At last we know why Chicago’s homicide level is so out of control: Gangs, not police control the streets. The gangs know it; the
police know it; and now, thanks to DNAinfo.com/Chicago, we know it. A week ago, Chicago street gangs held a huge party in a
park, with a thousand people attending, some brandishing firearms, terrifying neighbors for hours. The police sent 25 squad cars,
yet were outnumbered and unable to really do anything. Stephanie Lulay wrote: A raucous and "very dangerous" gang party that brought 1,000 people to a Near West Side park late Sunday was
so out of control, Chicago police struggled to shut it down, one alderman said.
Despite calling for police and politicians to address notoriously loud and sometimes violent gang parties for
years, neighbors living near Touhy-Herbert Park report that this weekend's massive all-night party that spilled over
into the streets was worse than ever. (snip)
One area neighbor called the out-of-control party "Armageddon."
"Sheer madness, chaos, bedlam, insanity!!!!!" she wrote on Facebook. "It was literally like '[a] calling in the
National Guard and SWAT team' situation. It was a party riot."
There is a lot more in the article worth reading. It appears that open gang celebrations have been a fact of life in Chicago for
some time.
Obviously, there is no political will to take back control of the streets. So everyone gets the message that gangs rule. No wonder
the murder problem isn’t getting solved.
It would take a lot of money and even more guts to really address what ails Chicago. Effective countermeasures would be called
police state tactics and worse. I see no reason for any optimism. Chicago will remain a meatgrinder for urban youth. It is very
hard to think of this city as "functional."
In a progressive society, it is often white families that stand in the way of equality and justice. Systemic white supremacy depends, first and foremost, on the white family unit. When white conquerors forcefully penetrated the indigenous, egalitarian homeland of the Native peoples of America, they were quick to replicate their white societies, initiating their parasitism by establishing white plantations, headed by white fathers, submissive white mothers, and, most critically, white children, with full dominion over the enslaved and oppressed people of color that were forced to uphold these micro-fiefdoms.
It is no surprise, then, that America’s fascination with the white family unit has gone hand-in-hand with the historical proliferation of white supremacy. After Bacon’s Rebellion, white micro-fieftans thought it necessary to expand the definition of white family to encompass the entirety of white society, so as to coerce the working class to fight amongst itself based on racial lines. Whites are embedded from birth with the sense of common white identity, and this identity conditions them to replicate the white family unit, thus furthering the cycle of white supremacy in America. That is why the white family unit must be destroyed…
…White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite. White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children.
Daniel Greenfield reveals why there’s no mystery behind the Democratic loss in Georgia, while Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and
the George Washington University Profiling Project Deepen the Mystery of the “Russian Hacking” narrative.
There was a great deal of press this week about the District 6 Georgia Congressional race in which once again -- for the fourth
time -- the hyped “referendum on Trump” produced a Republican victory over a Democratic challenger in a special election.
As usual, David Burge tweeted the most succinct wrap up of the left-wing take on their latest failure to recapture Congress and
impeach Trump:
“David Burge@iowahawkblog
So I gather GA06 has suddenly gone from Enlightened Sunbelt Suburban Panera Voters back to Inbred
Reactionary Neo-Confederate Klansmen”
When hyping the Ossoff-Handel race, the media regularly misrepresented the district (Newt Gingrich’s former seat) as rock-
ribbed Republican when in fact it has become more Democratic due to redistricting, and the race was tighter than represented.
But as Daniel Greenfield – alone -- observed, the race was hyped as winnable only to fill the Democratic coffers. It was never
likely that Jon Ossoff, a pajama boy who didn’t even live in District 6, was going to beat Karen Handel, a well-known and
respected District 6, resident no matter how much money the Democrats spent there.
So why did the Democrats pour $31 million down the drain to advance his doomed candidacy? Daniel Greenfield explains: the
DNC is badly short of cash and spun this (and the three losing races which preceded it) to raise cash for itself and its
infrastructure.
