Hey,
GOP: This is Your Do or Die Moment. If Democrats, the corporate media, and foreign interests can steal a
presidential election, they can steal any congressional or gubernatorial election, easily. If a thief can rob Fort Knox
with ease, any bank on Main Street will be child's play. If they can weaponize the CIA, FBI, IRS, and DOJ to target
their political enemies, without punishment, why won't they double down next time? For the left, crime does pay.
There has been no reckoning or accountability for the stolen 2020 presidential election. What's to stop every
subsequent election from being stolen in the same way? [...] Does anyone seriously believe that the Biden FBI or DOJ will
lift a finger to investigate voter fraud?
You're It. If the communists gain
control, it won't be long before you will not be able to travel as you always have. Checkpoints will ensure that you
are permitted to travel, especially to other states and the conditions of travel in those states might vary wildly. In
some, you might have to quarantine for a period of time upon arrival. This rules out a lot of civilian transcontinental
travel. This is part of the Green New Deal imposed through other means. It also gives the government the right to
restrict travel for purposes of political demonstration. Private property will be eliminated. That sounds
ridiculous as I write it, but then so did the idea of shutting down the powerful American economy all because of a virus
based on intentionally inaccurate death rates and wildly speculative ideas of how the virus spread. The communists
don't want private property or a middle class. Those are means of self-sufficiency they cannot tolerate. It sets
a bad example and encourages people to live outside of their control. They need a population that is reliant on them,
in close quarters where they can be monitored by other citizens; citizens who will inform on them for any violation.
Biden's
'Dark Winter' Is A Warning About His Economy, Not The Virus. Should President Donald Trump's election
challenges fail to keep Joe Biden out of the White House, it's a certainty that bleak days will be ahead. We're staring
into the barrel of at least four years of sclerotic economic growth. Six days after the election, Biden, employing the
Democratic Party strategy of sowing fear whenever possible, warned that the country is facing a long night. "Before the
surge in COVID cases we predicted, many predicted, and the deaths rise that we've seen in December ... we head into a very
dark winter ahead," he said. [...] Apparently it never occurred to Biden and his handlers that government intervention, not
the virus, caused 2020's downturn. Nor have they even begun to understand that Democrats' economic policies, filled
with steep, punitive taxes, and impossible-to-jump regulatory hurdles, are a slow-motion march of the economic lockdowns that
almost instantly paralyzed the economy this year.
The
Democrats' Road to Hell. The ruling political class in Washington D.C. is always making matters worse through
what appear to be appropriate solutions for serious problems facing the country. Then when they don't work out as
advertised many years after they've been implemented, they tell us that they've got the solutions for the newer, more serious
problems that to the unsuspecting and unknowing public seem as if they came out of nowhere, and who are clueless as to how
they began in the first place. [...] Government assistance has morphed from safety net to entitlement where there is no
accountability for the failures of the ruling political class that perpetually creates problems, as well as government
incentives to "right social wrongs" that do the same by distorting the marketplace in ways that are not good for anyone.
How
Democrats are sneakily destroying the Electoral College. Add the Electoral College to the list of American
institutions that the Democrats have destroyed (along with education, media, entertainment, Silicon Valley, sports, big
cities, the justice system, the family, the FBI-CIA, the Supreme Court, etc.). By manufacturing massive fraudulent vote
counts in the big cities they control, Democrats invalidate suburban and rural votes in key battleground states like Georgia,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. Elections simply become who can produce the most votes, which
is most easily accomplished in large Democrat-run cities like Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee. The
Democrat machines that control those cities can effortlessly run up large vote counts for Democrats without fear of being
found out by manipulating the voting rules and by manufacturing ballots. Local Democrat judges "on the payroll" look
the other way, while Big Media leads in the cover-up with information blackouts. Large Democrat donors, Silicon Valley
bigwigs, and geopolitical rivals like China bankroll the operation. By relying on big city votes to swing the national
elections, our electoral system degenerates into a de facto direct voting structure, thus invalidating the Electoral College
and violating the Constitution.
November 2020: The Good Points:
The Presidential election of November 2020 was an unmitigated disaster to any sane-thinking person concerned with the good of America.
While unintellectual, style-obsessed political simpletons cheer the outcome based strictly on emotional rooting interests, intelligent
individuals who are more concerned with full employment, energy independence, military readiness and border security than identity politics,
racial/gender quotas and the microaggression du jour realize that a "Biden" administration will set American economic prosperity
and social progress back by decades. If the Democrats come into power, the government will pick the winners and losers and the country
will devolve from a meritocracy to a selectocracy. [...] Under a progressive administration:
• Crime will increase as the police are defunded and bail/sentencing standards are relaxed and eliminated
• We'll get higher taxes, and have less disposable income
• Energy costs will increase as exploration and production are intentionally curtailed, leading to higher consumer prices across the board
• Progressives will refuse to "allow" life to return to normal, even after widespread dispensation of the COVID vaccines
Voters will see this all quite clearly and that's good.
Christmas
Message for a Broken Republic. The left has done its utmost to air-brush God out of the Constitution, ban the
Ten Commandments from every public square, and ostracize Christ from all public discourse, while at the same time
expropriating Christ's words for their conceited, bewitching subterfuge, preached from every "progressive" altar and chanted
as they burn restaurants and beat Trump supporters to a pulp. All these acts of eradication were merely rehearsals for
the final ransack and rapine of the electorate now taking place.
Portland
police [officers are] resigning for jobs elsewhere making less money and it's not hard to see why. Portland
police officers are resigning from the force in unusually high numbers in the middle of their careers. Many are seeking
jobs in other cities where they will be paid less money and also lose some of their time toward retirement. According
to the Portland Tribune, it's unusual for the number of resignations to exceed the number of retirements but that's what's
happening right now.
Nullification
Isn't Just for Democrats, Anymore. Since the 2016 election, Democrats have made all kinds of nullification
standard fare, but more pernicious than displaying a disagreeable temperament, or contrary opinion; more than First
Amendment-protected civil disobedience. Instead, making that which is legitimate, illegitimate; making what is
illegitimate, legitimate. Making what is decent, abhorrent; making what is grotesque, glorious — all
enjoying approbation from a fawning media. Any and all tactics, now including election fraud, and covering up bribery
of a president to-be, are used unapologetically, with no subterfuge, and with impunity. Truth now is subjective,
conditioned on identity and whether it will be canceled by the mob, or approved by the neo-aristocracy.
The
reimagined police as servants of the left. We back the blue, but will they back us? Like most conservatives, I
support the police and the vital role they serve in a civilized society. But like many conservatives, watching them stand down
on orders from blue-state mayors during months of riots was jarring. (They even stood down during a Back the Blue rally in Denver
when speakers were attacked.) Many of us asked how the police could obey such orders and allow criminals to have free rein in
our streets — criminals whose victims, I might add, included over 2,000 police officers. Don't police officers swear
an oath to protect and defend the Constitution? Well, yes, they do. In fact, that is their paramount responsibility.
Perhaps this year, it seems we witnessed the rule and not the exception — the rule being that most people, including the police,
will be cowards in the face of tyrants.
What's
happening in Minnesota bodes ill for Democrats. Across America, the Wuhan virus has allowed Democrats to
implement some of their long desired plans for "reforming" America in a properly Marxist mold. One of the most hallowed
plans, which academia promotes, is "de-incarceration" (i.e., ending prisons). The other one, although it's kept
hush-hush, is to end that pesky, morality-driven, hardworking, freedom-loving middle class. Minnesota's Governor Tim
Walz is working on both issues, with disastrous results for good people. That's why this arrogant societal manipulation
could soon prove to be the Democrats' downfall. [...] For the crime of feeding her family, Walz, through the Minnesota
attorney general's office, is filing documents to imprison [Larvita] McFarquhar for trying to stay afloat.
U.S.
City May Pass "Duress Legislation" to Give Criminals "Poverty Defense". Elected officials in a major U.S. city
plan to pass a law that will allow thieves to sell items they steal if they do it to earn money for basic needs and
trespassers to set up camp on private property when it is to obtain adequate shelter. Dozens of other crimes —
including assault and harassment — will be excused under the preposterous measure if suspects are poor, mentally ill
or addicted to drugs. It is being crafted as a poverty defense and will allow municipal court judges to dismiss a multitude
of crimes if poverty, mental illness or a substance-abuse disorder drove the perpetrator to commit them. Even for a famously
liberal left coast city like Seattle it seems like a bit much. The proposal was first introduced during the Seattle City
Council's budget deliberations weeks ago, according to a local news report. It was put on hold over a budget process
bureaucracy but has gained incredible steam and appears to have enough support to alter the city code early next year.
"The idea could enormously impact the city — and set Seattle apart from the rest of the country in its approach to
misdemeanor crimes," according to the news story, which includes the concerns of frustrated public safety advocates who say
the law will essentially legalize most crimes in Seattle.
If
the Media Doesn't Report on Crime, It Won't Exist. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism was set up at
Harvard. Like everything touching old foundations and journalism, it's a toxic disaster. And this one is right up
there with In Defense of Looting. [...] No this stuff isn't marginal. Nieman is influential and it's part of the
larger pro-crime push. And the reshaping of the legacy media. Even at this late date, one of the few things the
local news does anymore is sports, weather, and crime. Lefty virtue signaling destroyed sports. The push to make
every weather report about global warmunism while firing any weatherman who doesn't go along has been underway for years.
Republican
Mackenzie Kelly Wins Austin City Council Runoff. Local Paper Declines to Cover It. In a stunning upset,
Republican Mackenzie Kelly defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in Austin's District 6 runoff Tuesday. Kelly ran
on a platform that includes restoring police department funding and ending the city's permissive homeless camping
ordinance. She won with 52% to Flannigan's 48%, a margin of just about 700 votes overall. Kelly's win, and
Republican Jennifer Virden's near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters' thinking. The
Democrat-dominated city was already up in arms over the homeless camping ordinance, which allows homeless people to camp just
about anywhere they want all over the city (except city hall) since the council passed it unanimously in the summer of 2019.
That has led to encampments under overpasses and even on the fringes of neighborhoods all over Austin.
The
'kraken' is the sleeping giant now awakened within the GOP. [Scroll down] We're censored by big tech, smeared
in the media, mocked in popular culture, and endure malicious political prosecution, as in the cases of Michael Flynn and Kyle
Rittenhouse. On the other side, Hillary Clinton destroyed 30,000 emails, federal bureaucrats broke countless laws in the
Russian Collusion hoax, leftist radicals burned cities and attacked police, Obama weaponized the IRS against Republicans, and
illegally imposed DACA. The rules are clear: Democrats can break the law whenever they want. [...] Can you imagine
a country where Democrats can commit blatantly unconstitutional actions to enable voter fraud while simultaneously using the
same Constitution to insist Republicans have no legal grounds to challenge them? This is the America we're living in.
Can
We Survive the Coming Socialism? It's looking pretty grim right now regarding President Trump's chances of
getting the four more years he deserves, and that he almost certainly would have received had the Democrats' cheating game
not gone to all time high levels. It's also looking like justice and honesty are going to play a diminishing role in
the United States for the foreseeable future, as evidently about forty or so percent of the country is perfectly comfortable
with massive voter fraud and willing to participate in it, all because they wanted to have their own way. With that, it
also looks like we are on our way towards a pretty heavy dose of socialism as the Left is now emboldened by their brazen acts
of fraud and encouraged by the fact that even SCOTUS does not seem willing to challenge their crimes.
Republicans
[are] Pushing Themselves Off the Cliff. [Scroll down] If Democrats can steal one presidential election,
they can certainly steal another one, and enough Congressional elections for a permanent Democrat majority in the Executive
and Legislative branches of the federal government. Elections will no longer matter as the winner will be preordained
by the ruling class. Democrats can add states to the union, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and a split California,
giving them a solid Senate majority. Eliminating the filibuster, as promised, will make Republican objections to any
bill or nomination irrelevant. A stacked Supreme Court, as also promised, will allow the left to rewrite the
Constitution to suit Bernie, AOC, and George Soros, rather than Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison. Medicare-for-all and
the Green New Deal will soon be the law of the land, as will open borders and tens of millions of new Democrat
constituents. Expect a carbon tax as we sign on to the Paris Climate Accord. Iran will be back to building nukes
and China will control of most of corporate America.
Seattle
is considering making it legal to steal, as long as you're poor and plan on selling the items. Remember over
the summer when AOC blamed the spike in crime in New York City on parents stealing food to feed their families? [Tweet]
She was roundly ridiculed for that, of course, but now Seattle hopes to make AOC's fantasy a reality by creating an
affirmative defense for theft if you intended to sell the stolen items for "basic needs" like food or rent. It's called
"the poverty defense," and would not only make stealing legal, but apparently fencing items as well, and would cover over 100
misdemeanor crimes.
Judge
to California's 3rd Largest County: On Account of COVID, Release Half Your Convicts. How do you empty a
large county's jail system by half? That's a question currently demanding an answer, as a West Coast judge has ordered
that very thing. As reported by The Daily Wire, on Friday, Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson dictated Sheriff Don
Barnes must liquidate Orange County's jail system by 50%. The decision comes following the American Civil Liberties
Union's April lawsuit demanding the release of disabled and vulnerable inmates in light of the pandemic.
America's
Two Plagues. [Scroll down] And I say, the inmates have taken over the asylum. There is a madness
loose in the society stemming from the collapse of classical, Biblical, sexual morality. The US has become Sodom and
Gomorrah and evidence of this is this latest lunacy. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed
homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, and the rest is history. It led to the AIDS epidemic and to the
tolerance of such low life millionaires such as Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophilia, with Bill Clinton
their soulmate in sexual predation. It led to this sexual degenerate in the Oval Office engaged in perverse sex games
with a woman young enough to be his daughter. Clinton's historic legacy will be a semen-stained dress. Joe Biden
may be supportive of so-called "transgenderism," but there is no such thing because there is no such thing as "gender," as
the "Woke" misuse that word today. The existence of "gender" as they understand it is nothing less than magical, not
scientific, thinking. No source for this sensation is known in the body or brain.
Our
political opponents are vicious, but they're also crazy. Leftists live in a world of racial hatred, gender
confusion, white self-loathing, religious loathing, American loathing, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic feelings, misogyny,
misandry, homophobia, transphobia, and so much more. Everything is defined by hatred for others. It's impossible
to live in a world imbued with hate and still be happy. These -isms and -phobias get pushed onto young people in public
schools and in institutions of higher leftist learning. Many of these people, when they leave college or university,
continue to bathe in this fetid broth of self-loathing and paranoia.
Minneapolis
delivers on its George Floyd promise to defund police and wipes $8m from force's budget. Minneapolis City
Council on Thursday [12/10/2020] approved a controversial budget which is set to move $8 million of funding from the
police — despite record crime rates since the May death of George Floyd. Mayor Jacob Frey, who had
threatened to veto the entire budget if the council went ahead with a plan to cap police staffing, said the vote was a
defining moment for the city which was the first to be hit by anti-police protests following the death of Floyd. The
city has been plagued by soaring violent crime since then — with homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary,
theft and arson all up on last year's figures.
Alternate headline: Democrats Abandon the War on Drugs Drugs Declare Victory in War on
Drugs. The 2020 elections delivered a resounding victory for drug policy reformers, who won everywhere their proposals
were put to a vote. Across the country, in red and blue states, on both coasts and in between, in the Midwest and the Deep South,
voters passed ballot initiatives that not only continued to reverse marijuana prohibition but also broke new ground in making drug laws
less punitive and more tolerant. New Jersey's approval of marijuana legalization was expected. Preelection surveys consistently
put public support above 60 percent, although the actual margin of victory was a few points bigger than the polls suggested.
Where's
the Kraken? Where's the Storm? If Democrats control the federal government, there is zero chance any
electoral fraud will be investigated. The only investigations will be of Trump and his supporters. Democrats will
use the 2020 election as a pilot project, refining their ability to steal enough future elections to keep themselves in
permanent majority. Democrats will change the rules so that Republicans never have control of either branch of
government again. Added states will insure Democrat control of the Senate. Institutionalized electoral fraud will
make future elections as irrelevant as the outcome when the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals. A good
show with a predetermined result, banana republic style. How do those countries end up? A stacked Supreme Court
will rewrite the Constitution and Bill of Rights to suit Bernie, AOC, and George Soros. Masks, lockdowns, and censorship
will become the norm. The Mitt Romney's of the GOP will be yapping chihuahuas in cages, annoying but irrelevant.
If
vote fraud wins in 2020, prepare for life to get ugly. What kind of changes will we have to endure? We
will wear masks forever. There will always be a medical crisis mandating them. There will be a war on
combustion. We will be forced to drive electric cars or no car at all. Barack Obama began this effort in 2009
with his "cash for clunkers" program. Thanks to new regulations, we will pay much higher prices for technology and
medical care. We will have medical death panels. It is already starting. The first to receive the COVID-19
vaccine will be health care workers and nursing home residents. So far, the choice is palatable, but who will be the
next one to be deemed worthy of survival? [...] The war on combustion means there will be no fossil fuel to heat our
homes. We will have to use heat pumps exclusively. Heat pumps require refrigerant. There is already a high
price for refrigerant because of previous regulations. Expect the price to go higher. All of this will lead to
rationing of electricity. There will be either rolling blackouts or central control of the thermostat.
Car Jackings
In Minneapolis Up 537 Percent. Honestly, who with a functional brain didn't see this coming? As I've
noted before, even if you take every dime you remove from the police budget and put it toward crime prevention measures,
it'll take years before any of them show any potential results. Defunding law enforcement now is idiotic, and now we
can quantify just how idiotic. I mean, a 537 percent increase? That's insane, but also think about how few
carjackings there were during the lockdown. For months, few people went anywhere, which meant fewer opportunities to
jack someone's car. It was also more difficult to mill about on foot while waiting for a potential target. That
means it's very likely these numbers have skyrocketed in just the last half of the year, making it even more insane. It
looks from here like the whole "defund the police" thing has turned into the trainwreck we all expected it to become.
Where We Are.
[Scroll down] You cannot create a world of perfect equality because people are not equal, and the attempt to make them
so requires taking away the freedom of most for the benefit of what turns out to be a few. You cannot create a
government that is socially "just" because the people who will run it are the same people whose lies, bigotries, selfishness
and greed created the unjust world you are attempting to leave behind. The new rulers, corrupt as ever, will have more
power than ever. You can only make things worse. Much worse. I learned these truths first in my work with
the Black Panther Party, a murderous street gang whom we regarded as "the vanguard of the revolution." We did so because
the Panthers were the only leftists with guns who were willing to use them. The Panthers preyed mainly on vulnerable
blacks but also murdered a friend of mine who was white. My second awakening came with the success of the New Left's
"antiwar movement," which forced America out of Vietnam. The New Left's claims to be "anti-war" in behalf of the
Vietnamese were actually two dangerous lies. When the movement succeeded in forcing America's withdrawal from
Indo-China, the Communists proceeded to slaughter two and a half million peasants in Cambodia and Vietnam. There wasn't
a single demonstration against the slaughter. Not one. I realized then that it was never an "anti-war"
movement. It was an anti-American movement. The Left wanted the Communists to win and didn't care how many
innocent Asians were murdered in the process.
Seattle
homicides [are the] highest in over a decade as council cuts police budget. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan plans to sign a
new city budget that will reduce the police budget by 18% despite homicides reaching record highs not seen in a decade.
Council members overwhelmingly voted last week to cut funds for police training and overtime and to eliminate dozens of
vacant positions within the Seattle Police Department after months of contentious talks. The reductions fall short of
the 50% that local activists demanded amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice. The
council also decided to transfer parking enforcement officers, mental health workers and 911 dispatchers out of the police
department.
How
Liberals Can Destroy Football with COVID, and Why They'd Want To. Football has always been reviled by the
left. It is quintessentially American: invented in this country; played by high-testosterone, masculine men; and
operating almost entirely as a super-competitive meritocracy — i.e., the test of whether someone gets to play in
the NFL is whether he can play, and play better than the other guy. In the NFL in 2020, there's no time to humor
racism or any other "ism" in fielding a winning team; there's only the all-defining imperative priority to put the best
players on the field and "coach 'em up" to play the game well. All of those attributes of the sport are precisely why
it has been so popular in America; it has been aligned with American cultural norms and preferences for decades. The
sport's popularity is in fact proof that America as a whole is not racist — systemically or otherwise.
Americans don't root for their team or watch the NFL in huge numbers based on a team's compliance with racial hiring quotas;
they root and watch because they appreciate the best playing the best using talents that most of us don't have, and deciding
on a level playing field who wins a competitive game and who loses.
Seven
Quotes to Lay Out a Totalitarian America. [Scroll down] We have lived through the decades of gradual
transition of socialist sentiments and actions in our country, becoming more socialist every day through the
transition. We have seen universities, K-12 school systems, the media, large companies, philanthropic organizations,
and other entities transition from idealistic to socialist, largely unnoticed — until now. Would Biden's
administration be a massive socialist revolution into a totalitarian state? No. But given what has happened
already, it could be the straw that breaks democracy's back. Our transformation to a totalitarian state must be
resisted. Buckle up and stand tall. Do not fear Black Lives Matter, Antifa, social media, the press, your
school's curricula, your employer, or any of these forces.
Racism is alive and well in America.
Leftism destroys everything — absolutely everything — that it touches:
• It took first and second wave feminism (right to vote, equal pay for equal work) and turned it into third wave man-hating feminism.
• It took the Great Society and welfare, and turned them into the destruction of the black family in America, with all the pathologies that follow.
• It took the concept of avoiding cruel and unusual punishment when dealing with criminals, and turned it into no punishment at all,
which increases crime, destroys societal trust, and puts criminals at grave risk of vigilantism.
• It took the idea that the state cannot promote or interfere with religion and turned it into a state hostile to religion.
• It took the Civil Rights movement, one premised on the fact that we are all equal before God and the law, and turned it into a
foundation for dangerous, divisive, and tragic anti-white hatred.
By Every Legal Means
Necessary. The Democrats began a comprehensive assault on the electoral system several years ago in many
states; they consecrated great resources to electing the secretaries of state who effectively administer federal elections
within their states; they agitated and litigated in many states to change voting practices and to facilitate ballot
harvesting through unsolicited mass mailings to the entirety of the voter rolls and the collection and delivery of ballots
with increasingly dubious verification that they represent the will of the voters ostensibly casting them. Many of
these processes were challenged and proved unsuccessful. But the movement to alter the election process decisively in
favor of those who could exploit mass mailings to the whole voters' lists, which inevitably include a great many people who
have died or moved, was greatly strengthened by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
The War on Thanksgiving.
[Scroll down] Here we see the fruits of a generation raised on [Howard] Zinn. While it is likely pointless to
convince the vandals who attack statues and businesses that their views are misguided, we need to take the propaganda that
has undermined our country and driven fellow citizens to lunacy and extremism seriously. Thanksgiving is in the
beginning stages of receiving the Columbus Day treatment. We can't underestimate the threat of a few militant voices
amplified by America's elite culture-shaping institutions. Columbus was once nearly universally admired in America, his
holiday only questioned by an odd collection of left-wing radicals and, at an even early date, white nationalists who
resented the celebration of a Catholic and Italian-born hero. Now, the holiday has nearly collapsed. Even his
statues are going undefended by the descendants of Italian immigrants who helped construct them.
"Burn
It Down". American cities are entering a period of chaos. Protests and riots have dominated headlines,
but beneath the surface, activists are launching an unprecedented campaign to overthrow the traditional justice system and
replace it with a new model based on a radical conception of social justice. In Seattle, where this campaign may be
most advanced, activists have crafted a narrative about police brutality, mass incarceration, and punitive justice that leads
to a natural sequence of solutions: "abolish the police," "divest from prisons," and "defund the courts." Over the
past three decades, the city's radical-progressives have seized control of municipal government — with the notable
exception of the criminal-justice system, which they see as the final obstacle to total control. If they can dismantle
it, activists believe, they can bring about their transformation of society.
Redfin
says 30% want to live 'somewhere else' because of protests. In a new study, Seattle-based real estate service
Redfin really gets to the heart of the matter of the summer's Capitol Hill occupied protest zone — condo
prices: "Seattle's condo market has really struggled in general during the pandemic, but the units that are closest to
the CHOP have typically been selling even more slowly than other condos in Capitol Hill," said local Redfin real estate agent
Forrest Moody. "I had one listing that was a block away from the CHOP and across the street from a Ferrari dealership
that had its windows smashed," Moody goes on to say. "The condo actually sold within five days, but that's likely
because we listed it for $25,000 less than we had planned to back in February."
A
warning from the future: The US may soon look like New Mexico. If you don't believe that the United
States can become very radical, very quickly under a Biden administration, you haven't been paying attention to New
Mexico. I know what you're thinking: When it comes to radical liberal policies, California is the gold
standard. Yet, for the past two years, New Mexico has embarked on an unfortunate mission to become just like
California, but faster. The disastrous results speak for themselves. [...] Millions of people are justifiably worried
about California's radical policies spreading nationwide, but don't sleep on New Mexico. In less than two years, we've
gone from a budget surplus and low unemployment to the disaster you see today.
Seattle's downward
spiral — these city actions are driving the decline. The city of Seattle may legalize most
misdemeanor crimes. This isn't an exaggeration. It's arguably not even the most radical idea introduced by the
Seattle City Council. Rather, it's the latest move by politicians growing increasingly dangerous and aloof to concerns
in a city spiraling dangerously out of control. In the final week of October, the Council used the 2021 budget process
to forward an updated plan installing heroin injection sites, replace a specialized police unit tackling homelessness, and
lay off more Seattle police, which already has record low staffing. Seeing the writing on the wall, some of the city's
best paid residents are fleeing.
The
California Elections Pandemic. The once Golden State, renowned for creating and exporting much of what
constitutes American popular culture, now exports a vote-fraud rich, elections-stealing contagion across the nation. [...] A
consequence of Californizing elections will be rampant cynicism. Sullen distrust will take hold. Voters, in
droves, may elect not to vote. Yet nonparticipation may be the best case. In time, the nation may devolve into
warring political factions, who thuggishly vie to control the levers of power. Does that seem surreal?
Investigate Latin America, where countries are colored with rigged elections and associated violence.
Looking
to Solzhenitsyn for clues about the present. Solzhenitsyn warned America and the West time and time again that abandoning its
religious foundations and embracing secularism would in turn lead to total chaos, followed by a complete loss of freedom. America and
the rest of the West are already in chaos. What follows is the people's determination and destiny.
The Chump Effect.
We all know the feeling: when you're inching forward in the freeway exit lane, say, and another driver flies past and swerves
onto the ramp at the last second; when your child has to complete her college-entrance exams within a designated time period,
but your neighbor's child gets twice as long because of a suddenly diagnosed "learning disability"; when you pay extra to
have your pet travel in the airplane's cargo hold but the yipping poodle across the aisle, an "emotional-support animal,"
gets to ride on its owner's lap for free. You didn't know that you could get an emotional-support card just by claiming
an anxiety disorder and paying a fee to an online agency? What are you — a chump? What makes these
indignities so infuriating isn't just that a few people game the system. It's that their selfish gambits work only
because the rest of us follow the rules. If every driver mobbed the freeway exit from the passing lanes, traffic would
come to a halt. The student who fraudulently obtains extra test time gets a leg up only if most other students stick to
the original time limit. And if every pet were designated an emotional-support animal, airplanes and restaurants would
become full-time menageries. (Some airlines have begun tightening rules on support animals for just this reason.)
Conspiracy
Theory, Or Stolen Election? I have no opinion on whether the election was stolen by the Biden campaign or
not. I don't think there is any way to know, on the current evidence, whether, if only legal votes were counted, and
each voter voted only once, Donald Trump or Joe Biden actually won the election. I do know that if the United States is
to avoid banana republic status, we need to institute more secure and reliable election procedures. No more ballot
harvesting, no more millions of mail-in votes, and some reasonable attention paid to the machines and software that
ultimately count the votes. [...] One more thing: liberals are quick to dub anything they don't like a conspiracy
theory. But four years ago, I wouldn't have imagined that top officials of the FBI and the CIA would collaborate with
Hillary Clinton's campaign to propagate lies in order to try to swing the election to her, or failing that, to disable the
incoming administration of the candidate that they didn't favor. That scandal has greatly expanded my, and our,
understanding of what may be possible. This isn't your grandfather's United States of America.
It's a
Coup. Just Say It! Political science types have a word for every happening. One is the Overton
Window. Like lots of these terms, it is not too scientific, but it well describes things observed every day. For
instance, the idea that an eight-year-old boy decides to be a girl, because he feels like it, and is then medicated with
hormone therapy to look as close to a girl as science enables was once a preposterous idea. Then it was possible, then
probable, and now, voilà! A boy is now a girl, and if you use the wrong pronoun, you lose your job! Meet the
Overton Window: that period of time when something seemingly quite impossible becomes mainstream.
Washington State is a worrisome window into the future.
[Scroll down] Completing our state's social-engineering trifecta is the law originally passed in 2008, and subsequently
endorsed by referendum, that allows physicians to write prescriptions for lethal doses of drugs for individuals who in their
opinion have less than six months to live. The measure applies to any patient over the age of 18 who can produce an
accepted form of ID, which, thanks to the largesse of our state's SB 5023, specifically excuses the applicant from providing
'Proof of citizenship, a Social Security number, or command of the English language.' If you happen to find yourself
here in Washington, are aged 17 or over, can pass the not-demanding traffic safety test and sign your form with an X, the
state will happily issue you with a driver's permit valid as photo ID, and you're good to go. It may fail to surprise
readers that Washington was also in the vanguard of the same-sex marriage crusade, or that the last local politician to
openly question the ethics of providing publicly-funded abortions, a Republican assemblyman named John Koster, was roundly
mocked for admitting that he was guided in such matters by his reading of the Bible. This is what 'political debate'
has come to in my state.
Minneapolis
authorizes $500k to hire cops from OTHER forces after officers leave in wake of BLM protests. The Minneapolis
city council has authorized $500,000 in funding for the police department to hire cops from other forces, after several
officers have quit and crime has soared since the start of the year. Council members on Friday narrowly voted 7 to 6
in favor of approving $496,800 in extra funds for Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). The money will be used to bring in
20 to 40 cops from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department and Metropolitan Council/Metro Transit Police to help the
department tackle the recent crime wave across the city.
The Biden Threat to Law
Enforcement. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were unambiguous throughout their presidential campaign: they believe
that racism pervades policing and all other aspects of the criminal-justice system. [...] Biden's plan for "strengthening
America's commitment to justice" reads like a Black Lives Matter wish list; there is no reason to think that a Biden-Harris
Justice Department will not implement it. Among its most consequential proposals, it calls for a return to the practice
of imposing weakly-justified consent decrees on police departments. During the Obama years, career attorneys in the
Justice Department regularly opened civil rights investigations into police departments (called "pattern or practice"
investigations) without credible evidence that an agency was systematically violating citizens' constitutional rights.
Those investigations almost invariably resulted in settlements (called consent decrees) that placed police departments under
the control of a nonelected federal monitor and a federal judge; monitors collected millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded
fees while they held police departments to draconian deadlines and mindless paper-pushing mandates for years on end.
Refund
The Police? Minneapolis Starts Begging For Outside Resources. Old and busted: We don't need our
police in our city! New hotness: We need your police in our city! Minneapolis' city council, which spent
most of the summer and fall demanding the ability to dismantle its police force, has now started begging for police officers
from neighboring jurisdictions to help them deal with skyrocketing crime.
The Editor says...
Let the city of Minneapolis rot! Let the miserable residents contend with the fallout from their left-wing politicians' actions.
Let's Take Stock
of Where We Are. The 2020 election in particular, and our electoral process in general, have been badly
compromised. First there have been the successful efforts by Democrats to loosen electoral administration standards and
practices by legalizing ballot harvesting (where partisan "volunteers" go out and collect ballots as well as "assist" voters
in filling out their ballots), allowing same-day voter registration, mass mail-in voting, and the like. On the flipside
we have Democrats tenaciously fighting any efforts to shore up the integrity of the system, such as requiring ID and proof of
citizenship to vote. Couple all of this with unprecedented last minute rule changes on the eve of what was sure to be the
most contested election in generations, if not in American history: all changes designed to favor one side over the other.
A House Divided Along
New Lines. Americans used to agree on certain things. They believed in God. They believed that
America was a force for good in the world. They believed in the individual. They believed in protecting the
innocent. They believed in the rule of law. They believed that all men are created equal but are not guaranteed
equal outcomes. They believed in charity rather than subservience to government. They hated communism and
socialism, loved the challenge of innovating, and took delight in the market's response to their gifts. They hunted and
fished and went to church and minded their own business and helped their neighbors. In the current political
realignment, these beliefs are no longer universal. Half the country holds them. These citizens are derisively
referred to national populists, but really they're the same old people who consider themselves patriotic Americans.
It's the other half of the country that has changed. The Oligarchy of America is guided by New Age spirituality.
God is mutable, as is truth. Abortion is a sacrament. Individuality has given way to conformity of thought and ideas.
Why Shouldn't Black America Walk Away From
The Democratic Party? For years, Black America's absolute fidelity to the Democratic Party has been one of the
bedrock assumptions of political calculations in the United States, with Democratic Presidential candidates regularly
receiving some 90% of the black vote every four years. The pattern was so pronounced that neither Republicans nor
Democrats felt the need to aim campaign pitches at black Americans, Republicans because they felt it was useless and
Democrats because they felt it was unnecessary. During the same period, cities across American enjoyed uninterrupted
Democratic Party control and uninterrupted decay. Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia: None has had a Republican
mayor in the last half century. Black Americans voted for Democrats in near-monolithic numbers since 1964 only to see
the cities they lived in continue to get worse. Now, thanks to President Donald Trump, that may all be changing.
Supporting
Systemic Victimhood Is Not Caring. Socialism has never worked. It spreads misery wherever it has been
tried. Under the guise of caring, Biden's platform calls for new entitlements designed to meet all needs —
healthcare, college tuition, guaranteed income, and the list goes on. It's clear that those on the Left have no
confidence in the minorities they claim to help. To the left, minorities need a political Robin Hood ready to steal
from their neighbor to give them what they deserve but can't earn. What an affront to those they claim to help.
Unfortunately, the reality is that once a citizen is locked into government programs and funding, it's hard to get out.
They live too well. To actually work and start at the bottom and work their way up in a real job means a cut in
income. They call it "The Cliff!" Why work when being dependent can meet my needs. Why be married
when not having a husband or wife increases my benefits?
Last-Minute
Voting Advice. [Scroll down] For me, the top issue is religious freedom/freedom of speech. Far too
many people are seemingly unaware of the threats undermining religious freedom and freedom of speech in this country.
Even with the riots and looting that have decimated many American cities this spring and summer, too many are not connecting
the dots and are falling for the "mostly peaceful protests" line the media and the Democrats are promoting. The
political correctness movement has declared that people cannot speak truth about current events; only certain approved
perceptions can be spoken. Facts are irrelevant; there is "your truth" and "my truth." The perceptions of an
event or incident become the "fact" regardless of further investigation or other information that shows that distortion has
occurred, such as when a person with a history of violent actions charges the police with a knife in hand and commits
"suicide by cop."
Austin
sees spikes in violent crime, officer retirements after defund police vote. Austin has seen a spike in violent
crime and officer retirements after the city council voted over the summer to immediately slash $20 million from the police
department budget, becoming the first major Texas city to do so. In August, Austin City Council members voted
unanimously to cut about $150 million, or roughly one-third, from its police department and allocate those funds to areas
like violence prevention, housing and mental health services. Only about $21.5 million was immediately removed from the
department's funding in part by canceling three upcoming cadet classes and slashing overtime expenses. "It is
demoralizing for the officers. It is angering for the citizens because they're having to wait longer for officers to
get the calls. And it's unsafe for citizens and officers," Austin Police Association President Bill Cassidy told Fox News.
Will
anti-lockdown sentiments spur the next populist revolt? As the nation frets over the possibility of the "dark
winter" that Joe Biden recently predicted, we're already seeing signs of renewed authoritarian lockdowns in many parts of the
nation. Curfews are being put back in place in a number of cities. Orders forbidding gatherings of more than a
certain number of people have accompanied them. Far too many schools are still either closed or holding "virtual
classes" that have been failing spectacularly. There have already been signs of growing resentment toward yet another
round of crippling restrictions on the activities of private citizens and businesses, along with the mounting damage these
policies have done to what was one of the most thriving economies our nation has experienced prior to the arrival of the
novel coronavirus. So how much of this will people stand for before enough is declared to be enough?
Logically indisputable reasons why President Trump should
be reelected. [Scroll down] The Democrats are tainted by their intimate dependence upon their corrupt
urban political machines, personified by the grossly incompetent Democratic mayors of New York (de Blasio), Chicago
(Lightfoot), Los Angeles (Garcetti), Washington (Bowser), Seattle (Durkan), and Portland, Ore. (Wheeler). The Democrats are
also severely compromised by having maintained total silence all summer as the worst rioting in America in over 50 years
raged across the country and white-hating urban guerrillas and white hooligans burned and stole and vandalized billions of
dollars of property and tried to destroy statues and monuments of inoffensive people such as Columbus, and of some America's
greatest leaders, including those most dedicated to the advancement of African Americans: Frederick Douglass, Abraham
Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant.
Anarchy in New York?
One late summer Sunday morning, Demetrius Harvard, a 30-year old Bronx man, stood on a subway platform in Greenwich Village
and methodically threw construction material onto the tracks. Bystanders tried to stop him, and someone even went into
the train well to remove the debris, but Harvard persisted in his sabotage. Eventually, he succeeded in derailing an
uptown A train, injuring several passengers. You had to read to the end of tabloid news reports to get the real
story. Two weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood, Harvard had tossed a steel bench through a bus window. He was
arrested, charged with criminal mischief, and immediately "ROR'd" — released on his recognizance — with
no bail. This cycle is now all too common in New York, where public order and safety have been buffeted by chaotic
forces. Criminal-justice reform at the state level removed bail as an option for all but the most heinous charges.
China's
Communist Party is backing the left's revolution, seeking our downfall and subjugation. The demonization of
U.S. police as racists killing black people, is a tactic designed to defang the police and give free rein to marauding
mobs. A breakdown of order serves the left's attempts to gain power. It provides a crisis, something that must
not be wasted according to Obama's former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Disorder scares [...] normal people and makes
them vulnerable to accepting radical changes like abolishing the police, a move that would result in rule by leftist
mobs. It's pathetic how privileged youth fall for this lie about the police. They are products of our educational
system, one of the institutions that the left has been marching through for decades. The Italian communist Antonio
Gramsci and the German communist Rudi Dutschike are both credited with the idea of the left marching through institutions,
like the schools and courts, as a means of stealthily imposing communism, probably renamed true democracy.
Exposing
Liberals' 'Tiny Fraction' Lie. [Scroll down] [T]he threats from the left are anything but tiny
fractions. The cancel culture is not a tiny fraction. The radicalized faculty at the university is not a tiny
fraction. The indoctrination of socialist ideas and identity politics and white privilege in schools is not a tiny
fraction. The falsehoods and half-truths spread by the media are not a tiny fraction. The high-tech crackdown on
dissenting speech is not a tiny fraction. The division created by falsely accusing and demonizing one part of the
population while exaggerating the malice and damage to provoke the rage of another heavily indoctrinated, hyper-sensitized
part of the population is not a tiny fraction. And it is self-perpetuating, since the isolated outlier incident serves
as the basis for rioting and the bottomless pit of grievance and recrimination, which in turn continue to be dismissed by
adversaries as tiny fractions.
San
Francisco: A string of drug stores close after shoplifters strip the shelves bare. You'll be shocked to
learn there are some serious problems in San Francisco with petty crime. This week the San Francisco Chronicle reported
on the seventh Walgreens drug store to announce it is closing in the city since last year. The problem is a wave of
shoplifting from retail locations that can add up to millions of dollars in lost merchandise. [...] The Walgreens clerks
can't do anything about the theft because the company has a policy preventing them from interfering in shoplifting.
Allegedly this is for their safety but I suspect it's really because if they didn't have this policy and anyone got hurt,
they would be sued.
Unemployment
Figures Dramatically Favor Republican-Led States. August's unemployment figures, just released by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, paint a remarkably consistent picture that correlates — almost uncannily — between
low unemployment rates in states led by Republican governors and high unemployment rates in states led by Democratic
governors. Drawing national conclusions from the unemployment statistics for all fifty states, those Republican-led
states that have tried to follow President Trump's lead in reopening America are doing much better in terms of unemployment
than are states likely to support Biden in November. Former Vice President Biden, while repeatedly complaining about
President Trump's actions in fighting COVID, has yet to articulate a coherent COVID policy. Remarkably, these
early-opening Republican-led states do not have a statistically-valid comparative rate of increase in COVID deaths, as
presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though the three states with the lowest death per 100,000
population are led by Republican governors.
Uptown
Apple store in Minneapolis closes permanently. The Apple store in Uptown will close permanently, the latest in
a growing list of shops and restaurants that have recently abandoned the beleaguered south Minneapolis retail center.
Apple has had a presence near the bustling corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lake Street for the past decade. It informed
its approximately 60 employees Wednesday [10/21/2020] that the store would close. The store had yet to reopen since March
when the state's stay-at-home orders to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic forced many retail establishments to temporarily
shutter. Following the killing of George Floyd in May, the Apple store was one of nearly 40 businesses near the corner
that was damaged by rioters.
The
City is Killing America. Welfare states don't create jobs. They're what happens when there are too many
people and no jobs. We might be able to build our way out of this dead end, but we have to begin by questioning the
urban model which is at the root of all of our national problems. America doesn't need an expanding population.
Urban political machines do. [...] There is no shortage of cheap labor in America. We don't need more of it.
Every major city is already choking on the unemployed cheap labor forces they have. And unless we have a massive
manufacturing boom, the only employment opportunities for them are in the gig economy where they can deliver pad thai and
give rides to environmental consultants. The urban model hasn't worked for America in sixty years. The pandemic
has put it on the verge of collapse as the wealthy industries that made cities their base flee into virtual workspaces.
It's time to rethink and defund cities as the hubs of our economy and our nation.
Houston
Police Sgt. Killed By Repeat Offender After Soros-Funded D.A. Refused to Press Charges. A police sergeant
in Houston, Texas was shot dead Tuesday morning [10/20/2020] by a suspect who was in police custody just two days earlier,
but was allowed to go free when the Democrat district attorney refused to press charges. HPD Sergeant Harold Preston
had been with the Houston Police Department for 41-years and was due to retire at the end of the year, according to the
Montgomery County Police Reporter. The local pro-police paper is urging voters to oust the D.A., whose campaign for
office was bankrolled by left-wing billionaire George Soros.
My week with the baying antifa
mob. As one long-term [Portland] resident said to me last week: 'This used to be a very civil town.' Not
any more. Of course, like every city in the West, the madnesses that already existed here have been exacerbated by the
coronavirus and the ensuing decision to lock down the population and shutter the economy. The businesses here are
mainly closed, many for good. Some were able to get through one lockdown but very few can get through multiple
lockdowns or the depression to come. As a result, downtown Portland is a desolate, dangerous place, populated by
homeless people who flooded into the area over recent decades, incentivized by left-wing administrations that allowed them to
pitch their tents wherever they liked. In the main squares, unattended tables of food and drink are set out for them to
pick at. But it isn't just the virus or the reaction of the authorities that led to this wasteland. The giveaway
is the status of the few shops that are still open. Almost all have hardboard affixed to their remaining windows.
Some have bullet-holes in them, not fired by the police. The businesses that do still operate do so as in a city
under siege.
"We
want law and order": Minneapolis residents sue over shrinking police resources. Who didn't see this
moment coming for the Minneapolis city council and Mayor Jacob Frey? The council's police-abolition posturing prompted
an abrupt and widespread drain of sworn officers from the Minneapolis Police Department, through retirements, disability
claims, and just plain old resignations. The MPD canceled recruiting classes as well, while waiting to see whether
their would be a force to expand or even maintain. As police retreated, crime exploded. And the people who have
been paying the price for the city council's empty posturing ever since now want some accountability. A group led by a
former council member has launched a lawsuit against the council and Frey, essentially for dereliction of duty.
CHOP
Zone Businesses Pursue Lawsuit Against Seattle. The 21 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the city of
Seattle for not enforcing the law against the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, or CHOP, will get their day in court, though
the city's liability in such matters remains in question. U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Zilly of the Western
District of Washington issued an opinion on Friday stating, "Plaintiffs plausibly allege that the City's actions —
encouraging CHOP participants to wall off the area and agreeing to a 'no response' zone within and near CHOP's
borders — foreseeably placed Plaintiffs in a worse position." Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes did not
respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal. The plaintiffs are 21 businesses in the area of the city that protesters
declared an "autonomous zone" from June 8 to July 1 and used barriers to block off. "Inhabitants" even
declared the area was no longer part of the United States.
The Terrible
Ten. As of September 18, 2020, these are the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates in the country:
NE; UT; ID; SD; VT; ND; AL; GA; MT and OK. The 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, all in excess of 10%,
are: PA; NJ; IL; MA; NM; CA; HI; NY; RI and NV. See a pattern? Of the 10 states with the lowest unemployment
rates, only Montana has a Democrat governor. Of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, only one,
Massachusetts, has a Republican governor. Additionally, of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, all have
Democrat control of both houses of the state legislature except for Pennsylvania, with Republican control of both
houses. I live in deep blue New Mexico, one of the terrible ten with unemployment rates in excess of ten percent.
NM has had single-party Dem rule at the state level for most of the last 90 years. In the state legislature, the last
time Republicans held a majority in both houses at the same time was 1930.
'Banana
Republic of America'. We are living in times in which our leaders have intentionally cast doubt on the
court. Members of Congress have managed to earn the doubt of nearly 90% of America simply through childish partisan
behavior. They have intentionally cast doubt on the presidency through the abuse of the impeachment process.
Elected officials and the media have both cast doubt on law enforcement. It seems nearly everyone even tangentially
involved in politics now says or does whatever they think can win the moment regardless of the long-term consequences.
Bureaucrats in the state of Virginia have decided to ignore the law on the books regarding ballot postmarks. The state
legislature didn't change the law. No. Virginia administrative officials have simply made the choice to do
something different. On whose authority? No one has that authority under the law, yet they insist anyway. [...]
Stability no longer exists. The rules change day to day. The laws only apply sometimes and only to certain
people. Election results, the courts, the police and elected officials themselves are under a constant shadow of doubt.
Research
Shows Critical Race Theory Is Actually Making People More Racist. President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5
an end to critical race theory training in federal agencies. As explained by Russ Vought, the director of the Office of
Management and Budget, the policy change targets "training or propaganda" pertaining to "white privilege" and efforts to
advance the claim that "the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or ... that any race or ethnicity is
inherently racist or evil." On Sept. 22, the president extended this ban to companies doing business with the federal
government. He was right on both counts. Critical race theory and similar academic left perspectives over the
last decade stormed the political mainstream through a surge in news and popular media attention. As a result, today
politicians, celebrities, and corporations employ "critical," or woke, rhetoric. Even comic books push critical themes
despite hostile reactions from their readers.
There's
Never Been a More Important Time to Choose Wisely. This critical election is a choice between progressive
government and its collective baggage and representative government and its free enterprise. [...] So-called "progressives"
brought us such societal horrors as the War on Poverty. Progressives are rooted in the intellectual arrogance of
self-anointed "experts." Not only are their theories proven 180 degrees wrong, but they never pay the price for their
failures. They just move on to "solve" the next problem, leaving their mess behind. Exhibit 1 is the War on
Poverty. Contrary to good intentions, it devastated minority communities for generations and created fatherless homes
for 70% of blacks without making a dent in actual poverty. Progressives applaud "reducing" poverty from 19% of the
population in 1964 to 14.8% in 2014. But they ignore that much "improvement" simply moved people onto public support,
building a dependency on welfare, food stamps, "free" lunches, and other subsidies.
Orwell Rears His Head.
On Monday of last week, to use the phrase "sexual preference" was completely acceptable. As recently as last month,
multiple gay rights publications used the phrase. Leon Panetta had used the phrase in the past couple of years.
Joe Biden has used the phrase this year. Merriam-Webster considered "sexual preference" to be just another version of
"sexual orientation." But then Tuesday happened. On Tuesday, the village idiot from Hawaii masquerading as a
senator, Mazie Hirono, attacked Amy Coney Barrett for using "sexual preference" instead of "sexual orientation." By
Tuesday evening, the employees of Merriam-Webster had changed the phrase in their online dictionary to note it was
offensive. No, I am not making that up. The dictionary company literally changed it after Barrett's exchange with
Hirono. Steve Krakauer, a former CNN producer who now produces Megyn Kelly's podcast, documented the change on his
social media feed. Gay rights publications such as The Advocate went on the attack as well. In just 18 days,
"sexual preference" went from acceptable to a hate crime.
