Social Media Proves The Need For Whatfinger Style Alternatives

In this era of growing mass censorship of conservative, traditionalist opinion and overt media bias, the need for alternative news and information outlets has never been greater. No hyperbole. Legitimately never greater. The reason is twofold:

➔ The victory of political correctness and the rise of identity politics on the American left, which dominates the dissemination of information in the nation;

➔ The social media revolution that also is dominated by the American left and increasingly willing to flex the anti-free speech instincts of its fellow travelers.

This has been growing over the past couple of years, but the depth of it has been rapidly revealed since the election of Donald Trump. Even many anti-Trumpers on the right (alas, not all) have come to realize with assurity that the American left has a powerful streak that would censor all speech with which they disagree. Amazingly, this is even true in the media to a degree.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz issued a strong warning about the monopolistic power of Silicon Valley during a recent interview on the Breitbart News Sunday program. He said “The nexus of power in media has moved from New York City to Silicon Valley” and that America needs to “look at all the tools we have to protect free speech and prevent the Internet from becoming a vehicle for censorship.”

Cruz was referring to the shadowbanning on Twitter, where views not agreeable to the Twitter overmasters drop into a dark pit, and no one or almost no one, sees them. Conservative Twitter users frequently notice that suddenly no one is engaging with their tweets and whistleblowers have confirmed Twitter does this as a practice.

Youtube, which is owned by Google, has been demonetizing conservative channels by flagging them as having “inappropriate” content that scares off advertisers and viewers, and essentially attempts to silence the conservative sites by bankrupting them. Dozens of large conservative sites — including those as unoffensive and mainstream as PragerU — have seen dramatic demonetization on Youtube as suddenly video after video is flagged. Youtube just recently announced it will spend $25 million of its own money to promote its own list of the same “trusted” news sites.

And Facebook has replaced its discredited “trending news” section after the company was caught filling it with leftist news that was not in any way measurably “trending.” It was so bad and Facebook is so influential, that it became the subject of Congressional inquiries that included founder Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress.

But what Facebook is replacing it with is a feature called “breaking news,” that will be populated only by “trustworthy and quality sources.” Not surprisingly, the list of 80 such outlets appears to be dominated by, if not exclusively featuring, leftist publications. Facebook is not revealing the criteria for how the 80 were chosen, but in addition to the Washington Post, it was leaked that the much more leftist Vox and The Verge are on the “trustworthy” list.

Most recently, Apple has launched a “midterms election” feature of “trusted sources” for its official News app on iPhones, which like Facebook seems to include largely leftist publications from the old mainstream media to outright leftist Vox and Axios.

Apple News does not have the reach of the Big Three in social media, but it demonstrates that every dissemination organ out there is run by leftists who will choose to tell consumers what they should be consuming rather than allow the freedom for consumers to choose themselves.

Back to Cruz: “That is a level of power that is staggering, and I think it poses a real and present danger to our democratic system, particularly given the extreme left-wing bias of Silicon Valley. What we’ve seen over and over again, they’re acting to muzzle and silence conservative views, views they disagree with. That’s frightening.”

The problem is less and less with an absence of alternative news and comment sources. Those have multiplied in recent years, including big hitters from Foxnews.com, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Newsmax, the Daily Wire and so on to smaller hitters such as Liberty Nation, Sparta Report and The Revolutionary Act.

The problem is broad dissemination for people not already familiar with their platforms. And as bad as the stacked deck is for conservative news views, it is compounded by the shifting of the-once solid conservative alternative of the Drudge Report into a more mainstream, celebrity-soaked, sensationalistic, UFO and sex robots site. Not really what conservative, traditionalist Americans are after.

There are really only two alternatives to this. One is to declare the social media giants — particularly Facebook — a monopoly in the information dissemination industry and either break it up like Ma Bell was broken into the Baby Bells, or regulate it like utilities are. That option should rub every conservative wrong because it places the government as the overseer of information. A fairly terrible and certainly untrustworthy option at best — and the government is already a player in the progressives establishment.

The other option is for conservatives and traditionalist Americans to use alternative information disseminating sites. The most prominent of these is the fast-rising Whatfinger News, which is a solidly conservative news aggregator in the space of Drudge, but with literally 10 times more story links from reliable sources.

While Drudge puts up 25 to 30 new links per day, Whatfinger * adds 250 to 400 new links daily. The site is much more complete in covering the news and issues from a range of conservative perspectives with none of the nonsense that Drudge now indulges in.

Whatfinger News is followed by alternative Drudge look-alikes The Liberty Daily and Citizen Free Press. Try them out to see what works for you. They are all providing a more conservative alternative to Drudge, but we prefer Whatfinger as the layout is clean and well-organized and you can count on a huge number of new items every day — nicely prioritized.

This approach to the mass censoring is the best option for freedom-loving conservatives. It allows a broad reach, at least into the conservative community, for all of the right-leaning news sites to aid in distribution of content that counters the liberal media narrative.

But it can only work if conservatives share such alternatives with each other. Whatfinger’s growth has been almost exclusively by word of mouth, and it has grown fast in just two years. If conservatives will share these sites on their own social media accounts by the millions, the word will spread rapidly and others who may be traditionalists or even moderates will see other news options that the social media giants are censoring.

This needs to happen quickly, before the social media censors go further and block such attempts. Don’t think that won’t happen. Based on what has gone on since November 2016, everything is possible.

(* NOTE: The Revolutionary Act has no financial arrangement with Whatfinger and no quid pro quo on articles. Like every one of our posts, this is a straightforward opinion.)

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Revolutionary Act.

PODCAST: The Reasons Women Aren’t Happy Today

Listen here to the full podcast, which features an interview with Mona Charen and a discussion of a new study showing kids don’t play as much outside, or read the lightly edited transcript of the Charen interview below.

Katrina Trinko: Joining us is Mona Charen, the author of the new book “Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.” Mona is a columnist, a contributor to National Review, and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Mona, first I wanted to touch on something you bring up in the intro to the book: Women aren’t happy. You note that women’s happiness has declined since the early 1970s, that women are significantly more likely than men to be on antidepressants. Is there a relationship between women’s dissatisfaction and feminism in your view?

Mona Charen: I think there is a connection because I think that one of the things that the feminist movement did is it removed something from the lives of women that’s very important to them, and that is security. Women need security because we are more vulnerable than men. We’re the ones who are smaller and weaker. We are the ones who have babies, who nurse babies. Security is very important to us. Because of the decline of marriage and the more raw, sexual environment that women are forced to live in now, there’s less security than there used to be.

Trinko: Interesting. As someone who hates being out of my comfort zone, I can relate to that. You also mentioned in the introduction to your book [Facebook Chief Operating Officer] Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In”. Obviously that’s an enormously influential book. It’s encouraged women to lean in to their careers, even if they’re having children—to essentially still be aggressive on the career front. What do you think about Sandberg’s advice and can women have it all?

Charen: Women can have it all, but not all at once. We are lucky that most of us can expect to live long lives, and there’s time enough to do everything in a sequential pattern, not necessarily all at once.