Most of the money came through Act Blue, the big DNC fundraiser. And much of the money raised went to Canal Partners
Media Mothership Strategies and Mission Control, Inc. the Democrats’ infrastructure.
[Ossoff] was sucker bait. And the suckers bit hard enough to make a special election in a conservative district the
most expensive House race in history.
Ossoff was a great way for Washington D.C. campaign pros to extract money from Bay Area lefties. His campaign
had nine times more individual donations from California than from Georgia. He had almost four times more
donations from nine Bay Area counties than all of Georgia.
The Dems lost and they’re laughing all the way to the bank.
There was much fussing in the Bay Area over snarky Republican ads in the race taking potshots at them. If they
had any sense, they would be far more offended by the greedy contempt of their political allies.
The Democrats have gone far to the left partly because of a profitable machine for transmuting the left’s worst
instincts into money. The Washington Post scored record profits by tempting lefties with fake news promises of
impeachment. The special elections scam offered lefties the seductive idea that throwing away millions on a
doomed cause would somehow reverse Trump’s victory.
Hey, it worked for Jill Stein, didn’t it?
Angry, emotional people do stupid things. Like wear pink hats and shout in public about their private parts,
subscribe to the Washington Post because they think it can deliver Watergate on demand or plow millions into
backing an annoying hipster with no credentials in Newt Gingrich’s old district.
Jon Ossoff’s slogan was “Make Trump Furious.” He failed even at that. But it isn’t Trump’s fury his backers were
interested in. Instead they succeeded in cashing in on the angry stupid rage of the left.
The Press: Democratic Midwives
Once again, the DNC had the press shilling for its sting, but as Michael Goodwin wrote in a must read, journalistic standards
died with the 2016 election:
I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so
long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair
and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more
accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the
gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale -- that most of what you
read, watch, and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even
close. [snip] The realization that they had helped Trump’s rise seemed to make many executives, producers, and
journalists furious. By the time he secured the nomination and the general election rolled around, they were
gunning for him. Only two people now had a chance to be president, and the overwhelming media consensus was
that it could not be Donald Trump. [snip] the so-called cream of the media crop was “engaged in a naked display
of partisanship” designed to bury Trump and elect Hillary Clinton.
[snip]
For the most part, I blame The New York Times and The Washington Post for causing this breakdown. The two
leading liberal newspapers were trying to top each other in their demonization of Trump and his supporters. They
set the tone, and most of the rest of the media followed like lemmings.
[snip]
I found the whole concept appalling. What happened to fairness? What happened to standards? I’ll tell you what
happened to them. The Times top editor, Dean Baquet, eliminated them. In an interview last October with the
Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Baquet admitted that the piece by his media reporter had nailed his
own thinking. Trump “challenged our language,” he said, and Trump “will have changed journalism.” Of the daily
struggle for fairness, Baquet had this to say: “I think that Trump has ended that struggle... We now say stuff. We
Having abolished journalistic standards in 2016, the trend is continuing. This week, the BBC was forced to retract -- at least
online -- an outrageous headline respecting the story of an Israeli soldier stabbed to death in Jerusalem by three terrorists who
were shot to death: “Three Palestinians killed after deadly stabbing in Jerusalem”.
On Facebook Daniel Goldstein offers up three updated headlines for a press which these days is acting merely as a security
blanket for the coastal elites:
"Reports of Anti-Japanese Hate Crimes Surge After Battleship Sinkings in
Hawaii."
"Ex-Marine Shot on Live TV By Restaurant Owner After Tumultuous Dallas
Weekend."
"Unilateral Planting of American Flag 239,000 Miles From Earth Renews
World Fears of Expanded U.S. Colonial Ambitions Under Nixon."
It appears the FBI is now following the press lead in distorting events to fit a leftist Democratic narrative.
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway explains the gross misrepresentations in the FBI presser on the shooting of Congressman
Steve Scalise:
fact check him. We write it more powerfully that [what he says is] false.”
Baquet was being too modest. Trump was challenging, sure, but it was Baquet who changed journalism. He’s the
one who decided that the standards of fairness and nonpartisanship could be abandoned without consequence.
