Closing Mental Institutions Made Us More Vulnerable to Mass Shootings

A liberal-created failure that goes entirely ignored is the left’s harmful agenda for society’s most vulnerable people—the mentally ill.

Eastern State Hospital, built in 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the first public hospital in America for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Many more followed. Much of the motivation to build more mental institutions was to provide a remedy for the maltreatment of mentally ill people in our prisons.

According to professor William Gronfein at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, by 1955 there were nearly 560,000 patients housed in state mental institutions across the nation. By 1977, the population of mental institutions had dropped to about 160,000 patients.

Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting.

According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, titled “Fifty Years of Failing America’s Mentally Ill,” shutting down mental hospitals didn’t turn out the way advocates promised.

Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings). They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless.

We often encounter these severely mentally ill individuals camped out in libraries, parks, hospital emergency rooms, and train stations, and sleeping in cardboard boxes. They annoy passersby with their sometimes intimidating panhandling.

The disgusting quality of life of many of the mentally ill makes a mockery of the lofty predictions made by the advocates of shutting down mental institutions and transferring their function to community mental health centers, or CMHCs.

Torrey writes:

The evidence is overwhelming that this federal experiment has failed, as seen most recently in the mass shootings by mentally ill individuals in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. It is time for the federal government to get out of this business and return the responsibility, and funds, to the states.

Getting the federal government out of the mental health business may be easier said than done.

A 1999 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Olmstead v. L.C. held that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals with mental disabilities have the right to live in an integrated community setting rather than in institutions.

The Department of Justice defined an integrated setting as one “that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with non-disabled persons to the fullest extent possible.” Though some mentally ill people may have benefited from this ruling, many others were harmed—not to mention the public, which must put up with the behavior of the mentally ill.

Torrey says it has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. But that’s not true. Torrey says:

Altogether, the annual total public funds for the support and treatment of mentally ill individuals is now more than $140 billion. The equivalent expenditure in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy proposed the [community mental health centers] program was $1 billion, or about $10 billion in today’s dollars. Even allowing for the increase in U.S. population, what we are getting for this 14-fold increase in spending is a disgrace.

The dollar cost of this liberal vision of deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people is a relatively small part of the burden placed on society.

Many innocent people have been assaulted, robbed, and murdered by mentally ill people. Businesspeople and their customers have had to cope with the nuisance created by the mentally ill.

The police response to misbehavior and crime committed by the mentally ill is to arrest them. Thus, they are put in jeopardy of mistreatment by hardened criminals in the nation’s jails and prisons.

Worst of all is the fact that the liberals who engineered the shutting down of mental institutions have never been held accountable for their folly.

Commentary By

Portrait of Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

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When Help Never Comes

If you are still wondering how a 19-year-old young man was able to murder 17 students and faculty in his former Florida high school, how he simply and safely left campus on foot for a repast after his mass murders were accomplished, and how his years of dire distress warnings were ignored by every system in place to prevent tragedies, then you are surely not acquainted with Florida’s high-risk, highly-profitable guardianship system, wherein elders, at the opposite end of the age spectrum as the murder suspect, are warehoused until the ends of their lives and their distress signs are routinely ignored by the systems intended to protect them.

Just suppose you are a family member attempting to protect your elderly loved one, and you call the elder abuse hotline, just as concerned persons had called hotlines and authorities to report the teenage mass murder suspect well before he struck fatal blows to dozens of families. This scenario is not hypothetical to thousands of Florida families who have for dozens of years made fruitless communications to hotlines and multiple agencies, including the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, the local police, the Governor’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, the local sheriff, the FBI, and their associated hotlines. All too often, when we report elder abuse, our beloved relatives are left unprotected from abuse, and we whistleblowers are frequently disregarded or targeted as troublemakers.

Although the paperwork from Adult Protective Services states that “Florida law requires DCF [Department of Children and Families] to investigate all reports alleging abuse, neglect, [and] exploitation … [and a DCF investigator] will visit the vulnerable adult within 24 hours of receiving the report,” Florida law is commonly disobeyed by those paid to protect adults at risk.

When my husband and I contacted Adult Protective Services over the course of many months in 2008 and 2009 reporting orally and in writing that our Dad, Al Katz, 89 years old, was being severely abused and neglected by his caretakers, over whom we had no legal control, our reports were routinely refused by the hotline in-take. During that exact same period of time, medical records available to APS but not to us, show that Al Katz was hospitalized and/or received emergency medical treatments for: anxiety; post traumatic stress disorder; acute bronchitis; oversedation; exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder; abrasion to head, swelling, and bleeding; swelling and laceration above eye; acute head injury; acute cervical spine sprain; acute abrasions and contusion around left eye; skull fracture; intracranial hemorrhage; poisoning; scalp laceration; staph urinary tract infection; “urine yellow with clots”; and numerous other medical distress warning signs of elder abuse; yet, the abusers were not removed from Dad’s home by authorities for nearly one year after my elder abuse reports began, and then Dad was put into guardianship, in which further abuse ensued.

In September 2009, Manatee County, Florida, Judges Janette Dunnigan and Paul Logan held guardianship hearings without the presence of Al Katz or any of his family members, during which professional guardians (who are not required to be licensed by the State of Florida) were appointed to assume total control – financial, physical, and medical – over the life of an elder they did not know; while I was not even notified of the hearings.

Within a few days after being put into court-ordered professional guardianship, my Dad was totally isolated from his family and home, locked down in the basement of a city hospital behind electronic metal doors monitored by armed guards. Al Katz, the victim of severe, prolonged elder abuse, had become a Ward of the State of Florida, with fewer rights than a mass murderer; while his abusers remained free on the streets and still are lurking somewhere nearly a decade later.

Within two months, while in court-ordered guardianship, Al Katz’s official designation by his guardians was “IMMINENT DEATH.” During the time Marjorie Ashley Butler and Jonene Eisch had total control over Al Katz’s life, his medical status plummeted as he developed cellulitis, extreme edema, bed sores that lasted for months, a fever of 107 degrees, and sepsis. My petitions filed during this entire time to the court to personally care for my Dad were not granted until he was nearly dead, but G-d spared his dear life for many months to come, when Dad re-learned how to walk, talk, and eat in his own home with me.

Like the school murder victims, most victims of guardianship abuse never have the chance to go home or to re-learn how to walk, talk, and eat. Their pleas to go home are unheard and unheeded like the discounted chilling reports made to authorities about the teenage mass murder suspect before he struck:

It’s just so much and I know he’s going to explode …. I just know I have a clear conscience if he takes off and just starts shooting places up …. It’s alarming to see these pictures [he posts on the Internet] and to know what he’s capable of doing and what could happen … [like] getting into a school and just shooting the place up.

The reports of danger to our elders likewise go unheard and unheeded even after tragedy strikes. It is obvious to families of suffering and of departed victims, young and old, that those responsible for breaking laws that they are paid to enforce or ignoring reports they are paid to thoroughly investigate will never pay in a court of law or through monetary compensation for their crimes and cruelties. It is the victims themselves and their families who pay an infinite price for patterns of malpractice and malfeasance pervasive in the professions intended to protect the vulnerable.

Although scores of persons in authority from social workers to the FBI knew about the suspect’s long dark history of violence and his threats of future violence, especially directed at schools, they paid no heed to the inestimable, irreparable harm he could and would and did do. Did anyone really believe that a long-time at-risk teenage male who ingested gasoline and mutilated his own arms on the Internet was not at great risk of harming himself and others? Social workers and mental health professionals investigating these incidents all gave the suspect a low-risk assessment. When a violent teen boasts on the Internet that he wants to be a “professional school shooter,” who would believe he poses no threat to society, particularly to students trapped inside of a school?

Our nation cannot stand on its abysmal record of neglect of duty and law by those in positions of power. Their doors are shut to us in need; their ears are closed to those in crisis; and their hearts do not give us access to them. We families know pain all too well – the sickening feelings of loss of loved ones stemming from doors and ears and hearts that are vacuum-sealed. How many lives are sacrificed for nothing more than cries and pleas for help that go unheard and unanswered? How many lives? How many lives? We ask you how many lives?

We are told at every turn to rely upon the authorities for protection when their protection may never arrive, and death awaits. As lives are lost and suffering is ceaseless, more children and elders remain in crisis without recourse or resources reachable to them and their loved ones. Our reports are destroyed, discarded, and disregarded. They are dead ends. If you want to hold some accountable for the senseless murders of seventeen on Sweetheart’s Day, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of 2018, then first in line must be the recipients of every dead-end report that preceded this preventable mass murder by a man who was reported again and again and again in a long dead-end trail of blood; for dead-end reports cause deaths.

“Lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep,” said Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, whose office received scores of reports for years about the suspect’s dangerous behaviors before the mass murder occurred and whose deputy refused to enter the school while its students were under siege, the school to which he was assigned as the security officer, as dozens died inside.

“Lions don’t care about the opinions of sheep” or about the reports they file. Dead-end reports cause deaths. Bah-h-h-h-h ….

