended, Blacks and Minorities Will Be "Reviewed".  We have tracked this intent for 5 years as it evolved from theory, to hidden practice, to policy discussion, then presidential executive order, and now into full blown implementation.  Both Miami-Dade and Maryland Schools did it secretly.  At least the Minneapolis School District is being open about their intentions, all former districts have done it without telling the public.  Minneapolis will now institute a policy of disciplinary suspension for white students, but blacks and other minorities will not be suspended and allowed intolerant behavior to correct the disparate impact.

The Editor says...
Would you (or do you) send your child to a school where the blacks face no consequences for their actions, just because they're black?

Couple fined for refusing to host same-sex wedding on their farm.  Cynthia and Robert Gifford are caught in a same-sex nightmare.  They've been forced to defend themselves against claims that they're lesbian-hating homophobes.  "We respect and care for everyone!" Cynthia Gifford told me.  "We had an openly gay man working for us this past season," she said.  "We've had a woman who's transitioning to be a man.  We don't discriminate against anyone."  But the government of the state of New York sees things differently.

Cleveland's 'bathroom bill' puts women, children in danger.  The Cleveland (Ohio) City Council is conducting a public hearing Wednesday afternoon [11/12/2014] to discuss a proposal that would permit men and women to enter public restrooms, locker rooms, and showers of their choice — including restrooms located in businesses.  Local news media report the ordinance is being considered "in an effort to help transgendered people feel more comfortable" using those public facilities.

4 charts that expose the invisible side of homelessness.  New York City and Massachusetts are legally obligated to provide shelter to all homeless residents year-round, while Washington, DC must do so when temperatures fall below freezing.  In all three places, family homelessness increased by roughly 40% since 2011 in the midst a national decrease of 8%.  Major cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, Seattle and San Francisco saw no change or even a decrease in family homelessness.

It's the Socialist Democrat Party on Tuesday's ballot.  [Scroll down]  For the truth is, in all but name, the Democrat Party is the Socialist Democrat Party that is giddily well on its way to completion of the Fundamental Transformation of America.  Even though half the country did not vote for him, this is what millions of Americans, promised Hope & Change by Obama back in 2008 got to date: a vulnerable borderless country, an all-but-gutted military, increased threats of Islamic terrorism and an Ebola pandemic.  But the biggest change notwithstanding all of the above in Obama's promise of change is that millions of Americans no longer have jobs and little hope of ever finding a new one.

Which Cities Have the Least Bad Unemployment Rates?  In March 2009, Provo, Utah saw the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 5.1% and Modesto, California had the highest at 17.5%.  Moreover, five of the six worst unemployment rates are located in California.  Similarly, from March 2008 to March 2009, ten of the 15 areas with the largest change in the unemployment rate were located in California and Florida.

New Jersey ranks last in business tax climate, again.  For the second year in a row, New Jersey's tax climate for business is the worst in the nation, according to a report released Wednesday [10/29/2014]. [...] In the latest report, New Jersey earned its best ranking in the individual category for unemployment insurance tax rank, at 32.  But the Garden State continues to suffer from high property taxes (50), high sales tax (48), high income tax (48) and a high corporate tax (41), according to the report.

Obama Administration Allows Fertility Clinics To Sell US Citizenship.  President Barack Obama's administration has decided to let the surrogate birth industry sell U.S. citizenship — and access to the U.S. welfare system — to foreign parents who never even set foot in the United States.  The fertility clinics will be able to pocket the profits, after granting access to American education, health, welfare and retirement services to the foreign children and the foreign parents.

What I Have Learned From Debating Young Liberals.  How can a person go through life parroting talking points?  What is going to happen to the individual when he or she is faced with reality?  Most importantly, what is going to happen to America with these individuals as future leaders?

Electricity Prices Soaring In Top Wind Power States.  From 2008-2013 electricity prices rose an average of 20.7 percent in the top 10 wind power states, which is seven-fold higher than the national electricity price increase of merely 2.8 percent.

More about wind energy.

City Threatens to Arrest Ministers Who Refuse to Perform Same-Sex Weddings.  Two Christian ministers who own an Idaho wedding chapel were told they had to either perform same-sex weddings or face jail time and up to $1,000 in daily fines, according to a lawsuit filed Friday [10/17/2014] in federal court.  Alliance Defending Freedom is representing Donald and Evelyn Knapp, two ordained ministers who own the Hitching Post Wedding Chapel in Coeur d'Alene.  "Right now they are at risk of being prosecuted," attorney Jeremy Tedesco told me.  "The threat of enforcement is more than just credible."

More about same-sex marriage.

Obama's Enablers in the Senate.  Barack Obama isn't running merely the worst American presidency since James Buchanan's, but the worst imaginable presidency in this day and age.  And every single Senate Democrat is thoroughly complicit in Obama's horrendous record.  Is there a single Obama initiative that has actually worked as advertised, or even one that has improved the lives of most Americans or improved the U.S.'s standing in the world?

Pets Allowed.  [A]n increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments, cohabiting with them in animal-unfriendly apartment buildings and dormitories, and taking them (free!) onto airplanes — simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being.  No government agency keeps track of such figures, but in 2011 the National Service Animal Registry, a commercial enterprise that sells certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up twenty-four hundred emotional-support animals.  Last year, it registered eleven thousand.

'LGBT': The 'T' is for Tyranny.  Washington state, dateline 2012: Colleen is just like the girl next door.  Well, sort of.  Colleen has a penis.  So, I guess, unless the girl next door has a penis, Coleen really isn't much like her at all.  But that's beside the point.  In Washington you must, under penalty of law, pretend, along with Colleen and Democrats that, in the face of both reality and sanity, Colleen really is like the girl next door.  This includes letting Colleen, who is actually a 47-year-old dude named Clay Scott Francis, lay naked and "sprawled out in a sauna exposing himself" to girls as young as 6 years old.  This really happened in the ladies locker room at Evergreen State College.  It's only fair, you see, because, as Clay, er, "Colleen," complained, and as police agreed, this sick bastard was "discriminated against" when he was asked to leave on behalf of a terrorized 17-year-old girl.

Liberals Wage War on the Truth.  In the history of our nation, only the pro-slavery Democrats of the 19th century rival the political deception employed by today's liberals that lead the modern Democrat Party.  Support of everything from abortion, to gender perversions, homosexuality, pornography, a redefinition of marriage, wicked climate policies, and an enslaving welfare state have made today's Democrat Party little more than a modern-day Mephistopheles.  Instead of magic to lure their Faustian targets, today's Democrats employ, among other things, bribery, class warfare, fear, greed, lust, propaganda, scientism, vengeance, and violence.  This is really unsurprising.  When your politics regularly conflict with absolute truth, constant deception is required.

The Power of Perversity.  Last week I heard a young woman speak to Rush Limbaugh about the paradigm under which the younger generations operate.  Her thesis was that the young have been so trained to feel bad about being white, about being well-fed, about being American, about being "oppressors," that they make both their personal and political decisions from a stance of abject repentance.  Whenever they have to make a decision — a buying choice, a voting choice — they choose that which would present the least benefit for themselves.  They vote and buy penitently, painfully.  They seek primarily self-flagellation.  They seek that which they know will be bad — for them and for the country, which they think is the fount of all misery and unfairness.  I really tuned into this call because I've been aware for quite some time of the perverse nature of most liberal positions.  Any behavior, purchase, or political decision that we would traditionally consider either morally good or monetarily beneficial, the younger generations categorically reject.

Expert's devastating 20-year study finally demolishes claims that smoking pot is harmless.  A definitive 20-year study into the effects of long-term cannabis use has demolished the argument that the drug is safe.  Cannabis is highly addictive, causes mental health problems and opens the door to hard drugs, the study found.  The paper by Professor Wayne Hall, a drugs advisor to the World Health Organisation, builds a compelling case against those who deny the devastation cannabis wreaks on the brain.

Harvard Divinity School Introduces 'All Gender' Restroom.  The Twitter account for Harvard Divinity School published a photograph of a sign outside a campus restroom.  The restroom is labeled an "all gender restroom" and the sign adds that "anyone can use this restroom, regardless of gender identity or expression."

Toll Worker: Boss Told Me Not to Say 'God bless you'.  A former New Jersey toll booth worker said she was told by her supervisor to stop saying "God bless you," because it might offend motorists.  Cynthia Fernandez has filed a lawsuit against the Garden State Parkway claiming her former boss violated her First Amendment rights.  "I was so upset, I was crying" the mother of three told me.  "There's nothing wrong with saying 'God bless you.'"

Victory! Boys born as boys can shower with girls in Kentucky school.  I probably would have missed this story were it not for Maggie Gallagher at The Corner.  It seems that the good people on the appeal board considering a case at Atherton High School (part of the Jefferson County public school system) have determined that you can use the girls' bathrooms, locker room and showers if you say you're a girl.  No physical required.

Transgenderism Is A Mental Illness, Not A Civil Rights Issue.  If someone came to a doctor and asked him to cut off a perfectly healthy arm because it just felt "wrong" for the arm to be there, should the doctor do it?  This isn't an idle question because this does happen with a mental illness called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID).  People who have it feel as if they're not supposed to have a certain body part, like an arm or leg.  As a general rule, doctors won't remove a healthy body part; so some of these poor deluded people crush, mangle, burn, or otherwise deliberately destroy their own arms or legs in order to get a surgeon to slice them off.  This raises a question:  Are surgeons who refuse to remove healthy limbs from people with BIID doing them a service because they're mentally ill or are they denying them their civil rights?

The clean fuels' program is a hidden tax on gas.  Many politicians on the West Coast have fallen in love with untested policies and programs they say will help solve global warming.  Many of these policies are mind-bogglingly complicated.  What, after all, is a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS), or clean fuels program?  And how exactly do programs like "cap and trade" work?  And, perhaps most importantly, how do these policies impact you, the consumer?  Here's the dirty little secret the politicians don't want to talk about:  All of these policies are going to make it more costly to produce gasoline and diesel.

Consequences From Disparate Impact Rules In School — High School Senior Rapes Teacher On Campus.  A Florida high school senior confessed to raping a teacher on campus and fleeing the scene of the crime in her stolen car.  Homestead Police arrested 18-year-old Victor Marshall Nash after the Friday [9/19/2014] attack.  He made his first court appearance Monday, where a judge set the South Dade Senior High School student's bond at $62,500.  Police said Nash attacked two hours after the final bell Friday [9/26/2014].

Unprovoked machete attack by illegal aliens caught on camera in Chicago.  A horrific machete attack by an illegal alien gang on two innocent young men waiting on a platform for a Chicago El train has been caught on surveillance camera, and is making big news in Chicago.  Chicago is, of course, a sanctuary city for illegal aliens under the policies of Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Tuberculosis Outbreak Feared in Massachusetts After Obama Ships Hundreds of Illegals There.  Crime, disease, racial strife, terrorism, violence, and war.  Yep, we've got a Democrat President, alright.

D.C. Ranks in Top 10 for Households Receiving Public Assistance in 2012.  In 2012, the District of Columbia, the home of the federal government, ranked in the top 10 in the United States for having the highest percentage of households receiving public assistance, according to data from the Census Bureau.  According to the report, Public Assistance Receipt:  2000 to 2012, 3.9 percent of households in D.C. received public assistance in 2012, or about 10,456 households, which was up from the 3.7 percent in 2011.  The District came in seventh in the ranking, behind 1) Alaska, 2) Maine, 3) Vermont, 4) Oregon, 5) California, and 6) Washington.

The Editor says...
Hmmm... What do all those states have in common?

Marijuana's Hazy Contribution to Highway Deaths.  As states liberalize their marijuana laws, public officials and safety advocates worry there will be more drivers high on pot and a big increase in traffic deaths.

Time to Stock Up on Styrofoam and Plastic Dishes and Utensils.  Because our anti-human tyrannical overlords have decreed that Americans must not have the ability to get our reusable dishes clean enough to eat off of.  They already took away our good detergent and forced useless junk on us that leaves the dishes far from spotless, and now they want to make it impossible for us to get dish-washing machines altogether unless we are rich politically connected leftist elites who are exempt from moonbat rules and regulations.

South Carolina teen sues DMV over license photo.  The family of a South Carolina teenager who was ordered to remove his makeup before taking a driver's license photo this year has filed a federal lawsuit against the state Department of Motor Vehicles, according to court records.  Chase Culpepper, a 16-year-old who identifies as male but wears makeup and women's clothing on a regular basis, was ordered to remove his makeup by DMV officials when he tried to obtain his driver's license in March.

The Streets of San Francisco.  If you want to film a zombie movie on the cheap, San Francisco offers a ready-made location overflowing with extras.  The mentally ill, addicted, and homeless find a home in the City by the Bay as they do nowhere else in North America.  In this walkable Western metropolis, one walks a gauntlet of down-and-outers betraying that unmistakable drug gait and displaying lights out upstairs through their windows' 100-watt stares.

The Editor says...
The article above gives a fairly good description of Hell.  Unfortunately the writer is describing San Francisco.

LGBT Movement forces Child Welfare Services, run by Churches, to Close.  In recent years, some religious child welfare providers who believe that children deserve to be placed with married mothers and fathers have lost government funding and have shut down because of laws requiring them to serve the lesbian, gay, bi and transsexual (LGBT) communities, despite their contradicting religious convictions.  In Illinois, unmarried heterosexual couples and homosexuals may legally adopt children and become foster parents, leading to the discontinuation of the Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Rockford's adoption services.  In Washington D.C. a similar adoption program was shut down due to another law that requires religious organizations serving the general public to provide services to homosexuals regardless of religious beliefs.  Comparable cases are found in California, Massachusetts, and all across the nation — cases which offer a choice between sincere religious beliefs and punishment under law, or compliance and the forsaking of religious conscience.

The ultimate end product of liberalism is evenly-distributed poverty.
Amid Rationing, Venezuela Takes The Misery Crown.  [S]ocialism has made Venezuela the most miserable place on earth.  But don't take our word for it.  That's the result of objective research by Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke.  He has created a "Global Misery Index" based on the original inflation-unemployment misery index of the late economist Arthur Okun and the interest rate and GDP per capita additions of Harvard economist Robert Barro.  Put them all together and Venezuela tops the globe in misery with a figure of 79.9.  The misery in this case, as in so many others, is the product of socialism implemented in another purported but misguided effort to help the poor.