James Hodgkinson was an active Democratic activist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer [whose office he
visited] who hated Republican members of Congress. He held membership in multiple social media groups
strongly opposed to Republicans, such as “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans,” “Join the Resistance
Worldwide,” “Donald Trump is not my President,” “Terminate the Republican Party,” “Boycott the Republican
Party,” and “Expose Republican Fraud,” among dozens of other groups. He was a voracious consumer of liberal
media and believed the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to secure the White House.”
The FBI admits that Hodgkinson:
• vociferously raged against Republicans in online forums,
• had a piece of paper bearing the names of six members of Congress,
• was reported for doing target practice outside his home in recent months before moving to Alexandria,
• had mapped out a trip to the DC area,
• took multiple photos of the baseball field he would later shoot up, three days after the New York Times
mentioned that Republicans practiced baseball at an Alexandria baseball field with little security,
• lived out of his van at the YMCA directly next door to the baseball field he shot up,
• legally purchased a rifle in March 2003 and 9 mm handgun “in November 2016,”
• modified the rifle at some point to accept a detachable magazine and replaced the original stock with a folding
stock,
• rented a storage facility to hide hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional rifle components,
• asked “Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?” before firing on the Republicans,
• ran a Google search for information on the “2017 Republican Convention” hours before the shooting,
• and took photos at high-profile Washington locations, including the east front plaza of the U.S. Capitol and the
Dirksen Senate Office.
We know from other reporting that the list was of six Republican Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Mo
Brooks, who was present at the practice.
So what does the FBI decide this information means? Well, the takeaway of the briefing was characterized well by
Iowahawk was more on point than the FBI field office:
David Burge@iowahawkblog 3
Big takeaway for Democrats this week: $25 million in ad spending is less effective than shooting up a baseball
practice
Speaking of mysteries, this week former DHS head Jeh Johnson testified that he was denied access to the reportedly hacked
DNC servers. Former FBI head James Comey testified to the same effect earlier. Yet Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman
Schultz, head of the DNC during the supposed hacking, said that neither the DHS nor any federal agency had informed her of
any hacking or sought access to the DNC servers.
Either the DNC is lying or the Obama-era FBI head (Comey) and DHS head Johnson are. And if she’s not the liar, were the DNC
servers actually hacked by the Russians or anyone at all?
Some believe that the murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich was the source for Wikileaks head Julian Assange, giving him access to
the emails which, inter alia, revealed the DNC plot to deny Bernie Sanders the party’s nomination. There was an interesting
report on that murder this week. The crime-profiling project at George Washington University, aided by forensic experts issued a
little-publicized report on the Rich murder.
After a three-month review and investigation into the death of Seth Rich, The Profiling Project notes the
following:
1. Seth’s death does not appear to be a random homicide
2. Seth’s death does not appear to be a robbery gone bad
3. Seth death was more likely committed by a hired killer or serial murderer
4. There may be additional video surveillance of the crime and crime scene
5. The resolution of prosecuting the individual(s) responsible appears to be hindered both actively and passively
6. Seth’s killer(s) most likely remains free within the community"
In sum, the “Russian collusion” story was fabricated upon a foundation that the Russians “hacked” the DNC servers, the federal
agencies involved in investigating such matters say the DNC denied them access to their servers to examine them, but the head of
the DNC vehemently denies they ever contacted her about the suspected “hacking” or sought access to the servers. Someone,
whom independent investigation indicates was a professional killer, murdered the chief insider suspect for the leaked emails on
those servers and the search for the killer is being hindered “actively and passively.”
I never bother reading spy and mystery novels anymore -- real life events are far more intriguing to me.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) blasted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Thursday for lying about President Donald Trump being under investigation when he knew otherwise.
Senator Grassley showed his disgust for the Democrat party, the fake news media and James Comey for continuing to mislead the public about President Trump being under investigation. James Comey refused to declare to the public that President Trump was not under investigation and Chuck Schumer continued to publicly state he was when he knew otherwise.
