Author: 53percenter

A server in the no-go Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis was murdered by a customer who was allegedly unhappy at how long it took him to make a sandwich.

The fatal shooting occurred in Noisy-le-Grand at around 9 pm Friday at the restaurant Le Mistral in the evening, with witnesses and restaurant staff saying that the alleged gunman took out his weapon and shot a waiter after complaining that the preparation of his food was taking too long, Franceinfo reports.

The 28-year-old victim was initially shot in the shoulder but died soon after the shooting, even though emergency responders were able to get to the scene relatively quickly.

A historical analysis of the environmentalist movement released Monday revealed close ties between radical ecology, population control, and eugenics, which is still evident today in “ecofascism.”

An “ultra-violent strain of white-nationalism also embraces climate science,” states the Canadian activist Cory Doctorow in his piece exploring the racist roots of modern environmentalism.

“Several of the recent white nationalist mass killers have described themselves as ‘ecofascists’ and/or have deployed ecofascist rhetoric in their manifestos,” states Doctorow, which should not surprise anyone familiar with the ecology movement.

President Donald Trump on Monday renewed his call for the Federal Reserve to sharply reduce its interest rate target and accused its chairman of suffering from a “horrendous lack of vision.”

The tweets are the latest in Trump’s year-long feud with the Fed chairman. The president began publicly criticizing the Fed last summer, accusing it of hampering his administration’s efforts to ramp up economic growth.

…..The Fed Rate, over a fairly short period of time, should be reduced by at least 100 basis points, with perhaps some quantitative easing as well. If that happened, our Economy would be even better, and the World Economy would be greatly and quickly enhanced-good for everyone!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2019

America’s news media have blown their credibility. The 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, won office despite the best efforts of the major media outlets to defeat him, and now expects to use the media against themselves. Coming next: his dismissal of media accusations of racism. 

The full commitment of the New York Times to serving as a propaganda outlet to defeat President Trump was revealed by the recording of executive editor Dean Baquet addressing key staff members leaked to Slate.  In it he signaled that the failed effort to discredit Trump as an agent of Vladimir Putin will be succeeded by an effort to tar him as a racist. The newspaper that serves as pilot fish for the rest of the media has lost all credibility as a news-gatherer, and now functions as a pusher of themes designed to damage the re-election chances of the president. And everyone can now see it.

It was surprising to learn that the leader of the Times is so open. But even before this revelation, the American public already understood. Sharyl Attkisson’s syndicated television show Full Measure commissioned a poll from Scott Rasmussen on media credibility, and it revealed that the abuses have gone on so long that the public has caught on and discounts the garbage being offered to it in the guise of news. Attkisson discussed the results with Rasmussen last Sunday. A full recording of the broadcast is embedded below, along with the transcript, courtesy of Real Clear Politics. Tim Haines summarizes, but the full transcript or video is worthwhile:

Haines:

Sunday on “Full Measure,” host Sharyl Attkisson discussed a new poll showing a plurality of Americans think political media is more biased than it was five years ago. She talks with pollster Scott Rasmussen, who said: “We asked about national political reporters, are they credible, are they reliable? And you know, a little more than one out of three people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what’s happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia. Gee, that’s an interesting fact. I better check it myself.”

“The media has a huge credibility problem and it’s always had the problem,” he explained. “Oh, we talk about it differently today. Now we talk about it as a political bias. I think the issues have always been there. I mean, people were complaining about the bias of Walter Cronkite back in the 1960s.”

He continued: “78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened… If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that.

“So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information,” he concluded. 

Here is the video:

And here is the transcript:

SHARYL ATTKISSON: Today, we begin with a new Full Measure poll on the national news media. As you might expect: the results aren’t very good. For the media. Whether it’s coverage of the Russia investigation or the Covington High School kids, news consumers on all sides of the political spectrum report declining trust — in us. We turn to two experts to analyze the current Media Madness.

One need only sample lowlights from a single month to get a sense of the problem.

In January, a Seattle Fox affiliate aired a doctored video of President Trump.

President Trump: Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.

Buzzfeed: The comparison which shows Trump with an altered face and a looped licking of his lips

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a BuzzFeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

And a January article about Melania Trump in the Telegraph was followed by seven corrections an apology and an undisclosed payment to Mrs. Trump. One-sided narratives presented virtually unchallenged. National news quoting anonymous sources that turn out to be wrong.

The headline contains the most devastating part: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to congress.

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a Buzzfeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

The Washington Post took us “Inside the Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order”— only to later admit the article misreported Trump’s actions, a reported meeting had not actually occurred, and a conference call hadn’t happened as described.

FBI Director James Comey debunked a New York Times article about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff “senior Russian intelligence officials.”

And NBC News reported that Russian President Putin said he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite. It’s been a bad few years for media credibility.