I also resist this idea of having it all because I believe that to be our fullest and best selves, we have to also focus on giving to others and not just living for ourselves. When I was a mother and when I was with my kids, I felt that I was where I really needed to be. That was a good feeling, and it made me happy. There was another part to your question about having it all. What was it?

Trinko: Well, women can have it all, but it sounds like you’re saying …

Charen: Yes, women can, but again, I would just push back a little bit on this idea of having as being the goal. I think we should all want to live rounded lives where we give and receive love to one another.

Trinko: Good. What do you think about sexual assault right now, particularly on college campuses? What is the right approach to this matter?

Charen: Well, conservatives have made a point of saying that the 1 in 5 or the 1 in 4 statistic is not true, and I agree, that is not. It’s an exaggeration, but I think conservatives have gone a little too far in stressing only the stories about mattress girl and others or the University of Virginia case, a rape on campus where they turned out to be hoaxes, because there really is a problem.

There really is a lot of very bad behavior going on. Conservatives should not be perceived as indifferent to the mistreatment of women or the rape of women. It is happening in numbers way beyond what should be tolerable.

That’s my plea is to take it seriously and begin to examine what is going wrong between the sexes. Why is there so much sexual assault? I point to a number of things, the hookup culture, the excessive drinking that characterizes dating life now (if you can even call it dating), and the confusion about sex where people aren’t getting clear signals about what is acceptable and what isn’t. The whole regime of so-called affirmative consent is confusing and unhelpful.

Trinko: Yeah, it seems like many of these people are saying, “Well, you didn’t read my signals.” It’s like, well, how could someone you’ve met a couple hours ago …

Charen: Exactly.

Trinko: … read your signals? Maybe the bigger question is why are you having this intimate activity right away?

Charen: Yes.

Trinko: I make a point of trying to read a lot of feminist takes just to keep that in mind. Obviously the term toxic masculinity is used a lot.

Charen: A lot, yeah.

Trinko: What do you think about that term, and in general, what should we be doing about the boys right now?

Charen: One of my critiques about feminism is that they have a tendency to disparage men as a sex. To say even the phrase toxic masculinity …

Imagine toxic femininity. Feminists would be up in arms if there were such a term being bandied about, much less whole courses about it in men’s studies departments. Look, men are human beings. They have strengths and weaknesses. Masculinity brings with it some serious problems, like aggression, like a huge sex drive that has to be controlled, but masculinity also brings with it a self-sacrifice, a willingness to be brave and to protect those who are weak and vulnerable.

One of the things that I cite in my chapter on this where I’m talking about toxic masculinity are the cases where for example, when that shooter entered the theater in Aurora, Colorado, no fewer than four young men covered their girlfriends with their own bodies to protect them.

Trinko: Wow.

Charen: Three died doing so.

Trinko: I did not know that.

Charen: You can say what you want about men and about masculinity, but that’s part of masculinity, that natural, self-sacrificing heroism.

Let’s be fair to men. If men have become very sexually aggressive and insensitive, maybe it’s because all of the rules about dating have been thrown out the window, and we live in a culture that is drenched in pornography and in which we are told that the old standards about courtship and dating are completely passe.

Trinko: Actually, you just mentioned pornography, and I think that’s something that we don’t really talk about very much publicly, which is interesting. You see that studies show that an enormous number of people are looking at it, including some women as well. How do you think that forms part of the problem between the sexes right now?

Charen: I think it’s a huge part of the problem. I think it definitely invades people’s imaginations and infiltrates what people think is normal behavior. The Harvey Weinstein story with some of the behaviors that he engaged in were just so grotesque. I thought, “Where did he get these ideas like masturbating into a potted plant?” No normal woman would have ever told him that that was a turn on. He had to have gotten that from some pornographic thing somewhere.

Trinko: Yeah, I think it’s definitely shaping desires. It seems every, I don’t know, [every] few months you read another story about high schoolers or college girls feeling they have to engage in some new behavior. They’re told, “Oh, well, I saw it in porn.”

Charen: Yeah, exactly. I’m sorry, but it used to be that boys would think they were lucky if a girl would let him kiss her or touch her somewhere, right. Now boys are making these demands that women do things to their bodies to make themselves appealing that are totally unnatural and weird. Is this progress?

Trinko: Not in my view. A lot of conservative conversation focuses on what’s wrong with the current culture, but are there any positive ideas that could help women lead more fulfilling lives?

Charen: Absolutely. One of the things that I liked in the research for my book is that I’ve found there are countercultural movements afoot. There’s a professor at Boston College called Kerry Cronin who has assigned dating to her students and taught them how to ask someone out on a date and how to go out on dates. She gives advice in class about how to do it. The students support each other, and they’re very enthusiastic.

Under her rules, the students have to be home by 10 p.m. There can be no drinking on the date. It can’t be a movie because there has to be an opportunity for conversation. In any event, and they have to ask someone they’re genuinely interested in, not just a friend to get out of the assignment, I suppose. It’s just reintroducing these things, reintroducing the idea of romance. I think it might just catch on.

Trinko: Yeah, I think it might. It’s always interesting to me. I’m a bit older than a college student, but at the same time, it seems that so many people in the overall millennial generation are more comfortable being physical with a stranger than being verbally intimate.

Charen: Exactly. I said to one of my sons that they can’t protect their bodies, but they do protect their souls. They put up walls so that people can’t really get to know them.

Trinko: Absolutely. You see that a lot on dating sites. Now one critique I imagine the left would say about this book is that essentially it’s wanting to go back to the 1950s. Is that your ideal era?

Charen: No.

Trinko: Let’s say you could wave a wand and change society. What does it look like?

Charen: If I could wave a wand and change society, I would change it to 2018 to the habits of people who are living right now but who happen to be college graduates. If you look at the patterns of dating and marriage and childbearing of the college graduate cohort in our society, you don’t have to go back to the 1950s, they’re doing it right now. Their patterns of finishing school, getting married, and having babies in that order, it hasn’t changed very much from the patterns that used to characterize everybody in the 1950s.

Some people say, “You want to go back to the 50s.” No, I just want all of our people in every income category, especially those at the bottom who need the support of families even more than the people at the top, to be able to benefit from having a mother and a father in the home, having two incomes, having that stability and that great start in life.

Trinko: OK, thank you very much, Mona. Again, she’s the author of the new book, “Sex Matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love, and Common Sense.” Check it out.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is managing editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcast. She is also a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors. Send an email to Katrina. Twitter: .

Portrait of Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis is the commentary editor of The Daily Signal and co-host of The Daily Signal podcastSend an email to Daniel. Twitter: .

The Daily Signal podcast is a 25-minute weekday podcast that shares the news highlights conservatives need to know and features an in-depth interview. Subscribe on iTunesGoogle Play, or SoundCloud.


Muslim Who Squeezed $3M Out of SPLC for Calling Him an Anti-Muslim Extremist Says Others Also Wrongly Labeled

A left-wing organization is wrongly labeling others as “hate groups,” a Muslim leader who works against Islamist terrorists says.

