It has to hurt the establishment media outlets when they have to publish something that is favorable to President Donald Trump. It seems that virtually everything put out by them is bashing him, so when they don’t it can come as a surprise.
The Associated Press, which has taken a decidedly anti-Trump tone since even before he was elected president, has just published good news for the commander in chief. The news agency’s own APVoteCast poll shows high support for Trump from veterans.
The poll revealed that “Nearly 6 in 10 military veterans voted for Republican candidates in the November midterm elections, and a similar majority had positive views of President Donald Trump’s leadership.” This high support may not come as a surprise to anyone on the right, but the left may find it bothersome.
Veterans on President Trump’s handling of Border Security – 62% Approval Rating. On being a strong leader – 59%. AP Poll. Thank you!
The poll was conducted by surveying “more than 115,000 midterm voters — including more than 4,000 current and former service members.” The bad news, and there is some, is that men supported Trump in a higher proportion than women, according to the poll.
That fits the left’s narrative, but does not match what many observe on social media and at rallies. Trump has a large base of support from women, but the poll respondents differed from that.
The poll results showed that of the respondents, “58 percent of female veterans disapproved of Trump, which is similar to the share of women overall (61 percent).” Despite this, overall Trump had a lot of support in regards to his job performance.
But that was not all. He also got a lot of overall support for the way he has handled the border security and wall issues.
Are you or do you know a veteran who supports President Trump?
That, too, likely will not go over well with the left. But Marine veteran Joey Jones appeared on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday with an explanation for why Trump has veteran support, particularly in those areas.
“We look at that places we’re deployed … and we see how the rest of the world lives, and when we come home we actually have a renewed respect for what this country is,” he said.
He also pointed to how Trump keeps his promises.
Then Jones spoke of other issues that would score well with veterans in regards to Trump.
“President Trump has gone a long way with things like VA accountability and the Veterans Choice (Program), but even those two things, they sound a lot better than they are effective.”
The current AP poll results are similar to those of Pew Research from May 2017. In that survey, “In April, 54% of those who have served in the military approved of his job performance. Trump’s job approval among the overall public was just 39%, according to the same survey.”
In that poll, Trump did well with veterans regardless of age. Level of education also did not seem to make a difference in regards to support for Trump from veterans.
Interestingly, among both veterans and the general public, Trump did have some support from Democrats, although it was small.
“The April survey found that 98% of veterans who identify as Republicans approve of Trump; among Democratic veterans, the share was just 10%. Among the public overall, 86% of Republicans approve of Trump, compared with only 9% of Democrats.”
Something interesting in the AP poll is that Trump also defied the left’s narrative with support across racial divides. Among white, 62 percent of veterans approve of him versus 49 percent of nonveterans, Latinos 53 of veterans versus 28 percent of nonveterans, and African-Americans, 22 percent of veterans versus 10 percent of nonveterans.
So it seems that no matter what narrative liberals attempt to push, Trump continues to defy the odds and prove them wrong.
This latest news may be argued by the left, but the facts remain that Trump has continued to garner support from a variety of demographical groups, including veterans and minorities.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
A young conservative commentator has sadly died, but her tragic loss didn’t stop one of the largest news agencies in the world from going political in its write-up.
On Friday, 26-year-old Bre Payton died unexpectedly due to complications from H1N1 flu and meningitis. Payton wrote for outlets including The Federalist, and often appeared on Fox News as a guest.
The young writer’s death is no doubt a shock to her family, friends, and colleagues. If for no other reason than basic dignity, it’s wise to treat these kinds of sad incidents with respect — but instead, The Associated Press found a way to weave the words “fake news” and “Donald Trump” into its coverage.
In an AP piece that was distributed to news wire subscribers all around the globe, the outlet strangely shoe-horned a very tone deaf paragraph into what should have been a somber piece.
“In recent appearances on Fox News, Payton had condemned what she called ‘fake news’ media coverage of President Donald Trump and ‘sexist and bigoted’ coverage of first lady Melania Trump,” the AP wrote.
How did Payton’s past commentary have anything to do with the story, and why did the news organization decide to jam quotes like “sexist and bigoted” in what was essentially an obituary for a young and vibrant woman?
That’s exactly what Daily Wire and Wall Street Journal contributor Kassy Dillon wants to know. In a post that has so far been liked and re-tweeted nearly 10,000 times, Dillon asked why the AP chose to run a non-sequitur political angle in a story about a dead woman.