A new Full Measure poll conducted for Full Measure by Scott Rasmussen finds: 42% of Americans believe national political news coverage is inaccurate and unreliable. Fewer— 38%—believe it’s accurate and reliable. And 52% say it’s worse compared to five years ago.

National political reporters also get poor scores. Only 26% of those polled say reporters carefully report the facts. 57% say reporters use news stories to promote their own ideological agenda.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen:

Rasmussen: We asked about national political reporters are, are they credible, are they reliable? And you know, a little more than one out of three people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what’s happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia. “Gee, that’s an interesting fact. I better check it myself.”

Sharyl: And what does that tell you?

Rasmussen: The media has a huge credibility problem and it’s always had the problem. Oh, we talk about it differently today. Now we talk about it as a political bias. I think the issues have always been there. I mean, people were complaining about the bias of Walter Cronkite back in the 1960s.

Sharyl: People forget about that.

Walter Cronkite: For it seems now more certain then ever that the bloody experience in Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

Sharyl: It is often argued that Donald Trump created this media environment where everybody hates the media. And then others say he simply understood that environment, and capitalized on it. Which is it you see?

Rasmussen: Oh, people have hated the media for a very long time

Trump: Fake news folks, fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories.

Rasmussen: Donald Trump capitalized on it. He understood it, but he’s not the first to do so. The first President Bush when he was campaigning, he actually got kind of aggressive with, I think it was Dan Rather, during an interview because a lot of Republicans weren’t sure he had the fire to, to be president.

President Bush 1: It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a re-hash on Iran. How would you like it if I judge your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?

Rasmussen: So he capitalized on that. But all you’re doing is tapping into a sentiment that’s already there and Donald Trump is playing the media but beautifully.

Rasmussen says his polling found a good recent example of how many today have come to regard— or disregard— the national media. The Covington High School pro-life students’ confrontation with a Native American activist at a Washington DC protest.

Rasmussen: When the story broke, of the students from Covington high school, we went out and polled right away when the story first broke and ask people what they thought. And as you would expect, liberals and conservatives had different views of whether the high school students acted inappropriately or somebody else did.

Sharyl: So to summarize, liberals probably thought the high school students who were pro-life behaved inappropriately and aggressively.

Rasmussen: Yes.

Sharyl: And Conservatives thought the Native American was the one who is inappropriate.

Rasmussen: Yes. And by the way, conservatives also thought the media was inappropriate.

ABC news: A group of teenagers, some Catholic high school students, seen wearing Make America Great Again hats, appearing to face off with Nathan Phillips – a 65 year old Native American.

Rasmussen: And then we had a week’s full of coverage. And as you recall, there was a lot more coverage that came out, uh, about the incident. A lot more videos and a lot more information. And a week later, nobody’s opinion changed.

Sharyl: I’m surprised by that because some reporters and in media even apologized that they had been too hard on the children at first or the high school students without knowing the full story.

Whoopi Goldberg: So many people admitted they made snap judgements before all these other facts came in.

Sharyl: But you’re saying the public at large, didn’t change their mind?

Rasmussen: That’s correct. The public at large made up their mind. They knew their sources

Sharyl: But the most overwhelming results came when we asked about the motivation of political reporters.

Rasmussen: 78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened.

Sharyl: Most people also seem to think reporters cannot be fair when it comes to their chosen political candidate.

Rasmussen: if a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that.

Sharyl: So most people think the reporter would cover it up because they like the person?

Rasmussen: Right, exactly. So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information.

Sesno: An actual report or professional reporter would yeah never do that.

Frank Sesno is a former CNN correspondent and bureau chief. As head of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, he routinely confronts declining public trust in the media.

Sesno: The public understands fundamentally what journalism should be. They don’t understand how it’s actually practiced. And that falls to news organizations in my view, to be more creative, more imaginative about how they’re engaging with their publics, to both explain what they do to defend what they do when it’s controversial and to be accountable for what they do if it’s wrong.

Sharyl: After 2016 when so many of us got the election so wrong, we promised a period of self-reflection and correction, have we done it?

Sesno: No, not enough. If we had done the self-reflection and correction better and more deeply, there would be more reporters reporting from more places across the country talking to more diverse audiences. We would not be so in tiredly focused at least in certain media channels and places on the Trump administration and the outrage of the moment. That being said, there is so much news from this administration. It’s kind of hard not to do that.

Trump: If we don’t get what we want, I will shut down the government.

Sharyl: In the era of the Trump presidency, can you point to a couple of things you think the media has done right

Sesno: I would start, actually, in the Trump era by calling out NPR. I think NPR has done an exceptional about getting outside of Washington and engaging other voices and people from different sides of the ideological divide to get their sense of what’s happening. would call out the New York Times and the Washington Post for making remarkable use of multimedia. So there’s a lot of good journalism and good media that’s taking place also that, that extends beyond the Trump administration. There is such a thing as beyond the Trump administration.

