VIDEO: Creating School Monsters
The liberal left work hard to create sociopaths, then blame conservatives when things go wrong.
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We need to harden our families, not our schools
Fact Check: What Percentage of Americans Have Concealed Carry Permits?
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie claimed recently on NBC that 8 percent of Americans outside of New York and California have concealed carry permits.
Verdict: True
The Republican congressman’s figure holds up, although permits as a percentage of the adult population for all 50 states is lower at 6.6 percent.
Fact Check:
Many Republicans, including President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, have warmed to enacting new gun control measures in the wake of a Florida school shooting that left 17 dead. Recent polls indicate that around two-thirds of Americans, including—according to some polling—a slight majority of Republicans, support stricter gun control.
Yet Massie, founder and head of the Congressional Second Amendment Caucus, has remained steadfastly opposed to gun control measures that Trump, Scott, and even the National Rifle Association support. When asked about his views, Massie told NBC host Chuck Todd that gun culture is more widespread than he might suspect.
“You’re in a bubble. If you take out New York and California, 8 percent of Americans have concealed carry permits,” Massie claimed on “Meet the Press.” “And the people watching this show right now? There are a lot of them getting ready for church in middle America. Putting their guns on. Millions of them, they’re going to be carrying guns to church, and to family dinner after that, and they’re going to be safe.”
Data from the Crime Prevention Research Center, a pro-gun rights think tank, indicate that there are about 16.5 million active concealed carry permits in the U.S., only 182,000 of which have been issued by the populous states of California and New York. “Outside the restrictive states of California and New York, about 8 percent of the adult population has a permit,” a July report from the center noted.
The center’s data, which has been updated since July, reveals that permits as a percentage of the adult population is 6.6 percent for all 50 states.
The Government Accountability Office released a similar study about concealed carry licenses in 2012.
Data from that study, however, shows that permits as a percentage of the adult population (20 years of age or older) in states other than California and New York was only 4.2 percent in 2011, and only 3.5 percent for all 50 states combined—around half of what the Crime Prevention Research Center data suggests. (Although the GAO did not have permit data for five states.)
But due to a recent surge in concealed carry permits in the U.S., the GAO findings are outdated.
“During the eight years from 1999 to 2007, the number of permits increased by about 240,000 annually. During the next four years, the number of permits surged by 850,000 annually. Then, in 2012 and 2013, the yearly increase accelerated to 1,550,000,” a July Crime Prevention Research Center report explained. “Record increases after that: 1,690,000 in 2015, 1,730,000 in 2016, and 1,787,115 in 2017.”
Although Massie’s figure is correct, the permit data it’s based upon does have some limitations.
The Crime Prevention Research Center, for example, lumps the permits that states grant to residents together with permits granted to nonresidents. Examining overall active permits may therefore involve double-counting of Americans who possess more than one concealed carry permit. (Many states, however, have agreed to honor each others’ concealed carry permits to prevent the need for multiple permits.)
The center reported that states have granted active permits to 15.6 million residents, so the real number of permit holders falls somewhere between 15.6 million and 16.3 million, according to its July report. The lower bound translates to 7.7 percent of the adult population outside of New York and California.
While millions of Americans have applied for concealed carry permits over the last decade, many states have scrapped the need for one altogether.
Just one state, Vermont, allowed constitutional or permit-less concealed carry in 2003. Eleven more states have passed or implemented permit-less carry laws in the time since. More than half of these states—Idaho, North Dakota, Missouri, Mississippi, New Hampshire, and West Virginia—have done so in the past two calendar years alone.
Studies suggest, however, that only a fraction of Americans who conceal carry actually do so on a routine basis. A recent study of 2015 survey data estimated that 9 million Americans carry at least once a month, while only 3 million do every day—about 1.2 percent of the American adult population.
RELATED ARTICLE: To Keep Students Safe, This School Allows Teachers to Carry Guns
EDITORS NOTE: Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image is by James Carroll/Getty Images.
I Go to a School Where an Attack Was Foiled. Here’s Why I’m Against Limiting Gun Rights.
Police cars surrounded my high school as I walked fast across the street to the science building. Eyes were glancing in many directions. The slight panic—bordering on hysteria—was obvious.
Hundreds of students stayed home, but I did not. Why? Because the threat was safely locked away in jail.
Four months before the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, my own school in Cherokee County, Georgia, was under serious threat in October from two 17-year-old students.
Together, the two juniors at Etowah High School planned a Columbine-style attack using explosives, law enforcement authorities said.
But campus police and the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office learned about the pair’s plans ahead of time through a tip, and reacted immediately to the first report. The two students are charged as adults with attempted murder and other offenses.
If that threat had not been stopped, many people at my school would be dead. It could have been me, my brother, my closest friends, or all of us.
But it was stopped. We are alive.
Having this perspective, my heart was shattered into pieces when I heard the news Feb. 14 about Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. I have been praying for all of the students, teachers, and families who are going through hell right now.
“Take away gun rights. Something needs to be done,” my friends keep telling me.
Yes, something absolutely does need to be done, but not that way.
Reports and tips need to be taken seriously. Death is an unchangeable thing, and anyone who jokes about it is sick. A threat is not a joke; it is illegal, and it demands an immediate response.
Next, teachers should be trained and armed with guns, if they choose to be. I am constantly hearing friends say that if teachers were armed, they would be too scared to shoot back. That is an offensive statement, and it needs to stop.