California Is About To Pass A Bizarre Law Making Sex A Legalistic Nightmare For College Males.  The bill, which is based on guidance from the Obama administration, requires an "affirmative consent standard" that school administrators would use to determine whether a sexual assault has occurred.  The standard would define every sexual encounter as an "an affirmative, unambiguous and conscious decision" by everyone involved.  Under the law, a person who communicates nothing would not consent to sex.  A person who is asleep or drugged cannot consent, but such people already can't consent under current law.  At the same time, communication of consent can be vague and muddled — a nod of the head, say, or perhaps some kind of lean-in movement.  The bill says consensual make-out sessions leading to sex must be "ongoing" and "can be revoked at any time."

Colorado aims to sell more legal pot.  Seven months after Colorado legalized recreational pot, the state has an unexpected problem.  It needs to grow more.  Because even though sales have surged, only about 60% of the marijuana sold is the legal variety.  The rest is either illegal or grown unregulated in the so-called gray market, where unlicensed citizens can grow for their own use.

5 Reasons Not to Trust the 'What Me Worry' Media About Ebola.  [#1] The Mainstream Media Love to Lord Their Superiority Over Us[.]  Accusing the hoi polloi of panicking and then calling for calm is the first knee-jerk reaction of anyone who gets off on puffing themselves up as Our Betters.  And that is our media personified.

Is America Too Far Gone?  The reason that we are in this mess in the first place is due to a dumbed-down electorate coupled with a lying media.  I will concede (although I will never understand it) that some people were persuaded [by Obama] in 2008 by all his slick talk.  However, it is depressing to witness grown people not being able to discern the dangers of this president's and the Democrat party's policies.

Automation [is] the Joker in the Deck.  At the same time that the political Left is agitating for the minimum wage increase, it is seeking legalization, or normalization, of millions of illegal aliens, most of whom fall into the low-skilled category.  In effect, they are promoting one measure that would reduce low-skilled employment while at the same time increasing the number of people seeking those jobs.

Average Price of Electricity Climbs to All-Time Record.  For the first time ever, the average price for a kilowatthour (KWH) of electricity in the United States has broken through the 14-cent mark, climbing to a record 14.3 cents in June, according to data released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Before this June, the highest the average price for a KWH had ever gone was 13.7 cents, the level it hit in June, July, August and September of last year.  The 14.3-cents average price for a KWH recorded this June is about 4.4 percent higher than that previous record.

1000 Children Fleeing Violent Honduras Heading to Violent Chicago.  A thousand children said to be fleeing the violence in Central America will be welcomed to Chicago, where local children are routinely in the cross-fire of gang-related grudges.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel, at the request of the Obama administration in which he formerly served, says he is working with local organizations to make room for up to one thousand additional unaccompanied children "traveling" from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border in the coming year.

Legalization of Marijuana Increases Homeless Population.  Officials at some Denver homeless shelters say the legalization of marijuana has contributed to an increase in the number of younger people living on the city's streets. [...] The Salvation Army's Men's shelter in Denver has seen an increase in the number of 18- to 25-year-olds.  An informal survey found that about a quarter of the increase was related to marijuana, including some who moved hoping to find work in the marijuana industry.

Get Ready for the New England Power Shortage.  In 1980, under the first administration of Governor Jerry Brown, California decided it wasn't going to build any more power plants but would follow Amory Lovins' "soft path," opting instead for conservation and renewable energy.  By 2000, with the new digital economy sucking up electricity, a drought in the Pacific Northwest cut hydropower output and the state found itself facing the Great California Electrical Shortage.  You know what happened next.  For weeks the Golden State struggled to find enough electricity to power its traffic lights.  Brownouts and blackouts cascaded across the state while businesses fired up smoke-belching diesel generators to keep the lights on.

Truth Telling and the Abuse of Language.  If you were a member of an elitist group trying to get complete control of a logical and stiff-necked people, what would you have to accomplish first?  The citizens of that country would have to stop thinking, and since you can't just pass a law against thought, their basic ability to think would have to be destroyed — gradually before they noticed.  The process is simple:
Lower standards for both teacher and student.
Fill both teachers and texts with propaganda.
Give awards to everyone.
Fill entertainment with the same messages.
Encourage pot-smoking — make it more and more available and acceptable.
But the most effective tool is one Orwell could see coming in 1948 — the erasure of our language.

DIA Rental Car Agencies Now Dumping Grounds For Pot.  Rental car workers at Denver International Airport say pot tourists are regularly leaving them with marijuana that travelers don't want to try to carry through DIA.  "It happens quite often," a rental car employee at a national chain told a CBS4 employee.  "Every couple of days.  I just throw it in the trash."

Rhode Island Shows Blue-State Model Of Activist Government Is Built To Fail.  Progressives say the blue-state model works.  After all, states like California, Massachusetts and New York have some of the nation's wealthiest and best-educated populations.  But many are also basket cases, reeling from problems ranging from high costs of living and widening income inequality to chronic fiscal crises. And leading blue states often possess unique assets that protect them, at least for a time, from the full economic consequences of their public policies.

Non-Citizen Driver's Licenses Bogging Down Colorado DMV.  A new kind of driver's license for non-citizens will soon be available but even before the Department of Motor Vehicles can issue them, advance requests are clogging up the system.  Tens of thousands of drivers in Colorado are calling the DMV to register for the new ID which is clogging the system.

Another harmless incremental step.  Next:  government subsidies.  Later:  Marijuana "access" is a right.
Berkeley Dispensaries to Provide Free Marijuana to Low-Income Members.  Medical marijuana dispensaries in Berkeley will likely soon be required to provide free pot to low-income members and homeless people, according to an ordinance approved by the city council on Tuesday [7/1/2014].  The city is also looking to approve a fourth dispensary, raising the current limit of three locations.

Thousands turn out for Trans March in S.F..  Thousands of people descended on Dolores Park on Friday afternoon [6/27/2014] for the nation's biggest transgender pride event, the 11th annual Trans March, before moving the celebration to the site of the Compton's Cafeteria Riot at Turk and Taylor streets in San Francisco.  Once at the site of the one of the most important transgender riots in U.S. history, city officials unveiled a street sign honoring the late Vicki Marlane, one of San Francisco's legendary performers.  The Board of Supervisors in April approved a resolution to recognize the pioneer, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 2011.

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  [#2]  America has turned from a nation promoting morality and a belief in God to a nation where anything goes, with the most perverse and ungodly acts being accepted, promoted and even glorified.  And if anyone disagrees, or speaks out against this immorality they are quickly labeled as promoting hate, bigotry or of being a racist.  This quickly shuts most opponents up while simultaneously, implanting the message in everyone's mind, that those acts in-question are to be accepted and are somehow cool.

The Establishment's Conspiracy to Silence Conservatives Could Destroy Our Country.  The key to any democratic republic is legitimacy.  If the system allows a full and fair airing of different views before a decision is made, groups that lose the debate will accept the decision.  You are disappointed if the other side won fair and square.  But you are furious if the other side cheated.  And all the other side does today is cheat.  Worse, it does so with a mindless cynicism, having discovered that if other elements of the establishment play along — like a mainstream media that refuses to perform its accountability function — then there are no immediate consequences.  Over time, this risks of alienating nearly half of our citizens.

How The Trans-Agenda Seeks To Redefine Everyone.  In November, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).  The law is based on the assumption that one's perceived "gender identity" does not always "match" your sex "assigned" or "designated" at birth.  So, the thinking goes, the law should allow a more ambiguous array of gender identities:  male, female, both, neither, or something else entirely.  It's not an overstatement to say that ENDA is a huge step, mostly under the radar, to codify a new definition of humanity.

Is this what would happen if cannabis was legal in Britain?  In the U.S., Barack Obama — who liked to get stoned as a teenager — recently gave his support to the Colorado initiative even though it meant contradicting his own drugs advisers.  But as I discovered in Denver this week, five months in, this shoddily handled experiment should give serious pause for thought to those in Britain who want a cannabis joint to be as freely available as a pint of beer.

Sex Change Regrets.  While some might find the story laughable, I personally find it tragic:  Don Ennis, an experienced TV news producer was fired from his job, allegedly for performance-related issues, after reappearing as Dawn Stacey Ennis, marking his third gender change since last year. [...] It would appear that Ennis is quite troubled and in need of serious help, but even to suggest such a thing is to be branded transphobic and hateful.

Iraq Civil War Is Exactly What Democrats Wanted.  The chaos that is unfolding in Iraq is being portrayed in the media as an unexpected development.  It certainly is an unnecessary fate for a country that had, until recently, a chance of survival.  Yet it is not only the predictable, but in fact the desirable, outcome in Iraq for Democrats, who in 2006 were pushing for as quick a withdrawal from Iraq as possible — never mind the foreseeable consequences, including genocide and a terrorist takeover.

The Bluest State.  "Rhode Island is in the midst of an especially grim economic meltdown," a 2009 New York Times story began, "and no one can pinpoint exactly why."  Five years later, the state continues to suffer from most of the same problems the Times story described:  high unemployment, a crippling tax structure, dangerously underfunded state pension systems.  But contrary to the Times's claims, Rhode Island's predicament is easy to explain.  With no special economic advantages, the state has maintained an entitlement mentality inherited from an age of colonial and industrial grandeur.

The War on Social Science.  In editorials, sound bites, social media, and floor debate, the Left continues to insist that state and local tax burdens have no effect on economic growth, that higher state spending on Medicaid and unemployment insurance creates jobs, that teacher assistants boost student achievement, and that offering teachers bonuses to obtain graduate degrees makes them more effective in the classroom.  None of these claims has empirical support.  For decades now, social scientists have examined each and found them wanting.

Let's Move, But Not in Denver Parks.  In an ironic but typical example of government logic, the City of Denver imposed rules limiting group exercise in city parks and open spaces.  Specifically the decree is for no commercial activity without a permit.  And of course a fee that accompanies the permit.  Two thousand miles away from Denver, the New York Times took notice.  They reported that a group called Stroller Strides, new mothers working out while pushing their strollers, received a cease and desist order from Denver Parks and Recreation.

Liberal Austin homeowners surprised to find they have to pay all the taxes they voted for.  Voting and paying are different endeavors entirely.  Often, when one has to pay for the things one has voted to fund, that decision becomes less flippant.  This is a comment, less on the specifics of Texas' or Austin's tax system than the blaring disconnect between liberals in Austin who are voting for higher taxes and the actual paying of the taxes.  Which, as it turns out, is painful, discouraging, and can be a detriment to the fabric of the city.

Barack Obama and His Urban Parasites Declare War on the Constitution.  A key element of supply chain value analysis is, in fact, the identification of waste in your supply chain.  If your supplier is in Manhattan, you are paying Bill de Blasio's inflated taxes, and the city's inherently exorbitant rents and costs of living, as well as for the goods or, more likely, services you are actually receiving.  When enough productive people and employers figure this out, the last worker to leave New York City will hopefully remember to turn out the lights, the way he did when he left Detroit.

Detroit Dissolving: "A Hurricane Without Water".  [Photos show rapid decay.]

It will cost almost $2 billion to rid Detroit of urban blight.  The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, convened by President Obama last fall, based its report on a massive, detailed survey of Detroit's 377,000 parcels of land, concluding that the city should quickly demolish about 40,000 of them and consider scrapping or restoring more than 30,000 more.  That will cost up to $850 million, the report estimates, and it will cost up to $1 billion more to save or dismantle the city's almost 600 giant factories.

Houston Mayor Forces All to Open Girls Rooms to Men.  Houston's bathrooms, showers, and dressing facilities will now be open to all, regardless of gender, gender identity, gender expression, or other predilection of gender behavior.  By an 11-6 vote of the Houston City Council, Mayor Annise Parker achieved this as the crowning jewel of her tenure as mayor.  Mayor Parker, Houston's first openly gay mayor, said passing this ordinance was not the most important thing she has done in office, according to an article in the Fairfield Citizen, but it is the "most personally meaningful thing I will ever do as mayor."

With Abortions & Crime At All Time High, Detroit Approaches Third World Status.  Detroit is often heralded by small government proponents as a perfect example of an over-involved government pushing themselves into the culture of a successful city and creating a state of dependence which eventually collapses in on itself.  In other words, a great example of why big government fails.  But this is really only a partial explanation of the issue.  The real issue in America and the problem that is bankrupting cities just as much as the U.S. treasury, is the problem of cronyism.  This, above all other factors, is the legacy of Detroit.

City Of The Future: Where the Radical Left is Herding Us.  [Info-graphic]

VA Fast-Tracks Sex Change for Manning While Vets Die on Waiting Lists.  Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has formally approved the request of Pvt. Bradley Manning, convicted for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, to be temporarily transferred out of military custody in order to undergo expensive hormone therapy and surgery to become a woman.  Manning, whose taxpayer-funded request to change his name from Bradley to Chelsea was approved last month by a Kansas court, has been able to obtain repeated diagnoses from military doctors that he suffers from "gender dysphobia"; a condition of someone 'discontented' with the sex they were 'assigned with' at birth.  It was first listed as a medical condition in 2007 by the authoritative Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Clearing neighborhood blight could cost $2B, Detroit group finds.  The most comprehensive effort yet to catalog Detroit's empty, dangerous properties and trashy lots has found that 84,641 properties are blighted or vacant and it will cost $850 million to eliminate them.  It could take five years and $2 billion to get rid of them all — including blighted commercial properties, according to results released Tuesday of the Detroit Blight Removal Task Force, an effort of private and public sector leaders that was convened last fall by the Obama administration.

More Colorado drivers in fatal crashes positive for pot, study says..  Two new University of Colorado studies paint an ominous picture of the direction of the state since marijuana commercialization, but neither provides conclusive evidence that legal pot is causing harm.  One study shows more drivers involved in fatal car accidents in Colorado are testing positive for marijuana — and that Colorado has a higher percentage of such drivers testing positive for pot than other states even when controlled for several variables.  But the data the researchers use does not reveal whether those drivers were impaired at the time of the crash or whether they were at fault.

North Dakota U. Bans Something Truly Ridiculous from Campus.  Fencing is not only an Olympic sport; it is sponsored by more than 30 NCAA colleges and universities.  However, that didn't stop a North Dakota university from banning its fencing club from practicing on campus.  The reason?  Fencing violates the school's "weapons policy."

