(CATO) — The Cato 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey, a new national poll of 2,300 U.S. adults, finds that 71% Americans believe that political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have. The consequences are personal—58% of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs.
Democrats are unique, however, in that a slim majority (53%) do not feel the need to self-censor. Conversely, strong majorities of Republicans (73%) and independents (58%) say they keep some political beliefs to themselves.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) this week implored Americans to stop questioning official stories, conventional wisdom and the political establishment.
McCain made the remarks Monday at the Brigade of Midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.
“We have to fight against propaganda and crackpot conspiracy theories. We have to fight isolationism, protectionism and nativism. We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on earth by tearing down walls, not building them,” he said.
The aged senator didn’t mention President Donald Trump by name, but his remarks were largely panned as a rebuke of the administration’s policies.
McCain said Americans need to “wake up” and strive for better.
“I believe in America. We’re capable of better. I’ve seen it. We’re hopeful, compassionate people,” he said.
The senator added: “We are asleep to the necessity of our leadership, and to the opportunities and real dangers of this world … We are asleep in our echo chambers, where our views are always affirmed and information that contradicts them is always fake.”
Anyone else remember when McCain handed that fake Trump dossier to the FBI?
Social justice warriors are wetting their pants over offensive make believe, educators are on the lookout for headdresses and the media is pushing the annual poison candy stories– Happy Halloween!
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that “she might come as the president” for Halloween.
“I have to start thinking about it,” Clinton said when asked about her costume Monday at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. “I think I will maybe come as the president!”
The Chicago Tribune noted: “Clinton didn’t elaborate on whether she plans to dress as herself or the actual president, Donald Trump, though the latter seems unlikely.”
And it didn’t take long for the failed candidate to get the zing she’d so beautifully set herself up for:
If he hasn’t settled on a costume idea for White House festivities yet, President Trump ought to take some inspiration from Clinton. He could probably get a good last minute deal on a murderer loser costume.
Be careful out there, the “appropriation police” are out in full force this year
By now everyone has heard, culture is not a costume.
That’s why universities throughout the nation, according to Fox News, are cracking down on offensive costumes “using guides, checklists, workshops, threats of probes and investigations.”
Recently, schools cracked down on non-politically correct outfits, from creepy clowns to Caitlyn Jenner, and just about everything in between.
“The scariest thing about your costume isn’t what you think,” according to a “Halloween and Cultural Appropriation Tabling” event at Goucher College in Maryland.
The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota put up “Costume or Culture Appropriation” fliers listing “unacceptable” costumes and clothing as including Native American headdresses, a Mexican sombrero, a geisha outfit or any form of blackface.
“Cultural appropriation is defined as ‘the act of taking intellectual and cultural expressions from a culture that is not your own, without showing that you understand or respect the culture’,” the flier read.
Offensive costumes incorporate “a long history of prejudice, hate, discrimination, colonialism and slavery” as well as turning “an important and/or sacred element into fashion.”
And just in case you don’t get easily offended by costumes, several universities are ready to help.
For students who find Halloween assaults on their cultural sensibilities too much to bear, many of the schools are offering 24/7 counseling in designated safe spaces.
Sorry, kid with the “woke” parents, that’s what we call a rock and a hard place…
There’s a blog called “Raising Race Conscious Children”– and you bet it had a position on little girl Halloween costumes.
Disney’s Moana is out of the question for children who don’t live on a fictional Polynesian island 3,000 years ago. And for all the youngsters who’d like to be Disney’s Elsa… sorry, too much glorification of white beauty standards.
Writer Sachi Feris tells the tale of how she vastly over complicated Halloween for her child:
I had some reservations regarding both costume choices…about cultural appropriationand the power/privilege carried by Whiteness, and about Whiteness and standards of beauty…and so our conversations began:
“Elsa is an imaginary or made-up character. Moana is based on real history and a real group of people…if we are going to dress up a real person, we have to make sure we are doing it in a way that is respectful. Otherwise, it is like we are making fun of someone else’s culture.”
Hearing me push back against her Moana choice, my daughter re-asserted her desire to dress up as Moana (for Halloween 2018!). I closed this initial “Moana” conversation by telling her: “We would have to do some research and figure out if there is a way to dress up as Moana that is respectful of her culture.”