An Open Letter to the Republican Party by a Former Soviet Defense Attorney

The November 2018 election will be critical in deciding the future course of the American Republic. The Republican Party has a Golden opportunity to expose the DNC for what it really is by investigating the Obama/Putin Alliance, researched in my books, and the dreadful consequences of it that America faces in 2018.

All troubles we are witnessing today came to us as a result of the Obama/Putin Alliance systematic distraction and destruction of the country:

  1. Robert Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian trolls is the tip of the iceberg: thousands of the KGB’s political operatives entered American soil due to the Obama/Putin Alliance to interfere and disrupt all strata of our society. We are dealing today with the “ Axis of Evil, coordinated by Russia.
  2. The growing national debates on guns is part of the Obama/Putin Alliance, yet no one has connected the horrifying issue of attacking our children to the Axis of Evil, run by the Russian KGB Government.
  3. We are at war, an asymmetrical war with multiple fronts, and a variety of different shapes, forms, methods, and tricks waged against the American Republic by the Russian Intelligence—Putin plays a global chess-game. To solve our problems and win that war awareness of the enemy is crucial and knowledge of the KGB is imperative. See www.simonapipko1.com
  4. All problems of the FBI and our Intel are derived from the lack of authentic knowledge of our foremost enemy—the Russian KGB Government. The Obama/Putin Alliance has achieved a definite “success” by paralyzing our Law Enforcement and Intel, politicizing both, as a way of transforming our American capitalist economy to a socialist one, openly implemented by Obama. See my columns at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/.
  5. Socialist/Communist ideology failed in the 20th century; people now know that it is not working. The Russian KGB Government is changing their tune, fooling and deceiving you by inventing Crony Capitalism. In fact, Russia imitating the German regime of 1933 and establishing the political ideology of Soviet Fascism in Russia and spreading it across the world…
  6. While watching the so-called Steele Trump/Dossier document on TV, it did not take me even ten seconds to realize that it was Russian “fallshivka” –a fraud in front of me. Everything in the Dossier exposed the KGB’s imprint: an arrogant manner of presentation, method and character with an aggressive and salacious tone to denigrate President Trump, the Republican Party, and to influence American opinion. It was a vivid picture of the incredible dirt on Trump, a typical Stalin legacy of demonizing and attacking the opposition leader, used by the KGB, while implementing the ideology of Soviet Fascism around the globe. See my definitions of Soviet Fascism on p. 159, What is Happening to America? The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction, Xlibris, 2012
  7. The main KGB’s modus operandi in implementing the ideology of Soviet fascism is a very primitive one, to blame the opposition for the crime they themselves committed. It is the pot calling the kettle black. Just watch the latest example of how the Deep State of the Alliance is accusing the NRA in the Valentine shooting in Florida. It is a typical style of the KGB, (currently FSB).

For the last twenty-five years I have been warning America about Soviet Fascism in all my books and numerous articles. But politicized Intel and the FBI are suppressing information about my writings—the Obama/Putin Alliance doesn’t want the world to know the Truth.

Today, the Alliance is fabricating the case against Trump to cover-up the treason committed by the Democrats in cahoots with the Russian KGB Government.

Sincerely,

Simona Pipko
A former Soviet Attorney
February 28, 2018

Hollywood Actor’s Gun Pledge

The irony of “Hollywood” deserves its own Oscar.

Here we have a contingent of people who, because they sell tickets, truly believe they have something important to say to us “common-folk.”

So, let’s make an important point with Reductio Ad Absurdum and show the foolishness of “actors” who demand non-actors to change their beliefs and practices while exempting themselves from their own moral standards.

THE  HOLLYWOOD  ACTOR’S  GUN  PLEDGE

As a Hollywood actor I’m a special person with unique insight into life because I get paid a lot of money to make believe I’m other people. Therefore, GUNS are bad and should be BANNED. I stand in solidarity with students across America to tell Trump to change the law and stop the killing.  We know he won’t because the NRA will not let him but this PLEDGE by all of us Hollywood Actors, Directors, Producers, and Investors will change the law, stop the killing and Make America Gun-Free Again!

I (insert real Hollywood name) Pledge to:

  • Never act, produce, direct or invest in any movie that includes a gun in any way in the script, even if it’s a water pistol or one of them guns with the orange thing in the hole in the front.
  • Never hire any bodyguards who carry guns, ever carried guns or thought about carrying guns.
  • Hand in all guns I own to a company that can melt them into plowshares or at least a giant peace symbol.
  • Calculate all the money I have made in movies, TV shows, videos, direct-to-DVD productions and give all that money to groups opposed to the NRA.

When we Hollywood Actors put our BIG money where our BIG mouths are then the world and America will know we are finally serious about solving the gun problem in America. History shows that we actors with our social activism have solved world hunger, world poverty, world water shortage, world land-mines, and some farming issues somewhere, so we together can do this and solve the world’s gun problem!

Finally, by our leadership we ask all the bad people in America to follow our example and create your own pledge, The Bad People’s Gun Pledge,and get rid of your guns too!

Together we can #MeToo-MakeAmericaGun-FreeAgain!

Florida Congressman Brian Mast (R) Reneges on His Conservative Promises

When Congressman Brian Mast won the hearts of the conservative base with his promises and words of wisdom to protect and defend the Constitution of the United State’s – we now have his voting record to review to see if he is fulfilling his promises.

Our nation was born from resisting  an oppressive nation England, that tried to disarm us – and the result of the Revolutionary War was a defeated England and a free nation the United States.

The weapons of choice used by the Patriots that gave us freedom were not the AR-15 but for the times It was certainly an equivalent.

Out of this war our nation gained freedom by  people with godly character, and thus the US Constitution was written by people who had character for people who had character.

Congressman Brian Mast has stated for the record that he supports banning the AR-15.  This is a statement that goes against the very foundation of his political platform that got him elected into office.   It goes against the very thing our Founding Fathers risked everything for.

I would respect him more if he stated his gun control principles before the election so his base could make a reasonable and educated decision  at the polls when casting their vote.

The issue with Brian Mast is not whether you support banning or not banning the AR-15.  The issue is a matter of character and honesty.  He ran on a platform that he is now voting against.

Whether he succumbed to political pressure from his pal Al Hoffman Jr. or whether his liberal colors are now revealed we don’t care.  Brian Mast has turned out to be fraud who should resign and let someone else replace him that can actually follow the U.S. Constitution.

IN THE WAKE OF PARKLAND: Are we attacking the symptoms of gun violence or true problems?

We all suffered to some degree following the shootings in Parkland, Florida on Valentine’s Day, particularly the High school students there. Their pain is legitimate, their solution to the problem is not. Any time we have a disaster like this, the Left likes to point fingers at assault weapons, the FBI, the NRA, and their favorite target, Mr. Trump. In other words, everyone but the shooter himself. This knee-jerk reaction is obviously done for political purposes and addresses merely the symptoms, not the root problem.

Even if government banned the popular AR-15, there are many other rifles with similar capabilities, and if you were to ban them all, there are still semi-automatic shotguns which can do a lot of damage quickly, not to mention handguns. And if you were to ban all guns, there would be another weapon du jour, such as a road-side bomb, or simply a car ramming into a crowd.

Following the last Federal Assault Weapons Ban held from 1994-2004, the Department of Health and Human Services conducted a follow-up study and concluded,

“the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence.”

In other words, the ban did nothing to reduce violent behavior.

The NRA is frequently criticized and portrayed by Democrats as the bogeyman of violence. As advocates of the Second Amendment, their support of gun safety, education, and animal conservation is conveniently overlooked. True, the NRA supports various politicians, just like many other lobbyists. Hampering their ability to make such donations should only be done with sweeping reform of all lobbyists, not just the NRA. Their vilification is just plain wrong.

There are three areas that need to be addressed:

1. Discipline & Education

The shooter in Parkland came from a broken home, which probably explains why he had trouble differentiating right from wrong. It is no secret the family unit has been deteriorating over the years. It is common for children today to be raised by a single adult who is usually overworked and too tired to manage their offspring properly, and there are others who simply abdicate their parental responsibilities and allow their children to find their own way through life, with the assistance of the Hollywood media. Not surprising, morality is on the decline in this country and shaping the character of our youth. I find it rather remarkable we do not take Hollywood to task for the wanton violence they promote.

Not surprising, I’m a proponent of teaching parenting skills as part of an adult education program, perhaps at the schools in the evenings.

Since parents appear unwilling or unable to teach proper behavior, perhaps some basic classes for the students in morality and common courtesy are in order.