Five Things You Can Do About Climate Change.  [#4] Reduce Emissions In Transit:  The key thing here is to avoid electric cars.  Even before it rolls off the production line, an electric car has created far more CO2 than a conventional one.  That's because the manufacturing process — notably the energy used to create its battery and mine the lithium — is so un-eco-friendly.  Avoid also using bio-fuels, one of the most environmentally damaging forms of energy available.  In Asia and Africa, the demand in the West for mandated bio-fuels has led to the replacement of rainforest with plantations of industrial palm oil; it has also driven up food prices by diverting agricultural land for food production, thus harming the world's poor who are especially vulnerable to starvation.

Protecting a Bay While Treading on Truth.  For reasons known best to themselves — because they've mostly eschewed reasoned argument for slogans, fabrications, and junk science — the federal government and environmental groups have waged a crusade against a family-owned oyster farm in the waters off Marin County, Calif.  So far, the oyster farm owners and employees are losing:  Their last hope is a pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The law does not appear to be in the oyster farmers' favor, but it's still the kind of thing that gives liberal activists and their bureaucratic enablers a bad name.

The absence of fathers matters.  We have evolved a society wherein we pretend the opposite is true.  The disappearance of fathers is now nearly the norm.  Almost one in four American children lives in a household without their biological dads.  For brown kids, that number stands at about 28 percent.  For black kids, it's a little better than half.  Mass incarceration and the War on Drugs have certainly played a role in this.  But just as surely, a role is also played by the new social more which says it's okay for a man or a woman to be feckless, for him to wander away because he is immature, selfish and young, for her to have a baby on her own because the clock is ticking and really, she doesn't need a man for anything more than sperm.  This is the new morality, the new American mindset.

A front-row seat at the culture war.  It appears that the goal of pro-tolerance agenda being promoted by the leftists is to stamp out diversity.  In other words, a "tolerant" society makes room for (or actually glorifies) illegal aliens, oppressive dictators, homosexual marriage, abortion rights, convicted killers, sharia law, unrestricted pornography, teen-age sex and redistribution of wealth, so anyone opposed to these is not just intolerant and outside of the mainstream, but actually subject to shunning and possibly incarceration.  Moreover, the left is intent on co-opting traditional defenders of values such as the Boy Scouts, the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Republican Party, and turning them into mouthpieces for a form of "tolerance" that not coincidentally turns their own tradition-upholding members into purported agents of hate.

Report: Pentagon Paid $150 Per Gallon for Green Jet Fuel.  The Department of Defense (DOD) paid $150 per gallon for alternative jet fuel made from algae, more than 64 times the current market price for standard carbon-based fuels, according to a report released on Wednesday [5/7/2014].  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted in its report that a Pentagon official reported paying "about $150 per gallon for 1,500 gallons of alternative jet fuel derived from algal oil."

Poll: Half of Illinois residents would move from the state if they could.  Half of Illinois residents would move to another state if they could — the highest percentage for any state, according to a poll released by Gallup this week.  Nearly half of those polled in Connecticut and Maryland said they would move.  Some 19 percent of Illinoisans surveyed said they plan to move in the next 12 months, a rate that trailed only Nevada.

California Tops List of 10 States With Highest Taxes.  The Tax Foundation has ranked the states by their state income tax rates and among the highest are California, Hawaii, and Oregon.

[The] District of Columbia [is] the Nation's Most Expensive Place to Live.  Elevated housing costs helped to make the District of Columbia more expensive to live in than any state in 2012, according to data released Thursday [4/24/2014] by the Commerce Department.  Regional prices for goods and services in D.C. were 18% higher than the national average in 2012, Commerce said in a new report that compares income levels and costs of living across 50 states and the district.  It also gives a breakdown for big cities.  The metropolitan area with the highest cost of living in 2012 was Honolulu, followed by New York-Newark-Jersey City.

The Left's Advice Would Bring A Second Great Depression.  One oddity of the current economic debate is that the more Barack Obama's incompetent income-redistribution policies have failed, the more the left calls for more government-intervention policies to correct for the deficiencies of the earlier rounds.  American middle-income families have lost nearly $3,000 in purchasing power since 2007, and the left's only solution to get us out of the rut is more debt, more social-welfare spending, more income redistribution and higher taxes on the rich and big business.

Having learned nothing from Colorado's experience...
Lawmakers want task force to push pot legalization.  Citing strains on the criminal justice system and the economic costs of enforcing anti-marijuana laws, a group of Democratic lawmakers called Monday [4/28/2014] for the creation of a task force to pursue legalizing and regulating the drug in Illinois.  Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey said he will introduce a resolution at the May 21 County Board meeting asking the General Assembly to put together such a task force.  If passed, the resolution would go to the speaker of the House and the Senate president for consideration.

Rocky Mountain High and Unintended Consequences.  Within two weeks of marijuana legalization in Colorado, a stoned motorist plowed into two State Police vehicles in metro Denver.  And a 69-year-old driver was pulled over in Idaho, detained, and his vehicle searched.  He was profiled over his Colorado license plate and Washington driver's license.  Tragically, a 19-year-old Wyoming college student jumped to his death from a Denver hotel balcony after eating a marijuana cookie.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.*
Kids caught distributing pot in school.  Several Montfort Elementary School students were suspended Tuesday [4/22/2014] after school officials discovered they were selling and trading stolen, loose-leaf marijuana and edible forms of the drug at school.  "Over the past two days, we have had two separate incidents of students bringing marijuana into our school, both in the form of loose-leaf marijuana and an edible form of the drug," Principal Jennifer Sheldon wrote in a letter to parents.  On Monday, a fourth-grade student brought loose-leaf marijuana to school and sold it to three other students.

'420' Revelers Leave Golden Gate Park with 10,000 Pounds of Garbage.  The mellow, "peace now," countercultural, environmentally conscious "420" celebration deposited 10,000 pounds of garbage on what is known as Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park, leaving volunteers and park workers to clean up the mess.  According to the San Francisco Chronicle's website SF Gate, this year's celebration drew a massive amount of revelers estimated at between 10,000 and 15,000.  The pot smokers' untidiness will cost the city more than $10,000 in cleanup costs.

Safety concerns about legal marijuana edibles.  Two recent deaths and increased emergency room visits in Colorado have highlighted concerns about the safety of legal marijuana edibles. [...] "The edibles industry is huge," points out Colorado state representative Jonathan Singer.  "About 40 percent of the marijuana industry is in edibles."  "Edibles are a huge part of our business," agrees Jamie Perino, owner of Euflora, situated on Denver's 16th Street Mall and a popular tourist destination.

The Editor says...
Edible is not a noun.

Northern Colorado 4th graders sell, trade pot, prompting warning from principal to parents.  School officials in northern Colorado are asking parents to take care with their newly legal recreational marijuana, after fourth graders were caught dealing the drug on an elementary school campus.

America's power grid at the limit: The road to electrical blackouts.  Americans take electricity for granted.  It powers our lights, our computers, our offices, and our industries.  But misguided environmental policies are eroding the reliability of our power system.  Last winter, bitterly cold weather placed massive stress on the US electrical system — and the system almost broke. [...] Eight of the top ten of PJM's all-time winter peaks occurred in January 2014.  Heroic efforts by grid operators saved large parts of the nation's heartland from blackouts during record-cold temperature days.

The Editor says...
What would alleviate this problem?  Increased production of electricity, of course, but that is exactly what environmentalists oppose when they campaign against coal, because coal is no longer used to power factories, propel ships and heat large buildings — it is used almost exclusively in the generation of electricity.  When the lights go out on the coldest (or hottest) day of the year, you can blame left-wing tree-hugging environmentalist hippies (and their socialist Democrat congressmen) who think they are "saving the earth" by eliminating the use of coal.

Why Everything Is Dirtier.  [Scroll down]  My needs are for clean clothes, same as the laundry needs of the whole of humanity since the beginning of time.  The whole purpose of laundries is to meet that need.  Here's the problem, however.  The goal of the regulators who regulate the laundry is not to improve your life.  It is to wreck your life a bit at a time by pressing increasing numbers of restrictions and mandates upon private producers.  One of these mandates has removed TSP from detergent — and with catastrophic results.  No one wants to talk about this.  There is a major hush-hush culture here because business, understandably, doesn't want to face a consumer backlash, and government doesn't want to acquire the reputation for being the civilization wrecker that it truly is.

Bulletproof Subways A Sign Of Violent Times?  The store was clean and looked just like any other well-run Subway restaurant, except for the bullet-proof protection for the employees and lack of a bathroom for customers.  In fact, a few patrons asked for hand sanitizer because they couldn't wash their hands.

Watters Goes to Colorado Pot Rally.  The O'Reilly Factor sent Jesse Watters to Denver, Colo., for the popular 4/20 celebration.  The annual marijuana holiday coincided with Easter weekend this year and tens of thousands attended.  By late afternoon, authorities had issued 47 citations for public marijuana consumption and made 16 arrests.  Denver Health Medical Center paramedics treated 14 people, including three that were taken to detox.

Oklahoma will charge homeowners who generate their own power.  [R]afts of new regulations from Barack Obama's EPA and pressure from eco-warriors is moving us toward potentially crippling shortages of energy on the grid.  If enough coal fired plants are shut down prematurely, you may not be able to simply take it for granted that the lights will come on when you throw the switch some morning.  People willing to make the investment in producing their own energy — as well as spreading the extra around — should be encouraged, not subjected to discouraging fees.

This is where Obamacare is headed.
Dems want government health care for all — no matter the cost.  With little fanfare, Vermont is preparing to become the first state to implement a single-payer, government-run health-care system.  The Vermont plan, if implemented, would abolish private health insurance in the state and replace it with a taxpayer-funded system under which the state government directly pays doctors and hospitals.  Of course the state is having a bit of trouble figuring out how to pay for the program's estimated $2 billion price tag, considering that the entire state government's operating budget is currently just $2.7 billion.  Currently under consideration is an increase in the state sales tax from 6.9% to 29%.

Casual marijuana use linked with brain abnormalities, study finds.  Casual marijuana use may come with some not-so-casual side effects.  For the first time, researchers at Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of marijuana and brain changes — and found that young adults who used cannabis just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important brain structures.

Detroit bailout plans just paper over the problem with more money.  In Detroit's unfolding saga, the only innocent victims are city residents.  So if there is any case for a Motown bailout, it is to make the city more livable for them.  However, that seems to be the main goal of neither the Democratic White House nor the state's Republican governor — both of whom have come up with nifty new schemes to shovel taxpayer largesse to city retirees.  Just two weeks ago, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr had been threatening to put a buzzsaw to the city's $3.5 billion unfunded pension liabilities to lop off savings to "invest" in city services.

Stoned mom avoids jail after driving 12 miles with baby on roof.  An Arizona mother will avoid jail time after she got high and drove nearly 12 miles with her 2-month-old baby on the roof of her car.  Maricopa County Superior Judge Cynthia Bailey sentenced 21-year-old Catalina Mariah Clouser on Wednesday to 16 years of supervised probation. [...] Miss Clouser pleaded guilty in February to child abuse and driving under the influence of marijuana after her infant son was found miraculously unhurt in the middle of a Phoenix highway in June 2012, still strapped into his car seat, Reuters reported.

CBO Dire Debt Warnings Show Nation's Democrat Future.  Andrew Jackson, who in 1835 succeeded in paying off the national debt, was famous for considering debt slavery.  The current fiscal path the U.S. is on does indeed lead to slavery, but the slave masters of the future will be well-heeled politicians and federal bureaucrats, not plantation owners.  The CBO's new budget projections contain an eerie warning that we are on path from today's already unfathomable $17.7 trillion in gross federal government debt to more than $27 trillion in 2024.  This in spite of finger-crossing projections of tax revenue over the next decade exceeding its 40-year average as a share of GDP.  Debt will reach 78% of GDP by 2024, CBO warns, which is double the 39% average of the past 40 years.

Black Lives, Democrat Lies.  A fascinating article by Francis Wilkinson appeared in Bloomberg View last week (h/t Instapundit).  Wilkinson detailed the fact that income inequality between whites and blacks is worse in leftist cities: [...] Now to someone like me — a former liberal who became a conservative, in part, because I saw the devastation wrought on poor black neighborhoods by leftist policies — this is no surprise, not even all that interesting.  What I did find riveting though were the desperate attempts by presumably left-leaning social scientists to explain the discrepancy away.

Probe finds 104 school staff-student flings since 2009.  More than 100 city teachers, administrators and other school staffers have been caught in the last five years engaging in sexual or "inappropriate" relationships with students, The [New York] Post has learned.  The special commissioner of investigation for city schools, Richard Condon, has fielded 593 complaints about such illicit relationships since April 2009.  His office substantiated 104 cases, it revealed Friday [4/11/2014].  "I'm absolutely stunned at that number," said Laura Timoney, a Community Education Council member whose 15-year-old daughter attends a city high school on Staten Island.  "It's shocking, but what do you do to stop this?"

Cigarette machines are unthinkable, but a vending machine for marijuana cookies is okay.
Marijuana Vending Machine Unveiled In Colorado.  You may be picturing a vending machine on a sidewalk, ready to dispense pot brownies to anyone with correct change.  That's not quite what backers of the machine have in mind.  For now, at least, the ZaZZZ is aimed for use only by medical marijuana patients.  And it'll be in licensed stores, where it will serve a purpose like that of an automated checkout line at a grocery, they say.

Vermont's Single-Payer Dream Is Taxpayer Nightmare.  Of the plans that states have hatched for the Affordable Care Act, none has been bolder than that of Vermont, which wants to implement a single-payer health-care system, along the lines of what you might find in Britain or Canada. [...] Just two small issues need to be resolved before the state gets to all systems go:  First, it needs the federal government to grant waivers allowing Vermont to divert Medicaid and other health-care funding into the single-payer system. And second, Vermont needs to find some way to pay for it.  Although Act 48 required Vermont to create a single-payer system by 2017, the state hasn't drafted a bill spelling out how to raise the additional $1.6 billion a year (based on the state's estimate) the system needs.

Before 1993, there were no mass shootings on U.S. military bases.  In 1993, most soldiers were stripped of their right to carry a weapon onto United States military bases, effectively turning them into gun free zones.  While the directive was composed under big government progressive George H.W. Bush, it was implemented shortly after big government progressive Bill Clinton assumed office.

More about gun-free zones.  Thanks for nothing, liberals!

Female transgender student suspended for using women's bathroom.  Central Piedmont Community College officials say they suspended Andraya Williams, 22, for not handing security officers her student identification and said she couldn't come back unless she used a gender-neutral bathroom.