It may not seem like it as we move quickly into campaign 2020.

Sharyl: I guess we should warn people, hang on to their seat belt with 2020 campaign coming. What do you foresee in terms of media?

Sesno: Yeah, so here’s the next danger. The next is everybody for walks right off the cliff of coverage like they did last time. Obsessing over, you know, the, the candidate du jour, the moment, du jour. How will the media be able to arbitrate this mass of people who all want to be president so that the audience can follow it with some degree of clarity, and so that you neither fall into an oversimplified narrative, or a narrative that just revolves around the melodrama of who’s up, who’s down, and who’s making the most noise or tweeting the most.

America’s news media have blown their credibility. The 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, won office despite the best efforts of the major media outlets to defeat him, and now expects to use the media against themselves. Coming next: his dismissal of media accusations of racism. 

The full commitment of the New York Times to serving as a propaganda outlet to defeat President Trump was revealed by the recording of executive editor Dean Baquet addressing key staff members leaked to Slate.  In it he signaled that the failed effort to discredit Trump as an agent of Vladimir Putin will be succeeded by an effort to tar him as a racist. The newspaper that serves as pilot fish for the rest of the media has lost all credibility as a news-gatherer, and now functions as a pusher of themes designed to damage the re-election chances of the president. And everyone can now see it.

It was surprising to learn that the leader of the Times is so open. But even before this revelation, the American public already understood. Sharyl Attkisson’s syndicated television show Full Measure commissioned a poll from Scott Rasmussen on media credibility, and it revealed that the abuses have gone on so long that the public has caught on and discounts the garbage being offered to it in the guise of news. Attkisson discussed the results with Rasmussen last Sunday. A full recording of the broadcast is embedded below, along with the transcript, courtesy of Real Clear Politics. Tim Haines summarizes, but the full transcript or video is worthwhile:

Haines:

Sunday on “Full Measure,” host Sharyl Attkisson discussed a new poll showing a plurality of Americans think political media is more biased than it was five years ago. She talks with pollster Scott Rasmussen, who said: “We asked about national political reporters, are they credible, are they reliable? And you know, a little more than one out of three people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what’s happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia. Gee, that’s an interesting fact. I better check it myself.”

“The media has a huge credibility problem and it’s always had the problem,” he explained. “Oh, we talk about it differently today. Now we talk about it as a political bias. I think the issues have always been there. I mean, people were complaining about the bias of Walter Cronkite back in the 1960s.”

He continued: “78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened… If a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that.

“So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information,” he concluded. 

Here is the video:

And here is the transcript:

SHARYL ATTKISSON: Today, we begin with a new Full Measure poll on the national news media. As you might expect: the results aren’t very good. For the media. Whether it’s coverage of the Russia investigation or the Covington High School kids, news consumers on all sides of the political spectrum report declining trust — in us. We turn to two experts to analyze the current Media Madness.

One need only sample lowlights from a single month to get a sense of the problem.

In January, a Seattle Fox affiliate aired a doctored video of President Trump.

President Trump: Some have suggested a barrier is immoral.

Buzzfeed: The comparison which shows Trump with an altered face and a looped licking of his lips

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a BuzzFeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

And a January article about Melania Trump in the Telegraph was followed by seven corrections an apology and an undisclosed payment to Mrs. Trump. One-sided narratives presented virtually unchallenged. National news quoting anonymous sources that turn out to be wrong.

The headline contains the most devastating part: President Trump directed his attorney to lie to congress.

The same month, Special Counsel Robert Mueller refuted a Buzzfeed bombshell that falsely claimed Trump directed his ex-lawyer to lie to Congress.

The Washington Post took us “Inside the Battle Over Trump’s Immigration Order”— only to later admit the article misreported Trump’s actions, a reported meeting had not actually occurred, and a conference call hadn’t happened as described.

FBI Director James Comey debunked a New York Times article about supposed contacts between Trump campaign staff “senior Russian intelligence officials.”

And NBC News reported that Russian President Putin said he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite. It’s been a bad few years for media credibility.

A new Full Measure poll conducted for Full Measure by Scott Rasmussen finds: 42% of Americans believe national political news coverage is inaccurate and unreliable. Fewer— 38%—believe it’s accurate and reliable. And 52% say it’s worse compared to five years ago.

National political reporters also get poor scores. Only 26% of those polled say reporters carefully report the facts. 57% say reporters use news stories to promote their own ideological agenda.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen:

Rasmussen: We asked about national political reporters are, are they credible, are they reliable? And you know, a little more than one out of three people say yes. When we ask about Wikipedia, we get the exact same answer. So what’s happening is we have a world where people look at journalists like they look at Wikipedia. “Gee, that’s an interesting fact. I better check it myself.”