Maajid Nawaz recently settled out of court with the Southern Poverty Law Center for over $3 million after he challenged it for listing his left-of-center group as extremist.

“I want them to understand that something clearly went wrong in the processes here,” Nawaz said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “If it could have gone wrong for me, which is such a clear case, then there are others.”

Listing Nawaz and his research group, Quilliam, as anti-Muslim extremists cost the Southern Poverty Law Center $3.4 million in a settlement payment paired with a video apology.

In 2016, the SPLC had labeled Quilliam, which markets itself as the “world’s first counter-extremism organization,” as an anti-Muslim hate group for its calls to reform Islam. Nawaz, who is British and a former radical Muslim, moved to sue the SPLC on grounds of defamation.

The matter was settled out of court June 18, with the SPLC agreeing to pay the $3.4 million and issue a public apology.

“I grew up respecting the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and their work against the KKK, in particular, was something, somebody like me … grew up appreciating,” Nawaz said in the interview on “Fox & Friends.”

The SPLC has been in the news in recent years for labeling mainstream conservative organizations, including the traditional values group Family Research Council and the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, as hate groups. They and others say the liberal group does so to those it disagrees with to raise money.

Nawaz, who calls himself a liberal politically, said his inclusion on the SPLC’s list of hate groups was “shocking.”

Labeling someone an anti-Muslim extremist is dangerous because “that’s putting a target on our heads for the jihadists to come and kill us,” he said.

“These are serious allegations that terrorists take very, very seriously, and they go after people like us,” he said.

Nawaz said he told the SPLC that “we agree on more than we disagree when it comes to challenging extremism,” and that he wanted to understand how he had ended up on its list.

Nawaz said he believes that the SPLC’s apology was sincere, and that his inclusion on a list of hate groups was a “genuine mistake.” But, he said, he is “still trying to explore and get to the bottom of this.”

COLUMN BY

Jeremiah Poff

Jeremiah Poff is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.


Planned Parenthood targets ‘younger folks’ with F*** Everyone campaign

We have reported on the push to promote underage sex and pedophilia by socialist Democrats. Well now we see ads promoting “sex with everyone” ads appearing in New York City.

Photo by Planned Parenthood New York.

In an ADWEEK article titled “Planned Parenthood Wants to Protect Your ‘Freedom to F*ck’ With New Fundraising Effort: The campaign targets younger folks in NYC” Katie Richards reports:

Dear New Yorkers: Planned Parenthood of New York City has an important message for you all. If you want to continue to love and sleep with the person (or people) of your choosing, you might want to think about making a donation to the organization’s NYC chapter (which served over 60,000 New Yorkers in 2017).

Read more.

The Official Democratic Store sent out an email on May 23, 2018 introducing it’s “Democratic collection” of Gay pride shirts, lapel pins and campaign buttons.

On the same day the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) reported:

The producer of the children’s film, “Show Dogs,” has pulled the film from theaters around the world and will recut it, removing two scenes that seemed to groom children for sexual abuse. This film is about a dog that goes undercover at a dog show competition – harmless enough except for the story arc where the only way for him to win and save the day was to allow unwanted touching of his genitals, while his coach practiced it with him and encouraged him to just go to his “zen” place. Yes…I know…it is hard to believe this was in a children’s film, to begin with. [Emphasis added]

You may read more about the film “Show Dogs” on the NCOSE website by clicking here.

What does homosexuality have to do with child abuse?

PubMed.gov is a resource on research done on homosexuals and child abuse. PubMed.gov lists a 2001 study by the California School of Professional Psychology titled “Comparative data of childhood and adolescence molestation in heterosexual and homosexual persons.” The abstract reads:

In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestation. This research is apparently the first survey that has reported substantial homosexual molestation of girls. Suggestions for future research were offered. [Emphasis added]

The following is a graphic from a CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) online slide presentation, “HIV Surveillance in Adolescents and Young Adults”  breaks down the incidence of HIV among young men ages 13-24. In 2011, an astonishing 94.9 percent of HIV diagnoses among teenage boys (13-19-years-old) were linked to homosexual (“male-to-male”) sex. And 94.1 percent of the cases among young men ages 20-24 were from “gay” sex:

HIV-Young-Adult-Males-2011-CDC

Democrat Socialists (formally known as the Democrat Party) are pushing underage sex. Their bed mate is Planned Parenthood who is now publicly promoting “the freedom to f***.

Does it get any worse than this?

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Court Drops Bogus Charges Against David Daleiden for Exposing Planned Parenthood Baby Part Sales

Permission Accomplished: Parents Have Sex-Ed Say at RNC

What kind of country would fund a group whose best advice is “F*** everyone?” Ours.

Last week’s ad from Planned Parenthood was the perfect example of the pornographic messages conservatives are fighting to stop in America’s sex ed curriculum. Every day, the headlines are full of horror stories about what students are learning with — or more likely, without — their parents knowledge. And at least one political party is doing something about it.

From Fairfax County to East Penn Schools, moms and dads are flooding districts with complaints for glamorizing dangerous sex acts, gender confusion, and the LGBT agenda. In some cases, like Pennsylvania, parents are suing just for the right to see the videos their kids are watching. In others, moms and dads have absolutely no idea what’s being taught because the school refuses to tell them. That needs to end now, the Republican National Committee has declared. In its summer meeting that wrapped up this weekend, the RNC passed a unanimous resolution demanding that state legislators do more to protect kids from the outrageous curriculums sweeping the nation.

It’s time, said Virginia’s National Committeewoman Cynthia Dunbar, to put sex-ed decisions back where they belong — in parents’ hands. Under the RNC’s new language, the party will put its energy into “parents’ rights” provisions that would force school districts to get moms’ and dads’ written permission before moving forward with any sex-ed material. “I’m thrilled this resolution passed,” Cynthia said after the vote. “This should not be a partisan issue. Parents everywhere deserve the right to know what their children are being taught and afforded an opportunity to consent to it.”

Of course, Americans’ frustration over sex ed have been boiling over for quite some time. When “Activist Mommy” Elizabeth Johnston floated the idea of a protest, she was overwhelmed by the response. Thousands of people from around the world joined in her Sex Ed Sit Out in April, a sign of the growing irritation over how states are handling such a sensitive topic.

For the last several years, FRC’s Cathy Ruse points out, liberal school boards have tried to use “opt out” provisions to shield themselves from criticism. (“Hey, we don’t force it on anyone, you can always opt-out!”) But in reality, most parents have no idea that they can pull their kids out of class — or worse, that they’d even need to. A lot of parents trust their local schools — and the districts have taken advantage of that trust by misleading them about the true content of sex ed. In Fairfax County, for example, some of the lessons labeled “abstinence” weren’t about abstinence at all!