Maryland's bathroom bill benefits few transgenders, puts all girls at risk from pedophiles.  Maryland moms and dads will now have to be more vigilant when their children use public bathrooms.  It will soon be legal for a man who simply says he identifies as a woman to use the ladies' room.  This serious risk for sexual assaults of women and little girls is all in the name of political correctness.  And this is just the latest in a string of successes by the transgender lobby.  On Friday, the Maryland House passed legislation that prohibits discrimination based on "gender identity" in employment, housing, credit and public accommodations — which, most disturbingly, includes restrooms.

College student falls from balcony and dies after eating marijuana cookies.  Levy Thamba, a 19-year-old exchange student, fell four-stories after eating the legally purchased cookies in what's believed to be the first publicized fatality linked to pot since its legalized sale in January.

Official Policy: Male Federal Workers Can Use Women's Restrooms, Locker Rooms.  When an expectant mother visits her doctor for an ultrasound, the doctor invariably asks:  Do you want to know the sex of your child?  The Obama administration, however, does not believe an unborn child has a sex — even when a doctor sees indisputable physical evidence.  Obama's Office of Personnel Management has published what it calls "Guidance Regarding the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Workplace."  This document speaks of "sex" as something a person has "assigned" to them only after they make it through the birth canal.

Obama's 'children' on a rampage.  [Scroll down]  The mainstream media, ever-supportive of Obama, neglects to publicize any such event and only local newspapers are reporting the increasing meaningless and violent attacks against white victims. [...] It is undeniable that once those wrong doers in the black community (which represent a very small minority) realized they could essentially get away with murder, it was inevitable that racial anarchy would ensue.  America might have been a post racial nation before but after 2008, it has become anything thanks to the constant class warfare promoted by the Democrat Party for its own preservation of power.

The Decline of the African-American family.  In reaction and repentance sparked by Dr. King's nonviolent civil disobedience and the systemic introspection of social norms by whites, Americans overcompensated with sweeping entitlement programs under President Johnson's "War on Poverty," and by turning a blind eye to accountability on longstanding values and principled behavior within the African American community.  While affirmative action and desegregation jump-started social change, the unintended consequences of shifting the cultural incentives upside down were ignored. [...] And with Civil Rights Act of 1964 giving legal credence to making any sort of behavioral judgment toxic, the cultural glue that held together the African-American family was fundamentally changed.

The states with the most segregated public schools are epicenters of liberalism.  The state with the most segregated public schools is New York.  Other states with exceptionally segregated schools include California, Illinois and Michigan.  These findings come from a longitudinal study of enrollment figures conducted by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles, The Associated Press reports.  The period studied was 1998 through 2010.

Report: NY Schools Are Most Racially Segregated.  New York state has the most segregated public schools in the nation, with many black and Latino students attending schools with virtually no white classmates, according to a report released Wednesday [3/26/2014].

Progress: Indiana Clean Coal Plant Uses More Energy Than It Produces.  Duke Energy was very proud to discuss their clean coal plant back in 2009.  They replaced a 60 year-old coal plant with clean coal technology.  But it uses more energy to run than it produces.

What U.S. states have the highest and lowest taxes?  If you hate paying taxes, pay attention to where you live.  Residents of the nation's lowest-tax states pay less than one-quarter of the levies contributed by those in the highest-tax states.  And that's even when they earn the same amount and spend the same amount on everything from housing to beer, according to an analysis by personal finance site WalletHub.  The site looked at 10 different taxes, from property and state and local income taxes to those on vehicles, food, alcohol, fuel, telecommunications and sales.

A convoluted insanity defense:
Transgender Woman Claims Former Male Self a Murderer.  Authorities in Washington State believe that a series of murders of prostitutes in 1990 were committed by Washington resident Douglas Perry.  Now Perry has been captured and charged with the murders, but Douglas has become "Donna," a transgender woman who claims that she is not responsible for the murders because Douglas no longer exists.

Red state residents pay fewer taxes than blue state residents.  The average American family pays nearly $7,000 in state and local taxes in a given year, but the actual amounts vary wildly.  A Californian who lives on the western side of Lake Tahoe pays almost three times more in state taxes than their neighbor on the Nevada side of the lake.  Someone living in Portland, Ore., pays more than twice as much as a neighbor living across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash.

Dereliction of Duty in Detroit.  I've had my eye on Detroit's bankruptcy proceedings because it is indicative of what's to come for a lot of cities.  How Detroit deals with its bankruptcy could also set a precedent for other cities forced to deal with the decisions of bankruptcy, satisfying pensions and debtors.

A law so stupid California legislature seeks to repeal it two months after it took effect.  California's state legislature is seeking to repeal an idiotic law that took effect January 1st.  It turns out that some feel-good regulatory efforts generate enough blowback that they can actually be reversed.

Corruption in the City of Brotherly Love.  Philadelphia Daily News reporters Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker have written two powerful series of articles on abuse, corruption, and intimidation within the city, state, and federal government.  These stories read like something out of a political thriller. [...] The authors found that some police were as corrupt as the criminals they targeted.  These detectives terrorized hardworking legal immigrant shop owners, sexually assaulted women, and fabricated search warrants.

Moody's Downgrades Chicago's Credit Rating, Lowest Of Any Major City Except Detroit.  The agency announced Tuesday [3/4/2014] it's lowering the rating on $8.3 billion in debt from A3 to Baa1, putting it only three notches above junk-bond status.

Insurers in the nation's capital must cover sex-change surgery.  New laws in Washington, D.C., compel health insurance carriers to provide payment for sex-change treatment and surgery.  Mayor Vincent Gray says the regulations will prevent discrimination against the transgender population.

When 'leave us alone' became 'bake us a cake!'  Sexual orientation is not race — and permitting what would most definitely be a very small number of observant Christians to exercise their right of conscience is vastly different from pervasive and state-sponsored racism. [...] We have reached a point in the gay rights debate where all the low-hanging fruit has been picked.  We are now entering into the zero-sum game phase of the debate, where gay rights and religious liberty must collide.

Enough with the Gay Mania.  It's one thing to be tolerant of what once were known as "alternative lifestyles."  It's another thing to be asked to celebrate them, as the exuberant mythologizers of Michael Sam and Johnny Weir ask us to do.  And it is way beyond the pale to hold forth on any sort of sex life — perhaps apart from self-restraint — as if it's a form of heroism.  Yet the culture of the professional Left, enthusiastically aided by the establishment media, is going bonkers in pushing active homosexuality (or any one of several exotic variants thereof) as an absolute virtue.

Venezuela: the Left's favourite 'socialist paradise' is sliding into poverty and dictatorship.  How are things coming along in Venezuela, that paradise of democratic socialism? [...] Well, tens of thousands of protesters are in the streets, the army's been sent to crush revolt, an opposition leader has been arrested and supporters of the government just shot dead a former beauty queen.

Assisted suicide and shallow, superficial vanity are two of liberalism's fruits.
Italian woman pays $14G to commit suicide at euthanasia clinic due to being 'sad about losing her looks'.  A perfectly healthy Italian woman paid $14,000 to commit suicide at a Swiss euthanasia clinic because she was "sad about losing her looks."  Oriella Cazzanello, 85, reportedly took her own life at the right-to-die center in Basel after getting "weighed down by ageing and the inevitable loss of the looks of which she was proud."

Germany's Energy Goals Backfire.  Germany's radical initiative to subsidize renewable electricity generation has resulted in higher carbon dioxide emissions and the most expensive electricity in Europe, with the poor disproportionately bearing the burden.

The Costs of the Environmentalism Cult.  California is in the third year of a drought, but the problem isn't a lack of water.  The snowfall in the Sierra provides enough to help us ride out the years of drought.  All we need to do is store it.  But California hasn't built a new dam in 35 years.  Worse than that, every year we dump 1.6 million acre-feet of water — about enough to serve 3.2 million families for a year — into the Pacific Ocean in order to protect an allegedly "endangered" 3-inch bait-fish called the Delta smelt.

Obama's Fate.  [Scroll down]  This is what the Democrats have in mind for the rest of the country.  The prospect we're facing is not 1984, or Nazi Germany, or even Suharto's Indonesia.  It is contemporary Argentina, controlled by elites, bouncing from one political extreme to the other, run by an ever more bizarre train of lunatics, with a government that relates to the people in much the same way that a parasite relates to its host.  Can this be stopped?  Only if we begin acting like citizens of a republic, which may well be too much to ask.

Obama Twerks America.  No... you cannot keep your insurance, no matter how much you like it.  You also can't keep your doctor, or your full-time job.  Twenty-nine hours a week or less of gainful employment will have to suffice going forward.  And that's a good thing.  Just ask any Democrat — it's freedom from job-lock.  Americans, thanks to Barack Obama, now have the right to be unemployed. [...] Besides, stop your whining, are there not food stamps, acquirable in an instant?  How much does he have to do for you people?

To Avoid Becoming The Next Detroit, Puerto Rico Needs Growth, Not Taxes.  Puerto Rico's debt has been cut to junk by two credit rating agencies, prompting an outcry from officials of the recession-hit island that, after all, they've hiked taxes.  Well, that's the problem right there.

If You Like Your Light Bulb, You Can't Keep Your Light Bulb.  A recent study found only 28 percent of the public was aware of the 2007 law that unrealistically raised the minimum efficiency standards for light bulbs to the point where it effectively turned the 25 cent light bulb into contraband.  "In its place," reports CNS News, "alternative, costly and mercury-filled CFLs are manufactured in China, and incandescent factories in the US have been shuttered."  The last U.S. incandescent light bulb factory, in Winchester, Virginia, closed in September 2010, leaving 200 well-paid employees feeling they'd been "sold out by the government."

More about the prohibition of incandescent light bulbs.

Do Liberals Care if Third World Illnesses Infect Americans?  The Biblical scourge of leprosy, a "slow-growing bacillus... parasite with a tropism for peripheral nerves, skin, and mucous membranes... upper respiratory tract, anterior chamber of the eye, and the testes," is also within our borders.  In 2002, there were only 900 total cases of leprosy in the US.  In the next three years there were 9,000, mostly in states with the largest immigrant populations. [...] So, a word to the wise:  the next time a French fry falls on the table in the food court or the handle of a shopping cart is grabbed, remember that along with open borders and liberal politicians come diseases and various deadly pathogens either formerly eradicated or never endemic to the US in the first place, are waiting for a new host, and you are nominated.

'Aid in Dying' Movement Takes Hold in Some States.  Helping the terminally ill end their lives, condemned for decades as immoral, is gaining traction.  Banned everywhere but Oregon until 2008, it is now legal in five states.  Its advocates, who have learned to shun the term "assisted suicide," believe that as baby boomers watch frail parents suffer, support for what they call the "aid in dying" movement will grow further.  In January, a district court in New Mexico authorized doctors to provide lethal prescriptions and declared a constitutional right for "a competent, terminally ill patient to choose aid in dying."

The Most Corrupt Village in America.  Alorton, an African-American village run by Democrats, may actually be the most corrupt village in Illinois and the United States.  Alorton's violent crime rate has been as high as ten times the national average.  Its biggest employers are health care, fast food, welfare and education.  The unemployment rate for black men is at 31%.  Half the people in Alorton live below the poverty line.  70% of poor households consist of single mothers.  The village has the fourth highest poverty rate of any place in Illinois.  Its corruption and misery are examples of what happens when the Democratic Party's power goes unchallenged.

Study: Fatal Car Crashes Involving Marijuana Have Tripled.  According to a recent study, fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in the U.S.  "Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana," Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia, and co-author of the study told HealthDay News.

Illinois Loses 80,000 Workers in One Year.  President Barack Obama's home state, which has been governed by Democrats throughout his national political career, has slipped in the rankings and now has the third-worst unemployment rate in the nation.  Though the jobless rate was the same in December 2013 (8.6%) as in December 2012, the state's labor force declined by a staggering 80,000 workers, according to Michael Lucci of the Illinois Policy Institute.

Progressivism Kills.  Detroit has the highest child-mortality rate of any American city, exceeding that of many parts of what we used to call the Third World.  The rate of death before the age of 18 in Detroit is nearly three times New York City's, and its infant-mortality rate exceeds that of Botswana.  The main cause of premature death among the children of Detroit is premature birth — the second is murder.

Study: Liberals drink more alcohol than conservatives.  A sobering new study published by the Journal of Wine Economics — yes, there is a Journal of Wine Economics — finds that alcohol consumption in American states rises as the population's politics becomes more liberal.

The Poison of Postmodern Lying.  All presidents have, at one time or another, fudged on the truth.  Most politicians pad their résumés and airbrush away their sins.  But what is new about political lying is the present notion that lies are not necessarily lies anymore — a reflection of the relativism that infects our entire culture.  Postmodernism (the cultural fad "after modernism") went well beyond questioning norms and rules.  It attacked the very idea of having any rules at all.  Postmodernist relativists claimed that things like "truth" were mere fictions to preserve elite privilege.  Unfortunately, bad ideas like that have a habit of poisoning an entire society — and now they have.

Guns Don't Kill People, Democrats Kill People.  Even a casual reader of local news headlines should not be shocked to learn that firearm-related homicides are more prevalent in some neighborhoods than others.  However, what may be shocking is the near exclusivity of firearm-related homicides to a small subset of neighborhoods; neighborhoods that vote predominately for Democrat candidates.

Fact-Free Liberals: Part II.  Words seem to carry far more weight than facts among those liberals who argue as if rent control laws actually control rents and gun control laws actually control guns.  It does no good to point out to them that the two American cities where rent control laws have existed longest and strongest — New York and San Francisco — are also the two cities with the highest average rents.  Nor does it make a dent on them when you point out evidence, from both sides of the Atlantic, that tightening gun control laws does not reduce gun crimes, including murder.  It is not uncommon for gun crimes to rise when gun control laws are tightened.  Apparently armed criminals prefer unarmed victims.

Most and Least Bible-Minded Cities in the United States.  After interviewing more than 46,000 adults nationwide over a seven-year period, the American Bible Society, in conjunction with Barna, ranks Chattanooga as the number one most Bible-minded city in the United States.  Providence, Rhode Island, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, share the dubious distinction of being the least most-Bible minded cities in America.