“Why is this necessary AP?” she wrote. “Bre Payton died suddenly at a very young age and you’re politicizing it?”
Do you think the AP used poor judgement in their piece on Payton?
Others, including The Daily Caller editor Amber Athey, were equally baffled and disappointed by the AP’s apparent attempt to smear Payton and make her passing about specific views with its coverage.
“They knew exactly what they were doing when they reduced her body of work to that particular comment,” Athey posted. “One might even call it a dog-whistle. I feel sorry for them.”
They knew exactly what they were doing when they reduced her body of work to that particular comment. One might even call it a dog-whistle. I feel sorry for them.
Meanwhile, here is one example of how Payton’s passing was noted on Fox News.
Last one – @ShannonBream ended @FoxNewsNight by paying tribute to @Bre_Payton, adding that her family has started the Bre Payton Scholarship Fund that, as Bream explained, “will go towards those that are supporting young, rising, Christian leaders.” #RIPpic.twitter.com/aqemIG3XjZ
Many commenters online agreed that the AP had purposely tried to tie Payton to terms like “fake news” even while reporting her death.
“(I)t is about misrepresenting the work of a talented journalist and reducing it to a caricature,” pointed out one Twitter user.
They may have a point. It’s hard to imagine the AP or another worldwide news source treating the sudden death of, say, a young Huffington Post writer the same way.
If the tables were turned, would they include jabs about the last columns from a liberal writer while describing how she died?
It seems unlikely.
Pretending that a young woman enthusiastically building her career was nothing more than a few throw-away talking points about the president hints at the disdain much of the media has for anybody faintly conservative. The tinged filter through which they view the world has become so ubiquitous, they no longer notice their own prejudices.
This may not be the most egregious example of media bias, but it’s a memorable data point in the growing trend of skewed reporting.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Congresswoman elect Democrat-Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out a photo of her congressional office this weekend. She made the mistake of adding that she’s just your average girl from the Bronx.
? Don’t be fooled by the plaques that we got, I’m still / I’m still Alex from the Bronx ? pic.twitter.com/eO68AGxn2z
Oops.
Conservative Michael Knowles jumped on her tweet reminding the young socialist that she actually grew up in the elite neighborhood of Worchester miles from the Bronx.
Via Twitchy:
The average household wealth of the town in which you grew up is $1.2 million. https://t.co/4sLCLWfnCb
Michael Knowles hit her again and called her out for her repeated lies.
You didn’t grow up b/w 2 worlds. You grew up in Westchester then lied abt it then changed your bio when the lie was exposed. I grew up in the (⬇️affluent ⬆️diverse) neighboring town, spent many wknds in the Bronx. The difference: I don’t lie abt my upbringing to feign victimhood. https://t.co/uitqPocXU8
As The Gateway Pundit reported back in July 2018 — Ocasio-Cortez was forced to change her campaign bio page after she was caught lying about living in two worlds when she grew up in Worchester. She left the Bronx when she was five-years-old.
And Knowles hit her again.
Right, but @Ocasio2018 didn’t grow up in a city. She grew up in a small, homogenous, affluent suburb, where she attended excellent schools before pretending she grew up in the Bronx. https://t.co/rLaUCLp3R8
Google has rejected an application from conservative website The Gateway Pundit to appear in Google News search results.
In an email to the Gateway Pundit, Google claimed that it could not provide specific reasons why the site had been rejected. Instead, the tech giant provided two “common reasons for rejection,” although it would not say if they were the actual reasons the conservative website was rejected.
Per Google’s rules, publishers must submit an application to have their site appear in Google News search results. Once rejected, a publisher must wait 60 days before applying again.
Here is the message Google sent to The Gateway Pundit.
Review Complete: Site Rejected
Thanks for your interest in sharing your content via Google News. Unfortunately, we can’t include your website in Google News at this time.
Before you request inclusion again, review our content policies and technical guidelines. You can also visit the Google News Help Forum, where Google News employees and publishers often share helpful tips and expertise. Members of the forum may provide specific suggestions and feedback for your website.
While we can’t provide specific feedback for publishers seeking inclusion, here are the top 3 most common reasons for rejection.
Unoriginal content: Google News values original reporting. If your site shows syndicated content, make sure it’s properly attributes and makes up less than 50% of the content on your site. Advertising and other paid promotional material on your pages should not exceed your content.