The
Chinese Virus — Why We Panicked and Why We've Got to End the Panic Now. [Scroll down] The
programmers have been busy making us, or enough of us, believe not that truth is optional, but that there is no truth, in the
manner Pilate iterated. There is only the convenience of the moment. Who can doubt that we are being taught the
truth no longer exists? Examples are legion. Let's take one. A president denounces white supremacy dozens
of times. But the "truth" — the fake truth de jour — is that he has not. How
convenient! Another beauty: many American cities were recently devastated by riots. But the "truth" is that the
rioters were "mostly peaceful." How convenient! It's not that the collective "we" are dumb. "We" have been
made to be dumb. And they are trying to make us ever more dumb. They require that we believe their fake "truth."
If we don't, we are deplorables. At best. Some now call for our physical destruction. In other countries,
similar things have occurred. Perhaps even worse. They are actively jailing people who express incorrect feelings.
Seattle mayor
who praised CHOP, supported police cuts, is now 'deeply concerned' as more than 100 officers have left the force.
Democratic Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan — who once called the police-free autonomous zone in her city a "block party"
amid a "summer of love" — is now "deeply concerned" over the mass exodus taking place within the city's police
department. KING-TV reported early Friday morning that a record number of officers had left the department in September,
according to a new Seattle Budget Office report. The report noted that 39 officers and officers-in-training "separated"
from the department while an additional 14 officers extended their leaves. The exodus is part of a continuing trend
that has resulted in at least 118 officers leaving the force this year, KTTH-TV reporter Jason Rant said. He added
that "even this number is misleading" because "many officers are using their accrued sick time as they begin their escape to
other agencies or wait for retirement."
The
literally deadly results of "bail reform". Last week, a 43-year-old Long Island man named William Farnum was
being pursued in his vehicle by the NYPD. The suspect eventually crashed into a utility pole. When the police arrived
on the scene and approached to investigate they discovered that Farnum had slit his own throat in the driver's seat of his
car and was dead. The bad news didn't end there, however. When officers attempted to notify his next of kin they
discovered two dead bodies in his home. They are believed to be the remains of Farnum's father and sister, reportedly
killed by Farnum. What's really got the local police and Republican lawmakers up in arms about this situation is the
fact that Farnum never should have been out on the streets when all of this was taking place. Scrolling through the
man's recent history of engagements with law enforcement and the totality of his criminal record, he should have been behind
bars. But new bail reform laws in New York have tied the hands of judges and it was virtually impossible to keep Farnum
locked up for more than a few hours at a time.
If Republican Senators Were Like
Crazy Mazie. [A] fair-minded observer cannot avoid recognizing that the poison and vitriol in American politics
long preceded Donald Trump. It was the Democrats who changed the landscape by murdering Judge Robert Bork's name and
reputation for a generation. While Republicans repeatedly treated Democrat Supreme Court nominees with kid gloves, the
Democrats just assassinated one human being's character after another. They destroyed Bork. They came up with the
most racist, stereotypical garbage imaginable against Clarence Thomas. They lied about Brett Kavanaugh, defaming that
very extraordinary man, a man who reflects so elegantly the Divine spirit that reposes within all of us. In the
presence of his dignified wife and innocent children, and before the eyes and ears of hundreds of millions of Americans, they
proffered false accusations of rapes, attacks that never happened, fantasies of truly sick minds. [...] And then the
Democrats pontificate and hypocritically ask why our democracy is no longer civilly bipartisan as it once was.
Destroying
the Institutions We Inherited. The annual Academy Awards were once among the most watched events in
America. In 2020, however, Oscar viewership crashed to its lowest level in history, due in large part to backlash
against the left-wing politicking, sermonizing, and virtue-signaling of award winners. Recently, the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, announced that it will adopt racial, gender, and sexual identity quotas
for nominees — refuting the ancient idea of "art for art's sake[.]" Such ideology has also infected, and thus
tarnished, the Grammy and Emmy awards, and left-wing virtue-signaling has also become part of the NFL and the NBA.
Conservative
Answers for Poverty. It is an unfortunate fluke of history that in the 1960s, the time when the civil rights
movement crystalized and black Americans achieved equal treatment politically — what should have long before been
achieved morally — was a time of moral unraveling of the country. Religion and moral principles were
increasingly seen as a barrier to freedom, rather than its source. Prayer was banished from school, abortion on demand
legalized. But the choice of man is not whether to believe. The only choice is what to believe. As religion
was pushed out of the public square, the new religion became government. Government programs were increasingly seen to
be the path to salvation, rather than personal commitment to eternal truths.
Hawaii
"Has Committed Suicide" — Local Rages "Hardly Anyone Is Sick, But We're All Broke". While we have
grown used to the people (well, at least those who are capable for thinking for themselves) of Michigan and California
complaining that the tyrannical COVID lockdown rules imposed by Governors Whitmer and Newsom are arbitrary and capricious (if
not downright unconstitutional), it is less often we hear from those living on the beautiful islands of Hawaii. [...]
["]The new travel requirements will trap Hawaii residents here as securely than if they were slaves.["]
Slaughter in the Cities.
Establishment voices are finally, grudgingly admitting that murders and shootings are up spectacularly in 2020. But the
reasons, they all agree, are immensely complicated and rather boring. Perhaps, they muse, it has something to do with
lockdowns? Or there could be any number of other subtly interacting factors. Who can tell? In any case,
this mysterious rise in violence is beyond the comprehension, much less the control, of politicians. [...] Did anything
happen in late May that encouraged criminals and discouraged cops? The data journalists appear stumped when they try to
think back that far. But, as you may recall (it was in the news at the time), George Floyd died in police custody on
May 25, and three days later the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis let rioters burn down a police station. From there,
looting and rioting spread nationwide as the press and universities extolled the Mostly Peaceful Protesters.
Pay
Attention To Local Elections, Because Whoever Wins Can Make Your Life Miserable. This year, more than any other
in recent memory, we got a bitter taste of the power of local officials to enable, and even promote, rioting and mayhem in
America. Many of us have watched aghast as mayors of blue cities like Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York turned a
blind eye or even encouraged mob rule that resulted in wide-scale violence, vandalism, looting, injury, and, yes,
murder. They have flatly rejected all offers by President Trump to bring it under control by calling in the National
Guard. Let's not forget that these mayors — along with the many other officials close to them —
were elected locally. Recall, it's local elected prosecutors, district attorneys, state's attorneys, and attorneys
general that have the power to allow violent criminals to roam free after an arrest. We see this happening repeatedly
in Democratic Party-run cities like Seattle and Portland where Antifa thugs caught on camera assaulting officers and citizens
are immediately set free without bail.
Media
Vs. The People: The War Over Pedophilia. The media has been working to normalize pedophilia, but
the American people keep rejecting it. Until recently, the pedophilia pushers suffered no serious consequences for
their relentless campaign to sexualize children and groom them for adult exploitation. But the recent indictment of
Netflix for distribution of child pornography has changed the dynamics. A grand jury in Texas has indicted Netflix, a
streaming giant with $20 billion in annual revenue, for allegedly promoting "lewd visual material" of a child. [...] Almost
unanimously, the major film critics adored the award-winning "Cuties," lavishing praise on it as "extraordinary," "inspired,"
and "empathetic and analytical." These arbiters of cultural standards dismissed criticism of the film's sexualization of
children as closed-minded tripe from right-wing "pearl-clutchers." But the American people despised "Cuties" and
launched a campaign to cancel Netflix subscriptions.
Why
Some People Take Q-Anon's Pedophilia Allegations Seriously. [Scroll down] If charges of organized
pedophilia at the highest ranks of society are so delusional, then why is Obama-connected Netflix doubling down on its
support of child porn? Why has California created a legal loophole for twenty-four year-olds to engage in "consensual"
sodomy and oral sex with fourteen-year-olds in the name of LGBT equality? [...] When these issues were raised during the
debates about gay adoption, the constant response we heard from the left was that "children don't need to be raised by their
mother and father; they only need to be loved." If you unpack that logic, you'll see the underlying evil. Q-Anon has
figured out that terrible things happen when adults think all children want their "love" all the time. Stalking,
molestation, grooming, trafficking, and harassment of underage people quickly become normalized when the left reserves the
right to say the child wanted whatever strange treatment the adults believed they were entitled to force or press upon the child.
Protesters
want to defund police. Homicides and violence are spiking. The homicide rate is spiking, a troubled
police department is reeling from street demonstrations seeking racial justice and accountability, and the city budget is
ravaged by the coronavirus economy. The push to reshape police departments is occurring in cities across the country,
but it is perhaps nowhere more evident than here in Oakland, where veteran activists want to sharply reduce the police budget
but much of the broader community is struggling with what that could mean.
NYC: The example America
should not follow. New York City is becoming an economic basket case. "'We're at war': New York City Faces
a Financial Abyss," screams a New York Times headline. New York City's unemployment rate stands at 16%, double the
nation's average. Yet, even in the midst of a "financial abyss," the animosity of New York's liberal elite remains
undeterred in its hostility toward free enterprise and entrepreneurship, the pillars of job creation and economic
recovery. In a latest example, commercial real estate development firms have pulled out of a proposed project, Industry
City, that was estimated to bring 20,000 jobs and $100 million in tax revenue to New York City. After several years of
fighting opposition to get approval for rezoning that would have made the project possible, they threw in the towel.
The Art of Propaganda.
An ally of BLM posted a video of herself three months ago. The young lady ("I'm gonna stab you" to the next person with
the "Caucasity" to say "all lives matter") may well represent the majority attitude of our Ivy League — she is a
Harvard grad — and of much of the left. How did this come to pass? Her intelligence is not
small. It's in the incessant propaganda, coming not only from academia and the schools, but from the mass
media — especially television and film. It's not just the overt message, it's in the subtext. See a
villain on the screen, there's a good chance you'll see an American flag in the background. Propaganda is exponentially
more potent than it was in 1922, when Mein Kampf was written. The electronic media are pervasive, and their
product, entertainment, almost always has a political message. To a large extent it's not merely the art of propaganda
but the propaganda of art. As for the Harvard grad, even Hitler youth did not exhibit such ice-cold hatred. She
is no longer a free agent. Her values are "fixed" — they will not change. Nor will the politics and
values of much, if not most, of her generation. She is the future.
Red
states are outperforming blue states economically. Overall, Democratic-run states, particularly those in the
Northeast and Midwest, had larger contractions in gross domestic product than Republican-run states in the Plains and the
South, according to the latest state GDP data for the second quarter of 2020, released by the Commerce Department on
Friday. Of the 20 states with the smallest decrease in state GDP, 13 were run by Republican governors, while the bottom
25 states with the highest decrease in state GDP were predominantly Democratic-run states.
The
Language of Privilege: I can speak fluent wokese. [Scroll down] Or maybe you have by now read about
the now-infamous wokese imposition of "Latinx" (pronounced Latin-ex) to name a group of people first designated by a Nixon
administration-era census as an ethnicity, and whose members either haven't heard or don't want to be termed by that label
rather than the supposedly problematic "Latino" or "Hispanic." A recent New York Times essay by progressive
strategists Ian Haney López and Tory Gavito found that, "Progressives commonly categorize Latinos as people of color, no
doubt partly because progressive Latinos see the group that way and encourage others to do so as well. Certainly, we
both once took that perspective for granted. Yet in our survey, only one in four Hispanics saw the group as people of
color." But pretend you don't know that. Keep calling Hispanics people of color. Use the phrase "people of
color" often enough that you are inclined to shorten it to "POC."
Left
Wing Governor Of Washington State Freaks Out As Boeing Moves Production To South Carolina. Jay Inslee, the left
wing governor of Washington State, is freaking out because Boeing has decided to move production of its 787 airplane to the
more conservative and business friendly South Carolina. Who can blame Boeing for making such a move, especially if it benefits
them financially? Besides, in Seattle, leaders have shown that they will allow mobs of left wingers to destroy businesses.
A
Case Study in Punitive Liberalism. Never mind small business and retail shops. Big business in Seattle
isn't very happy either. Boeing announced today [10/1/2020] that it plans to discontinue manufacturing its 787
Dreamliner plane in Washington state and consolidate 787 production in (nonunion) South Carolina. This shouldn't be a
huge surprise to Seattle, given that Boeing already moved its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago a few years
ago. Let that sink in a moment: although Boeing said they wanted an HQ location closer to their global customer base,
you really have to wonder that Chicago would be preferable to Seattle, given the parlous state (and higher taxes) of
Illinois. In other words, this should have been a wake up call for Seattle's political class. Well, Boeing
pulling its 787 production out of Washington isn't sitting well with Washington's dimwit Governor Jay Inslee.
Garbage In Garbage
Out. What is wrong with New York City? Their streets are lined with garbage from Wall Street to Midtown
Manhattan. [Photos] Garbage everywhere even though businesses remain closed and half the people normally working
there haven't stepped foot in the city for months.
Formerly known as the Ferguson Effect: US
sees 710 additional homicides and 2,800 more shootings, attributed to 'Minneapolis effect'. With police
departments across America under siege, pushed back on their heels by the oft-violent Black Lives Matter movement, the
Democratic Party and their media allies, violent crime is "skyrocketing." That's the assessment of Paul Cassell, a
professor at S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, who has dubbed the explosion of violence the "Minneapolis
effect." The professor is the author of a recent research paper titled, "Explaining the Recent Homicide Spikes in U.S.
Cities: The 'Minneapolis Effect' and the Decline in Proactive Policing." "I think what Minneapolis is seeing is
the same thing we're seeing all over the country," Cassell told Fox 9. "We're seeing a reduction in proactive policing,
and as a result of that homicide and shootings are skyrocketing all over the country."
Colonizing Trump
country. 90 minutes away from the maddened crowd in DC, the farmers of Rappahannock County and their neighbors
live a bucolic life amid rolling hills and mountains. The 7,252 residents face an invasion as DC residents, who having
fouled their nests, seek new territory to destroy. They are trouble makers who seek to turn the rural county into what
they left behind. [...] [Mike] Massie didn't talk to the [Washington] Post. I don't blame him. Never talk to a
cop without a lawyer, and never talk to a reporter at all. But the Post reported, "For many who have been here, the
objections to the hay bales were the breaking point. They could tolerate the new wine bar — and the corner
store that offers seven kinds of kombucha. But they would not allow a farmer to be told what kind of sign he could
erect on his land."
The Way to
Perdition. Encountering a certain segment of our society's acceptance of burning, looting, and execution of the
police, not to mention the outrage prevalent when criminals or simple bad actors get their just desserts when police exercise
their duty, I have been challenged to find any rhyme or reason to excuse such actions, not only in the permissiveness our
leaders attach to such activity, but the actual encouragement they offer. Indeed, you can find many who are so
completely invested in this mindset to the point they cannot cope emotionally with any pushback or appeal to traditional law,
justice, or morality. Simply put, the traditional moral parameters of good behavior no longer apply. [...] This is
simply the cost of doing business in a "woke" society. Inevitably the chaos will submit to someone's organization, for
good or ill. Possibly, it will lead to even greater oppression and tyranny from a more pervasive, more powerful
entity. And where power alone regulates activity, perdition is the inevitable outcome. This is the fate of a
society that embraces such thinking in the first place.
The Progressive Medusa.
Large swaths of the downtowns of America's large cities — New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland — are becoming unhygienic, unsafe, and uninhabitable. Substantial corridors
swarm with the homeless. Crime is increasing but commensurately redefined as a sort of cry of the heart, no-bail social
activism. The cities are broke and yet demand more bailouts to spend more money that will ensure things get worse.
[...] Stepping over human excrement, accepting that if mugged the assailant will either rarely be caught or if so, released
shortly without bail, and resigned that "brick and mortar property" is not properly one's own are all no way to go through life.
Zimmerman
woman paralyzed after missing window for urgent medical care during riots. A 59-year-old Zimmerman woman told 5
Eyewitness News she had an extreme medical emergency May 29 but was delayed getting specialized treatment during Twin Cities
riots and is now paralyzed from the waist down. Retired Minnesota National Guard Master Sgt. Launette Figliuzzi
said she had a spinal stroke and needed to be airlifted to a metro hospital that specializes in emergency stroke care, but
airspace over the metropolitan area was restricted at the time and major highways were closed as well due to the rioting.
Civilization
Requires Collective Common Sense. Without common sense in government, civilization cannot continue. After
the summer protests and rioting in many large cities, activists demanded a defunding, or at least radical pullbacks, of the
police. So-called crime experts often concurred. So some city governments ignored public warnings and diminished
their police presence despite a sharp rise in crime in many cities. Looting and arson were often ignored. If you
call 911 in a large American city, there is no guarantee that anyone will answer promptly and send out police to aid the
endangered. So gun sales have soared. Some people who never before owned weapons, or even opposed the use of
firearms, are now terrified to remain unarmed. Self-protection often outweighs abstract ideology. According to a
recent Gallup poll, most black Americans favor maintaining or increasing police presence. Often, city officials who
support cutting back on law enforcement still expect their own homes and property to be constantly policed. The same is
often true of activist elites who live far from the inner city.
The War of All
Men Against All Men. [Scroll down] With few exceptions, our culture has murdered the idea of objective
truth, leaving us unable to agree on what is good, right, or true, even as regards fundamental issues. Most of us, for
example, oppose child abuse, but some critics have applauded the lewd film "Cuties" with its sexualized adolescents, and we
tell children who are too young to vote, drive a car, or drink a beer that they can decide to change their gender.
Facts have also taken a nosedive in our society. Look, for instance, at COVID-19. Were the lockdowns necessary?
What is the actual death rate from the virus? Why are we still wearing masks? Has the fallout from this policy
been more deadly than the virus? It's almost impossible to answer such questions objectively, because instead of
sticking to facts, we made the virus a political and emotional tennis ball. Oppose closing schools, for example, and
you risk being called a murderer.
America
[is] in peril if RBG's SCOTUS seat is not filled before the election. [Scroll down] SCOTUS confirmation
hearings used to be boring even by C-Span standards. Senator Bob Dole once remarked that the toughest part of a
confirmation hearing was for the Senate committee chairman to be able to "stare straight ahead at the witness while
sleeping." Presidents of both parties were given broad latitude to appoint whoever they liked to the courts and to
their cabinet. Unless a nominee had been guilty of serious malfeasance, they were easily confirmed. Ideology was
never a factor since it was expected that nominees shared the ideology of the president who nominated them. This all
changed in 1987. Judge Robert Bork would have been the fifth vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that
legalized abortion. Democrats decided that the ends justified the means. Bork had to be personally
destroyed. Leading the charge against Bork were Senators Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden. Ideology alone became grounds
for disqualification. Democrats declared every liberal nominee to be mainstream and every conservative nominee to be
extreme. After torpedoing Bork, Democrats almost derailed Clarence Thomas.
Minneapolis'
Guilty Whites Think BLM Lawn Signs Will Save Them When the Mob Comes. It's a strange time to be staying in
Downtown Minneapolis. [...] If I lacked purpose, I could go for days without seeing a soul, and even chance meetings near
elevators or stairwells make people scurry away like frightened rats. No one comes here anymore. As I walked back
from NoGo Minneapolis yesterday, a man rose from his little group of thieves to follow me as I passed, putting a scarf across
his face as he approached to take whatever I had. He was different from other men in other cities who have done the
same, and knew in a heartbeat my reactions mattered in this moment, if I was to walk away unharmed. This man had
nothing to lose. The streets are eerily empty too. Its like the day after some kind of apocalypse where shocked
survivors venture out to find water, only to quickly scurry away, hugging the outline of buildings in the shadows with their
faces down to the curb. Minneapolis is lost.
Shootings
soar in Portland after mayor disbands police gun unit. Shootings in Portland, Oregon, nearly tripled over the
summer after Mayor Ted Wheeler disbanded the city's police gun crimes unit, according to new police data. The city
recorded 223 shootings in July and August, up from 77 over the same period in 2019. And a little more than halfway through
September the city already had 64 shootings, or double the shootings from the same month last year. The numbers were
released last week.
Minneapolis
city councilors: Residents are feeling 'terrorized,' say police 'nowhere to be seen'. Minneapolis city
councilors told the city police chief Tuesday [9/15/2020] that their residents are feeling "terrorized" and say police are
"nowhere to be seen" months after the police killing of George Floyd set off protests against police brutality. The
Minneapolis City Council called on Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo to address constituents' reports of increased
street racing, carjacking, robberies, assaults and shootings. The meeting this week came months after the city council
unanimously voted to amend the city's charter to allow the city police department to be dismantled. The proposal, which
would need to be voted on as a ballot measure, would replace the police department with a Department of Community Safety and
Violence Prevention, "which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public
health-oriented approach."
San
Francisco's Deathly Compassion. San Francisco has a serious drug problem, particularly among its homeless
population. Roughly 8,000 people live on the city's sidewalks or in its alleyways, public parks, and playgrounds.
People with needles in their arms and legs, holding glass pipes and lighters, are a regular sight. Users go limp in
doorways and tents, or they career about, dazed and distraught, or angry and violent. Dealers selling heroin, Fentanyl,
methamphetamine, and crack are ubiquitous. So, too, are the advocates for "harm reduction," which holds that widespread
drug use should be accepted but its worst effects mitigated. Organizations such as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation,
the Harm Reduction Coalition, the Drug Users Union, and even the Department of Public Health, in partnership with The DOPE
Project, focus almost exclusively on "safe drug use." In fact, the Drug Users Union's goal is "to create a safe
environment where people can use & enjoy drugs as well as receive services." This attitude led to today's humanitarian
crisis: thousands of people living on San Francisco's streets, languishing in an endless cycle of homelessness and addiction.
Blue
States Slammed with Multiple Interlocking Crises. Black lives (along with all other lives) are now more
endangered by increased crime than they were before. Violent crime is on the rise in the cities that rallied the
hardest demanding racial justice — Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Portland, D.C., Baltimore,
Minneapolis, and Seattle. These processes are superimposed on economic recession caused by the unnecessary shutdowns of
businesses and schools. The economy — President Trump's greatest achievement — has been hit hard
and mercilessly. [...] While all Democrats-run states went to lockdown, almost half of the Republic states remained
opened, with closed states imposing fewer restrictions. Still, the blue states got hit harder.
'Enter
At Your Own Risk!': Texas Police Group Puts Up Billboards Warning Those Entering Austin That City Defunded
Police. People entering Austin, Texas, from Interstate 35 will see two billboards warning them that the city
defunded police. One billboard says, "Warning! Austin defunded police. Enter at your own risk!" CBS News
reported. The board is referring to the Austin city council's vote last month to cut the police budget. The
second billboard reads, "Limited support next 20 miles," the outlet reported. The billboards were put up by the
Texas Municipal Police Association, which announced its campaign Wednesday [9/9/2020] on Facebook.
Never-Trumpers
Need A Lesson In Basic Math. [Scroll down] But a Joe Biden win? That will harm the entire
country. And the damage will last a lifetime. If you don't think so, look at the legacy of past Democrats who
were able to shove their agendas through. Now in place for 55 years, Lyndon Johnson's Medicare, Medicaid, and "Great
Society" programs account for a third of the federal budget. (And their fiercest defenders are often Republicans.)
ObamaCare costs close to $100 billion a year (after Republicans betrayed voters and failed to repeal it). Welfare
dependency — another of Johnson's legacies — is the main cause of the disintegration of families and
the perpetuation of poverty, despite Republican efforts to mitigate the damage. For 40 years the Jimmy Carter-created
Department of Education has been pouring taxpayer dollars into schools, achieving nothing on standardized tests while
massively fueling college tuition inflation. Liberal judges with lifetime appointments make a mockery of the separation
of powers. The list goes on.
Oscars'
woke quota will backfire on Hollywood spectacularly. According to last February's ratings, 93 percent of us are
already not watching the Academy Awards. Now Oscar is wondering: How do I whittle down that last 7 percent?
Answer: woke quotas. That thunk you heard coming out of La-La Land on Tuesday [9/8/2020] was the sound of the Academy
grandly planting its face in the sidewalk by announcing it was formally rejecting the pursuit of artistic quality in favor of
a byzantine quota system. Starting with 2024 films, your project can't even be considered for a Best Picture Oscar
unless it meets a set of diversity targets of the kind you'd normally expect to see credited to the Oberlin Freshperson Student
Social-Justice Initiative & Sustainable Vegan Hemp Co-Operative. Good news, whoever staged that Rob-Lowe-meets-Snow-White
dance number: You're now the second-most embarrassing thing ever associated with the Academy Awards.
Oscars'
Orwellian diversity quota throws out merit. In the latest act of craven capitulation to the BLM-Antifa mob, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decreed Tuesday [9/8/2020] that no movie can win the top award unless it
satisfies a set of genetically and sexually diverse quotas. For example, lead actors must be from an "underrepresented
racial or ethnic group ... Asian, Latinx, Black, Native American, Middle Eastern, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander."
At least 30 percent of the rest of the cast otherwise must be chosen from at least two of the following victim
identities: women, underrepresented racial or ethnic group, "LGBTQ+" and the disabled. Or the Academy gets to
dictate the content of the movie so that the "main storyline, theme or narrative of the film" must satisfy the same
intersectionality requirements on gender, race, sexuality and disability. And that is just Standard A, one of four
labyrinthine prescriptions for creating Academy-sanctioned art. They all read like satire. You have to pinch
yourself to make sure you're not having some dystopian dream.
Oscars
announce that films will have to meet 'representation and inclusion' requirements if they are eligible to win Best
Picture. Actress Kirstie Alley raged at the Oscars' 'dictatorial' new diversity rules last night [9/8/2020] — claiming
they were akin to 'telling Picasso what had to be in his [...] paintings'. The Academy Awards shake-up means films hoping to win
Best Picture from 2024 will have to hire more black, female, LGBT or disabled cast and crew or address themes that affect those communities.
Academy chiefs say the rules are intended to 'better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience', but critics accused 'Woke Hollywood'
bosses of turning the Oscars into a 'weapon against anyone who disagreed with their politics'.
Liberals
figure out a way to make the Oscars even worse. I realize that many of you will read the title of this column
and assume that it's just more fake news. How could anyone possibly make the Oscars worse than they've been in recent
years? [...] From now on, it won't be enough to simply make a good movie, or at least "good" as defined by the Hollywood
elite. Now the prospective nominees for the Best Picture Award will be judged on whether or not the people involved in
every aspect of the production are "diverse" enough. This is apparently Hollywood's latest nod to the Black Lives
Matter movement, though we might at least hope that it will include Hispanics, Asians and Indigenous Americans as well.
Insufferable San Francisco.
Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, the American city hardly exists at all. [...] I had figured I could stick around
forever. Then I took my daughter to see The Nutcracker. The two blocks we had to walk from the train
station to War Memorial Opera House made a greater impression on my nine-year-old than any magical offering from the SF
Ballet. The city greeted her with the army of cracked nuts, the ubiquitous 'zombies' who aimlessly roam our
streets. The need to be hyperaware of their presence while pirouetting to avoid discarded syringes and human excrement
left her depressed and terrified for days. My daughter refuses to go to the ballet at the War Zone Opera House ever again.
The True
Cost of Riots. A striking case against riots is clearly expressed in the findings of Professor Mary C. King
whose research demonstrates "little relationship between regional progress for African Americans and relatively proximate
race riots." Riotous behavior often results in businesses fleeing minority communities, thus depriving residents of
employment and income. Racism is an extremely sensitive matter; however, sensitivity must be tempered by logic.
African Americans have experienced substantial progress over the past century. Eroding these gains is a possibility if
rational adults refrain from correcting misguided activists. Such was the impact of the race riots of the 1960s.
Examining the effects of civil disorder on small businesses in inner cities, sociologists Howard Aldrich and Albert Reiss
found that riots not only inflicted serious property damages but in the long term they made it prohibitive to operate in
inner cities, hence driving up insurance costs. As a result, businesses migrated to nurturing environments.
Low-income residents are the major beneficiaries of entrepreneurship in the inner city, so when emotions trump logic and
businesses exit these communities, the losers are poor black people.
New York
Had It Coming. NYC's streets are now too dangerous and too disturbing for normal folks to tolerate. If
they're not being attacked, beset, robbed, or murdered, they're being disgusted. The streets are the problem that must
be fixed before we can consider a resurrection for NYC. The psychotics, thugs, panhandlers, loiterers, tent campers, muggers,
and everyone else making life in the city a trial need to be removed and never tolerated again. New York City was
America's premier metropolis. It should be reserved for "movers and shakers," ne'er-do-wells should reside
elsewhere. Last year when hoodlums started dousing NYC cops with buckets of water and little was done about it, NYC's
fate was sealed. Giuliani would never have allowed the streets of NYC to descend into the chaos that de Blasio has let
happen; Rudy would have stopped it cold. If New York is to be revived, then a new policy of zero tolerance for bad
behavior must be instituted. Panhandling, public urination and defecation, nudity, sex in the streets, loitering,
malingering, tent encampments, etc. should no longer be tolerated. If New Yorkers aren't willing to forbid such things,
forget about the city coming back.
Don't
Be a Victim of Democrat Abuse and Voter Endangerment. If you have been surviving in a pocket of America where
Democrats have forced you into unemployment over a virus that is proving less lethal by the day, robbed your kids of an
education while using teachers' unions as political weapons, turned your elderly parents' nursing home into a death camp for
disease transmission, fire-bombed your favorite restaurant or neighborhood drugstore because you've been deemed
insufficiently "woke" and irredeemably racist, and now deprived you of any sports or entertainment shows that don't first
take a moment to tell you how awful and evil you are, then you are a victim of Democrat abuse and voter endangerment.
American cities didn't kill themselves, after all. Democrats did that. All this mayhem and violence in the
streets — the Democrats built that, too. Democrats have had an absolute monopoly on the way most American
cities are governed for fifty to a hundred years. They run those cities' police departments. They control the
national news media housed in those cities. They sit on the boards of all the "woke" corporations that fuel their
wealth. They've taken over the sports leagues and replaced entertainment with sermons from the perpetually
aggrieved. They have the backing of the Chamber of Commerce, an organization that prefers Wall Street to Main Street
and cashing checks from Chinese communists to aiding American workers. And the Democrats are Hollywood.
Seattle
Police Chief Carmen Best steps down, claims cuts left her 'destined to fail'. Carmen Best, the first Black
police chief in Seattle's history, left her post Wednesday, saying on her way out that the city council's police budget cuts
had put her in a "position destined to fail," according to a report. Best, 55, announced her resignation Aug 10, after
the council made good on its promise to approve sweeping proposals that would slash the police department budget by $4
million and cut as many as 100 officers from the force. "I believe 100% that they were putting me in a position
destined to fail. Cutting a police department that already had low staffing numbers, that was already struggling to keep up
with the demand," Best told NPR on Wednesday. "How are we going to provide for adequate public safety in that environment?"
The
coming blue-city exodus. While the election isn't until November 3, it looks like lots of people and businesses
are, in a sense, "voting" early — with their feet. In pre-pandemic January, I wrote here about the blue-state
exodus in which thousands of blue-state residents, fed up with high taxes, heavy regulations and "woker-than-thou" policies, are
fleeing the sinking blue ships and moving to red states. Now it appears we are seeing a blue-city exodus as well.
Begin with the fact that virtually every large city in the country is run by liberals. World Population Review lists the
20 most liberal U.S. cities, with San Francisco leading the way, followed by Washington, DC, Seattle, Oakland, Boston,
Minneapolis, Detroit and New York City. Chicago comes in at 11 and Portland at 12.
Must
See Video Shows Democrats Continually Called for Uprisings and Violence. Democrats and the media have made a
sudden turn the last few days. After months of excusing the riots and even actively encouraging them, the new narrative
is that it's all Trump's fault. They ignore that Trump has offered assistance to Portland, for example, and has been
viciously rebuffed even as the city continues to suffer chaos. They also ignore that when Gov. Evers did accept
Trump's help in Kenosha, the violence dwindled almost immediately. No matter, though. The media believe they are
the vanguards of information and the Democrats know they have them in their pocket. So you get insanity like this
must-see video which succinctly shows just who has really been stoking the flames. [Video clip]
Cultural Suicide Is
Painless. It is not all that hard to blow up a culture. You can do it in a summer if you haven't much
worry about others. When you loot and burn a Target in an hour, it takes months to realize there are no more
neighborhood Target-stocked groceries, toilet paper, and Advil to buy this winter. You can in a night assault the
police, spit at them, hope to infect them with the coronavirus, and even burn them alive. But when you call 911 in a
few weeks after your car is vandalized, your wallet is stolen, and your spouse is violent, and no one
comes, only then do you sense that you earlier were voting for a pre-civilized wilderness. You can burn down a Burger King
in half an hour. But it will take years to find anyone at Burger King, Inc., who would ever be dumb enough to rebuild atop
the charred ruins — to prepare for the next round of arson in 2021 or 2023.
Eviction Moratoriums Cause Big Problems for Mom-and-Pop Landlords.
Mom-and-pop landlords across the United States are coming under increasing pressure as a patchwork of regulations and
eviction moratoriums passed by the federal government, states, counties, and municipalities in the wake of the CCP (Chinese
Communist Party) virus crisis have strongly curtailed their ability to enforce their property rights. In addition, The
Epoch Times has received reports that a small number of tenants are abusing moratoriums by choosing to withhold payment of
their rent — and in some cases without claiming coronavirus-related hardship.
Portland
mayor piously turns down Trump's offer of police aid, finds his apartment's lobby overrun by protestors.
Portland's mayor, Ted Wheeler, has already made his city a punchline internationally, vacuously mouthing the platitudes of
Black Lives Matter, and watching mobs riot and burn his city for 92 days straight, with no effort to contain it.
Democrats bristle at Republican efforts to pin rioting on poor Democrat rule, but are cut off at the pass when Portland is
brought up. Nobody can argue about the incompetence there. Even the people in Minneapolis console themselves with
the thought that as bad as their city is, at least it's not Portland.
New Yorkers keep moving
out of the city to suburbs, other states. The move is on — to leave New York City. The exodus
that began at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, with many New Yorkers departing to their beach and country homes, has
continued unabated as more leave for good, according to city moving companies overwhelmed by the avalanche of would-be
expats. "People are fleeing the city in droves," says Moon Salahie, owner of Elite Moving & Storing in Yonkers, who has
been working nonstop since the city began Phase 1 of its reopening in June. Salahie said 90 percent of the moves
are to the suburbs and mostly families with kids worried about the school year. He's packed people out of neighborhoods all
over Manhattan.
California Apocalypto.
Note the synergism of the California postmodern apocalypse: The hotter it gets, the more fires burn on ecological fuel
and hillside natural "compost," the smokier the air becomes, the less efficiently California's solar pathway to the future
generates, the more power outages ensue, the more real people are put in danger from either being incinerated by fire or
suffocated by smoke or boiled inside without air conditioning. Last week, I asked an elderly patient at the allergy
clinic whether, in the 108-degree heat, he preferred to stay outside to breathe smoke and haze, or stay inside his uncooled
apartment. He gave a novel answer: He didn't care about the power outages since he couldn't pay the exorbitant
electricity charges anyway to turn on his air conditioner. And he added that, in California these days, you can't tell
whether mask wearers are fighting the virus, the smoke, or the police.
Portlanders
in Need Had to Fend for Themselves, and You Won't Believe Just One Night's Crime. You've seen the violence in
Portland. You've witnessed the chaos caught on tape. The cops have their hands full. So what happens, then,
when people outside the chaos need police? It turns out they have to go it alone. As reported by The Daily
Caller, on Sunday night, 35 officers had to abandon patrol duty after a riot was declared. That led to 80 other
emergency calls being put on hold. [Video clip] On Monday [8/24/2020], the Portland Police Bureau issued a
statement detailing the night's insanity. Twenty-three people ages 19 [to] 44 were arrested, for crimes
including assaulting a public safety officer, interfering with a peace officer, and escape in the third degree.
Why
I Am No Longer a Social Worker. A social worker who wants to continue working had better understand that he or
she has to support all aspects of LGBT platforms, has to facilitate partial-birth abortions, and has to eliminate any and all
references to God — no matter what he or she believes. Alternative therapies are acceptable so long as they
are goddess-driven and support mandatory vaccination. All therapies have to pass their "ethical" (i.e. political) means
testing... and they all revolve around the exaltation of the Self, even when that "self" has the emotional stability of
packing peanuts. The essential problem is this: the Self can only be exalted in this manner once the Creator Himself
has been ejected. And that is precisely what has happened... slowly and cunningly, but steadily.
Reclaiming
Our Culture from the Left. [Scroll down] But the education most of the rioters have received has made
them abjectly incapable of thinking rationally and evaluating claims on the basis of their logical coherence and supporting
evidence. No amount of careful reasoning, no amount of evidence is going to convince most of the rioters that their
rage is based on false premises, because they have been carefully educated throughout their lives to feel rather than think,
and to believe that America is a nation of deep injustice with a shameful history and an equally condemnable present.
It doesn't matter that the claims that the rioters and their defenders are making are false. It doesn't matter that
police brutality affects people of all races. It doesn't matter that thoroughgoing civil rights legislation has made
"systemic racism" a thing of the distant past. The rioters know America is evil because they have been taught it all
their lives by virtually every authority they have encountered, and those authorities have also taught them that those who
tell them otherwise are stupid, contemptible, and operating out of ulterior motives. This is true of the establishment
media as well as the educational system — not to mention the corporate culture, the entertainment industry, and more.
Multiple
Portland companies plan to move out of downtown office spaces because ongoing BLM protests have made the area 'unsafe'. A
number of companies based in downtown Portland are set to vacate or sell their offices because on-going protests in the city against
police brutality have led to 'unsafe' conditions in the area, reports suggest. Activists have taken to the city streets for the
last 82 consecutive nights to demonstrate under the banner of Black Lives Matter, but some of the rallies have descended into chaos,
resulting in violent clashes with police or widespread acts of vandalism.
The
Thin Veneer of American Civilization. Nine months ago, New York was a thriving, though poorly governed,
metropolis. It was coasting on the more or less good governance of its prior two mayors and on its ancestral role as
the global nexus of finance and capital. The city is now something out of a postmodern apocalyptic movie, reeling from
the effects of a neutron bomb. Ditto in varying degrees Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco —
the anti-broken-windows metropolises of America. Walking in San Francisco today reminds me of visiting Old Cairo in
1973, although the latter lacked the needles and feces of the former. At the present increasing rate of police
defunding, homeless encampments, the emptying of jails and prisons, the green-lighting of rioting and vandalism, the flight
of the wealthy, the revolutionary change to Skype/Zoom tele-working, and the exodus of upper-middle-class liberal families to
safe houses in the New York and New England countryside, once beautiful New York City is in danger of becoming the nation's
aneurysm. That is, after the "recovery," it and other blue cities may be seen as permanent weak veins and arteries
prone to sudden fatal hemorrhaging that could implode at any moment, and thus may become metaphorically tied off, as the
country reroutes around them.
New
York City is 'dead forever,' according to this proud New Yorker. Will the city that never sleeps ever wake
up? Not according to James Altucher, a best-selling author and former hedge-fund manager (and a former MarketWatch
columnist), who says that New York City is "dead forever" as its residents come to grips with the reality of the coronavirus
pandemic and what it means for the fate of the Big Apple. "I love NYC. When I first moved to NYC, it was a dream
come true. Every corner was like a theater production happening right in front of me. So much personality, so
many stories," he wrote in a blog post explaining why his temporary relocation might become more permanent.
How Race Politics Burns
Out. [Scroll down] The kind of racialized violence now taking place reflects what historian Fred Siegel
called "the riot ideology", which has been deleterious to the progress of African Americans. The rioting in the 1960s
weakened urban economies and led to devastating losses for minority property owners and businesses. Even today many
areas burned down in the 1960s in Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit have never recovered. Indeed despite massive
expenditures to redress huge past inequities, high-poverty areas in cities have grown steadily, doubling in population
between 1980 and 2018. Looting and mayhem, long-term, don't work. After the 1992 riots, there were pledges of massive
corporate and government support for south Los Angeles. Now, almost three decades later, the area, site of two of the
worst riots in American history, has experienced a growing gap with the rest of the county in terms of homeownership, income
and educational attainment. The more recent disorders also are unlikely to spark much long-term inner-city investment.
Hollywood
Apocalypse. Gold's Gym has become synonymous with the Hollywood Dream. [...] Yet today Gold's sits amid
post-apocalyptic scenes which have consumed much of LA, turning the City of Dreams into an urban nightmare from which people
are fleeing in droves. A makeshift tent city made up of flapping tarpaulins and cardboard boxes surrounds the gym on
all sides. Junkies and the homeless, many of whom are clearly mentally ill, walk the palm-lined streets like
zombies — all just three blocks from multi-million-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific. Stolen bicycles are
piled high on pavements littered with broken syringes. TV bulletins are filled with horror stories from across the
city; of women being attacked during their morning jog or residents returning home to find strangers defecating in their
front gardens.
The State of Our Cities That Our Media Is Hiding
From You. [Quoting Mike Doran:] I've been exchanging messages with friends about what what's happening in
our cities: NY, Philadelphia and LA especially. A lot of disturbing things are not making the news. Even
Republicans aren't drawing attention to it. Here's a message from a friend about life in NY today: "Here's my
neighborhood, Mike: An elderly man, enjoying dinner w/his wife at an outdoor restaurant, punched in the face. A
woman waiting for the subway to come stabbed in the back. An older neighbor pausing to catch his breath told to pay two
dollars in protection money or get [...] off that particular street corner. This is just the ten block radius from
where I live in the last six days." Other friends from NY talk about shattered business districts, drugstores with locked
shelves, and hundreds of homeless people and parolees, including sex offenders, being moved into hotels on the Upper West
Side adjacent to schools and playgrounds, which are filled with needles again like in the 1970s. Friends in Philadelphia
report large homeless encampments in the city center and being robbed at gunpoint. Friends in LA talk about squatters
taking over empty homes in professional class neighborhoods whose residents fantasize about emigrating to Canada.
Retail
and Restaurants Flee Democrat-Run New York Forever. Crime, taxes, disease, and an anti-science approach to
social distancing have chased a number of big retailers and restaurateurs out of New York forever, reports the far-left
New York Times. "In the heart of Manhattan, national chains including J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway and
Le Pain Quotidien have shuttered branches for good," per the Times, which adds other big box retailers, like
Victoria's Secret and the Gap, have chosen to reopen in other states while their Manhattan locations remain shuttered.
New York City's
Downward Spiral. On a return visit this weekend to the Upper West Side neighborhood where I've lived for more
than a quarter of a century, the fear in the air was palpable. The population seemed to be reduced by about half.
New Yorkers steer around each other on the sidewalks, some of them walking in the street to avoid passing near a
stranger. A lady declined to ride the elevator with me and my children. People are especially terrified of the
subway, whose ridership is down 80 percent from normal levels. Friday night, at a time when there would ordinarily be
50 or more people riding on any given car of the 1 train, there were about seven. Downtown was morose, grim,
broken. Graffiti was much in evidence.
A
mad rush for the exits as New York City goes down the tubes. It's not just a few Upper West Siders who are
fleeing New York: Moving companies say they're swamped with calls from residents looking to ditch the city —
even though the COVID crisis has waned. One likely reason: The virus was but the last straw; New Yorkers are fed
up with the shootings and lootings, homelessness on the streets, sub-par online schools, sky-high taxes and the sheer
obliviousness of pols like Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. On Sunday [8/9/2020], The [New York] Post
highlighted families who've given up on the Upper West Side — now teeming with junkies, the homeless, convicts and
others — and are headed for greener pastures outside Gotham.
In Colorado,
the police are canceling themselves. The state of Colorado has been experiencing the same twin dilemmas that
have been plaguing much of the country for the past several months and this has had a rather drastic impact on police forces
across the board. They're dealing with the pandemic like everyone else, and police officers have jobs that put them in
constant contact with the public. At the same time, protests and demonstrations blaming the police for many of
society's ills have led the state to eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. This puts them a
greater personal risk of civil suits or criminal charges if an arrest of an uncooperative suspect goes awry. What's the
upshot of all of this been? Far fewer interactions with the public and a significant increase in police officers
retiring early or simply quitting and seeking new types of employment.
When
Government Encourages Victimhood, You Have an Alternative. According to a report from the Minneapolis Star
Tribune, the number of officers in the Minneapolis Police Department has been reduced 10 percent since May and the department
"could lose as much as a third of its workforce by the end of the year." Some on the city council have sought to abolish the
police department. With this development, there has been a corresponding spike in violent crime. Minnesota Public
Radio reported that as of August 4 Minneapolis had experienced more than twice as many homicides in 2020 as during the same
period in 2019. Local CBS affiliate WCCO reported that through July 26 robberies in 2020 were up 36 percent over
the same time period in 2019.
Insurance
payouts fall far short of what's needed to rebuild Twin Cities. Though Gov. Tim Walz has estimated that
total losses will exceed $500 million, insurance companies have informed the Minnesota Department of Commerce that they will
be covering a maximum of $240 million in riot-related damage. In the 5-mile stretch of Minneapolis that sustained the
heaviest destruction, uninsured losses among local small-business owners are at least $200 million, according to the Lake
Street Council.
How
Therapists Became Gods. [Scroll down] The youth suicide rate — 14.6 per 100,000 —
appears to be the highest it's been since the government began collecting such statistics in 1960. How can that be
when we are surrounded with opportunities for self-gratification and encouraged by countless "authorities" to avail ourselves
of them? Why are we so sad, so lonely and isolated when there are so many socialization programs in our schools and
everyone is so "connected" over social media? Why the misery when you can even choose a new gender? Or even marry
your own pet? (Truly, in California "whatever" has taken on a fantastical new meaning.) If there is no longer a God,
if His moral code is irrelevant, and if self-esteem boosting therapy is the answer (and the self-actualized therapist the oracle),
why do so many people feel so empty even after years and years on the couch?
De
Blasio's plan to destroy New York City is working wonderfully. It's no longer news that, once the Wuhan virus
descended on New York City, the rich did what rich people always have down when plague appears: they packed up their goods
and their money and left for comfortable country homes where they could wait out the disease. The New Yorkers who
remained in the city ranged from the upper-middle-class down to the homeless. Mayor Bill de Blasio then had the bright
idea to bring these two classes together, something that's working out about as well as you would expect. It's also a
preview of coming attractions for the rest of America should Biden win the White House and Democrats take full control of
Congress.
Democrats
Are Destroying Their Own Cities, and it all Makes Perfect Sense. America's cities are dying, and no one in the
Democrat Party seems to want to do anything to stop it from happening. In fact, it is Democrats who are actively managing the
chaos and destruction. Ask yourselves why that is the case. After all, the big cities represent almost the entire base
of power for the Democrat Party. That's why the county-by-county presidential election maps always look like a sea of red
with little blue islands sprinkled onto it. Most of those islands are the counties where the big cities are. The sea
of red is where they aren't. This isn't complicated. Yet, right now, as we sit isolated in our homes today thinking
about which useless, virtue-signaling mask we will wear when we venture out to the grocery store, Democrat mayors and city councils
all over the country are willingly presiding over the complete destruction of their centers of power.
Trucking
Company Owner: Cities That Defund Police Are in for a Big Surprise. Cities that decide to cut their
police funding could be cutting their own supply lines, too. That was the message a trucking executive carried to "Fox
& Friends First" on Wednesday [8/5/2020], and it's something urban politicians — in the thrall of Black Lives
Matter rioters and antifa anarchists — should be seriously considering unless they think citizens can start
growing their own food. Because if it's not safe for truckers to carry goods — they just might not do
it. And trucking companies won't be willing to risk the business.
Minneapolis
Downtown Council says up to 10,000 jobs could be lost over 'public safety concerns'. Steve Cramer, president
and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, told [KSTP] concerns over public safety and the future of the city's
police department have some companies looking to leave downtown. "Almost overnight the brakes went on in downtown,"
Cramer said. "The point where it all started to change was the day the City Council announced it supported defunding
the police department." Cramer said in a six-week period from that day there were 45 companies that indicated they were
either moving out of downtown or were a business that was no longer moving downtown, and there were 13 companies
in that group with 100 or more employees and one with 600.
Dozens
Of Minneapolis Businesses Consider Leaving, Cite Possibility Of Police Being Dismantled. Dozens of Minneapolis
businesses are considering leaving downtown, citing concerns about the possibility of the police department being dismantled,
CBS Minnesota reported. A survey by the Downtown Council shows 45 business owners say they are considering leaving
downtown Minneapolis because of the lack of people working and socializing in the area and also the idea that the police
department could be dismantled, CBS reported. One of the surveyed businesses that is considering leaving employs 600
people, deepening fears that the city could take another major blow to employment, which was hit by the coronavirus
pandemic. The Council did not divulge which businesses are considering leaving.
How the
Media Could Get the Election Story Wrong. I spoke last week to executives, TV hosts and election analysts
across leading American newsrooms, and I was struck by the blithe confidence among some top managers and hosts, who generally
said they've handled complicated elections before and can do so again. And I was alarmed by the near panic among some
of the people paying the closest attention — the analysts and producers trying, and often failing, to get answers
from state election officials about how and when they will count the ballots and report results. "The nerds are
freaking out," said Brandon Finnigan, the founder of Decision Desk HQ, which delivers election results to media
outlets. "I don't think it's penetrated enough in the average viewer's mind that there's not going to be an election
night. The usual razzmatazz of a panel sitting around discussing election results — that's dead," he said.