Since her 2017 Halloween choice was, in fact, Elsa, I returned to this costume choice and shared: “There is one thing I don’t like about the character of Elsa. I feel like because Elsa is a White princess, and we see so many White princesses, her character sends the message that you have to be a certain way to be “beautiful” or to be a “princess”…that you have to have White skin, long, blonde hair, and blue eyes. And I don’t like that message. You are White, like Elsa—if you dressed up as a character like Moana, who has brown skin, you would never change your skin color. But I’m not sure I like the idea of you changing your hair color to dress up as Elsa—because I think Elsa’s character could also be a short, brown-haired character like you.”
This was my favorite part of the piece:
“Anyway,” I added, “I don’t like the idea of dressing up using the same traditional clothing that someone from Moana’s culture may have worn because that feels like we are laughing at her culture by making it a costume. A child whose family is Polynesian could dress up using that type of traditional clothing but Moana’s culture is not our culture. If you want you could dress up as someone from one of your cultures, you could be a tango dancer from Argentina…(or as Che Guevara!). Otherwise, maybe you could be a modern-day Moana and dress up in the clothing you think Moana might wear today.”
Che Guevara, the revolutionary icon. And the guy who anyone who ever read The Motorcycle Diaries knows, had a pretty weird way of showing affection for other races.
Here’s a nice little excerpt:
The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.
Guevara apologists argue that those views were a product of his time and his young age of 24 at the time of writing– though, I’m not sure how graduating from casual racist to cold-blooded murderer is a step in the right direction.
If somehow you do manage to settle on an inoffensive costume and take your child out trick-or-treating, watch out for all that poisonous candy… and DRUGS!
Officials throughout the country are warning parents that skeezy residents may want to get their children high by handing out marijuana edibles on Halloween.
It doesn’t hurt to check, especially if your a parent looking to score an against-the-odds freebie edible– but leave the hysterics to the costume Nazis…
Last but not least, another gem from Remy
Michael Jackson’s Thriller gets an update for the social justice era:
(TAMPA BAY TIMES) — For at least three days in the final week of the 2017 legislative session, a covert surveillance camera recorded the comings and goings of legislators and lobbyists living on the sixth floor of the Tennyson condominium near the Capitol.
Weeks later, in a dark parking lot of an Italian restaurant in Tallahassee, Sen. Jack Latvala of Clearwater, a Republican candidate for governor, was also being spied upon. Grainy photos show him standing and planting a kiss on the cheek, then the mouth, of a female lobbyist on the last night of the Legislature’s special session.
These weren’t routine smartphone photos captured for fun. They were the work of private investigators whose research has fueled an escalating barrage of rumors in the last week about sexual harassment in Tallahassee and infidelity among the state’s elected legislators.
Watching the nation’s mainstream news networks would lead you to believe that President Donald Trump is a racist Russian spy terrified that he’ll be thrown out of office just as soon as Robert Mueller scares someone into dishing dirt. Meanwhile, there’s a big economic story the mainstream media is refusing to cover.
According to a series of recent polls, Trump’s approval rating is plummeting in recent weeks. And that’s because the media is providing round-the-clock coverage of the Russia collusion investigation which has yet to provide a single shred of evidence against the president.
Still, negative coverage of the Trump administration is the media norm. According to a Pew study out earlier this month, mainstream media coverage of Trump’s first 60 days in office offered “negative assessments” of the president 62 percent of the time. That’s just under three times as much negative press aimed at each of Trump’s two immediate predecessors for the same period.
Meanwhile, behind all the front-page and prime-time reports about Trump’s maybe, probably, hopefully being a Russian stooge, massive economic improvement is being ignored.
It seems that all of Hillary Clinton’s adoring fans in the media have totally forgotten the phrase James Carville coined during the 1992 presidential cycle, “The economy, stupid.”
And since the stupid mainstream media isn’t going to push any reports about great things happening with the economy to the front of the page anytime soon, here are a few you should read.
Consumer confidence is higher than it has been in 17 YEARS!
The Index now stands at 125.9 (1985=100), up from 120.6 in September. The Present Situation Index increased from 146.9 to 151.1, while the Expectations Index rose from 103.0 last month to 109.1.