Unclear ownership or authorship: Google News strives to show readers news from transparent sites with verifiable author information. Make sure site ownership, mission, and contact information (such as email and physical addresses and phone numbers) are available. Articles should display author information.
After a minimum of 60 days, you can submit your website for review again using the Request Inclusion in Google News button next to your site in the Publisher Center.
The Gateway Pundit does not appear to be in violation of the “unoriginal content” nor the “unclear ownership or authorship” criteria.
Both ownership and authorship on The Gateway Pundit is also more than clear. The website’s “about” page clearly identifies the owner of the site as Jim Hoft, the website has a contact form, and the vast majority of articles have an author byline. (You currently have to scroll past 52 articles with author bylines before you find a piece with an “Assistant Editor” byline — a common device occasionally used by publishers).
Then again, Google’s links to the violent far-left extremist “Antifa” movement are well-documented, and the company has so far failed to explicitly disavow the movement, despite its official classification as a domestic terrorist organization.
Feminist Amy Siskind tried to get progressive radio show host David Pakman fired from his adjunct professorship at Boston College after he dared to disagree with her social justice politics on Twitter.
In a tweet last week, Siskind argued that she would not support any white male candidates in the Democratic primary. “I will not support white male candidates in the Dem primary. Unless you slept thru midterms, women were our most successful candidate,” Siskind wrote. “Biggest Dem vote getters in history: Obama ‘08, Hillary ‘16. White male is not where our party is at, and is our LEAST safe option in 2020.”
I will not support white male candidates in the Dem primary. Unless you slept thru midterms, women were our most successful candidate. Biggest Dem vote getters in history: Obama ‘08, Hillary ‘16. White male is not where our party is at, and is our LEAST safe option in 2020.
Pakman fired back at Siskind’s tweet, arguing that is not progressive to preemptively disqualify white candidates. “Isn’t there something not progressive about pre-emptively dismissing a candidate based on their race and gender?” he said. “I feel like there’s a word to describe that…as a progressive, I won’t be jumping on board with that idea.”
isn’t there something not progressive about pre-emptively dismissing a candidate based on their race and gender? I feel like there’s as word to describe that…as a progressive, I won’t be jumping on board with that idea.
Siskind initially fired back by suggesting that Pakman was insecure and afraid of diversity. “Secure men are always at the fore-front of diversity. They don’t see their place or status threatened by lifting women, people of color, or people of all sexual orientations because they are comfortable with themselves,” she said.
Secure men are always at the fore-front of diversity. They don’t see their place or status threatened by lifting women, people of color, or people of all sexual orientations because they are comfortable with themselves.
The day after, Pakman reported that Siskind had called Boston College, where Pakman has previously served as an adjunct faculty member, and asked that he be terminated. Pakman explained that he could not be terminated because adjunct faculty member as rehired every semester and he is not currently teaching.
However, it is not entirely clear why Siskind thought that her disagreement with Pakman justified her call to Boston College.
In a comment to The College Fix, Siskind asked Pakman to apologize for daring to disagree with her. “Mr. Pakman can publicly apologize and explain his misstatements. I understand he has been corrected,” she wrote. “People are watching how he conducts himself.”
Pakman posted a video about the incident on YouTube on December 21. He played a voicemail from a conservative listener who commended Pakman for speaking out against intolerance on his own side.
It’s not clear what Amy Siskind’s beliefs are. Siskind supported John McCain and Sarah Palin in the 2008 election. As late as 2011, Siskind was arguing that Sarah Palin could be a strong leader for America.
The only reason I write articles attacking the irrefutable science of “climate change” is that I am paid such vast sums to lie. Besides the stupendous salary I get from Breitbart News, I also receive generous retainers from the oil industry and the tobacco industry, which, for reasons of crass right-wing ideology or crude economic self-interest, require me to churn out propaganda stories, day in day out, insisting that global warming is a myth.
No, not really.
I doubt even many leftists or greens would be stupid enough to believe that this were so.
First, most of the money is on the other side of the argument, so why would I bother shilling for relative paupers when I could be coining it in from the $1.5 trillion-plus Climate Industrial Complex churning out lucrative global warming bilge for the Guardian, the BBC, or the New York Times and being flown out to endless environmental conferences to sit on panels bewailing the selfishness and greed of people who fly too much?
Second, like a lot of journalists, I’m quite lazy. Why would I put myself through the stress of faking scientific articles and torturing data and pretending to take people like Michael Mann seriously when it’s so much easier just to print the truth?