Sharyl: And what does that tell you?

Rasmussen: The media has a huge credibility problem and it’s always had the problem. Oh, we talk about it differently today. Now we talk about it as a political bias. I think the issues have always been there. I mean, people were complaining about the bias of Walter Cronkite back in the 1960s.

Sharyl: People forget about that.

Walter Cronkite: For it seems now more certain then ever that the bloody experience in Vietnam is to end in a stalemate.

Sharyl: It is often argued that Donald Trump created this media environment where everybody hates the media. And then others say he simply understood that environment, and capitalized on it. Which is it you see?

Rasmussen: Oh, people have hated the media for a very long time

Trump: Fake news folks, fake news. Typical New York Times fake stories.

Rasmussen: Donald Trump capitalized on it. He understood it, but he’s not the first to do so. The first President Bush when he was campaigning, he actually got kind of aggressive with, I think it was Dan Rather, during an interview because a lot of Republicans weren’t sure he had the fire to, to be president.

President Bush 1: It’s not fair to judge my whole career by a re-hash on Iran. How would you like it if I judge your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York? Would you like that?

Rasmussen: So he capitalized on that. But all you’re doing is tapping into a sentiment that’s already there and Donald Trump is playing the media but beautifully.

Rasmussen says his polling found a good recent example of how many today have come to regard— or disregard— the national media. The Covington High School pro-life students’ confrontation with a Native American activist at a Washington DC protest.

Rasmussen: When the story broke, of the students from Covington high school, we went out and polled right away when the story first broke and ask people what they thought. And as you would expect, liberals and conservatives had different views of whether the high school students acted inappropriately or somebody else did.

Sharyl: So to summarize, liberals probably thought the high school students who were pro-life behaved inappropriately and aggressively.

Rasmussen: Yes.

Sharyl: And Conservatives thought the Native American was the one who is inappropriate.

Rasmussen: Yes. And by the way, conservatives also thought the media was inappropriate.

ABC news: A group of teenagers, some Catholic high school students, seen wearing Make America Great Again hats, appearing to face off with Nathan Phillips – a 65 year old Native American.

Rasmussen: And then we had a week’s full of coverage. And as you recall, there was a lot more coverage that came out, uh, about the incident. A lot more videos and a lot more information. And a week later, nobody’s opinion changed.

Sharyl: I’m surprised by that because some reporters and in media even apologized that they had been too hard on the children at first or the high school students without knowing the full story.

Whoopi Goldberg: So many people admitted they made snap judgements before all these other facts came in.

Sharyl: But you’re saying the public at large, didn’t change their mind?

Rasmussen: That’s correct. The public at large made up their mind. They knew their sources

Sharyl: But the most overwhelming results came when we asked about the motivation of political reporters.

Rasmussen: 78% of voters say that what reporters do with political news is promote their agenda. They think they use incidents as props for their agenda rather than seeking accurately record what happened. Only 14% think that a journalist is actually reporting what happened.

Sharyl: Most people also seem to think reporters cannot be fair when it comes to their chosen political candidate.

Rasmussen: if a reporter found out something that would hurt their favorite candidate, only 36% of voters think that they would report that.

Sharyl: So most people think the reporter would cover it up because they like the person?

Rasmussen: Right, exactly. So voters are looking at them as a political activist, not as a source of information.

Sesno: An actual report or professional reporter would yeah never do that.

Frank Sesno is a former CNN correspondent and bureau chief. As head of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University, he routinely confronts declining public trust in the media.

Sesno: The public understands fundamentally what journalism should be. They don’t understand how it’s actually practiced. And that falls to news organizations in my view, to be more creative, more imaginative about how they’re engaging with their publics, to both explain what they do to defend what they do when it’s controversial and to be accountable for what they do if it’s wrong.

Sharyl: After 2016 when so many of us got the election so wrong, we promised a period of self-reflection and correction, have we done it?

Sesno: No, not enough. If we had done the self-reflection and correction better and more deeply, there would be more reporters reporting from more places across the country talking to more diverse audiences. We would not be so in tiredly focused at least in certain media channels and places on the Trump administration and the outrage of the moment. That being said, there is so much news from this administration. It’s kind of hard not to do that.

Trump: If we don’t get what we want, I will shut down the government.

Sharyl: In the era of the Trump presidency, can you point to a couple of things you think the media has done right

Sesno: I would start, actually, in the Trump era by calling out NPR. I think NPR has done an exceptional about getting outside of Washington and engaging other voices and people from different sides of the ideological divide to get their sense of what’s happening. would call out the New York Times and the Washington Post for making remarkable use of multimedia. So there’s a lot of good journalism and good media that’s taking place also that, that extends beyond the Trump administration. There is such a thing as beyond the Trump administration.

It may not seem like it as we move quickly into campaign 2020.