“Consumer confidence increased to its highest level in almost 17 years in October after remaining relatively flat in September,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions improved, boosted by the job market which had not received such favorable ratings since the summer of 2001. Consumers were also considerably more upbeat about the short-term outlook, with the prospect of improving business conditions as the primary driver. Confidence remains high among consumers, and their expectations suggest the economy will continue expanding at a solid pace for the remainder of the year.”
The Conference Board provided the following breakdown of consumer attitudes about the economy:
The percentage saying business conditions are “good” increased from 33.4 percent to 34.5 percent, while those saying business conditions are “bad” rose marginally from 13.2 percent to 13.5 percent. Consumers’ assessment of the job market was more upbeat. The percentage of consumers stating jobs are “plentiful” increased from 32.7 percent to 36.3 percent, while those claiming jobs are “hard to get” decreased slightly from 18.0 percent to 17.5 percent.
…The percentage of consumers expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months increased from 20.9 percent to 22.2 percent, while those expecting business conditions to worsen decreased from 9.6 percent to 6.9 percent.
Home price increases appear “unstoppable”
When builders are building and buyers are buying, you can bet that an economic upswing is underway.
And if the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index is any indicator, the economy is improving… bigly.
According to the index, home prices across the nation rose to 6.1 percent in August, up from 5.9 percent the month prior.
“Home price increases appear to be unstoppable,” says David Blitzer, managing director of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones. “August saw the National Index annual rate tick up to 6.1 percent; all 20 cities followed in the report were up year-over-year while one, Atlanta, saw the seasonally adjusted monthly number slip 0.2 percent. Most prices across the rest of the economy are barely moving compared to housing.”
Blitzer says a combination of low interest rates and an improving economy are largely responsible for the upward pricing trend. But, he added, “The price gains are not simply a rebound from the financial crisis; nationally and in nine of the 20 cities in the report, home prices have reached new all-time highs.”
The report was based on the latest readings from Citigroup’s U.S. Economic Suprise Index, which shows that the U.S. economy is outperforming economic forecasts for the first time since April.
And CNBC admitted with little fanfare last week that Trump has reached his goal of 3 percent economic growth without yet getting much of his legislative economic agenda underway.
From the report:
Third-quarter GDP grew by 3 percent, well above the 2.5 percent expected by economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters and below the 2.8 percent in the CNBC/Moody’s Rapid Update. The third-quarter number comes on top of 3.1 percent growth in the second quarter, making for the best back-to-back quarters since 2014 and ending a long streak of sluggish 2 percent growth.
One factor aiding the improvement was an 8.6 percent annualized rise in business spending on capital equipment, coming on top of an 8.8 percent pace in the second quarter.
“Give credit where credit is due,” wrote Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at MUFG Union Bank. “Trump’s economics team has been steering the country since January, and the economy has hit the Administration’s 3 percent target two quarters in a row. … This economy in its ninth year of expansion shows no sign of tiring and turning down and may outlast the 10 years of growth during the Clinton presidency.”
(DENVER POST) After back-to-back losses in 2010 and 2014, immigration hardliner and former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo plans to try again in 2018 to become Colorado’s next governor — a move spurred in part by his anger at Republicans for not protesting when a Colorado Springs resort cancelled a white nationalist conference where he was supposed to speak.
His entry into a crowded Republican field adds a combustible element to a primary already brewing with rivalries, and it could provide new insight into the mood of the Colorado GOP at the start of the Trump administration.
A group supporting Democrat Ralph Northam in the Virginia gubernatorial race has unleashed a racist attack in an inflammatory new video ad that purports to tie Republican Ed Gillespie to white supremacists.
In the video, a white man driving a pickup is shown chasing several minority children through a neighborhood. The pickup is adorned with a Confederate flag, a Gillespie bumper sticker and a “Don’t Tread on Me” license plate. The children running from the truck include two Hispanic boys, a black boy and a Muslim girl in a hijab.
The children run into an alley and attempt to climb a fence as the truck charges them, but one of them wakes up to reveal the ordeal to be a nightmare before the vehicle hits them.
“Is this what Donald Trump and Ed Gillespie mean by the American dream?” a voiceover asks while a couple is shown watching footage of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The ad was produced by the Latino Victory Fund, a left-wing political action committee whose stated mission is “growing Latino political power by increasing Latino representation at every level of government – from the school board to the Senate to the White House.”