Woke
Mobs Demand You Must Now Explain Why You Stand For The Anthem. Kneeling for the national anthem at sporting
events used to be the occasional episode of player activism protesting the United States as an evil racist empire. Amid
the new 21st century woke revolution however, kneeling has become a key signifier for players and teams to declare which side
of the culture wars one sits on. It's those who love America versus those who hate it, the latter of which despises the
American flag and all that it represents as a relic of white supremacy that must be condemned. Those who still stand
out of respect for the nation's ideals and the uniformed men and women who protect it are now the outliers forced to defend
themselves in a new age of no dissent, because dissent is racist, racism is oppression, oppression is violence, and violence
is not to be tolerated, even if it isn't real.
Antifa
Is the Natural Product of Our Educational System. [Scroll down] For decades, our schools have been
self-replicating machines, preaching to college students, directly or indirectly, the left-wing gospel according to Howard
Zinn (and the Frankfurt School and so forth) and sending them out in turn to preach this junior varsity, critical theory
Marxism themselves as teachers at whatever level at all manner of institutions throughout the country. The youngest of
those levels is perhaps the most dangerous because it's the most impressionable. Antifa members are therefore only
doing what they have been taught all along, getting rid of a cancer called the United States. This connection between
Antifa and the teaching profession is so profound that some insist the majority of those hidden behind the black masks are
indeed teachers. Others, needless to say including the liberal media, have denied this. It's impossible to know
for certain. Antifa, like some Islamic terror groups, doesn't have a formal leadership structure; why would they need
it? They also don't keep records. This, however, is probably a case where the cliché about smoke and fire
applies. Whether Antifa is 50 percent teachers or 20 percent teachers, it's a lot of teachers.
The Bus Never Stops.
First they told us that homosexuality was normal and that there was no need for anyone to be afraid of the ramifications of
treating them as normal, even though only about 2 percent of the population are homosexual — giving new meaning to
the word "normal." About 1 percent of babies are born with a heart defect, but we don't call that normal. Doubters
said that treating as normal people as different as homosexuals would have consequences. First thing — or maybe
second thing — they would want to get "married" and have their "marriages" treated as normal. [...] What's
next? What's wrong, really, with having children watch pornography? It's everywhere, and there's essentially no
effort to eliminate it. How do we know that? Because there is no serious effort by Republicans to stop it.
And if children can watch it, why shouldn't they do it? What's the effective difference? And what's wrong,
really, with sex with children, so long as there's an adult in the room? "Don't be absurd," you say. But you said
that years ago when homosexuality was normalized. And again when homosexual marriage was normalized. Now when
polyamorous relationships are normalized, are you saying that we have reached the terminus: that the bus stops
here? Please. The bus never stops. Unless someone stops it.
This did
not happen to America overnight. These days, one of the most frequent laments of conservatives is that so much
damage has been inflicted on our nation in such a short amount of time. With the economy humming along and the nation
brimming with optimism as recently as the spring of this year, it seems that our world has been transformed almost overnight
into an unrecognizable cauldron of chaos, despair, and even death. However, while the Wuhan virus, the riots, and the
raging lawlessness of the last five months are a major calamity, they are really only the inevitable culmination of attacks
being waged against America for several decades. The level of these attacks has been increasing in intensity and
audacity the entire time. But although Americans found it too easy to retreat from the mayhem for much of that period,
the boldness and extent of the leftist onslaught have increased to the point that no more room for surrender exists.
The
Trans Cult. A few years ago, three things happened in the course of a single week in my life. First, a
friend told me about a letter her daughter, then 11, had received from her closest summer-camp friend. The girl had
some big news: She was now a boy. Then, another mother told me she and her daughter were sitting at a synagogue
lunch when they were joined by a man who "presented" as a woman. And I received a lengthy email from my daughter's swim
coach at the local YWCA — a man whose missives had never included anything besides practice times and requests for
volunteer timers — explaining that someone on the team had come out as transgender; the coach attached an entire
Washington Post article explaining how we should treat the child and the proper pronouns we should use to refer to "them."
Nearly half of 258 surveyed
police agencies' budgets [have been] cut: report. A soon to be released survey of 258 police departments
nationwide shows almost half have had their budgets cut amid calls for police to be defunded despite increases in gun
violence and otherwise violent crime in some parts of the country, according to USA Today. The outlet was first to
report that the Police Executive Research Forum publication, which is expected to be released in the coming days, shows cuts
in the police budgets are largely being made to training, equipment. Protesters are pushing to "defund the police" over
the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans killed by law enforcement.
Let Portland and
Seattle burn. [Scroll down] My theory regarding this flight from reality in Portland and Seattle (where I
lived for a couple of years) is that those cities have long suffered from an inferiority complex vis-a-vis San
Francisco. The big city to the south makes Portland and Seattle feel like a timber mill and a fishing harbor.
Every policy decision is consequently animated with the unspoken sentiment, "What would San Fran do? Let's outdo that!"
Congratulations, Portland and Seattle, you've managed to outdo even San Francisco in violence, vagrancy and anarchy. Now you
can live in the festering filth and feces of sociopaths who have nothing but cynical contempt for your self-indulgent
self-righteousness. But at least you feel really good about yourselves.
We're at War. Attacking Trump's
Tweet in the NYT While the Democrats Foment Riots & Ruin to Defeat Him is Treason. [Scroll down] The
people trying to destroy us stopped caring about the rules ages ago. They faked Russian cyber-espionage against the
Clinton Campaign to discredit WikiLeaks revelations about her corruption and incompetence. They tried to frame Trump as
part of their phony Russian plot. They used the FBI to illegally spy on Trump's campaign. They gave Robert
Mueller power and an unlimited budget to destroy Trump and as many of his allies as possible. They organized and
promoted Christine Blasey Ford's perjurous hoax. They tried to remove Trump from office for his patently reasonable
attempt to get Ukrainian authorities to investigate Joe Biden's obvious corruption. They've caused an economic
catastrophe that could very well wind up being worse than the Great Depression, gaslit the entire nation into months of
debilitating fear and panic, and caused the deaths of countless Americans by lying and withholding information about a virus
that all the data literally says is less harmful than the flu. They've fomented riots across the nation and caused the
murder of American police officers and ordinary citizens alike by promoting the poisonous false narrative that American cops
start their day fervently hoping they'll get a chance to kill someone who isn't white. And that's just the egregious,
defamatory and destructive mass deceptions the Democrats and their allies in the corporate press have perpetrated.
The
Implosion of the Left's Language Circus. Right now, the left's power consists mostly of power over the English
language. The left has sway over education, the media, law, arts, and entertainment, especially in English-speaking
countries: the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand. Liberal-dominated industries
shape the understanding and use of words. Since the English-speaking world defines discourse for the whole world and
the English-speaking left defines English words, the left now has global hegemony. For two reasons, I believe that this
will not last very long. First, the history of Spanish, French, and German shows that language communities reach their
downfall when one party's prevalence distorts communication. Second, the three most prominent left-wing slogans in
recent history — "it gets better," "me too," and "black lives matter" — cancel each other.
Eventually, skeptics will notice, or the folly will cause a social disaster.
Seattle
police chief: New limits on anti-protest gear will mean 'adjusted' law enforcement. Seattle's police
officers will now respond to protests and rioting through "adjusted deployment" methods because of a new city law that bans
them from using some crowd-control tools, the city's police chief said Friday [7/24/2020]. The new law, which takes
effect Sunday, "bans Seattle Police officers the use of less lethal tools, including pepper spray that is commonly used to
disperse crowds that have turned violent," police Chief Carmen Best said in a statement. "Simply put," Best added, "the
legislation gives officers NO ability to safely intercede to preserve property in the midst of a large, violent crowd."
Downtown
Portland businesses, derailed by pandemic, say protests present a new challenge. Restaurants and retailers
throughout Oregon have struggled to stay afloat amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some businesses have already closed
permanently. Others say their futures are uncertain. But downtown Portland business owners say they are facing
unique challenges as they try to recover from the economic devastation brought on by the pandemic. Many point to the
raucous protests downtown and the controversial federal response, which have put the city atop national headlines.
While most of downtown is tranquil, and nearly all confrontations between protestors and police take place late at night, the
nightly protests have given Portland a reputation for upheaval that businesses say is keeping shoppers away. Office
buildings remain empty because of the pandemic and tourists have yet to return, taking away a large customer base for many
downtown businesses.
The Editor says...
The tourism industry in Portland and Seattle is finished, for at least a decade. The governors and the mayors should
have thought of that possibility before letting rioters have their way in the streets, night after night, week after week.
These
are the innocuous words progressives want to ban you from using. Trying desperately not to get canceled, bosses
are trying to think ahead about what words might create a fake Duraflame firestorm of anger, and preemptively ruling ordinary
words out of bounds. At the Los Angeles Times, for instance, an editor has said the word "looters," which has been used
many times in the paper, now has "a pejorative and racist connotation" and that anyone who is inclined to use the word should
"talk to your immediate supervisor." Translation: Best not use the word at all, if you want to stay employed.
So what to call looters? Non-paying shoppers? That doesn't quite tell the story: Ordinary shoplifters don't
usually bust up all the windows. How about self-appointed retail-justice-commandos? Revolutionary mass
goods-redistribution agents?
Cancel
Culture's Dual Meaning Is a War for America's Soul. The rabid Left is actively rewriting American history as
being inherently bad from the start, as it has no excuse to change our culture if there is anything arguably good about
it. Therefore, our values, historical narrative, monuments, and anything that makes us uniquely American must be
disparaged and destroyed. Tyrants throughout history have practiced cancel culture by forcibly suppressing opposition
to their authoritarianism with methods similar to what the American Left is using today. In 2001, Americans were
horrified when the Taliban destroyed ancient Buddha statues along Afghanistan's silk road despite objections from 54 Islamic
countries. Equal outrage occurred in 2015 when ISIS destroyed statues and other irreplaceable artifacts dating back to
Iraq's seventh-century BC culture. Nazis stole countless billions in art, historical, and religious treasures from
Jewish families to eliminate Jewish culture.
The cleanup from the riots in Denver isn't going quickly,
or cheaply. We've spent plenty of time over the past month or two looking at the seemingly endless series of
riots consuming many of the nation's larger cities. While the violence, injuries, assaults and even deaths capture many
of the headlines, the staggering amount of property damage taking place is also a part of the equation. The question
is, what do these cities do in the aftermath when downtown storefront windows have all been replaced with graffiti-covered
plywood sheets, walls and roads are festooned with paint and lights, statues and other public property has been
destroyed? That's a problem that the City of Denver has been wrestling with for quite a while now. When the worst
of the riots first broke out in the Mile High City, the community and the government teamed up to try to keep up with
repairs. They no doubt hoped that the worst of the rioting would fade quickly and order would be restored. That
hasn't happened, however. Cleanup efforts have been stymied by repeating offenses and the costs have been spiraling out
of control.
Goodbye, Washington DC.
[Scroll down] I did my part, too. My role in the fabric of urban society, overlooked but essential, was to spend
my money. Eat, drink, shop, spend, tip, pay. And man, did I pay: taxes, rents, then a mortgage and HOA
fees. I paid taxes on things the government deemed "bad" for me, like alcohol and cigarettes; taxes on services which
organized labor deemed "bad" for them, like rideshare. I paid gas tax, cable tax, cell phone tax, and, of course,
income tax. Lots of income tax. All I asked in return was relative safety and to be left alone to enjoy the
city. City-living in America, for decades, meant tolerating mild inconveniences so that you could be left alone,
alongside millions of others. That was the tacit pact. And DC broke it.
Why This
Revolution Isn't Like the '60s. The '60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies,
communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music, and high divorce rates to the war
on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action, and race/gender/ethnic college curricula. [...] A
half-century after the earlier revolution, today's cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more
dangerous. Government and debt have grown. Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer
federal programs. The "Great Society" inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state. Divorce
rates soared. The nuclear family waned. Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed. Thus, America is
far less resilient, and a far more divided, indebted, and vulnerable target than it was in 1965.
The accelerating
collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America. St. Louis, famously known as the Gateway to
the West, has become America's reigning murder capital and a symbol of urban decay — trends accelerated in recent
years by a soft-on-crime mayor and a social justice-minded prosecutor. Last month, the images of Mark and Patricia
McCloskey, both armed, confronting protesters in front of their restored mansion in the historic Central West End district of
downtown St. Louis previewed what a defund-the-police era may look like. In the aftermath of George Floyd's death
in police custody in Minneapolis, St. Louis, like other American cities, faced a crisis of public order.
Businesses were burned to the ground, and looters roamed freely. Four St. Louis police officers were shot in one
night. Civic unrest was so widespread that first responders took nearly 30 minutes to reach a 7-Eleven set aflame
by rioters. The city's elected leaders have seemingly abandoned the police. St. Louis's current condition
reflects a decades-long tumble from growth and prosperity to decline and disorder.
Harris
Faulkner presses Marie Harf to name a single GOP-run city in chaos: 'It's a yes or no question'. Fox News'
Harris Faulkner challenged network contributor Marie Harf to name a Republican-run city that is currently under siege by
rioters during an "Outnumbered" segment on Thursday [7/23/2020]. The discussion began with co-host Dagen McDowell
ticking off a list of shootings in Chicago, long a Democratic stronghold, just in the past few days as the panel discussed
Mayor Lori Lightfoot's decision to accept federal assistance in bringing order to chaotic parts of the city, a reversal of
her earlier position. "What if it works in Chicago? What if the police in that city can stop the daily murders?"
McDowell said before ticking off a list of shootings and killings in just the past few days. "What if this partnership
actually works?" she added, decrying the use by some so-called "peaceful protesters" who "carry Molotov cocktails, metal
pipes and hammers — is that where we are in this nation?"
One Nation Under Anarcho-Tyranny.
The America you grew up in is not the America we live in now. [...] It's not "socialism" or "communism" under which we
suffer. Our dangerously chaotic, selectively oppressive predicament is more accurately described as "anarcho-tyranny."
The late conservative columnist Sam Francis first coined the term in 1992 to diagnose a condition of "both anarchy (the
failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny — the enforcement of laws by the state
for oppressive purposes." The "criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent," Francis expounded, is achieved in such
a state through: "exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation; the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social
institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through 'sensitivity training' and
multiculturalist curricula; 'hate crime' laws; gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have
no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally; and a vast labyrinth of other measures."
Chicago
Police Statistics Destroy Black Lives Matter Narrative. Last week in Chicago, a protest of sorts obediently
marched to the tune of hackneyed charges of systemic injustice. The tired narrative droned on about bad policing,
police targeting of the black community, and too much jail or prison time. This kept the crowd from considering
alternatives to their afternoon work, such as offering a token of gratitude to thankless peacekeepers in their own backyard,
the murder capital of America. One wonders if they know that out of the 560 homicides, 475 victims were black, killed
not by the police or whites, but by other blacks. By all means, protest. But when people complain about the
system being rigged, they need to remember they voted for their system, and they've been voting for the same system for quite
a while. The mayoral offices have been run by Democrats since before the Great Depression, which means only about 2
million out of 350 million total Americans were alive the last time the city voted for a Republican. Most recently,
Obama acolyte Rahm Emanuel helmed the city between 2011 and 2019, and currently a woman by the name of Lori Lightfoot, whose
sole victory in the role comes from being the first openly gay, black mayor of the town, presides over the carnage.
Trump
Has Already Won the 2020 Election. Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already
won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot — and maybe I am. (I've been called worse.) But I
can't help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they're printed on, digital or
otherwise, they're about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler. No one sensible is talking about their
political allegiance these days in public — especially to an anonymous pollster. Instead, they're buying
guns, in record numbers. Why wouldn't they? Calling 911 has become about as useful as calling tech support for a
transistor radio run over by the same six-wheeler. The destroyed statues are the least of it. They're
inanimate. The actual people of Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and on and on
are living a nightmare. Violence stalks the streets of all our major cities whose murder rates are going up
stratospherically. (As I type this, the news is reporting 9 more shot in D.C.) Have there ever been remotely as many
stores and businesses smashed, many still not operating, from the Atlantic to the Pacific? America isn't in the midst
of a civil war. It's in the midst of a national meltdown with the banana-brained neo-Marxists of Black Lives Matter and
Antifa, stoned like sophomores (if that) on Foucault or some other self-important "critical theorist," leading the way to
oblivion and mutual hatred (actually a return to tribalism).
Portland
Goes To Hell: The Death Of An American City. Portland, Oregon, was once known as the quintessentially
nice Northwestern city. Its nickname, "The Rose City," was given to it by a Baptist group that held a convention there
over a century ago. Sadly, today, riot-riven Portland smells like anything but roses. The city has been the locus
of nonstop violent protests for 51 days and counting. And really, calling them protests is incorrect: They are
acts of outright rebellion, with many participants openly calling for the dismantling of the United States. [...] Who's
behind all this? Antifa and Black Lives Matter, of course. But they aren't the only ones. There are lots of
other leftists of various affiliations agitating the crowds. [...] This is part of a pattern of how the left works:
Destroy the rule of law, the backbone of our free republic. Intimidate ordinary citizens into silence. Then
support and elevate rule by power of unelected street thugs in Antifa and BLM.
Here's what I saw in the first half of
2020. [Scroll down]
8. Liberals worked hard to manufacture "social unrest," report on it as if it were
spontaneous, and "defund the police." Libs think the solution to a breakdown in law & order is less law & order.
9. Liberals evidently figured out this "social unrest" they were manufacturing from nothing, had an effect on the election in
their favor. They may have figured this out before they started manufacturing it. At any rate, the places run by
liberals began to make silly concessions to the protestor-terrorists, that the protestor-terrorists never even
requested. Statues, dairy company emblems, rice brands, syrup brands, etc. Evidently these apologies, changes and
removals were supposed to deter the protestor-terrorists from protesting and terrorizing. They did not.
10. Places run by liberals also had more violence, more COVID infections, more COVID casualties, more deaths and injuries from
protests, and more unemployment. These places run by liberals also had less freedom. Their lockdowns were more stringent
and the harm done to their business communities were much greater.
11. While all this was going on, our mainstream media, run by liberals, began hemorrhaging its credibility even faster than it had been
hemorrhaging it in recent years... which is really saying a lot. They began to use the phrase "mostly peaceful protests" to
excess, applying it in places where it clearly didn't apply. One anchorman even waxed lyrically about these "peaceful protests"
in front of a burning liquor store. This proves the media thinks we're all stupid. Well who can blame them.
12. Liberals don't have a clue what all this looks like to grown ups because they never have doubts about anything and can't be told anything.
Can
a Whole Country Go Mad? This is what happens when God has been evicted from a culture. It is indeed a
strange thing that is happening to western civilization. In the earlier stages of our culture, the existence of things
unseen was hardly questioned. Today, if you don't see it, it doesn't exist at all. The locus of control
has moved from a universe of the Divine to the essential singularity: One's Self. As a result of this tectonic
shift, there are things happening in our culture that are truly insane. Period. As a result of this increasing
insanity I have resigned from the National Association of Social Workers. I am taking down the shingle that used to
stand for compassion and righteousness, but now stands for nothing more than social indoctrination and lunacy, an
organization that protests against the death penalty for serial killers but rallies in favor of partial birth abortion.
The
Big Apple Is Being Destroyed, and Billy De Blasio Is More Concerned About a BLM Mural. Like the Dallas
Cowboys, you just need to give it time; they'll disappoint. [...] In politics, the same mindset can be applied to Democrats;
give it time — they'll destroy whatever they takeover. The Left took over the cities, and nothing has
changed for residents, especially black Americans. These cities are now nothing more than Democratic powerbases that
lie, cheat, and steal from residents who keep voting leftists into power. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio
is doing his part in destroying the city. [Paywall]
It's
not just police: Public servants of all stripes are now under assault. 'Is it just me, or is it getting
crazier out there?" So asks Joaquin Phoenix's Joker while meeting his social worker, motioning to Gotham outside the
window. It isn't just you or the stuff of superhero thrillers. Gotham — the real Gotham —
is in chaos, and disrespect for authority, and not just police authority, is sinking it deeper. New York is suffering a
serious slide in livability. Those who can have already fled the city, and it's a big question mark whether they are
coming back. Each day brings a new barrage of online-message-board pleas, from people wondering if they can get out.
Are
We In The First Days Of A Lawless Era? A nation founded on the rule of law appears to be yielding to the rule
of the mob. Not everyone has surrendered. The trend, though, is worrisome. Too many of our "leaders" and
institutions are failing us. In 2020, law enforcement officers in this country are being treated not just with
disrespect but in many instances are being abused verbally and physically. Rioters and looters are going unpunished,
not because they can't be identified or the cases against them are weak but because prosecutors (several of them backed by
George Soros) refuse to uphold the law and charge the offenders. Violent gangs have been allowed, almost encouraged, to
take over city streets, sidewalks, and private property; shut down the free movement of others; and topple public monuments.
Death of a Nation.
America and Britain are under attack by anarchists and thugs, while media pimps and opportunistic politicians are excusing
the mobs. Worse, the media is in cahoots with those who say that words are a form of violence that has to be
regulated. Who would have thought it would come to this? Our First Amendment, our most precious freedom of
speech, challenged by smear artists who lust for power and control. Unlike what Hollywood depicts as wartime Berlin,
Germans bitched to high heaven over the bombing and lack of food, as did Russians during Stalin's time. But just try to
not kneel nowadays and watch your career fly out the window quicker than you can say "BLM." Is this why we fought the
wars, to not to be able to say out loud what we believe? To be silenced by unelected street thugs, dandruff-covered
academics, and spittle-flecked media leftists?
Descending
into Chaos. [Scroll down] We have remarked the gradual, now accelerated encroachment of the socialist
nightmare on the American dream, the rapid breakdown of public order following the COVID pandemic so egregiously mismanaged
by our political and medical classes, the destructive riots of various groups of domestic terrorists joined by the
unproductive elements of society, and the racist hysteria leading to the eruption of social violence and hatred of
whites. We have watched good people being "cancelled" by their moral inferiors. And we have seen our political
authorities either foment the mayhem or retreat into their bunkers of silence and inactivity. These are the people
descending the chain of being into the terrain occupied by the rabble, sinking from the realm of communal order into the
realm of turbid misrule.
Why
It [is Bad] to be a Democrat in 2020. The Democratic Party is the oldest voter-based political party globally
and the longest existing one in the United States. You'd think wisdom would come with time. Instead, look at
them. All you see is negativity. [...] Democrats destroy everything they touch. Consider their
accomplishments: They banned school prayer, legalized abortion and support infanticide. They've secularized
society, replaced God with government and personal charity with social justice. They've substituted religion for
reason, blurred the lines between males and females and destroyed the nuclear family. They've lorded over the
destruction of America's youth, brainwashing kids to the point they hate America, their parents and themselves. Look at
their cities: Democrats' cities burn as the stench of human feces fills the air. During the pandemic, pot shops
thrive while businesses and churches stay closed. Lawlessness prevails as mobs mete out a perverted form of justice
where good people get punished and criminals get rewarded. Black-on-black murders rise. Babies get shot without a
whisper, while anarchists decimate whole city blocks because of the murder of one man.
Nightmare in
New York. This Nightmare in New York is brought to you courtesy of Gov. Andrew Cuomo; Mayor Bill de
Blasio; and a cast of thousands of Black Lives Matter protesters, anarchists, and street thugs. The once vibrant city
is turning into a virtual no-go zone of looted shops, shuttered store windows, and skyrocketing murder rates. The
number of shooting victims is up 51% this year so far, and that tragic trend is accelerating. In June of this year,
there were 250 shootings, as opposed to 97 in June of 2019. New York was already reeling from the highest coronavirus
death toll in the (formerly) United States, due in large part to Gov. Cuomo approving the transfer of thousands of
recovering COVID-19 patients to nursing homes at the height of the pandemic. Then the rioting began, and Mayor de
Blasio's response was to shame cops and propose cutting his city's police department budget by more than one billion
dollars.
NYPD
limits retirement applications amid 400 percent surge this week. New York's Finest are putting in for
retirement faster than the NYPD can handle — while citing a lack of respect and the loss of overtime pay, The [New
York] Post has learned. A surge of city cops filing papers during the past week more than quadrupled last year's
number — as the city grapples with a surge of shootings — and the stampede caused a bottleneck that's
forcing others to delay putting in their papers, officials and sources said. The NYPD said Wednesday that 179 cops
filed for retirement between June 29 and Monday, an astounding 411-percent increase over the 35 who filed during the same
time period in 2019.
Lawlessness,
the Murder of Our Children, and the Soul of America. BLM, Inc., Joe Biden and the DNC own the death and
destruction of this past weekend, in cities like, Atlanta, New York and Cleveland! Joe Biden and the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) have surrendered to the Radical Left (Black Lives Matter, Inc., Antifa, etc.). The Democratic
Party(DNC) has had decades to fulfill its promises to black Americans, but all it's delivered is crime-ridden cities bereft
of economic opportunity. It's time to shake things up, show the extent of DNC failure and expose BLM, Inc. for the
fraud it is. For weeks Americans have watched radical leftist anarchists and Antifa thugs engage in extreme violence
and murder that will haunt many people for the rest of their lives. Dozens of innocent civilians and police officers
have been killed, hundreds of civilians brutally beaten, and more than 700 police officers were injured nationwide.
Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed as businesses and communities in more than 42 states
were devastated by arson, looting, and mayhem that activists quickly followed with a call to defund the police.
BLM's
Violence & the Death of America's Cities. The police-hating rhetoric of the openly and proudly Marxist "Black
Lives Matter" (BLM) movement is doing exactly what it did five years ago — creating a massive increase in violent
crime and homicide throughout urban America. You may recall that back in 2015-16, BLM's anti-police protests and
riots — particularly in the aftermath of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Missouri — intimidated officers nationwide into becoming much less proactive in dealing with criminal
suspects. A Pew Research Center report titled "Behind the Badge" — which tabulated the results of a
questionnaire that was sent to thousands of officers — confirmed that 85 to 95 percent of law-enforcement officers
in large police departments became highly reluctant to engage criminals except where absolutely necessary. The
consequences of the new timidity of law-enforcement were monumental: • In 2015, America's 56 largest
cities experienced a 17% rise in homicides. • Twelve cities with large black populations saw their
murder totals spike even more dramatically — e.g., by 54% in D.C., 60% in Newark, 72% in Milwaukee, 83% in
Nashville, and 90% in Cleveland. • Robberies surged in America's 81 largest cities during the 12
months that followed the shooting of Michael Brown. • During the first quarter of 2016, homicides in
America's 63 largest cities increased by 9%, while nonfatal shootings were up 21%.
Could IT
Happen Here? [Scroll down] One reason Hitler wasn't taken seriously during the early 1930s was because
the world media presented Hitler (and Mussolini) as caricatures to be laughed at more than feared. [...] Most law-abiding
Americans shake their heads in disgust at what is happening. Some view anarchist antics as more comical than
threatening. For instance: • Weirdly designed pink [...] hats that look like props from a 1950s
sci-fi movie. • Garage door pull that had been used for months suddenly seen as a KKK noose.
• Bizarrely named autonomous zones that are declared separate countries. • Young
white girls yelling at older black cops that the black cops do not understand racism.
Six
Weeks, Six Cities, 600 Murders. The single most important issue, affecting some of the largest swaths of
populations in America, is the scandal the media ignores even as it explodes in our faces. In only six weeks, city
after city operated by entrenched Democrats have seen a massive expansion in lawlessness, violence, and murder.
Stunningly, many news outlets seem gobsmacked and mystified at how or why such an explosion of lawlessness has occurred.
[...] So why did all of these cities take such violent turns? Is it because their leadership capitulated to the anger
of the mobs as opposed to thinking clearly and strategically about an effective response? Or do these Democrat-run
towns literally operate with denial in good and evil? How else can you explain that in the city of Minneapolis (where a
nation watched in horror and subsequently responded to the murder of an innocent man) that within 30 days they would record
1,600 shots fired? But then respond by voting to dismantle its police operations all together?
The
Devil's Pitchfork: Seeking the Origin of Our Present Troubles. The progressivist campaign to destroy
America is three-pronged, the tines of the devil's pitchfork, namely: de-individuation, de-historicizing,
and what I'm tempted to call pre-eminent domain (the power of the state to take more than one's physical property).
In other words, it is a war against three intimately related phenomena: self-governing personhood, historical memory,
and the possession of property, whether intellectual or private property as understood by John Locke. Thus our ideas
are no longer our own but state-injected bromides, history has been co-opted in the service of a political fantasy, and
ownership is the prerogative of the state. It is clear that the entire sensibility of the age, and certainly of the
coming era, has changed dramatically, not only as the result of the onslaught of lethal political and cultural viruses like
democratic socialism, "social justice," postmodern relativism and radical feminism, but of the "Information Revolution" and
its carrier, the Internet, in particular the social media platforms run by a cabal of corporate oligarchs.
Saving
America From the Mob. In just six weeks, violence has increased in many cities throughout the nation.
This is the result of police officers either resigning, taking sick days, or showing less interest in challenging the
criminal element. It is an exceedingly difficult time for anyone to be a police officer today. Police recruitment
has become extremely challenging in an environment where violence toward police is increasing and police are not supported by
weak politicians following the orders from the mob. It is not only police that activists are trying to destroy.
In the past six weeks, movies have been removed, police shows have been cancelled, even cartoons have been adjusted. In
addition, countless monuments have been toppled, flags have been changed, amusement rides have been altered, product packages
are undergoing a politically correct overhaul. Other products are changing their supposedly offensive names, all to
satisfy the mob.
Covid-19,
BLM protests and a liberal mayor are turning the city into a no-go zone as murders skyrocket, shops are looted.
Two bullet-ridden bodies lay sprawled on bloodstained concrete steps. Alongside, relatives of the victims are wailing
and collapse to the ground. In another part of the city, a gang of youths use spray paint to disable security cameras
before robbing a corner store. Later, video footage captures police officers sitting helplessly in their patrol car as
a baying crowd hurls glass bottles at them. This is lawless New York — a city that was once America's
glittering crown jewel but which risks descending into mob rule. Murder figures have skyrocketed and a combination of
the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and weak political leadership is in danger of achieving what
Osama Bin Laden never could: bringing the Big Apple to its knees.
CNN:
Shootings, Murder Surge in Democrat-Controlled Cities. Shootings and murder are surging in Chicago, Los
Angeles, Milwaukee, New York City, and Philadelphia, all of which are Democrat-controlled cities. CNN reports murders
in Milwaukee are up 95 percent this year. They note murders in Philadelphia rose 24 percent as shootings rose
57 percent, and Los Angeles witnessed a 250 percent increase in murders during the first week of June alone. Shootings
have surged by 44 percent in NYC, compared to the number of shootings at this same point in time last year, and murder is up
23 percent.
Yoga
studio implodes in brutal, yet classic case of 'progressives' eating their own. Yoga is officially
canceled. Or at least it is at Kindness Yoga, a set of yoga studios in Denver that had striven so diligently to cater
to left-wing extremists but has since been eaten alive by those same zealots. Prior to its cancellation, owner Patrick
Harrington's Kindness Yoga had offered far-left zealots a utopia of so-called "progressive" ideals, according to The Colorado
Sun. "Kindness Yoga, which began in 2001 with one Cherry Creek studio called Yoga Energi, had an outward reputation of
inclusivity — with its earthy studios in Capitol Hill and Hilltop, gender-neutral bathrooms and person-of-color
yoga nights where 'white friends and allies' were asked to 'respectfully refrain from attending.' Kindness held an LGBTQ yoga
workshop just weeks before the pandemic forced the studios to close," the Sun reported Monday. [...] Yet despite all the
hoops that Harrington had jumped through to build and maintain his rep with left-wing extremists, it wasn't enough for yoga
teachers Jordan Smiley, who's reportedly indigenous and transgender, and Davidia Turner, who's black. According to
them, Harrington still wasn't doing enough to bring about so-called meaningful racial "change."
Calling
Racism a Public Health Crisis Can Kill Black People. Baltimore, Cleveland, Denver, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh
are among the cities that have officially declared that racism is a public health crisis. A number of states are also
moving in that direction. Senator Sherrod Brown intends to push a similar resolution in the Senate. The
medicalization of racism has been backed by the American Medical Association, whose heads have called on "health institutions
and physician organizations to explicitly denounce police violence" and urged "clinics, hospital and healthcare providers to
review and reconsider their policies and relationships with law enforcement". Considering the already fraught state of
emergency rooms in urban areas where the victims and perpetrators of gang violence show up every weekend, that would be
catastrophic. It would lead to fewer doctors, fewer ERs, and worse outcomes for black patients in urban areas.
Dilbert
creator Scott Adams: Republicans will be hunted if Biden is elected. Comic strip creator Scott Adams said
there's a "good chance" Republicans will be killed if former Vice President Joe Biden is elected. Adams, who created
Dilbert in 1989, sent out tweets Wednesday claiming conservatives would be targeted with violence should the presumptive
Democratic nominee win the 2020 election. "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the
year," Adams warned in a tweet. "Police will stand down. Republicans will be hunted," he added. Police will
stand down. [Tweets] After some social media users questioned his claim, Adams said he spoke with a woman who told
him she was fired from her job because her colleagues suspected she supported President Trump. "Just interviewed a woman
who was fired for suspicion of liking President Trump. Suspicion. Fired," Adams wrote.
The
Coming Collapse of the Republic. [Scroll down] As I warned in 2012, there no longer is a culture
war. "What is occurring now is a pacification effort." Its progress is why corporate America, including the
now-absorbed Chick-fil-A and NASCAR, has turned decidedly to the dark side (shifted "left"). It's why prominent people,
including Republicans such as Indiana senator Mike Braun, are bowing before terrorist group Black Lives Matter. It's
why mobs are enabled and good people hobbled for defending themselves from the mobs. It's why we're seeing a complete
cultural collapse — portending a political collapse. This is partially due to a new "woke" generation having
entered the corporate sphere and others of influence. But what did you expect? The apocryphal saying (no, it's
not Lincoln's) informs, "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the
next." Did you really think the Left could completely control academia for generations and that, somehow, it all would
"stay in college"?
Breakdown. [Scroll
down] To be sure, the first manifestation of the Black Lives Matter movement had a mouthpiece in the Oval Office,
lacking now. It doesn't matter. Presidential imprimatur or no, the reborn Black Lives Matter has gained billions
of dollars in corporate support, more billions in free round-the-clock media promotion, and a ruthless power to crush dissent
from the now-universal narrative about murderous police bigots. During the two weeks of national anarchy that followed
the death of George Floyd, cops were shot, slashed, and assaulted; their vehicles and station houses were firebombed and
destroyed. American elites stayed silent. Since then, police have continued to be shot at and attacked; the
elites remain silent. Monuments to America's greatest leaders are being defaced with impunity; anarchists took over a
significant swathe of a major American city, including a police precinct, without resistance from the authorities. And
a push to defund the police gains traction by the day.
Get Ready
to Be Canceled. If you thought you could evade the tentacles of political correctness by avoiding a campus or
classroom, steering clear of political protests, or self-censoring your Facebook posts, think again. [...] The label of
"white privilege" is currently used by leftists and progressives to discount or deny speech and data that contradict the
narrative of whatever movement they seek to justify. Recently, it has been used to dispel the criticism of the violent
looting and riots that followed peaceful protests decrying the murder of George Floyd. One Minneapolis councilwoman
used it to justify dismantling the police, even when private homes are broken into. It is now a basis for dismantling
statues and desecrating historical monuments. Whether seeking to silence whites or even hurt successful communities as
a means to balance or make reparations for perceived injustices, this social weapon is gaining strength and credibility.
Apocalyptic
science: How the West is destroying itself. The most serious threat to the West is not China or Russia
but its visceral disgust with itself. A growing proportion of people — in universities, the media, politics
and corporate structures — now reject the premises upon which their own thriving societies are built.
Critical Theory opposes everything that makes the West work. Unlike traditional academic inquiry, which seeks to
explain and understand with logic, analysis and the scientific method, these doctrines are less theories than programs.
Their purpose is to condemn cultural norms, tear down existing orders and transform society. It all starts with Marx.
Violence rises in Minneapolis, as debate over role of police
rages. Minneapolis officials have described an unprecedented burst of violence following George Floyd's
Memorial Day death, after an officer held him down with a knee to his neck, sparking worldwide fury and massive
protests. At least 113 people have been shot since May 25, eight fatally, according to Minneapolis police, with
hundreds of reports of gunfire across the city, including several shootings in broad daylight. The spike in violence
has come amid a raging debate over the role the Minneapolis Police Department should play in addressing crime in this
city. Public confidence has so deteriorated that a majority of the City Council has pledged to dismantle the
agency. Some residents have accused officers of purposefully curbing response to crime, which police deny. Others
have decided to stop using the agency's services altogether.
Nearly
300 NYPD Officers File for Retirement as Violent Crime Surges. Close to 300 New York City Police Department
(NYPD) officers have filed for retirement over the last month amid riots against the police and as violent crime keeps
surging. According to figures released to the New York Post, about 272 NYPD uniformed officers have filed for
retirement since riots over the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd began in late May. At the same time last
year, about 183 officers had filed for retirement, indicating a nearly 50 percent spike in retirements this year.
Conservatives
Are Treated like Second-Class Citizens, and That's Dangerous. What use is a federal government that refuses to
protect our basic constitutional rights? [...] Democrat mayors and governors are bankrupting American citizens by preventing
them from engaging in simple commerce, and they're getting away with it. Street mobs across America are causing
millions of dollars in property damage, destroying priceless historical monuments; killing police officers; and targeting
random, unlucky citizens based on the color of their skin, and the press cheerlead the madness and defend the murderers and
arsonists as heroes. John Kerry just the other day threatened the United States by declaring that if Democrats don't
win the election in November, they will insist on "revolution." Revolution? How else can you describe this
incendiary cocktail of mob violence and flagrant denial of conservatives' constitutional rights, aided and abetted and kept
volatile by Democrat mayors who applaud the mayhem, Democrat prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law, and Democrat-aligned
corporations who happily treat conservatives as second-class citizens?
De
Blasio's performance grows worse by the day, making NYC unlivable. The New York that survived 9/11 and bounced
back stronger than ever is now being brought to its knees. The coronavirus, the economic shutdowns and the frequent
street protests, mixed with pillaging and vandalism, are no ordinary hurdles, but they are surmountable — with
courageous leadership. Tragically, that's exactly what New York doesn't have. The crises pile up like dead
leaves, but leadership is nowhere to be found. Without it, the city is fast becoming unlivable. The slow exodus
of recent years has quickened in recent months, with natives, long-timers and recent arrivals clogging the exits.
NYPD
retirement filings surged 49 percent amid protests. The New York City Police Department has experienced a
significant surge in the number of officers looking to retire following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minnesota that
sparked national protests and calls for police reform. The NYPD told Fox News that 272 of New York's finest have filed
for retirement during the period between Floyd's death and June 23, a number that the outlet said represents a 49 percent
jump compared to the same timeframe in 2019. While retirements so far this year have been about the same —
135 in 2020 compared to 131 over the same timespan in 2019 — the department indicated to Fox that the recent
cluster of retirement filings still awaits processing.
272
uniformed NYPD cops file for retirement after George Floyd death. Cops are hanging up their handcuffs in huge
numbers. The flurry of Finest farewells began after the police-involved killing of George Floyd on May 25, with 272
uniformed cops putting in retirement papers from then through June 24, the NYPD says. That's a 49 percent spike
from the 183 officers who filed during the same period last year, according to the department. An NYPD source suggested the
recent departures could signal a coming crisis for the 36,000-member department, which also faces a $1 billion budget
reduction amid the "defund the police" furor.
Washington
Post: It doesn't matter that the most violent cities in America are run by Democrats. Usually, we elect
mayors to do the job of running things and one of the most important parts of their job is public safety. Especially in
cities with higher crime rates, crime reduction is often a major point of discussion during election season. For
instance, Memphis, Tennessee is at the top of the per capita crime list. [...] Why would the fact that the winner is almost
always going to be a Democrat not matter? Don't Democrats tend to have certain specific views about crime, policing,
mass incarceration, etc.? Don't Republicans have a reputation for being tougher on crime, more friendly to police and
prosecutors, etc.? How can this not matter?
Anarchists
and Trump's Reelection. I love my country. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for
all who choose to pursue their dreams. The BLM movement has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with empowering
blacks. Leftists are exploiting blacks as useful idiots to implement their transformation of America away from the
divinely inspired vision of our Founding Fathers. For decades, public education, Hollywood, Democrats and fake news
media have infected youths with a poisonous lie that America is a hellhole of racism and the greatest source of evil on the
planet. Our passivity allowed leftists to transform our kids into their social-justice army of anarchists.
2020
Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry. For nearly a month, the nation has been consumed by massive protests
and chronic riots, looting, and arson. The catalyst for the demonstrations — the violent and wrongful death
of African American George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police — is itself fading from connections
with the ensuing upheavals. Statues are toppled. Names are abruptly changed. Careers canceled. Police
are both reviled — and walking off the job. Retired generals are no longer seen as conservative
traditionalists but radicals themselves who dare to take on the commander-in-chief. Downtown Seattle is no longer in
the control of the city government. The internet is aflame with self-appointed sleuths. They scour hours of video
and millions of words, searching for an indiscreet past remark — as fodder to take out a political opponent, a
rival for a job, or a personal enemy.
Liberalism
is dangerous to your wallet and your health. The most recent jobs report found that nine of the 10 states with
unemployment rates above 14% are in liberal blue states. Ranked from highest to lowest, they are Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii
(22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island (16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois
(15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), and Washington state (15.1%). I call this the "blue state jobs depression." [...] It is hardly
shocking news. Liberals are anti-business, and their policies are especially hostile to small businesses.
Why
Are We Letting Democrats Steal from Us? Brainwashed, radicalized liberals have been using Trump's election as a
reason to take over our streets, college campuses, corporate America, and other traditional American institutions in ways we
could not have imagined. Putting aside the Resistance movement, which began the day Trump won, these frustrated
anarchists are now acting like rabid dogs let loose on innocent populations who wish to live and prosper in peace. They
have stolen livelihoods from the same people they purportedly care so much about. They have stolen the lives of
officers and individuals who seek only to instill law and order in the midst of chaos. They are pilfering much of what
has made America unique and special — including our glorious history and traditions. From Aunt Jemima,
Mrs. Butterworth's, Uncle Ben's, Cream of Wheat, and Eskimo Pie to Land O'Lakes, corporate logos that existed for over a
century are now gone or soon to be removed from grocery store shelves. When leftists see racism in Snap, Crackle and
Pop, where does the insanity end?
RNC
ad puts a spotlight on Dem tactics that bolster 'Marxist' attack on America. The Republican National Committee
released a new ad this Tuesday designed to highlight how "left-wing anarchists are using chaos to destroy America" as
Democrats watch sometimes with tacit approval and other times with beaming support. [...] [T]he video links the ongoing
madness being perpetrated across the country by Black Lives Matter extremists — think police cruisers being burnt,
police officers being run down, statues being toppled, etc. — with the incendiary rhetoric of Democrat political
figures ranging from Nancy Pelosi to Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
The Movement to Destroy
a Nation. Nation-wide protests weeks after George Floyd's murder turned into a movement to destroy a
nation. Parading as an attack on racial injustice, the movement has turned into an obliteration of history. This
week that devastation set its eyes on faith. Less than one week ago, protesters rekindled the call for removing
confederate statues. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in a show of solidarity with the protest mob, removed two
portraits of former House speakers who were part of the Confederacy. From there, the momentum quickly shifted to anyone
whose statue is seen as offensive, who may have held racist or politically incorrect views of another era, or who may (or may
not) have owned slaves or supported slavery at any time. Never mind that the qualifiers of what constitutes "offensive"
is blurred; the momentum of eradicating history is ruled by emotion, not reason.
2020
Election Will Be a Contest of the Angry. For nearly a month, the nation has been consumed by massive protests
and chronic riots, looting and arson. The catalyst for the demonstrations — the violent and wrongful death
of an African American man, George Floyd, while in the custody of Minneapolis police — is itself fading from
connections with the ensuing upheavals. Statues are toppled. Names are abruptly changed. Careers are
canceled. Police are both reviled — and walking off the job. Retired generals are no longer seen as
conservative traditionalists but radicals themselves who dare to take on the commander-in-chief. Downtown Seattle is no
longer in the control of the city government. The internet is aflame with self-appointed sleuths. They scour
hours of video and millions of words, searching for an indiscreet past remark — as fodder to take out a political
opponent, a rival for a job or a personal enemy. The people's energy, tranquilized by a two-month national quarantine
and the terror of the coronavirus, has suddenly exploded in both massive protests and silent seething at the
lawlessness. The result is that for good or evil, the 2020 election is no longer really about Biden and Trump,
Democratic or Republican policies, or progressive and conservative agendas.
Minneapolis
Police Department Reports Increased Hostility Toward Officers. The Minneapolis Police Department says officers
are routinely walking into hostile situations and crime scenes where they are not welcome. It happened at least twice
last night [6/21/2020] alone. Now, police officers are pleading for cooperation, as others double down asking for
systematic change. When Minneapolis police were called to a shooting near the George Floyd memorial Friday night,
officers were met with resistance, and had trouble getting to the man who needed help. And police say this is not an
isolated incident.
America's
Jews and Christians Are Failing the Test of Their Lives. America is being taken over by violent mobs; a vast
amount of destruction and stealing has taken place (with little police intervention and the apathy of our political leaders).
Why aren't all clergy delivering thundering sermons about the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal"? Does it now come
with an asterisk? A central part of a major American city has been seized and occupied by people who hate America and
its values, including its Judeo-Christian values. Heard any clergy (aside from some evangelical Christians) speaking
out against it? And most ominous by far, for the first time in American history, free speech — the mother of
all freedoms — is being widely suppressed, not by the government but by the press, the universities, the high
schools, the elementary schools, all the giant internet media, Hollywood and virtually every major business in America.
Christians and Jews place repentance at the center of their theologies, yet there is no place for repentance if you did or
said one insensitive thing — real or alleged — even if it was 20 or more years ago. Yet all we
get from American religious leaders on this matter is ... silence.
Obeying
The Law Is For Suckers. If you watch the news, national or local, there is a disturbing percentage of our
fellow Americans doing whatever [...] they want to do with little or no concern for the law. And the law has little
or no concern for itself, at least when it comes to those charged with enforcing it. Across the country, charges are
being dropped against rioters and looters. Why? Many of those people in position to prosecute the guilty have no
interest in doing so. [Indeed], many of them ran on the idea of not prosecuting people. What kind of idiot would vote
for a district attorney who promised to let people get away with more? Well, from San Francisco to St. Louis,
they did just that.
NYC sees staggering shooting
numbers; top cops warn of 'storm on the horizon'. The New York Police Department has reported a staggering
increase in shooting numbers, and injuries, as officials warn there's "a storm on the horizon" — and say changes
must be made. An estimated 72 people were wounded in 53 shootings citywide from June 15 through Sunday night, an NYPD
spokesperson said Monday morning. The department saw 14 shooting victims in 12 shootings for the same time period last
year, data shows.
What Happens
When the Madness Ends? At some point, tonight's hero on YouTube torching Wendy's or kicking a downed policeman
on CNN, becomes tomorrow's commonplace, unnoticed felon — with a new warrant issued out on his head, and about
whose fate and lengthy CV no one other than his parents much cares. Governors and mayors can demand masks and all sorts
of social distancing measures. But once they declared that only those not demonstrating — the non-looting
and nonviolent — were subject to their rules, while millions both peacefully protesting and violently looting were
exempt, then their words meant nothing. It will be impossible for them ever to be seen as credible again. Virus or no
virus, crowded freeways, and busy malls will soon be referenda on the bond of governors like Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer.
Thoughtcrimes
Now Prosecuted in the Land of the Free. [Scroll down] Practically anything, any piece of fact,
statistics, sentiments like "all lives matter," any picture, any opinion expressed as civilly as possible, may cost you your
job, reputation, and even life. "Social justice warriors" are torching traditional liberal beliefs about free speech
and tolerance with ideas so toxic and destructive that they shut the debate down, moving straight to shaming, threats, and
intimidation — all while calling for a "discussion" about race. Evidently, only unarguable support is
allowed. [...] We're witnessing organization after organization being bullied into searching out thoughtcrime. We're
talking about not some KKK proclamations, but cases where people were punished for common sense that was found
offensive. Even a UCLA professor may be placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King's "Letter from a
Birmingham Jail" to his students, or his colleague could be suspended from his job after refusing a student's request to
effectively cancel final exams for black students amid protests over the death of George Floyd. There's a data
scientist who once worked for President Obama's re-election campaign who was fired from a research firm for retweeting an
academic study suggesting that nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones. We're seeing
conservative media — Zero Hedge and the Federalist — being pressed by Google to censor their content by
barring them from Google's ad platform. We're seeing corporations changing logos of their products dubbed racist on Twitter.