Grassley: “After that meeting, I publicly called for Mr. Comey to tell the public what he had told us about whether President Trump was under investigation. The public had a right to know. Mr. Comey told me and other Congressional leaders that President Trump was not under investigation. He even told the President himself–repeatedly. But, Mr. Comey didn’t listen to my request for transparency. He didn’t listen to the President’s request. Only months later has the truth finally come out.”
“So the media was wrong. So the Democrats were wrong. So the wild speculation and conspiracy theories ended up harming our country. They played right into Russia’s hands. And how did we all learn about this truth? In President Trump’s letter removing Mr. Comey from office.”
Tucker Carlson argues gun control with gun control advocate in light of Seattle's gun tax backfiring. (Image source: YouTube)
Fox News host Tucker Carlson took on a gun control advocate on his show Friday over Seattle’s recent gun tax and its apparent failure to quell gun violence, and instead, backfire completely.
In 2015, Seattle implemented a “gun violence tax,” which aimed to reduce the amount of gun violence in its city limits. The tax imposed a $25 tax for every firearm purchased and a $.05 tax for every round of ammunition bought within the city limits. The tax has hurt small business owners in the city that own gun stores and has even forced many of them to lay off workers, move to the suburbs or completely shutdown altogether.
But new reports indicate the law hasn’t worked the way it was intended to. In fact, violence has increased in Seattle and murders have doubled this year. Carlson said it proves the law has backfired. Gun control advocate Mark Glaze disagreed.
Glaze said the purpose of the law was to help fund studies of gun control and not to end gun violence like Carlson allegedly claimed. However, Carlson said that isn’t what he claims.
“I’m merely noting the obvious, which is the gun tax didn’t make the city any safer,” Carlson said. “What’s the point of any of this…if it doesn’t make the city any safer? That’s the whole point. Right?”
Glaze responded by accusing the “gun lobby” of preventing the federal government from allocating funds to study gun violence, so Seattle created their tax in order to do it themselves. But Carlson wanted Glaze to address the real facts of the matter.
“Again, the whole point of all of this…is to reduce gun violence — and it doubled [in Seattle],” Carlson said. “So it’s hard to take you or people like you seriously if you don’t let the data drive your conclusions. And the date here are really clear, crystal clear. This didn’t work, so why would you still support it?”
Glaze again reiterated his claim that no person in Seattle thought the gun tax would drive down gun violence, but Carlson quickly called out him out.
“That’s not true,” the Fox host interrupted. “They didn’t say ‘we’re gonna end all gun violence,’ but they said it would make it a safer city — and the city got more dangerous.”
Glaze then tried to move the conversation along to discuss control measures that he alleged the public “wants.” He said that instead of a gun tax, Seattle should implement a ban on “semi-automatic” rifles with “high capacity” magazines, alleging that gang members “most often” use them to commit acts of gun violence while drawing a connection to the weapon used to nearly assassinate House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) earlier this month.
But once again, Carlson was quick to throw a time-out on the field.
“But your numbers are just wrong,” Carlson replied. “Actually, a relatively small percentage of murders in this country are committed with rifles of any kind. They’re almost all committed with handguns.”
“So I know these guns may look scary, and they send you guys into a frenzy because they’re terrified-looking, but they don’t actually drive the problems. So again, you’re wrong,” he explained.
Given the number of firearms in America — which is believable to be several hundred million — Carlson said the “truth” of the matter is the only way gun control advocates will get what they want is through gun confiscation.
Glaze suggested the federal government buyback Americans’ guns in order to dramatically reduce the number of firearms in the country similar to what Australia did. But Carlson noted that Australia’s gun “buyback” wasn’t voluntary and was actually gun confiscation.
“That’s not true, that’s not true,” Carlson said. “They didn’t buy them back. They confiscated them by force. You had no option. It wasn’t voluntary. If you tried that in this country, you would have a civil war in about 10 minutes.”
“Is that the plan? To take people’s guns by force?” Carlson questioned.
Glaze responded by alleging two-third of American gun owners would willingly give up their firearms in a government buyback.
