Major League Baseball Saturates Social Media with Black Lives Matter Posts


Major League Baseball’s social media accounts has gone full woke with dozens of Black Lives Matter posts from the league and players alike.

Pro baseball escaped from much of the anthem kneeling controversies in 2016 and 2017 by steering clear of wokeness for the most part. But that seems to be coming to an end if the league’s Twitter account is any indication of where baseball is headed.

MLB’s Twitter feed is filled with paeans to Black Lives Matter that have been given the MLB endorsement with official posts and re-tweets.

While the league had some that took a knee during the anthem over the years since former NFL player Colin Kaepernick began protesting during the anthem in 2016, the anthem protests largely went unobserved in baseball.

But, if the league’s Twitter account can be taken as indicative of the league’s direction, MLB may be signaling that kneeling during the anthem will be accepted and maybe even encouraged going forward.

On Thursday morning, the league re-tweeted a statement by St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty’s statements approving the act of kneeling during the anthem.

But Flaherty’s appreciation of protesting against the country during the anthem is far from the only Black Lives Matter-styled message on MLB’s official Twitter account. The account is liberally strewn with such messages.

There are many, many more like these above.

In a side note, the MLB account is also heavily pushing the idea of mask wearing:

In the end, it appears that any hope that Major League Baseball could remain relatively free of wokeness has been demolished.

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Pelosi Shrugs Off Mob Destruction in Baltimore: ‘People Will Do What They Do’

Nancy Pelosi

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on Thursday expressed indifference about mobs tearing down statues of historical figures across the country.

"People will do what they do," Pelosi said when asked about Baltimore’s statue of Christopher Columbus being destroyed by a mob. "I don’t even have my grandmother’s earrings."

She added that heroic figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln would "want us to be talking about the future," saying that when young people visit the Capitol she tells them, "Everything we do here is about you."

Pelosi’s comments come as rioters are pushing to tear down monuments and statues to important historical figures.

Baltimore police did nothing to stop vandals from dragging the statue down from its perch in Little Italy and throwing it piecemeal into the harbor on the night of July 4. Divers recovered bits of it Monday morning, organized by members of the Italian-American community in Baltimore, which is Pelosi’s birthplace.

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Kanye West: Removing God and Prayer from Schools Meant More Drugs, Murders, Suicide


Removing prayer from schools has led to “more drugs, more murders, more suicide,” said rap megastar and fashion mogul Kanye West, who unveiled his unfiltered thoughts on President Trump, God, and politics in an interview with Forbes just days after tweeting about his presidential bid.

“Reinstate in God’s state, in God’s country, the fear and love of God in all schools and organizations and you chill the fear and love of everything else, so that was a plan by the Devil to have our kids committing suicide at an all-time high by removing God to have murders in Chicago at an all-time high because the human beings working for the Devil removed God and prayer from the schools,” the “Follow God” rapper said. “That means more drugs, more murders, more suicide.”

West, who has teased a presidential run for years, formally announced his bid on Independence Day, writing, “We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision and building our future. I am running for president of the United States ! #2020VISION”

While his July 4 announcement provided little information, the “Jesus Is King” rapper confirmed to Forbes that the announcement applies to 2020 — not just 2024.

“Let’s see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it’s 2024—because God appoints the president. If I win in 2020 then it was God’s appointment. If I win in 2024 then that was God’s appointment,” West explained.

Bringing God back into key parts of society and culture appears to be fundamental to Kanye’s West vision”

“Trump is the closest president we’ve had in years to allowing God to still be part of the conversation,” he said of the president in the interview, adding that he is personally pro-life “because I’m following the word of the Bible.”

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Supreme Court Rules In Favor Of Religious Schools, Hospitals In Employment Discrimination Suit

In the second of two religious freedom decisions issued by the Supreme Court Wednesday, the court determined that religious employers, including schools, hospitals, and social service organizations, are, in fact, exempt from some aspects of employment discrimination law, where that law conflicts with their closely held beliefs.