The City They
Voted For. Thousands of kids awaken in Crown Heights terrified & traumatized from 2 weeks of nonstop fireworks
at night. Seniors haven't slept in weeks. Residents don't walk Eastern Parkway past 10pm to avoid being hit by
fireworks. [Video clip]
The 'cancel'
crew will come for you someday soon. A moral panic is sweeping the nation. How we react to the pitchfork
hordes will determine the fate of our country for a generation or longer. We call what the hordes do to our fellow
citizens "cancel culture," but the term is far too cute to capture the cruel, mindless and life-destroying process taking
place all around us in the name of "fighting racism." The tendency has been with us for some time, but the current,
extra-crazed moment has accelerated its malignant energies: Locked in for months due to COVID-19, we re-emerged into a
society more enraged and at war with itself than ever before. Then the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis took the
ideological madness to the next level. The great majority of Americans agreed that Floyd's death was horrific and that
the police officers responsible for it must be held to account. But that sane consensus wasn't enough, as far as the
cancel left was concerned: Enemies had to be found and eradicated. And if there weren't enough racist enemies,
then more of them had to be invented.
Flyers
call for NYPD strike on July 4 so cops can show city what 'independence' from police looks like. The chasm
between the NYPD and a mayor and city who have sided with Black Lives Matter and other Left-wing groups seeking to "defund"
or "disband" them has grown wider since the death of George Floyd, as police officers around the country suddenly feel under
siege like never before. Cops in New York may be planning a department-wide strike on July 4 to give the city and its
pandering Democratic leaders a look at what it's like to have their 'independence' from police, as many have said they want,
according to the New York Post. The news outlet reports that cops have said flyers that are being circulated among NYPD
rank-and-file officers are urging them to call in sick en masse on Independence Day as pushback against Mayor Bill de Blasio's
pledge to scale back police funding amid a growing anti-law enforcement environment both in the city and around the country.
The Silent
Majority can be silent no more. This year has been one body blow after another to the nation we love.
First, there was the coronavirus, and we thought, "How can this get any worse?" Then came the economic shutdown and the
incalculable pain and suffering it brought. Next were the riots, the radicals' unopposed seizure of a section of
Seattle and the maniacal efforts throughout the country to defund the police. Now a series of rulings from the
"conservative" Supreme Court are wreaking untold havoc on the Constitution and the rule of law. It wouldn't take a
Christian fanatic or an excitable conspiracist to conclude that America is now the target of an intense spiritual
onslaught — brought on by its own rampant descent into decadence. The left has been at war with America as
founded for decades, and it has made great progress in transforming our culture and institutions.
Democrats
Have Failed the Black Community for Too Long. In recent weeks, Americans have watched radical leftist
anarchists and Antifa thugs engage in extreme violence and murder that will haunt many people for the rest of their
lives. Fifteen innocent civilians and two police officers were shot and killed, hundreds of civilians were savagely and
brutally beaten, and more than 700 police officers were injured nationwide. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of
property was destroyed as businesses and communities in more than 42 states were devastated by arson, looting, and mayhem
that activists quickly followed with a call to defund the police. With each passing day, both of us asked ourselves the
same question: where are the governors and mayors of these cities who took an oath of office to uphold the Constitution of
the United States and keep residents safe from harm? Instead of upholding law and order — also known as
doing their jobs — they turned a blind eye to the violence while praising the demonstrations that the radicals
were using as cover.
Free
Speech is Under Full Assault. Increasingly, we see people holding unpopular views being attacked and refused a
forum in which to speak. Through the threat of force and censorship to control people's speech, free speech is under
full assault. History is replete with others using similar tactics. As in the times before the Nazi rise to
power, the Soviet gulag era, and Mao's revolution, similar trends are prevalent today. Freedom of speech is engaging in
unrestricted speaking of one's mind without fear of retaliation or censorship. It is the freedom to use one's natural
rights to engage in complex thought and speech. This is not a new concept. Freedom of speech has a history
centuries old, long predating the founding of this country. Some want to control these natural abilities. This is
where the dispute lies. One does not have to look far to find multiple examples of the threat of violence and
censorship. This ranges from online mobs to technology company and media censorship and peer attacks. Those with
differing opinions are blackballed, blacklisted, attacked, and censored out of existence.
What Type
of Fool Shoots a Cop With a Taser or Wrestles Him for His Gun? [Scroll down] Something is very wrong and
broken in America. It is not "systemic racism" because the System is not racist. But it is Systemic Left
Propaganda. That systemic plague endangers our culture, our values, and our civilization — and it endangers
Black lives, too. Any leftist narrative that makes heroes and icons of people who break loose from peacefully arresting
cops and then shoot tasers at them, or that idolizes thugs who wrestle police officers for their guns, endangers
impressionable people who believe the lies and falsehoods so propagated. Forty-two years ago The Deerhunter, a
movie set in the era of the Vietnam War, contributed to scores of accidental suicides caused by idiots playing Russian
roulette after watching the film. Today the Left media advances a new insanity, inspiring fools and idiots to shoot at
cops and wrestle them for their guns, offering instant fame and martyrdom.
We Must Stop the Great Unraveling. Across the
United States, a great unraveling is in progress. A rolling crime wave, under the guise of social activism, has left
city after American city shattered and smoldering. [...] Social-justice mobs have taken aim at freedom of expression,
inventing new heresies daily and ruining the lives of those who unwittingly give voice to them. Forced confessions and
language proscriptions are the order of the day. Poetry, fiction, movies, and television shows — including
children's cartoons — are canceled and excised from history. Indeed, all art and opinion are now subject to
the chopping block lest they prove insufficiently propagandistic. To rewrite the present, the mob has rewritten the
past. They have forced upon us a distorted and grotesque version of American history. With the support of
corporations and education boards, school textbooks and curricula tell of an unredeemable America founded not on the promise
of human liberty but human bondage. What's more, this history discounts the transformative progress on racial equality
for which Americans — black and white — have given their lives.
The
Democrats' Corruption of America's Inner Cities. What are the real problems in America's inner cities? Is
it all about racism, or could it be a combination of several factors? According to a survey of Chicago parents by the
Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, poverty, violence, and crime are also some of the biggest concerns in
their neighborhoods. Good jobs and capitalism could solve the poverty part of the problem, but if cities make it hard
for businesses to come into town or for a local person to start a small business, citizens with little mobility stay
poor. Why wouldn't these cities want the freest, most business-friendly laws and policies imaginable for their
citizens? The answer is often that politicians care very little about their constituents but care deeply about their
own power and money. High taxes, crony capitalism (meaning favors for politicians and others who have the power to give
the "right" companies the contracts), excessive regulations, and a culture of "it's who you know" combine to crush
entrepreneurs and small business owners who are not among those favored by the powers that be.
At
Least 7 Minneapolis Police Officers Resign — 7 More in Process of Resigning. Leftists rioted and
looted over 270 businesses in Minneapolis in the last three weeks following the death of George Floyd during an arrest in the
city last month. The Minneapolis City Council voted to replace the police department last week with a "community-led
public safety system." The Minneapolis police have been abused by city officials and violent protesters. So it
should come as no surprise that seven police officers have resigned and several more are in the process of leaving.
Detroit's recent move
to defund police had serious consequences, reporter finds: 'Children are dying'. Over the last week, following
the May 25 police custody killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, communities nationwide have faced calls from critics to
disband police agencies or redirect funding from law enforcement operations to community development programs. Detroit,
according to a report, has seen this decade an uptick in crime because of defunding the city's police department. The
city cut back its police force and funding during a historic bankruptcy in 2014. Funding for the police department has fallen
20 percent in the last six years. Starting salary is $40,000 a year. Wages for cops were cut 10 percent and have
never recovered, accounting for inflation. Health benefits for retired cops were stopped and pension payments postponed.
The
Summer of our Discontent. We are entering the summer of our discontent. The season promises to be a long,
hot struggle to maintain the integrity of our founding principles that are increasingly compromised with the best and worst
of intentions. The worst intentions are those of the rabble whose objectives we shouldn't underestimate. They
will instigate and inflame chaos and anarchy to achieve what a former president promised: "to fundamentally transform
America." They will opportunistically take advantage of the nation's weakened status from overreaction by government to
COVID-19, compounded by the well-intentioned but ultimately destructive flood of trillions of dollars in "temporary" cash
benefits. The street scenes of Minneapolis and Seattle promise to play out across the country all summer, leading to
November's election.
Baltimore
Residents Blame Record-High Murder Rate On Lower Police Presence. For the third year in a row, Baltimore, Md.,
has had more than 300 murders, reaching a new record of murders per number of residents in 2017. Some residents
attribute the high murder rate to relaxed police patrols in the city following high-profile cases of police brutality.
Officers have backed off in neighborhoods, like the one where Freddie Gray was arrested. The Rev. Kinji Scott, a
pastor in Baltimore who's held positions in local city government, says the opposite needs to happen. "We wanted the
police there," Scott says.
Atlanta
riot shows the left's downhill in slide in racializing police incidents. As tragic as officer-involved
shootings of anyone is, not all of them are worth burning down a Wendy's for. For radical activists and their enablers,
this act is getting old fast. [...] [I]n contrast to the George Floyd case, where the victim died pleading to breathe on
video with a bad cop's knee on his neck for 8 minutes, we now have someone who was driving while intoxicated (hello, MADD),
sleeping on the grounds of a fast food joint, grabbing an officer's taser while under arrest, and using the taser against
police. And Wendy's is the bad guy? Police are the bad guys? This looks like the sort of nonsense that goes
on at every fast food joint in inner cities every week. Transients and drug users are often found at these
establishments because of the low-cost food and availability of public restrooms. Just read the Yelp! reviews of any
inner-city McDonald's or In-N-Out burger, there will always be mentions of homeless as part of the user experience.
Anarchy, Seattle, and All That
CHAZ. Three cities, all supremely liberal, represent an American descent into anarchy against which no one is
standing. After New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he wanted to slash the police budget, the New York City Council is
going about cutting $1 billion from that budget, about 16%. That will inevitably cause a reduction of police presence around
the city and, with equal inevitability, result in an increase in crime. President Trump has said that if Washington
Gov. Jay Inslee and Mayor Durkan didn't restore order in Seattle, he would. But he has done precisely
nothing. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25, the city council plans to disband
its police force entirely. On Friday, the city council voted to replace the police with a "community-led public safety
system." What [...] is a "community-led public safety system"? And then there's Seattle.
The
Protests May Have Started Out Legitimate, but They've Been Hijacked. This mayhem has thus far taken the lives
of at least 11 people, many of whom are black Americans. Hundreds of others have been injured in the chaos, with police
officers getting shot and protesters struck with rubber bullets. As the carnage, looting, arson, and assaults have been
allowed to continue in Democrat-controlled states and municipalities, it has become undeniably evident that the wrongful
death of George Floyd has morphed into anarchism. As lives, businesses, and personal property have been driven asunder,
the criminal perpetrators are buoyed by pusillanimous Democrat politicians too timid to take back their own streets.
Whether it be Crown Heights, August 1991; Rodney King, May 1992; Ferguson Missouri, August 2014; Baltimore, April 2015; or
one of many others, the script has remained the same. In concordance with fawning state and local officials, a
legitimate protest is hijacked by a throng of anarchists.
Where
Black Lives Don't Matter. Milwaukee and every other big blue city in America have been marked by a decades-long
murder merry-go-round that has nothing to do with the police. The overwhelming majority of the murdered —
and the murderers — in America's cities are young black men who were cheated out of a decent education by the
inexcusably substandard Democrat-run public schools they had no choice but to attend. Because many were functionally
illiterate and afflicted with arrested psychological development, they lacked the skills to hold down even the most basic
entry-level job. So what did these frustrated and angry young men do? Most turned to a life of drugs and crime,
with many ending up dead or in prison before reaching their 20th birthdays. For generations on end, black-on-black
homicides in Democrat-run cities have been an ongoing calamity for the black community. On May 31, Chicago experienced
a record 18 homicides in a single day. Year to date, the city has chalked up 264 murders, with young black men a solid
majority of the victims, which raises the question: are those black lives any less important than George Floyd's, any less
deserving of our outrage? Chicago is the poster child for urban carnage, but every big blue city in America has
overseen a breeding ground for black-on-black havoc, and they've done it for the last half-century.
The
True Plight of Black Americans. While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder,
the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called "systemic racism."
Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities. Some of the most dangerous big cities
are: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and
Philadelphia. The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal
Democrats. Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven't elected a
Republican mayor for more than a half-century. On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they
dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools. [...] The bottom line is that today's
black Americans have significant political power at all levels of government. Yet, what has that meant for a large
segment of the black population? Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their
large, and growing, school budgets. Consider Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore's 39 high schools,
not a single student scored proficient on the state's math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient
in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state's English test. [...] It's the same story of academic disaster
in other cities run by Democrats.
Communism
Is Reborn with a New Name in America. Do some people really think that the impeachment, the corona-gulag, and
the pogroms all occurred in America one after another in a completely random pattern of events? Why did pre-planned and
synchronized riots and looting suddenly arise? Because the adventure with the coronavirus hysteria failed. Why
did the coronavirus hysteria suddenly lead to a corona-gulag being created? Because the impeachment failed. Why
did impeachment suddenly arise? Because "Russiagate" (or, rather, Obamagate) failed. Why did "Russiagate"
arise? Because leftism was defeated in the 2016 elections.
Obama to the Rescue.
For three years, Resistance Media and a set of political operatives who tag-team with their allies inside the federal
bureaucracy have laid siege to the American public through their proxy war against the president they hate — and
the country elected. What the resistance yearned for was the kind of imagery that galvanizes resistance movements from
Latin America to the Middle East: a spectacular act of martyrdom that would crown their campaign of new age political
warfare, which began with the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which was followed by a fraudulent impeachment process staged by
the same political operatives, CIA officers, and media personalities who pushed "collusion" into the public sphere, to the
three-month-long coronavirus lockdowns that were portrayed as matters of life and death only to be magically lifted to combat
racism, after leaving nearly 20 million Americans jobless. The successive failures of the campaign to destroy
Donald Trump and undo the 2016 election have only made the American left angrier and more willing to take desperate measures[.]
Why You
No Longer Recognize Your Country. Mass looting throughout the nation. Police precincts burned to the
ground. Murdered cops. An historic church in Lafayette Park set on fire. Video after horrifying video of
innocent Americans being beaten senseless by gangs of thugs, as one political party demands: "DEFUND THE POLICE!"
Everyone is saying it: I no longer recognize my country. You don't recognize your country because it's
not the same country. What you're seeing is the third-world hellhole the left has been quietly assembling for us since 1970.
Minnesota, the crucible of the riots, has gone from having 2.6% foreign-born in 1990 to nearly 10% foreign-born today — and
that's not including their children or illegals. Instead of liberal but non-rioting Scandinavians and Germans, the new immigrants
are overwhelmingly African, Asian and Hispanic. In fact, Minnesota now has a much larger proportion of Asian and African
immigrants than the nation as a whole. Although the state has always leaned Democratic, thanks to its German and Scandinavian
immigrants (Ben Franklin was right about them), the Norsemen elected Walter Mondale. Recent immigrants elected Rep. Ilhan
Omar. Hey, Republicans! Tell me again that immigration is just a "single issue."
Democrat
Cities: Fourth-World Scourges. When the terrorists become bored and cease terrorizing, when the flames
are extinguished, when those who died in the riots are buried and cremated, when the shards of glass from storefronts are
disposed of, and when livelihoods are permanently lost, Democrats will still run the vast majority of the deadliest and most
dangerous cities in the U.S. Death and destruction always follow Democrat policies and culture. Stagnant local
economies. Unsafe streets for children. Gun crime. Failing schools. Breathtaking corruption.
Problems with the police. Property crime. Poverty. Poor public health. Single- or no-parent
homes. All are found in abundance in Democrat-run cities, and found overwhelmingly in majority-black neighborhoods.
So who are the true "racists"? By every objective measure and metric, Democrat-run cities are the unequivocal worst
places in America to live.
Shaun
King: Democrats Run The Cities With [the] Worst Police Brutality. As debates about police brutality and
systemic racism rock the country in the wake of George Floyd's horrific death at the hands of a police officer in
Minneapolis, Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King let himself utter an uncomfortable truth that other activists have been
ignoring: Democrats control all the major cities where black people are experiencing the most police brutality and
systemic racism. In a tweet on Friday [6/5/2020], the activist scolded those who tell black Americans to affect change
through voting, asserting that such blind thinking may not exactly be the panacea people are talking about.
What
Do They Really Want? [Scroll down] The New York Times reports that Minneapolis, like all the other places
on fire, is one of the most liberal cities in the nation. Surpassing even Seattle, Minneapolis has black people on the
City Council. Two of these black council members are transgender. None of them is a Republican. Juneteenth
gets a yearly parade, and the police chief, until this week, was a black man. They're so devoted to fighting racism
that you can't zone for single-family housing anymore — ostensibly to make the housing cheaper for blacks and to
keep richer whites from having better neighborhoods to move to. This means that Minneapolis and all the other left-wing
cities on fire already do everything they can to police the police — and if they go any farther, they'll have to
get rid of them altogether.
Democrats Want to
Abolish the Police and Confiscate Our Guns. [T]o those of you who think this idea of abolishing the police and the Second Amendment is
insane and can therefore never happen, you need to remove your head from the sand. Here are some more facts:
• We went from zero to gay marriage in less than ten years.
• We went from zero to drag queen story hour in about ten seconds.
• The left is blacklisting us for referring to biological men as "he."
• The corporate media are now describing the burning and looting of cities as "political speech."
• This same media are describing peaceful protests by Tea Partiers and those ravaged by anti-science lockdowns as "dangerous" and "violent."
• Lego is blacklisting its own toys.
• The NFL just committed suicide.
• Drew Brees is now on his third 1984-ish public confession, a full-blown grovel tour, for the sin of expressing respect for the American flag.
• Legions of white people are kneeling to ask forgiveness for something they had no part of.
• Healthcare "experts" are telling us the coronavirus is lethal if you want to go to work, school, or your grandmother's funeral, but not so lethal if you are out en masse to support "approved" causes.
The Democrat Party has been completely radicalized, emboldened, and is currently eating itself alive in the kind of cultish moral panic we have not seen since McCarthyism or the McMartin preschool scandal.
Minneapolis
Mayor Asks Trump For Aid After Riots Cause At Least $55 million In Damage. The Minneapolis mayor is asking for
federal help cleaning up and rebuilding his city after rioters caused at least $55 million worth of damage through looting,
burning, and defacing public and private property. That cost estimate is likely to increase in the coming days as
government officials continue to tally the damage done in the wake of George Floyd's death, Mayor Jacob Frey said according
to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the state's congressional delegation are also pushing
the Trump administration and Congress for funding.
The Editor says...
If the mayor had done everything in his power to quench the riots and incarcerate the perpetrators, he might have a case.
Instead, he is asking the federal government to clean up his mess. Let the city of Minneapolis rot!
Minneapolis
Mayor Now Asking Trump for Relief Money After He Let His City Burn. You've gotta admire the brazenness someone
has to operate with to not protect their own city from riots, trash the President in the process, and then go running to the
federal government for money. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who bears a striking resemblance to Canada's Justin
Trudeau, has managed it though. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the damages are already at $55 million and
climbing. [...] Yeah, that's not what FEMA is for, as evidenced by the fact that Maryland was denied such assistance by the
Obama administration in 2015 after the Baltimore riots. These politicians sat idly by and let their cities be
destroyed. They need to be the ones to pay for it. These people had ample opporutnity, including usage of the
National Guard, to stop the rioting, burning of buildings, and looting. They instead chose to appease the mob for
purely political reasons. That's on them.
Liberal
Mayors, Racial Politics, and Fake News. There are three things you need to know about the unrest associated
with the killing of George Floyd. First, almost all major cities these days are governed by Democrats, usually liberal
Democrats. Second, black Americans have suffered because of the public policies these cities have adopted. Third,
the reason why city governments adopt policies harmful to black families is not because they are racists; it's because they
are liberal. In city after city, all too often black families are forced to send their children to the worst schools;
they are forced to live in the worst housing; they receive the worst city services (including policing); and they are subject
to the worst environmental harms. The politicians who run these cities are Democrats. Many of them are black
themselves. Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, is an example.
During
This Spate of Racial Outrage, Here Are Some Deeply Uncomfortable Facts for the Press, the Activists, and Even Ben &
Jerry's. [Scroll down] This is the language we normally see attached to the messaging of "Systemic
racism". The problem, however, is one of location. While it sounds great to attribute Floyd's death to the racism
built into the culture, what few are willing to do is analyze that culture. So why don't we look into the system where
this crime took place? To start, you have as the city Mayor, Jacob Frey, an avowed leftist who follows a string of
Democratic liberal leaders. The last time a Republican was elected to run the city was 1957. The police chief of
Minneapolis is Medaria Arradondo, a black police official. The federal representative for the city, in Washington, is
the famed female POC Ilhan Omar, and the top cop for the state is another POC and former head of the DNC, Attorney General
Keith Ellison. Are these the leaders perpetuating the culture of white supremacy? Just to add to the list, you
have Minnesota headed by Democrat Tim Walz, the state is served by two Democrat senators, including Amy Klobuchar who spent
years as an acting state attorney in a few offices, and even the sister city of Saint Paul has as its Mayor, Melvin Carter,
another POC leader. These would be the people operating the "racist and prejudicial system and culture".
Bill
De Blasio Is A Cowardly Tyrant Fueling New York's Demise. The grave injustice inflicted upon one person is now
being compounded into a grave injustice for millions of New Yorkers. It took decades to bring New York City back from
the brink — facing crime, squalor, and bankruptcy — to the peace and prosperity that has marked it
since Mayor Rudy Giuliani's tenure. Today, Mayor Bill de Blasio seems intent on sending the city back to the bad old
days, threatening to undo decades of progress while operating under the banner of "progressivism." The twin crises of
the Chinese coronavirus and the present rioting and looting have created the perfect storm for the city's demise.
Riots,
Brought To You By District Attorneys Who Won't Prosecute. adicalized district attorneys in cities across
America are putting violent rioters and looters back on the streets, and letting other hardened criminals walk. More
than anyone, one man is responsible for this outrage: Billionaire socialist George Soros. St. Louis is a
case in point. There, prosecutor Kim Gardner let 36 people arrested for looting and rioting go scot-free, according to
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Gardner's office used the pathetic excuse that it needed "essential evidence" from
the police, implying it had none. One wonders how people caught in flagrante delicto could simply be
released. The answer is, Gardner is a far-left acolyte of Soros, having been the recipient during her 2016 election of
no fewer than three separate donations from a Soros-backed political-action committee.
The
Bloodletting and Wilding Is Part of An Agenda To Tear Down The Country. I haven't had much time to reflect on
the looting and riots that swept mostly (but not exclusively) large Democrat cities. It was a wilding on a scale we've
never seen. It was a bloodletting and release of criminal fury. We should be clear what is happening. It is
not protest over the death of George Floyd. That is the spark, but not the fire. This has been a long time
coming. At least a generation, maybe two. The left methodically has taken control of key institutions to
implement an anti-American, anti-Capitalist agenda. You send your kids to public schools and college, where they are
taught from their earliest years that America and capitalism are the sources of evil in the world, that we are a systemically
racist society that consumes 'black and brown bodies,' while socialist and communist systems are more equal and fair.
It's all a lie, but it's a lie told by the teachers, professors, and administrators with power. The real racists are
the people who obsess about race, and who judge people based on the color of their skin. When your kids emerge from the
social justice warfare meat grinder, you don't recognize them anymore.
NYC
Arsonists to Be Instantly Freed from Jail Thanks to 'Bail Reform' Law. Arsonists who set fires in New York
City, New York, during multiple nights of riots will be instantly freed from jail if ever arrested thanks to Gov. Andrew
Cuomo's (D-NY) bail reform law. For many nights now, arsonists have set ablaze New York City Police Department (NYPD)
vehicles, city dumpsters, and rubble on the streets of New York City. Those arrested for arson, if arrests are made,
will spend less than 24 hours in jail.
Nearly
All Rioters Freed from Jail in D.C., Most Avoid Felony Riot Charges. Nearly all rioters have been freed from
jail in Washington, D.C. and most have had felony riot charges dropped against them, and now they are only facing burglary,
destruction of property, and curfew violation charges. Arrest records obtained by WUSA 9 reveal that hundreds of
rioters have been arrested over the last week in riots and looting sprees across the nation's capital.
Riots,
looting and America burning — the end of the progressive dream. There is a big debate about
designating Antifa a terrorist group and what if any steps the federal government can take to stop the rioting. But we
all know who the real culprits are for turning America's streets into a war zone: progressives and liberals. They
have filled the mind of America's youth with ideological nitroglycerine that is now exploding in our streets, while also
setting the conditions that make it almost impossible to stop it. The terrible events that have unfolded in the wake of
the death of George Floyd represent the systematic failure of five decades of progressivism and liberalism. The end of
the progressive dream has now brought us all to the brink in three ways. [...]
How to destroy civilization. The violence that is
exploding across the country now has almost nothing to doing with the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by Derek Chauvin,
a white policeman. That was merely the catalyst for a process that has deep roots in American culture. The moral
is: ideas matter. For decades now, our colleges and universities (and increasingly our grades schools) have been
preaching a gospel of cultural self-hatred. America, according to this gospel, is evil. The country is
inextricably racist and beholden to an irredeemably exploitative economic system. The latest retelling of this creation
myth is the Pulitzer-Prize-winning '1619 Project' whose fundamental message is that America was started as a 'slavocracy.'
According to this malignant fantasy, the Revolutionary War was fought primarily 'to protect the institution of slavery.'
At last count, elements of this disgusting bit of historical revisionism were being adopted in the curricula of some 4,000
school districts.
Democrats'
Chickens Come Home to Roost. Conservatives have been warning about the dangers of Antifa and other left-wing
groups for years. No one in the Democrat media listened. More than that, they cheered them on; defended
them. Why not? After all, they were chanting the right things and targeting the right people, from the left's
perspective. No progressive group would condemn them: Black Lives Matter didn't, the Women's March didn't, CNN
didn't. They were helpful in beefing up numbers and energy at protests and marches Democrats deemed helpful. What
did it matter if they threw a few rocks or Molotov cocktails? They were throwing them at police, a group those silent
partner groups had declared the enemy[.]
How
do we explain the many thousands of Americans who believe they are entitled to steal? Night after night, we
have watched thieving thugs break windows of small and large businesses, charge into them, and run out with as much
merchandise as they can carry. They stuff their booty into large SUVs, many of which have the license plates
removed. They are wearing masks so [they] do not fear facial recognition software. These riots seem to prove
that, despite our protestations to the contrary, we do live in something of a third-world nation. When that many people
in as many cities that are under siege right now feel no allegiance to the law, to their families, to their neighbors, to
civil society, we are indeed a nation in need of a reboot. Fifty-plus years of the left's smearing of American values,
their opposition to the nuclear family, the promotion of the idea that out-of-wedlock births are just another lifestyle
choice have, as we see now, made for a population sullied by the acceptance of abject criminality. That is what we are
all seeing on our TV screens. This is not about race; it is all about respect or the lack of it and values.
What's
Trump Got To Do With The George Floyd Riots? Almost everything connected George Floyd's tragic death and the
subsequent riots involve Democratic leaders. So naturally, President Donald Trump is taking the blame. Start at
the beginning. George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, a liberal city (the New York Times calls it "one of
America's most liberal cities") in a liberal state (that hasn't voted for a Republican for president since 1972). In
2017, Larry Jacobs, a professor at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs, observed that "In
Minneapolis, we have one of the most liberal activist agendas in the U.S. They are seeking to accomplish at the
municipal level what isn't being done at the federal level." Even that wasn't liberal enough for city dwellers, who
booted out a liberal mayor in November 2017 for an even more leftist mayor, Jacob Frey. He ran promising more
affordable housing and, if you can believe it, improved police-community relations.
Who
is recruiting, moving and paying the professional anarcho-rioters? [Scroll down] Is it really the
citizens of Minneapolis who have set the city on fire, burning down small businesses as well as the police precinct building,
libraries, etc.? Who are those masked men in black with secret-service quality ear-pieces, military grade gas masks and
backpacks full of Molotov cocktails? They are very likely professional rioters, recruited, transported and paid by the
likes of some George Soros front group or other anonymous Cloward-Piven devotees who share Soros' hatred of America and want
to see this nation bought to its knees. [...] These are not protests. What we are seeing is mass thievery under color
of protest. Chances are if the looters in Los Angeles were asked "who was George Floyd," they would not have a clue nor
would they care. Democrat-run cities have long valued "social justice" (different standards for different groups) and
identity politics over lawfulness and basic values. This is what you get when deviancy has been defined down so
egregiously that we have citizens behaving like animals.
This
is a Result of Democrat Governance. The outrage we are seeing manifested over the past few days, is focused on
the wrong target(s). We are getting wall to wall coverage of the aftermath of the in-custody death of George Floyd.
Riots in major cities, property damage and even a few deaths are just part of that aftermath. Innocent people are being
harmed, while at the same time, some are attempting to affix cause and blame for Mr. Floyd's death on the wrong
parties. As usual, using admittedly disturbing video, there are some who in a rush to judgement and to take advantage
of this terrible tragedy for their own political ends, cannot seem to wait for the facts to come out. Instead, they
instigate violence and property damage and actually harm the very folks they purport to care about. Also as usual, the
more time that passes, the more information comes out that increases our knowledge and subsequently alters our perception of
exactly what happened. Two critical pieces of such information have just come to light.
Big
City Schools: Where America's Most Vulnerable Kids Languish. In 2010-2011, public schools in the nation's
capital spent $29,345 per pupil — nearly $600,000 per each classroom of 20 students — yet the
District's 8th graders finished dead last in a nationwide proficiency test in math and reading. According to a 2015
report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 96 percent of 8th graders in Detroit's public schools tested not
proficient in math, and 93 percent tested not proficient in reading. According to a 2017 investigation by Project
Baltimore, 13 of the city's 39 public high schools had zero students who tested proficient in math. Zero! Of the
3,841 students in the remaining 26 high schools, only 14 tested at or above proficiency in math, less than one-third of one
percent. For a half-century running, Democrat-run urban schools have robbed minority children of a realistic chance for
a decent education.
California's Budget
Bust-Up. Every state and municipal budget in America will take a big hit because of the coronavirus lockdowns,
but no public purse is in as much trouble as California's. Its Department of Finance recently estimated that the Golden
State could face a $54 billion shortfall in the fiscal year beginning July 1, which surely must be the largest deficit any
state has ever accumulated, surpassing the $40 billion hole that nearly swallowed Sacramento in 2008. Still, though Governor
Gavin Newsome said last weekend that the staggering deficit was "a direct result of Covid-19," that's clearly not true.
Critics have long warned that the state's tax base is volatile, being increasingly reliant on wealthy residents and
vulnerable to sharp contraction in the next recession. Combine that with California's spending spree —
including expenditures to fix problems that the state's own bad policies have worsened — and the swing from
prosperity to penury isn't hard to understand.
Nurses
give inside look at 'nightmare' NYC-run adult-care center. Out-of-state nurses brought to Manhattan to fight
the coronavirus say they found hellish conditions at the city-run adult-care center on Roosevelt Island — from
patients with horrific bed sores to feces-smeared walls. "It was just heartbreaking," said one of the RNs, a mom of
four from Wisconsin who spent about 17 days at the Coler Rehabilitation and Nursing Care Center. "Patients were in
deplorable conditions — very, very dirty, bed sores, terrible odors," the FEMA-contracted nurse, 38, told The
[New York] Post.
A tale of
two governors. Alas, the early "science," the early facts and analysis of COVID-19 suggests that those states
controlled by the urban left are flunking by any fair mark up. A New York (D) versus Florida (R) comparison, blue
versus red, provides an early template for judging who gets high marks for crisis management. By any measure New York
is not just the national Covid hot spot, it is an international disaster area. Andrew Cuomo's (D) state leads the
nation in all statistical categories from infection to morbidity rates. New York City (D) is now the toxic nexus for
the nation. The Big Apple is hands down the necrotic 2020 spoiler in the larger American barrel. Badgering
Washington for more of everything from the start, it turns out that team Mario miscalculated the need for damn near
everything, including beds, hospitals, rescue ships, and respirators. Mario Cuomo pushed city mayor de Blasio (D) aside
and seized control of metro policy with hype and bombast, if not hysteria. Incredibly, Cuomo was lionized by the media
as "the only adult" in the room as he presided over the worst state or city medical crisis in America, if not the world.
Common
Sense and Self-Evident Truth in a Post-Truth World. Many Americans today go far beyond simply rejecting the
ideas of the American founders, the claims of the Declaration, and the Constitution. They reject the very idea of
truth. These Americans were taught in American universities that there is no such thing as truth, that truth is an
outmoded concept, that we now live in a post-truth reality. The belief that the concept of truth is outmoded is no
longer confined to academia. It has invaded the world outside academia and won a great victory there; the Oxford
Dictionaries selected "post-truth" as the Word of the Year for 2016. And a great victory it is. Convincing
Americans that there is no such thing as truth defeats the very foundation of the American idea.
Democrats
seem to be enjoying this authoritarian moment. Various Democrat politicians are competing to be the most
proactive in enforcing social distancing in their communities, so the internet is awash with stories of decidedly
anti-American government behavior. This post will bring you up to date on some of the more egregious things that are
happening in Democrat-run communities across America. For sheer shock value, there's really nothing to equal a short
video that's come out of Philadelphia. The video, which has been viewed almost five million times, shows a rider being
forcibly torn from a bus in Philadelphia, although not arrested, because he was not wearing a mask [...] The Daily Caller
notes the irony that this violent attack "comes after Philadelphia police announced that due to coronavirus, they would stop
arresting people for 'non-violent' crimes including burglary and drug offenses." Within a short while of the video going
viral, Philadelphia's Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority announced that it was no longer enforcing its
short-lived mask policy. Philadelphia is a Democrat-run city.
Did
Trump Ruin Our Economy for Nothing? Except for foreign travel, Trump didn't shut down anything. Where
did this economic halt come from? It started in states and cities with Democratic elected officials. Perhaps they
were influenced by the fake news media during "Trump is ignoring the crisis" and overreacted themselves, or perhaps they
wanted to show up Trump by taking action. Either way, they used their favorite tool, the power of government, without
any regard as to what it might do to their people. It should be obvious from their focus on Trump, but Democrats care
only about power, and so they focus on those in power.
Bet
Your Life — Vote for Democrats. New York City and California's loony politicos are hooked on
identity politics and see racism everywhere, ignoring objective science. The consequences of ignoring reality:
overwhelmed medical facilities, lack of proper medical equipment, and soaring death rates. [...] In brief, Mayor de Blasio's
City Health Commissioner, Oxiris Barbot, is a radical who previously served as Health Commissioner of Baltimore where she
"had given the city's race rioters 'space to destroy.'" Space which continues after her move to New York to result in a
soaring murder rate. She boasted of seeing health policy through a "racial equity lens," a lens so fogged that she
concentrated on discouraging those arriving from Wuhan from going into self-quarantine and encouraging New Yorkers to attend
the Lunar New Year celebrations in the city.
What
the left is destroying goes far beyond politics and the economy. It is clear that reconciliation with the left
is a pipedream! They reject reciprocal respect, based on a mutual agreement about human nature. They can't have
it both ways. They can't demand our politeness while we are insulted by them. They can't fabricate "crimes",
knock together "evidence" and call it "justice", as Sidney Powell exposes. [...] They can't butcher the record to fit in with
their slanted ideology and pretend it's "history". They can't stake out adolescent absurdity as the correct response to
the world, and expect us not to interrogate their wisdom. If honorableness in communication is the shining standard we
aim for between human beings, it has suffered the same fate as every other aspect of culture the left touches. It's
been destroyed.
Another
Pandemic Known as Social Justice. To achieve their aims, universities are watering down requirements in order
to attract more women and minorities. This portends "disastrous [repercussions] for scientific innovation and American
competitiveness" not to mention the care of sick people. Consequently, [a recent National Association of Scholars]
report asserts that "social justice movement's political goals include increased federal and state taxation; increased
minimum wage; increased environmental regulation; increased government health care spending and regulation; restrictions on
free speech; restrictions on due process protections; maximizing the number of legislative districts that will elect racial
minorities; support for the Black Lives Matter movement; mass release of criminals from prison; decriminalizing drugs; ending
enforcement of our immigration laws; amnesty for illegal aliens; open borders; race and sex preferences in education and
employment..." to name only a few. Support for the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement is also part of
their movement and mob violence is advocated to enforce any and all of these objectives. The traditional mode of
teaching students how to think has been replaced with teaching them what to think.
Not
enough hospital beds in New Hampshire? Blame needless regulations. One regulation forces anyone who wants
to open a hospital to have a 24 hour per day, seven day per week emergency department. Given that emergency departments
are the most expensive and toughest to staff part of any hospital, this is a huge barrier to opening a new facility.
And, like most cronyism, existing hospitals made sure this requirement doesn't apply to any hospital that had its license
before the law was passed. Another regulation forces any new hospital to take reimbursement from all payers, regardless
of whether doing so makes sense for that hospital's business model. Across the country, cash-only facilities are
thriving, providing lower cost alternatives to patients. But, under state law, they can't operate in the Granite
State. Finally, one state regulation provides for a 15-mile radius monopoly zone around smaller hospitals in more rural
areas. This guarantees that anyone outside of the southeastern part of New Hampshire will never see another hospital
being built in their community, or anywhere near them.
Life
in the Time of Wuhan. [Scroll down] Mayors who let thousands of homeless people tent out on their streets
where they relieved themselves daily amid piles of rat-ridden heaps of trash and drug paraphernalia, will learn some lessons
about public health. Nancy Pelosi, who for three and a half years accused the president of treason and exceeding his
constitutional powers, now begs him to assume dictatorial powers. The mainstream media is almost entirely discounted as
a source of reliable news and is reduced to posing ignorantly framed gotcha questions at the conclusions of transparent
first-class White House briefings. The notion that cities like Baltimore, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco,
whose leaders have undermined the rule of law and law enforcement, will suddenly be able to get the will and manpower to
enforce lockdown of the residents defies all probability.
Left's
Pet Issues Like Mass Transit, Reusable Bags Prove Deadly During Coronavirus Crisis. With some experts
predicting, at a minimum, anywhere from 480,000 to 1.6 million American deaths from the coronavirus over the next three to 18
months, how smart does urban living, mass transit, open borders, reusable straws, reusable grocery bags, reusable water
bottles, gun restrictions, over-regulated housing, using the Centers for Disease Control to fight gun violence, and
outsourcing to China look now?
Greening Our Way
to Infection. The COVID-19 outbreak is giving new meaning to those "sustainable" shopping bags that politicians
and environmentalists have been so eager to impose on the public. These reusable tote bags can sustain the COVID-19 and
flu viruses — and spread the viruses throughout the store. Researchers have been warning for years about the
risks of these bags spreading deadly viral and bacterial diseases, but public officials have ignored their concerns,
determined to eliminate single-use bags and other plastic products despite their obvious advantages in reducing the spread of
pathogens. In New York State, a new law took effect this month banning single-use plastic bags in most retail
businesses, and this week Democratic state legislators advanced a bill that would force coffee shops to accept consumers'
reusable cups — a practice that Starbucks and other chains have wisely suspended to avoid spreading the COVID-19 virus.
Major
crimes in NYC unexpectedly surge after bail reform law. We recently looked at some new proposals for
fixing New York's disastrous new "bail reform" law or at least mitigating some of the damage it's causing. They may
want to get off the stick and start looking at those suggestions in a hurry because a newly released report shows that major
crimes in New York City took a very sharp turn upward in February as compared to the same period of time last year. And
the police have the data to show that the bail reform policies are playing a significant role in this very bad development.
America's
Declining Sexual Morality. Today's "sexual revolution" is expressed by our being told by the highest court in
the land that homosexual marriage can and must be married and by women being encouraged to abort children as a "right." In
today's society, drag queens reading to little children in libraries is considered delightful by many. Further, vast
numbers of people consider one's sex designation psychological and not biological, and, increasingly, parents encourage their
little children to "choose" which sex/gender they want to be. As additional evidence of the "sexual revolution," the
overall percentage of children born out of wedlock has risen from 5% in 1960 to about 40% the last three or four years
(albeit much higher among black and Hispanic persons).
The Law That Ate
the Constitution. The Civil Rights Act passed under President Lyndon Johnson was meant to address an emergency
situation that most Americans, even most white Americans, recognized as a national disgrace. Over the following
decades, those emergency measures would be revealed as a permanent apparatus combining "surveillance by volunteers,
litigation by lawyers, and enforcement by bureaucrats." Civil rights offered "new grounds for overruling and overriding
legislatures and voters on any question that could be cast as a matter of discrimination. That was coming to mean all
questions." If you doubt the infinite adaptability of civil rights to any subject under the sun, consider the multifarious
uses to which it has been put. [...] There are pavilion-sized homeless encampments on the streets of Los Angeles, employers
can hire illegal immigrants with relative impunity, gay marriage is the law of the land — all because of civil
rights law, directly or indirectly.
California's Gig Law Comes For
the Scooters, Destroys Independent "Juicers". California's "gig economy" law — AB5 —
continues to have disastrous consequences across the state. The list of jobs affected or outright destroyed is huge and
growing every day. The wedding industry is collapsing. Festivals are closing. Theaters and music venues are
closing. A nursing shortage is now upon us because qualified nurses can no longer pick up extra side-jobs in areas like
hospice care. The law has even killed Christmas: mall Santas can no longer contract their services.
Progressive
Big Lies. These days, fake news is the first draft of fake history. Worse yet, today's progressives
believe lies to be true despite their egregious falsehood. Then progressive state governments act on beliefs that
biological sex can be changed by choice, that an aborted human being isn't a human being, that infants surviving abortion can
still be killed, that the modern industrial world can run on solar panels and windmills, that money can be endlessly
appropriated and redistributed, that a region like California should dump precious water to protect a bait fish, that hordes
of bums and hobos polluting public spaces require no action, and that our enemies can be mollified by soothing words and
foreign aid rather than by mind-concentrating deeds. These lies and their dangers have been worsened over the last few
decades by the degeneration of education from grammar school to university.
As
Trump wins praise for effective coronavirus response, blue cities do opposite, threatening its spread it through homelessness. The
left's blue cities do all they can to encourage and reward homelessness, amounting to the country's great enabler of homelessness as a
lifestyle. Blue cities employ and are expanding gargantuan bureaucracies dedicated to "servicing" the homelessness, which encourages
a hunt for more "clients." San Francisco alone spends $77,000 per homeless "client." They also refuse to enforce quality of life
laws, such as those against vagrancy, public camping, drug use, public alcohol consumption, prostitution, and public urination and defecation,
promoting homelessness even more. Some are encouraging squatting on private property. Others are permitting the homeless to take over
public parks and spaces. Some, such as Bill de Blasio's New York, are secretly busing the homeless to other cities to keep them from creating
problems in their own cities. It's a massive tax on those who own the overpriced homes in those cities, but taxes are the left's bread and
butter. It's a money merry-go-round, all done in the name of "compassion."
Black-on-Jewish
attacks in NY, black-on-Asian attacks in SF: Same progressive rule. [Scroll down] The second thing we see is that
this person has no fear of the police, no fear of the feds, and no fear of punishment, no matter what he does. That's the work of
leftist politics that in San Francisco now requires a dollar value of $951 in thievery before any police action can take place.
Thieves know they get the first $950 free in that city. Cash bail has been eliminated, and San Francisco's district attorney has
a pinned tweet praising Bernie Sanders for praising that. That crazed leftist "serving" as district attorney, one Chesa Boudin,
is the son of a terrorist killer, raised by Bill Ayers, last seen "serving" as Hugo Chávez's translator, whose big selling point
is "decarceration," and ending "mass incarceration," and who refuses to prosecute quality-of-life crimes such as public urination.
The cops in that city are throwing up their hands at having this creep at the prosecutorial helm, effectively making all street crimes
get-out-of-jail-free cards.
Sorry,
Democrats: Party's Over. It makes me smile to know that fewer people are watching CNN than have fled from
California in the last few years. These days even Jed Clampett wouldn't be convinced that Californy is the place he
ought to be. He would have the sense to take his money to Texas where the taxes are reasonable and you won't be
flash-mobbed by SJWs chanting that you're an eco-criminal for striking it rich in the energy sector. Modest as Jed's
education may have been, I think he would have understood that energy is a good thing and letting junkies poop in the aisle
at Costco is a bad thing. Even cousin Jethro would have winced at the mountain of filth that Pelosi and her party have made.
Canada: A Dead
Country Walking. Canada is presently in the throes of social and political disintegration. A left-leaning
electorate has once again empowered a socialist government promoting all the lunatic ideological shibboleths of the day:
global warming or "climate change," radical feminism, indigenous sovereignty, expansionary government, environmental
strangulation of energy production, and the presumed efficiency of totalitarian legislation. Industry and manufacturing
are abandoning the country in droves and heading south. Canada is now reaping the whirlwind. The Red-Green Axis
consisting of social justice warriors, hereditary band chiefs, renewable energy cronies, cultural Marxists, and their
political and media enablers have effectively shut down the country. The economy is at a standstill, legislatures and
City Halls have been barricaded, blockades dot the landscape, roads and bridges have been sabotaged, trains have been
derailed (three crude-by-rail spillages in the last two months), goods are rotting in warehouses, heating supplies remain
undelivered, violent protests and demonstrations continue to wreak havoc — and the hapless Prime Minister, who
spent a week swanning around Africa as the crisis unfolded, is clearly out of his depth and has no idea how to control the mayhem.
On Leaving
the Golden State. [Scroll down] Let us talk about the authorities for a moment. What exactly are
they doing to help? First, they threw open the borders and created sanctuary cities so that people that do not belong
here can not be molested by law enforcement. Next, they decriminalized camping in public. People camping in
public need something to do to while away the hours so they decriminalized drugs even going so far as to give away free
needles. If that were not enough, they decriminalized theft up to $950 per day. This way any homeless person can
walk into any business and brazenly steal whatever they wish without any fear of being sent to jail. Finally, they've
arranged things such that the police will no longer respond to 911 calls pertaining to vandalism or burglary. You can
watch from your bedroom window as a homeless person smashes your car windshield with a rock so as to ransack your car and if
you call 911 it will be YOU that is in trouble for tying up their emergency line as someone vandalizing and robbing your car
is a non-emergency and not worthy of any kind of response.
Bright Lights,
Blighted City. [Scroll down] New Yorkers didn't bargain for what they're seeing these days. They
don't want the subways to break down so often or to spot a rat scurrying along with a pizza crust or to get slugged on the
platform or shoved on the tracks by some mumbling paranoid nut. They don't want to hurry under the construction
platforms that leave the sidewalks permanently in gloom, and they don't want pieces of buildings to fall on them or their
grandchildren. They don't want to be confronted by a phalanx of panhandlers on the prime shopping blocks of Fifth
Avenue or groped by a moocher costumed as Captain America in Times Square. Or see men peeing on the sidewalk. [...]
Other cities have bigger problems. Homelessness is now endemic in Los Angeles and, especially, San Francisco.
Violent crime rates in St. Louis, Detroit, Memphis, and other places dwarf New York's.
Heightening
the Contradictions. How often does the Left come up with ideas that, on the face of it, appear absurd,
irrational, or utterly insane? The answer, is, of course, all the time. The general response is bewilderment or
incomprehension — a shrug and an assertion that "those lefties are crazy." But in truth, they're no such
thing. There's nothing irrational about it. It's all part of the program. [...] The same is true of any other
"senseless" or "irrational" leftist program. None of them, whether they involve introducing transsexualism to schools
or placing jihadis in Congress, occurred by accident. They were meant to happen exactly the way they did, to heighten
the contradictions.
As
the media focuses on Democrat candidates, Democrats are looking at Trump. Democrats will no doubt be distressed
to learn that the progressive habit of politicizing absolutely everything is giving new weight to the law of unintended
consequences. A New Hampshire woman, horrified by the uproar in the knitting world a few months ago when woke knitters
went on a rampage, found herself at the Trump rally in New Hampshire and went public about the pleasant surprises she found
there. [...] People who were enjoying their craft were suddenly lambasted as racist cultural appropriators and worse.
Conservative knitters fled the knitting sites, and they were joined by Independent and Democrat knitters who found it
offensive to have politics invade their peaceful, creative hobby.