Pham Minh Hoang is led from a courtoom in 2011 after being jailed for three years: he has now been stripped of his citizenship and deported (AFP Photo/Vietnam News Agency)
A Vietnamese dissident blogger with dual French citizenship arrived in Paris on Sunday after he was stripped of his birth nationality by authorities in the one-party state and deported.
Former mathematics lecturer Pham Minh Hoang was put on a plane to Paris late Saturday, weeks after his Vietnamese citizenship was revoked -- a rare move that has sparked outrage among critics of the communist government who accuse it of quashing dissent by any means available.
"I am very sad," Hoang told AFP by phone after his arrival in Paris.
"I tried to do the best I can but today I lost the battle," he said, adding he would continue fighting for democracy in Vietnam.
Hoang said police surrounded his house on Friday night and took him away with no prior warning.
He met French consular officials and a lawyer before his deportation but was unable to say goodbye to his wife Le Thi Kieu Oanh.
"I feel totally defeated... when my husband left, I couldn't say any farewell words, I also feel very angry," Oanh told AFP.
After speaking to Hoang on arrival in France, Oanh said she was at least reassured he no longer faced political persecution.
While authoritarian Vietnam routinely jails critics of its regime, 62-year-old Hoang is the first Vietnam-based dissident to have his citizenship revoked in recent history.
Human Rights Watch called the revocation an "unprecedented and shocking action".
"(It) crosses many human rights red lines on freedom of expression, right to nationality and exercise of basic civil and political freedoms," HRW said in its statement.
Hoang found out his Vietnamese citizenship had been stripped early this month after he received a letter dated May 17 and signed by the president, a decision he unsuccessfully tried to appeal.
He was convicted in 2011 of attempted subversion for publishing a series of articles which prosecutors said were aimed at overthrowing the government.
Hoang was released from jail after 17 months and ordered to serve three years of house arrest. He continued to post articles critical of the government on social media following his release from prison.
Hoang moved to France in 1973 and lived there for 27 years before returning to Vietnam to work as a mathematics lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Ho Chi Minh City.
He told AFP this month he had to stay in Vietnam to care for his disabled brother and elderly mother in law, whom his wife will now look after.
A secretive Washington firm that commissioned the dubious intelligence dossier on Donald Trump is stonewalling congressional investigators trying to learn more about its connections to the Democratic Party.
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month threatened to subpoena the firm, Fusion GPS, after it refused to answer questions and provide records to the panel identifying who financed the error-ridden dossier, which was circulated during the election and has sparked much of the Russia scandal now engulfing the White House.
What is the company hiding? Fusion GPS describes itself as a “research and strategic intelligence firm” founded by “three former Wall Street Journal investigative reporters.” But congressional sources says it’s actually an opposition-research group for Democrats, and the founders, who are more political activists than journalists, have a pro-Hillary, anti-Trump agenda.
“These weren’t mercenaries or hired guns,” a congressional source familiar with the dossier probe said. “These guys had a vested personal and ideological interest in smearing Trump and boosting Hillary’s chances of winning the White House.”
Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.
More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.
In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.
Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.
Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Fusion GPS said the firm’s work is confidential.
Sources say Fusion GPS had its own interest, beyond those of its clients, in promulgating negative gossip about Trump.
Fritsch, who served as the Journal’s bureau chief in Mexico City and has lectured at the liberal Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, married into a family with Mexican business interests. His wife, Beatriz Garcia, formerly worked as an executive at Grupo Dina, a manufacturer of trucks and buses in Mexico City that benefits from NAFTA, which Trump opposes.
Fritsch’s Fusion GPS partner Thomas Catan, who grew up in Britain, once edited a business magazine in Mexico, moreover. A third founding partner, Glenn Simpson, is reported to have shared dark views of both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Before joining Fusion GPS, Simpson did opposition research for a former Clinton White House operative.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is also investigating whether the FBI has wrongly relied on the anti-Trump dossier and its author, Christopher Steele — the old spy who was hired by Fusion GPS to build a Russia file on Trump — to aid its ongoing espionage investigation into the Trump campaign and its possible ties to Moscow.