Discipline and respect are in decline in schools. For example, consider this letter sent from a middle school Science teacher in Dunedin, Florida to his PTA following the Parkland incident:

“I am a science teacher here at DHMS and I wanted to share this information with you. This is the real problem; the system is broken to where we cannot do anything or exact any meaningful consequences for this type of student. This article I found today from the Miami Herald describes at least a dozen students here at our school. We write referrals, they might even get suspended for a day or two, but these ‘nightmare’ children return and terrorize our campus as soon as the consequence is served. Students that get reassigned to Pinellas Secondary School end up coming right back after a semester. The description of the student in the first paragraph (aside from bringing bullets) describes many students that never receive a consequence, or are categorized as ‘Special Education’, ‘Emotionally/Behaviorally Disabled’, and know that the school cannot do anything about their atrocious behavior. Before we attack people’s 2nd Amendment Rights, we need to attack our legislators and School Board for forcing administrators to keep these dangerous students in our schools despite their repeated warning signs of violent tendencies. Until we can enact change to report and remove these students, these tragedies will continue. I have been physically assaulted by a student this very school year, pressed charges, and the student continues to walk the hallways and brag about who all he has ‘beat up’. We spot these students early on, and dread their presence, but have absolutely no legal way to protect the rights of the rest of the population from these predators.”

As corporal punishment is no longer allowed in schools as a deterrent for misbehavior, disciplining children is next to impossible, and without it, student grades are affected. To illustrate, ten years ago I wrote about Caroline Haynes, a school principal in Great Britain who caught the attention of the press when she started to implement strict discipline in the classroom. She is with the Tendring Technology College in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, UK, a secondary school which, when translated to the American equivalent, is a private school for children ages 11-19. Her “zero tolerance” policy for misbehavior resulted in a school environment where students were freed to concentrate on their studies and, consequently, improved their grades significantly. I was told the students actually liked the discipline and preferred it over chaos. This is consistent with my contention that people tend to thrive in a structured environment which is well organized and leadership is strong, whether it is in school or in business.

There is also something to be said about implementing school dress codes to influence behavior. Such codes help to promote conformity and decorum. A local high school recently experimented with a “Professional Attire Day,” meaning the students in the business program were asked to dress up for a day. Instead of t-shirts, shorts and gym shoes, they were asked to wear suit and ties for the men, and dresses for the ladies. Remarkably, the lion’s share of students liked the change and took pride in looking their best. The students were questioned about their experience afterwards and reported they felt more positive and confident when dressed up as opposed to being dressed down. Interestingly, they appreciated the respect they received from their teachers regarding their appearance and deportment. The students comprehended the effect of a professional image, both at school and beyond. Some genuinely yearned for a better school dress code as opposed to the slovenly appearance which was currently the norm.

One last note regarding education, some time ago I wrote about my experience attending a concealed weapons class here in Florida. Other states have similar programs. In my case I was impressed with the professionalism and knowledge of the instructors, and felt this was something everyone should be exposed to. An informed public is less likely to become a victim and more likely to survive a shooting situation. Anyone who has attended such a class would probably agree, education is the key. Everyone from Middle School onward should be taught the lessons of gun safety. Even children in Elementary grades should learn some of the basics.

The only problem with these suggestions for education and discipline is they are considered socially unacceptable and, as such, will likely be spurned as opposed to embraced. Parents will probably not be inclined to learn new parenting techniques, claiming they haven’t got the time. They also tend to oppose dress codes as they see it as inhibiting the creativity of the individual, and have no appreciation for the benefits of teamwork. And gun safety classes will be perceived as promoting violence, when in reality, it is just the opposite. This means, the parents and students do not want to put forth the effort to thwart school violence through such education and hope it can be stopped through other means, such as changes in the law. The only problem here though is you cannot legislate morality.

2. Review and revise our rules for obtaining guns.

Following Parkland, there was much discussion about raising the age of a person to own a gun. The argument here is that if a person can join the military at 18 and fight for his/her country, then 18 should be the age. The one difference though is that the military provides proper instruction in the handling of firearms, something others do not receive. Again, I am a proponent of gun safety classes. If a person can be certified, such as through an NRA class, they should know how to properly handle a firearm.

The most difficult aspect to ascertain is the mental stability of the individual, which was at the heart of the problem in Parkland and other shooting scenes. Here, students, teachers, parents, and shooting instructors should be trained in terms of looking for signs of trouble and how to report a problem. Again, it’s a matter of education. In the case of the Parkland shooter, his social media was full of obnoxious references to shooting. This should have raised some red flags in the system. Unfortunately, it did not.

3. Fortification

The era of using schools as gun free zones is quickly coming to an end. Such zones embolden shooters as they realize they are soft targets. School perimeters need to be secured to eliminate unauthorized access. This was a significant problem at Parkland.

Training and arming school personnel should also be considered either using existing staff or hiring supplemental people to secure and defend the school campus.

Such measures as mentioned herein seem unimaginable to those of us who grew up in a different time when we respected our teachers, loved our school, and as such, had no need for school resource officers. But times have changed. Back in the early 1970’s you could simply go to the airport, show your ticket to your flight attendant, hop on a plane and leave. You obviously cannot do this anymore as tight security is now required. The same is true in our schools, it is a new time and we can no longer afford to operate as we did forty years ago. Our social mores and morality have changed radically, making this a much more dangerous time for those attending our schools. It is time to improvise, adapt, and overcome just as we did in our airports.

Even if you implemented all these measures, including the abolition of guns completely, you are never going to solve the problem 100%. There will always be the issue of a social misfit or radicalized person waiting for an opportunity to seek violence. It’s not about the choice of weapon, it’s about the human being. It always has been, and always will be. It is not so much about what laws, rules and regulations we enact as it is about treating human frailties and maturity. Education, discipline, and a little common sense will go much further than banning guns altogether.

Let us stop attacking the symptoms, it is time to look in the mirror and address the true problem.

Keep the Faith!

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Obama’s Genie

Imagine a guy in his mid-thirties walking on a beach in Hawaii and seeing an object that actually looked like the genie lamp he read about in his childhood––the kind of lamp he could rub until a genie popped out and granted his most fervent wish.

Being a pretty ordinary guy––you know, the kind who hung out smoking pot, who slacked off in school, who didn’t get the girl and actually hated and was jealous of the guys who did––he asked for power.

Poof––the Genie granted him his wish, power beyond his wildest dreams.

To be sure, the Genie certainly didn’t know that this ordinary guy didn’t want merely to embarrass the guys he was jealous of, he wanted to destroy them. And not through the ordinary methods––knives, guns, poison, et al, although all of them might play a part one day––but through politics!

The most important thing the Genie didn’t know was that all those cool, get-the-girl guys were only symbols for the thing Mr. Ordinary hated most––America!

But too late––the Genie had given him the power to mobilize the entire world against the country he claimed was the place of his birth.

ONE LUCKY GUY

Who was this ordinary guy?

He said his name was Barack Obama and that he was born in 1961 to a white mother and black father from Kenya, Africa, who met at the University of Hawaii. Reporters had no interest in finding a marriage certificate, but––as leftists are so fond of saying––it’s only a piece of paper!

Two years later, the boy’s parents divorced and young Obama’s mother met and married another U. of Hawaii student, Lolo Soetoro, a native of Indonesia. In 1966, the couple moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, with five-year-old Barack, who was adopted by his new father, which according to Indonesian law would automatically make him an Indonesian citizen. His student ID card carried the name of Barry Soetoro. Four years later, Mrs. Soetoro gave birth to a daughter named Maya and sent 10-year-old Barack back to Hawaii to be raised by her parents.

In Indonesia, the reporting grows fuzzy, some saying that Barack attended a Christian school, others saying a Madrassa where he studied the Koran. The latter seems more probable as Mr. Obama himself described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

After high school, Mr. Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles. But again, the media weren’t curious enough to ask for the transcripts and so none were ever produced. Was this to conceal Mr. Obama’s status as a foreign student? Mmmmm.

Then, he transferred to Columbia University in NY City. But strangely, no first-person reports ever emerged of any associations, sightings, relationships or dating of the Ivy League student––and, again, no transcripts.

Mr. Obama moved to Chicago in 1985 and became a community organizer––entering the profession of his own and Hillary Clinton’s idol, Saul Alinsky, the America-loathing Marxist whose book, “Rules for Radicals,” provided a blueprint for “fundamentally changing” the United States of America from a capitalist, free-market, U.S. Constitution-respecting, freedom-loving country into either a Communist paradise or an Islamic caliphate.

In 1988, our One Lucky Guy entered Harvard Law School where he became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review….quite amazingly, seeing that he wrote not one article to earn this honor and that––ta da––no transcripts of his years in the law school ever materialized! The media once again demonstrated a remarkable lack of curiosity about who paid Mr. Obama’s immensely expensive tuition.

They also had no interest in asking Mr. Obama why Simon & Schuster cancelled the contract on the book they gave him a pricey advance for––Dreams from My Father––which was finally published in 1995 by Times Books (a division of Random House). Or how on earth his publisher, editor, and the professionals employed by the literary agency, Acton & Dystel, could all have gotten it wrong when they distributed a publicity brochure for the book that featured the author’s picture and a blurb that read: “Barack Obama, the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii”––a description future candidate and then Oval Office occupant Barack Obama spent multimillions of dollars on denying!