The 7-2 decision had the same breakdown as the Supreme Court’s contraception mandate decision; Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s conservatives, as did Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer, and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The case before the court involved two Catholic schools, St. James Catholic School and Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic School, that dismissed employees who later sued.

Religious institutions typically have a so-called “ministerial exemption” allowing them more leeway in hiring and firing and certain protection from employment discrimination suits, but the case before the Supreme Court ultimately tested whether there was a specific limit to that “ministerial exemption,” particularly where the fired employees were not technically members of the church’s ministry.

“The decision covered two cases involving teachers at religious schools who claimed that they were discriminated against. In one, Agnes Morrissey-Berru alleged that a Roman Catholic school in Los Angeles did not renew her contract because of her age,” Fox News reported. “She taught a variety of subjects, including religion, but did not have any religious training or title prior to working there. She did take religious education classes at the school’s request once she was working there, and prayed with students.”

“In the second case, Kristen Biel — who has since died — claimed that she was let go from another Los Angeles Catholic school because she asked to take leave due to breast cancer treatment. She too taught multiple subjects including religion and prayed with students, despite not having a formal religious title,” the outlet added.

The Supreme Court affirmed that such religious organizations do, indeed, have broad protection against employment discrimination suits.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, noted that the Court could not carve out loopholes to the exemption, lest they risk making it moot.

“The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission,” Alito wrote. “Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate.”

“Take the question of the title ‘minister. Simply giving an employee the title of ‘minister’ is not enough to justify the exception. And by the same token, since many religious traditions do not use the title ‘minister,’ it cannot be a necessary requirement,” Alito added. “Requiring the use of the title would constitute impermissible discrimination, and this problem cannot be solved simply by including positions that are thought to be the counterparts of a ‘minister,’ such as priests, nuns, rabbis, and imams.”

As with the contraception mandate case, both Sotomayor and Ginsburg objected on grounds that the Supreme Court was granting too much leeway to religious institutions and, at the same time, undercutting individuals’ rights.

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Horowitz: Asian-American researcher fired from Michigan State administration for advancing facts about police shootings

The entire purpose of academic research is to discover the truth about vexing scientific and societal questions through the use of research and data. However, if the truth refutes a sacred political agenda, you can no longer publish such research or even cite it. The latest victim of this reverse Jim Crow witch hunt against truth in data and academic research is Stephen Hsu, vice president for research at Michigan State University.

On June 2, I cited a study from researchers at the Michigan State and the University of Maryland that concludes, “We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.” This study analyzed 917 officer-involved fatal shootings and found that that “per capita racial disparity in fatal shootings is explained by non-White people’s greater exposure to the police through crime.” The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year.

Tucker Carlson mentioned this study on his show later that evening, and it has since gained more notoriety. Naturally, one would expect those who believe in the “systemic racism in policing” blood libel to cite evidence why this study is wrong and to provide counter-evidence that supports their position. But debate is not their strong suit, just censorship.

The College Fix reports that Stephen Hsu was fired from Michigan State University for citing this study and posting an interview of one of its authors, Michigan State colleague Joe Cesario, on his blog. He posted the interview with Cesario on June 2, the same day I cited the study.

On June 25, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Graduate Employees Union was calling for Hsu’s head on twitter. The Journal pointed out that among other things, “The union also faulted him for having ‘directed funding to research downplaying racism in bias in police shootings.’”

As Professor Hsu told the WSJ: “The MSU professor who conducted that work, psychologist Joe Cesario, tells me that ‘we had no idea what the data was going to be, what the outcome was going to be, before we did this study.’ Mr. Cesario has collected evidence from a simulator and from real-world interactions between police and citizens. He concluded that ‘the nature of the interaction really matters the most, and officers were not more likely to be ready to shoot upon encountering a black versus white citizen.’

Commenting on the Wall Street Journal article in his blog, Professor Hsu noted, “Several years ago Cesario was granted a rare opportunity to study police shootings and officer behavior in simulators in a large city. My office provided him with a small amount of funding to create realistic simulator video of police stops and other situations. This is an important topic to study if we want to understand and improve policing.”