A coach at Douglas High died because he ran into the shooting and jumped in front of a bullet. How could anyone say that man would have been afraid to shoot back? He chose to die so his students didn’t have to, yet people say teachers would have been hiding if they had guns.
Taking away gun rights isn’t going to help the cause. Immediately after our Founding Fathers listed our God-given rights, they decided that every American’s right “to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Everyone needs a way to defend himself or herself. I realize that many people simply want to add restrictions to buying a gun for everyone, which I thought seemed reasonable at first until I researched it.
Some of the most infamous shooters were approved to buy a gun because their previous felonies had not been reported to gun shop owners. Those shooters should not have been approved, but they were.
The system of background checks needs to be tightened to include felons and those who courts say are mentally ill.
Taking away Second Amendment rights from everyone is not the solution.
COMMENTARY BY
Nicole Martin
Nicole Martin is a freshman at Etowah High School in Woodstock, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta.
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RELATED VIDEO: Student Kyle Kashuv a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida -sincere and rational.
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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Etowah High School in Georgia, where students pictured in 2003 praying at a flagpole before class. (Photo: Robin Nelson/ZumaPress/Newscom)
Truth and the Transgender Movement
In the whirlwind few years since Caitlyn Jenner turned the culture debates on their head, many on the far Left have been so busy pushing radical transgender policies that they haven’t stopped long enough to consider the consequences for the people they’re claiming to help. Fortunately, scientific research has.
New research, the Washington Times reports, is screaming “Stop!” to the forces of political correctness carrying on Barack Obama’s agenda. In the journal JAMA, experts from Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are leading more people to urge caution in this rush to trans-friendly policies. Despite what the sexual extremists might say, there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence that procedures like gender reassignment are actually helping people. (Even Obama’s CDC admitted as much in 2016.)
Even so, the authors point out, there’s been an almost four-fold increase in the number of patients diagnosed with a gender identity disorder. Despite the rapid growth rate, though, the overall numbers remain small, with only 4,118 gender reassignment surgeries being performed in the United States in a 15-year period. That’s only about one in every 56,000 Americans over the age of 18 (according to the 2010 census). It ought to lead us all to ask why our culture is being turned upside down to appease the desires of such a tiny number of troubled individuals!
FRC’s own Peter Sprigg has studied the effects of these surgeries extensively and knows that sometimes the treatments that promise the most help actually harm patients more. While the LGBT lobby and others want us to encourage this fantasy that gender is a choice, the effects of that thinking can be devastating. And Swedish researchers would be the first to say so.
In their “‘robust’ study, the consequences of gender reassignment surgery are startling, and appear to be uniformly negative. They encompass not only higher rates of mental illness (as indicated by psychiatric hospitalization) than in the general Swedish population, but higher rates of physical illness — cancer (“neoplasm”) and heart disease — as well.”
“Most shocking of all, however, was the rate of completed suicides — which was over 19 times higher than in the general Swedish population. Transgender activists often insist that the reason gender reassignment surgery is ‘medically necessary’ is in order to prevent the suicides which might otherwise occur among those who identify as transgender but are frustrated in their desire to surgically alter their bodies. Yet the Swedish study shows that extraordinary rates of suicide persist after surgery.”
At a time when courts are actually stripping parents of custody for refusing to rush their teenagers into these dangerous procedures, it’s time to stop and consider what’s actually best for the people struggling with this confusion. Children, in particular, are being sucked into a world where “feelings” are the new biology, and it’s destroying them. According to the American College of Pediatricians, gender ideology is child abuse. After all, they point out, as many as 98 percent of gender-confused boys and 88 percent of gender-confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty. That hasn’t stopped a loud and vocal minority from pushing people of all ages on a dangerous and irreversible path.
“There is some evidence that surgical techniques have improved, resulting in fewer or less serious physical complications after such surgery,” Peter explains. “Unfortunately, there is no evidence that such procedures achieve their ultimate goal, which is an improvement in the overall mental health of person who identifies as transgender. In other words, this increase is driven almost entirely by ideology, not by scientific evidence the procedures are ultimately effective.”
For more on what you can do on this important topic, check out Peter’s new publication, “How to Respond to the LGBT Movement.”
Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.
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Women Who Make History: Are You One of Them?
Hey girls! You are never going to change the world by just sitting down and shutting up. Historian, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, reminded us of this when she said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” The same sentiment is repeated in the great little book, Nice Girls Don’t Change the World by Lynne Hybels, co-founder of Willow Creek Church near Chicago.
March has been designated as Women’s history month. As I look over the many lists of famous women in history, while they all had widely differing personalities, religious leanings, and political affiliations, one thing that they had in common was the ability to dream, strong beliefs and tenacity.
They broke through molds, glass ceilings and the expectations of others.
There is not one dream or direction or focus of interest that is more valuable than any other. We are created to be unique. We are constantly battling against a society and culture that says, “Fit in,” “Look like everyone else,” “Make sure everyone agrees with you before you open your mouth.” We are even told to make sure you are right before you launch out, because you don’t want to fail or to appear foolish. I have never been able to figure out why on earth we give permission to other people, who are just as insecure as we are, quite possibly more so, who have no idea where we have been or why we think the way we do, to judge our ideas and actions as being acceptable or not. You know that’s crazy, right?