The FBI received a copy of the Democrat-funded dossier in August, during the heat of the campaign, and is said to have contracted in October to pay Steele $50,000 to help corroborate the dirt on Trump — a relationship that “raises substantial questions about the independence” of the bureau in investigating Trump, warned Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
Senate investigators are demanding to see records of communications between Fusion GPS and the FBI and the Justice Department, including any contacts with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, now under congressional investigation for possibly obstructing the Hillary Clinton email probe, and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, who is under investigation by the Senate and the Justice inspector general for failing to recuse himself despite financial and political connections to the Clinton campaign through his Democrat activist wife. Senate investigators have singled out McCabe as the FBI official who negotiated with Steele.
Like Fusion GPS, the FBI has failed to cooperate with congressional investigators seeking documents.
Steele contracted with Fusion GPS to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia starting in June 2016, whereupon he outlandishly claimed that Hillary campaign hackers were “paid by both Trump’s team and the Kremlin” and that the operation was run out of Putin’s office. He also fed Fusion GPS and its Hillary-allied clients incredulous gossip about Trump hating the Obamas so much that he hired hookers to urinate on a bed they slept in at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton, and that Russian intelligence recorded the pee party in case they needed to blackmail Trump.
Never mind that none of the rumors were backed by evidence or even credible sourcing (don’t bother trying to confirm his bed-wetting yarn, Steele advised, as “all direct witnesses have been silenced”). Steele reinforced his paying customers’ worst fears about Trump, and they rewarded him for it with a whopping $250,000 in payments.
But it’s now clear his “intelligence reports,” which together run more than 35-pages long, were for the most part worthless. And the clients who paid Fusion GPS (which claims to go “beyond standard due diligence”) for them got taken to the cleaners.
Steele’s most sensational allegations remain unconfirmed. For instance, his claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen held a “clandestine meeting” on the alleged hacking scheme in Prague with “Kremlin officials” in August 2016 unraveled when Cohen denied ever visiting Prague, his passport showed no stamps showing he left or entered the US at the time, witnesses accounted for his presence here, and Czech authorities found no evidence Cohen went to Prague.
Steele hadn’t worked in Moscow since the 1990s and didn’t actually travel there to gather intelligence on Trump firsthand. He relied on third-hand “friend of friend” sourcing. In fact, most of his claimed Russian sources spoke not directly to him but “in confidence to a trusted compatriot” who, in turn, spoke to Steele — and always anonymously.
But his main source may have been Google. Most of the information branded as “intelligence” was merely rehashed from news headlines or cut and pasted — replete with errors — from Wikipedia.
In fact, much of the seemingly cloak-and-dagger information connecting Trump and his campaign advisers to Russia had already been reported in the media at the time Steele wrote his monthly reports.
In the same August report, for example, Steele connected a Moscow trip taken by then-Trump campaign adviser Michael Flynn to “the Russian operation” to hack the election. But there was nothing secret about the trip, which had taken place months earlier and had been widely reported.
And there was nothing untoward about it. It was a dinner celebrating the 10th birthday of Russian TV network RT, and Flynn sat at the same table with Putin as US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
The real question is why anyone would take anything in the sketchy report seriously.
But even the CIA gave it credence. The dossier ended up attached to a Top Secret intelligence briefing on Russia for President Obama, even though his intelligence czar last month testified “We couldn’t corroborate the sourcing.” The FBI, moreover, has been using it for investigative leads on Trump associates like Carter Page, even though former FBI Director James Comey this month described the dossier as “salacious and unverified.”
And of course, Democratic leaders in Congress keep referring to it to cook up more charges against Trump, while liberal media continue to use it as a road map to find “scoops” on Trump in the “Russiagate” conspiracy they’re peddling — still hoping against hope that the central thrust of the report — that Trump entered into an unholy alliance with the Russian government during the election — will one day prove true and bring about the downfall of his presidency.