Sharyl: I guess we should warn people, hang on to their seat belt with 2020 campaign coming. What do you foresee in terms of media?

Sesno: Yeah, so here’s the next danger. The next is everybody for walks right off the cliff of coverage like they did last time. Obsessing over, you know, the, the candidate du jour, the moment, du jour. How will the media be able to arbitrate this mass of people who all want to be president so that the audience can follow it with some degree of clarity, and so that you neither fall into an oversimplified narrative, or a narrative that just revolves around the melodrama of who’s up, who’s down, and who’s making the most noise or tweeting the most.

Speaking of being held down. Speaking of ‘cancel culture.’ Has there ever been as blatant a civil rights violation as this, found by a marketing company’s survey?

Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner found this:

American workers who like President Trump face sweeping bias against them, with some managers refusing to hire his supporters and those already employed facing discrimination and mockery, according to a new study.

And those who support Trump and who are already in the workplace face substantial mockery, including name-calling. The survey listed the responses to several examples of what pro-Trump workers face:

• 28%, joking about them.
• 23%, overly critical of them.
• 21%, being dismissive of them.
• 11% facing name calling.

One out of five!

This is precisely what drove voters to elect President Trump in 2016. It’s why they surprised pollsters as a ‘silent majority,’ declining to put Trump bumper stickers on their cars out of fear of leftist intolerance. Now this news may propel them to elect him again in 2020 because conservatives have known for years that leftist intolerance in every area of the American establishment is quite real, including kin its routes to opportunity and paths to success, such as in hiring. The perpetrators now are so comfortable doing it they’re admitting they’re doing it to pollsters. It signals that this cancel-culture among the establishment elites is out of control, and in effect is becoming a China-style social credit system.

What’s more, it not only exists among hiring managers, we also know it exists in the anteroom to hiring, in the college admissions system, which specifically rewards social justice warrior applicants over equally qualified others and who knows what other kind of discrimination — Kyle Kashuv, call your office. And if that is not enough, it very obviously extends to faculty hiring, which is uniformly leftist.

It all highlights a major civil rights issue no one’s talking about, the discrimination against diversity of ideas. Want to know why Facebook and Apple and Twitter and Google seem to be monolithically filled with hostile leftists, now focused on manipulating the 2020 election? It’s quite likely that much of that started with that 20% of hiring managers who couldn’t stop being intolerant. Want to know why wealthy suburbs vote uniformly leftist, even against their own interests? Maybe this is because they got through the social credit gatekeeper system to get those good jobs landed them those good salaries. Social credit: It’s not just for China anymore.

Which signals that ending the wholesale discrimination of conservatives is actually pretty urgent. 

Having a large base of hiring managers discriminating against the 50% of the population over something that has nothing to do with how they perform at their jobs is outrageous, and they are getting away with it. It ought to be met with a fedral DoJ lawsuit, or a private sector one from a group such as Judicial Watch and one hopes it may eventually happen. At a minimum, President Trump and other Republicans should bring this up on the campaign trail and force leftists to answer for it. Conservatives who anticipate justice in the long run might want to start sending applications to the firms they suspect of leftist discrimination in anticipation of a future payout.

Leftists for years have set these laws, and not without conservative support, that so long as a person can do the job, his or her sexual orientation, race, sex or any other factor is utterly irrelevant. If those things can be irrelevant, how could political beliefs not be irrelevant, too? That’s the template most people operate on, that’s the expectation normal people have. Nobody expects a thumb on the scale for those other factors, everyone believes America is the land of opportunity and expects to be given a fair chance no matter what their identity in life. The left is so invested in this idea, it has found ways to actually take it to excessive levels. The left has insisted on putting even transsexuals in need of special medications in foxholes with Marines during wartime, and wants to force Catholic priests to conduct the sacrament of matrimony on people whose lifestyle contradicts Church teachings on this logic. They can’t back away from it on discrimination over political beliefs.

But they do it all the time in hiring, creating a de facto Chinese social credit system without telling anyone. In China, social credit is what prohibits someone with ‘wrong’ views to be denied the right to purchase a plane ticket, or get into a desirable school. And coincidence of coincidences, the Silicon Valley bigs are the ones helping the Chicoms enact this sick system. And dollars to donuts, they’re at the forefront of taking it here.

One can only hope that the Department of Justice (and James O’Keefe) notice this report about blatant discrimination in hiring, take steps to identify the perpetrators, sanction them punitively, and make them afraid of the consequences of discriminating against one half of the population in favor of another on utterly irrelevant factors unrelated to the job.

Speaking of being held down. Speaking of ‘cancel culture.’ Has there ever been as blatant a civil rights violation as this, found by a marketing company’s survey?

Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner found this:

American workers who like President Trump face sweeping bias against them, with some managers refusing to hire his supporters and those already employed facing discrimination and mockery, according to a new study.