The problem is that same voice, that same belief, that same thought process is loudly raging all around us and is difficult to ignore. However, there are many women throughout history that have heard that voice and dismissed it, or at least pushed past it in order to live their destiny and change the course of history.
What would have happened if Susan B. Anthony had decided it was just too hard, and the naysayers were just too loud and decided to just sit down and shut up? She spent 60 years of her life fighting for equality and died without having achieved her goal. But we, now, benefit from her tireless persistence.
Anne Frank knew the powers that be, at the time, were just plain wrong. Living in the midst of a culture that was chaotic and hate-filled, she was known through her diaries as having an indomitable spirit filled with hope and joyful expectation, claiming “It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.” She was all about living your truth and not waiting for permission, or holding back, expecting circumstances to change. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world,”she said.
Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India for four terms warned against rivalry against others in our quest of fulfillment. “To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.” Your only competition is you. Your only detractor that can hold you back is your own collection of thoughts and beliefs.
Coco Chanel, encouraging the differences between us is known to have said, “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” She decided that the fashion had to be changed and followed her vision to do just that, encouraging each of us to be our own genuine, unique self.
Saint Mother Teresa
Mother Theresa saved her world, one person at a time and opposed a culture of indifference and changing family patterns by simply following her call to ministry. She didn’t care what it looked like. And she resisted being bought by big donors. She was never looking for fame or position, just the fulfillment of what she felt called to do.
Called crazy and delusional, Joan of Arc lived her reality, and in so doing, changed the course of French history, and was burned at the stake as a witch because of it. She said, “One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”
The first woman to fly across the Atlantic, Amelia Earhart, while also setting many other records, as well said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” She encourages us to just make a decision, and move forward from there.
These women came from different times, different religions and nationalities all with a different dream, goal or calling. What they had in common was:
- They had a strong belief in their dream or calling.
- They did not let opposition stop them.
- They refused to be pulled off target by the opinions of others.
- They were not distracted by pettiness or discouragement or fear.
They simply kept their eye on their goal. Some of them did not live to see their victory. Some where not validated like they could have been. But each one of them advanced the cause of righteousness, the power and capability of women, and made the world a better place in a diverse and enriching way.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to change the world. Just do what’s in your heart, refusing to be knocked off track by opposition or judgment or opinion or pettiness. Keep your eye on your goal. Don’t allow yourself to be squeezed into a mold that you don’t fit into. Create your own mold and blaze your own trail. The world needs more independent thinkers with focus and determination. We are making history everyday, just by being who we were created to be.
What’s stopping you?
VIDEO: This is why we’re investigating Big Tech
At CPAC, James O’Keefe and former Google engineer James Damore led a panel on the suppression of conservative views in social media. The panel, sponsored by the American Principles Project, also featured Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor, entrepreneur Marlene Jaeckel, and attorney Harmeet Dhillon.
Facebook is labeling conservative news as “fake”; Twitter has been exposed “shadow-banning” ideas they don’t like; Google has outright fired those who do not share the same viewpoints as their executives. These attempts to silence views and control opinions is what makes social media companies so dangerous.
O’Keefe spoke about the power that social media companies hold today:
“If they can rewire society to prevent people from even talking about things, it’s going to change everything. And we’re not going to let it happen.”
James Damore, who was famously fired from Google for publishing a factual memo, also gave some profound insights during the panel:
“These companies are so ubiquitous and powerful that they’re controlling all the means of mass communication… We really need to wake up to the problem and help raise awareness, because this is a big risk to freedom of speech and democracy in general.”
New York Times Agrees with President Trump: Sweden’s Migrant-perpetrated Violence Out-of-Control [Video]
Invasion of Europe…..
Can we expect an apology from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and the rest of the anti-Trump media about his Sweden comments last year? Don’t hold your breath!
Powerline blog reminds us here of what happened a year ago February when the New York Times and all of its media lackeys landed like a big bird on President Trump when he said Sweden has a problem with out-of-control immigration (from certain ethnic/religious groups) and the violence it inevitably brings!
In February of last year, at CPAC, President Trump linked mass Muslim immigration to an increase in crime in Sweden. The New York Times, in an article called “From an Anchor’s Lips to Trump’s Ears to Sweden’s Disbelief,” ridiculed Trump for getting his information from television (a report on Tucker Carlson’s program) and suggested that Trump was misinformed. [The President might have said it at CPAC also, but it was at a campaign rally in Florida, here.]
It also criticized Trump for “start[ing] a dispute with a longtime American friend that resented his characterization and called it false.” The Times sniffed that “the president’s only discernible goal was to make the case domestically for his plans to restrict entry to the United States.” The Times seemed to believe that making this case was somehow out-of-bounds.
Powerline reports this from the NYT story as well:
Note that the trend the Times describes began in 2014. Trump discussed the problem of immigrant violence in 2017. He wasn’t premature, the Times is late.
They are all late.
Maybe the use of weapons of war began in 2014, but their immigrant problems began long before that. I began writing this blog in July 2007 and my first story on immigration problems in Sweden came in August 2007 (and there were surely more stories before I came along!).
I have a huge archive on Sweden, the country I predict will be the first European country to be conquered by Islam in the modern age.
Go here to see my many previous posts on Sweden’s failed multicultural experiment.