After Harvard, the new graduate joined a Chicago law firm where his supervisor was another Harvard Law School graduate, Michelle Robinson. They dated, then married. But surprise, surprise, there is no record of their marriage certificate, just as no photos of Michelle being pregnant with their two daughters and no birth certificates of their daughters exist in the public domain.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

No, not the policy of favoring members of a minority group in job hiring, college admissions, etc., but rather the concrete steps a number of shakers and movers took when they began to think that Mr. Obama would be the perfect fit for Chicago “machine” politics.

In 1995, Mr. Obama’s mentor, the Communist Alice Palmer, announced that she was giving up her seat in the state senate to run for the U.S. Congress and anointed Mr. Obama her successor. She had personally introduced Mr. Obama to Bill Ayers––the anti-war founder of the terrorist group the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) who advocated killing 25-million Americans to actualize his goal of overthrowing America––and to Ayers’ partner in crime, his wife Bernardine Dohrn. In fact, Mr. Obama’s political career was launched in the Ayers’ living room.

But after Mrs. Palmer suffered an unexpected defeat in the special congressional election, she decided she wanted her state senate seat back and asked Mr. Obama not to run. He not only refused to step aside but said he was going to pose a legal challenge to the legitimacy of the signatures she had amassed to qualify for the ballot. Using the same tactic, he got all four challengers––including Mrs. Palmer––knocked off the ballot so he could run unchallenged.

Mr. Obama spent three terms in the Illinois state senate––from 1997 to 2004––when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate. And whaddaya know! Trailing in third place with only three weeks until the election, Mr. Obama magically––or you can blame it on the Genie––got some hack from The Chicago Tribune to publish salacious dirt on both rivals (one with sealed records, no less), which destroyed their candidacies and gave the nomination to, again, the unchallenged state senator.

That was in March. The following July, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) pushed for Senator Obama to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. It was a masterful presentation in which the extreme leftwing radicalism––which defined his years in community organizing and in state office and would go on to define his eight years in the Oval Office––was camouflaged to perfection.

“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America,” he intoned to the audience, “there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States…we are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

Yeah, right.

DEFINITION OF CHUTZPAH

On February 10, 2007, only three years into his first term, Senator Obama announced his intention to seek the presidency of the United States of America. Just as his three terms in the Illinois state senate had yielded a remarkably unremarkable record of boilerplate liberal “accomplishments”––with abortion, especially late-term abortion, and also killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions at the top of his list––so had his first three years in Washington, D.C.

But on August 28, 2008, the fledgling senator was nominated for president, defeating the perennial glass-ceiling candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), and going on to defeat the Republican-in-Name-Only (RINO), Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Who, indeed, could manage to mobilize leftwing politics worldwide? Which included:

  • The entire spectrum of the American Democrat Party,
  • The worldwide America-loathing Muslim Brotherhood,
  • The bought-and-paid-for American media whores,
  • The impotent socialists of the European Union,
  • The impotent socialists and Communists of Venezuela, Cuba, and other utterly failed regimes,
  • The Muslim terrorist regime of Iran,
  • The dictator-populated United Nations,
  • The mal-educated millennials raised on leftist propaganda,
  • The bitter abortion-loving, man-hating feminists,
  • The pathological jealousy of all things successful,
  • On and on and on and on….all negative.

Of course, that ordinary guy was Barack Obama––a member of the infamous Choom drug-inhaling gang.

But his fans yearned to believe that Mr. Obama was not half-white but instead the Great Black Hope that would redeem Big Bad America from its racist past, and also that he was a successful author––but author Jack Cashill made a slam-dunk case in his blockbuster book, Deconstructing Obama: The Life, Loves, and Letters of America’s First Postmodern President, that is was actually Mr. Obama’s close pal, the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, who actually wrote the book.

And they wanted to believe that Mr. Obama was a very honest guy, which is why they nodded their heads affirmatively when he said that in over 20 years of sitting in the pews of the “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright’s church, he never ever heard the preacher’s anti-American, anti-Semitic rants.

Throughout the campaign (and well into his occupation of the Oval Office), a group of 400 leftist, ahem, journalists decided that they didn’t like authentic journalists questioning Mr. Obama on everything from the Constitutional eligibility of his candidacy to his longtime relationships with radicals like William Ayers and anti-American, anti-Semitic bigwigs like Rev. Louis Farrakhan. To prop up their candidate of choice, and to go after any of his critics and questioners with a vengeance, they formed JournOlist.

Sure enough, this overwhelmingly leftwing and deeply corrupt group refused to ask even one question about why Mr. Obama used a state of Connecticut Social Security number when he hadn’t lived one day of his life in that state, why he lost his law license in 2002 (or if, in fact, he ever took the Bar exam), why Michelle’s law license was inactivated by court order, why Mr. Obama never released more than a one-page medical report…the list of unasked questions goes on and on.

And when any moderate or conservative journalist asked him about saying during his campaign that he had traveled to “all 57 states––I think one left to go” (did he mean the 57 states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference?), or in office when he stated that the people in Austria speak Austrian, or referred to military corpsmen as corpse men, or described his grandmother as “a typical white person”––you get the picture––the media whores immediately pounced, accusing any critic of being a “racist.”

How clueless they were and are to this day of their own rank racism, in essence telling Americans that they’re not allowed to criticize a black man because he’s not smart enough or strong enough to take it…but they are and so they’ll defend him by insulting his critics. Cannot make this up!

THE COUP DÉTAT CABAL

America has had unlikely presidents before Mr. Obama, but none quite as unlikely. How did this happen?

For almost an entire century, and certainly since the tumultuous ‘60s when Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and other far-leftists reared their seditious heads, the left has been looking for the one defining figure to get them over the goal line, that being literally overthrowing the United States of America––the land they loathe.

Jimmy Carter was a start, but the Dolly Parton fantasizer lasted only one term before America came to its senses and elected the genuine conservative Ronald Reagan. After enjoying two terms of peace and prosperity, Americans once again voted for Republican George H.W. Bush, only to boot him out in favor of the charming southerner Bill Clinton, whose victory, political pundits claimed, was helped immeasurably by the phony third-party candidacy of Texas billionaire business mogul Ross Perot, who bowed out of the race at the last minute, de facto throwing his votes to the man who would become known forever as “slick Willy.”

Clinton’s eight long years lasted largely because of a strong economy, job growth, a surge in homeownership, and Family & Medical Leave for 20-million Americans, et al––in spite of non-stop scandals, impeachment, perjury and the loss of the his law license, the accusation of rape, the stained blue dress, the pathetic wife, the mishandling of terror attacks, the proliferation of corporate scandals (numbering 86), allowing a floodgate of un-vetted immigrants into the country, the massacre at Waco, Texas, the colossal failure of Hillarycare, betraying America by by selling advanced U.S. missile technology to our enemy, the People’s Republic of China, and threatening little Elian Gonzales at gunpoint.

Once again, America came to its senses and elected #43, the former two-term Governor of Texas George W. Bush, the son of #­­41. The affable junior enjoyed two terms until the coup d’état cabal was ready for their full-on assault on America. But “W” facilitated that assault by joining the left in their fantasy that Islam was “the religion of peace” and acknowledged himself that his “Mission Accomplished” banner was a bad idea, and that he failed to push for immigration reform. Others cite a skyrocketing deficit and that he waged two costly and ineffective wars (in Afghanistan and Iraq).

Over all these years, leftist heavy hitters were developing their takeover. Armed with multibillions of dollars from a handful of powerful America-detesting progressives, they covered every base, starting with the media whores who proved to be the easiest to buy and control. Next they bought every member of the Democrat Party, instructing them to sing one tune and one tune only throughout the candidate’s presidential campaign and his entire tenure…and that they, the real brains behind the coup, would provide both the tune and the lyrics.

Next, they implanted the consigliere, Valerie Jarrett, to basically run the presidency, and speech writers to formulate every single solitary word that Mr. Obama spoke, even demanding that he use a Teleprompter to address a kindergarten class!

Within weeks or months, the honchos-in-chief delivered to their hand-picked puppet––that would be the guy who rubbed the genie lamp––the massive to-do list they had been working on for decades:

  • 11,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare, aka socialized medicine),
  • Mountains of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that effectively killed the coal industry and other domestic energy sources, among other Draconian rules.
  • A blueprint for Common Core, aka socialized education (read, leftist propaganda),
  • An elaborate plan to destroy the military, as Matt Barber spells out here, by, among other things, purging military commanders, enacting Rules of Engagement that militate against our success in combat, cutting military pay and benefits, cutting missile defense, et al.
  • The introduction of members of the Islamic supremacist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, into the highest reaches of the American government.
  • Weaponized the Internal Revenue Service and, we now learn, the FBI, the DOJ, the DHS, and other and other agencies of the U.S. Government, a function, Tom Basile writes in Forbes, of Obama’s “dangerous arrogance of power.”
  • On and on and on and on.

ENTER THE GENIE SLAYER

The Obama regime, as Americans have now learned, was steeped, indeed marinating, in illegality and corruption. There was virtually no dirty trick they believed was beyond the pale, no department (FBI, anyone?) and no operative (Seth Rich, anyone?) beyond exploitable or dispensable.