Several Christian activist organizations have complained to the charity database GuideStar after it adopted the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center’s controversial “hate group” designations. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Several Christian organizations well known for their defense of traditional marriage have been labeled “hate groups” by GuideStar, one of the United States’ leading charity research groups.
GuideStar, which touts itself as a “neutral” database containing information on more than two million charities, has adopted the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center’s nonprofit designations. The charity site pointed to the “hateful rhetoric” during this “highly politicized moment” in American history as its reason for making the decision, The Associated Press reported.
Profiles for Christian organizations such as the Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, and the American Family Association now each feature a banner warning they were “flagged as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Image Source: GuideStar Screen Shot
Retired Army Gen. Jerry Boykin, vice president of the FRC, told Christianity Todaythat the new GuideStar policy is “another attack on conservative Christian organizations and individuals.” And in an interview with The Daily Signal, he said GuideStar is “becoming an arm of the ultra-left.”
In a phone interview Friday with TheBlaze, Dr. Chris Gacek, a senior fellow at the FRC, said the thinking behind GuideStar’s decision is nothing new, noting that left-leaning organizations like the SPLC have for years been conducting “guerrilla warfare against their political opponents.”
“This is part of a general operating plan, it seems, on the left and this part of it just kind of fell into place,” Gacek explained of GuideStar’s decision to integrate the SPLC’s classifications.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” designation is particularly controversial among Christian groups, given the liberal, Alabama-based watchdog applies the label to organizations that oppose LGBT agenda items, such as same-sex marriage.
According to its website, the SPLC sees these conservative groups as part of a “dangerous new narrative that portrays Christians who object to homosexuality on biblical grounds as victims of religious persecution.”
Moving forward, Gacek said the only way to defeat groups like the SPLC is to change public opinion about the progressive watchdog.
“These are pretty vicious people,” he said, “and once you unmask them, you can at least point average people in the right direction.”
So far, 46 organizations listed in the GuideStar database feature the SPLC’s banner at the top of their pages, which led dozens of conservative leaders to write a protest letter to GuideStar President and CEO Jacob Harold, voicing their “strong disagreement” with the new policy and describing the SPLC as “a hard-left activist organization.”
The idea that Harold may be sympathetic to the SPLC’s perspective is not all that surprising.
On GuideStar’s website, Harold is described as “a social change strategist,” and on Jan. 23, he tweeted a photo of himself participating in the progressive Women’s March against President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C.
In a statement, though, to The Daily Signal, a spokesperson for GuideStar said the charity portal is “reconsidering” how the SPLC data will be displayed on each charity’s profile.
The FRC, a pro-life, pro-traditional-marriage organization that works to “advance faith, family, and freedom … from a Christian worldview,” has a significant past with the SPLC. In 2012, the Christian group blamed the SPLC in part for an attack on its headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The letter to Harold noted that James Hodgkinson, the 66-year-old gunman who opened fire on Republican lawmakers during a June 14 baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, “liked” the SPLC on Facebook.
“Does it not concern you that within the past five years, the SPLC has been linked to gunmen who carried out two terrorist shootings in the D.C. area?” the letter read. “With these points in mind, we respectfully request that GuideStar return to its prior, nonpolitical approach to evaluating nonprofit organizations.”
Groups like the Liberty Counsel, which represented Kim Davis, the county clerk who in 2015 made headlines for refusing to sign same-sex marriage licenses, have also voiced their opposition to GuideStar’s use of the SPLC’s “hate group” label.
“The only purpose of providing the SPLC’s false and dangerous ‘hate group’ label is to push a liberal political agenda designed to hurt good organizations,” Mat Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, told Christianity Today.
And Greg Scott, a spokesman for Alliance Defending Freedom, which was just added to the SPLC’s “hate group” list in February, described GuideStar’s new policy as “so unfair,” calling the decision “highly partisan.”
“Normally,” he explained, “we wouldn’t waste time talking about it, but some mainstream news organizations take what the SPLC says as gospel. We see it more as tabloid.”
The letter was sent to Harold on Tuesday, and the conservative leaders are requesting a response within one week.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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