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Latino Victory Fund has received funds from Priorities USA Action, the Service Employees International Union, and billionaire Tom Steyer, who is funding advertisements calling for Trump’s impeachment.
The group’s president, Cristobal J. Alex, is a veteran of both Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Open Society Foundations, which was founded by George Soros.
“In a desperate attempt to become Virginia’s next governor, Ed Gillespie has eagerly embraced racism and xenophobia,” the Latino Victory Fund claimed on social media Monday morning. “We refuse to stand by as Gillespie slanders our families and portrays our community as thugs, criminals, and gang members.”
A political ad paid for by the Latino Victory Fund depicts minority children being chased by a pickup truck with a Confederate flag.
In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, Gillespie campaign manager Chris Leavitt ripped the ad as “disgusting” and an “attack on the people of Virginia.”
“Ed Gillespie has focused his campaign on the many policy differences between Ralph Northam and him, but sadly the Northam campaign and its allies have launched a desperate smear campaign against Ed in the closing days of this election,” Leavitt said. “The Lieutenant Governor was roundly rebuked for exploiting imagery from the tragedy of Charlottesville for political points. Now his allies have reached a new low with a disgusting, vile television ad seeking to instill fear in our children with that same imagery.
“This is not an attack on Ed Gillespie anymore,” he added. “This is an all out attack on the people of Virginia. This latest ad gives a clear indication of just what Ralph Northam and his national Democratic allies think of all of us, and it’s sickening.”
The director of the Center for American Progress defended the ad on Fox News.
“You’re defending an ad that has a racist driving a truck with an Ed Gillespie sticker on it, trying to murder children?” exclaimed an exasperated Tucker Carlson.
Although the ad was not authorized by Northam, his campaign is ignoring calls from Republicans to denounce it.
“Independent groups are denouncing Ed Gillespie because he has run the most divisive, fear mongering campaign in modern history,” Northam Spokesperson Ofirah Yheskel told The Washington Post. “It is not shocking that communities of color are scared of what his Trump-like policy positions mean for them.”
Many pundits suggest the ad will backfire and actually help Gillespie in the final stretch of the campaign, reported Mediaite.
And despite what the ad implies, Gillespie denounced the Charlottesville protests the day they happened, releasing a statement that read, in part:
“Having a right to spew vile hate does not make it right. It is painful to see these ugly events in Charlottesville last night and today. These displays have no place in our Commonwealth, and the mentality on display is rejected by the decent, thoughtful and compassionate fellow Virginians I see every day.”
In another statement, Gillespie referred to the marchers as “a torch-carrying, shield-bearing white supremacist and neo-Nazi mob” that “essentially invaded Virginia.”
And the GOP nominee has come out strongly against the notorious MS-13 gang, which preys mostly on the immigrant community. Gillespie has promised to ban sanctuary cities in Virginia if elected governor.
(TWITCHY) — NBC News’ Alex Seitz-Wald has some bad news about America’s smartest woman; it seems she’s still harboring some delusions about what took place almost a year ago.
(LIFE NEWS) The pro-life advocates behind the many shocking videos exposing Planned Parenthood selling the body parts of aborted babies for research have released a 15th video today highlighting the eyewitness experiences of a former fetal body parts harvesting worker inside Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
Holly O’Donnell worked as a procurement technician for StemExpress, LLC, stationed inside some of the biggest Planned Parenthood surgical centers in northern California, drawing blood and dissecting organs from aborted babies, which the company then sold to research customers across the country. She worked for StemExpress from December 2012 to April 2013, ultimately quitting in disgust with the company’s business model.
The new video follows on the heels of one in which Planned Parenthood is caught showing off the body parts of an aborted baby.
(FOX NEWS) The smallest fish in the net hauled up Monday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is a “liar” and a low-level aide with a history of exaggerating his role in last year’s presidential campaign, according to President Trump and other administration officials.
Listed as a former foreign policy adviser to President Trump’s campaign, the 30-year-old George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to the FBI. He allegedly tried to set up meetings between Team Trump and the Kremlin, then lied about to the FBI.
But Papandopoulos, who President Trump on Tuesday branded a “liar,” appears to have greatly exaggerated his influence within the campaign.
PropagandaGuard 