They believed this because every single poll told them (and told America) that Barack Obama’s successor would be his former Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton, a woman who had elevated corruption, dishonesty, and malfeasance to a virtual art form.

In other words, with Hillary’s election, their dirty secrets would remain with them.

They welcomed the sixteen Republican candidates who ran against Hillary for president in 2015, especially the mega-mogul Donald J. Trump whose inexperience in the political world and colorful, tabloid-rich background made him the perfect target for their oppo-research team to skewer.

But as candidate Trump systematically leveled every opponent and Hillary was left to face the guy who labeled her “crooked Hillary”––inspiring the huge crowds he attracted to chant “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!”––Ms. Glass Ceiling began to devolve, relying on Democrat operatives like Donna Brazile to give her questions to upcoming debates and forcing her to commit unforced errors like calling Trump supporters, a month before the election, “a basket of deplorables.”

When the Obama/Hillary crew finally smelled the coffee of possible defeat, they hatched a plan to destroy a President Trump if, in fact, that eventuality came to pass. And it did. And they launched their plan––to produce a phony dossier and to accuse President Trump of colluding with Russia in order to win the election. Relevant to mention here that it was over a million dollars from Hillary’s campaign coffers that paid for MI6 agent Christopher Steele to compile the dossier.

Just as their moneybags donors had directed them during the Obama years, both the media whores and the Democrats stuck to the script––Trump-Russia, Trump-Russia, Trump-Russia. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller was anointed by another former Obama operative, Ron Rosenstein, to conduct the investigation.

Mr. Mueller hired––exclusively, with not one exception––Democrat prosecutors and lawyers, most of them contributors to Hillary’s campaign, to help destroy the newly inaugurated President Trump. They labored for over a year, with the oleaginous top dog on the intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), leading the charge.

The result: The stunning revelations of widespread, massive, endemic corruption and collusion with Russia––by the Democrats themselves! But not one scintilla of evidence against President Trump.

Yesterday, February 24, 2018, reporter Gabby Morrongiello of The Washington Examiner quoted former White House advisor Sebastian Gorka, who commented on the four-page memo released a few weeks ago by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), which accused FBI and Justice Department officials of abusing their power and deliberately misleading the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to gain permission to surveil former Trump adviser Carter Page because of his contacts in Moscow.

[Surprise, surprise––10 of the 11 FISA court judges were appointed by Obama!]

“Remember,” Gorka announced at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, “we’re only at the beginning of FISA-gate, which eventually will be Obama-gate.

“It’s not the Ben Rhodes of the world, it’s not the John Brennans, it’s not the Susan Rices, who are only culpable for the criminal regime we had that spied on Americans illegally,” Gorka said, citing several senior Obama administration officials. “Guess what––somebody had to let them.”

“And guess what?” Gorka continued. “It’s the last president of the United States.”

Rep. Nunes apparently agrees, as he identifies Mr. Obama to WorldNetDaily.com as being the person who was really in collusion with Russia “for eight years and setting the stage for orchestrating a conspiracy theory of collusion between Moscow and Donald Trump during the 2016 election.”

Daniel Greenfield writes that “the Obama era is over. It was wiped from the pages of history in one night that left Congress and the White House in Republican hands. Obama’s…frantic efforts to campaign for Hillary did no good. The public…made it clear that he did not matter. Obama once thought that he belonged to the ages. Now he belongs in the rubbish bin.”

Maybe… but maybe not. President Trump not only wiped out any shred of Mr. Obama’s so-called legacy, he effectively destroyed the fantasy of a magical genie that has guided the former community organizer’s lifelong obsessive mission to destroy America.

Is it too much for the rest of us to fantasize that the man who once chanted “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” will have a prosecutor replace the G in genie with a G for Gitmo?

13 Russians and 63 million Trump Voters Indicted

Mueller charges 13 Russian nationals, formerly known as Trump fans, and 63 million Americans, for meddling in US elections by voting for the wrong candidate.

The Justice Department announced the indictment of 13 “Russian nationals,” aka Trump fans who’ve been observed consuming Russian dressing, for meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Intelligence estimates show there are tens of millions of Trump fans associated with Russian aims to get Donald Trump elected. Some of these people speak Russian, and other soon-to-be-extinct white men and women still insist on voting. DOJ refers to Trump voters henceforth as Russian nationals, spies, intelligence agents, colluders, and just plain evil. They helped this illegitimate president win by unjustly going to the polls.

“Defendant’s operations included supporting the presidential campaign for then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton,” according to the indictment.

Mr. Mueller added that up to 63 million Americans who disparaged Hillary Clinton by voting wrongly can expect a fate the same as the Russians, er, white males, and will get deported back to Moscow where they belong. Mr. Mueller did not rule out capital punishment. The assembled reporters wearing Hillary 08 lapel pins rose in unison, stamped their feet and cheered, as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews vibrated in the front row as he was having thrills run up his legs.

The indictment stated that these foreign agents, aka, white men and women wearing MAGA hats, wrote anti-Hillary diatribes in the reader’s comments in the nation’s conservative journals and on the GOP website. To add insult to injury, they not only refused to watch the Fareed show on CNN, but congregated among other like-minded “Russians” at Tea Party events to freely spread vile, poisonous, unnatural and treasonous ideas right out of the US Constitution, Thos Paine’s Common Sense, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, the Bible, and the Federalist.

The indictment said that some defendants “communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign named Donald Jr., Ivanka, and an evil Little Me midget only identified as ‘Baron,’…” without disclosing their links to Russian dressing, subversive books by Leo Tolstoy, and sour pickles imported from Volvograd.

Justice said the individuals were given more than 1 ruble to be split among themselves by a Russian who is a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, or Sasha Baron Cohen, or Jackie Mason – take your pick – to fund the anti-Clinton campaign.

The indictment charges all defendants with conspiracy to defraud the Clintons, Barack Obama, and Nairobi, Kenya, all of whom correctly voted for Hillary. Most disturbingly, said Mueller, all they got for their efforts after having spent $1.2 billion for the campaign were red MAGA baseball caps. Three other defendants were charged with conspiracy for having an opinion other than that approved by the Reverends Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. Five defendants were charged with aggravated FAKE NEWS that departs from the Current Truth which states that the US economy is in free fall and Hillary Clinton is the nation’s legitimate president.

The indictments are the most significant development to date in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe into Russian meddling. In an addendum Team Mueller has also disclosed the existence of 4787 not yet-identified hookers, all named Olga, and all of whom said that Donald Trump has groped them right after the Great War. Reportedly they are still holding in their bladders.

The president repeatedly dismissed charges that Russia got him elected, calling it “a hoax” and “fake news” – despite unanimity among the three of seventeen US intelligence chiefs led by Obama appointees (the other fourteen, or 97% of global warming deniers, have not yet agreed to the unanimity). Hillary and Bill Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett, agreed unanimously and collectively that these 13 Russians with the collusion of FOX NEWS – a Russian propaganda outlet – and 63 million other Trump fans (Russian agents) pulled levers at the polls throughout the Glorious Fatherland at the urging of Komrade Putin.

And that is WHAT HAPPENED!

The illegal voting by Trump fans under Russian control to get a Russian spy elected to the nation’s highest office was a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy against Hillary Clinton, Mueller said. He added, “After all Hillary did win the presidency and the popular vote of Mahattan’s Upper West Side, Brooklyn’s Park Slope, and Berkeley and Hollywood. It would be proper for these areas to choose America’s president, after all the rest of the nation are morons and should have no say in the matter” said Mueller.

Standing proudly in front of the nation’s cameras with James Comey and Loretta Lynch at his side, Mueller reminded the nation as he pointed to his lapel pin, that “I AM WITH HER.” The assembled mainstream media cheered him on as the team stood in front of the sign behind the podium that stated “He’s Not My President.”

Mueller charges Russian nationals for meddling in US election

RELATED VIDEO: Watch how evil ‘Kremlin propaganda bullhorn’ REALLY works.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire by Kommissar Chernobylski originally appeared on The Peoples Cube.

Here Are 5 Reasons Transgender Policies Are Harmful

Who knew that removing the federal government from debates over school bathroom policies would be considered an assault on LGBT rights?

That’s the argument activists made last week when the Department of Education announced that it would be enforcing Title IX the way the federal government always had—up until the second term of the Obama administration. That’s when the Obama Department of Education announced that the word “sex” now meant “gender identity”—and ordered schools to open up their bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, and dorms accordingly.

It’s understandable why many ordinary Americans recoiled at this transgender mandate. Most Americans—including those who identify as transgender—aren’t activists and want to find ways to peacefully coexist. Most can understand why a man who identifies as a woman doesn’t want to be forced into the men’s room, but also understand why women don’t want a man in the ladies’ room. These concerns are even more heightened when dealing with students.

As I explain in my book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” new transgender policies raise five distinct areas of concern—privacy, safety, equality, liberty, and ideology—and the Trump administration is right to reject the radical Obama policies in favor of letting local officials work to find reasonable compromises.