Third, okay, so where are my stables, my string of hunters, my sexy girl groom and under groom, my villa in Tuscany, etc?
Fourth, anyone who would make such an allegation clearly doesn’t understand journalism. We don’t go into it for the money. Otherwise, by now, we’d have made the transition to corporate PR. We do it – bizarrely – because we actually believe in this shit we do.
Fifth, I would have been rumbled by now. Conservative commentators are always held to much higher standards by our left-biased media culture. So if I were just printing anti-global warming stuff for monetary gain, the flaws in my feeble arguments would certainly have been cruelly exposed by doughty left-leaning investigators, and everybody would have long since ceased to take my commentary seriously.
But suppose if, despite all the above, I really were doing it just to please my nefarious funding sources; here’s the clincher: it wouldn’t matter a damn anyway.
Why wouldn’t it matter?
Because facts are facts, logic is logic, truth is truth, and everything else is for the birds.
The claims I make in my pieces are verifiable, well sourced, often illustrated with helpful graphs, linked to scientific studies, and abundant with quotations from experts in the field.
So whether I’m paid a billion dollars a day for writing this stuff or I’m doing it for free is entirely irrelevant. If you want to go ahead and refute my facts and my arguments, feel free to refute my facts and arguments. They’ll remain valid facts and valid arguments regardless of what you think of me personally or of my funding sources.
I mention all this by way of introduction to a fascinating debate I saw on Twitter recently, which I want to share with you because it goes to the heart of perhaps the biggest and most dangerous challenge to conservatives right now: our increasingly tough struggle to make our voices heard in a world which is trying to close us all down.
It started with a tweet by economist, philosophical thinker, and author, Jamie Whyte:
I am leaving the IEA as of 1 Jan 2019. I will miss it. But I won’t miss the endless “who funds you?” tweets. They reveal a profound misunderstanding of the kind of people who work at think tanks and what motivates them. And always irrelevant to the issue at hand. So stupid.
As listeners to my podcasts will know, the IEA, Institute of Economic Affairs, is one of my favorite London think tanks. From the fake news “gender pay gap” to the Nanny State’s war on sugar, salt, fat, fun, and freedom, the IEA is one of our greatest intellectual redoubts against the creeping menace of ever-bigger government.
That’s why it is constantly being plagued with the “Who funds you?” question from its leftist critics. They don’t like its arguments but find them too difficult to refute. So, instead, they opt for the smear tactic of making out that its arguments are somehow corrupted by its donors.
Whyte has written about this logical fallacy before. He calls it the “motive fallacy.”
As he puts it in his excellent book Bad Thoughts: “A man may stand to gain a great deal of peace and quiet from telling his wife that he loves her. But he may really love her nevertheless.”
Whyte reiterates this point with his usual clarity here:
Many people on Twitter wonder how they can trust me, gven that they do not know who funds me. But I have never asked for people to take my opinions on trust. If my arguments are no good, tell me where they go wrong. My income and its sources are irrelevant.
Yes. So why is it that the people on the left – and it is almost always people on the left – cannot understand this?
And I’m not just talking about stupid or NPC-level people on the left, either.
Here is a left-leaning commentator and author I normally admire weighing into the fray. His name is Jeremy Duns, and one of the reasons I usually respect him is that he strives hard not to let his instinctive political impulses cloud his judgment. For example, he has proved an extremely trenchant critic of the Corbynista sock puppet, Owen Jones – an easy thing for those of us on the right to do but a much braver and more original line for someone on the left to take:
His claim to be asking to be judged on the strength of his arguments is nonsense. They publish research. Concealing funding is a masssive red flag, pretending conflicts of interest don’t exist even more so.
Eh? The point is that declarations of conflict of interest are there for a reason – it’s not up to the reader to work them out or investigate them, as this works on trust. If you simply refuse to say who funds you, you are essentially boasting about a conflict of interest.
What a tragically pettifogging point on which to stake your credibility as an impartial, thoughtful commentator.
Sure, part of what Duns is arguing here is trivially true: research can be corrupted by funding sources (as we see a lot in, for example, the global warming industry, where so much “peer-reviewed” lol research confirms what the alarmist paymasters wish to hear); if someone refuses to disclose their funding sources, then, yes, that would indeed prompt any neutral observer to be more wary about taking his “facts” at face value.
But so what?