Pushing The Pink Police State.  The Human Rights Campaign, the gay rights lobby, is denouncing Gene Schaerr, the Utah attorney defending Utah's stand on traditional marriage because of his religious convictions.  The idea is that his religious beliefs have no place in this discussion.  The HRC is trying to drive religious people out of the public square.

Kiddie Porn Does Not Count as "Moral Turpitude" to S.F. Govt..  A former high-ranking San Francisco government employee convicted of felony possession of child pornography will continue to receive his government pension because, according to city regulations, evidence of "moral turpitude" is required to revoke a pension yet viewing violent kiddie porn does not qualify as moral turpitude.

Gambling revenue [is] at [the] heart of Detroit's dilemmas, new and old.  Michigan voters in 1996 approved casino gambling in Detroit, hoping to revitalize the ghost town.

7 Lies Liberals Tell Young Americans.  [Scroll down]  You want a society with no moral code, where no one is ever made to feel bad about doing disgusting things?  Well, then you should expect school shootings, welfare fraud, a deterioration of marriage, women having five children out of wedlock with four different men, perverted politicians, etc., etc., etc.  When you say morality isn't welcome, you don't get to pick and choose which dearly held precepts are trampled into the dirt in the public square.  If you want your kids growing up in a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, buy into the idea that morals don't matter and you'll be doing your part to make it a reality.

Court affirms Mass. murderer's right to get sex change in prison.  A federal appeals court on Friday [1/17/2014] upheld a judge's ruling granting a taxpayer-funded sex change operation for a transgender inmate serving a life sentence for a murder conviction, saying receiving medically necessary treatment is a constitutional right that must be protected "even if that treatment strikes some as odd or unorthodox."

The Left's Reordering of Human Desire.  Human desires are frequently cited, accurately or not, as the basis for human rights.  Want publically funded birth control?  Then argue that it's a human right.  The same goes for SSM or assisted suicide.  If you love someone, then it's your human right to marry them; if you no longer want to live, then it's your right to die.  If you don't want a child, then abort it.  But if that same baby dies in a car accident on the way to the abortion clinic, the death becomes homicide.  By making human desires indistinguishable from human rights, the Left fundamentally recreates the historic Western category of the human.

Big government exacerbates inequality, economist argues.  When liberals start talking about inequality, it's nearly always in pursuit of more government.  They take for granted that a free market makes inequality worse and Big Government programs are needed to mitigate it.  This argument appears flawed in many ways.  For one thing, inequality in and of itself — as separated from the problems of poverty and immobility — might be harmful only when that inequality is created by cronyism.  Also, the Left's economic policies can exacerbate inequality as often as they can shrink it.

All wrong — in California, girls can use urinals in the boys' restroom.  As of January 1, students in California public schools have been able to choose whether to use the boys' rest room or girls' rest room, as well as the girls' locker room or boys' locker room, based on whether they feel female or male, not whether they are anatomically female or male.  That's right:  Governor Jerry Brown, of California, signed a bill that took effect January 1 that tells kids from kindergarten on that they should decide whether they believe their gender identity is and act, accordingly.

The Idol of Equality.  Most initiatives that Obama has embraced are characterized by going after a suspect group or tradition — targeting particular businesses deemed not sufficiently socially sensitive to workers, focusing on legal gun owners, eroding the military tradition in infantry service of restricting women to non-combat roles, coercing schools that would discipline trouble-makers in class, promoting the suppression of interest rates by the Federal Reserve to reward the many who owe money and punish the fewer who saved some — all on the notion of helping the proverbial "people."  Such a thoroughgoing effort at enforcing ideas of fairness covers both the important and the trivial:  The government renames terrorism "man-caused disasters"; the fight against it is merely "overseas contingency operations."  The Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular."  If need be, we can jail an obscure video maker on trumped-up charges of parole violation to serve the larger need not to show bias against anyone.

Driver who hit 2 state troopers was high on pot.  State troopers say the man who drove his car into two patrol cars this weekend was under the influence of marijuana. [...] Troopers say they arrested Keith Kilbey, 23.  He is charged with driving under the influence of drugs.

The Editor says...
Of course this might have happened anyway, even if marijuana hadn't been legalized days earlier.  But the State of Colorado has now made fatalities like this more likely.

Louisiana Named Most Pro-Life State; Washington The Least.  Americans United for Life released their annual "Life List" report on the most and least pro-life states in the US.  This year, Louisiana came out on top for the fifth straight year, followed by Oklahoma, Arkansas, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.  Nos. 46. Connecticut, 47. New York, 48. Vermont, 49. California, and 50. Washington state brought up the rear, with Washington placing last for the fifth straight year.

CDC releases updated STD data; syphilis, gonorrhea cases are up, chlamydia numbers are stable.  Wyoming had the lowest rate, at 7.7 per 100,000 people.  The District of Columbia was the highest at 388.7 per 100,000.  Ohio's rate was 142.9 per 100,000.  The number of cases reported in Ohio in 2012 was 16,493, down slightly from 2011.  More than 15,000 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported in 2012, a rate of 5 per 100,000 people.  The rate increase was solely among men, especially gay and bisexual men who represent an estimated 75 percent of cases.

Gonorrhea, Syphilis Regain Traction in U.S., CDC Reports.  While all three diseases [gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia] are curable with antibiotics, many people don't get tested as recommended, said Gail Bolan, the director of the CDC's STD prevention division.  That's especially the case for syphilis, where the rise is entirely attributable to men, particularly those who are gay or bisexual.

Signature Count Begins For Calif. Law That Lets Boys Play on Girls' Sports Team, Use Girls' Bathroom.  The California Secretary of State's press office confirmed on Wednesday [1/8/2014] that Secretary Debra Bowen has given all 58 counties in the state until Feb. 24 to count and verify every signature in a petition campaign to let voters decide whether a law that gives students the right to use facilities and take part in sports and other activities based on their "gender identity" and not their biological sex stands.  Assembly Bill 1266, the School Success and Opportunity Act, was passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown in August 2013.

The Denaturalization of America.  Homosexual marriage, a passing joke at parties until a few years ago, is now legal in much of the U.S., as in many other Western progressive countries.  Meanwhile, in decisions soon to be upheld by the Supreme Court no doubt, various U.S. jurisdictions have declared that schoolboys who decide they feel more like schoolgirls will be permitted by law to use the girls' locker room, while the actual girls, unprotected by any new laws of their own, will apparently just have to get used to undressing in the company of boys.

Pot Opponents Predict 'Hogwild' Colorado Trainwreck.  Colorado will make history Wednesday [1/1/2014] as the first American state allowing stores to sell marijuana for recreational use — eliciting fear and predictions of doom from anti-drug campaigners.  On a Tuesday [12/31/2013] conference call hosted by Smart Approaches to Marijuana, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., said Colorado and Washington state — where stores will open later in 2014 — are "canaries in the coal mine."

Colorado Predicts More Than $500 Million in Marijuana Sales in 2014.  A Bloomberg report on the eve that marijuana legalization takes effect in Colorado notes that the state also expects $67 million in tax revenue alone from those nearly $600 million in profits.  The profits will go in part to funding schools, and only those over the age of 21 can buy marijuana at legally licensed stores.  The stores opening tomorrow morning were already in existence, selling their product medically to those with a prescription.  No new shops may legally open until July.

The Editor says...
Notice that (1) medical marijuana was just an introduction:  after we all got accustomed to it, then recreational marijuana arrived; and (2) marijuana is being taxed, and the proceeds go to education, so recreational marijuana is "for the children" after all.  This emotional ploy helps to deflect opposition.

Mass Shootings and the Left.  A return towards traditional social structures and values would perhaps help more than politically motivated, lobbyist driven, misdirected legislation touted by the left as "gun control."  It would seem that what we need is people control.  While unbounded freedom of personal expression might lead to Utopia, it can also lead to anarchy, a lesson liberals have yet to learn.

Good news from Chicago: Only 413 murdered Americans this year.  Good news from Chicago: The catastrophic murder rate in the Democratic-controlled city was slightly less catastrophic in 2013 than in 2012.  Only 413 Americans were shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death in the city, where all 50 aldermen are Democrats.  Most of the victims in the blue-voting city were African-Americans or Hispanic, and very few were white.  Still, the city's Democratic leaders cautiously cheered the deaths of the 413 Americans, more than one victim per day, which included one young woman who marched in President Barack Obama's 2013 inauguration parade.

The Straight Dope on Homosexuality.  Disease rates are one of the few undisputed facts about homosexuals.  The Centers for Disease Control says that in 2008 "men who have sex with men" accounted for 63% of new syphilis cases.  If men are half the population and 3.3% of them are homosexual, it means that 1.65% of Americans account for 63% of the country's syphilis cases.  It's even worse for AIDS.  In 2010, homosexuals were about 200 times more likely than everyone else to be diagnosed with HIV.  However, the CDC says they are only 15 times more likely than everyone else to get Hepatitis B and about 17 times more likely to have anal cancer.

TSA Offers 'Transgender Travelers' an Advice Page.  The TSA is well-known for being too aggressive in its body searches, so it shouldn't be surprising in the Obama years that the TSA has a web page titled "Transgender Travelers: Special Considerations."  "TSA recognizes the concerns members of the transgender community may have with undergoing the security screening process at our Nation's airports and is committed to conducting screening in a dignified and respectful manner," they promise.  First, they reasonably suggest that your birth date, name, and gender on your reservation match your government ID. [...] Then there are those pat-downs that can go wrong.

The Great Race Hoax.  When Barack Obama rose to national prominence following his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, his African-American heritage was a footnote to the fawning reception he received from the media and from most Americans. [...] Fast forward to today.  President Obama's race is no longer a footnote.  It is central to his presidency.  It is arguably his defining characteristic.  Unity and bipartisanship are nowhere to be found.  Who is responsible for this?  The blame rests squarely with the American Left, and specifically, with the racialists.

Electricity Prices Rise Dramatically Under Ohio Renewable Mandates.  Electricity prices in Ohio have risen approximately triple the national average since Ohio enacted renewable power mandates in 2008.  The sharp rise in electricity prices occurred despite promises during 2008 legislative hearings that renewable power mandates would have little or no impact on electricity prices.  In 2008 the Ohio legislature passed legislation creating the state's renewable power mandates.  Under the mandates, Ohioans must purchase 25 percent of their electricity from designated renewable sources by the year 2025.

Electricity Prices Soar As Government Regulation Surges.  In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Electricity Price Index hit 202.284, an all-time record and nearly 20% higher than just six years ago.  This might strike some as strange, given the private-sector shale-fracking boom going on in the Midwest, Northeast and Texas, which has led to soaring new domestic supplies of natural gas and oil.  According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, as recently as 2008 the U.S. produced 2.1 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day.  Today, it's 12.3 billion cubic feet and growing fast — truly astounding growth.

Anarchy in Detroit.  Detroit's future, to put it mildly, looks bleak.  About one-third of its 138 square miles are deserted, it has no tax base, and its schools are horrendous.  Last year, one in every 1,800 residents was murdered.  In July, the city filed for bankruptcy, and politicians, unions, and investors are currently slugging it out in court, grasping for whatever little cash remains in the Motor City's coffers.

What to Do When ObamaCare Unravels.  This fall's website fiasco and policy cancellations are only the beginning.  Next spring the individual mandate is likely to unravel when we see how sick the people are who signed up on exchanges, and if our government really is going to penalize voters for not buying health insurance.  The employer mandate and "accountable care organizations" will take their turns in the news.  There will be scandals.  There will be fraud.  This will go on for years.

The next Detroit? Atlantic City and Las Vegas facing catastrophic collapse.  With the closure of the recent Atlantic Club Casino Hotel, rumors of the bankrupt Revel being sold to Hard Rock, more than half of the mortgages in Las Vegas under water, casinos opening up all around the country and online gambling legislation underway in various states, it seems as if the reasons for the very existence of Atlantic City and Las Vegas are in serious jeopardy.

The Decline and Fall of Political Discourse.  The majority of the American people, asleep during the past sixty years of overwhelming peace and prosperity, are gradually waking up to the massive deception that has been perpetrated by the Left and their inability to solve the almost insolvable problems they, in large part, created.  Unfortunately it has taken the election of Barack Obama and the imposition of ObamaCare, among other policies aimed at concentrating power in the hands of the American Left, to achieve this epiphany.

Polygamy and the Left.  With the ruling of a federal judge last week that declared part of Utah's anti-polygamy law unconstitutional, the left finds itself torn.  Of course, with their ever-wavering consciences that are willing to go along with whatever seems the latest fad that tests our moral boundaries (especially in the sexual realm), some liberals say that it is time that we take a closer look at plural marriage.  After all, if consenting adults want to enter into such relationships, what is the problem?  In other words, as I asked over five years ago, what's wrong with polygamy?

Polygamy and the Marriage Free-fall.  Marriage in America is in a state of free-fall, and it's the confluence of American attitudes and legal rulings that are responsible for helping push it off the cliff.  On Friday night, a George W. Bush judicial appointee, Judge Clark Waddoups, struck down a part of Utah's law against polygamy in a 91-page ruling. [...] Waddoups's ruling can't be viewed in isolation from the events that preceded it, especially the debate over same-sex marriage and the larger effort to undo the norms of family life.  Social change, for good or ill, rarely happens at a single moment in time, but over time as the sum total of a thousand smaller events.  This Friday night in Utah was one such event.

Judge Cites Same-Sex Marriage in Declaring Polygamy Ban Unconstitutional.  In a game-changer for the legal fight over same-sex marriage that gives credence to opponents' "slippery slope" arguments, a federal judge has now ruled that the legal reasoning for same-sex marriage means that laws against polygamy are likewise unconstitutional.  In his 91-page opinion in Brown v. Buhman, on Dec. 13, U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down Utah's law making polygamy a crime.  In so doing, he may have opened Pandora's Box.

Pajama Boy: The Obama Machine's Id.  The Obama administration isn't doing very well with putting an empathetic face on its calamitous health-insurance law, is it?  First, we had Julia, the creepy, eyeless, vision-of-horror from Brave New World whose life was run from cradle to grave by the federal government.  Then, we had Adriana, the painfully neutral and carefully ambi-racial stock-model-from-everywhere whose face became so synonymous with HealthCare.gov's hilarious launch that she had to be replaced with a graphic plugging an 800 number.