It shouldn’t be hard to see the privacy concerns when men who identify as women can enter female-only spaces. When changing for gym class, most high school girls don’t want to see or be seen by boys who identify as girls.

The reason we have separate facilities in the first place is not because of “gender identity” but because of the bodily differences between males and females. This privacy concern is particularly acute for victims of sexual assault, who testify that seeing naked male bodies can function as a trigger.

Preventing sexual assault comprises another major area of concern. Public safety experts explain that predators abuse gender identity policies to gain access to victims. The concern is not that people who identify as transgender will victimize women, but that perverts will use such policies to do so. Indeed, after Target changed its policies, men disguised as women were caught doing just that.

Activists promote gender identity policies in the name of equality, but isn’t it a violation of equality when biological males compete against females in sports and other arenas where sex differences are relevant? Already a high school girl has lost a state track championship to a boy who was allowed to compete against girls.

Activists also promote gender identity policies in the name of liberty, but isn’t it a violation of liberty to force people to speak or act in ways contrary to their best judgment and deeply held beliefs?

In New York City you can be fined up to a quarter-million dollars for “misgendering” someone. Catholic hospitals are being sued for declining to perform sex-reassignment surgeries. And in its last year, the Obama administration issued a mandate forcing health care plans to cover sex-reassignment procedures and forcing qualified physicians to perform them.

While the mandate doesn’t require that all physicians perform transitions, a surgeon who performs hysterectomies for cancer, for example, would be required to also perform them for sex-reassignment purposes; an endocrinologist who administers testosterone for men with low testosterone would have to do so for women who want to identify as men.

This mandate included no exemptions for religious liberty, no protections for conscience, and no considerations at all about best medical judgment: Many doctors, after all, think hormonal and surgical “transition” procedures to be bad medicine. They consider the appropriate medical response to gender dysphoria to be one directed at the mind and the emotions, not at the body.

Which, of course, leads to the final concern: ideology. Transgender ideology is promoted not only in schools, where children are taught that gender is fluid, falls along a spectrum, and is detached from bodily sex, but increasingly in all walks of life, where no one may dare dissent from transgender-affirming protocols.

Activists go after anyone who expresses any reservation at social transition for 5-year-olds, puberty blockers for 9-year-olds, and testosterone for 14-year-old girls. Just last week a family lost custody of their teenage daughter because a judge ruled that it was in her best interest to receive transition therapy, against her parents’ wishes.

But contrary to the claims of activists, sex isn’t “assigned” at birth—and that’s why it can’t be “reassigned.” Sex is a bodily reality that can be recognized well before birth with ultrasound imaging. Cosmetic surgery and cross-sex hormones don’t change the deeper biological reality. People who undergo sex-reassignment procedures do not become the opposite sex, they merely masculinize or feminize their outward appearance.

The medical evidence suggests that sex reassignment does not adequately address the psychosocial problems suffered by people who identify as transgender. Even when the procedures are successful technically and cosmetically, and even in cultures that are relatively “trans-friendly,” transitioners still face poor outcomes.

In truth, very little is understood about the causes of discordant gender identities. Starting a child on an experimental process of “social transitioning” followed by puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones was unthinkable not long ago.

As I show in “When Harry Became Sally,” a more cautious therapeutic approach begins by acknowledging that 80 to 95 percent of children with gender dysphoria will grow out of it naturally. Many experts think of gender dysphoria as being much like other kinds of dysphoria, or serious discomfort with one’s body, such as anorexia.

The most helpful therapies do not try to remake the body to conform with thoughts and feelings—which is impossible—but rather to help people to move toward accepting the reality of their bodily selves.

Children are especially vulnerable, and while we need to respect the dignity of people who identify as transgender, we must do everything possible to protect young people and foster their healthy development. That will require acknowledging that it is not discriminatory for public policy to take our sexual embodiment seriously.

Originally published by National Review Online.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Ryan T. Anderson

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, where he researches and writes about marriage, bioethics, religious liberty and political philosophy. Anderson is the author of several books and his research has been cited by two U.S. Supreme Court justices in two separate cases. Read his Heritage research. Twitter: .

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Planned Parenthood Targets Minors For Transgender Treatment

In a virtually ignored development, Planned Parenthood has found another way to make a buck on the backs of mostly impressionable young people.

On top of its massive abortion industry, and the more recent discovery that it was selling baby parts, the nation’s largest abortion provider is now offering transgender hormone therapy for women who want to become men and men who want to become women.

Planned Parenthood’s abortion business model is threatened as the U.S. abortion rate continues to decline, new regulations are put in place on the horrific and unpopular practice of late-term abortions and the American public becomes more inclined towards curtailing abortions as science reveals more of what is going on in the womb.

Further, there is substantial momentum toward defunding Planned Parenthood at the federal level, which would be another blow to the abortion giant’s revenue stream. Congress can’t quite get its act together on this, but the Trump Administration is actively helping states in the fight for unborn babies. The Health and Human Services administration, working with the Alliance Defending Freedom legal team, is telling states they no longer have to comply with Obama regulations that threw up roadblocks for states trying to exclude Planned Parenthood from their state Medicaid programs.

Declining abortions and reducing tax funding is putting a crimp in Planned Parenthood’s money flowing style. So it is not surprising that the organization turned to transgender hormone — or sex change — treatments in 2016. But it is quickly going for the younger, more impressionable teens who are in vulnerable years of life.

Until literally the last few years, gender dysphoria was understood to be a psychological disorder, and very treatable. Importantly, most young people who experience this condition of gender confusion outgrow it as adults and no longer suffer from the dysphoria. Somewhere between 75 percent and 95 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria will outgrow it as adults. The majority grow up to be gay adults. The minority are traditional adults.

But the LGBTQ activist community continues to undermine every scientific reality with its powerful political machine and a sympathetic media. Just off their successful dissolution of marriage as being between one man and one woman, the LGBTQ activists immediately turned to mucking up the differences between the two sexes. Boys can be girls and girls can be boys, whatever they feel like, science and biology and known reality be damned.

One of the earliest Planned Parenthood groups to begin selling hormone therapy drugs is based in Sarasota, Florida, where it is now dishing out the irreversible body-altering drugs to about 250 people on a regular basis. The Guardian newspaper reported that “Planned Parenthood is one of the largest sources in the U.S. of transgender healthcare.”

And now, it will be “offering” its drugs for sale to minors with parental consent. But anyone paying attention knows that the parental consent portion will be under attack almost instantly.

This is abominable considering most of these minors will outgrow their gender confusion as adults, but with these drugs, they will be unalterably changed. Many of their lives will be severely degraded because of the drug regiment they chose to buy from Planned Parenthood as teens. But the LGBTQ community will further its destructive agenda and Planned Parenthood will play its part while making its millions.

Most transgender hormone treatment clinics require a therapist’s letter for giving out the irreversible, body-altering drugs — providing some tiny level of protection from compulsive acts — something teens are famous for. But Planned Parenthood does not. In fact, all the group’s policy requires is to simply inform confused young people of the risks of treatment. The patient signs the form, the treatments begin, and the money flows in.

The hormonal ‘sex-change’ treatments are not supposed to be funded by tax dollars, but they are when it is deemed “medically necessary,” according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Thus a brand new revenue stream is spawned for Planned Parenthood, and more lives will be unnecessarily devastated.

RELATED ARTICLES:

The Risks of Menopausal Hormone Therapy

School Survey Asks Sixth Graders About Visiting Gay Bars

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. Please visit The Revolutionary Act’s YouTube Channel

The Parkland School Massacre: A story of armed cowards and unarmed heroes

As Americans learn more and more about what actually happened leading up to the massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School located in Parkland, Florida the more astonished they are that this happened. There are two smaller groups of people who are getting angrier and angrier.

Who are two angry groups?

The first group are the Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, the Broward County School Board, transgender students, some vocal Marjory Stoneman Douglas students and politicians representing the Democratic Party.

The second group are those who want safe schools for children, don’t trust government to protect them, believe in God, are law abiding gun owners, and politicians representing the Republican Party.

The first group blames what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on:

  1. Guns in general and the AR 15 style rifle in particular.
  2. The National Rifle Association.
  3. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
  4. The Republican Party in general and President Donald J. Trump in particular.

The second group blames what happened on February 14th, 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 19-year old Nikolas Cruz the man in custody and charged with the premeditated murder of 17 faculty members and students.

Which one is right?

The first group wants more government control of guns and more reliance on government and law enforcement to protect school children.

The second group believes that murder is a crime and believes in crime prevention, if you see something, say something. The second group believes in self-defense.

As the facts become know about what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, when and by whom, the story tends to support the second group over the first group.