In no wise does this refute Whyte’s fundamental point: arguments stand or fall on their own logic, not on the motives or funding or “bad faith” of the people who make them.
This might seem a fairly abstruse philosophical point on which to base a 1,500-word article at a time of year when most of us are still struggling to cope with our Christmas hangovers and our preparations for the onslaught of New Year.
Actually, though, I’d say it’s key to almost everything that matters – perhaps the most important struggle of our times: the battle to preserve plurality of speech.
If you’re on the left – as the IEA’s critics are – you’re never going to find yourself silenced because of your politics. Not in the politically correct West, at any rate. You’ll be welcomed in academe, in the media, in politics, in big business, in the law – all of which are now fully on board with the identity politics/social justice/communitarian agenda.
If you’re on the right, on the other hand, your every thought and deed is a microaggression potentially punishable by loss of income, loss of credit rating, loss of social acceptability, loss of freedom. Just one expression of an idea that contradicts the politically correct status quo can get you thrown off Twitter or demonetized by Patreon or kicked out of your job or denied promotion or refused work in the first place.
So crushingly victorious has the left been in the culture wars, indeed, that many intelligent, reasonable people out there – Jeremy Duns clearly being one of them – have come to accept its tyrannical hegemony as normality.
Apparently, it hasn’t even occurred to Duns that there might be very good, morally unimpeachable reasons why an organization like the IEA or the Global Warming Policy Foundation may wish to keep its donor list secret. And the reason it wouldn’t have occurred to him – and his ilk – is because, being on the left, he is never once in his life going to experience the kind of prejudice, discrimination, and persecution that is becoming routine for those of us on the right.
Try earning a living as a conservative journalist, Jeremy, in a climate where even once-conservative newspapers are now squeamish about publishing opinions that the shrill, resurgent left has successfully but unjustly branded “hard right.”
Try getting a novel published when – as you are, Jeremy – you are cursed with being white, educated, and middle class, only with the added killer handicap that your politics are deemed insufficiently woke by the social justice warriors who dominate the publishing industry.
Try – ditto – getting yourself heard on TV, except as the token right-wing loon to be doughnutted on a panel by a socialist, a green, and a feminist.
Try making a crust as a vidcaster or a podcaster or a blogger when, if you’re even remotely conservative, YouTube will demonetize your content and Patreon will deny donors the chance to support you.
Try being paid to articulate and promulgate free market ideas in a scholarly, published way unless you work within the security of a free market think tank.
Yes, I’m quite, quite sure that the people and organizations who fund free market think tanks have powerful reasons for doing so, sometimes ideological, sometimes financial. But the same goes for the people and organizations that fund left-wing think tanks. The only difference is that the latter are not held up to nearly the same degree of scrutiny.
We on the right may deplore the cynicism and hypocrisy and self-serving nature of the likes of George Soros or Tom Steyer in the leftist causes they choose to fund. But we’re not so ideologically blinkered as to imagine that “funded by Soros” or “funded by Steyer” or “funded by the Russians” (as so much anti-fracking industry propaganda is) constitutes an argument sufficiently strong to make our case. Sure, it’s a bit of helpful color, circumstantial evidence which may enhance the case for the prosecution – or at least prompt like-minded readers to raise their eyebrows in sympathy with our line of attack. But we’d never expect our audience to view it as the clincher because that just wouldn’t be intellectually tenable. It would be as fatuous as trying to insist that dogs are all hateful because Hitler was very fond of his.
For the left, on the other hand, “Who funds you?” is more than sufficient to act as judge, jury, and executioner.
There are a number of reasons why the left does this, one being that it has a completely different mindset than the right – one based on emotion and “the narrative,” rather than on facts and logic. For, say, Antifa or Momentum or your average leftist Twitter bloviator, rightists are so evil that there’s no need to refute their arguments; merely to point and shriek at how wicked they are is more than adequate.
But the main reason the left does it is simply because it can.
“Who funds you?” is not a valid criticism or a credible argument. It means little and proves nothing. Those who care about the future of our civilization, be they on the right or the left, need to recognize it for the ugly, dishonest, mean-spirited, low down, and dirty tactic it truly is: and cover their faces in shame, Jeremy, for ever having imagined otherwise.
The brief article explains how communist societies use propaganda to control the population.
Th author Donald McClarey included this quote:
“In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”
Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels)
This quote clearly describes the actions and intent of today’s mainstream liberal media in America.