The Editor says...
Advertising very often includes actors and actresses who are chosen for their indistinct ethnicity, such as the "painfully neutral and carefully ambi-racial stock-model-from-everywhere" mentioned above.  This is because liberals insist on multiculturalism, diversity, and the inclusion of everyone who isn't lily white; and if there is only one role to be played in an advertisement, the actor or actress must resemble everybody and, at the same time, nobody.

What Does A Satanic Monument Look Like?  I read at Breitbart that the Satan-worshipping group Satanic Temple wants its very own statue outside the Oklahoma Statehouse in Oklahoma City alongside a Ten Commandments monument. [...] This all got me thinking:  What would be an appropriate Satanic marker for the Oklahoma Statehouse?

Festivus pole to go up in Florida Capitol rotunda.  A nearly 6-foot-tall "Festivus" pole made from empty beer cans will be put up in the Florida Capitol this week as a not-so-subtle protest to the recent placement of a Christmas nativity scene.

The Editor says...
The Satanist and Festivus monuments would never have received a moment's consideration 50 years ago, but now such requests must be entertained because of the "inclusion" and "diversity" dictated by liberal PC.  Otherwise, a Christmas display or a Ten Commandments monument wouldn't be "fair," and a handful of troublemakers from left-wing fringe would be "victims."  This incremental manipulation of public buildings and public spaces will only get worse.  Not suddenly worse, just a little this year and a little next year, until sensible Americans grow tired of defending centuries of tradition.

Obama's home town by the numbers.  Chicago, which has some of the toughest gun control laws in America, had a rough November.  Despite the cold weather, it was a popular month for shooting.

Hate Crime Tip-hoaxing.  Two recent incidents have caused many people, including blogger Elizabeth Scalia, to suggest that people stop tipping with cash, in order to prevent being falsely accused of a hate crime. [...] So, if you want to avoid being falsely accused of stiffing on a tip and committing a hate crime, always put the tip on your credit card.  And save your receipts and credit card bills.

Knock Out Black Self-Hatred.  The "knockout game" is a prime example of the demise of black families across America.  The goal of the "knockout game" is to catch someone off guard and try to knock him or her out in one punch.  Many media outlets initially highlighted youth as the common denominator among the attackers.  Other media outlets reported that the majority of the perpetrators were Black males. [...] How does an individual come to think it's fun to harm another human being, capture the attack on film, and share it with the world through social media?  One has to wonder what is (or is not) going on in the households of the attackers.

America Is One Step Closer to a One-Party Tyranny.  November 21, 2013, may be another date that will live in infamy.  Instead of conventional bombs and aerial torpedoes exploding at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the "nuclear option" went off in the U.S. Senate at Washington, D.C.  By a 52-48 vote, the Senate voted to change the institution's regulations related to the filibuster, thereby emasculating a political minority's ability to thwart, or at least delay, majoritarian dictatorship.  A Senate minority can no longer thwart the president's nominations of judges to lesser federal courts or of executive department officials.

Bad managers ruined Obamacare.  All appearances to the contrary, the managers involved in this debacle aren't dumb.  But they come from a background — law and politics — where arguments often take the place of reality, and plausibility can be as good as, or better than, truth.

Keywords:  necessarily skyrocket.
Price of Electricity Hit Record for October; Up 42% in Decade.  The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday [11/20/2013] by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month.  The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012 — and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.  Americans now pay 42 percent more for electricity than they did a decade ago.

Allen West: Amnesty, Govt Dependence Create Conditions That Lead to 'Knockout Game'.  Col. Allen West, former GOP U.S. Congressman from Florida, said at a Thursday morning [11/21/2013] panel focused on the devastating economic impacts of amnesty that economic policies that displace black youths from jobs — like President Barack Obama's immigration policies — have led to fads like the "knockout game."

Did someone mention the knockout game?

Climate Scientists Murder World's Oldest Creature.  A group of "climate change experts" that discovered a 507-year-old clam that was the world's oldest known creature killed it in the process of determining its age.  The scientists, determined to count the rings on the inside of the clam's shell, killed the creature instantly when they opened it up.

ObamaCare Breaks Obama's Middle Class Tax Pledge, Too.  Matthew Fleischer, a freelance writer in Los Angeles, recently learned ObamaCare will force him off a plan he likes, and a comparable policy will cost him nearly $800 more next year.  "Most young, middle-class Americans I know are happy that millions of previously uninsured people will receive free or heavily subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act," he wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.  "We just didn't realize that, unless we had health insurance at work, we'd be the ones paying for it."  Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner in Illinois, came to the same realization after finding that his premiums will go up nearly $3,000 a year.

ObamaCare, Central Planning, and the Truth.  Looking at what was promised under ObamaCare and there is no wonder why people were dazzled by what it offered.  Of course when you talk in ideals everyone would love to have universal healthcare.  People might even believe it is possible.  After all, if it can be envisioned, why can't it come to fruition?  Unfortunately for you, ObamaCare, as it's affectionately called, is by all means of empirical evaluation not only a disaster, but the quintessential example of why central planning does not work.

Does Environmentalism Cause Amnesia?.  [Scroll down]  What does hurt people is bad public policy.  Exhibit A is the U.S. ethanol mandate — justified in part as a response to global warming — which diverted the corn crop to fuel production and sent global food prices soaring in 2008.  Exhibit B is the cult of organic farming and knee-jerk opposition to [genetically modified crops], which risk depriving farmers in poor countries of high-yield, nutrient-rich crops.  Exhibit C was the effort to ban DDT without adequate substitutes to stop the spread of malaria, which kills nearly 900,000 people, mostly children, in sub-Saharan Africa alone with each passing year.  The list goes on and on.

Sixteen tons to sixteen cents.  The bankruptcy of Detroit, America's most African American major city, raises the question of how safe those Blue Model public pensions really are.  This was dramatically heightened by a report that the city could only pay sixteen cents on every pension dollar.

A Shocking Number.  So far, the LBJ plan seems to be working perfectly.  Black Americans did not leave the party of Lincoln for the party of Joe Biden; they left the party of Herbert Hoover for the party of Franklin Roosevelt.  Or at least they thought they did.  What they got instead was the party of sky-high crime, dangerous and dysfunctional schools, a joblessness rate for black men that is more than twice the rate for white men at 14 percent and rising.  Twice the unemployment, twice the high-school dropouts, four times the abortions, four times the HIV, seven times the prison sentences, twelve times the babies born with congenital syphilis, fourteen times the murder victims, and nineteen times the gonorrhea.

How to Break an American City.  [When Detroit] filed for Chapter 9 this July, it was actually behind the curve of civic bankruptcy.  Stockton, San Bernardino, and Mammoth Lakes in California all declared bankruptcy in 2012.  Central Falls, Rhode Island, did so the year before that.  Around the country, from Maine to California, Alabama to Illinois, local governments are seeing their tax revenues decline or simply fail to keep pace with politicians' ever-expanding promises of how to spend them.

A Way to Deal With Public Unions.  The average BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) worker makes over $76,000 per year, plus huge benefits.  Janitors make as much as $82,752. But the unions want more.  And they are willing to bankrupt the region to get more.  In my opinion, San Francisco is already bankrupt due to pension obligations that cannot possibly be met (but the city may not realize that yet).  Oakland is without a doubt bankrupt due to public union pension obligations.  Oakland city officials likely realize that (but they just do not want to admit the obvious).  In due time, both Bay Area cities will follow Vallejo, Stockton, and San Bernardino into bankruptcy.  In the meantime, unions are hell bent on driving cities right over the bankruptcy cliff.

Reuters asks staff if they are 'intersex,' 'transsexual,' 'genderqueer,' male-to-female.  The 60,000-strong Thomson Reuters media empire, in an effort to determine its diversity success, is asking its staff of reporters, researchers, marketers and others to pick their sex from nine choices, including "genderqueer," a category for identities other than man or woman.  According to the company's annual employee survey, choosing a sexual identity doesn't have to be based on a worker's actual sex, but instead "a person's innate, deeply felt psychological identification."

Lessons in Liberal Projection: Conservatism Is 'Mean'?  Typically, liberal/Democrat policies and programs are ill-conceived, emotion-driven, and void of reality.  For example:  decades of liberals/Democrats lowering standards and morals have destroyed the black family.  Now we see over 70% fatherless households, with epidemic high school dropouts.  Blacks are aborting themselves out of existence.  Then there is the liberals' irrational obsession with gun control, also known as disarming the good guys (law-abiding citizens).  Bad guys — that is, criminals — do not obey gun laws.

Oakland robberies surge as investigations sputter.  No city had more robberies per capita than Oakland in 2012.  According to new federal statistics, Oakland had 10.9 robberies per 1,000 residents.  And 2013 is shaping up to be even worse.

This story has it all:  Gender confusion, assisted suicide, psycho-babble and expendable human life.
Belgian killed by euthanasia after a botched sex change operation.  Nathan, born Nancy, Verhelst, 44, was given legal euthanasia, most likely by lethal injection, on the grounds of "unbearable psychological suffering" on Monday afternoon [9/30/2013].  Wim Distelmans, a cancer specialist who carried out the euthanasia, is the same doctor who late last year gave lethal injections to congenitally deaf twins who were frightened they were also going blind.

You are now paying to clean up the Democrats' mess.
Detroit to Receive "Not-Bailout" from Federal Government.  Detroit is going to receive an infusion of cash, courtesy of the federal government.  The municipality declared bankruptcy this summer and is trying to avoid having to pay the $18 billion in liabilities it has accrued, with court battles and protests raging all the while.  Final details will be worked out in Detroit by an Obama administration delegation led by Gene Sperling, head of the White House National Economic Council, which sounds like something out of an Ayn Rand novel. [...] The ostensible purpose of the meeting is not to talk about bailouts (which aren't happening, everyone insists) but rather to discuss plans to "lift up" Detroit, "to expand opportunity and renew this world-class city."

Obama administration plans $320 million to aid Detroit recovery.  Top Obama administration officials will head to Detroit on Friday [9/27/2013] to announce nearly $320 million in federal and private aid as the city grapples with the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.

Meet the slush funds Obama used to bail out Detroit.  According to the Detroit Free Press, [Gene] Sperling "wasn't immediately able to break down" exactly how much of the money awarded represents "new funding" for Detroit, but he did say "much of it represented an effort by administration officials to scour their departments for funding that Detroit could access."  In other words, this is all the cash Obama could scrape together after looking for spare change in between the couch cushions of the federal government.

Liberalism and Mass Shootings.  It's often pointed out that without the top four American cities for homicide — Washington, Chicago (newly crowned murder capital of the USA), Detroit, and New Orleans, the U.S. would have one of the lowest murder rates in the industrialized world.  All these cities suffer from the liberal curse.  As I demonstrated in my book Death by Liberalism, liberal "judicial reform" triggered the "Great Crime Explosion" of 1964-1994, with a death toll in the hundreds of thousands.  The current plague of insane gunmen is simply a back eddy of that colossal act of hubris.

There They Go Again.  Obama recounted in his September 22 remarks, "As president I have now grieved with five American communities ripped apart by mass violence:  Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora, Sandy Hook, and now the Washington Navy Yard.  And these mass shootings occur against a backdrop of daily tragedies as an epidemic of gun violence tears apart communities across America, from the streets of Chicago to neighborhoods not far from here." [...] When was the last time a Republican served as Mayor of Chicago?  Or of Detroit?  Or governed the "neighborhoods not far from here"?

On guns, why won't Obama lead?  Where gun violence is up in recent months, it's in gun-free towns like Chicago and New York.  And whether it's the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Aurora, Colo. movie theater, the Washington Navy Yard or earlier, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood or Columbine High School, it's clear that gun-free zones don't prevent the mentally unstable from wreaking havoc on innocent victims.  In the case of Aaron Alexis, he bought a shotgun legally and then reportedly stole handguns inside the facility to perpetrate his crimes.  The laws of the facility — and the District of Columbia — didn't stop him.

Same Lies, Different Day.  When the left focuses on the gun as the common element, they don't have to focus on the depravity they have engendered as that common thread.  They don't have to answer for the lies they have told to keep the poor compliant, and tethered financially, to the politicians who endlessly promise to someday save them.  They don't have to answer for their utter failure and refusal to address the root causes of the violence:  the fatherless homes, the drug-addicted parents, the high crime rate, the welfare addiction, the rampant poverty, the joblessness, or the propaganda that others are to blame for their situation, all of which are products of the mess the left has made of those lives.  They evade accountability for the pervasive hopelessness of victimhood that is so necessary to the left's political power.

Defenselessly 'sheltered' as anti-gun fortress is breached.  As any decent American knows, there is no feeling more powerless than to realize that a couple of mass murderers are loose in your neighborhood and you are denied the right to keep a gun to defend yourself, your family or your home.  A sickening knot tightens in your gut. [...] Then came the latest Orwellian phrase in the "homeland security" lexicon:  "Shelter in place!"  So, not only are you not allowed to defend yourself against mass murderers, you are not supposed to run from them, either.  This, my fellow countrymen, is pure insanity.

Flashback: US Military Bases are 'Gun Free Zones' Because Democrats Decreed Them To Be.  After Nidal Hasan killed 13 and wounded more than 30 in November 2009, John R. Lott wrote about one of the craziest policies to come out of the Clinton era:  making military bases "gun free zones."  Yes, that's correct.  In 1993, President Bill Clinton decreed that US military personnel were to surrender the Second Amendment rights that they swear an oath to support and defend.

Lesson of Navy Yard Shooting Echoes Lessons of Camp Liberty, Ft. Hood.  Yesterday's [9/16/2013] shooting spree at Washington's Navy Yard reminds us that disarmed military personnel are made-to-order victims for spree shooters. [...] The lesson of the Camp Liberty and Fort Hood shootings was that disarmed soldiers are just as vulnerable as anyone else to a spree shooter exploiting the fish-in-a-barrel opportunity of a "gun free zone."  More details will emerge from the Navy Yard shooting, but we already know everything we need to know.  The criminal justice system had the shooter in its control, but for whatever liberal impulses were at play that day, this dangerous man was released.

FBI: Chicago passes New York as murder capital of U.S.  The city of Chicago registered more homicides than any city in the nation in 2012, surpassing even New York — despite the fact that the Second City has only one third as many residents as the Big Apple.  In new crime statistics released Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported 500 murders in Chicago in 2012, up sharply from the 431 recorded in 2011.  New York reported 419 murders last year, compared with 515 in 2011.