Forty years ago, when sex ed was two hours on the basics of human development and reproduction, the opt-out system might have worked. But it’s completely inappropriate for today’s radical, graphic, and age-inappropriate sex ed. Thank goodness the Republican National Committee agrees! It’s time to stop letting schools exploit parents, who would never dream that their son’s eighth grade teacher would give him a lesson with 18 mentions of “anal sex” or tell their seventh grade daughter that she was born in the wrong body because “biological sex is meaningless.”

The Republican National Committee made sure to address these “family planning” sex-ed programs in its 2016 platform. Together, the delegates called for sexual risk avoidance (abstinence) education that makes saving sex until marriage the responsible and respected standard. But this is the first time the RNC has directly taken on the tactics of the far-Left, so our hats go off to the RNC for joining us in this fight and demanding parents have a say!


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


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Law Center Defeats New York Attorney General’s Attempt To Silence Pro-Life Sidewalk Counselors

ANN ARBOR, MI – The Thomas More Law Center (“TMLC”), a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that it has won a significant legal battle on behalf of Christian pro-life sidewalk counselors sued in a New York federal district court by the New York Attorney General’s Office (“OAG”). In a 103-page opinion issued last Friday evening, U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon rebuked the efforts of the New York Attorney General’s Office to silence sidewalk counselors who regularly assembled outside of Choices Women’s Medical Center (“Choices”), a Queens abortion clinic, to plead for the lives of the unborn.

Former Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman who later resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Last summer, June 20, 2017, at a much-ballyhooed press conference held outside Choices, then-Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman (who later resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct), concluding a massive year-long investigation, announced his federal lawsuit against thirteen sidewalk counselors with the astonishing remark that this is “not a nation where you can choose your point of view.”

TMLC attorneys Tyler Brooks and Kate Oliveri represent two of the thirteen counselors sued by OAG, Angela Braxton and Jasmine Lalande.

Tyler Brooks commented, “A radical state attorney general abandoned his duty to enforce the law fairly in favor of pursuing an ideological campaign intended to silence pro-life Christians. The federal court, however, has seen through the State of New York’s efforts and made clear that the free speech of Christians will not be censored simply because some people on the left do not like it.”

Kate Oliveri added, “In denying the State’s preliminary injunction motion, the district court judge protected the true victims of harassment: the pro-life sidewalk counselors. Judge Amon sent a clear message to the New York Attorney General’s Office that the First Amendment does indeed guarantee the right of citizens in New York to have their own viewpoint.”

Richard Thompson, TMLC President and Chief Counsel praised the great cooperation between TMLC attorneys and attorneys associated with the Thomas More Society and Liberty Counsel, who represented the other Defendants.

In its lawsuit, OAG alleged that the thirteen sidewalk counselors violated federal, state and New York City laws prohibiting the obstruction of abortion facilities, and harassment and intimidation of women who were seeking abortions. It petitioned the federal court to create a sixteen-foot buffer zone around Choices abortion premises and levy fines, attorney fees and compensatory damages against the Defendants.

An extensive preliminary injunction hearing was held between February 12 and March 6, 2018. In addition to videos, photographs and other documentary evidence, OAG called seven witnesses and the Defendants called ten witnesses. On May 22, 2018, Judge Amon heard oral arguments on OAG’s motion for a preliminary injunction. In her 103-page opinion and order, Judge Amon denied the OAG’s motion finding that the OAG had failed to substantiate any of its allegations against the Defendants.

For years, Choices has had security cameras trained on its entrance. And in June 2016, the OAG installed a high-mounted surveillance camera to capture the exterior of Choices’ main patient entrance surrounding sidewalk. Moreover, OAG investigators obtained additional video evidence in undercover operations where they approached Choices, pretending to be patients and their companions, while wearing hidden cameras recording video and audio.

Despite these investigative activities, Judge Amon found that not a single video introduced into evidence substantiated the OAG’s allegations against the sidewalk counselors.

The Court also heard testimony from several Choices employees and escorts, including Merle Hoffman, the owner of Choices who proudly accepts the title “Millionaire Abortionist” and who has said that pro-life advocates should be considered the “American Taliban.” Judge Amon found the witnesses produced by the OAG were not credible.

OAG can appeal Judge Amon’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. However, the appellate court is required to defer to the findings of fact made by Judge Amon, making any such appeal very difficult for the State.

Click here to read the Court’s opinion.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured illustration is by Getty Images/Redux

Democrats Caught In Vile Attack On Wife Of Trump’s Florida Co-Chair

The deteriorating state of the American left and the Democratic Party was on vivid display again in a recent, ugly controversy in Florida that Democrats initiated, then tried to shrug off and finally back-tracked on after media coverage exposed it.

A Democrat running for local government office posted on Facebook about an issue facing voters in November. Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Republican Party of Sarasota, a state representative and the co-chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign in Florida, responded to the issue. One of the first responses to his comment was this:

“..you never did answer my question about when and where I can grab your wife by her pu**y. Get back to me on this.”

Obviously this vile piece of nastiness was a reference to Trump’s old statement from the Access Live video several years ago, which Trump apologized for and for which he rightly received considerable condemnation from Republicans at the time.

Alone, it was just a one-off from a nasty individual. But this repugnant comment was “liked” many times, including by a local Democratic candidate running for the School Board. This candidate was subsequently forced to apologize when the local ABC affiliate did a story on it — which came only after the Republican Party of Sarasota put out a statement condemning the comment, the “like” by the School Board candidate and the willingness of the original Democratic author of the post to keep it up. The statement called on the Democratic Party to disavow the statement and its candidates’ involvement in it.

The Democratic Party did neither. But after the media exposure and public fallout became clear, the vile comment was taken down the next day. Of course, that could have happened immediately. It could have happened after Gruters brought it to the attention of the initial Democrats’ posting. It could have happened when the Republican Party issued its statement. But it did not happen until it was exposed in the media and the Democratic Party measured the response in this red part of Florida.

As bad as all of that was, the really telling part is that the Sarasota County Democratic Party issued an official statement saying that while the comment was inappropriate…“make no mistake that this fake outrage by the Republican Party of Sarasota about a ‘like’ of a comment on a Facebook page is a clear attempt to distract the voters and to score political points.”

Fake outrage?

It seems pretty likely that if anyone suggested they wanted to know when they could grab the private female parts of one of the Democrats’ wives or daughters or mothers, their outrage would be most sincere. Too many Democrats have learned nothing from the lessons of the 2016 election. Instead of understanding how they disconnected from so many Americans, the lesson they took is that because Trump said something vile, they can therefor say anything with impunity. Wrong lesson — for them and the country.

It’s also clear that if Republicans had not highlighted the nastiness to the local media, the Democrats were fine with leaving the comment and its supporting approvals up. Most people recognized that the outrage over this was real and legitimate, particularly for candidates asking voters to put them in office.

Perhaps Democrats need to step back and rethink spending the past 18 months in a daily cyclone of ginned up, hate-based outrage over every act of the Trump administration. It has impaired their ability to distill genuine outrage from the fake.

And its impaired the ability of the nation to participate in any sort of issues-based, civil debate.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Reasons Women Aren’t Happy Today

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.