The goal of the US mainstream media and the tech giants in Silicon Valley is not to inform or report the truth but to deceive and control.
The best example of this in recent memory is the liberal media’s outlandish defense of CNN’s Jim Acosta after he was banned from the White House press corps.
In early November CNN’s rude and boisterous reporter Jim Acosta was suspended from covering the White House over his disruptive and abusive conduct during the president’s press conference.
Video shows Acosta hacking a White House intern’s arm with enough force to push her arm down and knock her off balance.
CNN said the video of Jim Acosta was doctored.
The White House video originally posted by Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars — WAS CLEARLY NOT DOCTORED!
It wasn’t and it was CLEAR to anyone who compared the two videos that they were not doctored.
Yet the liberal media pushed the complete lie that you were seeing two different videos!
Paul Joseph Watson proved his video that came under attack by the liberal media WAS NOT DOCTORED!
Here’s the video that proves I did not “doctor” or “speed up” the Acosta video, as some media outlets claim. I merely zoomed in.
Nice try to distract from Acosta’s behavior, but this kind of dishonesty is why the media has a massive trust issue.
Still the media pushed the outlandish lie that the video was doctored.
Today the liberal mainstream media is showing us who they are — shameless liars and Communists.
Don’t fall for their propaganda!
Featured image — Czech farmers’ communist propaganda
Comments
As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. The same applies to trolling, the use of multiple aliases, or just generally being a jerk. Enforcement of this policy is at the sole discretion of the site administrators and repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without warning. Guest posting is disabled for security reasons.
On Friday, conservative writer and pundit Bre Payton tragically passed away at just 26 years old from a sudden illness.
A rising star on the Right, Bre worked as a staff writer at The Federalist, co-hosted the "Problematic Women" podcast, and was a frequent guest on outlets like Fox News Channel, Fox Business Channel, and One America News Network.
President Trump Blames Democrats for Deaths of Migrant Children
by Kristinn Taylor December 29, 2018
President Trump blamed Democrats for the recent deaths of migrant children in Border Patrol custody, saying on Twitter Saturday that the immigration policies of the Democrats and their refusal to support a border wall encourage migrants to try to enter the U.S. illegally.
Screen image from December 25, 2018, during partial government shutdown over border wall funding.
“Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two……..children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard & getting so little credit!”
Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two…..
…children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard & getting so little credit!
A record number of migrant children are pouring over the Southern border this month, with a reported 24,000 just in the first three weeks of December. DHS reports many migrants, including children, are sick when caught. Two migrant children from Guatemala have died with flu-like symptoms in Border Patrol custody in December.
While caravan migrants have been stopped at the Tijuana, Mexico side of the border with California, other migrants are swarming the borders of New Mexico and Texas, overwhelming the ability of the federal government to handle and process them. The government has released thousands of migrants on the streets of cities like El Paso because of a lack of capacity to hold them.
Trump is in a showdown with Democrats over a budget demand of $5 billion for border security and wall construction which the Democrats are refusing. The federal government is partially shutdown as a result with negotiations set to continue next week when the Democrats take control of the House while Republicans retain control of the Senate with an increased majority comprised of fewer turncoat GOP senators.
Comments
As a privately owned web site, we reserve the right to edit or remove comments that contain spam, advertising, vulgarity, threats of violence, racism, anti-Semitism, or personal/abusive attacks on other users. The same applies to trolling, the use of multiple aliases, or just generally being a jerk. Enforcement of this policy is at the sole discretion of the site administrators and repeat offenders may be blocked or permanently banned without warning. Guest posting is disabled for security reasons.
I must admit I sneered at all of the “First they came for Alex Jones …” posts right after he was banned from every social media platform save Geocities.
True, I found it anomalous that every major tech company found him in violation of its terms of service with felicitous simultaneity for doing the same things that he’d been doing for nigh on a decade and a half, but even most conservatives would agree Jones was sui generis as a fringe voice. I disagreed with the decision but couldn’t summon any outrage; Jones was a singular figure and surely the banning was a singular occurrence — even as it was obvious to anyone paying attention that social media was cracking down on conservative voices in more covert ways.
Never since my prediction that Ryan Leaf would get the best of Peyton Manning (made back in high school, I must note) have I made a prognostication so horribly, frightfully wrong. Jones was clearly a test case. When the media didn’t mind and conservative outrage was mild at best, they moved onto figures still perhaps on the fringes but certainly not in the territory Jones occupied. And then the figures weren’t fringe.