Decriminalization
of drugs fueling meth and homelessness in California. The same people who demand that Congress and state
governments spend even more money to "combat" the twin drug and homelessness crises never seem to connect the dots back to
their decriminalization policies or admit that they are causing a rise in crime. One journalist in California is not
scared to pin the tail on the donkey — in the case of the Golden State, the infamous Prop 47. Right around
2014-2015 is when the drug crisis exploded nationwide, including in California, roughly around the same time homelessness
soared, particularly in the Golden State, along with the rise in theft and other crimes. What else happened around the
same time? California passed Prop 47, which downgraded drug and theft crimes. The result was a logical
consequence to an illogical policy. Bill Lamb, VP and general manager of Fox 11 in Los Angeles, delivered a TV
commentary last week pinning the blame for the homeless and drug problems squarely on Prop 47.
Trump's
Presidency Reveals 7 Undeniable Facts About The Swamp. [#6] Identity politics and the legislation of social
justice policies have stifled the rights of free speech and freedom of association throughout the democratic nations of the
western world. And they materialized as the result of language manipulation. Remember when gender used to
represent male or female? Yet, in that example, the word "identity" was added after "gender" thus opening a verifiable
Pandora's Box of Orwellian Newspeak. Today in formerly free societies, men and women are forced to navigate Genderqueer
and Non-Binary Identities, consisting of an entirely new lexicon including neo-designations such as Agender,
Cisgender, Ceterosexual, Ceteroromantic, Demigender, Enby, and Epicene; just to
name a few. Political Correctness is a means of thought control in the bubble, designed to protect imaginary
victims from the societal sins of xenophobia, sexism, homophobism, and racism.
Number
of THC positive drivers in fatal crashes has doubled in Wash. state. A new study shows the number of Washington
state drivers involved in deadly crashes who tested positive for THC has doubled. According to research by AAA between
2008 and 2012, an estimated eight percent of Washington drivers involved in fatal crashes were positive for THC. That rate
now is more than double since weed became legal in Washington. In the five years before legislation, an average of 56
Washington drivers involved in fatal crashes each year were THC positive. In the five years after legislation, that
average jumped to 130.
Democrats
Don't Care About American Lives. Democrats' vision for the perfect America includes transforming her into a
wild, wild west of sex, a society in which every perversion is legalized and citizens are forced to celebrate. A memo
exposed Obama's DoJ plan to legalize 12 perversions including pedophilia and bestiality. Colleges are laying the
groundwork by scolding us about our bigoted intolerance of pedophiles. Democrats are sexualizing children beginning in
pre-k with a mandatory LGBTQ curriculum. I Am Jazz, a book about a boy whose parents began his so-called sex change at
age three, is required reading. Once you realize that Democrats only care about furthering their agenda and American
lives do-not- matter, you understand their behavior. U.S. students are sick with strange diseases due to untested
illegal alien children being sent to public schools. Transsexuals who regret having sex change surgery are blocked
from media.
Guess
the State: Democrat-Run Fiasco Edition. The last time Republicans held a majority on this state's Supreme
Court was in the 1920s. Its Court of Appeals has never had a Republican majority. The last time Republicans held
a majority in both houses of the state Legislature at the same time was 1930. In the 89 years from 1931 to the present,
Democrats have held a majority of both houses of the state Legislature for 79 of the 89 years. Since 1931, Democrats
have held the governor's office for 69 of the 89 years. Even when a Republican has been governor, his powers have been
greatly limited because he has never held a majority in both houses of the state legislature while in office. What state
am I? If you guessed CA, IL, NY, NJ, or MA, you're wrong. If you guessed NM, go to the head of the class.
Since 1931, no other state has had single-party Dem rule at the state level as long as New Mexico. And how has New Mexico
fared under the stewardship of single party Democrat rule? As we shall see, not so well.
Liberalism
Causes Achievement Gaps. This report by Chris Stewart of Brightbeam is a blockbuster. It is titled:
"The Secret Shame: How America's Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity For All."
Stewart is a liberal activist from Minnesota who undertook to find out why the Twin Cities' left-wing public schools have some of
the country's worst achievement gaps between white and minority (black and Indian) students. Stewart compared achievement
by race in a number of cities that he classified as progressive or conservative. The results didn't surprise me, but they
shocked Stewart. Conservative cities (as ranked by political scientists used as a reference for the study) consistently
did a better job of closing student achievement gaps — sometimes, to zero — than progressive cities.
A
Peek at America before 1950 and the Assault by the Left. Picture a neighborhood composed of low and middle
income families, each with two parents, no homeless people, no street drugs, safe to walk the streets at night. Is this
the figment of an overactive imagination? [...] This typical school of 1940s New York City had higher standards and grade
profile than any counterpart today and operated on a budget far smaller in equivalent dollars than any current public school
budget. In these "backward" times, the schools were free of substance abuse problems, sexual promiscuity, and identity
problems. There was an abiding respect for the authority of teachers and parents and for the dignity of every person
regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. There were clubs in my school for religion, for foreign languages
(including Latin). A Reporters' Club recorded significant events for the school paper. There were toy drives
for a local hospital... The list of extracurricular engagements was long.
We
Have Miseducated Boys and Girls Alike. [Scroll down] Why wouldn't a culture that worships promiscuous sex
send the message to young men that their entire value revolves around sex? And consider the stated — and
hidden — messages that young men get every day: Women should be able to sleep with as many men as possible.
(Your girlfriend won't be faithful to you.) Divorce should be easy. (If your own father left and you're hurt by
that, who cares? Men won't stay in a marriage. You shouldn't expect to stay in a marriage.) Dads are "deadbeats"
or buffoons. (Mothers are more important than fathers.) Abortion is a constitutional right, and men should have no
say. (Your children shouldn't mean anything to you. They can be destroyed whether you want that or not. You
don't matter.) It isn't that every negative, oppressive trend affecting American boys is an after-effect of the sexual
revolution. Some problems Orenstein mentions — difficulty expressing emotions; fear of failure; "jock culture,"
with its bullying and vicious coaches — have been around much longer.
San
Francisco, solid blue city of — empty storefronts and missing young people. San Francisco is getting
to be a hellhole and not just because crooks are having a field day, or a vast homeless army has prompted new tech
'innovations' in poop-map apps. It's actually becoming a city with a hollowed out look, redolent of some place like
Steubenville, Ohio or maybe Utica, New York, during the bad years, empty storefronts and missing young people. So much
for the trope that leftwing cities, with their walkable boulevards full of food trucks, handmade crafts, knitting shops,
bookstores, artisan cheese shops, gourmet restaurants, and cafes are more lively and liveable than rightwing places.
For awhile, that did seem to be the story. But it's coming to an end. Sure, there's vast wealth. But
despite California being in an economic boom, the place is starting to look like Venezuela.
The
Left's Endless Commercial Has Weaponized Popular Culture. American consumers understand that most forms of
popular culture have become nothing more than commercials for the Democrat party. Movies, television, and music focus
less on entertainment than on influencing the next election. They have gone beyond mere leftist bias. Artists,
writers, and musicians subordinate their craft in order to present one endless Democrat commercial. This trend is
equally egregious in the case of books. In modern bookstores, the Democrat commercial spreads far beyond the "politics"
shelf. "The gardening books advocate hiring illegal aliens. The sports books reminisce about Vietnam." A telling
example of this trend appears in a 2018 book about the design of General Motors automobiles from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Fins, by William Knoedelseder, appears to be credible, informative, and interesting until it reaches Chapter 9.
In Chapter 9, the author apparently loses interest in classic cars and decides, instead, to tell the reader that President
Trump is just like Hitler.
Democrats
Have Become a Disfigured Reflection of the Party They Once Were. [Scroll down] We see in their contempt
for federal marijuana laws, the institution of sanctuary cities, and their hostility to border enforcement a deranged lack of
perspective regarding the health of our citizens, many of whom are struggling with or dying from drug usage. The opioid
epidemic we face is clearly connected to the opioid supply, and that, in turn, is clearly a border issue. Yet they put
aside the well-being of so many poor souls caught by the hook of addiction into ignoring border enforcement in order to score
political hate points against the president. Instead of looking at border issues in terms of law and national health,
they turn enforcement into an ugly, defamatory argument about American and Trumpian racism. Only 14 years ago, they
were able to agree with Republicans on the need for stronger border enforcement, whereas now they try to block every Trump
attempt — mandated by the American people — to bring order out of chaos on our southern border.
Chile's Collapse
Foreshadows America's If Dems Win. America's economic growth under Barack Obama was anemic, and the economy
would have been even worse had the Democrats enjoyed control over Congress during his two terms. Were the Democrats to
return to the White House in 2020, all the economic gains under Trump would vanish. All of the potential Democratic
presidential nominees favor flirtations with economy-sapping socialism of one kind or another. In a recent Wall
Street Journal op-ed, Axel Kaiser, a scholar at Adolfo Ibañez University in Santiago, warned Americans that Chile's
collapse could be theirs if they too consume socialism's poisonous cocktail of high taxes, increased government spending, and
excessive regulation.
Guess
Who Runs the Rudest Cities in America. Recently, an oft-cited Business Insider survey ranked the rudest cities
in America. The top 10 are all bastions of misguided liberalism. They are sanctuaries to illegal aliens and often
hostile towards law-abiding citizens by imposing oppressive taxes and silly regulations and by encouraging lawlessness by
handcuffing law enforcement.
Mayhem
on the Streets of NY. Beginning on the first of this year, New York's "no bail no jail" law, enacted by the
Democratic legislature and put into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo went into effect. [...] It may be true that some low-level
crimes for which poorer arrestees cannot afford bail, means they languish in jail until trial, but this law is so poorly
crafted that it includes crimes for which bail is warranted no matter what the economic condition of the person arrested, for
otherwise there is no penalty for immediately repeating the criminal acts. Criminals learn there are no consequences
for their actions. Of course, it won't much affect the rich, who glide about in chauffeured cars and live in gated
communities or buildings guarded by doormen, but the middle class surely are impacted. Once, again these misguided
efforts to coddle the underclass have the effect of remaking our cities and states on a feudal model where the rich are
protected and serfs who work and pay taxes are in constant danger from brigands and murderers.
Man
accused of driving drunk, killing pedestrian freed due to new criminal justice reforms. A man who allegedly hit
and killed a pedestrian while driving drunk in East Harlem is back on the streets for now — thanks to the state's
new criminal justice reforms, authorities said Thursday [1/2/2020]. Farkell Hopkins, 23, was arrested on charges of vehicular
manslaughter and DWI at the scene of the deadly New Year's Eve collision, but was cut loose before he was even arraigned.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office said prosecutors still intend to pursue the case, but they now have to ensure they're
able to turn over all their evidence to Hopkins' defense team within a tight 15-day time-frame, thanks to new soft-on-crime
laws that went into effect Jan. 1.
Topics We Aren't
Allowed to Talk About. Baltimore may be the most depressing big city on the eastern seaboard. Have you
been there? Everyone in Washington has. If you want to take a train from Washington to New York, you have to pass
through Baltimore. This summer, the president told the rest of the world what it's like. Baltimore, he said, is
"rodent infested, not to mention a corrupt mess." Why is Baltimore so bad? How did it get so poor and hopeless?
Part of the answer is 50 years of uninterrupted Democratic Party rule. But saying that would be embarrassing to the
Democratic Party, so the party's apologists don't want to have the conversation.
Back
to the pre-Giuliani era: Serious crime up 31% in NYC's Central Park this year. NYPD crime stats recently
reported by the New York Post show that violent crime incidents in Central Park, Manhattan, have spiked 31 percent in 2018.
[...] The cleanup of Central Park was one of the milestones of the era of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York that jump-started
a two-decade decline in crime throughout the city. Those gains are now being reduced due to the abolishing of pretrial bail,
reduced sentencing, early release, and almost no deterrent against juvenile criminals. The subways have already returned to
pre-Giuliani-era crime levels. According to NYPD data, there were 1,185 transit misdemeanor assaults citywide from Jan. 1
to Nov. 17, which reflects a 10.9 percent increase from the same time last year.
American
Society and the Stretched Rubber Band. [Scroll down] Regressives have been successful in fostering a
censored, politically correct environment in politics and entertainment. They've accomplished this by resorting to
character assassinations, engaging in identity politics on the basis of one's external traits, deplatforming media and
entertainment personalities, and rioting in the streets in order to enforce their new code of ethics and engrain their
postmodern ideology into the fabric of American culture. Naturally, this oppressive behavior has led to a
counterculture that rejects what Regressives laud and embraces what they hate. This includes distrust of the media
elite, which is intentionally dishonest, self-censoring, and heavily biased; a desire to promote patriotism and protect
national heritage; and, most importantly, a yearning for politicians to fire from the hip and not worry about the laws of
political correctness that devalue freedom of speech. This brings us to President Trump, who may appear like a buffoon
whose presidency is a fluke. However, his ascendency is no accident — Trump correctly identified this
counterculture as a sleeping giant waiting to be riled up.
A
Liberal Order That Seeks To Shut Down Christian Charities Doesn't Deserve To Survive. Even without full control
over the government, the left has been aggressive in its use of government power against Christians who believe traditional
teachings on human sexuality. The left seems to target particularly those engaged in charitable work, rather than
protecting them on account of their good works. The left's legal wing is trying to compel Christian hospitals to
perform abortions and sex-change surgeries, Christian schools to affirm same-sex relationships, and Christian charities such
as women's shelters to pretend men can be women. A purportedly serious Democratic presidential candidate wanted to tax
dissenting Christian organizations, including churches, into oblivion. The left won't even spare elderly nuns.
When the Trump administration ended Barack Obama's legal campaign against the Little Sisters of the Poor, various Democratic
attorneys general made a point of continuing that unholy effort.
The
Destructiveness of the Liberal Child Mind. The Left's takeover of our schools and media has brainwashed a whole
generation. We've got millions of befuddled biological adults walking about with the minds of kids, cheering on the
likes of foolish teen Greta, who should be at home practicing for her soccer meet or piano recital. Give any of these
kinderlings or their kind the reins of adult power, and what you get is an utter economic and societal wreckage. You
get the squalor, poverty, and degradation of the socialism of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and now Venezuela.
You do get nice slogans and cool tee-shirts emblazoned with "Health Care Is a Human Right" and "Medicare for All," but such
things won't put food, let alone an MRI scanner or anti-cancer drug, on the table.
How
Social Work Became the Pit of Despair It Is Today. [Scroll down] Without a "fundamental transformation"
of the mass media's constant condemnation of personal moral judgments — without a drastic change in its lionizing
of hedonistic pursuits that "push the envelope" beyond every prior boundary of decency — without a rejection of
its reflexive division of society into privileged and victim groups — without a massive intellectual and moral
shift on the part of educators, the entertainment industry, prominent intellectuals, and folks in electronic communications, the
prospect for significant improvement in the culture at large, including its ever expanding social services arena, seems bleak.
Cook
County Christmas shopping, Kim Foxx style. When state's attorney Kim Foxx announced no prosecution for
shoplifting under a thousand dollars, the results were fully predictable. Chicago and Cook County, Illinois are leading
the headlong American rush toward lawlessness and the loss of civil order. The election of Kim Foxx as Cook County
state's attorney, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in backing by George Soros, has been a further disaster —
with not just the scandalously lenient treatment of Jussie Smollett after convulsing Chicago and the entire country with a
fake hate crime caper, but the virtual abolition of laws against felony shoplifting under one thousand dollars.
Operation
Mockingbird's Racial Destructive Lies. In a recent article, I explained that Operation Mockingbird is a program
founded by the CIA in the 1950s to use journalists and front groups to spread propaganda. Today's version of Operation
Mockingbird uses intelligence agencies, academia, Hollywood, and the Democratic party to spread hatred for Christians,
traditional values, law-abiding gun owners, straight white men, pro-lifers, police and the 63 million who voted for
Trump. I am encouraged that a growing number of young Americans realize they are being propagandized 24/7. Young
people are fed up with SJWs (social justice warriors) demonizing whites, anyone who is happy, successful, thin, and enjoying
life. Youths are angry for being branded an "ist" or "phobe" for everything they say or do. These three Operation
Mockingbird lies continue to wreak havoc, igniting racial hatred, division and violence.
Will Dems Leave Their Irreligious
Party? The average Democrat I know does not believe that infanticide is a right nor do they accept the nonsense
that there are more than two genders. They do not believe that open borders that allow drugs and murderous gangs into
our country should be our policy. Those that have jobs do not approve of their wages taxed to give benefits to those
who are here unlawfully. They are also outraged that children are being subjected to progressive stunts like having
drag queens read to them in public while exposing their crotches. (Don't believe this? Google it). They
do not approve of grown men being allowed to use women's bathrooms especially when they are being occupied by young
girls. Yet all of that is being pushed by the Democrats running for president in 2020.
America's
real disease is toxic ignorance. Many factors have combined over the last 50 years to remove the moral
scaffolding into which we fit incoming information and prioritize it. Judeo-Christian values have been demonized and
replaced with relativism. Relativism implies that nothing is all good or all bad, all wrong or all right. There
are no justified priorities. Live and let live. Once this took hold, toxic education stepped into the breach and
indoctrinated students with substitutes for what used to be "right" and "wrong." The only truth is your own personal
well-being. So teachers set about redefining history and interpreting ideas with which the left disagrees as harm to
one's person. This makes it a small step to say "speech is violence."
New
York Times puts bad light on murdered Barnard teen and exculpates the city. The disturbingly horrible stabbing
murder of Barnard freshman Tessa Majors over a cheap robbery by one-to-three thugs is an awful story. The victim was an
18 year old female freshman, a very young-looking teenager, walking to campus around 7 or 8 p.m. when it would have been
dark. [...] Unpopular Mayor Bill de Blasio, who's excused these kinds of crimes in the past has made the right noises, but it
remains to be seen if he's serious. But the Times seems to be eager to minimize the crime, cast a negative light on the
victim, and exculpate the now-socialist city. [...] In any case, the Times has a big problem now that the reality of
blue-city politics has hit New York in a dramatic turnaround from the Giuliani era — kids are now being murdered.
That's why they're doing their best within decency to put the victim down and insist that the city remains safe even with
crime now a free for all in New York.
A
Safe Space Society Is A Totalitarian Nightmare. As the undisputed star of the new film No Safe
Spaces — the hit documentary on academia's descent into Orwellian tyranny features a quick shot of a lawyer
letter I wrote to some collegiate gulag apparatchiks — I wholeheartedly recommend that you go see it. Adam
Carolla and Dennis Prager take you on a guided tour of the insanity and evil that has gripped academia, and it's utterly
terrifying. You need to see it not merely to gape at the freak show but to learn what's coming for society as a
whole. The dreary conformity factories that pretend to be providing our next generation of leaders with a higher
education have instead embarked on a campaign of indoctrination designed to manufacture a generation of goose-stepping creeps
who use their bizarre collection of buzzwords and fetishes as weapons to suppress any kind of dissent. And the problem
is that this PC Nazism is not just limited to academia. Eventually, these daddy-issue cadres are going to get out into
the world and contaminate all of our institutions even worse than they are contaminated now.
Why
Is Our Society Degrading So Badly, So Fast? On a local level in many cities and communities, Democrats in power
are by their actions undermining the rule of law. For example, expected compliance with the law in several of our
leading cities run by Democratic Party leaders, including most notably New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, is
now often based on a person's economic and immigration status, race, sex, sexual orientation, and increasingly an indication
of a person's political and religious affiliations. The reason for these exemptions being granted is based on the dual
ideologies of identity politics and social justice. The creation of an implied multi-tier justice system expressly
violates our fundamental value of the law applying equally to citizens from all walks of life and most importantly results in
the increasingly intolerable and dangerous conditions existing on the streets of these cities and an overall perception of
communities in decline.
Republicans
Will Live to Regret Joining Climate Alarmists. [Scroll down] The data are overwhelming that implementing
the proposals of climate alarmists — i.e., drastically cutting down or eliminating fossil fuels — will
devastate Western economies. According to a recent report by the conservative American Action Forum, the Green New Deal
will cost up to $93 trillion. Canada has instituted policies that severely constricted the ability of Western Canada to
market its oil and gas. Eric Denhoff, a former deputy minister of Alberta wrote: "With more than 150,000
unemployed in a persistent, unbelievably long-running recession, Alberta has faced thousands of bankruptcies, a huge increase
in suicides, and a tremendous loss of long-term capital investment that scares the bejesus out of the business community."
Kevin O'Leary, founder of the O'Leary financial group, said Alberta and the West "don't have their engine of growth anymore"
because "Trudeau hates energy." Canada, he notes, has been the the poorest place of all the G7 countries to invest your
money over the last four years.
Millennials
Are Fleeing Cities For Refuge From Democrats' Disasters. [Scroll down] My home city of Philadelphia is a
prime example. Here, 60,000 residents leave per year, and half of them are 18 to 34 years old. The reason?
Urban centers like Philadelphia are bent on destroying the very conveniences that drew millennials to the city in the first
place. Here, the combined effect of sky-high taxes and outdated regulations add up to an all-out war on millennials.
Or at least a war on the things they love the most. Brunch, for example. In Pennsylvania, where I live, the number
of available liquor licenses is restricted by our state liquor monopoly. These restrictions and the fact that licenses are sold
at auction (seriously!) make selling booze way too expensive for business owners.
The
obsessive, intolerant, despicable do-nothing-but-obstruct Democrats. It is the Left that has undone the tenets
of Martin Luther King. It is the Left that has branded any words they don't like as hate speech and destroyed higher
education in America with trigger warnings and safe spaces. Universities have infantilized college students for a
couple of decades now. Our pseudo-professorial class has indoctrinated its students and taught them nothing but
intolerance for the slightest word of opposition to their prescribed, permitted speech with which they've been
inculcated. They have severely handicapped many thousands of young people. Ask one of them who Mao was?
Stalin? The Holocaust? Socialism? About America's founding? They know nothing, by design and what
they think they know is so wrong. But ask them about transgenderism, institutional racism, homosexuality, white
privilege, etc. They will wax rhapsodic with their infinite knowledge of those topics, each of which is relatively
meaningless in the grand scheme of this once great nation.
Revolution
as a Mental Disease. Illegal immigration has a negative impact on the labor market, especially low-income
Americans, by keeping wages down. Nevertheless, half of our fellow citizens believe that any action taken against
illegals is tantamount to sending them to concentration camps. Medicare for all would lead to long waiting times, with
the problem being compound by the coverage provided to an undetermined number of illegals. In a country where 85% of
people have access to quality health care, this would represent a major downgrade. Socialism is another major electoral
theme, and rejecting it in an affluent society would normally be a matter of common sense. However, part of the secular
pietist mission is to fight inequality, even if that leads to worse living conditions for the majority, provided that the
object of their envy is also harmed.
After the
Impeachment. [I]f the Democrats win this sham of an impeachment proceeding and the 2020 election, we should be
very frightened, because a victory will usher in an era of governance that will lead to a timeline similar to what happened
to Venezuela. [...] Many of today's advocates for socialism have no recollection of Venezuela in 1992 as the third-richest
country in the world. Nor do they understand that Venezuela's socialist president ran on "income inequality" in 2001
and shortly afterward put into place the same list of "reforms" as the ones now being advocated by today's Democratic
candidates and some of their more radical allies — healthcare under government control, free higher education,
guns confiscated, opposition leaders imprisoned, elections suspended, etc.
Trump
is 100% on His Game. I thank God that President Trump is not like other Republicans. [...] If Trump is not
reelected in 2020, Democrats will kill healthy babies even after they are born. Sixteen-year-old girls will have double
mastectomies without parental consent or knowledge in absurd attempts to become men. Democrats will roll out the red
carpet to drug dealing, murderous illegals along with illegal alien children carrying strange diseases being admitted into
our schools. The Democrats' Green New Deal promises to stop air travel, kill the fossil fuel industry, and implement a
long list of insane job-killing and economy crushing initiatives. You cannot imagine the huge number of jobs Democrats
will kill or force overseas. Trump has our economy booming. Black unemployment has hit a new historic low.
All of Trump's unprecedented remarkable successes for America will be flushed down the toilet if Democrats take the White House.
Liberals
and the Moral Compass. [Scroll down] All of this wandering around the darkened moral landscape is simply
an inevitable consequence of tying one's values to one fashionably righteous cause after another. In the early part of
the 20th century, the progenitors of today's progressives were all for eugenics and forced sterilization. Now they like
androgyny and political censorship. Tomorrow, perhaps pedophilia and concentration camps will be all the rage. It
depends on what novelty proves the most expedient. Ultimately, the essence of the Left is a cynical and unaccountable
leadership leading people around by their desire to feel good about themselves — as cheaply and as painlessly as
possible. It thrives on intellectual laziness and low standards of integrity. While it is nothing really new, and
these people have always been with us, there are more of them now than any healthy society can possibly support.
Report:
Hollywood Adds More LGBT Characters to TV, Cable, Streaming — Now 488 Total. GLAAD, an organization
that seeks to accelerate "acceptance of the LGBT community" in American culture, released its 2019 report, Where We Are on
TV, and applauded the TV and cable entertainment industries for adding more LGBT characters to their programs. "Of the
879 regular characters scheduled to appear on broadcast scripted primetime television this season, 90 (10.2 percent) are
LGBTQ," states the report. There are also some 30 recurring LGBTQ characters, making a total of 120. That's up
from last year's 113 regular and recurring LGBTQ roles.
The Editor says...
If you haven't done so already, you should take all of the television sets out of your house and leave them at the curb for the next garbage truck.
When I got rid of my last TV in 1980, it was the programming was boring, shallow, insipid, and a waste of time. Now, almost 40 years later,
the programming is offensive, demeaning, pernicious, blasphemous, and destructive. The commercials are nearly as bad, and the so-called
"local news" is nothing but an infomercial for big government.
Feeding the Fat Green
Pigs. Land that once fed horses is now used to produce biodiesel and ethanol for cars, so food prices must go
up. Forests are felled to burn in green power stations and for green-tick buildings while grasslands are invaded by
feral pests and woody weeds from the ever-growing parks and Kyoto Protocol Forests. Birds and bats are being sliced by
wind turbines, flatlands are being smothered by solar panels, access roads and transmission lines. But electricity
costs soar, supply is rationed while reliability crashes. Behind every one of these modern maladies are troughs of Big
Green Pigs getting fatter on market mandates, subsidies from consumers or tax payers, and special tax treatments. In
the background, governments fund an academic/media industry promoting climate alarmism, energy rationing and intermittent
energy. Electric cars and penny farthings were pushed off the roads by Henry Ford's petrol engines, but politicians are
trying to put them back — a Tesla for the rich and a bicycle for the poor. Consumers and industry don't
count and taxpayers are there to be milked. In this Greentopia no one needs miners, farmers or fishermen. All are
lost for a fake global warming Emergency.
Why
Trump is the Black Voters' Clear Choice in 2020. Tragically, blacks have voted monolithically for Democrats for
60 years with nothing to show for it. Baltimore, Washington D.C., Chicago, and every other city controlled by Democrats
are hellholes of black misery; black-on-black homicides, out-of-wedlock births (fatherless households), high incarceration,
genocidal numbers of abortions, and school dropouts. And yet, Democrats are still deceiving blacks with their tired old
lie that every issue plaguing black Americans is the result of white racism. My stomach turned upon hearing Democratic
presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren promising to end environmental racism. I thought, "Here we go again with another
Democrat attempting to fill blacks with more victim nonsense while trashing America, claiming that even the weather in the
U.S. victimizes blacks."
No
Safe Spaces: What Happens When Common Sense and Values Disappear. The new documentary No Safe Spaces, starring
conservative thinker, radio host, and writer Dennis Prager and liberal, comedian, and podcast host Adam Carolla, is a must-see for anyone
concerned with the long-term viability of the First Amendment's free speech protections. While primarily focusing on the hostility
to free speech laying siege to America's college campuses, vividly illustrated with compelling clips of violent protests and civil unrest by
students from Berkeley to Yale, No Safe Spaces powerfully illustrates how the movement to limit speech has moved into mainstream arenas
as well. Prager and Carolla recognize that "common sense and values" are disappearing for the first time since our country's founding.
The
Source of the Media's Post-Truth Analysis. The source of the left-liberal bias in journalism is no
mystery. You need look no further than the faculty of any journalism or communications department at any American
university. But what really needs to be understood is how the people in the fake news business came to be liberated
from feeling any obligation to tell the truth. [...] For some time now, something called postmodernism has ruled on American
campuses, and a core idea of the postmodernists is that claims to truth are meaningless.
Reclaiming
Common Sense. How has it come to pass that in America, a man can identify as a woman, and his linguistic
affirmation by itself, at least in New York City, obligates others to refer to him as "her"? And why is it increasingly
considered mandatory to declare that men taking female hormones can compete against women in sporting events? What
aberrant philosophical doctrine, you may ask, is behind the assertion that there are sixty-three genders or that marriage
must no longer be considered the union of a man and a woman? The answer to these and other absurdities can be found in
Robert Curry's new book, Reclaiming Common Sense: Finding Truth in a Post-Truth World.
A Great
Awakening to the Fight is Upon Us. [Scroll down] No more compromise, no more calls for
bipartisanship. Republicans have been outfoxed on that score every time. [...] The old liberal promises of compromise
and conciliation were and are false (remember the pledge that when we get same-sex marriage we'll be done with sex and gender
issues?). Barack Obama's reasonableness was a disguise, Joe Biden's Scranton liberalism a pose. Obergefell
was but a step in the never-ending reduction of traditional sex roles. The inclusion of minority literature and history
in the curriculum during the 1970s and '80s wasn't to serve the ideals of diversity. It was to redefine America as a
racist creation from 1619 to the present. The Left has been making war by other means for 50 years, changing history
textbooks, peddling films that mock fatherhood and faith, designing bogus studies that show pay gaps and systemic racism.
But it's been a war nonetheless, and a successful one because conservative leaders and intellectuals have failed to assess the
other side.
Lies catch
up with Democrats. For years, Democrats brushed aside concerns that by giving them an inch they would seek a
mile. But Obamacare did lead to a demand for Government Health Care For All. Gay civil unions did lead to gay
marriage and now transgendering (castrating) boys. Beto O'Rourke wants to use gay marriage to regulate religions via
the tax code. His call for gun confiscation drew calls to shut up and not give the store away. Democrats lie
about their goals.
Fairfax
County, Virginia Presents Dire Warning to America. Fairfax's descent into its current state started with a wave
immigration, much of it illegal, into the area which washed away Republican political viability. Fairfax County became
a nullification (sanctuary) county in 2018 and now puts a significant chunk of money into its budget to defend noncitizens
from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, although the problem started long before that. By 2015, 30% of the
county was foreign-born. MI-13, [sic] a brutal criminal gang, is now more active than ever, and the once marquee
schools have started what will be a long slide through mediocrity to abysmal. Fairfax just ranked seventh among the
highest-crime sanctuary jurisdictions, ranking just below Chicago and tied with a nearby Maryland county that has had at
least nine illegal alien sexual assaults since its sanctuary policy was declared in late July. That's staggering.
Fairfax County now is on a list of shame with Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco.
We
need to fight for the values that made America great. The left railed against our soldiers during the Vietnam
War. The left calls those who believe in a supreme being or the commitment of marriage uninformed and
anachronistic. They're now openly saying that churches that hold traditional values should lose their tax-exempt
status. The Left doesn't care about our enormous debt, pushes for socialism, and criticizes the Boy Scouts. The
Left thinks it's OK that our schools don't teach about the founding fathers or free markets. They want you to think
America was never great. To a degree, the pressure from the Left is working. Americans under 30 are less
interested in joining the military. Church attendance is at an all-time-low, participation in the Boy Scouts, even
after allowing girls in, has shrunk, and many are choosing not to have families. Socialism, the single most discredited
idea of the last century, an idea that led millions into poverty and tyranny around the globe, has gained a foothold in one
of our two political parties.
How
to Bring Down the Ideology of the Left. The ideology of the Left is integral to the Left's power.
Democrats seek to codify political correctness into legislation as settled verities admitting no further debate. This
is despite the abject failure of their policies to solve the problems they contend need fixing. The welfare state has
spawned intergenerational dependence and misery as well as national debt. Their self-appointed victims have not been
healed by un-gendered bathrooms.
Trickle-Down
Bureaucracy Is Destroying Vermont. So much money is spent on reports, studies, and employment for state workers
that Vermont's property tax rates are some of the highest in the nation. To the extent that any of the money does come
back down, it is indeed a mere trickle. Vermont demonstrates the government bloat that plagues many states, and the
effects are becoming apparent. Vermont now has fewer than 700 conventional dairy farms — but the Vermont
Department of Agriculture and the UVM Extension Service steadily increase employees, and salaries. This is quite
typical of the virus-like quality of the Vermont bureaucracy — it grows, and citizens lose wealth or leave.
Vermont has nearly twice as many full-time state employees per 10,000 residents as New Hampshire, yet Vermonters are
struggling much more than their thriving neighbors. There is no growth, and the governor has infamously offered $10,000
bribes to out-of-state earners to reside in Vermont.
Eco
madness may be reason for disastrous Boeing 737 MAX safety issues. Air travel, which accounts for 2 percent of
global emissions, has become the great bogeyman for climate alarmists, sparking a backlash against airlines. Punitive
eco-taxes, aviation regulations, activist investors, green NGOs and climate-aware passengers conspire to force airlines and
manufacturers to lower CO2 emissions by using less fuel, which accounts for 99 percent of aviation's carbon footprint.
No one has said it explicitly yet, but this relentless pressure to reduce emissions appears to have been a significant factor
in the disastrous safety failures of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, which resulted in two fatal crashes in the past year,
claiming 346 lives. The warning from Boeing's catastrophes is that climate ideology can have fatal consequences.
The Derangement
Syndromes of Our Time. Who doesn't feel compassion? Who wouldn't do whatever they can to help someone in
need? But there are intractable problems with compassion gone wild. In practice, misguided compassion breeds
debauchery and dependence. Anyone wishing to see the former is invited to drive the streets of San Francisco, where
they may smell human excrement, tons of which are deposited each week on the sidewalks and gutters by the city's nearly
10,000 homeless. They may witness thousands of intravenous drug addicts buying and injecting this poison in
state-sanctioned acts of slow-motion suicide. Anyone wishing to see the latter is invited to tour pretty much any
legacy housing project in America, where welfare checks and free rent made the presence of a father not merely unnecessary
but economically disadvantageous.
NYC
is 'Spiraling Down to Chaos' Following Attack on 20-Year-Old EMT Worker. A union boss representing First
Responders across New York City slammed Big Apple Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday [10/23/2019]; saying his policies have led
to "chaos" that is nearing "the point of no return." "Mayor Bill de Blasio is being asked to do more to protect first
responders in the wake of an attack on a 20-year-old emergency medical technician as he was transporting an emotional
disturbed person to the hospital," reports CBS New York.
Moral
Relativism Taking Over Everything: Sports, Politics, Libraries. Portland liberals are so far removed from
the truth that they've decided to ban urinals in their $195-million remodel of the Portland Building, which houses the city's
administrative offices. In an email to city employees explaining this ignorant decision, Portland chief administrative
officer Tom Rinehart said, "I am convinced that this is the right way to ensure success as your employer, remove arbitrary
barriers in our community, and provide leadership that is reflective of our shared values." Similar perverse
"leadership" and "values" recently led insurance giant Kaiser Permanente to promote the evil "Drag Queen Story Time." The
television ad shows a grown man dressed as a woman laughing and dancing with small children. As Tyler O'Neil rightly
notes, this is a "clear attempt to normalize Drag Queen Story Hour. The smiling, laughing children are a subliminal
message that full-grown men dressing up like women and acting sexual around children is fun, not disturbing."
Of Electricity and Ideology.
[Scroll down] "For decades," [Kay] Grimes wrote, "traditional forest management was scientific and successful — that is
until ideological, preservationist zealots wormed their way into government and began the overhaul of sound federal forest management through
abuse of the Endangered Species Act and the 're-wilding, no-use movement.'" U.S. Representative Tom McClintock, whose Northern California
district includes the Yosemite Valley and the Tahoe National Forest, told Grimes that the U.S. Forest Service 40 years ago departed from
"well-established and time-tested forest management practices." "We replaced these sound management practices with what can only be
described as a doctrine of benign neglect," McClintock explained. "Ponderous, byzantine laws and regulations administered by a growing
cadre of ideological zealots in our land management agencies promised to 'save the environment.' The advocates of this doctrine have
dominated our law, our policies, our courts, and our federal agencies ever since."
Political
correctness versus common sense. Not long ago, everyone understood the unchanging commonsense reality that
human beings are either male or female. Today in New York City, the rules have been changed — and failure to
keep up can have dire consequences. New York City's special 31 genders are surrounded by special legal protections.
Businesses can now be fined as much as $250,000 for refusing to address someone by his preferred pronoun. As we have seen
in the news, even in cities that have not yet have caught up with New York City in terms of imposing legal penalties, failing a
test of political correctness about genders can result in public shaming or the loss of a job. [...] The important thing to
understand is that the masters of political correctness are not done yet. They have given us a glimpse of the future they
have planned for us. If they continue to have their way, more and more will be required of us, and the penalties will
eventually go beyond mere fines and public humiliation.
Social
and Political Disintegration Is Accelerating. In 1960, 5% of the nation's children were born out of wedlock;
but in the last few years, the percentage is hovering around 40%. Sexual immorality is further intensified by promotion of
sexual activity in our public schools. Free condoms are regularly distributed in our educational institutions.
Some states have clinics where, after a ten-minute interview, young girls are given referrals to get an abortion (no parental
or caregiver consent, for example, is needed in New York State as well as other states). In many states, at least one
parent must be informed, but consent is not required. Little children are sitting on the laps of drag queens in library
"readings" and some of those drag queens have records of pedophilia. Homosexual marriage is now the law of the land.
Trashy exhibitionists are singing on youtube.com and throughout the media. A million babies are aborted a year, not for
"women's health" in 90+% of the cases, but because of women's priorities. These changes in our sexual mores have led to
the disintegration of the family.
Air
Canada to stop announcing 'ladies and gentlemen' in recognition of gender fluidity. Employees aboard Air Canada
flights will no longer greet guests by referring to them as "ladies and gentlemen" or "mesdames et messieurs," which has been
typical protocol for years, in an effort to be conscious of gender fluidity. Flight attendants and other staff will not
use the language in boarding announcements, and the company instead plans to replace the standard greetings with neutral
words, such as "everybody" or "tout le monde."
Crazy
and Woke on the Western Front of Progressive Insanity. Thanks to progressive ideology as expressed in laws and court rulings,
in California today you cannot arrest and hold vagrants for petty theft or possession of hard drugs; you cannot move them out of public
spaces unless you can provide them with free and "permanent supportive housing;" you cannot commit demonstrably insane people to asylums;
and publicly funded shelters must offer food and urgent care without any preconditions whatsoever. Testimonials from residents of
Venice Beach provide ample evidence of what happens when you impose these progressive policies on an urban area bordered on the west by
some of the most inviting beaches and agreeable weather in the world. An estimated 1,200 homeless people have set up permanent
encampments in this three square mile beach town. They almost never use actual toilets.
Disposable
Humans and the Downfall of Civilization. How has the progressive movement made evil a common occurrence?
Lack of morality, ethics, and the inability to determine what is a valued life; and what is viewed a mere inconvenience, to
be removed, much like a dermatological imperfection. Over the years I have watched the erosion of society, and the
uprising of "wokeness." Nothing has prepared me for the utter lack of regard for life as we currently see in today's
world. Serial abortion as a form of birth control, and in some cases an appalling sexual fetish is being seen more as
society degrades and crumbles, before our very eyes, each passing day.
Imagining Chelsea
Clinton's America. [Scroll down] In city after city, draconian ordinances overrode zoning laws with
decades of precedence. Investors could demolish single family homes and erect fourplexes, or more units, where one
household had previously stood. Rent control laws, combined with mandated conservation retrofits (to prevent climate
change), made it hard for anyone apart from large institutional investors to maintain rental properties. Single family
homes became worth more to buyers if they were demolished and replaced with apartments. New laws made it obligatory to
accept Section 8 renters whose rent would be paid by taxpayers. Corporate behemoths busted block after block, in city
after city, turning communities into government housing projects. Those who objected were branded as racists, deniers,
xenophobes, and NIMBYs. They were silenced. Chelsea Clinton, of course, along with all the politically connected,
well fed animals in this new Animal Farm called America, resided in a gated community.
Can
we keep our Republic? Starting with Woodrow Wilson, and continuing through FDR's New Deal, LBJ's Great Society
programs, and Barack Obama's further expansion of entitlement programs and take-over of the health care industry, the country
has been moving relentlessly toward more and more centralization of federal power, expansion of the federal regulatory
regime, and encroachment on the freedom of states, civil society, families, and individuals. And don't forget, along
the way Republican elites have supported and abetted this weakening of the Republic. They have created or expanded
intrusive regulatory agencies like the EPA and the Department of Education, illiberal programs like race-conscious
set-asides, and increased the number and scope of redistributionist programs like Medicaid and Social Security. More
recently they have joined forces with the identity-politics left to support amnesty for illegal aliens and laxer immigration
protocols. Worse yet, they have frequently endorsed and legitimized the politicized, illiberal ideology of race,
"gender," ethnicity, and sexual identity that provides Democrats with tools for leveraging political power and influence in
order to achieve "social justice."
Dismaying
Dumbed-down Discourse. I see the crowds cheering the 2020 Democrat candidates and wonder if they're being paid
to appear, or are they really, really ignorant about what this party had become? It is now the party of open borders,
socialism, atheism, infanticide and is offering lots of free stuff that's being paid by taxpayers. It is also the party
that is completely committed to everything the "alphabet people" espouse. The LGBQT, aka the alphabet people (dubbed
by the brave comedian Dave Chapelle), has the Left convinced that there are more than two genders and thus it is perfectly
fine that men claiming to be women can now compete against women in sports events and can use women's toilets —
where little girls can no longer feel safe. This is pure insanity but if the progressive left certifies it, the
mentally deficient will accept it.
Progressing
toward Extinction. [Scroll down] Many young people live in random little groups — making a
semi-permanent lifestyle of the arrangements one finds in college dorms. In our particular brave new world, people are
free to lavish their attention either on themselves or, if they have some nagging concerns about posterity, on the latest
attempt to save the planet. Banning of plastic straws is both easier and apparently more noble than nurturing new human
beings. Though still shackled to some semblance of their animal desires through myriad and faddish varieties of sex,
today's young people are, at least, unshackled from the animal consequences. This is what is now called progress.
People can hope to binge-watch some anesthetic pablum to the end of their days, uninterrupted by the squeal of their
progenies' voices or the irritating patter of their tiny unshod feet. Children are an inconvenience, and grandchildren
are worse.
The
Left to America's Children: Your Past Is Terrible, and Your Future Is Terrible. A rule of life is that
everything the left touches it ruins: art, music, Christianity, Judaism, race relations, male-female relations, universities,
high schools, elementary schools, late-night comedy, sports, liberty, journalism, the Boy Scouts, national economies,
language and everything else it influences. [...] To this list, we can now add childhood and children.
Portland
Bans Urinals In $195M 'Gender-Neutral' Remodel of Government Building. The City of Portland has banned urinals
in the $195 million remodel of the Portland Building, which houses administrative offices for the city. While urinals
use less water than toilets, they are a relic of a bygone era when men and women were recognized as biologically different.
A spokeswoman told NBC affiliate KGW News that she could not estimate how much it will cost to remove the urinals, which have been
a feature of the building since its construction in 1982. Chief Administrative Officer Tom Rinehart explained the urinal ban
in an email to employees last February.
'The
Leprosy of Unreality' and the Demise of the Left. Evidence of the splintering social fabric is already apparent.
Rumors of crimes at the hands of the Democrat-controlled Deep State abound and undermine public trust. Snowflakes demand places
safe from the real world. Children are recruited into the fairy tale of rescuing the planet from an imaginary dragon. Through
childish games of dressing up as boys when they are women and wearing lipstick despite being men, our youths are indoctrinated into insanity.
The
50 most miserable cities in America. Not the worst, just the most miserable. We've identified the 50 most
miserable cities in the US, using census data from 1,000 cities across the country, taking into consideration population
change (because if people are leaving it's usually for a good reason), the percentage of people working, median household
incomes, the percentage of people without healthcare, median commute times, and the number of people living in poverty.
Often, these cities have been devastated by natural disasters. They've had to deal with blight, and with high crime
rates. Economies have struggled after industry has collapsed. These cities also tend to have high rates of
addiction. The state with the most miserable cities was California, with 10 in the top 50. New Jersey
was second with nine, and Florida had six.
California
Shocked To Find Bill Decriminalizing Retail Theft Resulted In... More Retail Theft. A few years ago, California
passed one in a series of bills aimed at emptying the jails and prisons. Proposition 47 carried the disingenuous name
of "the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act and its stated purpose was to keep non-violent offenders out of jail. To
achieve this goal, the state decriminalized a number of lesser offenses, including retail theft. The law raised the
value of the amount of merchandise someone could steal while still only being charged with a misdemeanor to nearly one
thousand dollars. To the great surprise of the government, people noticed this change and began taking advantage of
it. They have now recorded multiple years of steadily increasing, organized robbery. These plots are known as
"mass grab and dash" thefts and they generally involve large numbers of young people all entering a store at the same time,
grabbing armfuls of merchandise and dashing back out to their vehicles and hitting the highway. Not only are robberies
on the rise, but arrests and prosecutions are down. Who could possibly have predicted this?
Gun
Control: Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem. When liberals spend years telling people that life isn't
sacred, should they really be surprised that more people treat life as not being sacred? There have been more than 61
million abortions since Roe v. Wade in 1973. Every single Democrat candidate in contention is applying the Pete
Buttigieg "breath" standard, meaning they all support abortion up to, and perhaps beyond, birth. When you make an
effort to devalue life in the interest of political expedience, people will be affected in tragic, horrible, and surprising
ways. Mother Teresa once said "the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the
child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill
even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" That's a mighty good question.
The
American Left Is Completely Insane. It isn't just elected Democrats at the national level. Cities like
Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles and San Francisco — run by Democratic mayors and city councils — have
high rates of crime and homelessness. San Francisco and Los Angeles have growing cases of typhoid fever, tuberculosis
and other diseases borne by fleas and human feces, piles of which coat the streets. California's legislature has not
been able to solve those grave problems. But it has banned plastic straws in restaurants.
The
Broken Promise of American Cities. Hope for a better future in California is rapidly becoming a stillborn
dream, as the connection between decay and the politics of progressivism becomes painfully clear. The proponents of
this secular theology may be getting a wakeup call soon, as the Golden State's cities teeter on the edge of bubonic oblivion,
with rats teeming through the streets of Los Angeles, even forcing temporary, partial closures of City Hall. Skid Row
has unfurled its filthy tendrils into the halls of the Los Angeles Police Department's Central Division station, with
officers falling ill as vermin lay siege to their precinct. But the explosion of the rat population, catalyzed by the
feculence of homeless encampments across the state, has not deterred lawmakers from advancing a bill to ban rat poison in the
name of human health and environmental concerns. In the progressive mind, even mentioning the risk of disease caused by
these policies is somehow tantamount to racist dog-whistling. San Francisco, the rainbow flagship of our brave new
world, even has a "no-kill, catch-and-release" policy for rodents.
Bill
would require gender 'X' option on all state documents. Advocates for a gender "X" designation on state documentation say
making people chose male or female is akin to making them lie, while opponents argue that a person's sex is a biological fact.
"If you look at your Massachusetts driver's license, it lists 'sex,' not 'gender,'" Andrew Beckwith of Massachusetts Family Institute
told the Herald. "The concept of 'gender identity' is based on internal feelings, but sex is binary (male or female) and grounded
in biology, and we believe that a state ID should reflect that objective fact." A bill that would require an "X" option on
all state documents that ask for gender identification, including driver's licenses, birth certificates and voter registration,
went before the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight on Tuesday [9/10/2019].
On Destroying America.
We are lied to, deceived, and manipulated constantly to believe what isn't so. [...] I can remember several generations back
when common sense was common. No longer. Criminals are treated as victims. White people are labeled as
oppressors and must apologize for it. Deranged people who need help are ignored, treated as normal, or just doing their
thing. And they are everywhere, creating chaos, as designed and expected.
The
Left's determination to destroy us from within. [Governor Newsom of California], and the rest of the Democrat
governors and mayors that destroyed their own states and cities, have not only ruined the municipalities that they control,
but have destroyed countless lives — namely, of those who barely subsist on the streets of these cities: Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Seattle, Baltimore, Chicago. (Chicago and Baltimore are the murder capitals of the
nation. Both have among the strictest gun control laws in the nation.) They willingly promulgate the drug use of their
homeless (they pass out free syringes) and seem to tolerate the vast homeless encampments and all they entail: discarded
needles, public defecation, crime, disease — in short, the destruction of the cities they've been allowed to take
over and ruin.
Criminologists Mislead
Us. There is significant bias among criminologists. The reason for that bias is that political leanings
of academic criminologists are liberal. Liberal criminologists outnumber their conservative counterparts by a ratio of
30-to-1. Ideology almost perfectly predicts the position of criminologists on issues from gun control to capital punishment
to harsh sentencing. Liberal criminologists march in step for gun control, oppose punitive prison sentences, and are
vehemently against the death penalty. In 2012, the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a study on the growth of
incarceration. It showed that from 1928 until 1960, crime rates rose slowly each year. After the 1960s, crime
rates exploded to unprecedented levels of violence until the 1990s.