VIDEOS: Flames of Hatred — Socialists Who Burn Our American Flag

The fake news media melts down over a flame being held near The New York Times. What have they ever said about these socialists who burn our American flag?

“What is it that everyone thinks is going to happen next? The peaceful transfer of power? Calm elections? We’re destroying ourselves from the inside and apparently the Maxine Waters of this world think that’s a great thing.” —Dana Loesch

VIDEO: Why Politics Matters in Religion — Because everything is at stake.

TRANSCRIPT

Why do politics matter? Why are we devoting some of our resources to this? What does it all have to do with the Faith?

Those are legitimate questions, and here are the answers.

First, the U.S. bishops, pretty political animals during the past 50 years or so, have really become political in the last five years or so. What was pretty much known privately and in some select circles is now a secret no longer, and that is that the U.S. bishops taken collectively are dyed in the wool Democrats, supporters of the Party of Death in nearly every instance. It is the bishops who have become political and invested loads of their resources in the form of money, time and personnel into supporting Democratic Party politics.

In the rare instances they — probably — disagree with the party chieftains, like abortion and contraception, they just fall in lockstep by turning decidedly quiet and uninvolved. And on the whole homo-fascist movement sweeping across America, they have offered almost no resistance whatsoever, which is understandable given the enormous numbers of sodomites among them or their respective clergy.

On everything else on the agenda of the Party of Death, the bishops have completely thrown in with. They are deceiving Catholics up and down the body politic by pretending that their positions on immigration, climate change and social justice are Church teaching, which they absolutely are not. But, make no mistake, it is the bishops who have thrown down this gauntlet of trying to advance socialism through the electorate by use of their offices.

They get loads of money from their Democratic lawmaker buddies for pretended poverty issues, which all too frequently are really efforts to get more Democrats elected, one way or another. Notice, for example, the outrage from the USCCB over the recent ruling that union workers can’t be compelled to pay union fees which are used to support political actions they disagree with. Extorting money from politically conservative union workers has been a long time tactic of union mobs — almost all Democratic — and the U.S. bishops, with the exception of the solid Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, just couldn’t resist slamming the Court.

Notice the decided lack of cheering in the ruling on the baker gay wedding case — it just goes on and on.

If it’s Democratic, they support it. If it’s not, they attack it, and so it goes.

Notice the hypocrisy of the diocese of Helena, Montana earlier in the month for yet another example of railing against priests who attended Trump’s rally on July 5, yet later it emerged that the very diocesan official, Msgr. Kevin O’Neill, who slammed them for appearing at Trump’s rally appeared at the inauguration of the Catholic pro-abort governor of Montana, Steve Bullock, who also happens to give thousands of dollars to the cathedral, as records show.

Things have intensified to a white-hot intensity in the culture the past few years because the grip that the Left had on American culture is now deeply threatened, and the war is on. And precisely where this war is being fought tooth and nail is in the realm of politics.

That’s exactly why the bishops have ramped up their level of intensity, along with every other concerned group desperate to seize the future of the country right now in the present, and it is exactly the present fight that will dictate the future. Everyone involved in the fight knows that. That’s why the massive war over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court is just that — a war.

It’s why bishops won’t condemn pro-abortion Catholic politicians and deny them Holy Communion. It’s why there is still, almost half a century later, no national collection from the U.S. bishops for the right to life effort. Under no circumstances can the U.S. bishops anger their Democratic Party allies, so they join in when they can, which is most of the time, and fall silent on the few occasions they need to.

All of this is massively misleading to American Catholics who don’t get to keep close track of all this because they are busy trying to build their lives and raise their families. The bishops get to wrap their phony positions up in the robes and make them appear Catholic when they are not Catholic at all. This is an offense against truth, charity and justice and must be combatted.

They won’t tell the faithful that they have spent billions of your dollars on, not just sexually abusive priests, but homosexual sexually abusive priests because that admission would tick off the Democratic leadership.

So tell a half-truth instead and try to sweep the reality under the rug. So yes, politics do matter, elections do have consequences, and the bishops are largely on the wrong side of all this because they no longer make the Faith their first priority and have instead made money the goal. They are both used and being used in the world of politics and it is the duty of faithful Catholics to expose every bit of this. Their activity has nothing to do with saving souls or bringing people into the one true Faith.

If they won’t do it, then we have to.

PBS: The Un-American Classroom

Soon after the horrific bombing of the World Trade Center, I happened upon a television production of the history of Islam presented by PBS, an American public broadcaster and television program distributorself-declared as “America’s largest classroom.”  This trusted provider of television programming reaches 350 member-television stations, educational institutions, non-profit groups tied to public schools, college educational institutions, and state-government-owned or -related entities.  The narrator of the History of Islam, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, was already recognized for his outrageous proposal to establish a triumphal rabat-style mosque on Ground Zero. He’d hoped to name it Córdoba to echo Islam’s conquest of Spain in 711 AD.

Rauf presented the spread of Islam as the color of butter spread across the pastel map, as though untold thousands had not been enslaved or slaughtered by the ferocious and determined warlord, Mohammed.  Conquest was achieved by the merciless decapitation of 800 Jewish men, the rape and sexual enslavement of their women and children, the pillaging of the metalworks and crafts of the town’s Jews, Christians, and pagans who had been living in harmony. PBS was permitting itself to be used to promote a false narrative that concealed the true purpose of Islam and its continued bloody methods of conquest.

Christian Action Network, in 2017, revealed the introduction of the Islamic indoctrination program, “Access Islam,” by the U.S. Department of Education to public schools, when no similar material for Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism exists.

PBS provides “the largest classroom” for teaching these “educational” resources to schools and libraries, replacing the term “Religion of Peace” with “Empire of Faith.”  Americans for Peace and Tolerance has investigated and reported the world studies and history books in use today, and confirms that they embrace radical social activism, ideological indoctrination, and coerced conformity.  The textbooks and PBS’s films are replete with erroneous information, demonize Israel and America while glorifying Islam, and encourage fealty to Islam and identification with radical jihadists.  This is brazen-faced stealth jihad against our own country done without fear of negative consequence.

The social studies lesson plan for grades 5 – 12 begins with the Five Pillars of Islam, enhanced by the BBC’s supplemental visual material for easy memorization and scrupulous study.  This is total immersion into Islamic vocabulary with intense thought and discussion, acting out and reciting prayer, learning and performing customs along with changes of dress, and comparing superficial information of Judaism and Christianity with the favored Islam.  In addition to the books, papers, computer, and visual aids, students “fulfill their duty” with “impromptu” visits into the Islamic community, without parental consent.  Thus, they learn to feel like a Muslim (assuming the false victimization), view the world from a Muslim perspective (that all the world is Muslim and must be retrieved), think like a Muslim (lay blame elsewhere and justify abuse on women and the west), and to BE a Muslim (be a jihadi warrior).

Under the first pillar of faith, students must learn the Islamic calligraphy and memorize the shahada, a proclamation of faith and fidelity to Islam, despite their family’s beliefs.