And then they started going after religious figures.
The figure in question would be the Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham. Franklin, as you probably know, is a well-known evangelist in his own right, although certainly not an uncontroversial one. If you don’t agree with his views on the Bible, that’s fine — but the justification for the interpretation is clearly in there and (at least to this observer) it’s being given out of conviction and not hate.
That wasn’t Facebook’s verdict, however. Graham apparently found himself banned from the platform for 24 hours over something he wrote. Two years ago.
“Last week I was banned from posting on @Facebook for 24 hrs because of a 2016 post about NC’s House Bill 2 (bathroom bill). They said the post went against their ‘community standards on hate speech.’ Facebook is making & changing the rules,” Graham tweeted.
Last week I was banned from posting on @Facebook for 24 hrs because of a 2016 post about NC’s House Bill 2 (bathroom bill). They said the post went against their “community standards on hate speech.” Facebook is making & changing the rules. 1/2 https://t.co/HYIgErnp3J
“@Facebook is censoring free speech. They’re making & changing the rules. Truth is truth. God made the rules & His Word is truth. The free exchange of ideas is part of our country’s DNA,” he added.
.@Facebook is censoring free speech. They’re making & changing the rules. Truth is truth. God made the rules & His Word is truth. The free exchange of ideas is part of our country’s DNA. You can read the post that Facebook took down last week here: 2/2 https://t.co/SIbgivZjTo
North Carolina House Bill 2 was a 2016 piece of legislation that required individuals to use bathrooms that corresponded with their biological sex. Critics called it a piece of anti-LGBT legislation, while supporters of the bill contended it was passed in response to a poorly written anti-discrimination act in the city of Charlotte that would have essentially mandated unisex bathrooms. The bill was later repealed after numerous boycotts.
On April 9, 2016, Graham made the post that led to his temporary banning.
“Bruce Springsteen, a long-time gay rights activist, has cancelled his North Carolina concert. He says the NC law #HB2 to prevent men from being able to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms is going ‘backwards instead of forwards,’” Graham wrote.
“Well, to be honest, we need to go back! Back to God. Back to respecting and honoring His commands. Back to common sense.
“Mr. Springsteen, a nation embracing sin and bowing at the feet of godless secularism and political correctness is not progress. I’m thankful North Carolina has a governor, Pat McCrory, and a lieutenant governor, Dan Forest, and legislators who put the safety of our women and children first! HB2 protects the safety and privacy of women and children and preserves the human rights of millions of faith-based citizens of this state.”
This may not be your opinion, and you’re welcome to be angry. Graham’s take is also entirely within the realm of civilized debate and defensible within a biblical framework. Is this what you believe Facebook ought to be banning?
I’d also like to point out that there were, no doubt, a wave of liberals who complained about the post when it was made in April 2016. If what Graham is saying is accurate, the only action taken against it was now — two years later, when the only people left scrutinizing the post could only be described as cranks who apparently see some worth in going through old social media entries of conservative figures they don’t like in the hope of finding something they thought was worth reporting.
And in 2018, they struck gold.
Do you think Facebook is biased against conservatives?
Graham linked a Fox News article about the vagaries of Facebook’s speech policies, which is worth reading but profoundly unsurprising. It’s a window into a corporate culture that bans someone for supporting separate bathrooms for each sex but — according to sources within Facebook — allows praise for the Taliban provided it has to do with the terrorist group’s agreement to a cease-fire.
What’s most important is the result of social media’s enforcement vagaries — namely, the banning of conservative figures on almost a weekly basis.
They at least gave excuses for Alex Jones and Gavin McInnes — Jones for TOS violations and attempts to circumvent bans, McInnes for his association with the Proud Boys. The excuse for James Woods’ lockout was so woeful — that a joke meme he posted could theoretically have influenced an election — I feel sympathy for whatever Twitter employee was tasked with writing it. When it came to pugnacious conservative pundit Jesse Kelly, they didn’t even bother giving an explanation when he was perma-banned, then they didn’t give much of an explanation when they restored his account, only denying it was a perma-ban. This isn’t even going into shadow-banning, a phenomenon for which an OED-sized work could plausibly be compiled.
Think Facebook is any better? Just ask Franklin Graham — who can get temporarily exiled for something that was just fine two years ago but is apparently morally noxious now.
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