Countering Progressive
Nihilism. America's homeless epidemic, along with a shocking rise in deaths from drug overdoses, stem from the
same root cause: liberal progressive ideology. The seductive power of this ideology, which brims in equal measure
with overwrought compassion for the less fortunate alongside fuming resentment towards the "privileged," has earned it a
dominant position in American culture. [...] While countless critical issues are being ignored or made worse thanks to the
influence of progressives, two of them, homelessness and drug related deaths, stand out.
25
common sense truths that you're no longer supposed to say. [#14] Just because a white person
criticizes or gets into a conflict with a minority doesn't mean it has anything to do with race. In fact, the vast
majority of the time it doesn't. [#15] Drag queens are deviants and shouldn't be allowed near children,
much less allowed to be part of story times for kids. [#16] There are only two genders. [#17]
If America were oppressive for minorities, they'd be leaving the country, not coming here in droves.
The Left's
Neverland. Now, over 150 years after the Civil War, we find ourselves living in a world that has tucked reality
away in a locked cupboard and our schools, our media, and many of our churches don't want it to get out. We live in a
TV-Internet-Smartphone world where our music is mostly canned, our connections with people are at least once-removed, and our
children never look up. The virtual has taken over to a point where people actually think we can alter history by
removing statues and painting over murals, and they have to change history because Neverland has to have its own annals, its
own chronicles. Neverland is not America. This explains why both Obama and Hillary could talk with such disdain
about half of the population. We aren't their people. They were running to be president of Neverland, not of
traditional America.
Vermont
Is Going Insane. Will the Rest of America Follow? [Scroll down] Thirty-plus years later, our youths
have been corrupted by unhealthy food, limitless violence in television and pornography, phone and internet obsession that
leaves them anxious and stressed, and Facebook that feeds toxicity. [...] Studies have found that 30% of college students
don't know how to boil an egg; 52% of high school students don't know how to change a tire; 70% of young people have no clue
how to sew on a button. Yet we grown-up adolescents are yoking them with responsibility to "lead" us to solve our social
ills while they can't find jobs, many require psychiatric medications, and the national deficit has exceeded the capacity of
the human mind to comprehend.
Transgender
insanity: Another big battle in the war on common sense. A women's shelter is being sued for turning away
a man dressed in a nightgown. Really. According to the reports, a very large and very inebriated man dressed in a
nightgown showed up at a women's shelter in downtown Anchorage, Alaska seeking entry. He was not admitted to stay the
night. As a result, the shelter is now embroiled in a legal battle. The Anchorage Equal Rights Commission (AERC),
an administrative agency within the municipality of Anchorage, has brought a discrimination case against the shelter.
War on cops in
Philadelphia. Many people across the nation watched the hours-long standoff and shooting of Philadelphia Police
Officers on TV. Nine officers were injured and six were wounded by gunfire. Thankfully, no officers were killed,
and the gunman finally surrendered. The following day I spoke to a Philly cop who had been on the scene. He
scoffed at the idea of Philadelphia Mayor James Kenny and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner arriving at the
hospital to visit the injured cops. He called the two "anti-cop liberals."
Terror without trust.
Already it has proved impossible to cap the number of genders. The epithets "racist" and "Nazi" are applied to an
ever-growing number of people who find themselves guilty of offenses that didn't even exist until recently. It is so
powerful it even knocks over the woke.
Missing
the Point of Gun Ownership. If there were ever a survey asking gun owners why they buy guns, I'd wager the
majority of them would say that it basically is for protection. The Second Amendment was not written for hunters but
for the people's self-protection, including protection from tyranny. The first thing smart dictators do is remove guns
from registered owners. [...] There have always been guns in the country but mass shootings of innocents were rare until the
1960's. [...] Would there have been a Columbine massacre if God had not been removed from the schools? Most of the mass
shooters fit the same profile. Most are single males and come from broken homes. Nearly all have been under the
influence of marijuana or psych drugs. Not sure if any of these murderers were regular church goers but I doubt it.
U.S.
Attorney Blasts Soros-Backed Philly D.A. For Putting Police in Danger With 'Culture of Disrespect'. In a
blistering statement Thursday [8/15/2019], United States Attorney William M. McSwain lashed out at the District Attorney of
Philadelphia, saying his "vile rhetoric" and lax law enforcement policies were putting police in danger. Larry Krasner,
the Philly D.A., is a far-left former civil rights defense attorney who has sued police more than 75 times, and has defended
far-left Occupy Philly activists and Black Lives Matter agitators. Left-wing hedge fund billionaire George Soros helped
put Krasner in office by donating an overwhelming $1.45 million to an independent political action committee backing his
campaign in 2017.
Leaving
the Democrats. I have had a great life in the greatest country on earth. All along the way, the Democrats
have stepped on me, taxed me more, lied to me, called me names, and demand I give up my rights. Democrats were the ones
pushing environmental causes at the expense of humans and government takeover of healthcare. They have mismanaged
everything they get their hands on, and then blame others for their own deeds. I watch them lie and cheat and twist
words. Democrats have alienated their own base to the point they have to argue for foreigners to come into this country
illegally in order to vote for Democrats, mainly by calling those of us opposed to this "racist." [...] I am now called
racist, homophobic, misogynist, and Islamaphobic. A gun-toting, Bible-believing bitter clinger. A deplorable.
A white nationalist. Nazi. I can't remember all of my Democrat party subtitles.
This
Is What LGBTQ Organizations Are Doing to Society. Virtually every week, there seems to be another issue that
preoccupies the country. But while our attention is focused on President Donald Trump, Google, Charlottesville, Russia,
impeachment, Jeffrey Epstein, the next elections, racism, a trade war with China, the #MeToo movement or something else,
LGBTQ organizations are quietly going about their work dismantling ethical norms, making a mockery of education, ruining
innocent people's lives and destroying children's innocence.
Twilight
Zone Nation. How in the world did we get to this Rod Serling place where drag queens are reading to our
children in our libraries? How, in a rational universe, did four ignorant, left-wing, lunatic women attain breathtaking
power in less than a year? When did sex trafficking become such a huge crisis? How is it that facts and evidence
and law have no pull at all anymore? We find ourselves, apparently all of a sudden, in a place where telling bald-faced
lies about anyone we want to slander is acceptable behavior, where billions of dollars of government money is unaccountably
missing and no one seems really upset by that malfeasance, where pedophilia is working its way into appropriate behavior.
Will
Any Single Intervention Eliminate Mass Shootings? [Scroll down] The next part of this puzzle is the very
definition of "mental illness." The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatry has been modified many times.
The most recent revision has removed most of the "gender dysphoria" diagnoses, normalizing the alphabet soup of sexual
preferences. This is done in the face of the fact that LGBTQ-whatever "gender preferences" are associated with higher
mortality than binary male/female identities. Doctors are supposed to "first do no harm." Normalizing a health risk
creates harm. This means that the DSM changes are not medical, they are political.
Where
does politics meet the divide? Does Rashida Tlaib's rhetoric inspire the protestors outside Mitch McConnell's
home? Is Elizabeth Warren responsible for the shooting in Dayton that left nine people dead? Does Ilhan Omar own
the anger of American's when she says that white men should be profiled?. [...] Is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her baseless
environmental screeds responsible for El Paso? The shooter's manifesto "An Inconvenient Truth" not echoing the President,
but liberals, AOC, and Al Gore's claims that we will be dead as a result of dwindling resources within 12 years? Does
Joe Biden's latest gaffe comment mean he is a White Supremacist, believing that while he might work on behalf of the poor brown
and black kids, white children are superior?
Trump
administration seeks to juice dishwashers by scrubbing energy regulations. For years, consumers have complained
about slower, noisier dishwashers that produce dirtier dishes, the result of tighter federal efficiency regulations that the
Trump administration is now seeking to unload. The Energy Department last month proposed a rule to create a new
dishwasher product class that would finish a normal cycle in an hour or less by using less stringent energy standards than
permitted under the current rules. Sam Kazman, general counsel of the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute,
which led the charge for the regulatory clean-up, said the ever-tighter restrictions on energy and water have produced
machines that take twice as long without getting dishes as scrubbed as earlier models.
Researchers:
Crumbling family structures are contributing to mass shootings. A study by the Family Research Council says
that crumbling traditional family structures are contributing to a wave of mental health issues that often lead people to
commit mass shootings and other violence. "The fact that we have an epidemic of absentee fathers in the home and that
we have a disintegrating family structure in America, which is brought about by a variety of things, is a major issue and a
major cause for what we see happening in these mass shootings," Ret. Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Vice
President of the FRC, told The Epoch Times.
El
Paso Shooting: Latest Atrocity Exploited by Democrats. The deranged gunman's views are all over the
ideological map. However, his environmental views are clearly the result of progressives dominating public education
and fake news media. This quote from the manifesto exposes his insane progressive environmental views.
The
link between pot and mass shootings may be closer than we think. You can't walk through the streets of
Manhattan these days without smelling weed. Even as evidence mounts of the health problems associated with marijuana,
New York has insisted on joining other greedy states scrambling to legalize this deceptively dangerous drug. It makes
no sense at a time when American youth is suffering from an unprecedented mental health crisis. And, in all honesty, we
cannot rule out a connection between increasing marijuana use, mental illness and the recent spate of mass shootings by
disturbed young males.
The
surprise isn't that we had two mass shootings in 24 hours, it's that we don't have many more. After the El Paso
and Dayton shootings at the end of last week, a friend of mine was asking how we can "pull young men out of the 4chan/8chan
toxic cesspool." [...] The problem with this kind of thinking is that there are certainly toxic forums out there, but they're
just toxic pools down river from our toxic culture. I challenge you to listen to the kind of common rhetoric coming out
of college campuses ("Hearing words I don't agree with is violence"), places like Twitter ("It sure would be a shame if
something happened to your kids") and our standard political discourse ("You're a Nazi" for wearing that hat.) and
tell me that they're not toxic as well.
El
Paso proves we live in a mean culture. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick went on a one-of-a-kind rant
Sunday on Fox television: "What do we expect," he asked, "when kids play video games instead of going to church?"
One of the shooters reportedly was acting out in real life a violent video game character. Children just entering grade
school today are being exposed to a boatload of vile and venom. To gratuitous killing. To music that celebrates
it. "Garbage in, garbage out." American children are being programmed in a culture that is vengeful, covetous,
and mean. When they put it all together and make it a reality, why are we so surprised? They are simply doing
what they've been taught.
An Open
Letter to Democrats Who Insist Politicians "Just Do Something". Thousands can die in America's impoverished
inner cities every year — with illegally acquired guns — and Democrats are silent. Perhaps it's
because they're the ones running those cities, like Chicago, Baltimore and Destroyt. And decades of Democrat leadership
have enabled the worst breed of gangsters by criminalizing gun ownership by law-abiding citizens.
Social
Media's Transition from Novelty to Malignancy. [Scroll down] The most recent and troubling development in
social media is the mob mentality. Often the sharing of an opinion elicits a storm of response, and vastly wider
distribution, via a person's now-expanded network of friends and followers. Far from sharing ideas and feelings frankly
and spontaneously, many people now assiduously avoid triggers, anything remotely resembling judgments of others, and even
witticisms that might offend. [...] We now have a kind of Online Stockholm Syndrome. You tread lightly with your social
media audience or risk caustic online retribution and even real-world consequences like shunning, loss of a job, having your
business boycotted, or worse.
President
Trump Shatters Left-Wing Myths. President Trump is boldly providing much-needed relief to the American people.
[...] And now he has pinpointed what we have all seen, namely: decades of liberal-run major cities, whose liberal
policies, corruption, and mismanagement have degraded these urban centers and harmed their inhabitants. The liberal
"icons" that have controlled these areas for decades have allowed them, through their enforced and sanctimonious liberalism,
to degenerate from once great cities to districts akin to hellholes. No, it is not about the race of the leaders, but
their liberal policies: witness what Bill DeBlasio is doing to New York. Untouchable liberal icons such as Elijah
Cummings are to blame, grandstanding about the U.S. southern border while remaining indifferent to what is happening within
their own district, unless as an excuse to demand that more funds be channeled their way.
The Voters
Do Deserve to be Neglected. One hears pundits on the Republican conservative side of the discussion bewailing
the misfortunes of the people of Baltimore in Elijah Cummings's rat-infested district. They say, "The people of Baltimore
deserve better. The American People deserve better." No, they don't. They deserve exactly what they have.
They deserve their rats and their crime rate. America still is, for now, a republic that operates on democratic principles
of voting. The people of Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, and St. Louis all have elected one Democrat after
another to lead them. St. Louis has not had a Republican mayor since 1949. Detroit since 1962. Chicago
since 1931. Baltimore since 1967. When people in a two-party country continue for more than half a century, without
interruption, electing candidates from the same party to lead them, even as their once-great cities fade into rat-infested murder
centers, then those voters do indeed deserve exactly, precisely what they have. They do not deserve a whit better than
they have chosen for themselves.
Baltimore
Is Worse than Trump Thinks. Democrats have gotten away with too much for too long in the cities they've
super-majority controlled: Baltimore, St. Louis, Philadelphia; Detroit; Chicago; New Orleans; Newark; Oakland, on
and on. Children become permanently entangled in inter-generational familial poverty, squalor, drugs, guns, failing
schools, juvenile violent crime, and lack of economic mobility. The end results of Democrat dominance are more shocking
and horrifying than most realize. It's high time for reasonable Americans to accept an uncomfortable and deadly
truth: Democrats destroy everything and everywhere they attach their tentacles to. The utter, abject failures of
Democrat-run cities are the most egregious cover-up by the DMIC in American history.
Trump
Speaks the Politically Incorrect Truth. These majority-minority districts frequently elect useless demagogues,
who deliver little, other than the rhetoric of flattery and blame. Cummings and his colleagues Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)
and Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas) are all archetypal cases. Not infrequently, extensive corruption is the handmaiden of
these politicians — Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick comes to mind. Trump's message in recent weeks is
straightforward: those who purport to represent these poor and desperate people provide little in the way of good government
or service to them. The state of America's lost cities — Detroit, Baltimore, Birmingham — is
familiar to anyone with eyes to see. One boarded-up building after another. Crime rates that rival
Venezuela's. Police insulted and attacked by shameless young people.
The Democratic Washing
Machine. The Democratic washing machine is so named because it was Democrats who decided to ruin a durable
product in a mature industry. In the name of saving electricity and saving water, they couldn't save just a little
electricity and a little water. No, they had to force manufacturers to create a product that used almost no
water. And to save electricity, they turned the control panel on the washing machine into something resembling the
bridge of a starship, with so many options you have to study a detailed manual even to figure out how to turn on the device.
A failure
to assimilate. Decent Americans of all colors have silently watched out-of-control black criminals destroy
city after city because raising any questions, doubts or objections bring down storms of career-destroying, job-ending
accusations of white racism or Uncle Tomism. This is the race conversation America has needed for so long, a
conversation where black destructiveness and visceral hatred of anything not black gets called out and held to account rather
than excused and let go. For decades in the inner-city thugs have murdered, raped, and destroyed with impunity as
beleaguered police come under attack for doing their jobs.
Why
Do Democrats Run All of the Dangerous and Rodent Infested Cities? Rep. Cummings, while being very obsessed
with Russia, seems utterly bewildered with the idea that anyone could dare question why so many billions of federal dollars
flow to places like West Baltimore when they are obviously doing no good. Look at other cities in similar dilapidation
and there holds a unique truth: Democrats run them all. How long will sewage run down the streets of San
Francisco? How long will St. Louis, Detroit, and Baltimore, continue to rotate as the nation's most dangerous
crime infested metros?
A
Spirit of Lawlessness Has Descended Upon America. We have raised an entire generation of Americans who have no
respect for the law, and now we are reaping what we have sown. I cannot even begin to tell you how alarmed I am by some
of the videos I have been watching lately. As you will see below, all over the nation, young people are brazenly
flouting the law, obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers and committing criminal acts in large groups. I
think "lawlessness" is perhaps the best word to describe what is happening, and many believe that what we have witnessed so
far is just the beginning.
The
Co-Conspirators in the American Left's Takeover of the Democratic Party. Using the cudgel of the mainstream
media, the entertainment complex and the education establishment combined with the apathy and cowardice of the Republican
Establishment, the American Left had successfully, within 25 years after the Reagan landslides, inculcated into a plurality
of the American people a belief that there are no moral absolutes and that the state, not God, is the source of the inalienable
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and thus the state can deny those rights to whomever it chooses. They
are creating the belief that this country's founding documents are arcane, racially insensitive and unsuitable for today.
They teach they young that this nation is and always has been racist and oppressive, that religious liberty, the right to bear
arms, and unfettered freedom of speech are subject to the whims of the state.
Immorality
Embraced by So-Called Christian Love. Situation ethics — introduced in 1966 by Joseph F.
Fletcher — came into vogue as a way to excuse pre-marital fornication by Christians, and anything that could be
considered Christian judgmentalism was muted by the liberal churches. In the name of love, increasing numbers of
churches became tolerant of sin. In the contemporary church world, tolerance of sin is no longer considered kind enough
or loving enough. Now, as seen by Joel Osteen's recent appearance at an LGBTQ event, celebration of sin is the step
beyond tolerance. A "woman's right to choose" is openly embraced by many members of the National Council of
Churches. Likewise, homosexuality among the clergy is acceptable.
The
Left is following Communism's playbook for revolution. This process continues and is manifested in the
widespread antipathy for sexual propriety, faith, and all that is great and good — and in the lust for perversion,
socialism, feminism, multiculturalism, "transgenderism," and anti-Americanism in general. We see it in the tearing down
of statues; removal of long present Christian symbols; leftist propaganda and decadence in schools and entertainment;,
prioritizing of illegal aliens over citizens; revising of American history and impugning of whites; and in attacks on the
Constitution, the Founding Fathers, and all things traditional. This destabilization of the American mind and moral
compass now has begotten, as it must, societal destabilization. This is reflected in, most obviously, the flooding of
our nation with unassimilable foreigners via a purposely porous border. This serves the Cloward-Piven goal of
overloading the system to cause breakdown, necessitating replacement of it with, the theory goes, a socialist one.
Of course, this human flood strains schools, hospitals, and services and resources in general.
How
Washington Has Helped Destroy American Civil Society and Family Life. The welfare state is another significant
driver of the decline of the nuclear family. Unsurprisingly, the black family is massively impacted. In 1965,
25 percent of all black children were born out of wedlock. In 2016, that rate had increased to 70 percent and
even topped 80 percent in certain urban areas. In the 1940s, this number was five percent, which was comparable to
that of white children. The Hispanic out-of-wedlock birth rate in 2016 was 52 percent, while for whites it was
30 percent. The rise in children born out of wedlock cannot be separated from the massive expansion of the welfare
state under Johnson's Great Society.
The
American Left Is Racist, Not President Trump. The problem with silencing an entire generation of white people
in the name of fighting racism is that while they have been silent, extreme environmentalism, anti-white racism, and creeping
socialism have swept across American culture, taking over our schools, universities, entertainment and media industries, our
corporations, and government at all levels. Unchecked, this will destroy the country.
Trump
is not a racist; he's pushing the Overton window to normal. For the past 60 years, Leftists have been pushing
the Overton window steadily (duh) left. From the manic colors of the LGBTQRSTUV+ rainbow, to contending that people can
magically use hormones and surgery to "change" their gender, to "shouting your abortion," Leftists are introducing entirely new
(and frequently insane) ideas into the realm of acceptable public conversation. [...] Think of ideas that were normal just a
decade ago: using pronouns consistent with biological sex, worrying about Muslim-inspired terrorism, admiring the Founding
Fathers, believing that a traditional male-female marriage is optimal for raising children, mentioning the Judeo-Christian God in
public, questioning anthropogenic climate change, or being anything but mindlessly positive about a member of a "Progressive
protected victim class." Nowadays, thanks to relentless media, entertainment, political, and educational pressure, voicing
those ideas creates the risk that the speaker will be shouted down, humiliated, fired, or even physically attacked.
How
Bureaucrats Ruin Everything From Dishwashers To Gas Cans To Cars. Have you ever wondered why dishwashers today
take twice as long to do a worse job of cleaning dishes? Or why it's so much harder to get gasoline out of a new gas
can? Or why cars made decades ago always turn heads, while today's are drab in the same way? There's a simple
answer to these modern-day mysteries: Government regulators. Take the dishwasher. Earlier this month, the
Department of Energy announced that it would revise its rules regarding dishwasher efficiency. Why? Because the
existing rules — which set limits on how much electricity and water a dishwasher may use — are forcing
manufacturers to build machines that are worse than ever.
Dallas Drag
Queen Show Promoted to Infants. The City of Dallas Public Library is currently advertising a controversial and
divisive drag queen show to be held at the Grauwyler Park Branch location and that the show is appropriate for age groups
from infants to 11 years old. The drag queen performers for this public library event during the day are employees of
an adult night club venue where children of this age are not permitted to enter. The drag queen event is scheduled to
take place at a public library Saturday [7/13/2019] at 1 pm where children will be able to "hear stories, sing, dance, and
interact with these fabulous ladies" according to the library event page. This Dallas event follows on the heels of a
similar and controversial drag queen event that was canceled by the city government of Leander, and in Houston where two
drag queens involved with these shows were discovered to be registered sex offenders.
Pelosi vs.
AOC: It's a Beautiful Thing. Everything about modern leftist ideology is extreme. It is extreme in
substance, and its practitioners are self-absorbed, sanctimonious, uncompromising and often irrational.
Intersectionality zealots are disciplining white feminists for their selfish advocacy. Biological males are dominating
female athletic events courtesy of the transgender movement. Leftists of color and female gender are dissing old white
men despite the men's long records of dedication to the sacred cause of progressivism. Some women of color are being
told they are not black enough to lead the cause.
Democrats
are Officially the Party of Derangement. If any of the 20 Democrats win in 2020, we can officially say goodbye
to our democracy as we know it. College campuses have already been destroyed. The two left coasts are a disaster
and demographic changes are leading to several purple states turning blue as the Democrats' refusal to address the
immigration crisis proves successful in their quest for power. More ignorant, arrogant, and bigoted representatives
will be elected to Congress in the manner of AOC, Omar and Tlaib and Republicans will find themselves more and more
marginalized. We can only hope that the majority of Americans watching this disaster unfold wake up and realize that
intolerance for thee ultimately leads to intolerance for me. Democrats do not care about Americans' rights —
they seek totalitarian power. They need to be stopped.
Julian
Castro Pounds the Table, Demanding Abortion for Men, Too. [Scroll down] In this case, I guess
Julián Castro's support for transgender abortion contains some semblance of warped logic. Not that this highly
implausible and as yet scientifically impossible scenario is worth mentioning in a presidential debate when you are already
limited by time and must choose your words wisely. And not that there are other more practical, more pressing issues to
be dealt with. But that's what you get from a political party that wants to fund the kinds of procedures that could put
babies inside men's bodies, while simultaneously fighting for laws that would allow these same babies to get ripped out again.
The Editor says...
Identity theft is one thing, but this opens the door to fraud, most of all. One cannot take advantage of credit
if the customer, the merchant, and the bank can't even agree on the customer's name. Anyone who is so confused and so mercurial
about his or her own name should have a credit rating of zero. Pay in cash or be gone.
Woman's
'Hail Satan' invocation prompts walkout from Alaska town meeting. Several government officials and attendees
walked out of an Alaska government meeting south of Anchorage this week when an official who's also a member of the Satanic
Temple ended the opening prayer with "Hail Satan." The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly's previous policy stated that
those delivering the invocation must be a member of a recognized church, but the rules were changed last October when
Alaska's Supreme Court decided in favor of the ACLU that the policy was unconstitutional, according to Alaskan Public
Media. Iris Fontana, the Satanic Temple member, was one of the plaintiffs in the case. An atheist and a Jewish
woman were also involved in the lawsuit.
'Hail
Satan' opening prayer at Alaska government meeting prompts walkouts, protest. Several attendees at a government
meeting open to the public in Alaska walked out in protest after an opening prayer praised Satan. The Associated Press
reports the prayer, where a woman declared "Hail Satan," was given by Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana, who won the right
to open the meeting with an invocation of her choice.
Student
Gets Kicked Out of Class For Saying There's Only Male and Female. This is just an amazing video to watch.
Hat tip to Rod Dreher for covering it. The student, Murray, tells the teacher that there are only two genders, male and
female. The teacher tells him that the national authority says otherwise. [Video clip]
Progressives
Seek To Make Segregation Great Again. The progressive left touts segregation on college campuses. You
have probably already heard of minority students requesting separate dorm facilities and safe spaces. But there is
another aspect of college life that the left wants to segregate: Graduations. Virginia Tech University recently
started offering ten segregated graduation ceremonies that are separated by race, sexuality, and other identity groups.
Students are allowed to participate in the graduation of their choosing. The ceremonies are open to anyone who wishes
to attend, but the participants must fall into the right category.
Marijuana
damages adolescent brains, health professionals write in op-ed. Two health professionals penned an op-ed in The
New York Times on Sunday that despite society's shift on marijuana use, it does not change the fact that the drug is not safe
for high school and college students. Kenneth L. Davis, the president and chief executive of the Mount Sinai Health
System, and Mary Jeanne Kreek, the head of Laboratory of the Biology of Addictive Diseases at Rockefeller University, cited
studies that show a "deleterious impact on cognitive development in adolescents."
San
Francisco and Los Angeles. If you are planning a visit to San Francisco or Los Angeles, may we ask why?
On a casual walk in downtown San Francisco or Los Angeles, tourists will encounter streets and sidewalks strewn with drug
needles, garbage, and feces. Gang activity is high in both cities. Both cities find themselves saddled with
liberal/progressive governmental policies. As one serious result, living conditions for low-income residents of San
Francisco and Los Angeles routinely reach toxic levels.
Reality
is Not an Option. What is "equality before the law" when some people are entitled to extra protections under
hate crime laws? What is "basic human decency" when, to be a victim, one must identify a group of people as oppressors
and revile them publicly as a class? [...] There isn't the slightest evidence that illiterate third-worlders or a tattoo-defaced
generation of the sexually confused are inclined to be either tolerant or productive citizens. There is plenty of
evidence that many of these disorderly creatures have good old-fashioned tribal axes to grind.
Texas
town overrun with crime and disease. The mayor has had enough. Uvalde is a small town of 17,000 inhabitants,
and they are now overrun by illegal immigrants and an international cartel smuggling operation. Uvalde is 40-60 miles
from the border, but it might as well be right at the border. "We are in no man's land. The state is not doing anything;
the federal government is not doing anything," the mayor, who is begging the politicians to get involved, said. "We are getting
nothing. I've lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this. The people in the communities are getting
scared. What is coming that we don't see? Who knows? People up north and in D.C. have no clue what is
going on here. They don't realize that these people are not being screened for diseases. We're fed up."
Situated at the crossroads of major highways coming up from border towns in the Laredo and Del Rio border sectors, Uvalde has
now become a dumping ground for migrants coming north. And they are not just coming from Central America.
Venezuela:
hyperinflation leads to new banknotes for second time in a year. Venezuela is releasing new banknotes for the
second time in less than a year, the central bank said on Wednesday, after hyperinflation eroded the effects of an August
2018 monetary overhaul meant to improve availability of cash. Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, last year cut
five zeroes off the currency and prices. The move was supposed to ease shortages of cash that pushed most of the
economy toward debit and credit card operations and put heavy strain on digital commerce platforms. Banknotes of
10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 bolivar denominations will begin circulating on Thursday [6/13/2019] to "make the payment
system more efficient and facilitate commercial transactions", the central bank said in statement.
Minneapolis' Sacred Stupidity.
[T]oday's generation of Democrat machine politicians in charge of our cities don't bother trying to sell themselves as
capable administrators anymore. How can they, when Los Angeles' trash piles rival those of Kinshasa, homeless bums
micturate on passing taxicabs on New York streets, it's recommended that one wear galoshes on the streets of San Francisco so
as to avoid ruining one's Ferragamos by stepping in freshly-lain human feculence, and New Orleans is inundated each time
there's a hard rain because the city's pumps and drainage infrastructure are virtually untouched by improvement despite
billions in spending for just that purpose?
Deep
Blue Connecticut Is A Model For How Not To Run An Economy. Connecticut is currently facing a $3.7 billion-plus
deficit, but the problem is much worse than it looks. Research found that Connecticut has the worst-funded pension
system in the country for the second year in a row. Unfunded pension liabilities amount to $117.7 billion and unfunded
liabilities for other post-employment benefits (OPEB) amount to $36.7 billion. While the 6.35 percent general sales
tax rate isn't raised, the new budget expands the sales tax base to include more goods and services. The sales tax would
expand to include parking, dry cleaning, laundry, interior design services and safety apparel.
Brown and Out in Beverly
Hills. Leftists advance incrementally. Their template is as simple as it is predictable: Ask for a
little, and swear that the demands will end there. Most regular folks will give in because decent people generally seek
compromise. But to leftists, compromise is merely a temporary step, a strategy. "We don't want gay marriage, we
just want equal partner benefits! Civil unions will shut us up." "Don't Ask, Don't Tell is fine. It's not
like we want the military to pay for tranny surgeries!" "Gender discrimination laws will not lead to the
government forcing women to let men use their bathrooms."
Life
In the Socialist Paradise of Bernie Sanders and AOC. Venezuela is the latest chapter in the long story of
socialist crimes against humanity. Venezuela reminds us how long a country can circle the drain, destroyed by socialism
but still hanging on by its fingernails. Reuters, a liberal news source, has the latest on Venezuela's long goodbye,
but never mentions the fact that it is socialism that destroyed what once was one of the world's richest countries.
Who Are the Big Babies
Now. This is the mediocracy at work. They revile greatness to mask their own inadequacies. Hence,
contrived hate crimes, fat shaming, participation medals, identity politics, demand for rights already accrued, for lopsided
equality, for affirmative action, resentment politics, no-platforming, and other corrosions of democratic health.
The decline of the
family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness. Americans are suffering from a bad case of loneliness.
The number of people in the United States living alone has gone through the studio-apartment roof. A study released by
the insurance company Cigna last spring made headlines with its announcement: "Only around half of Americans say they have
meaningful, daily face-to-face social interactions." Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many
people as obesity and smoking.
California
Is The Future The Liberal Elite Wants For You. [Scroll down] Already, petty crime has been effectively
legalized. Crooks get a free pass on the first $950 a day they steal. [...] And now pot's effectively legal here, which
is spectacular. Just what Cali needed — more people on a drug that makes them dumber and lazier. Take
a walk down the street and see the sights! Look, there's a schizo with his cargo shorts around his ankles baying at the
billboard informing you about how no human being is illegal! Oh, and there's another homeless druggie muttering to
himself about alien carrots stealing his vital essences as he pushes along his stolen shopping cart heaped with refuse.
If you're appalled or distressed by this, you're the bad guy. Caring means letting lunatics and addicts wallow in the
elements enslaved by their insanity and/or sickness. Shame on you for wanting your kids to be able to play
outside. Hypodermic needles and piles of human waste on the sidewalk are just part of the price you must pay to dwell
in the sun.
Law
enforcement, media changed standards for Trump. One of the more unfortunate effects of the Trump-Russia
investigation — and there have been many — is the weakening of traditional standards of argument and
proof in the public debate over allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to fix the 2016 election.
(Just for the record: It didn't.) In particular, angry disputes about the president have done terrible harm to
the principle that an investigator, be it a journalist or a prosecutor, should meet at least some standard of proof before
leveling an accusation.
Perfect
storm brews in Portland Maine as Mayor, Council welcome illegals. Currently, there are three major factors leading up
to the storm in Portland. All three involve illegal immigration: [#1] Portland has had an incredible influx of illegal
immigrants over the last few years. [#2] Immigrants are supported by a heavily strained, taxpayer-funded city welfare system.
[#3] City officials are encouraging the situation while being unable to provide satisfactory solutions to the problems they have created.
Green
Policies Turned California A Charred Black. More than half of California's roughly 105 million acres are owned
by the federal and state governments. It is on these sprawling parcels that the wildfires tend to rage before devouring
private land, homes, and businesses. Public lands "have proved far more vulnerable to forest fires than properties
owned by private groups," Hoover Institution scholar Richard Epstein wrote in California's Forest Fire Tragedy. [...]
The loudest voices assign blame for the fires to man-made climate change. But the human activity primarily responsible
for the destructive spread of wildfires is public policy favoring burned timber over harvested timber. While maybe
well-intended, laws inspired by the 1970s environmentalist movement, which is determined to make sure saw blades and trees
never meet, have stoked the furnaces.
San
Francisco: The Radical Left in Charge. In America's largest coastal metropolises, Democrats rule.
For all intents and purposes, there are no Republicans. Today, for instance, the New York City school commissioner is
hard at work trying to destroy the city's public schools. He is firing white administrators. He is telling school
principals to give special privileges to minority children. He wants to dumb down New York's premier high schools, in
the name of diversity. And yet, New York is not quite in the league of San Francisco, now become America's urban basket
case. It is worth noting that the city is home to House Speaker Pelosi, who is hard at work slandering the president of the
United States.
Leftist Heartbreak in San
Francisco. Like most big cities, San Francisco is poorly run, stridently progressive, and overly regulated.
Unlike many other big U.S. cities, it's located on one of the most scenic spots on Earth and has delightful year-round
weather. I take no pleasure in seeing such a glorious place run into the ground by bad leaders (and voters), even if
I occasionally struggle with Schadenfreude. But oddly enough, San Francisco's harshest critics these days
are not on the Right. To many progressives, San Francisco has turned from a source of their love and affection into a
painful disappointment.
'Sky-High'
Trash Piles Found In Los Angeles, Raising Concerns About Typhus. Apparently, problems with waste are not
limited to San Francisco. NBC4 reported Monday [5/20/2019] that "sky-high" piles of rotting trash were found around Los
Angeles, leading some to worry about a new typhus outbreak. "Even the city's most notorious trash pile, located between
downtown LA's busy Fashion and Produce districts, continues to be a magnet for rats after it was cleaned up months ago.
The rodents can carry typhus-infected fleas, which can spread the disease to humans through bacteria rubbed into the eyes or
cuts and scrapes on the skin, resulting in severe flu-like symptoms," the outlet reported. [Video clip]
San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll.
San Francisco is the nation's leader in property crime. Burglary, larceny, shoplifting, and vandalism are included
under this ugly umbrella. The rate of car break-ins is particularly striking: in 2017 over 30,000 reports were filed,
and the current average is 51 per day. Other low-level offenses, including drug dealing, street harassment,
encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant. Many in
law enforcement blame the crime wave on Proposition 47, which in 2014 downgraded possession of illegal narcotics for personal
use and theft of anything under $950 in value from felonies to misdemeanors. Anti-incarceration advocates disagree with
that argument, but theft is indisputably booming, and narcotics activity is exploding on sidewalks, parks, and playgrounds.
When compounded with other troubles for which the city is now infamous (human feces, filth, and homelessness, which is up
17 percent since 2017), San Franciscans find themselves surrounded by squalor and disorder.
Surprise!
Learning about Cotton in School Is Racist Now. I currently live in Arlington, Va., and do not vote in local elections.
It's not that I don't want to vote, but there is literally no one [...] on the ballots who could even
pretend to be anywhere close to being a conservative. The problem isn't my lack of desire, it's that I don't have anyone to vote
for. As one of the most progressively leftist communities in this country, my local government is completely devoid of any
representation of my beliefs and values. So, I was not surprised to read ARLNow's article about an Arlington elementary school
teacher who has found herself in hot water for having her students study cotton.
Planting
of Cotton at Arlington Elementary School Prompts Discussion. A cotton plant growing at Campbell Elementary
School drew criticism online today, but Arlington Public Schools said allegations that staff were going to make kids "pick
cotton" was a misunderstanding. "At no time, never, was the school going to have students pick cotton," said APS
spokesman Frank Bellavia.
NY
Times: Venezuela's Economic Devastation Comparable To Countries Destroyed By War. Democratic socialism is
working in Venezuela. It's working to make everyone miserable and hungry. The sign in the photo [left]
reads: "Maduro is hunger." The NY Times reports the economic decline Venezuelans are now experiencing
is unsurpassed in the past 45 years outside of countries in the midst of war.
The Editor says...
Socialism doesn't work in Venezuela. It also doesn't work
in Zimbabwe or Cuba.
Death
Always Follows Democrat Policies. In my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child is Becoming a
Democrat, I avoid policy and hone in on parenting. I believe that if my playbook is followed, we can ensure that
future generations of our youth don't grow up to be Democrats. Substantive health care fixes, cures for cancer and
AIDS, and the first man and woman on Mars will be as useless as a Willard Romney endorsement if we don't win the youth battle
within the four walls of our homes. I'd be remiss if I failed to mention the abhorrently increasing zeal for abortions
during any stage of pregnancy. The residual effects of Democrat polices, in addition to producing killer kids, also
kill our unborn. All of it is by design; nothing in politics is coincidental.
America's largest
cities drowning in debt, with Chicago leading the way, study finds. America's 10 largest cities, largely
Democrat strongholds, are drowning in municipal debt, according to a new report from government watchdog Truth in
Accounting. The report sought out "to determine what ... overlapping financial entities mean for taxpayers' bottom
line." Truth in Accounting said its purpose was to "calculate the various bills (and surpluses, when available) at the city
government level and divide them out to determine a per-Taxpayer Burden." The two cities with the highest burden: Chicago
and New York City; Chicago's combined taxpayer burden: $119,110; New York City's combined taxpayer burden: $85,600.
Life
if the Democrats take control. Democrats back in power would continue to appoint Leftist Judges who would
continue to limit Conservative speech in the open forum or on public media such as the Radio. These same judges would
continue to tear away our basic foundations where they find Religion an enemy of their goals. Consider what life would
be like if the face book options for gender become law. Facebook gives its members the choice of 58 types of
gender identification. Are you ready to deal with that if the Democrats continue to push such that concept.
Marriage continues to be under assault. TV shows are now glorifying the 3 person marriage. Do not
believe me? Watch SWAT on CBS.
Why
Have Department of Defense Suicides Spiked? The Department of Defense has a suicide problem. Thank Presidents Clinton
and Obama[.] Prior to 1993, the Department of Defense (DOD) used to screen recruits, officer candidates, and service academy entrants
for mental, personality, and suicide behavior disorders. Now they don't. [...] When men and women had enlistment physicals, they were
evaluated by a physician for obvious physical defects and to also see if they had an apparent mental or personality disorder. Any
potential recruit screened with mental, personality, and suicide (and a range of other) behavior disorders were considered unfit for service.
Then President Clinton signed the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law. DOD's policy that screened for personality disorders and mental illnesses
during the pre-enlistment physical was terminated as a function of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell law. The law removed all screening for
DSM categories of homosexuality, sexual and personality disorders and mental illnesses.
The
Destructive Equality Act of 2019. My dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder in which thought
and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality." We now have a majority of members of Congress
who are prepared to pass into law that the sex individuals are born with — their chromosomal and physical
reality — will take a back seat to how those individuals choose to define their own sexual identity.
Henceforth, we'll be done with the idea that there is some objective reality independent of what of any particular individual
decides it is. I once complained that our society was denying morality — right and wrong. Now we're
beyond this. We're denying reality in its entirety.
Why
are so many Democrats so reprehensible in exactly the same way? For the past fifty years, the imposition of multiculturalism and
all that it has entailed, two generations have been taught that tolerance of all things must supersede all other values. Ergo, we've arrived
at a place in which the bulk of one of our two political parties has, if inadvertently, embraced evil in the name of tolerance — radical
Islam, all variations of sexual orientation including pedophilia, the absolutist notion that all minorities are victims, all women are victims.
We must now accept the trope that all white men are bad, a blight on civilized society. How destructive is this to our country? It is
devastating, and they do it purposefully, these Democrats. They have become the embodiment of Cloward-Piven and Saul Alinsky.
New
York Blocked A New Pipeline And Guess What They Just Found Out. The "Keep it in the ground" crowd has a lot of
influence with the Democrats who control the government. That why, back in 2013, when the new Constitution Pipeline was
proposed to carry natural gas from Pennsylvania's rich shale oil fields to New York, activists were able to block the
construction despite it already having been approved by federal regulators. Similarly, when National Grid (the local
energy consortium) requested an extension to the Williams Co. Transco pipeline, they were also tied up because of the
outcry from environmental activists. Here comes the surprise that nobody could have possibly seen coming. The
city and its surrounding downstate region are still expanding with new construction projects, but their energy suppliers have
told them that they will not be able to supply natural gas to any new customers because they're already at capacity.
A World Without Morality. If the
theoretical end point of liberal democracy is a world without boundaries, physical or cultural, then it is a world without
morality. After all, morality is a world of fences and gates that control human behavior within the closed social
system. In order for there to be a moral order, there must be order and that must include boundaries. Once the
boundaries lose their purpose, the fences and gates are simply gravestones in a cemetery of a long forgotten people. No
one cares if the kids knock over the grave stones. In fact, in a world without form, the hunt for something to level
becomes increasingly urgent as there is less and less to knock over. Once the statues of the great men of the past are
removed, their names must be removed. Once the basics of family life have been destroyed through divorce and feminism,
the innocence of childhood is attacked via the degeneracy of transgenderism.
Sanctuary
Laws and the Death of E Pluribus Unum. "Sanctuary" laws that shield illegal aliens may have the veneer of
compassion, but their implementation is setting the stage for confrontations between federal and local law enforcement
officers with conflicting orders. The short-term result could be dead or wounded officers. In a broader context,
these laws raise the specter of a constitutional crisis and a breakdown of social order. Sanctuary laws are an
existential threat to America and need to end. [...] Sanctuary laws are a gateway to chaos. If such rebellion is
allowed to stand, are there any limits at all?
'MeToo'
Hysteria: Handshakes In The Workplace Could Be Next On Chopping Block. Employers seeking to avoid
lawsuits in the hypersensitive age of the #MeToo movement are looking to ban even the most innocuous professional courtesies,
including handshakes. Last week, Kate Palmer, associate director of advisory at human resources consultancy Peninsula
and an alleged "expert" on the matter, said that employers may soon seek to ban "all forms of physical contact to avoid
confusion about what kind of touch is appropriate," according to The Sun of Britain.
Here's
how many square feet you can afford to rent on a median income in these popular US cities. You may make the big
bucks in the big city, but that doesn't necessarily mean your pad is going to reflect that. When it comes to finding
the perfect spacious apartment, you have to take into account both your location and annual salary. And in some cities,
such as New York City, Boston or Los Angeles, you may just have to accept that you'll always feel a little cramped.
Watch
Former Fed Prosecutor Smash Anti-Trump Commentator's Biased Version Of "Truth". The facts are undeniable
regarding the Mueller investigation. After nearly two years and tens of millions of dollars wasted, there was no
collusion and no obstruction — period. The media is now working double-time to try and spin that
reality into something else. If they are allowed to do so this is no longer America because if a president isn't free
to do his job then none of us are. If you support attacking President Trump then you support attacking everything this
country once stood for — namely freedom, liberty, and the right to self-expression. And it has been the
Democrat Party and the media who have created this very real division that is now tearing the nation apart.
A
mysterious condition makes marijuana users violently ill. Before the meal began, Moon joked with Jagger that it
would be her last supper. A few hours later, she was at home vomiting uncontrollably. She'd spend the next few
days in the hospital. Moon had previously been diagnosed with a condition called cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, or
CHS. Very little is known about CHS, which was first identified in the early 2000s. The recognized hallmarks of the
condition are heavy, consistent marijuana use, violent vomiting and nausea, and a tendency to use extremely hot baths or
showers for relief.
Transgender
Rights: Judge Warns Girls Have No Right to 'Visual Bodily Privacy'. A federal judge is allowing a lawsuit
against transgender facilities in a school district to proceed, but warned the student-plaintiffs that, if the government
allows boys who claim to be female to use the girls' bathrooms and locker rooms, then the girls have no right to "visual
bodily privacy." Judge Jorge Alonso of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division is
allowing a lawsuit to proceed against the school district that adopted the Obama-era transgender policy permitting boys
claiming to be female to use the girls' bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms.
San
Francisco's Slow-Motion Suicide. The city's current concentration of wealth likely doesn't represent the
beginning of a golden-if-sinful era, but the end. Magnificent in the distance, San Francisco is now shockingly ugly
up close. In the decade I have lived here, the city has achieved the seemingly impossible: It has combined
the expensive and the bland and the appalling into a new form of decadence.
West
Virginia Leads Nation in Homeownership Rate; New York and California Rank Last. West Virginia ranked No. 1
among the 50 states for its homeownership rate in 2018, which was 74.7 percent, according to new housing data released by the
U.S. Census Bureau. New York and California ranked 50th and 49th with homeownership rates of 51.0 and 55.1, according
to Table 15 in the Census Bureau's Annual Statistics on Housing Vacancies and Homeownership. The Census Bureau
calculates the homeownership rate by dividing the number of owner occupied housing units by the total number of occupied
housing units.
How
Chicago Democrats Created Trump's Border Wall Problem. After World War II outmigration became a concern for all
big northern Democrat-controlled cities since the growth of suburbs and the baby boom prompted young couples to leave big
cities and seek more space for their families. But this outmigration created a huge problem for the big Democratic
cities from Boston to Los Angeles: how to restore and stabilize their city's population and keep control of Congress.
The solution was to allow illegal immigration and support them with benefits. Providing illegal immigrants with
benefits such as food stamps and housing were crucial, since illegal immigrants were not well educated and did not earn
enough income to be self-sufficient. This concern prompted President Lyndon Baines Johnson to establish the Great
Society welfare programs, and he himself admitted the programs were intended to strengthen America's big cities. LBJ
stopped the agricultural guest worker program, called the Bracero program, just at the time he started the Great Society.
This allowed illegal immigrants to come to Chicago and not worry about being educated well enough to support themselves.
The lack of income was made up through free benefits.
Doctors
Are Now Giving 8-Year-Old Girls Testosterone, Claiming They're 'Transgender'. According to medical doctors and
a parent of a gender non-conforming child speaking on a panel for the Heritage Foundation, their quest to stop dangerous
transgender treatments on minors has exposed that "government-funded research now allows wrong sex hormones such as
testosterone to be given to girls as young as 8," reported The Christian Post on Tuesday [4/2/2019].
I have my
'Trump 2020' cap! Without fear of punishment for their crimes, the enraged Deep State is now trying to remove
Trump by absurdly claiming he obstructed justice. These people are relentless and evil. If Trump is not
re-elected, Democrats will pass a law to kill babies after they are born. Sharia law will gain more strongholds in our
culture. Our economy will tank due to job-killing crazy green policies. Single-payer health care will empower
Democrats to dictate who lives and who dies. The LGBTQ agenda will be forced down our throats. Reading and
quoting the Bible will be illegal. These are not exaggerations, folks. All of these anti-freedom and
anti-Christian initiatives are being pushed right now by Democrats. President Trump is the main obstacle, courageously
standing in their way. The Democrats have become the party of full-blown lawlessness. Democrat-controlled sanctuary
cities boldly break our immigration laws. Democrats encourage illegals to break our immigration laws at the border.
One Bad Apple. Globalism,
multiculturalism, and socialism have done the trick: destabilized traditional family values with all these new mores like
same-sex marriage, gender-neutral bathrooms, and prepubescent transgender rights. But basically people feel mocked and
set aside by the elite who run this town, those in City Hall, the media, and the hatchet-faced women of glossy magazines.
Pseudo-lefty-trendy magazines like The New Yorker fail to address the fact that Hispanic, Chinese, Korean, even
African-American societies are conservative by nature. These phonies pretend to speak for the underdog, but converse
only with each other.
'Seattle
Is Dying' because Liberalism Is Killing It. If you haven't seen the KOMO News special Seattle Is Dying,
you need to. The hour-long show does a sound job of depicting the ugly decline of one of the most beautiful places in
America. However, the piece misses the forest for the nasty, dirty, twisted trees. Part of the root of the
problem in Seattle is political, but Seattle Is Dying virtually ignores the liberal politics behind Seattle's foul
decline. As John Sexton at Hot Air put it, "[t]here's really no escaping the fact that the current situation is the
result of political decisions."
Look
at the science and stop the march toward legalized marijuana. Despite myths to the contrary, marijuana is a
serious health risk. It does indeed result in unhealthy dependence among nearly one-third of users. It is a
definite risk (perhaps deadly) for lung health, and it is especially dangerous for heart health. Some studies also show
that it substantially increases risk for a form of testicular cancer. To be specific on heart risks, the National
Institute on Drug Abuse reports: "Limited evidence suggests that a person's risk of heart attack during the first hour
after smoking marijuana is nearly five times his or her usual risk." Meanwhile, the measurable consequences for states
that have legalized recreational marijuana have been bracing.