In a survey of hiring managers and workers shared with Secrets, the marketing firm Airtasker found that left-leaning firms are especially anti-Trump, with 20% vowing to reject a job candidate who backs the president.

And those who support Trump and who are already in the workplace face substantial mockery, including name-calling. The survey listed the responses to several examples of what pro-Trump workers face:

• 28%, joking about them.
• 23%, overly critical of them.
• 21%, being dismissive of them.
• 11% facing name calling.

One out of five!

This is precisely what drove voters to elect President Trump in 2016. It’s why they surprised pollsters as a ‘silent majority,’ declining to put Trump bumper stickers on their cars out of fear of leftist intolerance. Now this news may propel them to elect him again in 2020 because conservatives have known for years that leftist intolerance in every area of the American establishment is quite real, including kin its routes to opportunity and paths to success, such as in hiring. The perpetrators now are so comfortable doing it they’re admitting they’re doing it to pollsters. It signals that this cancel-culture among the establishment elites is out of control, and in effect is becoming a China-style social credit system.

What’s more, it not only exists among hiring managers, we also know it exists in the anteroom to hiring, in the college admissions system, which specifically rewards social justice warrior applicants over equally qualified others and who knows what other kind of discrimination — Kyle Kashuv, call your office. And if that is not enough, it very obviously extends to faculty hiring, which is uniformly leftist.

It all highlights a major civil rights issue no one’s talking about, the discrimination against diversity of ideas. Want to know why Facebook and Apple and Twitter and Google seem to be monolithically filled with hostile leftists, now focused on manipulating the 2020 election? It’s quite likely that much of that started with that 20% of hiring managers who couldn’t stop being intolerant. Want to know why wealthy suburbs vote uniformly leftist, even against their own interests? Maybe this is because they got through the social credit gatekeeper system to get those good jobs landed them those good salaries. Social credit: It’s not just for China anymore.

Which signals that ending the wholesale discrimination of conservatives is actually pretty urgent. 

Having a large base of hiring managers discriminating against the 50% of the population over something that has nothing to do with how they perform at their jobs is outrageous, and they are getting away with it. It ought to be met with a fedral DoJ lawsuit, or a private sector one from a group such as Judicial Watch and one hopes it may eventually happen. At a minimum, President Trump and other Republicans should bring this up on the campaign trail and force leftists to answer for it. Conservatives who anticipate justice in the long run might want to start sending applications to the firms they suspect of leftist discrimination in anticipation of a future payout.

Leftists for years have set these laws, and not without conservative support, that so long as a person can do the job, his or her sexual orientation, race, sex or any other factor is utterly irrelevant. If those things can be irrelevant, how could political beliefs not be irrelevant, too? That’s the template most people operate on, that’s the expectation normal people have. Nobody expects a thumb on the scale for those other factors, everyone believes America is the land of opportunity and expects to be given a fair chance no matter what their identity in life. The left is so invested in this idea, it has found ways to actually take it to excessive levels. The left has insisted on putting even transsexuals in need of special medications in foxholes with Marines during wartime, and wants to force Catholic priests to conduct the sacrament of matrimony on people whose lifestyle contradicts Church teachings on this logic. They can’t back away from it on discrimination over political beliefs.

But they do it all the time in hiring, creating a de facto Chinese social credit system without telling anyone. In China, social credit is what prohibits someone with ‘wrong’ views to be denied the right to purchase a plane ticket, or get into a desirable school. And coincidence of coincidences, the Silicon Valley bigs are the ones helping the Chicoms enact this sick system. And dollars to donuts, they’re at the forefront of taking it here.

One can only hope that the Department of Justice (and James O’Keefe) notice this report about blatant discrimination in hiring, take steps to identify the perpetrators, sanction them punitively, and make them afraid of the consequences of discriminating against one half of the population in favor of another on utterly irrelevant factors unrelated to the job.

One may believe that those in charge of public education are qualified to administer the task of educating America’s youth.  One may believe they have the best interests of society at heart.  And one may believe they are doing the best they could do, given the conditions under which they have to work.  Abundant evidence, however, points to the conclusion that none of those beliefs is valid.

Public education has become an institutionalized form of child abuse.  Rather than being a tool used to prepare children to become productive adults, public education is being used to indoctrinate them to believe what powerful interest groups wish them to believe.  This process is designed to transform America into a place unfit for human habitation, in which rights are suppressed, powers of government are unlimited, and traditional faith-based values are rejected.

What children in public schools are being told to accept as facts and truth is often nothing more than opinions of those who reject reason and do what they might to prevent students from developing the intellectual skills required for critical thinking so they might embrace their own enslavement and the subversion and degradation of their society.

Those who administer public education are contributing to the degradation of the morals of minors, to the undermining of their intellectual and spiritual growth as human beings, and to the sabotaging of their lives and well-being, as well as to all of these in society at large.  And they are unlawfully abusing their power to achieve those ends.