  • PBS’s online film about the Ten Commandments of Judaism does not equal in depth of experience the Pillars of Faith. Whereas the former operates at a purely informational level, the latter is indoctrinal, proselytizing, so that the child is imbued with the beliefs and views.

The second pillar is prayer, its importance, the words, sounds, movements, direction and frequency, an unparalleled intimate engagement.

  • This stage does not reveal the violent Islamic verses calling for jihad (warfare against non-Muslims) as a permanent obligation upon the Muslim community until the world is conquered for Islam (9:5, 9:29, and others), or the commands to wage war against non-Muslims until they: (1) convert to Islam, (2) pay the jizya (poll tax) and submit to sharia, or (3) are killed.

The third pillar is Zakat or almsgiving, with a video for media interaction, questions and answers.  They review the purpose of donations, the amount of charity, relationship between prayer and money, and why this differs from ordinary charity.

  • However, it is not made clear that zakat or charity is designated only for Muslims, never for the infidel.Israel, the US, and other western civilizations are first responders to tend others in times of natural disasters, Islamic countries do not respond with manpower or funds.

The fourth pillar, fasting, brings the discussion of the month-long holiday of Ramadan, its guidelines for fasting, challenges, and spiritual rules.

  • They do not learn that Ramadan mandates daily and increased attacks on hapless Christians and Jews in Israel, the Arab Middle East, Africa, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and throughout Asia, with each year’s death toll superseding the previous one.  The Bible’s tales of violence provide lessons to be learned; the Koran’s are open-ended, everlasting decrees of exhortation to violence.  The Muslim community has a responsibility to wage war against the unbelievers.
  • Students are not told about the inhumane, torturous pain purposely inflicted on animals en route to their slaughter for Islam’s holiday celebrations.  Halal may be falsely compared to kashruth (Kosher), but a cardinal tenet of the Jewish faith is shechita – the swift and painless dispatch of the animal, marked by compassion and consideration for its welfare.  In many instances, animals are accorded the same sensitivity as for human beings.

The fifth pillar is the compulsory pilgrimage or Hajj to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, which was Mohammed’s failed courtship of the Meccan Jews and his humiliation that now requires revenge and subservience of non-Muslims.  PBS presents a compulsory “virtual Hajj.”

  • WGBH, PBS’s Boston Public Radio, provides “the journey,” the purpose of the special clothing, the gravity of the experience, and how it would feel to make the trek to Arabia.  The children are forced to “live” the experience over their own religious and national birthright, to “feel” disdain and disrespect for their parents’ heritage and country, to ‘become stealth warriors.  Until they are sufficient in number to take up arms and overthrow America’s government, students are encouraged to meet with local Islamic clerics and to leave class for political riots and marches.

The sixth pillar, not revealed to the infidel, is jihad, which guides the thought and life of every Muslim, from the pregnant woman who will deliver the next jihadi warrior to the child who is taught to dedicate his life to martyrdom for conquest. Military might is the base for their ideology, the origin of Islam, the sine qua non of the faith, which is why the Islamic culture cannot adapt and accept ideas of modernity and secular government.

  • Despite the term “inner struggle,” jihad is their eternal war against the non-Islamic world.  Lessons encourage the children to identify with jihadis
  • Portraying Islam as the religion of peace is   Daniel Pipes explains that jihadists understand the terms with its “usage through fourteen centuries of Islamic history” as “the compulsory effort to forcibly expand Muslim territory and influence.” “It is the boldly offensive intent to achieve Muslim dominion over the entire world,” – war, dispossession, slavery, and death for its victims.  Islamic imperialism.
  • An Iraqi cleric in Baghdad, during a November 9, 2002, sermonized, “We challenge [President George W] Bush and the Americans with our words, before challenging [them] with our weapons . . . We are patient . . . and we will fight them with all kinds of weapons.  Jihad, Jihad, Jihad, Jihad. . . .” He exhorted all Muslims to “welcome death, welcome martyrdom for the cause for Allah.”
  • Beginning with the very young, jihadis are taught to hate Jews and are praised for becoming suicide bombers, dying for martyrdom.  “The day of Jihad is the day of blood.” The foremost Egyptian cleric of Al Azhar University urged Palestinians to intensify their suicide attacks against Israeli women and children – murder for the sake of their deity, with all manner of rewards in the next world.

The study of the Pillars of Islam is but one facet of what is being taught in our public schools today and what is supported by PBS’s “largest classroom” through lessons, plans and films.

In closing: An Olmsted Falls, Ohio, mother noted that her 7th grader was required to memorize the 5 Pillars of Islam and watch a proselytizing video, “30 Days: Muslims and America,” and asked the teacher if they were also to memorize the 10 Commandments and any other religion’s major core beliefs.  When she learned they were not, and asked the school district to remove and replace the video with an objective historic film, her request was denied by the superintendent and Board of Education.  She pursued the matter further with the state school board, state senator, representative, Ohio Department of Education and Ohio’s Governor Kasich, asking also that that the Israelites be added to the Ohio Standards.

It took more than a year and a half of discussion, discord, assistance, legal intervention by the Thomas More Law Center, and involvement by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) to exact the changes in accordance with the parent’s constitutional right to free speech and duty to oversee her children’s education.  The school system replaced the Islamic film and agreed to add the study of the ancient Israelites, including Abram and Moses, to the curriculum, thereby giving credibility to the Jewish people on their land and their bestowal of the Ten Commandments and morality to a world of impiety.  One outraged and dedicated parent was able to pave the way and show us that it could be done.

RELATED ARTICLE: Podcast: More Proof Colleges Have Become Insane

RELATED VIDEO: Islamic Indoctrination in Netherlands Schools from Thomas More Law Center.

The Courage of Our Convictions

Nicholas Senz writes that soon civil society won’t just reject Catholic teaching; it may feel compelled to silence and squash the Church itself.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie Becket (if one can single out a thread from that masterpiece) is the moment when the eponymous archbishop is confronted by King Henry’s lieutenants, who try to arrest him on trumped-up charges. Archbishop Becket appears fully vested, mitered and coped, with ferula in hand. As he approaches the crowd of soldiers and nobleman, he holds out the crucifix-topped staff, causing the gruff men to backpedal. When Robert de Beaumont begins to read out the charges, Becket calls him by his first name, then warns him, “Robert de Beaumont, hear me for the sake of your soul, which is in the gravest danger.”

He then denies the charges and announces to the gathered mob, “As head of the Church of England and as your spiritual father, I forbid you to pass judgment on me. I command you and all who would charge me to hold your peace on pain of endangering your immortal souls.” As he begins to leave and is confronted by one soldier, he upbraids him, “Sheathe your sword, Morville, before you impale your soul upon it!” Becket is allowed to depart.

It is difficult to imagine such a scenario today in a film, let alone in the Western world. Would a bishop who is confronted with such animosity stand up to his accusers and invoke his apostolic authority? Would such a rabble back down rather than simply seizing the cleric and clapping him in irons, as a prelude to much worse?