Green
Insanity Is Flooding Towns and Destroying Lives. Having written extensively in these pages on the catastrophic
flooding of the Missouri River basin in 2011, I believe that the occasion of this present flood disaster plaguing Nebraska,
Iowa, and South Dakota has given rise to many questions. Foremost, I have been asked if there is an environmentalist
element, as there was in 2011, when the Corps of Engineers intentionally permitted the flooding of eight states in order to
further their highest priority (as per the Master Water Control Manual) of "habitat restoration for riverine wildlife" at the
expense of the original top priority, flood control, and the preservation of human life and property.
Leftists
Have Turned San Francisco Into A Nightmare Of Drugs And Homelessness. There's no denying that San Francisco is
one of America's most beautiful and recognizable cities, but it has been racked with problems thanks to leftist policies that
have driven drug addiction and homelessness through the roof. The Daily Wire's Kassy Dillon and Colton Haas traveled to
the city by the bay and spoke to experts and homeless people about the conditions that have encouraged the spread of drugs,
disease, and more. During their trip, they could see the awful condition the city is currently in.
More
than a third of New Yorkers say they can't afford to live here. More than a third of all city residents say
they can't afford to live anywhere in the state — much less the Big Apple — and believe economic
hardship will send them packing in five years or less, according to a dismal new poll. That's 41 percent of city
dwellers who say they can't cope with New York's high cost of living, according to a Quinnipiac poll published Wednesday
[3/20/2019]. Separately, 41 percent fear they'll be "forced" to pull up stakes and seek greener pastures
where the economic climate is more welcoming.
Changing the Rules.
The news cycle is so unnaturally shrill as if it was the status quo itself was screaming. From unenacted policies to
the automatic assignment of blame to Western civilization the news cycle has become one continuous rant. Referring to
the root causes of the Christchurch mosque massacre a Slate article argued: "we are a nation born of shame. A
white-majority Australia exists only as the result of a genocidal invasion." Speech has never been more dangerous nor
points of view more opposed. When the demand isn't "why didn't you denounce this" or "why didn't you apologize for
that" it is may be "why did you misgender me?" You can go to jail for saying "he" instead of "she".
Major Science
Journal Embraces 'Nature Rights' Movement. Nature rights" is a hard-leftwing and anti-free market
movement — once on the fringe but now growing increasingly mainstream within environmentalism — that
doesn't seek tighter legal regulations over our use of the natural world, but rather, advocates personalizing nature toward
the end of granting flora, fauna, ecosystems, and geological features human-type rights. In a saner era, the idea of
granting rights to "nature" would be laughed off the public stage. But it's not funny. The nature rights movement
is serious, it is growing in power and influence, and it becoming alarmingly successful. Indeed, the movement has made
important strides in the last few years: four rivers have been granted enforceable rights, including the Amazon and
Ganges. So too have glaciers. An orangutan was declared a "non-human person" in Argentina and granted a writ of
habeas corpus to be released from a zoo to a sanctuary. Most recently, a special election in Toledo, Ohio passed that
granted "rights" to Lake Erie.
President
Trump Saves Thousands of Lives. So what happened in 2015 and 2016 to cause the violent crime rate, including
the homicide rate, to rise after decades of decline? I can't think of any explanation other than the Black Lives Matter
movement and the relentless attacks on law enforcement that it engendered, which were supported by the Obama administration.
But what happened when Donald Trump took over in the White House? The homicide and violent crime rates began to fall again.
If the New York Times's projection is correct, the second year of the Trump administration saw a steeper decline in the homicide
rate. Again, what could possibly have caused this change? I can't think of a plausible theory other than the Trump
administration's renewed support for law enforcement and the waning of the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement.
Something happened beginning in 2017 that has saved thousands of lives. If it wasn't the new administration in
Washington, what was it?
The
financial collapse of the Democratic mayors. Recently, non-government organization Truth in Accounting
published a report about the financial condition of the 75 largest cities of America. As it turns out, 63 out of
75 cities in America were not able to pay bills at the end of the fiscal year of 2017. The final result of this study was
the calculation of the burden borne by taxpayers in these American cities. The formula is simple: the financial balance
of the city (positive or negative) is divided by the number of inhabitants. The result is a good assessment of how effectively
the city authorities work, depending on the positive or negative financial balance of the city per capita.
KOMO News' Special:
Seattle Is Dying. "People didn't use to use the word embarrassing about Seattle, but they use it a lot now,"
the narrator to a new KOMO News special titled "Seattle is Dying" says. The focus of the special is homelessness and
the ways in which it has changed the city. There's a section featuring angry residents of one area of the city who are
screaming at their representatives for action. They want the tent cities managed and they're tired of calling the police
only to find out the police can arrest people but those same people will be back on the street, sometimes within hours.
7 Reasons Why the
Equality Act Is Anything But. [#1] It would penalize Americans who don't affirm new sexual norms or gender ideology. Jack
Phillips' case went all the way to the Supreme Court after the Colorado Civil Rights Commission accused the bakery owner of discriminating on
the basis of sexual orientation when the self-described cake artist declined to create a custom cake to celebrate a same-sex wedding.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, but le the law in question, the Colorado Anti-Discrimination
Act, intact. Until last week, Phillips was in court again defending himself against the same agency under the same law. The day after
the Supreme Court ruled in Phillips' case, Autumn Scardina, a lawyer who identifies as transgender, requested that he create a "gender
transition cake." After Phillips declined, the state Civil Rights Commission found probable cause under the law that the baker had
discriminated on the basis of gender identity. Thankfully, the commission last week dropped the case, and Phillips agreed to drop
his own lawsuit accusing the state agency of harassing him for his Christian beliefs.
Antifa-Controlled
Portland Police Bureau Faces Mass 'Exodus' As 50+ Officers Quit Over Insane and Dangerous Far Left Policies. As
Portland trends further and further from Democrat to Marxist, the rank-and-file officers of the Portland Police Bureau have
been put in the unenviable position of being ordered by the mayor to cater to the far left protesters and rioters like
Antifa. At the same time the officers also face a more and more irate public, angry at the police bureau's propensity
for ceding the city to the protesters on a regular basis.
From
Democratic Socialism to Total Destruction in Venezuela. During the 1970s, Venezuela's per capita income was
higher than the sum of all other Andean nations, including Chile. The country had the lowest taxes in the region,
coupled with a stable democracy. Since the US left the gold standard, only the Swiss franc and the Venezuelan bolivar
managed to maintain their value. In 1980 the Venezuelan bolivar was worth more against the U.S. dollar than in 1880.
It remained that way until the 1973 elections when both the legislative and executive branches came under the power of a single
democratic socialist party, Acción Democrática, while simultaneously the Arab oil embargo that year produced a huge
increase in oil prices. [A]s a result government revenues increased by a factor of 4. The government than embarked
in "democratic socialism", systematically applying the same theories supported now in the USA by Senator Bernie Sanders and
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Democrat
Lawmaker and Teamster President: 'Chaos' in Schools Since Obama-Era Discipline Policy. A Democrat state senator
and a Teamsters president said the dramatic drop in school suspensions in New York City since the Obama-era policy urging
more lenient forms of discipline for minority students has led to "chaos" and a lack of "accountability" for dangerous
behavior. New York state Sen. Leroy Comrie told CBS New York that schools in his Queens district are losing the
confidence of parents. "They're taking their children to other schools even if they have to pay for private schools,"
he said. "They don't want to have to have their children in an environment where they're assaulted and there's no
accountability."
Marxism,
the Frankfurt School, and the Leftist Takeover of the College Campus. When one observes the modern-day college
campus, one observes nothing but the Marxist-leftist indoctrination of America's youth. [...] One has to look no farther than
Boston University to find courses with titles such as "Dismantling White Privilege, Power, and Supremacy." Any course
that attempts to induce guilt for one's ethnicity is undeniably subjective in nature. Consider the debates on sex,
sexuality, and human physiology. There is arguably mainstream societal acceptance that there are more than two
"genders" and that sex and sexuality are in no way linked. Furthermore, if one even questions the eligibility of male
athletes in female-only sports, he will often be labeled a bigot, or at the very least old-fashioned. No empirical
research is needed to realize that much of American history is now scrutinized rather than honored. American military
involvement is commonly preached as oppression rather than liberation. Everything from the nuclear family to supporting
ICE is under scrutiny. There is a systematic dismantling of American values that were once accepted as objectively good
and now maligned as evil. When objective truth and reality no longer exist, the Left can rewrite the rules to
society — and it has. Where do all of these ideas come from? Primarily college campuses.
Blacks
and the Democrats. What has been the payoff to the black community for religiously voting for Democratic leadership? To start,
although blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population, they account for nearly 50% of the homicides. According to the National Council for Home
Safety and Security, the top 10 most dangerous cities in the United States for 2018 had Democrats as mayors, and according to the 2019 American
Community Survey, 9 out of the top 10 poorest cities also have Democrats as mayors. Many of these cities have the largest
population of African-Americans in the country.
The
Problem Is Legislative Overreach, Not Executive. In 1975, two years after Richard Nixon negotiated the Paris Accords
and ended the war in the Vietnam, the Communist North Vietnamese reneged and invaded South Vietnam. Instead of defending the
South as Nixon promised we would do in this event, President Gerald Ford looked on helplessly as the Democratic Congress would not
permit it. At the same time, the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia and turned the country into a death camp. Because the
Democrats hated Nixon and Republicans, and saw no political advantage to intervening, they permitted our allies to be slaughtered
and enslaved. A year later, in 1976, Ford signed the National Emergency Powers Act, which would allow special powers for the
president should this kind of emergency arise and the legislature decides to play politics as people die or great injustices occur.
Trump Is Right on the Law and the Merits President Trump's recent decision to invoke this act and fund a border wall was in response
to the Democrats in Congress refusing to cooperate.
Students
Across US Now Majoring In Marijuana At Colleges. Colleges are now adding cannabis to their curriculum.
Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she's majoring in marijuana. "My friends make good-natured
jokes about getting a degree in weed," said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal
plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University. "I say, 'No, it's a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and
foremost. It's hard work. Organic chemistry is a bear.'"
Socialism
destroys prom: School officials ban kids from riding in limos because everyone can't afford it. Socialism
invariably destroys everything it touches, including even proms. Back in the day, some kids used to enjoy saving up
enough money through the semester so they could rent a lavish limo for their year-end senior prom. But thanks to the
socialist mindset of one New Jersey school's officials, this tradition is no more. According to Trenton radio station
WKXW, officials at Lakeland Regional High School made a decision this year to ban students from driving to their prom or
renting a limo. Instead, every student must pay $15 to be driven to the prom at Rockleigh Country Club on a chaperoned bus.
Male
Christian Wrestler Forfeits State Championship Spot Rather Than Wrestle Girls. An 18-year-old high school
wrestler in Colorado has given up a potential spot in the Colorado high school state championships because he chooses not to
wrestle two young ladies saying it violates how he was raised to treat women. Brendan Johnston of The Classical Academy
in Colorado says those values — despite some light complaints from at least one of the young ladies he would have
faced — are informed by his Christianity and, after a discussion with his coach and some deep thought on the
subject, he's decided to stand behind his principles despite knowing it would mean a shortened competition.
Girls'
sports being decimated by biological males claiming to be females. There are only two genders in this world of
ours, male and female, and it doesn't matter how someone "identifies," that biological fact is established and unalterable.
[...] With that being said, the Left is nevertheless hard at work trying to convince us that gender is a 'fluid' thing and in
some cases, an outright choice, so old societal constructs like "male" and "female" sports are no longer necessary or
relevant. That's why they go along with allowing biological males to participate in (and dominate) all-female events
simply because they 'identify' as a girl, claiming — remarkably and unbelievably — that there are no
physical differences between the sexes.
From
Roy Rogers to Infanticide. America has moved on. Democrats, Hollywood, and fake news media say America no
longer wants white guys like Roy Rogers on TV, infecting our kids with Christian morals and family values. America has
moved on from the biblical teaching that there are only two genders. NYC recognizes 31 different genders.
Facebook gives customers 56 gender options. Leftists believe they are far more sophisticated and intelligent than Bible
believers and Americans living in flyover country. Leftists say determining a baby's gender by its genitalia at birth
is idiotic. They say we must allow the child to evolve into the gender it wants to be. This insane child abuse
has led to hundreds of kids as young as four years old identifying as transgender and changing their sex.
If
There's a Hair in Your Soup, Thank New York's Commission on Human Rights. [Scroll down] New York City had
long ago rolled through the usual spectrum of legal protections for everyone from ex-cons to transgender men. And the
Commission has been desperately concocting new legal protections. Its latest initiative declares that employers,
including in the health care and food service industries, may not prevent employees, regardless of race, from wearing
dreadlocks because that's racial discrimination. The Commission's new guidelines insist that employees have "the right
to keep hair in an uncut or untrimmed state." Schools, public and private, are also forbidden from banning dreadlocks.
Emotional
support pit bull mauled 5-year-old girl: suit. A woman has filed a $1.1 million negligence lawsuit after her
5-year-old daughter was mauled by a pit bull — which was being used as an emotional support animal — at
Portland International Airport when she petted it. Mirna Gonzalez and her children were waiting for an Alaska Airlines
flight to Texas on Dec. 18, 2017, when she stepped away to grab a coffee, the Washington Post reported. While she
was away, Gabriella asked if she could pet the dog, which suddenly bit her in the face and left her bloodied.
The Editor says...
The whole concept of "emotional support animals" came from the far left fringe. Those whose only god is the government,
and whose primary concern is their own feelings and emotions, must depend on warm and fuzzy animals to cope with situations
that the rest of us consider routine.
Disarming Law Enforcement
in Portland. Portland today is much changed from the city that I grew up in. Signs of urban decay and
degradation are everywhere. Streets are littered with trash, human feces, and drug needles. Transient camps and
villages dot the city. Vagrants roam the streets and threaten pedestrians and businesses owners. A Portland
resident calls the police every 15 minutes to report an incident involving a homeless person. Still, the city's
progressive politicians and activists would like residents to believe that law-enforcement officials pose a greater threat
than public anarchy. Portland's attitude toward law enforcement has become so negative, in fact, that neighboring
Washington County will no longer offer coordination or support to the Portland Police Bureau.
Based
On 'Discrimination' Law, Iowa Jury Awards Trans Woman $120,000, Access To Male Prison Facilities. A jury in
Iowa has concluded that the state discriminated against a former Iowa Department of Corrections nurse because the employer
wouldn't let her use the bathrooms with male employees. The jury also said the Iowa Department of Corrections denied
Jesse Vreogh health care coverage for "medically necessary surgery" — i.e. a double mastectomy to look more like a
man. The jury awarded Vreogh $120,000 for the "emotional distress" of both instances based on Iowa's sexual orientation
and gender identity law, which was introduced in 2007 and signed by Democrat Gov. Chet Culver.
Venezuela
Isn't Just a Failed State. It's a Failure of the Left. If we look at government spending as a percentage
of GDP, Venezuela seems far from socialism. In recent years government spending in Venezuela has been measured at about
40 percent of GDP, with the caveat that these statistics are not fully reliable. For the U.S., the corresponding figure
is about 37 percent. Yet emerging economies typically cannot afford the same government programs as wealthier
countries, and they cannot run them with the same efficacy. Poorer countries that try to expand their governments to
size of wealthier countries, such as Brazil and Venezuela, typically encounter sub-par economic performance. These are
indeed stories of big government run amok, as some of conservatives are suggesting.
The
5 Biggest Widely Accepted Lies in Politics. [#5] Diversity is a strength: While you might be able to make
the argument that diversity of thought is a strength, diversity itself is a weakness. In fact, much of the political
infighting, hatred, and disagreement in modern American politics centers around diversity. Every disagreement between a
liberal minority and non-liberal white American is summed up as racism. Every failing of a woman or female disagreement
with a man is summed up as sexism. We can't have a sane immigration policy because it's declared as racism against
Hispanics. Accusations of racism and sexism have almost completely replaced arguments and rational thought on the Left
because who needs to have good ideas if you can just argue that your opponents' arguments are invalid because they're bad people?
[...] All across the planet, the more diversity you see in culture, the more strife, bloodshed and, problems you see.
Venezuela
was my home, and socialism destroyed it. Slowly, it will destroy America, too. The first time I couldn't
buy food at the grocery store, I was 15 years old. It was 2014 in Caracas, Venezuela, and I had spent more than an hour
in line waiting. When I got to the register I noticed I'd forgotten my ID that day. Without the ID, the
government rationing system would let the supermarket sell my family the full quota of food we needed. It was four days
until the government allowed me to buy more. This was fairly normal for me. All my life I lived under socialism
in Venezuela until I left and came to the U.S. as a student in 2016. Since the regime in charge imposed price controls and
nationalized the most important private industries, production plummeted. No wonder I had to wait hours in lines to buy
simple products such as toothpaste or flour. And the shortages went far beyond the supermarket. My family and I
suffered from blackouts and lack of water. The regime nationalized electricity in 2007 in an effort to make electricity
"free." Unsurprisingly, this resulted in underinvestment in the electrical grid. By 2016, my home lost power roughly
once a week.
Major
League Baseball Ditches 'Disabled List' Over Social Justice Concerns. Major League Baseball will replace the
"disabled list" with the "injured list" for the 2019 season amid concerns that the term "disabled" was insensitive. The
"disabled list" has been part of professional baseball since the mid-1960s (though there are records of some teams using a
"disabled list" as far back as the early 20th century), and it's become second nature to refer to an injured or exhausted
player as "on the DL," but MLB has been reportedly playing around with the idea of renaming the injured roster in order to
better reflect the condition of players who skip games for medical or physical reasons, according to ESPN.
Unisex
toilets in schools are leaving girl pupils 'too afraid to use the loo'. Schoolgirls are too afraid to use
unisex toilets over fears of 'period shaming' from boys and sexual harassment, campaigners warn. A growing number of
schools are ditching separate-sex loos claiming they are not inclusive to transgender children and are a breeding ground for
bullying. But some girls are avoiding going to the toilet during school hours because of cruel taunts from boys and a
lack of privacy, according to the Daily Express.
LGBT
Activists Teaching Judges To Yank Kids From Parents Who Won't Transgender Them. On Thursday [2/7/2019], the Health and
Human Services committee of the South Dakota House killed a bill that would have protected the right of parents to refuse to consent
to medical or psychological treatment for a child suffering from gender dysphoria if the treatment "would induce, confirm, or promote
the child's belief that the child's sex or gender identity is different from the child's sex presented at birth." Proposed House
Bill 1205 also provided that "no public authority or official of this state may take any adverse action against a parent for exercising
this right." That such a simple affirmation of parental rights could not clear a committee in this solidly red state should
terrify parents, as it lays bare transgender activists' plan: use the government to force parents to affirm a false sex for
their child, agree to hormone blockers, and accept a transition to their son or daughter's preferred gender. If parents
refuse? Removal of the child from the family, due to alleged medical neglect.
Transgender
Man Awarded $120,000 in Discrimination Case at Iowa Prison. In 2015, Jesse Vroegh, a registered nurse working
in an Iowa prison, asked his employers at the state Department of Corrections to allow him to use the men's restrooms and
locker rooms at work because he was transitioning from female to male. But the department denied his requests, citing
its concerns about the "rights of the male officers" and saying that transgender issues were "too controversial," according
to a lawsuit.
A Transgender Hero Breaks
Ranks. Even though it's still young, the transgender movement has occasioned many bizarre and horrific
stories. But even in that company, the saga of Jamie Shupe stands out. Born in 1963, Shupe has been married to
his wife, Sandy, for three decades; they have a daughter. He spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in the U.S. Army.
In 2013 he began identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for years with a deep sense of being
different and had been harassed in the military because he was perceived as gay. After declaring that he was a woman,
he "lived for a year in Pittsburgh, got hormone treatments and a name change," but never had a sex-change operation.
Finding Pittsburgh inhospitable for a trans woman, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where he continued living as a woman for
another two years. In 2015, the New York Times profiled Shupe as part of a splashy, upbeat series celebrating
"transgender lives."
Another
Gift from Socialism in San Fran! Syringes Everywhere. San Francisco has more drug addicts than it has
students enrolled in its public high schools, the city Health Department's latest estimates conclude, the SFChronicle
reports. There are about 24,500 injection drug users in San Francisco — that's about 8,500 more people than
the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in San Francisco Unified School District's 15 high schools and illustrates the scope of
the problem on the city's streets. It represents an increase of 2,000 serious drug users, the article says, but doesn't
mention how many non-serious drug users there are and what the definition entails.
San
Francisco Has More Drug Users Than High School Students. Most of the people shooting heroin in BART stations
are doing it there because they have nowhere else to go. Last year there were local news reports about the extent of
drug use at BART stations. Those reports embarrassed the city and led to some effort to clean up the public areas, but
it remains an uphill battle. Over time, the addicts wind up collapsed in a stupor inside the stations, on the streets,
or on the trains themselves.
Typhus
Is Spreading in Liberal, Rat-Infested LA County. There are a lot of rats in LA, and, NO, for once we don't mean the
politicians although many qualify. We mean the little furry creatures who live in squalor and spread diseases. Last
September, a documentary called 'Rats' was screened as a Landmark Theatres Exclusive Midnight Event. It was frightening
because it's real. Infestations of rats are seen in major cities and elsewhere, and when garbage is left to rot in homeless
areas, they become a more serious threat to life.
The
Ruling Class and an Undeclared Civil War. Unlike any other period in the nation's history, one stratum of society, the
American elites of the past half-century, by their control of education, entertainment, the media and politics, have totally dominated
and overwhelmingly and negatively influenced the culture and national character. They are chiefly responsible for what it is today.
This American aristocracy is now entirely made up of those who have no recall or firsthand experience of the years of adversity prior
to 1940. Their entire point of reference is never-ending affluence and the pursuit of pleasure within an overall framework of
world peace. Yet this assemblage is dominated by a comparatively few committed ideologues and so-called intellectuals who are
dedicated to permanently altering the economy and American culture. Nonetheless, they have been very successful in attracting many
others by appealing to their vanity and avarice. Thus entrance into this class is not entirely a factor of birth or wealth but
rather that of developing a mindset of superiority similar to the evolution of cliques within a high school setting.
The
Mayors of the Worst Cities in America are Running for President. Newark is the most dangerous city in New Jersey,
Tallahassee is the most dangerous city in Florida, and South Bend is the most dangerous city in Indiana. But instead
of fixing their failed cities, the current mayor of South Bend, and the former mayors of Newark and Tallahassee want to run
for president. Mayor Peter Buttigieg has announced that he's forming an exploratory committee for a 2020 run. Media
reports have focused on the possibility that he might become America's first gay millennial president, instead of on the fact that
he's headed a city since 2011 which has double the national and statewide violent crime rates. And a city where Hispanic
poverty rates are 10% higher than the national average, African-American households have double the poverty rate, and Asian-American
incomes are halved. South Bend was recently rated one of the "worst cities" to live in. The unemployment rates are
higher than average, the property values are lower, and even the water quality is below average. Gushing media reports about
the gay millennial mayor, a Harvard grad and a Rhodes scholar, overlook South Bend's poverty rate of 24.7% and that 45% of
households are living near the poverty level.
Levin:
The Left is discouraging assimilation. LevinTV host Mark Levin began his radio show Monday evening reacting to
Tom Brokaw's comments on Meet the Press over the weekend, in which he said Hispanic immigrants should assimilate and learn
English. [...] "They don't want assimilation on the Left. It's not about Hispanics or any other group," Levin
explained. "They play to groups. They require groups. The progressive mindset requires groups."
Who
Benefits From Democratic Control? What cities are the deadliest for blacks? The Trace, an independent
nonprofit news organization, answers that question. Using 2017 data from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program, The
Trace listed the 20 major U.S. cities with the highest homicide rates — factoring in both the number of people
murdered in cities and their populations. Chicago, with 589 murders in 2018 — one murder every
15 hours — is often called the nation's murder capital. But that's dead wrong. In 2017,
St. Louis had the nation's highest murder rate, at 66.1 homicides per 100,000 residents. Baltimore came in second,
with 55.8 murders per 100,000 people. Detroit was third, with 39.8 murders per 100,000 people. Other cities with
high murder rates included New Orleans; Kansas City, Missouri; Cleveland; Memphis, Tennessee; and Newark, New Jersey.
With 24.1 murders per 100,000 residents, Chicago ranked ninth in the nation. It was followed by Cincinnati and
Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., was 17th. Now here's the kicker. Of the 20 most dangerous major cities, all
but one had a Democratic mayor. In many of these cities, the Democratic Party has ruled for a half-century or more.
I
Have a Dream for Black History Month. Democrats and fake news media do not view Black History Month as an
opportunity to celebrate black achievements. Instead, they exploit the holiday with old racial injustices experienced
by few blacks alive today. Their evil purpose is to make young blacks who have never experienced an ounce of racism
hate our country, hate whites, and continue voting for Democrats to save them. This great Democrat deception continues
to devastate black communities. Cities like Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore, controlled by Democrats for
decades, are plagued with high black poverty and addictive government dependency, high black school dropouts, high black
fatherless households, high black incarceration, and high black-on-black homicides.
Holes in the Map.
One more part of America has been allocated to another alien population — squatters who have been brought here to
feed on us and to drive us out. But where do we have left to go? This isn't progress — though it is
progressive. This situation did not occur by accident. It is the product of a premeditated and deliberate
social policy. When immigration is talked about on what sneeringly masquerades as news, it is always painted in
fatalistic phrases that make it sound like an unstoppable force of nature — as though the people surging into
America were a swarm of Mexican butterflies or a herd of East African wildebeests that had somehow overwhelmed the TSA.
This invasion is portrayed as if there were no plan involved at all — just some primal urge that arises spontaneously
in third-worlders that can't be stopped. This is the narrative fashioned for the convenience of the unaffected. That
they might feel good about themselves while enjoying a little schadenfreude at our expense. They do not see the
consequences. They see the dream.
Britain's
'First Transgender Family' Now Transitioning Their 5-Year-Old Son To Female. A family dubbed Britain's "first
transgender family" has announced that they are encouraging the gender transition of their five-year-old son, Jayden.
According to the family, Jayden, a biological male, likes dresses and hates "everything about being a boy." The little
boy's "step-dad," Greg Rogers, is a 27-year-old biological female who now identifies as a male. The child's mother is a
21-year-old woman named Jody. Both Jodi and Greg are furious that concerned citizens (referred to as "trolls" by many
U.K.-based outlets) have reported them to social services for apparent child abuse. The couple, however, maintain
Jayden — who is on track to medically "transition" in a few years — is properly cared for.
Pelosi's
Equality Act Could Lead to More Parents Losing Custody of Kids Who Want 'Gender Transition'. Americans have
long understood that children are best cared for by their parents. The state can only intervene in the family when
there is demonstrable evidence of abuse and neglect. This has long been established in our laws. But now,
transgender ideology is silencing doctors and challenging the way courts define parental abuse and neglect. Last year
in Ohio, a judge removed a biological girl from her parents' custody after they declined to help her "transition" to male
with testosterone supplements. The Cincinnati Children's gender clinic recommended these treatments for gender
dysphoria (the condition of being distressed with one's biological sex).
The
devil is using the Democratic Party to destroy America. The brutal reality is that the Democratic Party is not
the one of even a generation ago. It has become radicalized; hostile to biblical values and religious freedoms;
disrespectful to individuals and institutions; unashamed in using profanities and employing intimidation in the media and
public square; increasingly irrational, lawless, dishonest, hypocritical, corrupt and mean-spirited (remember the Brett
Kavanaugh hearing?); and finally, flippant in dismissing "due process" and our two foundational societal pillars of the
sanctity of human life alongside the sanctity of man-woman marriage. Here's the deal: as we've watched the
difficult-to-believe destruction of the 108-year-old Boy Scouts of America because they capitulated to forces the Democratic
Party championed, let us consecrate ourselves at this defining time to intercession, gospel proclamation, "salt and light"
activism and courageous, uncompromising obedience to God.
On
January 1, I became a criminal in my hometown of Boulder. It's not the intolerance of progressives that is so
insulting. It is the denial of their intolerance that is so abusive. When I was growing up it was the liberals
who more often held the moral high-ground. Those of us raised in the 1970's heard it all the time — "the end
doesn't justify the means." [...] Progressives have not just rejected that proud tradition, they have remade it into the ugly
opposite — the end justifies all: Coercing speech with speech codes and forcing cake bakers to create
statements against their core religious beliefs; social justice warfare and identity politics; the nanny state banning
everything from plastic straws to tobacco products; and forcing private health insurance products at gun-point.
Political Correctness
Is Ruining Sports. For the second consecutive year, Mack Beggs, an 18-year-old transgender wrestler, has won
the Texas girls' Class 6A 110-pound division. Born a female, Beggs is in the process of transitioning to a male, or so
she thinks. Beggs, who takes a low dose of testosterone, had wanted to compete against boys, but Texas public high
schools, which have yet to get with the progressive times, require athletes to compete under the gender on their birth
certificate. Last year two girls, not wanting to risk being injured by her, forfeited against Beggs. So did a
girl this year. Whether they were compelled to undergo empathy training I don't know. [...] Transgenderism is a problem
in the Olympics, too. Per the latest rules, transgender "women" must test below a specified level of testosterone for
more than one year in order to compete. But while this is doubtless somewhat effective, aren't these athletes, with
their still bigger, still stronger, and still more durable bodies, out of place even so?
The
Worst Enemy of Black People. Malcolm X was absolutely right about our finding solutions to our own
problems. The most devastating problems that black people face today have absolutely nothing to do with our history of
slavery and discrimination. Chief among them is the breakdown of the black family, wherein 75 percent of blacks
are born to single, often young, mothers. In some cities and neighborhoods, the percentage of out-of-wedlock births is
over 80. Actually, "breakdown" is the wrong term; the black family doesn't form in the first place. This is
entirely new among blacks.
Wealth,
Poverty, and Flight: The Same Old State of California. [B]oth legal and illegal immigration have also
radically changed the demography of the state. It is not just that about 40 percent of the nation's 11 [to]
20 million immigrants live in California, a state in which now one in four residents was not born in the United
States. Rather, it is the result of two or three generations of mass influxes of impoverished residents who on average
arrive without a high-school diploma, English proficiency, capital, or often legality. California now hosts one of
three Americans who are on some sort of federal, state, or local welfare supplement. About a fifth of the state lives
below the poverty level. Half of all births in California were paid for by the state-run Medi-Cal program, and
30 percent of Medi-Cal births were to mothers of undocumented immigration status. The San Ysidro border crossing
between Tijuana and San Diego is the world's busiest, where some 70 million people cross on foot and in cars into and
out of California each year.
Transgender
Man Goes Full Roid Rage after Being 'Misgendered' in GameStop. It's an amazing time to be alive, full of wonder
and terror and confusion all mixed together in a soup of "what could possibly happen next?" that keeps us all on our toes.
Today's dose of insanity comes from a viral video of a transgender man who had a testosterone-fueled meltdown because someone called
him "sir" in a GameStop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The minimum-wage employee who took the brunt of the all-male rage-a-thon
should win Employee of the Year for trying his hardest to diffuse the situation.
The
ILL-inois exodus continues. Meanwhile, every state in the Midwest, including longtime laggards Kansas and South
Dakota, are gaining population. What does ILL-inois have that these other states don't? One-party Democratic rule
by state party boss and the state House speaker for over 30 years, Michael Madigan of Chicago, who will remain the most powerful
politician in Illinois even though the Land of Mary Todd Lincoln Spending will have a Democrat governor in a few weeks.
Stand
by for a wave of male prison inmates claiming to be transgender females. Two federal judges now have ruled,
setting the precedent of transferring a male prison inmate to a female prison because he claims to feel that he is a woman
and poses as one, and, in the current instance, has undergone surgical mutilation of his reproductive organs. The
"transgender female" is referred to as a "woman" and "she" in the following report from the Associated Press: ["]A
transgender woman serving a 10-year sentence in Illinois for burglary has been moved from a men's to a women's prison in what
could be a first for the state, her lawyers announced today.["] The transfer was forced by a federal judge whom
the AP does not wish to identify. (Why?) That judge evidently accepts the politically correct line that, contrary
to settled science, sex is not determined by chromosomes.
Five
homeless vagrants face no charges in attack on cop seen in viral video, says Manhattan DA. Attacking a cop has
joined fare beating and public urination on the list of subway misbehavior Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance won't bother
prosecuting. Officer Syed Ali — an Army combat vet who served in Iraq and Afghanistan — had no
trouble fending off five homeless vagrants with his baton and his feet as they came at him one by one on Sunday night.
The attack, captured on video, was viewed 4 million times on Twitter.
NYPD
officer fights off aggressive drunks in the subway but none of the attackers are charged. While most of us were
getting ready for Christmas, NYPD officer Syed Ali was working a transit beat in the NY subways Sunday night [12/23/2018].
This particular night, five intoxicated men were harassing a woman on the platform of the East Broadway station. [...] Officer
Ali, who is a combat veteran, was praised by the Mayor and various NY authorities for dealing with the drunks without
escalating the situation. [...] But some were upset that the men who harassed the subway rider and tried to fight a police
officer were released and won't be charged with anything.
Seattle Under Siege.
Seattle is under siege. Over the past five years, the Emerald City has seen an explosion of homelessness, crime, and
addiction. In its 2017 point-in-time count of the homeless, King County social-services agency All Home found 11,643
people sleeping in tents, cars, and emergency shelters. Property crime has risen to a rate two and a half times higher
than Los Angeles's and four times higher than New York City's. Cleanup crews pick up tens of thousands of dirty
needles from city streets and parks every year.
Remembering
a Farm Christmas. I realize today that we kids were what we now call "free-ranged," in the sense that we had no
locks on any of the doors of our farmhouses. Even at seven in the morning we simply took off into the orchard and vineyard
and by late afternoon might end up anywhere we pleased on the farm, without much worry about checking in with our parents.
Everyone was a guardian of everyone else. Certainly, there then were few of the problems — with gangs, chop shops,
and meth labs — that characterize the Central Valley of today.
The
exodus of New York City's endangered middle class. New York City's shrinking middle class is now in full
retreat, as masses of our most endangered population depart the city in numbers not seen since the Depression, according to
analysts. After decades of sharp income erosion in the face of relentless taxes, escalating living costs and wage
reductions through technological changes, the full extent of this shocking exodus is laid bare in the latest US Census
data. That shows the city is losing 100 residents each day — with departures exceeding new arrivals.
New
York leads nation in population loss. New York State leads the country in an undesirable category. New
data from the U.S. Census Bureau says New York tops the nation in population loss. The report says nine states saw a
drop in population between July 1, 2017, and July 1, 2018. New York led the way at a loss of 48,510 people.
Texas
city featured in Al Gore film lost millions in green energy investments. A green energy scheme to supply a small
town in Texas with 100% of its electrical needs via cheap solar and wind power is, instead, costing the city almost $7 million.
Georgetown, Texas was featured in the sequel to Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth as the "future" of American power
generation. But falling fossil fuel prices are making the scheme ruinously expensive for the town.
Least-Educated
State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School
Graduates. California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and
older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new
data from the Census Bureau. Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed
[the] ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school. 9.7 percent of California residents
25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.
'Let
Them Come To Venezuela' And See Socialism For Themselves. Venezuela was once the most prosperous country in
Latin America, but today almost 90% of its population lives in poverty. Venezuela's economy is in shambles.
Recently, Venezuela's own government released a report showing that its annual inflation rate accelerated to a whopping
833,000% in October alone. In practical terms, Venezuela's misery means that it is not uncommon to see children
rummaging through the garbage for food. And as basic medical supplies and medicine run dangerously low, newborns
and the elderly die unattended in Venezuelan hospitals.
As for
Me and My House... New York City has legalized a "third gender" on birth certificates. Not that long
ago, over 40 states passed resolutions supporting God's definition of marriage — between one man and one
woman. According to the Public Religious Research Institute, a majority of Democrats, Republicans, blacks, whites,
Latinos, Catholics, and white mainline Protestant denominations support so-called "marriage" between people of the same
sex. The majority of evangelical Millennials support redefining marriage. Years ago, LGBTQ activists claimed that
openly homosexual leaders admitted into the Boy Scouts had no intention to change the organization from its founding on
Christian principles. As it turned out, first on the LGBTQ agenda was to remove "morally straight" from the Scout
Oath. We are living in a pretty sick time when "morally straight" is deemed hateful and offensive.
The Editor says...
Where are the "zero tolerance" anti-bullying enforcers? On the other hand, why wasn't he
known by his father's name in the first place?
James
Comey, Menace to Society. The intolerant progressives have virtually criminalized Christianity and Judaism
while protecting Islam. Even left-wing Jews are now openly anti-Semitic. Progressives have been largely
successful in outlawing the scientific notion of gender to embrace the sheer moonbattery of the "fluid gender" crowd.
So besieged with the desperate plight of LGBT persons, millennials actually think they make up 40% of our population
when they are only about 4.5%. For an even tinier percentage of people, elementary school bathrooms must be open to
anyone and everyone, even men pretending to be women.
Does
Freedom of Religion Mean Satanic Displays in State Capitols? In the Illinois Capitol Rotunda this month, several traditions
are being celebrated. We find a nativity scene for Christmas; a menorah for Hanukkah; and, alongside these displays, an arm holding
an apple, with a snake coiled around it. This snake sculpture is a gift from the Chicago branch of The Satanic Temple. Called
"Snaketivity," the work also has a sign that reads, "Knowledge Is The Greatest Gift." This revolting travesty is a result of decades
of decisions pertaining to the non-establishment of religion asserted in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Starbucks sidebar:
Starbucks is a company that is apparently doing everything it can to go out of business.
This subsection has moved to a page of its own,
located here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, at first it's only for cancer patients and those with genetic abnormalities. But then when you
get accustomed to the idea of three-parent kids, the idea will be hip and trendy.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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."
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."
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. The ALEC report also finds that Utah has the best
economic outlook this year, and Vermont the worst.
Barack Obama's America.
Barack Obama's America is a place where felons can vote but soldiers can't. It's where elderly people are arrested for peacefully
protesting against abortion, but where paramilitary-dressed black radicals can't be prosecuted for threatening voters. It's where
children can't shape breakfast pastries into the vague shape of a gun, but where children can procure abortions without even informing
their parents.
Report: Detroit's finances crumbling;
future bleak. The first report by Detroit's emergency manager declares that the city is broke and at risk of running
completely out of money — a financial meltdown that could mean employees don't receive paychecks, retirees lose their
pensions and residents endure even deeper cuts in municipal services.
Barack Obama and the End of an Era.
The essential civil rights movement and the tragically successful Viet Nam protests spawned numerous causes, among them: feminism,
environmentalism, global warming, and gay rights. For each generation born after 1940 it has been a rite of passage to take up the
mantle of protest concurrent with mindless dedication to oftentimes absurd and erroneous beliefs, which have, in nearly all cases, resulted in
disastrous societal and economic consequences.
There's a shooting every six hours in America's gun control utopia. America's urban gun control
utopia, Chicago, is a bastion of strict gun control laws. So far this year, the city is averaging a shooting every 6 hours and roughly a homicide a
day. And the weather hasn't even warmed up to 80 degrees yet! Does this sound like a place you should be visiting from business or pleasure?
Not if you're a reasonable person who makes prudent choices with regard to your personal safety.
California Group Mails Condoms to 12-Year-Olds.
The CFHC [California Family Health Council], a non-profit organization, has set up a website advertising its "Condom Access Project," where teens as young
as 12 years old can receive free condoms in the mail.
Jihad Blows Up the Liberal Utopia.
The Liberal Utopia is a land where the War on Poverty was supposed to end poverty — and instead winds up sending violent crime
skyrocketing, and, in the words of Thomas Sowell, setting up the American black family for rapid disintegration in the liberal welfare
state "that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."
America's
most dishonest neighborhoods revealed. America's top tax dodging hotspots have been revealed with about a third of fraudsters
in California. Neighborhoods including Beverly Hills and Newport Beach in California, New Carrollton, Maryland and College Park,
Georgia, were among the potential tax evasion clusters targeted for auditing, according to confidential IRS data. They were
identified by the National Taxpayer Advocate using the IRS's confidential tax return data. In all, researchers identified areas of
possible tax cheats in more than 350 communities in 24 states.
They Lied to us Then About
Immigration; They are Lying Now. It is impossible to quantify how much the last two decades of illegal immigration —
a direct result of the '86 amnesty — has cost us in education, healthcare, welfare, refundable tax credits, and criminal
justice. It is impossible to quantify how much the 1965 Kennedy bill has upset the balance of the country, ballooned the welfare
state, and created a permanent Democrat majority in many parts of the country. Now, instead of being ashamed of his past failures and
lies, Chuck Schumer is back pushing amnesty for the people who were never supposed to come here as a result of his original amnesty.
1984 + 29. Imagine if, during
the campaign of 2008, someone had written the following: "If Barack Obama is elected president, then each year from now on the
federal budget will be a trillion dollars in the red. He will pile up in two terms more debt than all previous presidents
combined. Interest rates will stay at near zero; 7.6 percent unemployment will be proof of progress in creating jobs.
Record use of food stamps, unemployment, and disability insurance will be hallmarks of recovery. The government will take over
health care, and the costs will skyrocket. During Obama's second term, ammunition will vanish from America's store shelves in
panic buying. Gay marriage will become uncontroversial. Women will be eligible for infantry combat. [...]" Obviously,
such a conspiracist would have been dismissed as an unhinged nut.
"Obama Will Let Me Go".
Linda Vickers, who owns a ranch in Brooks County, which is Ground Zero for the immigration debate, pins the blame directly on talk of 'amnesty' and
a 'path to citizenship' for people who entered the U.S. illegally. She recalls one man being arrested on her ranch not long ago.
"The Border Patrol agent was loading one man up, and he told the officer in Spanish, 'Obama's gonna let me go'." Border Patrol agents
report that immigrants are crossing the border, and in some cases surrendering while asking, "Where do I go for my amnesty?"
CA Crime Skyrockets in Wake of Brown's Prison Release Plan.
In 2011, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law California Assembly Bill 109, a piece of legislation designed to relieve overcrowded prisons in
accordance with a Supreme Court decision. AB 109 enshrined "realignment" into law — a plan to place supposedly "non-violent,
non-serious, and non-sex offenders" in county jails rather than state prisons. In other words, local governments were handed the problem of
prisoners the state didn't want to hold.
Why the United States is a Dying Country.
[Scroll down] [Over the past 40 years] the American people have sanctioned, through legal abortions, the death of over 54.5 million
children. Once this disregard of human life took hold, the citizens of this nation were susceptible to wholesale changes within society.
Far too many of the American people, flush with prosperity, willfully ignored the infiltration of the education, media and entertainment establishments
by the 1960's radicals, the most narcissistic and radical legion of socialist true-believers on the face of the earth. Through the control of
these media of indoctrination, an ever increasing percentage of the population has been conditioned to believe there are no moral absolutes and
there is a limitless list of rights as granted by the government.
Jesus
Portrait Removed From Ohio School. A Jesus portrait that has hung in a southern Ohio school district's buildings since
1947 has been taken down, because of concerns about the costs of a federal lawsuit.
Don't Buy an Electric Car.
I live in California, home to all sorts of environmental nonsense. We couldn't build our house where we wanted to because of a
tiny plant you can hardly see and a grasshopper that might — just might — live there. It cost a fortune to
replace our perfectly good septic system with a more environmentally friendly one to meet new codes.
41% in Bankrupt
Stockton Don't Speak English at Home; 21% Can't Speak It Very Well. In Stockton, Calif., which has just entered into
Chapter 9 bankruptcy, 41 percent of the people do not speak English at home and 21 percent cannot speak it very well,
according to the U.S. Census Bureau. [...] Looking at the subset of Stockton's population that was five years old or older (264,713), the
Census Bureau estimated there were 119,991 people who did not speak English at home.
Americans Are Migrating
To More Free Republican States. The "Freedom in the 50 States" study measured economic and personal freedom using a wide
range of criteria, including tax rates, government spending and debt, regulatory burdens, and state laws covering land use, union
organizing, gun control, education choice and more. It found that the freest states tended to be conservative "red" states, while the
least free were liberal "blue" states. The freest state overall, the researchers concluded, was North Dakota, followed by South Dakota,
Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. The least free state by far was New York, followed by California, New Jersey, Hawaii and
Rhode Island.
And the least free
state in America, is... George Mason University's Mercatus Center just released the third edition
of their comprehensive "Freedom in the Fifty States" study, ranking "the American states based on how their policies
promote freedom in the fiscal, regulatory, and personal realms." The researchers calculated in factors ranging
from the states' levels of government spending and debt, tax burden, property rights protection, and health insurance
freedom all the way to their policies on alcohol, tobacco, gambling, marriage, and firearms.
New York is the Nanny State with the least freedoms:
national study. New York's big government — with its hands deep in taxpayers' pockets and regulations controlling
everyone's lives — has made the Empire State the worst in the nation for personal liberty, a new study shows. A war on
sugary drinks is the least of freedom-loving New Yorkers' worries, according a report by George Mason University, which rated the state
No. 50 for the level of freedom its residents enjoy.
CDC:
110,197,000 Venereal Infections in U.S. According to new data released by the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, there were 19.7 million new venereal infections in the United States in 2008, bringing the total number of existing
sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the U.S. at that time to 110,197,000. The 19.7 million new STIs in 2008 vastly
outpaced the new jobs and college graduates created in the United States that year or any other year on record, according to government
data.
America's
Sharp Left Turn Began With Education Takeover. A better-educated citizenry surely would have been less likely to
vote for continued progress toward national bankruptcy, strangulation of our energy resources leading to higher gas prices, destruction
of the greatest health care system in the world (rated #1 in outcomes by the World Health Organization, despite what you've heard),
and weakened national defense while our adversaries are building up. But how did we get to this point?
Could Illinois be run any worse?
We're still in a jobs depression in many parts of Illinois. New business activity has slowed considerably thanks to sky-high taxes
and a state government so incompetently run, they still owe bills from 3 years ago. But the talk today is about a pension bomb
that threatens disaster and the settlement the state made with the SEC for misleading investors about the billions in shortfalls the
pension system was operating under.
Relativism: America's new 'religion'.
It is unlikely that many Americans would consciously choose a culture of coarseness, so why is American culture — TV, radio,
films, books and advertising — so immersed in violence, indiscriminate sex, superficiality, pornography and ugliness?
There is much talk about our freedom to choose, but we rarely hear that we can't choose the consequences of our choices. When
relativism is adopted by a society, it does not produce beauty, but coarseness, if not as the desired outcome, then as an unintended
consequence. One can see this occurring in America, in a descent to the lowest common denominator when it comes to art, music,
literature, public discourse and entertainment.
Socialism
Is Why Greece, Italy And Detroit Suffer. From Greece to Portugal to Detroit, it would seem some alien being called
"austerity" has descended on their bankrupt economies. In reality, it's the consequences of socialism itself.
Taxes are highest in states run by Democrats. States With the Lowest
and Highest Tax Burdens: The average American paid 9.9% of their income on state and local taxes during 2010, according to
data from The Tax Foundation. The state of New York ranked highest, with residents paying 12.8% of their income on state and
local taxes. The lowest: Alaska at 7.0%.
Detroit- Most Miserable City in
the US. The criteria: "Forbes looked at 200 of the country's largest urban areas and ranked them on factors
including crime rates, foreclosures, taxes, home prices, commute times, weather and decreasing populations." Detroit has
been run by Democrat mayors since 1964.
Detroit
protesters vow 'civil disobedience' in opposition to city's emergency manager. On Thursday [3/14/2013], [Gov. Rick] Snyder
appointees on a three-person panel confirmed African-American lawyer Kevyn Orr as the city's "emergency manager," a powerful position
that gives him authority to restructure the city's finances and change labor contracts while the all-black elected city council sits on the
sidelines. The move, facilitated by Snyder, has sparked charges of racial animus and "anti-democracy" against the governor.
Copper Thieves Plunge Detroit
Freeways into Darkness. In other news from the city that came out 98 percent for Obama, the freeways, which have no lights
anyway, are closed due to weather-related accidents. There's a backlog of 11,000 untested rape kits and the governor is looking for an
emergency financial manager to take over its finances as it appears to be on the verge of bankruptcy with an $8.2 billion debt that would
make it the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history.
The Decline of America.
In August 1945, Hiroshima was in shambles, while Detroit was among the most innovative and wealthiest cities in the world.
Contemporary Hiroshima now resembles a prosperous Detroit of 1945; parts of Detroit look like they were bombed decades ago.
History has shown that a government's redistribution of shrinking wealth, in preference to a private sector's creation of new
sources of it, can prove more destructive than even the most deadly enemy.
America's Suicidal Cities.
Some major American cities are dying, and the worst part is that these grievously ill patients often are refusing to take even the mildest
medicine that would make things better. Take Detroit, a city that has become a synonym for urban failure. The murder rate of
one per 1,719 people last year was more than eleven times the rate in New York City. One contributing factor may be that
two-thirds of Detroit's streetlights are broken.