Now more on The NYT’s evidence that Trump is right on Sweden from the Daily Caller:
The New York Times published a report Sunday on Sweden’s growing problem with immigrant gangs — more than a year after the paper chided President Donald Trump for calling attention to the same worrisome development.
Sweden’s pin has been pulled in more ways than one.
Entitled “Hand Grenades and Gang Violence Rattle Sweden’s Middle Class,” the report examines how weapons of war and clan-like*** violence have accompanied an influx of immigrants from certain parts of Europe and the greater Middle East.
The story centers on the death of a man in the town of Varby Gard, a once tranquil Stockholm suburb that is now the home base of an increasingly destructive immigrant gang. He was killed in early January when he picked up a mysterious object lying in the street that turned out to be a live hand grenade. The device exploded when he touched it, killing him instantly.
It was one of more than 100 incidents involving military-grade explosives in the Stockholm metro area that police have attributed to an “arms race” among immigrant gangs, reports The NYT. There were only a few such incidents in Sweden until 2014, but since then, the number of explosions and seizures of grenades has shot up and remained worryingly high.
The police seized 45 grenades in 2015, while 10 others were detonated in public, according to Stockholm Police. The next year, 55 were seized and 35 detonated. A modest decrease occurred in 2017, when 39 were seized and 21 exploded.
Though The NYT readily reported on the nature of the violence, it was somewhat more circumspect about its origin. Nowhere in the story do the words “Muslim” or “refugee” appear. The only mention of the word “asylum” is to describe a witness to the explosion, one of many Varby Gard residents who arrived there thanks to Sweden’s famously open asylum policies.
The fact is that Sweden’s spike in gang violence and certain categories of crime coincided with the resettlement of more than 100,000 asylum seekers from predominantly Muslim nations beginning in 2014.
Here is a bit from the New York Times article itself:
Sweden’s far right-wing party blames the government’s liberal immigration policy for the rising crime, and will thrust the issue to the fore in the fall campaign.
Last year, Peter Springare, 61, a veteran police officer in Orebro, published a furious Facebook post saying violent crimes he was investigating were committed by immigrants from “Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown country, unknown country, Sweden.” It was shared more than 20,000 times; Mr. Springare has since been investigated twice by state prosecutors, once for inciting racial hatred, though neither resulted in charges.
Yesterday we told you about Italian elections and said there might be hope for Italy if it gets rid of most migrants (most are economic migrants) and Italians start having babies. Same goes for Sweden, but there is even less hope there that they can turn around the DEMOGRAPHIC conquest in time.
Dear readers, I’m asked often “what can I do?” Here is one vital thing: follow news from Europe daily and be sure to send what you learn far and wide because as Europe goes, so go we (just a little farther along in this century)! Unless, of course, we heed the lessons unfolding before our eyes!
My ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive is here.
NOTE: By the way, any mention of clan violence means only one thing—Somalis are involved.
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Obama-Era Policies Helped Keep Parkland Shooter Under the Radar. Here’s What Went Wrong.
One of the most heartbreaking and perhaps infuriating aspects of the Florida school shooting that took 17 lives is just how many red flags there were surrounding the shooter.
The national debate following the shooting has mostly revolved around guns. Much ink has also (rightly) been spilled about the failed leadership of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in its moment of crisis.
What’s been lost in this discussion are the issues of school safety and discipline. Those issues are highly relevant to what took place in Parkland.
Prior to the mass shooting, Nikolas Cruz was involved in a huge number of incidents on and off campus, numerous calls were made to the police, and the was FBI even involved. He certainly appeared to be a ticking time bomb.
It would seem that somewhere along the way, he should have been stopped before the shooting took place.
But that wasn’t the case.
Max Eden, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained in City Journal how an Obama-era Department of Education initiative designed to put an end to the “school to prison pipeline,” combined with local mismanagement, helped allow the shooter to fall through the cracks.
“[I]n 2013, the school board and the sheriff’s office agreed on a new policy to discontinue police referrals for a dozen infractions ranging from drug use to assault,” Eden wrote.
A separate report by RealClearInvestigations found that Broward County was part of a “vanguard of a strategy, adopted by more than 50 other major school districts nationwide, allowing thousands of troubled, often violent, students to commit crimes without legal consequence.”
This was part of a larger Obama administration effort, launched in 2011, to reduce racial disparities in school discipline numbers, according to RealClearInvestigations.
“Students charged with various misdemeanors, including assault, would now be disciplined through participation in ‘healing circles,’ obstacle courses, and other ‘self-esteem building’ exercises,” the report said.
“We must ensure that school discipline is being handled by trained educators, not by law enforcement officers,” said former Secretary of Education John King in 2016. “Some schools are simply turning misbehaving students over to [school resource officers]. This can set students on a path to dropping out or even to prison.”
Florida’s Broward County, which is where the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting took place, was a leader in adopting this new program and was even touted for it by former Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
The number of school arrests dropped dramatically in the years that followed, but that didn’t mean serious crimes weren’t taking place.
The Parkland shooter was involved in a number of alarming incidents, including assault and bringing bullets to campus, for which he was eventually moved to another school.
Yet the police never arrested the shooter or expelled him, which is in part why he passed a federal background check and was able to purchase a firearm.
The red flags swirling around the shooter went unheeded, and it appears that Broward County’s lax policies deserve some of the blame.
Nevertheless, it’s worth noting there have been many problems with “zero tolerance” policies as well, which became common in the 1990s.