In his post publicizing his resignation, Hsu revealed that many academics wanted to sign a counter petition supporting him, but they “were afraid to sign our petition — they did not want to be subject to mob attack.”

He warned, “The victory of the twitter mob will likely have a chilling effect on academic freedom on campus.”

Now, even the authors of the Michigan State study are asking that their report be pulled, citing “continued misuse” by some commentators, particularly anti-crime advocate Heather Mac Donald, who used it in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “The Myth of Systemic Police Racism.” The authors now contend that the main point of the study was to examine the question of “Is there a relationship between the race of officers and the civilians they fatally shot?” not to “address the larger question of how race impacts the probability of being shot by police.”

However, the aforementioned quotes from their original study that there is no evidence of anti-black bias in police shootings and that, if anything, there is more of an anti-white bias, were stated clearly in their study. Do you really have confidence, given the motivation behind the firing of another Michigan State administrator, that this is really about some epiphany in the methodology of their study that they feel is now wrong? Heather Mac Donald cited this study the same way she did last month roughly a year ago in a column for National Review. Was there concern about misuse of their study in 2019, before cancel culture and before BLM’s agenda became a national religion?

Americans need to think long and hard about the implications of this story and the authenticity of academic and scientific research in general. If the only research that is allowed to be published is flat-earth “science” that is rooted in woke political sentiment and not in facts and data, then how can we trust anything published by the academic world? This is not just about policing. We are seeing the country turned upside down over assertions about COVID-19 that are already refuted by the public data we have about the lethality of the virus and how it spreads. The same censorship we see on policing and racial issues is playing out in coronavirus research. Policies that affect the safety, liberty, and way of life of the whole of the people are now being propelled by one-sided research.

Minnesota state Sen. Scott Jensen, who was named the Family Physician of the Year in 2016, announced in a video that he is now under investigation by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for questioning the official virus death count and implying that not all those people died because of COVID-19. That is a simple fact acknowledged by White House Coronavirus Task Force response administrator, Dr. Deborah Birx, and the Illinois health director. This is especially evident from an analysis of Minnesota’s death certificates. Yet Jensen is not allowed to speak the truth.

This cancel culture and censorship have now reached every aspect of our lives. You are no longer allowed to believe in common sense or traditional values, even outside your official job. Most recently, a Boeing executive was fired for having written an essay … in 1987 … opposing putting women in combat.

This culture has accelerated because Republicans, who serve as a fake opposition movement to the cultural jihad of the Left, have taught the modern-day book-burners that the minute they bark racism, sexism, or any other -ism, Republicans will run like a scared child from a barking dog. The time has come for a new movement that will stand our ground at all costs. There is no other choice.

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Religious Conservatives Notch Victories At Supreme Court On Birth Control Mandate, Bias Suits

Supreme Court Issues Orders And Releases Opinions

Social conservatives notched a pair of victories at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, as the justices sided with parochial schools and an order of Catholic nuns seeking exemptions from job bias lawsuits and the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate.

The first case involved a challenge to the Trump administration’s expansive conscience exemptions to a rule requiring that employers provide contraceptive coverage at no cost. The second case asked whether religion teachers at parochial schools are covered by the First Amendment’s "ministerial exemption." The bottomline judgment in both disputes was 7-2, with justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor in dissent.

The Trump administration’s victory in the ACA case in particular represents the fulfillment of a campaign pledge to religious conservatives. The president promised to enact an array of protections for houses of worship and faith-based employers, and the wide-ranging exemption to the contraception mandate was the watershed of those efforts. The administration’s policy has been dogged by legal challenges, however.

"My hope is that now we can move on toward an American public square in which we can have moral and doctrinal debates without seeking to force people into choosing between their deepest held convictions and the callings of service to which those convictions lead," said Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Wednesday’s decisions follow a landmark victory for LGBT rights in June, which commanded votes from two Republican-appointed justices. The ruling, which has far-reaching consequences for divisive social questions, left many religious conservatives embittered and came as surveys show President Trump’s support among evangelical voters dipping. Wednesday’s cases seem to show the rough outlines of a would-be culture war settlement, in which the justices recognize protections for religious liberty in tandem with progressive victories in related areas like abortion or trans access to women’s sports.