Here are the facts:

  1. In 2010 the Broward County School Board acquiesced to demands made by the NAACP to stop reporting illegal acts by minority students to the police under a policy titled “diversionary programs.” Students who engaged in violence, drug sales, robberies, burglaries, theft and other various crimes were intentionally kept out of the criminal justice system.
  2. Multiple students and teachers reported that Nikolas Cruz was “troubled.” Cruz posted disturbing photographs on his social media sites.
  3. Cruz was suspended from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Former schoolmate Joshua Charo said Cruz had been found with bullets in his backpack.
  4. Nikolas Cruz has no criminal record.
  5. Nikolas Cruz posted on YouTube “Im going to be a professional school shooter”.
  6. At least two citizens contacted the FBI warning that Cruz was a danger and wanted to shoot up a school. The first tip was on September 24th, 2017, the second on January 5th, 2018.
  7. Law enforcement visited Cruz on at least two dozen occasions after receiving 911 calls. On November 29, 2017, Nikolas Cruz called 911 himself in Palm Beach County to report that someone “attacked me and said they were going to gut me.”
  8. The Broward County Sheriff’s office released records dating back 10 years documenting contacts it had with Nikolas Cruz. The records released are logs of 23 separate 911 calls, including 15 calls made by his now-deceased mother, Linda Cruz, reporting disputes and disturbances involving Cruz between November 2008 and June 2014. Several other calls were made by third parties beginning in February 2016 through November 2017.
  9. On February 5, 2016, deputies received a call summarized as: “Third hand information from the neighbor’s son that Nikolas Cruz planned to shoot up the school on Instagram (Picture of Juvenile with guns.) One month time delay. Unknown high school. Cruz lives in area.”
  10. Cruz passed a background check and purchased a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 rifle in February, 2017 from Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs, Florida.
  11. On February 14, 2018 at 2:12 p.m. EST Nikolas Cruz entered Building 12 and began shooting faculty and students.
  12. At 2:50 p.m. Cruz calmly went into a Walmart near the school and purchased a drink at a Subway inside and then left the store.
  13. At 2:53 p.m. Broward County Deputies responded to reports of a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School. There was one Broward County deputy already on campus. He did nothing to stop Cruz during the assault nor arrest him once he left the campus. It is reported that three other Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were on the scene but did not go into Building 12 to find the shooter or help the wounded.
  14. At 3:41 p.m. a Coconut Creek police officer detained Cruz in Coral Springs, Florida.
  15. On February 15th, 2018 Florida shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was booked into the Broward County jail and charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.

The Bottom Line

Given this timeline it is clear that:

  1. Nikolas Cruz was known to law enforcement at every level from the Broward County Sheriff’s office to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  2. In the Broward County School system Nikolas Cruz was know as troubled and a growing threat to other students.
  3. Nikolas Cruz, like the shooters at Columbine, were able to get weapons. Nikolas Cruz passed a federal background check and was allowed to buy a rifle.
  4. At least four Broward County deputies did not do what was expected of them. Question: Are they cowards or were they told to stand down?
  5. At least two unarmed faculty and one unarmed student at the high school, assistant football coach Aaron Feis, athletic director Chris Hixon and Junior ROTC Cadet Peter Wang, raced toward the shots and attempted to shield others. All three died as heroes.

Government did not protect the children in Parkland, Florida. Government is working to downplay its failures by directing attention at others and an inanimate object.

Bottom line: Government failed! People died!

American author, historian, and Unitarian minister Edward Everett Hale wrote, “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”

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More Than a Motto

Nothing we do will ever bring back the 17 bright lights of Parkland. Children, coaches, lifetimes of promise — all lost, too soon. As parents, we’ve watched moms and dads in communities all across America experience an agony we can’t fathom. We’ve cried at the photos of smiling teenagers who will never have another school picture. And we wonder — when will we make it stop, or at least lessen?

The faceless, nameless crisis that leads people to murder innocent people — is there a cure? More Americans than ever are desperately seeking one. “What’s gone wrong with our culture that produces such atrocities?” Peggy Noonan asked before answering her own question. “It’s a very long list.” In a country so numb to violence, what happened in Florida feels different. Gun control is back on the table, but so is the longing for something deeper.

“It is not a secret that we have some gun issues that need to be addressed,” said Florida Rep. Kimberly Daniels, a Democrat, “but the real thing that needs to be addressed are the issues of the heart.” Following nearby Arkansas, she is sponsoring a bill to bring the conversation back to what matters: God. This week, her legislation to require “In God We Trust” in every school shows how quickly the environment is changing. By 97-10, state leaders agreed, it’s time to address the real problem. Daniels was just as heartbroken as any American when she heard the news of the school shooting. But, she believes God spoke to her and said, “Do not politicize what has happened in Florida, and do not make this a thing of division.” So, she worked on a different solution — reminding people to do good. “God is not a Republican or a Democrat. He is not black or white. He is the light and our schools need light in them like never before.”

What’s wrong, Noonan writes, deep down we all know.

“The family blew up — divorce, unwed childbearing. Fatherless sons. Fatherless daughters, too. Poor children with no one to love them. The internet flourished. Porn proliferated. Drugs, legal and illegal. Violent videogames, in which nameless people are eliminated and spattered all over the screen… The abortion regime settled in, with its fierce, endless yet somehow casual talk about the right to end a life… So much change, so much of it un-gentle. Throughout, was anyone looking to children and what they need?”

The questions after Parkland are the same ones we’ve had since Columbine. But now is the time for honesty. We can harden the targets, but we need to soften hearts too. Nothing we do will matter if we don’t acknowledge that America has lost its way – that we’ve reject the creator, and creation has turned on itself. Our children are our future, and they’re far too valuable to keep drawing political lines and standing on one side or the other. If we want to talk about access to guns, we’ve got to talk about access to God. And it’s not happening in our schools today.

We need Americans from both sides of the aisle who are willing to look for real solutions that fill the cracks in our families and our hearts. I’m willing. “It starts,” Ken Blackwell told me yesterday on “Washington Watch, “with how we value life. I know there are a lot of intellectuals on the political Left who don’t see the connection, but when you start to destroy innocent human life because of unwantedness, you in fact begin to cheapen the value of life. As a consequence, it’s been manifested in our culture, and it makes it easier for people to become insensitive to the loss of innocent life… As we’ve all said for decades, you can’t run God and faith out of the public square and not expect to have these sort of consequences.”

Noonan, who sees the world crumbling all around us, thinks our kids are watching.

“I’ll tell you what I think a teenager absorbs about [abortion], unconsciously, in America. He sees a headline online, he passes a television in an airport, he hears the quick story and he thinks: ‘If the baby we don’t let live is unimportant, then I guess I am unimportant. And you’re unimportant too.’ They don’t even know they’re breathing that in. But it’s there, in the atmosphere, and they’re breathing it in. And it doesn’t make you healthier.”


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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Survey: 82% Feel Proud to be an American

The American Culture & Faith Institute produced a report titled American Views on Patriotism. The report was based upon a October – November 2017 a survey that asked, “do you feel proud to be an American?” The results found that 46% answered “completely” and 36% answered “mostly”, for a total of 82%. Here is the breakdown on the “I feel proud to be an American” question.

Cultural view

  • Conservative 65%
  • Moderate 43%
  • Liberal 37%

Political Party

  • Republican 66%
  • Democrat 43%
  • Independent 43%

According to the American Culture & Faith Institute survey:

Beyond those designations, the [American Views on Patriotism] survey also revealed that most adults have lukewarm views regarding their other commitments and self-perceptions. For instance:

  • Slightly less than half “completely” embrace the idea that they “feel proud to be an American.” Another one-third (36%) say that description is “mostly accurate.”
  • Just three out of ten adults (29%) say are accurately described as wanting the government to stay out of their life.
  • Interestingly, most Americans seem aware that their political views are not “clear and unchanging.” Three-quarters of adults recognize their ambiguity on political matters.
  • Only one-quarter of adults (26%) firmly acknowledge their tolerance of different social and political views.
  • Surprisingly few people (12%) strongly affirmed their standing as a “culture warrior.” In fact, a larger share of the public (19%) completely rejects that self-description.
  • While the proportion of people who are proud to be an American is limited, only 10% say that preferring to live in another country is a completely accurate description of their views. Half of all respondents said such a label was completely inaccurate.
  • A mere 8% said they always trust the government to do the right thing.

Why is patriotism important?

In an August 9th, 2017 Philadelphia Inquirer article titled Paying the price for breakdown of the country’s bourgeois culture Amy Wax and Larry Alexander defined America’s bourgeois (middle class) culture. Wax and Alexander wrote,

That culture laid out the script we all were supposed to follow:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime. [Emphasis added]

Politicians have wooed the middle class. Politicians woo those who are patriotic and seek opportunities to be seen in the company of the U.S. military. Politicians love photo shoots with veterans and their families. However, once elected politicians tend to favor the funding of social programs over funding the U.S. military (e.g. sequestration). 

Where did America’s patriotism go?

The U.S. military makes up less than 1% of the total population. In 2014, the Veterans Administration estimated there were 22 million military veterans in the U.S. population. This is approximated 15% of the population of the United States. During WWII, Korea and Vietnam the United States had a universal draft. According to Google:

U.S. military draft ends, Jan. 27, 1973. On the day in 1973, as the Vietnam War drew to a close, the Selective Service announced that there would be no further draft calls. … Nixon thought ending the draft could be an effective political weapon against the burgeoning anti-war movement.