Tax and spend socialism has been tried, and it does not work.
How Detroit went broke.  An in-depth Free Press analysis of the city's financial history back to the 1950s shows that its elected officials and others charged with managing its finances repeatedly failed — or refused — to make the tough economic and political decisions that might have saved the city from financial ruin.

The cities with the most restrictive gun laws have the most murders.
Young Fatherless Elephants.  Thanks to the cold-blooded murders in Oklahoma and Washington, black teenage thugs have been much in the news lately.  But they've been newsworthy for quite a while now. [...] What's easy to forget, especially if you're a liberal, is that it's all an inevitable consequence of Lyndon Johnson's policies.  It was he and his stooges in Congress that made welfare to black women conditional on there not being a man on the premises.  With a swipe of his presidential pen, Johnson ended black families, as America had known them.  Until he put his welfare policy in place, the rate of marriages was higher among blacks than among whites.

Eight Killed, More than 25 Shot in Chicago Holiday Weekend Bloodbath.  At least eight people are dead and more than 25 others were wounded in shootings over Labor Day weekend in Rahm Emanuel's Chicago. [...] At lease one shooting occurred in one of the city's newly created "Safe Passage" routes, designated to provide a gun-free zone for Chicago students to get to school.  In the midst of Chicago's bloody holiday, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy continued to tout the city's overall decline in murders from 2012 and push for "stronger gun laws."

The Editor says...
Nobody guarantees the "safe passage" routes to be safe on a long holiday weekend when the schools are closed.  On the other hand, nobody with any sense believes that more gun restrictions will have any effect, since it's apparently very easy for criminals to find guns.  People who are intent on homicide don't care about gun laws.  Neither do people who have been to prison already and didn't find prison life all that rough.

Dietz & Watson warehouse blaze: solar panels hampered firefighting, officials say.  More than 7,000 solar panels on the roof of a burning warehouse in Burlington County proved too much of a hazard for firefighters, local officials said today.  "We may very well not be able to save buildings that have alternative energy," William Kramer, New Jersey's acting fire marshall, said after Delanco Fire Chief Ron Holt refused to send his firefighters onto the roof of the 300,000-square foot Dietz & Watson facility, ablaze since Sunday afternoon.  Solar panels are particularly hazardous to firefighters for a number of reasons, according to Ken Willette, a division manager with the National Fire Protection Association.

Unintended Consequences.  One of the many unintended consequences of the political crusade for increased homeownership among minorities, and low-income people in general, has been a housing boom and bust that left many foreclosed homes that had to be rented, because there were no longer enough qualified buyers.  The repercussions did not stop there.  Many homeowners have discovered that when renters replace homeowners as their neighbors, the neighborhood as a whole can suffer.

Is this Martin Luther King's legacy? National Mall covered in garbage.  The day after thousands rallied to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, the National Mall looks like a trash dump.  The grass from the Lincoln Memorial to the World War II Memorial is covered Sunday [8/25/2013] with empty soda cans, water bottles, boxed lunches, newspapers, a broken chair and rally signs.  The Reflecting Pool also was filled with trash.

Illinois v. Texas: Ballotpedia analysis should have us all packing our bags.  Internet encyclopedia of all things electoral, Ballotpedia, has published a study analyzing both the partisan makeup of a state based on new criteria — the "Trifecta" of control — as well as the state's quality of life (the "SQLI"). [...] The SQLI uses 19 factors to assess quality of life. [...] The three states that experienced the greatest improvement from 1992 to 2012 were Texas, North Carolina and North Dakota.  The three states that saw the biggest decline in their rankings from start to finish were Nevada, Connecticut and Illinois.

The Editor says...
Hmmm...  What do Nevada, Connecticut, and Illinois have in common?

Tolerance, Health and Fascism.  In the name of tolerance, girls' high school teams in California and elsewhere must now accept male players who feel female.  In the name of tolerance, businesses cannot fire a man who one day shows up on the sales floor dressed as a woman.  For the left, tolerance does not mean tolerance.  It means first, acceptance.  And second, celebration.  That is totalitarianism:  You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.

Abandoned Dogs Roam Detroit in Packs as Humans Dwindle.  As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam the streets and vacant homes of bankrupt Detroit, replacing residents, menacing humans who remain and overwhelming the city's ability to find them homes or peaceful deaths. [...] One officer in the Police Department's skeleton animal-control unit recalled a pack splashing away in a basement that flooded when thieves ripped out water pipes.

Bankrupt Detroit: As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam city streets in packs.  As many as 50,000 stray dogs roam the streets and vacant homes of bankrupt Detroit, as many residents flee the once-booming metropolis.  The city has shrank [sic] from 1.8 million to about 700,000 and packs of as many as 20 dogs have been found in boarded-up buildings of former residents, Bloomberg reported.  There are as many as 70,000 abandoned buildings for dogs and other animals to make their home.

The Editor says...
I suppose it would be impossible to declare "open season" on wild dogs, since only outlaws have guns in a liberal Utopia.  And since it's a liberal Utopia, the dogs have rights, too!

Welfare Can Make More Sense than Work.  In Connecticut, a mother with two children participating in seven major welfare programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, housing assistance, utility assistance and free commodities) could receive a package of benefits worth $38,761, the fourth highest in the nation.  Only Hawaii, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia provided more generous benefits.  When it comes to gauging the value of welfare benefits, it is important to remember that they are not taxed, while wages are.

Government Graft, Corruption, and Retaliation in Democrat-Run Virginia.  All across America, billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted or mismanaged by local governments because of little to no government transparency or accountability.  Alexandria, Virginia, provides an example of why.  Ironically, local government, which is arguably the "closest to the people," is in many ways shielded and protected from public scrutiny and questioning.  Only a select few who either work in local government or watch the actions of their local representatives closely catch these cases of waste, fraud, and abuse.  Their stories are often ignored because the media is more drawn to high-profile cases at the state and federal levels.

The Tales of Three Bankrupt Cities.  Why did so many people move out of Detroit?  The quick answer:  crime abetted by welfare.  During the decade from 1965 to 1975, crime and welfare dependency roughly tripled in the United States and rose even more in Detroit.  There was a connection between the two trends.  Welfare encouraged single parenthood; fatherless boys often grew up to commit violent crimes.  Most violent crimes were and are committed by (and against) blacks, whose numbers in Detroit during the great northward migration rose from 149,000 in 1940 to 660,000 in 1970.

Food-Stamp Use Rises; Some 15% Get Benefits.  Food-stamp use rose 2.4% in the U.S. in May from a year earlier, with more than 15% of the U.S. population receiving benefits. [...] Mississippi was the state with the largest share of its population relying on food stamps — 22% — though Washington, DC was a bit higher overall at 23%.  One in five residents in Oregon, New Mexico, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia and Kentucky also were food-stamp recipients.

Newark is named the world's least friendly city.  The 'winner' of the competition for the least friendly global city was Newark, which is known more for its airport than any other attractions. [...] Other American cities in the top 10 included Oakland, California, New Haven, Connecticut and Detroit, Michigan — as well as New Jersey's Atlantic City, which despite being a casino resort was denounced as 'a pale shadow of Las Vegas'.

Emanuel's Chicago Is On Path To Be The Next Detroit.  Chicago appears to be following Detroit's lead to financial disaster, perhaps the latest victim of decades of one-party rule by Democrats eager to redistribute wealth while driving real wealth creators out of cities.

Black Politicians Mostly to Blame for Detroit's Demise.  [Scroll down]  The way it works is fiendishly simple.  Black politicians pass laws that extort wealth by gunpoint from those better off (the so-called rich) and give it to those less so (the poor) — in this case, poor blacks.  Over time, made dependent on government largess for survival, an ever-growing number of poor blacks vote for the black politician, who promises to shower them with the most free goodies paid for by the "evil rich."

L.A., Chicago Rank 1 and 2 for Gun Murders; N.O. Has Highest Rate.  The Los Angeles and Chicago metropolitan areas had the most gun murders among the nation's fifty most-populous metropolitan areas in 2009 and 2010 (the latest years for which data is available), according to a report released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  During those two years, 1,141 people were gunned to death in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and 1,139 were gunned to death in the Chicago metropolitan area.  The New York metropolitan area ranked third with 1,101 gun homicides.

The Editor says...
I read a lot of news articles, and this is the first time I've ever seen a firearm-related homicide described as someone having been "gunned to death."

City of Chicago's cash cushion plummets, debt triples, arrests drop, water use rises.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand — down from $167 million the year before — while adding to the mountain of debt piled on Chicago taxpayers, year-end audits show.

Detroit Shows How ObamaCare Will Bankrupt the Country.  Looks like Detroit might get a federal bailout after all, by offloading its retiree health costs onto federal taxpayers via ObamaCare.  It's a window into why Obama-Care costs will quickly spiral out of control.

Saving Detroit From Itself.  The AFL-CIO and its friends are mourning Detroit as a victim of capitalism, claiming the government has a moral obligation to rescue the bankrupt city.  This is a nice political fable, but the hard truth is that Motown is a victim of its own political vices and a bailout would merely forestall the necessary rehab.

Defeat socialism and save Detroit, all in one move.  Detroit is the poster child for failed liberal social experiments.  Detroit was at one time the fourth largest city in America.  Instead of being the poster child for failed liberalism, it was the poster child for the success of the American free market. [...] The left wants Detroit bailed out so their fiscal sins can be covered and forgiven.  But there is a problem:  Detroit is not the only city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.  Many major cities, run by Democrats for decades are now facing fiscal Armageddon.  Chicago and New York are facing the same issues that drove Detroit to bankruptcy.

Detroit Ran Into The Inviolable Rule Of Economics.  [Detroit's] Cause of death?  Corruption, both legal and illegal, plus a classic case of reactionary liberalism in which the governing Democrats — there's been no Republican mayor in half a century — simply refused to adapt to the straitened economic circumstances that followed the post-World War II auto boom.  Corruption of the criminal sort was legendary.  The former mayor currently serving time engaged in a breathtaking range of fraud, extortion and racketeering.  And he didn't act alone.  The legal corruption was the cozy symbiosis of Democratic politicians and powerful unions, especially the public-sector unions that gave money to elect the politicians who negotiated their contracts — with wildly unsustainable health and pension benefits.

Unions ask Obama for Detroit bailout.  Union leaders are calling on Congress and President Obama to provide a federal bailout to the city of Detroit.  The executive council of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, called for an "immediate infusion of federal assistance for Detroit" to be matched by Michigan, which they say has not done enough to keep the city from going through bankruptcy.

No Taxpayer Bailout For Detroit.  Having dug itself into an $18 billion hole, bankrupt Detroit now has allies in Washington calling for a federal bailout.  This isn't going to help the city recover.

Detroit's Got Nowhere to Run and Nowhere to Hide.  There were over 1,849,000 people living in Detroit mid-decade in the '50s due to the automobile boom post-World War II. [...] Private enterprise is the straw that stirs the drink of any flourishing city, state or nation.  Not the other way around with the public sector leading the way as the sad case of Detroit's current bankruptcy and demise as a great American city is going to prove once and for all.  Today, Detroit is down to around 770,000 people.

What Detroit's Demise Says About America.  On race and other issues, Detroit should be a warning to the country.  It was — and in many ways, still is — a great city, but poor leadership and an ambivalent citizenry allowed Detroit's problems to fester, grow, and eventually overwhelm it.  A nation can make the same mistake.

It was suicide by government.  The city [of Detroit] undertook a controlled experiment in what happens if you are governed by a toxic combination of Great Society big spenders, race hustlers, crooks, public-sector unions and ineffectual reformers.  It spent and misgoverned itself into the ground.

The Detroit Detox.  In a letter authorizing Detroit's bankruptcy filing, Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, noted a few problems that have contributed to Detroit's dilemma:
  •   The city's unemployment rate has nearly tripled since 2000 and is more than double the national average.
  •   The homicide rate is at historically high levels, and the city has been named among America's most dangerous for more than 20 years.
  •   Roughly 78,000 city structures have been abandoned.

If Obama Had A City, It Would Look like Detroit.  Consider the following regarding the city of Detroit:
  •   40% of its street lamps don't work.
  •   210 of its 317 public parks have been closed.
  •   It takes an hour for police to respond to a 911 call.
  •   Only a third of its ambulances are drivable.
  •   One-third of the city has been abandoned.
  •   Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate.
Evidently 50 years of governance by compassionate Obama community organizer types have driven out the business class and now there is no one left to rail against.  To top it off, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina declared Detroit's bankruptcy "unconstitutional."

The Downfall of Detroit.  [Scroll down]  Forty-seven percent of adults are functionally illiterate, which is about the same rate as the Central African Republic, which at least has the excuse that it was ruled throughout the Seventies by a cannibal emperor.  Why would any genuine innovator open a business in a Detroit "innovation hub"?  Whom would you employ?  The illiterates include a recent president of the school board, Otis Mathis, which doesn't bode well for the potential work force a decade hence.

Government Motors Is Alive and Detroit Is Dead.  Last Oct. 13, President Obama boasted in a weekly address about the bailed-out auto industry that, "We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing.  We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt.  I bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later that bet is paying off in a big way."  Less than a year later, the American auto industry is indeed surviving, bolstered largely by a Ford that refused government assistance and foreign transplants located in right-to-work states.  Even General Motors has been forced to pay the free market some lip service, lest its customers go elsewhere, even as it accepts Chevy Volt subsidies.  Detroit, however, is dead, and unions and government killed it.

Detroit bankruptcy — this is what happens if you vote Democrat for 51 years.  I've been to Detroit and I won't be hurrying back.  I've never been surrounded by such appalling poverty in a Western country — rows and rows of public housing, every window broken, every door barred.  I was advised to take a cab everywhere and to avoid the sidewalk at all costs.  The gas station near my motel was a notorious hangout for crack dealers.  The only way to get any food was to order it in, and the pizza guy refused to enter the motel itself.  I had to come out to the freeway and nervously exchange money for food in the middle of the road.

Detroit's foreseeable bankruptcy: Coming to a nation near you?  Get out your cellphone.  Set the alarm for 58 minutes from now. [...] When it goes off, you'll know how long it takes Detroit police to respond to an emergency 911-call, on average.  More than five times longer than nationally.  As one result, that once prosperous, bustling city has the highest violent crime rate of major American urban centers.  Criminals know they can do their thing and be miles away before help arrives.  Detroit has about 700,000 people now, more than 80% black.