While promotion in public schools of faith-based ideology is supposed to have been prohibited, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, the faith-based ideologies of socialism, Marxism, nihilism, Islamism, Satanism, Darwinism, and others continue to be propagated in public schools.  This is clearly unlawful.  It is prohibited.  And it is destructive.  But Americans across the country do and say little even to express their opposition to the practice of indoctrination.

Unless this trend is reversed, unless Americans demand restoration of integrity to public education, unless indoctrination in destructive, deranged ideologies is eradicated from public schools, nothing else done in the cause of liberty will have lasting impact, as the foundation for future generations would continue to be built with shoddy materials in the public schools.

Children must be taught critical thinking skills so they might be able to discern between what makes sense and what is deranged.  Children are not being taught to employ reason, however, but instead are being indoctrinated to accept ideas and values antithetical to reason, to facts, and to truth, by educators who do not have the interests of those children at heart.

One may believe that those in charge of public education are qualified to administer the task of educating America’s youth.  One may believe they have the best interests of society at heart.  And one may believe they are doing the best they could do, given the conditions under which they have to work.  Abundant evidence, however, points to the conclusion that none of those beliefs is valid.

Public education has become an institutionalized form of child abuse.  Rather than being a tool used to prepare children to become productive adults, public education is being used to indoctrinate them to believe what powerful interest groups wish them to believe.  This process is designed to transform America into a place unfit for human habitation, in which rights are suppressed, powers of government are unlimited, and traditional faith-based values are rejected.

What children in public schools are being told to accept as facts and truth is often nothing more than opinions of those who reject reason and do what they might to prevent students from developing the intellectual skills required for critical thinking so they might embrace their own enslavement and the subversion and degradation of their society.

Those who administer public education are contributing to the degradation of the morals of minors, to the undermining of their intellectual and spiritual growth as human beings, and to the sabotaging of their lives and well-being, as well as to all of these in society at large.  And they are unlawfully abusing their power to achieve those ends.

While promotion in public schools of faith-based ideology is supposed to have been prohibited, according to the Supreme Court of the United States, the faith-based ideologies of socialism, Marxism, nihilism, Islamism, Satanism, Darwinism, and others continue to be propagated in public schools.  This is clearly unlawful.  It is prohibited.  And it is destructive.  But Americans across the country do and say little even to express their opposition to the practice of indoctrination.

Unless this trend is reversed, unless Americans demand restoration of integrity to public education, unless indoctrination in destructive, deranged ideologies is eradicated from public schools, nothing else done in the cause of liberty will have lasting impact, as the foundation for future generations would continue to be built with shoddy materials in the public schools.

Children must be taught critical thinking skills so they might be able to discern between what makes sense and what is deranged.  Children are not being taught to employ reason, however, but instead are being indoctrinated to accept ideas and values antithetical to reason, to facts, and to truth, by educators who do not have the interests of those children at heart.

You may have noticed that all advocates of federal gun control are arguing for the same end result, which is federal limitations upon the individual right to own firearms. But the underlying arguments as to why they believe that the federal government should be allowed to do so can vary, and often pretty wildly.

There are some who argue, for example, that the Second Amendment was never meant to guarantee any individual right, as CNN’s Chris Cuomo recently argued.  Some others may argue that the Second Amendment only protects guns owned for the purposes of hunting or sport.  That’s all intellectually indefensible, given the precise words of the Second Amendment and ample facts which provide the historical context for its inclusion in the Constitution.  As such, these examples are rarer than the other, more honest argument among gun control activists that I’ve encountered. 

Generally, this latter group of gun control advocates rightfully concede that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to own firearms, but that the Founders just never imagined weapons as deadly as an AR-15, for example.  They argue that it was never meant to protect those kinds of deadly firearms, despite the fact that the deadliest firearms on the planet at the time of the Constitution’s ratification (the same used by regulars in the British army, for example) were clearly meant to be legally kept in law-abiding American citizens’ homes. 

But in the end, all these arguments boil down to one thing — what gun control advocates think Americans “need.”  Irrespective of the mental gymnastics needed to philosophically get there, the closing statement in these arguments for gun control invariably goes something like this: “Why does anyone need a [insert any arbitrarily chosen gun, or gun accessory, of some specific caliber, muzzle velocity, rate of fire, cosmetic accoutrements, magazine size, etc., here]?”

We proponents of limited government and individual rights can, and often do, present substantial arguments as to why such firearms might be necessary to protect ourselves against evil neighbors or government agents who might choose to infringe upon our right to life and liberty, and why the gun control proposals being offered would be ineffective. 