Such questions seem academic, relating only to tales from a world long gone. Yet in certain parts of the world today, these spiritual and moral encounters are being repeated. China has no qualms about arresting bishops, or of holding them for years until they die in prison. Even in nations with deep Christian histories, such as the quickly disintegrating Nicaragua, bishops and cardinals are finding themselves under attack.

But surely such things are for dictatorships and failed states, we say. Surely it could not happen here.

I think that, before very long, we shall see.

Becket (Richard Burton) confronts his accusers.

The animosity of formerly Christian countries toward the Church is ramping up. After voters eliminated Ireland’s constitutional protection for the unborn, the Irish government has said that Catholic hospitals that wish to keep their government funding will be required to perform abortions. This from a nation that still televises the Angelus every day. And some Australian states have recently passed a law requiring priests who hear of child sexual abuse and other serious crimes in the confessional to break the sacramental seal and report it to the police.

Many Australian priests and at least one bishop have publicly stated they will not comply with the law, which – depending on the state – would mean a hefty fine or even jail time.

If push comes to shove, will they follow through? Will bishops help to pay the fines of their priests, or visit them if they are jailed? Will the Irish bishops be willing to forgo government funding rather than submit to the new abortion regime?

One can hope that the bishops will have the courage, should the time come, to stand by their convictions. Even in a time of increasing secularization and hostility toward the Church in Western countries, bishops still have largely remained respected figures. They are invited to important civil functions and given places of honor. They receive politicians and are pleased to release statements on this or that bill proposed in the legislature.

But things could become quite different quite quickly. In fact, seem likely to. The late Cardinal Francis George may have had it exactly right when he said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Too strong? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But consider this, too: imagine the opportunity suddenly present to give a living testimony for the faith. As Alfie Evans lay dying in a Liverpool hospital, (while his parents were barred from removing him to seek further help), one commentator wrote, “What if the archbishop walked into the hospital and said, ‘This boy and his family are leaving with me’?” If he were allowed to leave, what solace that would have given the family; if he were arrested, what a powerful witness that would have shown.

It may soon be the case that it will not be enough for society to reject the Church’s teaching; it may feel compelled to silence and squash the institution itself. But this will not be because secular society is finding itself growing strong and wishes to crush a rival. It will be because society, having rejected truth, finds itself terminally ill, and it will rage at the physician whose diagnosis is sound but undesired.

Then, God willing, the last portion of Cardinal George’s statement may come to fruition: “His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Nicholas Senz

Nicholas Senz

Nicholas Senz is the Director of Children’s and Adult Faith Formation at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Arlington, TX, where lives with his wife and two children. He holds master’s degrees in philosophy and theology from the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, CA. His website is nicholassenz.com.

EDITORS NOTE: © 2018 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Here’s what Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination means for gun rights

President Trump recently selected Judge Brett Kavanaugh as his Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Immediately following this announcement, national pro-gun groups like the National Rifle AssociationGun Owners of America, and the Second Amendment Institute released statements endorsing Trump’s nomination. Kavanaugh brings with him a strong support and respect for the Second Amendment. His judicial history clearly demonstrates that he is a friend to law-abiding gun owners.

Whereas on the other side of the aisle, gun-grabbing groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety opposed Kavanaugh, declaring that his confirmation would bring an end to “civil society” and public safety. Everytown for Gun Safety said in a statement, “Judge Kavanaugh has applied an extreme and dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment when determining whether a law is constitutional, one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.”

Throughout his judicial career, Kavanaugh has ruled on a number of Second Amendment-related cases during his time on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which included a detailed account agreeing with Heller from D.C. v. Heller. In 2011, when Heller brought another challenge to the city involving the AR-15 ban, Kavanaugh dissented from the majority and agreed with Heller. “In my judgment, both D.C.’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement are unconstitutional under Heller.”

When questioned about Trump’s nominee for Supreme Court, Dick Heller, from D.C. v. Hellerreplied, “Brett Kavanaugh is the right man for the job. He’ll bring with him a much needed refresh button to an out-of-date system, with Justices who refuse to uphold the Constitution. Justice Scalia, who wrote the magnificent Heller decision, would be proud.”

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, the Supreme Court will enter a new conservative era. Second Amendment supporters can expect the court hear more pro-Second Amendment cases, which could include striking down may-issue laws, constitutional carry, national reciprocity, and the most controversial of issues, the AR-15 ban.

Some current state laws that must be challenged, include red flag laws (which completely circumvent the Second and Fourth Amendments), raising the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, (which the left-leaning website Vox even admits would “do depressingly little”), and may-issue. In the 2017 case Wrenn v. D.C., the D.C. Court of Appeals struck down Washington D.C.’s unconstitutional “special reason” requirement for a concealed carry permit, thus changing the status of D.C. from may-issue to shall-issue. Meaning that, if a law-abiding citizen successfully completes the required training to obtain a concealed carry license in the District, D.C. shall issue them a license. Whereas before, D.C. could still deny that person.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation would shine a light of freedom in the face of the tyrannical darkness that is sweeping our nation. Dozens of pro-Second Amendment cases could finally be brought before the highest court of the land, and strike down unconstitutional gun control laws. Stricter gun control victimizes law-abiding citizens and empowers criminals. With another pro-Second Amendment conservative on the Supreme Court, law-abiding gun owners can finally take a very overdue deep, relaxing breath.

Gene Truono, candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware, agrees: “Kavanaugh’s resume and reverence for the Constitution make him a strong choice for the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh’s dissent in the Heller decision paved the way for the Supreme Court to ultimately decide to maintain the individual’s right to bear arms. Therefore, I believe Kavanaugh is a good choice in regard to the Second Amendment, specifically.”

ABOUT TYLER YZAGUIRRE

Tyler Yzaguirre (@realtyleryz) is the founder and president of the Second Amendment Institute.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Brett Kavanaugh’s Defense of Second Amendment Is Hardly ‘Extremist’

Implications of the Kavanaugh SCOTUS Confirmation and Originalism

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by AP/Lily illustration.

Racially Charged Language From UnidosUS (La Raza) Brought to You by Disney and Coca-Cola

UnidosUS, formerly La Raza, proclaims itself as “the nation’s largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization.” Corporations and non-profits donated more than four million dollars to it last year.

With so much corporate support by popular companies such as Disney and Coca-Cola, one would expect UnidosUS to be a constructive partner in the immigration debate. Instead, UnidosUS supports sanctuary cities and over the weekend accused the Trump administration of desiring to make America whiter:

This sort of racist language is par for the course for UnidosUS. Last month, the group used extreme rhetoric to oppose family separation solutions on Capitol Hill.

UnidosUS isn’t just getting in the way of solutions on immigration. It has also allied itself with extreme partners such as Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and Planned Parenthood. HRC has led left-wing efforts to force bakers to accept same-sex “marriage,” and Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion company.

UnidosUS is clearly a destructive partner when it comes to some of America’s most important public  policy debates. We urge you to do your part to stop them by refusing to buy from their corporate sponsors. The full list of UnidosUS’ 2017 sponsors is below, including American favorites such as Coca-Cola and Disney. Let these companies know that they should stop supporting UnidosUS’ racism and extremism.