The Editor says...
Is Detroit an example of what happens when Democrats rule for 50 years?  Or is Detroit an example of what an 80 percent black city with no firearms looks like?  Or is it a city populated by people who thought they would be able to make $50 an hour putting floor mats in Cadillacs — forever?  Answer D:  All of the above.

Leftists Just Can't Help But Ruin the World.  From the 1960s well into the 1980s, laws regarding criminal justice and self-defense were stacked heavily against law-abiding Americans.  Liberal judges routinely handed down minimal sentences after criminals had been convicted of heinous crimes.  Americans who had defended themselves against criminals using force, often in their own homes, faced severe prosecution for exercising their natural right to defend their loved ones, their homes and their property.  Crime rates soared and outrage built up as the legal system allowed criminal after criminal to walk free while acting in self-defense could ruin a law-abiding American's life.  Liberals did all of this in the name of "social justice," on a theory that the system is inherently racist, poverty causes crime, and society is ultimately to blame for criminals.

Detroit files for Chapter 9 bankruptcy amid staggering debts.  Detroit on Thursday [7/18/2013] became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy, a historic move sure to ignite complex battles in coming months with creditors, pensioners and unions who stand to lose significantly as the state tries to rescue a city whose failure Gov. Rick Snyder said was 60 years in the making.

Detroit Emergency Manager Calls for 'Complete Restructuring' of City Operations.  "No one should underestimate the severity of the financial crisis," [Kevyn] Orr said in a statement.  "The path Detroit has followed for more than 40 years is unsustainable and only a complete restructuring of the city's finances and operations will allow Detroit to regain its footing and return to a path of prosperity."

Top 10 priciest U.S. cities to rent an apartment.  Of the 10 cities on the list, six are located on the West Coast, while the other four are on the opposite side of the country on the East Coast.  Of the six out west, five are located in California, with three of those clustered in the northern end of the state.

13 Cook County Municipalities In Worse Shape than Bankrupt Stockton, Calif..  The 518 taxing districts in Cook County, Illinois have debts that impose a combined "financial burden" of almost $34 billion — an average of $17,147 per Cook County household — according to a study by The Heartland Institute and the Institute for Truth in Accounting.  With a population of 5.2 million persons, Cook County is the nation's second-most populous county and includes the City of Chicago.

The echo of gunfire.  Six months into the year, more than 1,000 people have been wounded or killed by gunfire in Chicago.  And this is an improvement.

NHS hospitals asked to generate their own power amid blackouts fears.  According to one energy company, four hospitals have already signed up to a deal under which they will reduce demand at peak times by using diesel-fired generators.  KiWi Power, which is a commercial partner of National Grid, says it has started to approach every NHS trust in the country about undertaking similar plans after winning a government contract to encourage power saving.

The Editor says...
There is no longer enough centralized generating capacity in England to serve all customers during periods of peak demand.  This is because England's energy policy is dictated by environmentalists who are opposed to the use of coal.  So the hospitals — and presumably any other large consumers of electric power — are being asked to switch to diesel-powered backup systems during peak demand hours.  How big is the "carbon footprint" of a megawatt diesel-powered generator — or a dozen of them?  What if the generator runs out of diesel fuel, and the (centralized) utility power fails, due to transformer overload, falling trees, lightning, or something else?  What will this increased demand do to the price of diesel fuel?  Any guesses?

America's top 10 snobbiest cities revealed.  Travel + Leisure has revealed America's top 10 most pretentious cities, with San Francisco topping the list and New York City and Boston not far behind.

Calif. lawmakers pass K-12 transgender-rights bill.  California lawmakers approved a bill Wednesday [7/3/2013] that would require public K-12 schools to let transgender students choose which restrooms they use and which school teams they join based on their gender identity instead of their chromosomes.

The Editor says...
Whenever schools allow the kids to make decisions about their rules, trouble is inevitable in the chort term, and chaos in the long run.  The same would be true if the inmates were allowed to make policy decisions in prisons.  Where liberals rule, common sense does not.

California is about to pass a law requiring bathroom, locker room access regardless of gender.  Mere ownership of a penis or a vagina will no longer limit California students in their decisions concerning which bathrooms and locker rooms to use, or which sports teams to join.  Under a proposed law that has passed the state legislature and now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, students in California will be able to make such choices based on their perceived gender identities, CNN reports.  Assembly Bill 1266 aims to extend the rights of transgender students.

Is Obama a Victim of Self-Esteem Education?  I never understood Barack Obama — or even some of my friends — until I read The Amateur by Edward Klein.  But first you also need to remember the plague of "self-esteem" based education.  And finally it all makes sense.  The self-esteem movement hurt our public schools and degraded the curriculum.  The self-esteem time bomb is now coming full circle, as the victims of our schools, colleges, and universities have moved into leadership of our country.

Obama's Perversity.  Chicago is basically a one-party regime.  How can you tell if you're living under one-party rule?  Your media aren't going to tell you.  Your government isn't either.  Your schools are part of the mob monopoly.  But there are signs:  the biggest one is that open scandals and crimes have no consequences.  We all know Holder is a perverse attorney general, that the EPA is run by scientific know-nothings, that Wall Street has high-level lines running into this administration, that "green technology" contradicts the known facts of physics, and that "catastrophic climate change" is a self-serving farce.

Rise in gay homeless people threatens San Francisco's name as gay-friendly mecca.  Thanks to the equality rights work of pioneers such as the politician and activist Harvey Milk, San Francisco has a reputation as the gay capital of the world.  But as the city recovers from its 43rd gay Pride festival at the weekend, attended by more than 1.5 million people, it must confront an uncomfortable issue.

Risk of UK blackouts has increased, Government admits.  Ofgem warned there could be energy shortages in the middle of this decade as the UK has failed to build enough new wind farms and nuclear powers stations to replace old fossil fuel plants.  It also believes demand for energy may not fall as much as originally expected, as fewer households are insulating their lofts and switching to green appliances than predicted.

The Editor says...
Conservation, insulation and rolling blackouts are not energy sources.  The only solution to an energy shortage is increased energy production.  As a practical reality, the most reliable, cost-effective fuels for the generation of electric power are coal and natural gas.  This was all common knowledge 50 years ago, and then the tree-hugging earth-worshiping environmentalists acquired political power.  Now, even the sensible population in England is reaping what the greens have sown, and the same thing can happen here.

Democrats put Blacks in the Back of the Bus.  Currently the unemployment rate for black Americans is 13.5%, vs. 6.7% for whites, but the rate for black teens is 42.6%, vs. 21.6% for whites.  It's clear that the Obama economy has had a very disparate impact on blacks.  This is in large part due to the much lower skill levels of blacks than whites.  While 94.4% of whites finish High School only 88.1% of blacks do.  Similarly while 39.2% of whites have at least a Bachelors degree only 20.1% of blacks do.  There are many theories as to why this gap exists but a likely cause is the horrible state of public education in the inner cities where Democrat politicians and teachers unions work together with little concern for the children they're supposed to serve.

Shape-shifters are Changing America.  Mostly unbeknownst to most of us mortals, a modern day shape-shifter can become the opposite of the sex he or she was born as, transforming into a man or woman in an instant.  It doesn't matter if the biological assignment given at birth remains.  Proclamation of one's sexual identity is enough.  One's gender can be established by fiat.  Even children may change sex just by proclamation, as the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary School guidelines affirm, stating that even if a child physiologically resembles a boy in every respect, but decides to be a girl, his new identity is to be acknowledged as the "real" one.  Just to be perfectly clear, lest anyone accuse the district of discrimination, it is not necessary to declare one's self male or female at all.  A student can essentially check the box "Neither."

As goes Detroit.  Urban America has a much-needed new truth-teller, and his name is Kevyn Orr.  Mr. Orr is emergency manager for Detroit — a Democrat tasked by Michigan's Republican governor, Rick Snyder, with arresting the financial death spiral in that state's largest city.  On June 14, Mr. Orr issued a 128-page report that cut through years of official obfuscation and delivered the grim facts about the city's plight.

The Consequences of Liberalism.  It's misleading to say that the social consequences of the welfare state are "unintended."  We know what the liberal welfare state does to people.  I occasionally rile up my liberal friends by noting that a century ago the rich were fat and the poor were thin, but today the rich are thin and the poor are fat.  Same with work.  Back then the poor worked all the time; today the rich work all the time.  Liberals don't like to hear stuff like that. [...] We know full well the consequences of liberalism.  They are manifesting themselves before our eyes in Chicago's bloodbath and Detroit's bankruptcy.

Other countries are further down the same road.
Brazil's Woes Are The Wages Of Socialism.  Brazil's rulers have been taken aback by the millions of countrymen surging up against them, venting their fury.  What we have here is a fresh example of why socialism fails. [...] What started as a protest against a 9-cent fare hike on public transport fireballed into a gigantic public protest against political corruption, high taxes and lousy public services — and the government itself.

Rotting, Decaying And Bankrupt: Detrot and America.  Much of America was shocked when the city of Detroit defaulted on a $39.7 million debt payment and announced that it was suspending payments on $2.5 billion of unsecured debt, but those who visit my site on a regular basis were probably not too surprised.  Anyone with half a brain and a calculator could see this coming from a mile away.  But people kept foolishly lending money to the city of Detroit, and now many of them are going to get hit really hard.

Emergency Manager: Detroit Won't Pay $2.5B it Owes.  A team led by a state-appointed emergency manager said Friday [6/14/2013] that Detroit is defaulting on about $2.5 billion in unsecured debt and is asking creditors to take about 10 cents on the dollar of what the city owes them.

New Republic Contributor Compares Sex-segregated Bathrooms to Jim Crow Racial Segregation.  Having a strict "girls' room" and "boys' room" is just as bad as keeping black and white bathrooms separate, claimed UCLA law professor Adam Winkler.  In a New Republic article called "Bathrooms Are Not Separate-But-Equal," Winkler sympathized with Maine high school student Nicole Maines, a 15-year-old "transgender girl" who was denied access to the girls' restroom, since Maines is biologically a boy who wears female clothing and makeup.  Winkler decried the "intolerance" of the "insensitive" schools officials who aren't comfortable letting the male Maines use the girls' bathroom, and complained that these are "strict and outdated rules that discriminate in who can use which restroom."  He insisted that such standards are "acts of discrimination no different from those that prohibited black people from entering white bathrooms until the 1960s."

Restaurant Tells Woman who Ran into Cross-Dresser in Ladies Room to Try Men's Room.  A Nashville woman who found herself face-to-face with a "big, burly" cross-dresser in the ladies room of a family restaurant felt her horror turn to anger after a restaurant manager suggested she try the men's room.  Transgendered people in several states have been fighting for the right to use public restrooms that correspond with whatever sex they consider themselves, with lawmakers in California and Massachusetts providing support for the idea.

Government overreach? Are you really surprised?  [Scroll down]  Benghazi is a natural outcome of a policy of appeasement in the Middle East.  Fast and Furious is a natural outcome of a policy of willful blindness to the dangers of a porous border.  But it's about more than just scandals.  It's about consequences.  Almost everything going wrong these days could have been, and was, predicted to follow from the votes of Congress and the policies of the president just as night follows day.

Student Suspended For Toy Gun The Size Of A Quarter.  When you add liberalism, political correctness, and gun control monomania, you'll get a toxic combination of absurdity.  In the very blue state of Massachusetts, one six-year-old was suspended over a toy gun about the size of a quarter.  Do you hear that?  It's common sense going down the drain.

Four Chicago Neighborhoods Named on List of 25 Most Dangerous.  NeighborhoodScout, a real estate blog, has compiled FBI data from 17,000 local law enforcement agencies to rank America's 25 most dangerous neighborhoods.  Chicago has four neighborhoods on the list, tied with Detroit for the city with the most neighborhoods listed.

Signature Shortages Of Socialism — Here In America.  Shortages of 300 drugs, vitamins and trace elements have reached the highest levels ever recorded in the U.S., according to a report by Alexandra Robbins in the Washingtonian, "leading to complications usually only seen in the developing world."  It's a direct result of the Food and Drug Administration's stepped-up harassment of makers of some of these lifesaving compounds — which has shut down 30% of U.S. manufacturing capacity in some specialties.

Europe's anti-carbon agenda is adverse to human health and welfare.  The hostile regulatory environment toward carbon, especially coal, is leading to business closures, higher prices, stagnation, unemployment, fuel poverty and an increase in the death rate.  In their fascination with computer models based on untested hypotheses, European Union policymakers have put their countries so far behind the economic curve that it will take decades to catch up to more competitive nations.

Europe is becoming a green-energy basket case.  For years, European leaders have flaunted their unwavering commitment to fighting climate change — and chastised the United States for lagging behind.  But last week brought yet more confirmation that the continent has become a green-energy basket case.  Instead of a model for the world to emulate, Europe has become a model of what not to do.

European power plants are burning firewood from U.S. forests because of "global warming" restrictions.
Europe's Green-Fuel Search Turns to America's Forests.  Loggers [in Windsor, NC] are clear-cutting a wetland forest with decades-old trees.  Behind the move:  an environmental push.  The push isn't in North Carolina but in Europe, where governments are trying to reduce fossil-fuel use and carbon-dioxide emissions.  Under pressure, some of the Continent's coal-burning power plants are switching to wood.  But Europe doesn't have enough forests to chop for fuel, and in those it does have, many restrictions apply.  So Europe's power plants are devouring wood from the U.S., where forests are bigger and restrictions fewer.

Europe importing U.S. trees to keep the lights on.  Environmentalists in the United Kingdom are outraged by what has become a growing trend in Europe  — countries are importing more wood from the United States in order to meet the EU's strict renewable energy mandates.  The BBC reports that millions of tons of wood pellets will be shipped into Europe to help keep the lights on in a more environmentally friendly fashion.  Environmentalists argue that burning wood pellets wrecks U.S. forests and does nothing to address global warming in the short term.

The Editor says...
The environmentalists who are so alarmed by this latest development should have asked (years ago) where their energy was going to come from after coal was outlawed.  I'm pretty sure they didn't see this coming.  And what does Europe gain by burning down the forests, if global warming has already stopped?

Texas, Red States Beat Blue States On Jobs, Growth.  Texas outperformed every other state in the nation on jobs and growth over the past decade, according to the latest annual report on state economic performance released Thursday [5/23/2013] by the American Legislative Exchange Council.  Michigan came in dead last.  The rankings are based on state GDP growth, population shifts, and changes in non-farm payroll jobs between 2001 and 2011.  Th