ACA allows broad exemptions for religious freedom under birth control mandate, Court says

The Trump administration created a comprehensive exemption from the birth control mandate in 2017, allowing employers and universities to opt out if they have religious or moral qualms. Pennsylvania and New Jersey immediately challenged the new rules in federal court, claiming states would have to cover the cost for workers who lose contraceptive coverage. A trial judge issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s policy, which the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld.

The administration said it crafted its rule to comply with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a federal law that defends against government-imposed burdens on religious practice.

Writing for the Court Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas said the ACA gives the executive branch broad discretion to decide what kinds of preventive services, like birth control, employers must cover. If the government has a lot of latitude to set coverage requirements, it follows that it has similarly wide authority to dictate exemptions, the Court said.

"The same capacious grant of authority that empowers [the administration] to make these determinations leaves its discretion equally unchecked in other areas, including the ability to identify and create exemptions from its own guidelines," Thomas wrote.

The Supreme Court has heard mandate-related cases twice before. In 2014 the justices ruled that family-owned businesses can opt out of mandatory contraceptive coverage by notifying the government of their religious objections. Alternative coverage would then be made available. Some religious entities found that process inadequate. Filing an opt-out form, they said, still made them complicit in the distribution of birth control, since coverage would be arranged through other channels. That sort of objection was before the Court in a 2016 case, but the justices punted after Antonin Scalia’s death left the bench shorthanded.

The Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns that operates about 30 homes in the United States for the elderly poor, has opposed the mandate in court for nearly a decade and was involved in Thursday’s case. The sisters expressed relief at the successful culmination of the years-long fight.

"Our life’s work and great joy is serving the elderly poor and we are so grateful that the contraceptive mandate will no longer steal our attention from our calling," said Mother Loraine Marie Maguire.

Court tosses bias lawsuit against Catholic schools, citing ministerial exemption

Wednesday’s other case involved the scope of the ministerial exemption, a First Amendment rule that allows religious entities to make employment decisions free from government rules, such as civil-rights laws.

The dispute involved two Catholic school teachers from California, Agnes Morrissey-Berru and Kristen Biel, who sued their former employers after they were allegedly dismissed for discriminatory reasons. Morrissey-Berru said she was fired due to age discrimination, while Biel—who has since died—said she was removed after disclosing a breast cancer diagnosis. The schools, Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. James, say their terminations were performance-related.

Justice Samuel Alito delivered the Court’s opinion, ruling that the schools were shielded by the ministerial exemption.

"When a school with a religious mission entrusts a teacher with the responsibility of educating and forming students in the faith, judicial intervention into disputes between the school and the teacher threatens the school’s independence in a way that the First Amendment does not allow," Alito wrote.

The cases are No. 19-431 Little Sisters of the Poor Saints Peter and Paul Home v. Pennsylvania and No. 19-267 Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru.

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Immigrant Who Fled Starvation, Became US Rep, & Makes $174,000 Says ‘System of Oppression’ Has To Go

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar should be an object lesson in the inherent promise of America. In 1990s, the now-Rep. Omar’s family left war-torn Somalia for the United States, finally settling in the Minneapolis area in 1995 when Omar was 12, according to The Washington Post. Omar went to North Dakota State University, a state…

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53% Of Restaurants Closed During COVID-Lockdown Have Shuttered Permanently, Yelp Data Shows

53% Of Restaurants Closed During COVID-Lockdown Have Shuttered Permanently, Yelp Data Shows

Tyler Durden

Wed, 07/08/2020 – 13:36

Authored by Alicia Kelso via RestaurantDive.com,

  • New research from Yelp shows that as of June 15, there were nearly 140,000 total business closures on the website since March 1. When compared to similar research released in April, which showed more than 175,000 business closures, these latest numbers indicate that more than 20% of businesses closed in April have reopened.

  • In March, restaurants had the highest numbers of business closures listed on the app compared to other industries, and the rate of closure has remained high. Of the businesses that closed, 17% are restaurants, and 53% of those restaurant closures are indicated as permanent on Yelp. Retail, however, is the hardest hit overall.