More information can be found at this link on Page 37.

AARP
American Express
Anheuser Busch Foundation
AT&T
Bank of America Corporation
BBVA Compass
Blue Cross Blue Shield
BP America
Caesars Entertainment Services, LLC
Capital One
Charles Schwab Bank
Charter Communications
Chevron Corporation
Citi Corporation
Comcast/NBCUniversal/Telemundo
CVS Corporation
Discover Financial Services
Eli Lilly and Company
Enterprise Holdings, Inc.
Fannie Mae Corporation
FedEx Corporation
Freddie Mac
GEICO
General Mills, Inc.
General Motors Corporation
Google
Hilton Worldwide
Honda
Hyundai Motor America
Intuit, Inc.
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorgan Chase Foundation
Marriott International, Inc.
McDonald’s Corporation
MGM Resorts International
MillerCoors LLC
Nationwide Insurance
Nissan North America
PepsiCo, Inc.
Pfizer Inc.
PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLC
Prudential Financial
Shell Oil Company
Sodexo, Inc. & Affiliates
Sprint
State Farm Insurance Companies
Target Corporation
The Boeing Company
The Coca-Cola Company
The Comcast Foundation
The Ford Motor Company Fund
The Hospital Corporation of America
The Walt Disney Company
Time Warner
T-Mobile
Toyota Motor North America
Uber Technologies, Inc.
UPS
Verizon
Walmart Stores, Inc.
Wells Fargo

Help us continue providing resources like this and educating conservative shoppers by becoming a 2ndVote Member today!

Gallup: Gun Control Not High on List of Problems

Gallup’s July survey found that the number of Americans who cited guns or gun control as the most important problem facing America had returned to levels similar to before the shooting in Parkland, Fla. This month, just two percent of Americans say guns and gun control are the most important problem. It was only a few short months ago that a record number of Americans cited guns as the most important problem (April, 13%).

Guns aren’t mentioned at all in the Gallup article on the July survey – not even in the section about “Americans’ Views of the Top Problem Facing the U.S.” Perhaps even more tellingly, it was not one of the top five most important problems cited by Democrats. You’ll only find the data on guns/gun control if download the full trend file and turn to the last page.

After Parkland, we were told that “[t]he gun control movement has reached a tipping point” and that “[t]his time it’s different.”

But the real difference might simply have been the intensity with which the agenda-driven media pursued the issue when they believed there was an opportunity to generate momentum behind it.

The fortunate truth is that Parkland-type incidents remain extremely rare. And as time passes, details emerge that refute the false idea that gun control could stop the few that actually do occur.  In the case of Parkland, these included details on the missteps of local law enforcement and the FBI and missed opportunities for early intervention and even for response at the scene.

However many Americans see guns and a perceived lack of gun control as problem facing the country, few consider it the most important. Economic issues, immigration, government, healthcare, and the political environment all rate higher, as well they should.

The rarity of such events makes the ones that do occur seem that much more awful. It is understandable the nation becomes riveted for a time. But knee jerk reactions promote neither safety nor good policy. And to their credit, Americans increasingly understand this as cooler heads prevail.

Anti-gun Propaganda Infiltrates History Channel’s Navy SEAL Drama “Six”

With shows like “Tales of the Gun” and “Mail Call” with R. Lee Ermey, the History Channel has often served as a place where gun owners can enjoy entertainment free from the anti-gun political messaging that pervades much of American media. Unfortunately, a recent episode the channel’s fiction series “Six,” a drama about the lives of members of U.S. Navy SEALs Team Six, embraced the usual Hollywood bias against guns.

As reported by the Media Research Center, the June 6 episode of the program, titled “Dua,” and July 18 episode “Scorpions in a Bottle” featured a storyline where fictional Navy SEAL Ricky Ortiz and wife Jackie debate the efficacy of firearms ownership.

In “Dua,” the couple have the following exchange, (transcript from MRC)

Jackie: I want a gun.

Ricky: Guns are my other life. That was the deal. I never bring my other life home.

Jackie: I need a gun to protect the kids when you’re not around.

Ricky: You know how hard we train just to use a gun safely, right? You’d be dangerous to yourself and to the kids more than anybody else. We’re safe, bonita. I promise.

Jackie: Really? Tell that to Rip.

Jackie subsequently obtains a handgun, which her husband finds in “Scorpions in a Bottle,” leading to the following dialogue,

Ricky: I found it in the glove compartment of your car.

Jackie: I took the magazine out.

Ricky: Where’d you get it? You know there could still be a round in the chamber, right? Is there a round in the chamber, Jackie?

Jackie: No.

Ricky: No? This is what gets people like you killed. This is what kills our kids. And it happens all the time. This piece is around 600 bucks, and I know you didn’t buy it. So who gave it to you?

Jackie: I’m sorry, Ricky. I was scared. You weren’t here. I panicked. I’ll get it out of the house.

Ricky: Who gave it you? Goddamn it, who gave it to you?!

Jackie: Alex. Caulder. I’m sorry. Say something.

This sort of anti-gun propaganda doesn’t happen by accident. In the 2000s, Entertainment Industries Council worked with the Brady Campaign and Violence Policy Center to inject anti-gun messaging into television programs. Today, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety employs a “Director of Cultural Engagement,” who described his position on his linked in page by explaining that “He oversees Everytown’s storytelling efforts, partnerships with the creative community and develops cultural assets that mobilize Americans to support common sense reforms…” Similarly, the Brady Campaign has consulted for writers from CBS’s “The Good Wife” and ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

MRC’s report correctly pointed out that “Six” producers have played to sexist stereotypes in their portrayal of a woman as too incompetent to safely own and use a firearm to defend herself and her family. However, the show also mischaracterizes the U.S. Special Forces as opposed to civilian gun ownership and the right to armed self-defense. In truth, the U.S. Special Forces’ community has a history of staunch support for Americans’ Second Amendment rights.

The Special Forces Association, a membership organization for Special Forces operators that “serves as the voice for the Special Forces community,” has made their position clear. In 2013, the SFA adopted a resolution which stated, in part,

The Special Forces Association and its membership affirms its recognition that the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees each lawabiding American citizen the right to keep and bear arms; and, be it

FURTHER RESOLVED that The Special Forces Association opposes all laws, ordinances, measures or rules by local, state, or federal governments that infringe or deprive honest citizens of their Second Amendment rights

The SFA reiterated this position in 2016, after former CIA Director David Petraeus and retired Army General Stanley A. McChrystal advocated for new gun controls. A statement from the organization read,

The Constitution and all of its amendments, realizing that only the existence of the Second Amendment guarantees the freedom of the American people and that the Bill of Rights was written to delineate and restrict the power of government and not to restrict the powers and rights of the people or states.

“Six” serves as yet another example that gun control advocates will stop at nothing to push their warped agenda, even if that means indoctrinating the public with sexist depictions of women or misleading characterizations of our country’s greatest heroes.