These policies, which Congress designed in part to make school campuses gun-free zones, have at times criminalized behavior that was innocuous and that certainly didn’t require police involvement—hence, the stories about students being suspended for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun or being arrested for wearing an National Rifle Association shirt.
In dealing with campus policing practices, it’s important not to overreact to problems and thereby create new problems. Zero tolerance policies come with their own complications.
There is no single policy or idea that can solve the school discipline and school shooter problem overnight, but it’s not unreasonable to expect a department to change its practices after such a catastrophic failure as we saw in Parkland last month.
Whether Broward County and the federal government will honestly evaluate their own failures and change policies remains to be seen.
COMMENTARY BY
Jarrett Stepman
Jarrett Stepman is an editor for The Daily Signal. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman.
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OSCARS: ‘Interspecies Sex’ Wins Best Picture Surrounded by 500 ‘Assault Rifles’
Hollywood’s 1% gathered for their 90th annual look at me party, known as the Oscars. I, like millions of others who did not watch the Oscars, decided to tune into something much more interesting, like episodes of the first prime time series on American television which ran from 1950-1963, The Rifleman.
What happened at the Oscars?
This morning I woke up to learn that the Academy’s best picture was “The Shape of Water.” Since I did not see the film I decided to Goggle it to learn more about it. What I found out is that Shape of Water is about “interspecies sex.”
In a Forbes article titled “Review: ‘The Shape Of Water’ Successfully Depicts An Interspecies Relationship, Somehow”
[I]n The Shape of Water, he’s [Director Guillermo Del Toro] managed to accomplish something very difficult indeed. He’s managed to depict a loving, consummated relationship between Sally Hawkins and a slimy fish creature, and not induce the audience into vomiting. [Emphasis added]
I then Googled for the closest definition I could find that represents a human consummating a relationship with a different species. The closest I could come is “bestiality” which is defined as:
- savagely cruel or depraved behavior.
- sexual intercourse between a person and an animal.
Newsweek’s Emily Gaudette reported this on The Shape of Water:
In the first few minutes of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a mute janitor named Elisa, played by Sally Hawkins, draws herself a bath and masturbates. She completes this quick ritual several times early in the film as part of her daily routine. Elisa is lonely, and efficient.
Eventually, she meets the man—or, rather, the monster—of her dreams: an aquatic humanoid without a name, played by Doug Jones under layers of hand-painted latex. Del Toro is a noted monster visionary (as in, an inventor of creatures), but this is the first time the director has envisioned one that makes love to a woman.
Hollywood has morphed from its #MeToo moment into its #MeBestiality and #MeMasturbate moments.
So a human woman having a “consummated relationship” with an animal (bestiality) is worthy of the Best Picture Oscar? Is this like Hollywood actors having consummated relationships with underage children (pedophilia)? Or multiple women having consummated relationships on the casting couch with a well known Hollywood producer (rape)?
What else happened at the Oscars?
A second headline that caught my eye, no not that this year’s Oscars was the lowest rated in history, was the number of guns, including AR-15s, present at this gala Hollywood event.
This headline was interesting because the cause célèbre, no pun intended, for the 2018 Oscars was support of gun control by wearing orange lapel pins.
In a Breitbart news article titled “Oscars: Celebrities Push Gun Control Surrounded by a Wall of 500 Armed Officers” Jerome Hudson reports:
The Los Angeles Police Department will deploy 500 officers to wrap the Dolby Theatre in multiple barriers of armed security for the 90th Academy Awards on Sunday night, an event at which several of Hollywood’s most celebrated stars will actively push for more gun control in America.
“We have these concentric rings of security that start in the middle and radiate outward,” said LAPD Cmdr. Blake Chow, the man tasked with overseeing the massive operation. “We have a lot of officers in fixed posts and foot beats keeping an eye on the event.”
Several celebrities plan to wear orange lapel pins on the red carpet and during tonight’s ceremony in support of gun control and the Michael Bloomberg-founded gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.
Tom Trento in a column titled “Hollywood Actor’s Gun Pledge” wrote:
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.
Perhaps we can add to Tom’s list:
- Never act, produce, direct or invest in any movie that includes in any way in the script a “consummated relationship” with an animal (bestiality).
Will Hollywood begin pushing sex with robots? Oops, too late. They already have with the 2017 remake of Blade Runner and the 2015 film Ex Machina. Hollywood deserves a rating of “D” for depraved.
What most impressed you about the Oscars?
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The Government Has Already Tried Universal Basic Income. Here’s What Happened.
How would you like to receive $500 a month, no strings attached?
Stockton, California, a city outside of Silicon Valley, is providing such benefits to a group of its low-income residents in a pilot version of universal basic income.
Universal basic income is a policy that gives all people a set amount of benefits without requirements or stipulations. After a brief stint of popularity in the 1970s, the idea has resurged in the public interest, with backers including innovators Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, union leader Andy Stern, and even libertarian Charles Murray.
The pilot program, called the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, has received initial funding from the Economic Security Project, an advocacy group for universal basic income policies.
There is no official start date for the program, but Stockton’s mayor, Michael Tubbs, has indicated they will be screening applicants through June. Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, is providing $1 million toward the effort.
To those familiar with the universal basic income debate, the renewed interest in the program is baffling because similar programs have been tested with terrible results.