In a column titled “10 Arguments In Support Of Bringing Back The Draft” J. Francis Wolfe found that U.S. Presidents and the Congress have deployed U.S. military personnel abroad 6.5 times more in the 40 years after elimination of the draft than the 40 years before.

The problem is few Americans feel the personal and visceral impacts experienced by those sent into harms way.

The draft provided three key functions to our youth:

  1. It gave the youth an opportunity to serve the nation – service above oneself was the ideal. Today’s youth lack a purpose in life because they cannot understand what doing something to serve the nation means.
  2. Those in the military learned team work, punctuality, how to abide by rules and present themselves properly while in uniform. These are traits sought out by companies both large and small in employees.
  3. The military provided a vast number of marketable skills to America’s youth. Skills such as: maintenance of vehicles and aircraft, how to render first aid (corpsmen), plumbing, electrician, radio operator, computer operator, how to drive or fly a variety of military vehicles, the safe use of weapons, cooking, and on and on. Today some technical high schools try to fill this gap but not to the extent nor to the high standards of the U.S. military.

Click here to read Wolfe’s rational on each of these arguments.

If America wants to be its citizens to be patriotic, it must make every citizen feel the real consequences and pain of service above one’s self.

EDITORS NOTE: The American Views on Patriotism survey is drawn from a pair of national surveys conducted online during October and November of 2017 by the American Culture & Faith Institute. Each survey involved 1,000 respondents age 18 or older. The sample in each survey reflects the demographic profile of the US adult population. The questions shown are one portion of a larger survey conducted each month. These questions relate to the concept of patriotism in America.

ABOUT THE AMERICAN CULTURE & FAITH INSTITUTE

The American Culture & Faith Institute (ACFI) is a division of United in Purpose, a non-partisan, non-profit organization. The mission of United in Purpose is to educate, motivate and activate conservative Christians to engage in cultural transformation in ways that are consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The organization does not support or promote individual political candidates or parties.

ACFI is under the leadership of veteran researcher George Barna, who serves as the Executive Director. The ACFI team includes several experienced research professionals who assist in the development and completion of each project. Much of the team’s research is accessible on the ACFI website, located at www.culturefaith.com.

Announcing the ‘Trump Box’ Meal Delivery Service

Trump wants to slash food stamps and replace them with a ‘Blue Apron-type program’

Obama had his ObamaPhone; now Trump has his Trump Box.

We are surprised to announce that government services are expanding with the Trump Box: A meal delivery service for those who can’t afford food. The goals of the Trump Box are to promote healthier eating, save money by purchasing food in bulk, and prevent fraud.

lettuce.jpg

The price of lettuce just increased on the black market.

White House Spokesperson Mick Mulvaney has described the Trump Box as similar to Blue Apron meal kits. But New York Times op-ed writer Bryce Covert – who does not like his meal kits co-opted by Republicans – was not happy about this comparison:

“With Blue Apron, you get to pick your meals and decide when they come. And it gives you all the ingredients you need to complete it. Under Trump’s plan, the government decides what you get and when you get it.”
Isn’t this outrageous? It’s horrifying that we should have to take what the government feels like giving us, even though we’re not paying for it ourselves. It’s what Marie Antoinette would call “Cake,” or what Nancy Pelosi would call “Crumbs.”

Usually we like it when the government tells us what to do. We liked when Michelle Obama told our kids what to eat. But this is different, because a Republican is president.

obama-produce.jpg

Obama was a fierce defender of produce.

Many people, who have not really cared that much for fresh fruits and vegetables, are now concerned that “half their benefits” each month will arrive at their door “in the form of government-purchased, nonperishable food items.” All of a sudden, they want to give peas a chance.

When asked for a sample menu of what the non-perishable items may be, Trump’s spokesperson provided this list, which sounds like an MRE from 1945:

  • Stale crackers
  • Ramen noodles
  • An MSG packet
  • Can of sardines
  • Chopped meat spread
  • Brick dust
  • Dog food for granny, before she gets shoved off a cliff
  • Vitamin C tablets for scurvy
  • And a voter registration form, with Republican Party pre-marked.

The responses from current food assistance recipients have ranged from indignant to passionate:

  • “This will not work for me. I don’t want to be told what to eat, unless a Democrat is president. I want to eat what I want, when I want it, and I want someone else to pay for it.”
  • “I have an aversion to Republicans and whatever they provide in the Trump Box. If the boxes include a jar of peanut butter, I will spontaneously develop a peanut allergy.”
  • “Where is the fresh produce? Oh, only half of our benefit is non-perishable? Well, I don’t want the other half if I have to use it on fresh produce. That is racist.”

It’s not surprising that Trump wants black people to starve (even though statistics show that Caucasians take the most government benefits.) But we at the Cube regretfully admit that the Trump Box is a good idea.

No longer will you have to travel to the store to get half of your food. Now that we think about it, it was racist to give people a card and insist that they find their own way to the store.

Complaints have surfaced that Trump Boxes would harm Walmart, Target and Aldi, who “stand to lose billions” when the Trump Boxes start arriving. This is puzzling. Never before have we seen progressives defending the bottom line of huge corporations.

What do you plan on cooking with your Trump Box items? Share your recipes below.

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire by  first appeared on The Peoples Cube.

On Russia, Media Sticks to Its Foregone Collusions

There’s the media’s usual treatment of conservatives — guilty until proven innocent — and then there’s the Donald Trump treatment: guilty even after proven innocent. Unfortunately for this president, there’s no winning under this toxic cloud of media bias. Barack Obama could do no wrong — and Donald Trump can do no right. Even after a nine-month investigation proves he is.

Nothing seems to move the needle on the press’s contempt — not even Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 13 indictments in the Russia probe, which should prove what the president has said all along: there is no collusion! Under normal circumstances, the detailed charges should have gone a long way to softening the media’s stance on what they claimed was a coordinated effort between the Trump campaign and foreign nationals to interfere in the 2016 election. “Russia started their anti-U.S. campaign in 2014,” the president tweeted when Mueller’s announcement came down, “long before I announced that I would run for president. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong — no collusion!

But what should have been validation turned to indignation when outlets like the Associated Press and New York Times refused to accept Mueller’s findings as fact. “Trump’s claim of vindication appeared to be unsupported by the indictment and premature,” reporters said, “as Mueller’s probe has shown no signs of abating.” Then, later, “The cries of vindication seem to be more show than substance.” And, “Neither [the Deputy Attorney General] nor Mueller’s office has ruled out any potential collusion in any other plot to disrupt the election.”

Even in the face of the Special Counsel’s own evidence, liberal reporters refused to accept the fact that Trump had no role in teaming up with the Russians to sway the election outcome. “The fake news media never fails,” he tweeted. So, instead of harping on his involvement, they started to attack him for being rightThe New York Times continued to bash Trump for insisting the allegations were a hoax. “The president’s mood began to darken as it became clearer to him that some commentators were portraying the indictment as nothing for him to celebrate, according to three people with knowledge of his reaction. Those commentators called it proof that he had not won the election on his own, a particularly galling, if not completely accurate, charge for a president long concerned about his legitimacy.”

Even now, without a scrap of evidence to stand on, some outlets refuse to give up their bogus theories of Trump’s involvement. Maybe they’re upset about being duped. After all, as Media Research Center (MRC) points out, they were the ones who were played the fool. Liberal networks were airing almost around-the-clock coverage of the anti-Trump rallies after the election — only to learn that the Russians had organized the whole thing! MRC combed through the Mueller indictments and found that, “Like their counterparts at CNN and MSNBC, multiple news outlets were quick to promote anti-Trump protests in New York City on November 12, 2016 — and in doing so became unwitting promoters of Russian propaganda… Special Counsel Robert Mueller revealed that this protest, as well as one in Charlotte, NC on November 19, 2016, was organized by Russian operatives.”

Congressman Don Bacon isn’t surprised. Yesterday on “Washington Watch,” he explained that Russia does this same thing all over the world. Why? Because, as he explains, “When we turn on each other, we’re less focused on what they’re doing in Ukraine, what they’re doing in Syria, and how they’re threatening the Baltics. And they gain more leeway in their part of the world. This is their way of distracting us from what they’re doing and helps them further their goals, while it undermines our ability to stop that.”

And the media played right into the Russians’ hands. Slate, the Daily Beast, and Huffington Post seized on the rallies, planting seeds of distrust and disunity. “If the goal of the secret Russian organizers was to inject nonsense like that into the American political dialogue,” MRC said, “then their unwitting helpers on CNN and MSNBC certainly gave them plenty of assistance that day.” Even radical filmmaker Michael Moore was suckered into the scam, tweeting photos from a protest that had been secretly orchestrated by the Russians. “If it was the goal of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S.,” President Trump said, “then with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing [at us] in Moscow. Get smart America!”

In the end, this had nothing to do with propping up Trump and undermining Clinton, it was about dividing America. And the media took the bait, ultimately playing a bigger role in tearing the country apart than anyone.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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