  • During the peak of the pandemic, the number of diners seated across Yelp Reservations and Waitlist dropped essentially to zero. In early June, numbers of diners seated are down 57% of pre-pandemic levels.

Predictions about the restaurant industry’s fate in a post-pandemic world have been abundant throughout the crisis. The National Restaurant Association estimated that 15% of restaurants could close, while Barclay’s estimate is more optimistic, predicting approximately 10% of restaurants will shutter permanently.  

Though it’s hard to find a silver lining in Yelp’s data, some predictions have been more dire still. In May, OpenTable said one in four restaurants were at risk for closure, for example, though those numbers focus on restaurants that use the reservations platform. Casual or fine dining sit-down restaurants and mom-and-pop concepts that are not well capitalized are expected to experience the brunt of this crisis. The Independent Restaurant Coalition, for example, forecast that as many as 85% of independent restaurants could permanently close by the end of the year. 

Yelp’s data does illustrate how some restaurants have been able to weather the storm, however, reporting a 10-fold increase in searches for takeout since March 10, for example. Takeout and delivery searches are up 148%, with Yelp predicting this off-premise trend could be here to stay. 

The research also shows that restaurants catering to group dining are making a comeback, with fondue searches up 123%, tapas bars up 98%, hot pot up 49% and buffets up 17%. Conversely, searches for cuisines that were popular during the past three months have begun to wane, including pizza (down 28%), Chinese (down 26%) and fast food (down 18%). 

While the pendulum has swung toward group dining, perhaps due to pent up demand after three-plus-months of safer at home orders and dining room closures in some markets, this interest could be short lived. This data was released before a number of states — New JerseyNew York and California among them — have delayed or re-closed some or all of their restaurants due to spiking coronavirus cases. Extended closures will further challenge operators who are burning through cash to maintain rent, labor and other costs. Restaurants with the strongest balance sheets and best access to capital have the best chance to endure sustained closures. The industry will favor the haves and weed out the have-nots, a trend that has become clearer as major chains like Taco Bell, Domino’s and McDonald’s have announced massive hiring sprees

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Ignored by American Media and the CDC: Children are SEVEN TIMES More Likely to Die from Seasonal Flu than the Coronavirus!

Elementary school children boarding school bus, Mount Shasta, California

In May the CDC equated the Wuhan coronavirus to the seasonal flu.

The  COVID-19 hospitalization rates are “similar to” those in the 65 and older category during “recent high severity influenza seasons.”

And the COVID-19 hospitalizations for children 17 and under is MUCH LOWER than the seasonal flu hospitalization rates during recent influenza seasons.

The COVID-19 is LESS DANGEROUS to children than a typical influenza!

And after four months of the pandemic we now know that children are SEVEN TIMES more likely to die from the flu than from the coronavirus!

Andrew Bostom posted this on Twitter.

And yet CDC officials are still scaring Americans over the reopening of schools this fall!
We need better medical officials.

The post Ignored by American Media and the CDC: Children are SEVEN TIMES More Likely to Die from Seasonal Flu than the Coronavirus! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Cold Comfort

Needs Some Warming here too (Canada)Before sunrise yesterday, the grass temperature in Washpool, “Sunny Queensland” was minus 1.7 deg.

There was no wind or sunshine. Wind turbines were becalmed and not even moonbeams energised our solar panels.

In that still, frosty darkness, green energy failed again. Not a watt came from becalmed wind “farms” or from subsidized solar panels cluttering many roofs (including ours). But we didn’t need our diesel in the shed – we were saved by trusty Old King Coal, with maybe a dash of gas or hydro. Reliable 24/7 generators provided pre-dawn power-by-wire for lights, heaters and coffee before we checked the frosty flats for new-born lambs.

Yet politicians, academics and the UN-ABC-BBC relentlessly push unreliable “green” energy, promising it will promote global cooling.

They should be careful what they wish for.

Neither sheep nor shepherds like frosty darkness.

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