In the 1970s, the government ran four random control experiments across six states to try the negative income tax, a similar policy proposal that was popular at the time. In each test, the work disincentive effect was disastrous. For every $1,000 in added benefits to a family, there was an average reduction in $660 of wages from work.
There are many reasons universal basic income proposals fail. The policy tends to direct resources to people who do not need them, while increasing dependency and decreasing work across the truly needy population.
The most apparent flaw in the universal basic income proposal is the lack of work requirements. Work requirements are important because they help those in poverty achieve self-sufficiency. Additionally, a vast majority of Americans believe that people should be required to work in exchange for benefits (upwards of 90 percent by The Heritage Foundation’s latest estimates).
Robert Rector, senior welfare policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, spoke recently about universal basic income with The Daily Signal. In the podcast, he suggested expanding the earned income tax credit, a program that rewards work with benefits, as an alternative to universal basic income.
Rector pointed out that the earned income tax credit “has the same effect as a guaranteed minimum income, but it’s linked to positive contributions to society.” To improve it, Rector suggests making the program more generous and supportive of marriage, as well as working to reduce fraud.
Despite the admirable goals of the Stockton proposal, the program is likely to reduce work, increase dependency, and overburden the taxpayer. Instead of overthrowing our current welfare system, it is better to focus on the initiatives that work.
Strengthening work requirements for major programs and reforming the earned income tax credit would be a good start.
COMMENTARY BY
Mimi Teixeira
Mimi Teixeira is a graduate fellow in welfare policy at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @_MimiTeixeira.
A Note for our Readers:
Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.
Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.
Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.
You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.
Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.
Pope Francis Reflect’s on the Lord’s Prayer: Up from Orphanism
Brad Miner read some reflections by Pope Francis on the Lord’s Prayer and concludes we’ve come a long way from Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II.
Pope Francis has allowed to be published a “book” about what a priest in my parish calls “our family prayer,” Our Father: Reflections of the Lord’s Prayer, which arose from a TV interview he did with an Italian prison chaplain, Marco Pozza.
This hastily thrown together little book – made up of fragments from that interview as well as remarks from general audiences and his Angelus talks – presents Francis at his most capricious. Thus the pope’s Preface opens:
Father.
Without saying this word, without taking it to heart, we cannot pray.
To whom do I pray? Almighty God? Too far away. I cannot feel that he is near. Even Jesus did not refer to God as “the Almighty God.”
He goes on in this anodyne fashion for 120+ widely spaced pages, constituting ten chapters, each devoted to a phrase from the Lord’s Prayer.
Of the prayer’s title and its opening phrase, Fr. Pozza asks the pope to explain “what it feels like for you pray the Our Father.”
The pope responds that he finds the prayer “reassuring;” that it reminds him he’s not an orphan. He has a “dad.”
God is a dad who warns, “Pay attention, look out for this,” he is saying. . . . I think that today the world has somewhat lost the meaning of fatherhood. It is a world sick with orphanism. . . .Jesus says to us that it will be the poor, the sinners, the prostitutes, the discarded who enter before you into the kingdom of heaven, all.
That’s a direct quote from the pope’s chat with Pozza, but the lack of editorial attention here is appalling. Perhaps in speaking the pope added that “all” at the end of his words (an oral tic), but why on earth should that have made it into the published version?
The pope’s point is that God is not one’s “private property,” which is why the word “Father” is preceded by the word “our.” This lacks the intellectual depth of his two predecessors, but I suppose one ought not to dwell on that.
There follows some hectoring by the Holy Father that “we have gone so far as to affirm that ours is a ‘fatherless society.’” This is especially true in the West, he says, where father figures are “seen as being symbolically absent, vanished, removed.”
Whatever does “symbolically absent” mean?
His view that in the past “authoritarianism, even tyranny in certain cases, held sway in some homes” and that children were treated as slaves is presented without supporting data, and it occurred to me reading this screed, that the pope’s off-the-cuff style (so familiar from his Alitalia flights), resembles no other public figure so much as Donald Trump on Twitter.
In any case, exactly what this pop sociology has to do with Christianity’s greatest prayer is unclear. If his point is that it’s hard to believe in THE Father if you have no faith in your own (biological) daddy, I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite so jejune.
Fr. Pozza now turns to “Who art in heaven,” and he is struck by the closeness of “those who say ‘Daddy,’ but at the same time by the distance.” And so he asks: “What is meant by ‘heaven’?”
The pope opines that ‘heaven’ means the greatness of God, “the immensity of his power,” and he cites Genesis 17:1 when Yahweh says to Abraham, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.”
So . . . it’s okay for the Father to refer to himself as “Almighty,” even though Jesus never did. I thought of Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
The pope then gives the helpful example of when, at 6, he had his tonsils removed, which, he says, the doctors did without anesthesia. Afterward, they gave him ice cream. In a taxi home from the hospital, little Jorge was stunned when his father paid the driver. “I thought my dad owned all the cars in the city!” That other papa Bergoglio set the boy straight, “which gives us,” his son the pope says, “an idea of our relationship with God.” To wit:
God is a God of glory, but he walks with you and when it is necessary, he even gives you ice cream.
As Abraham in heaven might remark, “Oy . . .”
Next, the pope explains that “hallowed be thy name” means God’s name “should be hallowed.”