Evidence
Mounts of Mass Shooting Causes: Sociopathic Progressivism & Drugs. It seems the root causes of this twisted behavior
include, at least by affinity, the ideological motivations of, or even pathological drives for, political or sociological causes
shared by the progressive "left" — mixed with psychotropic drugs — and that, especially among but not limited
to adolescent men. I am not joking; deadly serious. This brief compilation may serve as an introduction. I have
seen sound reports on numerous of these instances.
America Needs a New Birth
of Freedom. It was under [President] Johnson, who championed the "Great Society" in the 1960s, that a good portion of the runaway
government spending we are trying to get under control today originated. Johnson signed into law Medicare, Medicaid, the War on Poverty
programs, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. [...] So the Johnson administration years marked not just the beginning of many huge
government programs that we can't pay for today, but they also marked a major cultural change where government began displacing family and
personal responsibility. It is no accident that as the American welfare state grew, the American family collapsed.
Van
Lines Data Show People Fleeing States With Big Fiscal Problems. Citizens and businesses are fleeing states with fiscal
problems — that is one apparent message from the latest annual report from United Van Lines. The company's study of 2012
interstate shipments, released in December, showed significant continuing flight from states with high state government debt loads as
measured by the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA). For example, the top five states for the share of outbound interstate
shipments in the latest UVL survey were, in order from one to five — New Jersey, Illinois, West Virginia, New York, and
New Mexico.
Gun Violence
is Not a Republican Problem, It's a Democratic Problem. 67% of firearm murders took place in the country's 50 largest
metro areas. The 62 cities in those metro areas have a firearm murder rate of 9.7, more than twice the national average.
Among teenagers the firearm murder rate is 14.6 or almost three times the national average. Those are the crowded cities of
Obamerica. Those are the places with the most restrictive gun control laws and the highest crime rates. And many of them
have been run by Democrats and their political machines for almost as long as they have been broken.
The Missouri 'Rat Your
Kid Out or Rat Yourself Out' Act. A state legislator in St. Louis County has sponsored gun legislation for the State of
Missouri. Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, is sponsoring SB 124, the Rat Your Kid Out or Rat Yourself Out
Act. [...] Notice there is no specificity in the bill. That is not by accident; this is intended to be as broad as possible, to
open the door for more and stricter regulations down the road. Were Chappelle-Nadal putting forth a serious bill she would have
specific definitions and a very circumscribed legal requirement. It is open-ended for a reason.
Bed bugs were all but eliminated years ago — and then the liberals banned DDT. And the most bedbug-infested U.S. city
is ... The exact cause is not known, but experts associate the resurgence with increased resistance of bed bugs to available
pesticides, greater international and domestic travel, lack of knowledge regarding control of bed bugs due to their prolonged absence, and
the continuing decline or elimination of effective pest control programs at state and local public health agencies.
Detroit Betrayed: The
Radical Wrecking Of An Iconic City. [Scroll down] Coleman Young, the mayor of Detroit from 1974 to 1993, was able to "move
forward as he did" thanks in part to training he got from the "party" — that is, the Communist Party. [...] Young had a woeful impact on
Detroit. If there is any wonder why Detroit often resembles an Eastern Bloc municipality (minus the police state, since Mayor Young made
it a routine to attack and neglect the city's police forces, ensuring that the 1967 riots picked up where they left off), consider that
for 19 years the mayor who ran the city economically and socially was a closet Marxist. Carl Levin, senator from Michigan, was
Young's right-hand man as Detroit City Council president during the most destructive years of Young's reign.
Moving Company Reports
People Fleeing Illinois & New Jersey. The St. Louis based moving company United Van Lines is reporting that Illinois leads the nation
alongside New Jersey with the nations highest move out rates. United Van Lines spokeswoman, Melissa Sullivan told CBS affiliate KMOX in
St. Louis, 60.5% of their business comes from individuals and businesses leaving Illinois. She also said, "Illinois has seen more
outbound movement every year since" they have been keeping track, beginning in 1977.
Rahm Emanuel Out of Excuses for Chicago's Murder Rate.
In 2012, Chicago recorded 505 murders. That may not sound all that bad, since in some years in the past two decades the city had over
900 murders (1991, 1992, and 1994). But it looks like a terribly high number when compared to New York (which recorded 414 murders
in 2012) or any of the other ten largest cities in America, because Chicago is not only the murder capital of America in terms of experiencing the
most murders. It also has, by far, the highest murder rate among America's ten largest cities.
20 Ways
America Has Begun to Reap What It Has Sown. [#7] Our first priority when it comes to schools is catering to the teachers'
unions, not educating our kids; then we're surprised at the poor quality of public education in our country. [...] [#16] We worry more about
children's self-esteem than their performance; then we're surprised when college kids aren't ready for the working world.
Hobby Lobby and
the Loss of America's Soul. In America, established rights such as religious liberty and the right to
bear arms are currently under attack. Liberals are in charge and they seem to feel that straightforward Constitutional
precepts require alteration or eradication. Take for instance the "right to privacy" — the left has had no
problem broadening the meaning of "privacy" to include the right to kill an unborn child. As for religious liberty,
unless you're a Muslim demanding a Ramadan meal, liberals like Supreme Court judge Sonia Sotomayor, rather than uphold
religious liberty, facilitate Barack Obama's effort to redefine the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.
This isn't America Right Now. The nation is more
divided than ever in history. The nation is more immoral and unethical than at any time in history. The nation is more fiscally broke than
at any time in history. The nation is more hate-filled than at any time in history. It is more violent than at any time in history and it
is in fact, more racist than at any time in history.
446 school age children shot in Chicago so far this year with
strongest gun laws in country — media silent. The cesspool known as Chicago probably has the toughest gun laws in the country, yet despite
all the shootings, murders, and bloodshed, you never hear a peep about this from the corrupt state run media. In Chicago, there have been 446 school age
children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel and that produced Obama, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, etc. 62 school aged children have actually
been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year with almost two weeks to go. So why isn't this news worthy?
Obama administration, Congress quietly let school security funds lapse.
Government officials told the Washington Guardian on Friday night [12/14/2012] that two Justice Department programs that had provided more than $200 million
to schools for training, security equipment and police resources over the last decade weren't renewed in 2011 and 2012, and that a separate program that provided
$800 million to put police officers inside the schools was ended a few years earlier. Meanwhile, the administration eliminated funding in 2011-12 for a
separate Education Department program that gave money to schools to prepare for mass tragedies, the officials said.
The right states of mind. The writing is on the
wall. Between 2000 and 2010, the population in the eight states without income taxes grew by 18 percent, while all others grew by 8 percent; the
(then) 22 states with right-to-work laws grew by 15 percent; the others grew by 6 percent. Population flowed from north to south, with warm sun
and friendly Republican governors. Florida grew by 17.6 percent, Texas by 20.6 percent ... and New York by 2.1 percent.
"White flight" happens for a reason. Detroit's
Tragic Decline Is Largely Due To Its Own Race-Based Policies. In 1960, Detroit's population was 1.6 million. Blacks were
29 percent, and whites were 70 percent. Today, Detroit's population has fallen precipitously to 707,000, of which blacks are 84 percent
and whites 8 percent. Much of the city's decline began with the election of Coleman Young, Detroit's first black mayor and mayor for five terms,
who engaged in political favoritism to blacks and tax policies against higher income mostly white people. Young's successors, Dennis Archer and Kwame
Kilpatrick, followed his Third World tyrant policies, but neither had his verbal vulgarity.
If you lock up the lunatics before they commit a crime, who will run
the government? Apparently far left groups (the ACLU filing against the law) defeated a Connecticut mental health protections law just months before the
Newtown shootings. Their primary concern being that the proposed law would "severely curtail the privacy rights and liberty issues of people with psychiatric
disabilities." "Disabilities?" That's a nice politically correct term. Unfortunately nobody on the ACLU staff addressed the severe curtailment of
the privacy rights and liberties of the victims of a person suffering from one of these "dangerous disabilities."
How much wealth do the poor in America have?
[Scroll down] In America, poverty is self-inflicted. But that doesn't mean that the Democrats don't help the poor to stay poor. Democrats wants [sic]
to raise minimum wage, which promotes higher unemployment among younger workers — and more dependence on government programs. They want to subsidize
single motherhood and enact no-fault divorce laws, to destroy marriage. And they want to push gay history and green propaganda in the public schools, to diminish
the economic value of a high school education. They don't want the poor to lift themselves out of poverty so that they are independent of government.
Progressive Policies Are to Blame for the
Mass Shooting in Sandy Hook. [Scroll down] What is clear, is that decades of failed liberal policy have made it difficult to force people with
severe mental diseases to be treated or institutionalized. And, then we are all shocked when these same dysfunctional individuals go on a shooting rampage
like we witnessed today [12/14/2012] in Newtown.
Recently
Defeated Connecticut Mental Health Bill [Could] Have Stopped Friday's Shooter. In February 2012, Connecticut Senate Bill 452 (SB452) was put
forward to remedy the fact that Connecticut was one of less than ten states in the U.S. to lack an "assisted outpatient treatment" (AOT) law. But the bill
was passed to Connecticut's Joint Committee on Judiciary in March, where it quietly faded away because of opposition by those who viewed it as "egregious" and
"outrageously discriminatory."
Months Before Shooting, "Civil Liberties" Groups Defeated Conn. Law Aimed at the Violent Mentally
Ill. Connecticut is one of only SIX states in the U.S. that doesn't have a type of "assisted outpatient treatment" (AOT) law (sometimes referred to
as "involuntary outpatient treatment"). There's no one standard for these types of laws, but (roughly speaking) these are laws that allow for people with
mental illness to be forcibly treated before they commit a serious crime.
$822,000 Worker Shows California
Leads U.S. Pay Giveaway. Nine years ago, California Democrat Gray Davis became the first U.S. governor in 82 years to be recalled by
voters. The state's 20 million taxpayers still bear the cost of his four years and 10 months on the job. Davis escalated salaries
and benefits for 164,000 state workers, including a 34 percent raise for prison guards, the first of a series of steps in which he and successors
saddled California with a legacy of dysfunction.
Caesarism in the USA. Under Woodrow Wilson,
government gained the ability to manipulate the wealth and productivity of the whole country through taxation, changing the value of the
currency, and debt manipulation. And finally, Caesarism was openly installed by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Congress has never
been able to regain the power the Founders expected it to have. Instead, Congress has been content to "go along to get along" with the
commander in chief and to compromise just as long as congressmen and senators were left free to reward their political supporters.
The 11 Death Spiral States. Eleven states made Forbes' list
of danger spots for investors including California, New York, Illinois, and Ohio. They warned (and with the cliff it is even more critical), if
you have muni bonds in these states — clean up your portfolio; if your career takes you there — rent, don't buy!
Day
1 of Legal Pot Marred by Deaths at Alleged Wash. Growing Center. The first day of legal marijuana use in Washington State
was marred by an attempted robbery ending with two deaths at an alleged pot-growing facility just south of Seattle. The
possession of pot became legal in the state Thursday [12/6/2012] after voters passed a measure decriminalizing it in November.
Celebrations as pot use becomes
legal in Washington state. The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early this morning
with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law. Hundreds gathered
at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took
effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.
Tax and tell.
Illinois has a reputation for being an expensive and difficult place to do business, a big reason why the state has the ninth-highest
unemployment rate in the country, higher than every state that borders it.
Time to Break Apart the United States? What the liberals have done to Detroit they
do most everywhere that they go. The only reason that each and every liberal enclave has not imploded under the weight of liberal stupidity, greed, and cupidity
is the constant influx of revenue from the more conservative and responsible (and yes, honest) citizens in America.
Ten Little-Known Consequences of a Second Obama Term.
Believing in activist government means your work is never finished. You pass a new law that you think combats injustice and inefficiency.
Then human nature kicks in and, with great disapprobation, you discover that injustice and inefficiency still exist. So you pass another law,
then another.
The exhibitionist as a civil
rights hero. [Scroll down] The offender is "Colleen" Francis, whom I wrote about in a previous column.
Francis is 45 years old, white and a so-called transgender person. That is to say, Francis was born a male and has male
genitalia but chooses to identify himself as, and live as, a woman. Francis's anatomical maleness did not prevent Evergreen
State College in Washington from giving him permission to use the women's locker room on the campus.
Transgender Student in Women's Locker Room Raises Uproar. The decision to allow a transgender
45-year-old college student who identifies as a woman but has male genitalia to use the women's locker room has raised a fracas among parents and
faith-based organizations, who say children as young as 6 years old use the locker room. The locker room at Evergreen College in Olympia, Wash.,
is shared with the Capital High School swim club and a children's swim academy, along with the students at Evergreen.
The economy is in the worst shape in the states that are run by liberals. N.J. unemployment rate rises to 9.9 percent, highest
in 3 decades. In a mixed bag of economic news that was challenged by the Christie administration, New Jersey's unemployment rate inched
closer to 10 percent even as it added 5,300 jobs in August, according to figures released today [9/20/2012] by the state Labor Department.
The unemployment rate rose to 9.9 percent last month, up slightly from 9.8 percent in July and nearly two percentage points higher than the
national average of 8.1 percent.
Pelosi's Divine Comedy. At the core of the Obama
campaign is the insistent message that his failures should be discounted because of the overwhelming economic mess he inherited from
George W. Bush. It is befuddling that so many Republicans (including Mitt Romney, it seems) are so quick to concede a point that is
demonstrably untrue. Track the ebb and flow of our economy through the years, and it is stunning how frequently the bad times coincide with
Democrat control of Congress, the White House, or both.
Criminals thrive in cities run by liberals. Enter Detroit at your
own risk! Police issue shocking warning to baseball fans. Police officers in Detroit greeted football fans attending Saturday night's
Tigers game with a shock warning: 'Enter Detroit at Your Own Risk.' To protest against plans to cut their pay and increase their hours,
an estimated 400 off-duty police officers handed out fliers to fans as they entered the Tigers' Comerica Park stadium.
Poverty abounds in cities run by liberals. New Census statistics paint grim picture of Camden.
The recently released Census figures paint a grim picture of Camden. One that is worse than the year before. According to the new estimates,
Camden is the poorest city in the country with a poverty rate of 42.5 percent. The rate for children living in poverty in Camden was even higher
with a rate of 56.7 percent.
The poor people Obama left behind.
Four years after Barack Obama's historic election as president, little seems to have changed for the African-American communities on Chicago's South Side.
The lack of change — or the sense that these neighborhoods are getting worse — is eroding the president's standing among African-Americans
in his hometown. In 2011, Chicago suffered the third-highest black jobless rate among the nation's major metropolitan areas, at 19 percent,
according to the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
Obama's Perverse Middle
East Policy Bears Fruit. It would not be fair to blame yesterday's disasters in Egypt and Libya entirely on Barack Obama's
failed Middle East policies. The Muslim extremists who attacked our embassy and consulate are alone responsible for their actions;
they are, as a former president memorably put it, evildoers. Nothing we say about American foreign policy excuses them to the
slightest degree. It is nevertheless true that what happened yesterday in Egypt and Libya is directly related to the perverse
policies that the Obama administration has followed for the past four years.
Consequences of Obama weakness.
The murder of U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Libya on Wednesday is the direct consequence of President Obama's weakness as a leader.
[...] These are not isolated incidents but the predictable result of four years of Mr. Obama meekly trying to "lead from behind."
Dithering Obama too dangerous for U.S.
This past week's deadly violence in the Mideast and North Africa rolled a storm cloud over President Obama's sunny landscape of Arab Spring.
It rained blood on the seeds of weakness that Obama had planted with his "lead from behind" foreign policy of feel-good apologies, bows,
empty words, mixed messages and appeasement.
Deadliest
city in America plans to disband its entire police force. The deadliest city in America is disbanding its entire police force
and firing 270 cops in an effort to deal with a massive budget crunch. There have been a staggering 41 homicides in Camden,
New Jersey, already this year but the Camden Police Department will be replaced with a force run by the county, which supporters say will
cost significantly less and allow more officers on the streets. Some citizens worry, though that the new officers, many of them from
the county police force, won't be prepared for the tough, violent work of patrolling a dense urban city.
In Baltimore, Illegal
Immigrants Welcomed with Open Arms. The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (D), deliberately wants the city compete
to become the nation's largest sanctuary city. Baltimore's unemployment rate is at 10 percent. For blacks in Baltimore, the
unemployment rate is over 20 percent. People are fleeing Maryland — and its major cities like Baltimore — to
states like Virginia and North Carolina that have better conditions for economic growth. But none of that seems to matter to
Rawlings-Blake, who thinks opening up Baltimore to illegal immigrants (her goal is to attract at least 10,000 immigrants to Baltimore) will
solve — and will not exacerbate — the city's economic woes and counteract population decline.
Democrats'
Ideal Voter: Illegal Alien, Single Mother, Convicted Felon. How can a country that elected Ronald Reagan have Obama
tied in the polls with Mitt Romney? The answer is: It's not the same country. [...] The same process that has already
destroyed California is working its way through the entire country. While conservatives have been formulating carefully
constructed arguments, liberals have been playing a long-term game to change the demographics of America to get an electorate
more to their liking.
Progressive
City Learns Big Government Perils The Hard Way. How did the mayor of Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pa., end up
slashing every city worker's pay to minimum wage? Try big government, a tax squeeze on business and too many free riders.
New Yorkers
Leave Like East Germans Fled Communism. New York thinks of itself as the place to be, but its high taxes have made
it a place to flee. Those who have escaped the Empire State tax man could fill a major city.
Detroit,
North Korea, The City Of Broken Lights. Detroit, the buckle on the Rust Belt that as recently as the
1970s had 1.8 million people, now has only 713,000 in an area of 139 square miles. It fell victim to
one-party Democratic rule and labor unions that made its key industry — auto manufacturing —
uncompetitive and financially unstable. Before there was Greece, there was General Motors. Now Detroit
has announced plans to reorganize that could have come right out of Pyongyang.
Illinois Had Nation's Worst
Jobs Record in 2011. Over the past year, Illinois has been dogged by numerous news stories about the state's
poor jobs climate and negative economic outlook. The latest employment numbers indicate the trend won't end anytime
soon. In 2011, Illinois experienced the largest increase in unemployment rate of any state in the nation, according
to a new report by the Illinois Policy Institute.
Taxpayers Flee Illinois
with $26 Bil. of Taxable Income. "One taxpayer moved out of Illinois every 10 minutes between 1995 and 2009,"
according to the Illinois Policy Institute, and it appears taxes and tax policies are to blame for many of the losses.
Researchers at the institute examined IRS and other data and found over the past 15 years, more people have moved out
of Illinois than moved in.
Sex and the city leads to
this. Last week it was revealed that a staggering one in four adults in New York has the virus that causes
genital herpes, with the rate climbing to a colossal one in two for African-Americans. Far more women carry the virus
than men — 36% vs. 19%. This makes New York the national capital for genital herpes, something
which will surely grace the state's licence plates in years to come.
Political rope-a-dope. According to an
American Community Survey, by the U.S. Census Bureau, the top 10 poorest cities with populations more than
250,000 are Detroit, with 33 percent of its residents below the poverty line; Buffalo, N.Y., 30 percent;
Cincinnati, 28 percent; Cleveland, 27 percent; Miami, 27 percent; St. Louis, 27 percent; El Paso,
Texas, 26 percent; Milwaukee, 26 percent; Philadelphia, 25 percent; and Newark, N.J., 24 percent.
The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by Democratic and presumably
liberal administrations.
Carbondale in top 100 for
most dangerous cities. Carbondale ranks as the 95th most dangerous city in the U.S. according to
NeighborhoodScout.com. The website says it bases it's rankings off of mathematical algorithms and crime
data from the FBI to rank the cities. People that live in the city, have mixed feelings about the results.
No-Labels Movement: Another Liberal
Trick. After twenty years of mentoring athletic children, my brother is not coaching a little league football team this
year. He said things have changed. He ranted, "The kids run the show. They do not fear or respect anyone.
Parents cuss you out or worse for verbally disciplining their child. Some teams have banned keeping score, and every kid gets
a trophy — pure politically correct namby-pamby feel-good garbage."
The New American Divide.
Changes in social policy during the 1960s made it economically more feasible to have a child without having a husband
if you were a woman or to get along without a job if you were a man; safer to commit crimes without suffering
consequences; and easier to let the government deal with problems in your community that you and your neighbors
formerly had to take care of. But, for practical purposes, understanding why the new lower class got started
isn't especially important. Once the deterioration was under way, a self-reinforcing loop took hold as
traditionally powerful social norms broke down.
How
the Left is Sucking the Life out of the Private Economy. [Scroll down] The left will,
besides denying any responsibility for this devastation to the American economy, claim that their policies
have helped the poor and downtrodden. However, in 1965, the poverty rate in America was 15.4% (today
it is 15.1%). Not only has the income of Americans stagnated, but the disparity has widened —
not because of the so-called greed of the rich, but because there is now minimal upward income mobility
compared to the past, as high-paying jobs are no longer being created. The U.S. is not competitive
in the world market, as the manufacturing sector has been forced to wither on the vine. And
America has joined the list of countries facing insolvency due to out-of-control spending and borrowing.
The Blew It states: MSNBC listed
Ten States That Cannot Pay Their Bills. Nine of them were among the 28 states that Barack Obama carried
in 2008. Only 1 of them was among the 22 states that John McCain carried. In other words, the
Blew It states are Blue states, with the exception of Arizona. Now for the kicker, Real Clear Politics
lists 7 of those deadbeat states as going for Obama again in 2012.
Death by Liberalism.
The soft lethality of liberalism is a result of that saddest of English phrases: "unintended consequences."
Liberal politicians, academics, and operatives want to do good. They want to benefit Americans and the
country as a whole. They want to do it their way, through large-scale governmental policy. They
know exactly how it is to be done, and they will brook no interference. So they set out on their grand
schemes, and it ends, always and without exception, in disaster. Some of those disasters go over the
line into something resembling mass negligent homicide: the legal procedural revolution, the DDT ban,
CAFE fuel standards, federalized child protection, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, and gun-free
zones, to mention only a few.
The Schools in the District of Columbia are notoriously bad.
Obamas
Pick Sidwell Friends For Kids' School. "A number of great schools were considered. In the
end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now," said
Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama. ... Lelyveld said that while public schools
were considered, the Obamas felt that a private school was in the best interest of their children.
The Editor says...
No kidding. That's a polite way of saying that the kids would not get an education at a public
school in Washington, DC.
Eventually he came right out and said it. Obama:
D.C. schools don't measure up to his daughters' private school. President Obama said Monday [9/27/2010]
that his daughters could not get the same level of education from D.C. public schools that they receive at the
elite private school they attend.
D.C.
Being Made to Hire Back Fired Teachers. An independent arbitrator recently ruled that D.C. Public
Schools will be required to hire back 75 teachers fired during Michelle Rhee's tenure. On top of
this, D.C. will also be required to pay two years in back wages, costing the city approximately $7.5 million.
Although the dismissed teachers were still in their probationary period, arbitrator Charles Feigenbaum claims
that they were improperly let go because the district failed to comply with proper dismissal procedures.
'No
Child' Data on Violence Skewed. At Anacostia Senior High School last school year, private
security guards working under D.C. police recorded 61 violent offenses, including three sexual assaults
and one assault with a deadly weapon. There were 21 other nonviolent cases in which
students were caught bringing knives and guns to school. [And yet] Anacostia is not
considered a persistently dangerous school.
D.C.
Graduation Rates Down. The on-time graduation rate for D.C. public schools has fallen
below 50 percent, according to a new study, while the rates for Maryland and Virginia have not
improved since the mid-1990s. The study, released today by researchers affiliated with the trade
publication Education Week, examined data from 1996 to 2006, the latest available federal figures, to
calculate the percentage of students who graduate from high school within four years of starting ninth
grade. In 2006, the study found, the D.C. graduation rate fell to 48.8 percent, down
8.8 percentage points from the previous year. The figure did not include public
charter schools.
Senator:
Parents worrisome about D.C. schools system. "Parents tell us, they know in many cases, in D.C., if
they're sending their kids off to the public schools the chances are very good they're going to end up in a
gang rather than graduating high school," Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said during a news
conference Thursday [3/5/2009].
Special Speech.
[Scroll down] Witness the District of Columbia, which spends more per public-school student than any other school
system in the country. In terms of academic outcome, school discipline, and almost every other conceivable
measure, the D.C. schools are a notorious disaster, and for children with special needs they are an absolute
scandal. The idea that throwing more federal dollars into this sinkhole is a solution of some sort is
laughable.
School Choice Is Change You Can Believe In.
Just how rotten are the D.C. public schools? In a recent survey by Education Week, the D.C. public schools
ranked fourth from the bottom in terms of graduation rates. Test scores for basics like math and reading
are also near the bottom. It's not for lack of money: A recent U.S. Census Bureau report says the
district school spending clocks in at more than $13,400 per child — third highest in the nation.
It takes a lot of money to run a school system as lousy as D.C.'s.
The Union War on the No Child Left Behind Act:
Spending per pupil has skyrocketed over the last three decades — going from just over $3,000 a year to more than $8,194 a year.
In our nation's biggest districts, such as Washington, D.C., that number has reached more than $16,000 a year. Yet,
despite this increased spending, fewer than one-third of our fourth graders (and an equivalent proportion of our eighth
graders) read proficiently. Reading performance has improved only slightly over the past fifteen years among fourth
graders and has not improved at all among eighth graders.
Public School System, Not Vouchers, Is What's
Unfair. The District of Columbia is widely cited as having one of the worst public school
systems in the country, with reported graduation rates at a mere 57 percent and politicians crying foul
over an alleged lack of funding. But as Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute noted in the Washington
Post, public funding of DC schools is commonly claimed to be $8,322 per pupil, which is higher than the
tuition for many private schools in the area. And when Coulson accounted for all education expenditures
in the district, he found actual public school spending was about $24,600 per child! You could send your
kids to the toniest of private schools for that kind of money, yet the DC schools are a disaster.
Congress putting
D.C. kids in danger. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program saves lives. The fate of the nonprofit
outfit, which takes poor children out of failing schools and gives them scholarships to private institutions, is currently
up in the air — in the hands of Congress and, ultimately, the president. Supporters of the program cite
its strong record of academic improvement, but its value goes beyond grades. It quite literally saves lives.
Children enrolled in the DCOSP, now in its fifth year, are physically safer than they were in District public schools,
some of the most violent in the nation.
Black Education.
The education establishment and politicians tell us that we need to spend more for higher teacher pay and smaller
class size. The fact of business is higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes mean little or nothing
in terms of academic achievement. Washington, D.C., for example spends over $15,000 per student, has
class sizes smaller than the nation's average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are
the most highly paid in the nation.
A
Teaching Moment From the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia … is proving that spending
more on public schools is a waste of money. That was the unintended lesson of the press conference District
Mayor Adrian Fenty called this week to announce that half the District's public schools would not have proper
textbooks for opening day and half the school buildings would not have air conditioning. This is not
because the District has been frugal. Its public schools wallow in cash.
Higher Grades Contradict
Test Scores. Forty-three percent of white students scored at or above proficient levels on the
reading test, compared with 20 percent of Hispanic students and 16 percent of black students.
On the math test, 29 percent of white students reached the proficient level, compared with 8 percent of
Hispanics and 6 percent of blacks. The gap in reading scores between whites and minorities was
relatively unchanged since 2002. One of the stated goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law is to
reduce the gaps in achievement between whites and minorities.
Can D.C.
Schools Be Fixed? The schools spent $25 million on a computer system to manage personnel that
had to be discarded because there was no accurate list of employees to use as a starting point. The school
system relies on paper records stacked in 200 cardboard boxes to keep track of its employees, and in some cases
is five years behind in processing staff paperwork. It also lacks an accurate list of its 55,000-plus
students, although it pays $900,000 to a consultant each year to keep count.
To
Live and Take in D.C.: The Santa Clausiness of the D.C. government is almost beyond
comprehension. It seems that all you have to do is work there and money just falls into your
lap. For instance, The [Washington] Post reported just last week on how a former principal requested
a grant to train teachers and the school system authorized $3 million in a single day. And when she went
to pick up the first $1 million, the school system just handed over the money — no silly,
fussy contract or anything like that.
This article includes a state-by-state chart of spending per student. D.C.'s Distinction: $16,344 Per Student,
But Only 12% Read Proficiently: The District of Columbia spends far more money per student in
its public elementary and secondary schools each year than the tuition costs at many private elementary
schools, or even college-preparatory secondary schools. Yet, District 8th-graders ranked dead last
in 2005 in national reading and math tests.
Study finds one-third
in D.C. are illiterate. About one-third of the people living in the national's
capital are functionally illiterate, compared with about one-fifth nationally, according to a
report on the District of Columbia. Adults are considered functionally illiterate if they
have trouble doing such things as comprehending bus schedules, reading maps and filling out
job applications.
The 65 percent solution:
Nationally, 61.5 percent of education operational budgets reach the classrooms. Why make a fuss about
3.5 percent? Because it amounts to $13 billion. Only four states (Utah, Tennessee, New
York, Maine) spend at least 65 percent of their budgets in classrooms. Fifteen states spend less
than 60 percent. The worst jurisdiction — Washington, D.C., of course — spends
less than 50 percent.
The Rise of a Judicial Dictatorship:
[In Washington DC,] integration seems to have proven a false promise and a colossal failure. While per-pupil
expenditures are among the highest in the nation, the test scores of children in these D.C. schools are among
the lowest. In too many, the kids are learning at levels three and four grades below the national norm.
District fails to check
students. D.C. school officials did not verify residency requirements for more than 200 students
at schools and facilities receiving city funding during the past two years, violations that potentially cost
the District nearly $3 million, according to a report by the D.C. inspector general.
Do Away
With Public Schools. Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers
and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest
school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but
last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no
secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly
40 years.
End Them, Don't Mend
Them. [Scroll down] The District of Columbia's per-pupil outlay is claimed to be $17,542.
The real number is an astonishing $28,170 — 155 percent more than the average tuition at the
famously pricey private academies of the capital region. ... And the extraordinary expense of the D.C. public
school system produced a 2007 class of eighth graders in which, according to the NAEP, 12 percent of the
students were at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent were at or above proficiency in math.
Many of these young people are now entering the work force. Count your change in D.C.
D.C.
Council set to tighten school-truancy standards. The pending legislation, introduced by council
member Tommy Wells, would replace rules made just last year by the Board of Education, which allow students
to accrue as many as 25 unexcused absences before child welfare and judicial authorities intervene.
Mr. Wells' legislation cuts the number of days to 10.
The Editor says...
When I was in the public schools, I think that number was two or three at the most — not ten, and certainly
not 25. But you know, if the fools would prefer to flip burgers, join the Army, or go straight to prison
instead of graduating from high school, why not let them make that decision for themselves?
Obama states the obvious: DC schools stink! Obama:
D.C. schools don't suit daughters. In a rare and blunt criticism of education in the nation's
capital, President Obama on Monday [9/27/2010] called D.C. Public Schools a "struggling" system that doesn't
measure up to the needs of first daughters Sasha and Malia.
The Urban Plantation.
The blight in the District of Columbia infects higher education, too. The University of the District of
Columbia is ever in danger of losing accreditation and has one of the worst graduation rates in the country.
D.C. public options are so bad that residents receive subsidies to pursue degrees in other states. Again,
the taxpayer pays twice: for a sub-par college, and for subsidies that take serious students elsewhere.
If public school teachers and administrators could be sued for malpractice, the schoolhouse might improve overnight.
Violent
crimes of all kinds are on the rise in D.C. A violent weekend in Washington, D.C., in which
five people were shot, one fatally, in one incident and another person was killed in a separate shooting
capped off a 30-day period in which all categories of violent crime in the nation's capital increased over the
past year. Internal department documents obtained by The Washington Times contain preliminary police
statistics that say 11 homicides were recorded in the past 30 days compared with nine over the same
period last year.
DC Schools 'Cheating'
Scandal Heats Up. The story involves possible cheating on tests by "erasure corrections," bonuses
handed out to those teachers and principals overseeing the testing, and [Michelle] Rhee's feigned innocence about
the matter. ... If Rhee's "double-digit growth" numbers sound too good to be true they probably are. A
March 2011 report in USA Today investigated an abnormal amount of erasures occurring on standardized tests in
103 public schools for the 3 years Rhee was at the helm.
It Strikes Me As Odd.
One of the hardy perennials of American politics is an insatiable demand for more educational spending.
Outlays for education have been steadily and massively growing year by year, while the academic achievements
of American kids have been dropping. If it were only about money, schools in Washington, D.C. would be
the best, not the last, in the nation.
School Reform In
the Wrong Hands. There's more bad news coming out of the DC Public Schools this week.
Already under investigation for a major cheating scandal beginning in 2008, the DC Comprehensive Assessment
System reported a double-digit plunge in math and reading scores for the 2011 school year. Some of
the same schools that were flagged for a high number of erasures on standardized tests from 2008-2010 showed
the sharpest decreases.
Obama's War on Black Education.
Notorious for being violent, under-performing laggards, D.C. public schools have among the highest dropout and lowest graduation rates
in the country. In 2007, D.C.'s 4th and 8th grade students scored lower than children from all 50 states on the National
Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Fewer than half of children in D.C, public schools rated "proficient"!
In the District of Columbia, guns are under control, but crime is not.
Gun
free in D.C.: This is life in "gun free" Washington, D.C. No one is
safe. Marion Barry's a victim of a home invasion. Supreme Court Justice David
Souter was assaulted while jogging last year. Teresa Heinz was mugged outside her
Georgetown home. Wanda Alston, the head of the mayor's Office of Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual & Transgender Affairs was murdered in a home invasion robbery. You are
not safe in Washington, D.C. No one is.
Fables, Myths & Other Tall
Tales: Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun sales took effect in 1977 and
by the 1990s the city's murder rate had tripled. During the years following the
ban, most murders — and all firearm murders — in the city were committed with
handguns. Chicago imposed handgun registration in 1968, and murders with
handguns continued to rise. Its registration system in place, Chicago
imposed a D.C.-style handgun ban in 1982, and over the next decade the annual
number of handgun-related murders doubled. [This list also goes on and on.]
More Gun Control,
Please! Why does Washington, D.C., a district whose laws make it illegal to buy, possess,
transport or acquire a handgun, experience the highest per capita murder rates in the nation?
"Gun Control" Failures:
The federal Gun Control Act was imposed in 1968, yet violent crime increased until 1991.
Washington, D.C., banned handguns in 1976 and by 1991 its homicide rate had tripled, while the U.S. rate
had risen only 12%. Chicago, the only other city to ban handguns, has had more murders than any city for
the last two years. Despite having some of the most restrictive gun laws, Maryland's robbery rate remains
highest among the states, and Baltimore's murder rate has nearly overtaken D.C.'s.
D.C. cleans up its
gun ban. The nation's capital is home to some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country.
Washington city leaders intentionally crafted convoluted regulations to make it difficult for citizens to own
firearms legally. Now that these obstructionist rules are in the spotlight, the D.C. Council realizes it
needs to clean up its act.
Statehood, or the equivalent, for the District of Columbia:
A look at Pelosi's voting
record. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi would bring to the office a level of left-wing
liberalism that will be unprecedented. … Until she received a 95 percent liberal rating in 2005 from
the Americans for Democratic Action (the nation's pre-eminent liberal organization), Mrs. Pelosi had
racked up five consecutive years (2000-04) of 100 percent ratings. Her lifetime ADA rating
is 96 percent. Last year, the American Conservative Union gave her a zero rating.
Senate Vote Reveals Who's in Bed With MoveOn.org.
The MoveOn.org Party was at it again, flexing its muscle in the U.S. Senate. The issue was a completely
symbolic sense of the Senate vote supporting Gen. David Petraeus. It didn't mention the MoveOn.org attack
ad against Petraeus but the resolution didn't have to. Everybody knew what it was about.
Democrat-Sponsored
Bills Tell a Liberal Story. Various amendments to the Constitution, recently proposed by
Democrats, would create a constitutional right to equal public education, a constitutional right to equal
health care, a constitutional right to housing, and a constitutional right to full employment.
Power struggle: The
past as prologue if the Democrats win. Voters seemingly poised to hand control of the House of
Representatives and perhaps the Senate to Democrats should be thinking hard about the consequences on an array
of defining issues. The most reliable guide to those consequences is not what Democrats are saying on the
campaign stump — or mostly not saying, witness the suddenly missing Nancy Pelosi — but how they
have actually voted in Congress again and again on core issues.
The Trouble with Democrats. The
Democrats have become, more and more, largely a coalition of minorities, each with its own special agenda.
The first of these was the African-Americans, who regularly cast about 90 percent of their votes for the
Democrats. Also early on the scene was a large, disaffected segment of the intelligentsia, dominant in
the universities and angry at the failure of the country to recognize its superiority and its right to
rule. Then came the ultra-feminists, the abortion supporters, the gay lobby, the environmental
extremists and a newly vocal pack of secularists, openly hostile to religion and furious at the alleged
efforts of the "religious right" to impose a "theocracy" on society. These are the groups that
dominate the national Democratic Party today.
Fool's
Goldwater: Of course, when liberals say government should stay out of our hair, they mean
Uncle Sam should offer an open bar on abortions and gay-marriage licenses. Beyond that, everything's
fair game. How else to explain the fact that Ms. Goldwater interviews … people who support
nationalized health care, smoking bans, gun control, hate-crime laws, and other libertarian
wolfsbane — to testify about Goldwater's libertarian enlightenment.
Fifty Years of Fidel.
Castro never stopped hating America: He just transferred his nominal allegiances when the Axis lost. This
made him the perfect hero to the Far Left. There is no real "ideology" to the Left. It is simply a vast,
noxious stew of hatreds. The meat of this hatred is hatred of America, individual liberty that works. We
are honored by the enemies we make, like Fidel Castro, the man who ruined Cuba.
The Cult of Soros: Has
the Democratic Party become a cult? And is leftwing billionaire George Soros its guru? The chorus
of hosannas with which leftwing bloggers now greet Mr. Soros' silliest utterances — and the
faithfulness with which Democratic leaders repeat them — suggests that the answer to both questions
is yes.
The Religious Quest of
George Soros: Tivadar Schwartz, George Soros' father, rejected his own Judaism in youth, but
found another "religion" at some point in the First World War. During his years as a Russian POW,
Tivadar became enthralled with the obscure, synthetic language, Esperanto. … Esperanto was devised by a
Jewish physician in Warsaw during the 1880's. But it wasn't (and still isn't) just a made-up language;
it served as the embodiment of a cult formed around the ideas of "internationalism, anti-sectarianism and
cosmopolitanism," in the words of Soros biographer Michael Kaufman. Esperantists believe that a new world
order of harmony and cooperation will be ushered in through the adoption of their made-up, one-world language.
The Democratic Secular Socialist Revolution:
Secular socialists like Lenin and Marx failed to force socialism upon the west. But plan B, the slow
drip of misinformation that would one day cause average American voters to vote themselves into tyranny, is
almost complete. They are five lies from victory and today's Democratic Party is working around the clock
to gain general acceptance of all five.
Historical tidbits: Karl
Marx is the hero of some labor union leaders and civil rights organizations, including those who organized the
recent protest against proposed immigration legislation. It's easy to be a Marxist if you haven't read his
writings. Most people agree that Marx's predictions about capitalism turned out to be dead wrong.
What most people don't know is that Marx was an out and out racist and anti-Semite.
All Evil is on the Left. Nazis,
Bolsheviks, American "progressives," and Fascists have all held the same positions. They have suspicion
or contempt for Jews, Christians and the Judeo-Christian moral traditions. … They seek violence and
propaganda (violence against truth) as the primary instruments of their power.
The Constitution, Nazis, and the Corpse Man:
[Scroll down] To understand the roots of Nazism is simplicity itself. NAZI is an acronym (in German) for
Adolph Hitler's political party, the "National Socialist German Workers Party." Take out the words "National,"
and "German," and you're left with the "Socialist Workers Party." The "Socialist Workers Party." Hello?
That is unequivocally NOT a conservative outfit, folks — that's as Far Left as you can get.
A Liberal's
Definition of Liberalism: Liberalism has become synonymous with any action or doctrine that
tends to destroy existing standards of morality and decency. … New Deal liberalism transformed the media,
by default, into the the creator and shaper of public morality. Whatever "wrong" the media chooses to
publicize and whatever "remedy" it chooses to support tends to become public opinion.
The Loony
Liberal Chronicles: Chapter 1. Instead of addressing hard problems with real solutions,
today's Liberals spew forth a stream of self-serving, high-minded platitudes and slogans designed to make them
appear loving, caring, generous (with other people's money), and above all enlightened. It's better to be
seen as Progressive in the face of a failed policy than support a program that actually works, but diverges
from Liberal orthodoxy.
No Terrorism To See Here.
Critics of President Bush's conduct in the War on Terror get testy when they are accused of not taking the
threat of terrorism seriously, but with increasing prominence, they are making their true feelings known.
Quite simply, they don't think terrorism is a big deal.
The Sky Is Not
Falling. It's fun to say that the Democrats offer us no solutions on any of the major domestic or
foreign policy issues. The fact is, they have plenty of solutions, and their solutions are exactly what
you should expect from liberals — more government control over your wallet and your life, a less
secure America that does not want to offend Islamic terrorists and a permanent erosion of our individual
freedoms and liberties.
Witch Hunter in
Chief. Other than reducing entire forests to pulp for the paper to print his reports, the
American people, in whose name all this is being done, have precious little to show for his tireless work.
Notwithstanding [Rep. Henry] Waxman's billing as a legislator who loves to "write laws, and he has been
extraordinarily good at it," only three of the 95 bills he has sponsored in the past decade have been
enacted.
A Dialogue with a Liberal. Job
training and welfare are demonstrable failures. I think that treating a national community like a
family is a grave intellectual error. A national unit is an institution that creates a legal framework
for a large group of strangers to interact. A family is a small group that interacts on the basis of
personal bonds. Strengthening government serves to weaken families and other vital civic institutions.
Don't
experiment with 'none of the above' Democrats. Do we really want Congressman Alcee L. Hastings,
who was impeached as a federal judge and removed from the bench due to charges of accepting bribes, put in
charge of a committee handling top secret national intelligence? Do we really want far-left Congressman
Dennis Kucinich to be chairman of the subcommittee on national security? … Do we really want Detroit
Congressman John Conyers to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee...?
The Platform
Democrats Don't Want You to See. There's a reason the Kerry Democrats are the
political equivalent of a general anesthetic. They can't risk leveling with us. If
they told the electorate what they really want, voters would run screaming into the night.
Which party supports your
values? Compare the basic principles and values of the two
major political parties and decide for yourself.
Are Americans stupid?
How can 59,054,087 people be so dumb?" That was the headline in the British tabloid Daily Mirror
announcing the reelection of President Bush. American liberals are asking the same question, concluding
that the 51 percent of the public that voted against their man is just not smart enough to appreciate the
liberal agenda.
The Welfare Debate We're Not
Having: It turns out — apparently to the surprise of many on the left — that
working for a living is better than subsisting as a parasite on government handouts.
What transition costs?
The Democratic Party establishment is appalled at the thought of private Social Security accounts turning ordinary
Americans into owners of stocks and bonds and, therefore, potential Republicans. The argument by Democrats
that private accounts are too risky fails the test of history. Nobody can find a 20-year period in
America when investments have not gained.
Bankrupt: Why
the Democrats are the party of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. Sean Hannity says, "Don't
ever, ever be tempted to vote for a liberal, even as a protest vote. David Limbaugh shows you
why, in the most devastating critique I've ever seen of just how intellectually and morally bankrupt the
Democratic Party has become."
Kerry's scarlet letter:
It seems like a lifetime since July 1991 when Sen. Kerry declared: "I'm a liberal, and proud of it."
Thirteen years later, the L-word is forbidden language for Kerry. He is attempting what only Bill Clinton
among recent Democratic candidates has accomplished: covering left-of-center policies with a facade of
moderation. Kerry, less skilled than Clinton as a political dancer, is burdened with a 30-year record of
nearly unbroken liberal votes.
It's The L Word, Stupid.
Kerry is the most liberal Senator, against tough competition, the proof of which is that he has a 92% lifetime
rating by the Americans for Democratic Action. Remember, these are the liberals who give the ratings; they
think it's a good thing. They've been rating all members of Congress for more than half a century. Which
leads to the second measure of Kerry's extreme liberalism: he's the most liberal candidate the Democrats have
ever run, with a higher lifetime ADA rating than Al Gore, Walter Mondale or George McGovern (Since Carter, Dukakis
and Clinton never served in Congress, they don't have ratings.)
I survived the
Democratic National Convention. For four days, the Democratic Party put on its
quadrennial scare-old-people-and-minorities party. Democrats, of course, rely on the 90-plus
percent monolithic black vote. Thus, a black "non-liberal" poses a direct threat to the
party's national prospects.
The
vision thing: Kerry and Edwards are both liberal … in a political
sense, which today manifests itself in reactionary policies, such as wealth redistribution,
anti-entrepreneur laws and regulations, protectionism and refusing to fundamentally reform
Social Security for the 21st century, which is imperative.
"Socialism is the
philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy."
— Winston Churchill, 1948.
Where Do the Candidates Stand
on Abortion? President George W. Bush promoted and signed the Partial Birth
Abortion Ban Act into law. Senator John Kerry voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
Act every chance he got — six times. Dick Cheney has taken a strong pro-life
position. During his 10 years in Congress, he compiled a 100% pro-life voting
record. He opposes partial-birth abortion and he voted against tax funding of
abortion. John Edwards, in his six years in the Senate, has compiled a 0% pro-life
voting record. He voted to keep partial-birth abortions legal and he supports tax
funding of abortion.
Top 10 Democrat Sex Scandals in
Congress: [For example, #8] Rep. Barney Frank. The outspoken Massachusetts
Democrat hired a male prostitute who ran a prostitution service from Frank's residence in
the 1980s. Only two Democrats in the House of Representatives voted to censure him in 1990.
An Enigmatic Kerry-Edwards Energy
Plan. The eight-page Kerry-Edwards energy plan reads more like a new age feel good tome than a
policy program. Its specific proposals are either self-contradictory or depend on passing unusual
legislation that would repeal the laws of economics, chemistry and thermodynamics.
A Vote For John Kerry Is Like A
Vote For Ted Kennedy. One of the first names that comes to mind, perhaps the first
name that comes to mind, when you talk about liberals in the United State Senate, is Teddy Kennedy. And
largely because of that liberalism — although leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to die certainly doesn't
help — Ted Kennedy would be defeated as badly as Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale if he were
running for President this year.
The Kerry-Edwards Postal Plan Won't
Deliver. In an effort to win the support of America's Postal workers, John Edwards recently
announced that if elected, he would "never privatize the U.S. Postal Service." He further declared that
he and John Kerry would defend the current "no-layoff status" of America's Postal employees. Although the
Kerry-Edwards stance may score points with the Postal Service's entrenched unions, it completely ignores the
reality of USPS ledgers. Any serious assessment of the organization's finances shows that it is in
desperate need of an overhaul.
Kerry, candidate
of the left. [At the Democratic convention, Senator Hillary Clinton] made clear
what she and John Kerry are about by defining the solution to our problems in education as
putting more money into the government public school monopoly and opposing vouchers and other
attempts to give parents options in finding the best education alternatives for their
children. One has to wonder if Senator Clinton has ever taken note that the inexorable
rise in postal rates inevitably means that we simply pay more and more for the same mediocre
product. Monopolies exist to defend the status quo, not to find ways to improve.
Kerry's
liberalism prospers in his positions, his votes and the company he keeps. Ever
since he rose to the top of the pile of Democratic contenders for his party's presidential
nomination, John Kerry has sought to "introduce" himself to the American electorate — to flesh
out his political profile, to present as a dedicated, balanced, evenhanded centrist floating
along in the political mainstream. Evidently it didn't work.
Dead Catsup Bounce. Omitted from mention
in the platform itself were Democratic staples such as partial-birth abortion, gay marriage, capital punishment
and the Kyoto Treaty. Such is the desperation to beat Bush that even hardcore lefties coalesced around
this vision of the one (or is it two?) Americas so embraced by their ticket. This may explain the
confusion that seems to be reflected in the poor poll numbers so far. Voters don't seem to recognize
this new flag-waving version of the party and the time to re-re-introduce their candidate is
running out.
The strange disappearance of the
"L" word: When did Democrats stop calling themselves "liberal"? Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.,
when asked whether he considered himself a liberal, treated the questioner as if she belonged to the House
Committee on Un-American Activities during the McCarthy years.
Liberals believe that the availability of guns causes violent crime.
Conservatives believe that violent crime reflects a lack of values.
Liberals believe that society is responsible for protecting people.
Conservatives believe that a man is responsible for protecting his own family.
Liberals believe that government should be more powerful than the citizens.
Conservatives believe that the citizens should be more powerful than the
government.*