To say “Thy kingdom come” means to show mercy. It is “to be a beggar.” Pope Francis refers to the Parable of the Mustard Seed: the “kingdom is . . . a reality that in human terms is small and apparently irrelevant,” and one must “not trust in one’s own capabilities” but be a humble participant in God’s work.
Something here must be getting lost in translation. I sure hope so.
I skip ahead now to the part that last December led to controversy when, in the televised with Fr. Pozza, the Holy Father suggested that “lead us not into temptation” is incorrect. In the translated text it is: “This . . . is not a good translation.” Pope Francis mentions that the most recent Italian and French translations (“do not abandon me” and “do not let me fall”) are better since they do not suggest that it is God “who tosses me into temptation.” It’s Satan who does that.
There may be merit in this, although the old phrase has served pretty well for a very, very long time.
That televised interview ended with the great prayer itself, in which the pope and the priest recited together: “And lead us not into temptation . . .”
Walt Whitman would no doubt grin to know that a pope may also contain (contradictory) multitudes.
Brad Miner
Brad Miner is senior editor of The Catholic Thing, senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute, and Board Secretary of Aid to the Church In Need USA. He is a former Literary Editor of National Review. His new book, Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin, is now on sale. The Compleat Gentleman, is available on audio.
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. The featured image is of Pope Francis saying the Our Father during Mass at the Casa Santa Marta [May 2015].
Virginia Assembly Delegate and Former Green Beret Nick Freitas’ Open and Honest Debate on School Shootings
Michael Jacques published the above video titled “A Assembly Delegate Nick Freitas Open Honest Gun Debate” on his YouTube channel. Del. Nicholas J. Freitas, R-Culpeper, a former Green Beret, has formally announced his bid for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination to run against Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), Hillary Clinton’s running VP running mate. Jacques notes:
A Speech by Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas, the liberty-minded conservative who is challenging Senator Tim Kaine, discussing the importance of the Second Amendment has been viewed over five million times in the past 24 hours.
Well stated rebuttal to the Left’s call for gun control.
If you ever wanted to say something to the Left and cover all of your points in one shot…this is how its done.
Crushes it…with reason and logic…something the Left is devoid of.
A Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates roiled his Democratic colleagues Friday when he delivered a speech in which he suggested many people who commit mass shootings come from “broken homes” and blamed the “abortion industry” for helping to foster such a dangerous society for decades.
Frietas shared a video of his address on Facebook, explaining that he was reacting to Democratic lawmakers who have compared Republicans who have blocked the passage of gun control legislation to Nazis and segregationists.
In the speech, Freitas discussed societal issues that may have lead to an uptick in mass shootings.
“So, over the last several days, Mr. Speaker, there’s been a lot of discussion about an open and honest debate with respect to school shootings, gun violence, gun control, etc…and an open and honest debate as I understand it, is one that would rely on data, facts, evidence, analysis, reason, logic, etcetera, etcetera… and I’m certainly willing to have that deate,” Freitas began. “I think if we were going to look seriously at school shootings and gun control, we would analyze things like: Why do all mass shootings seem to take place in gun free zones? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to test whether or not the efficacy of gun-free zones have actually achieved what they’re intended intent is?”
Freitas brought up the fact that most mass shooters come from broken homes — and pointed out some of the government policies that have encouraged the breakdown of traditional families.
“We would start to look at…most of the shooters come from broken homes. What sort of government policies have actually encouraged broken homes? You can look at Left-leaning think tanks like the Brookings Institute, that will actually say that some of it can be attributed to various cultural change that happened in the 60’s to include the abortion industry,” Freitas said. “You can look at a more conservative-leaning organizations that will say that the welfare state contributes significantly to dismantling the family as families became more and more dependent upon the government than they were mothers and fathers in the home raising children.”
The senate candidate also discussed how areas like Chicago, New York and Washington, DC have strict gun laws, and yet, the gun violence hasn’t stopped.
Freitas also laid into the Democrats for claiming they only want to get rid of bump stocks and impose background checks.
“If you’re wanting the other reason why we can’t have an honest debate about this one is because, quite frankly, I don’t think any of us, on this side of the aisle, believe you when you say that’s all you want to do. It will be bump stocks, it will be background checks, it will be a different kind of background checks that register the guns… Then, after that, it will be ‘We need to ban assault weapons.’ ‘What’s an assault weapon?’ ‘Something that looks scary,’” Freitas asserted. “Then after that it will be semi-automatic rifles, then it will be semi-automatic hand guns. Then it will be revolvers, shotguns… because when the policies fail to produce the results you were promising your constituents, you will be back with more reasons for why we’ve got to infringe on Second Amendment rights.”
Freitas point was that the Democrats refuse to consider other options to end societal violence that do not consist of “tearing apart or gutting the Second Amendment.”
VIDEO: Patriotic Ad by Grunt Style Clothing Takes the Internet by Storm
When you visit the veteran owned and operated Grunt Style website you will see in bold capitol letters the following quote:
“WHERE LIBERTY DWELLS, THERE IS MY COUNTRY.” – BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
A grunt is defined as “a low-ranking or unskilled soldier or other worker.” But make no mistake the U.S. Army has depended on the bravery and skills of its grunts since its founding on June 14th, 1775.
You will also find the video below titled “This Commercial Would Have Changed the Game.”
To purchase Grunt Style clothing for men and women please click here.
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Marvel’s ‘Black Panther’ gets a thumbs down for gratuitous black on black violence
I went to see Marvel Comics’ latest film Black Panther with high expectations given the rave reviews by movie critics. After watching the film I found myself disappointed in many ways.
Here are just a few of the reasons I found the movie lacking and harmful to children, especially black children.
- As with all Hollywood films there is gratuitous violence. What makes this film different is the violence is entirely black on black violence. It is a reflection of what black kids see everyday living in the hood.
- The film celebrates the idea of rule by divine right, the rule of kings and queens. It is about the transfer of power by violent means (hand to hand combat).
- The film presents the idea that ordinary black people should not be given access to technological advances because they will not or cannot use it wisely. Blacks withholding knowledge from blacks is all to common place in inter city schools.
- The film denigrates black soldiers, especially those who serve in special operations units such as the Navy SEALs. The protagonist is a former Navy SEAL played by Michael Bakari Jordan.
- The film is focused on revenge, black family against black family revenge that ends in death and destruction.
- The film begins with a black man killing his brother and then abandoning his brother’s orphaned son. This leaves the nephew to grow up without his father and go on a quest to kill his cousin in order to become king. The idea of black boys growing up without their father is all to familiar in the hood.
This is a short list of the negatives.
Rather than lifting up the black community, it denigrates the black man.
I left saddened that Marvel used an entirely black cast to make such a film. A film that, in my opinion, celebrates violence, nepotism and the haves versus the have nots.
Black Panther is all about black power of the wrong kind.
There is enough violence in our world, particularly when it comes to young black boys growing up in the hood. Seeing this film glorifies black on black violence. It’s about two black gangs (tribes) fighting one against the other over control of a technologically advanced hood. The enemy is not in America. The enemy is in Africa, where real dictators, tribal and religious warfare is being conducted. If the character black panther wanted to make a difference then he would do it freeing the people of Africa. If he wanted to build a science center it would not be in America but in any country in Africa. That is where it is needed most, in the dark continent.
Perhaps Marvel should rethink where it is going with its franchise. Given the recent deaths in a school in Parkland, Florida, Hollywood needs to rethink how it portrays violence, especially gun violence.
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Over 500 Members of MS-13 Linked to Crime in 22 States
More than 500 members of the violent gang MS-13 have been arrested or charged with crimes in 22 states since 2012, a new report says.
The states with the most criminal cases related to MS-13 were California, with 92; Maryland, 85; New York, 80; and Virginia, 63, according to the report by Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Besides being a “tourist concern,” the numbers show the gang, previously weakened by police and other law enforcement officials, has been “reinvigorated by a huge influx of aliens, 200,000-plus aliens,” Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the nonprofit center, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
Those illegal immigrants, Arthur said, include “a huge number” of minors and young adults who crossed the southern border into the U.S.
Arthur said the policies of former President Barack Obama’s administration are to blame for crimes committed by MS-13 members.
Obama’s failed immigration system “created a pool of individuals from whom MS-13 could recruit, and that is what has helped drive the reinvigoration of this gang in the United States,” Arthur said.
A failure to enforce immigration law spurred the rejuvenation of MS-13, Vaughan’s report says:
We conclude that this resurgence represents a very serious threat to public safety in communities where MS-13 has rebuilt itself. The resurgence is directly connected to the illegal arrival and resettlement of more than 300,000 Central American youths and families that has continued unabated for six years, and to a deprioritization of immigration enforcement in the interior of the country that occurred at the same time.
Of the 506 gang members arrested or charged in connection with crimes, the report said 207 were charged with murder and 100 others were accused of conspiracy or racketeering, and “dozens of others” were accused of sex trafficking, attempted murder, sexual assault, extortion, and drug trafficking.
The report also found that 126 of the 506 MS-13 members arrested or charged were illegal immigrants, including 38 of the 207 murder suspects.
Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the comeback of MS-13 is the fault of the Obama administration.
“This report shows that the resurgence of the brutal MS-13 gang in recent years is the direct result of the Obama administration’s encouragement of illegal immigration, especially unaccompanied minors,” von Spakovsky said, adding:
Barack Obama bears a shameful responsibility for the hundreds of vicious murders, sexual assaults, and other crimes that would not have occurred except for his refusal to enforce our immigration laws, particularly his direction to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] field offices to cease their efforts to disrupt gangs by arresting their members for immigration violations.
Rachel del Guidice
Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.
A Note for our Readers:
Trust in the mainstream media is at a historic low—and rightfully so given the behavior of many journalists in Washington, D.C.
Ever since Donald Trump was elected president, it is painfully clear that the mainstream media covers liberals glowingly and conservatives critically.
Now journalists spread false, negative rumors about President Trump before any evidence is even produced.
Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. That’s why The Daily Signal exists.
The Daily Signal’s mission is to give Americans the real, unvarnished truth about what is happening in Washington and what must be done to save our country.
Our dedicated team of more than 100 journalists and policy experts rely on the financial support of patriots like you.
Your donation helps us fight for access to our nation’s leaders and report the facts.
You deserve the truth about what’s going on in Washington.
Please make a gift to support The Daily Signal.
EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Victor Fuentes, 20, an alleged MS-13 member, appearing on Nov. 17th, 2017 at the Palm Beach County Jail on two charges of first-degree murder. (Photo: Damon Higgins/Zuma Press/Newscom)