We might point out, for example, the data showing that there is absolutely no evidence that “assault weapon” bans and gun confiscation programs (like the much-touted Australian “buyback”) do anything at all to reduce homicide rates.  We might mention that violent crime and murder rates have fallen sharply since the National Assault Weapons Ban was lifted in 2004 (as I did in 2013, here), despite the number of firearms owned by individuals in this country growing dramatically in the years since, and the prevalence and expansion of concealed and open carry laws in many states.  We might also point out that the CDC has observed that guns are used as a means of self-defense in “about 500,000 to more than 3 million” instances annually, clearly signifying the value of gun rights in protecting Americans’ lives and preserving their liberty.  Or, we might argue, as David French does at National Review, that “for the Second Amendment to remain a meaningful check on state power, citizens must be able to possess the kinds and categories of weapons that can at least deter state overreach, that would make true authoritarianism too costly to attempt.”

But you might notice that all of these arguments, however correct and practical they may be, are not effective in moving gun control advocates’ away from their quest to rob us of our individual rights.  That is because they are clearly arguing on the grounds of raw emotion, and they are therefore incapable of adequately appraising facts and reason.  They are making what they believe to be a moral argument — if you don’t “need” the thing that they surmise you shouldn’t have, then why should you be allowed to legally own it?

Our moral objection to that question should be abundantly clear.  If it is, indeed, my legally protected “right to keep and bear arms,” and it’s true that this right “shall not be infringed” by the federal government, then the question about why I might need an AR-15, or any other arbitrarily maligned firearm, is inconsequential.  The more appropriate question to ask is why anyone else believes that he has the right to demand that the federal government take that explicitly defined right away from me, or any other law-abiding citizen. 

We are constantly besieged by variations of this argument about an American’s “need” being required to justify the most fundamental of American rights, and these arguments exist well beyond the debate around gun rights.  Leftists incessantly entreat Americans with the question, for example, “why should someone need X millions” of legally acquired dollars?  Our response shouldn’t be to ponder or address why someone else might need that amount of money.  That question is utterly irrelevant.  What we should be asking is, what right of mine do I own to demand that the government take their individual property rights from them?

The “ultra-millionaire” wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren has proposed is, without question, an unconstitutional violation of individual property rights.  But it’s seductive, because the masses buying into it care more about their moral indignation resulting from someone potentially having more money than he or she might “need” than about the individual right to property which would be unmistakably stolen from those Americans who are targets of any new “wealth tax.”

Direct taxes, according to the Constitution ratified in 1788, must be applied by the federal government in a strictly limited manner which is consistent with “apportionment” of taxes collected among the states and according to the census.  To get around this restriction and allow the government to discriminately tax individuals’ incomes, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed in 1913, which “permits the imposition of a federal income tax without regard to apportionment among the states.” 

But even with the Sixteenth Amendment in place, there are still some strict limitations to the government’s power to tax. To be clear, progressively taxing income is technically legal due to the Sixteenth Amendment, though it is still morally wrong and inconsistent with property rights as originally protected by the Constitution, I’d argue.  However, taxing an individual’s assets, or “wealth,” is a horse of a different color.  To this day, there remains no enumeration in the Constitution of a power to levy a direct tax on “personal property” which is “imposed solely by reason of its being owned by the taxpayer.”

In other words, if an “ultra-millionaire” has $100 million in a bank account or a brokerage account, the interest and earnings can be legally taxed by the government, and are.  However, the assets (i.e., property), upon which the owner has already paid taxes, cannot be legally taxed again until there is further transmission of the property. This is a profoundly clear distinction, and yet Warren is promising that, under her presidency, she would actively seek to violate the Constitution and tax that property.

I am not an “ultra-millionaire,” and short of winning the lottery or something, I’ll never be one.  I don’t know any other “ultra-millionaires” personally, either.  But that doesn’t change the simple fact that they, whoever they may be, should also enjoy the protection of their property rights under the Constitution.  This is the only way to ensure all Americans’ equal protection under the law, and this, I believe, is the only correct moral position.

Individual rights, such as the right to property and the right to “keep and bear arms” in order to preserve one’s life and liberty, are not “rights” at all if it is broadly imagined that they can be selectively stripped when the whims of politicians and activists demand it.  We cannot continue allowing the Left to focus the debate about individual rights around the arbitrary and malleable “needs” of Americans that are defined by the government and the media.

You may have noticed that all advocates of federal gun control are arguing for the same end result, which is federal limitations upon the individual right to own firearms. But the underlying arguments as to why they believe that the federal government should be allowed to do so can vary, and often pretty wildly.

There are some who argue, for example, that the Second Amendment was never meant to guarantee any individual right, as CNN’s Chris Cuomo recently argued.  Some others may argue that the Second Amendment only protects guns owned for the purposes of hunting or sport.  That’s all intellectually indefensible, given the precise words of the Second Amendment and ample facts which provide the historical context for its inclusion in the Constitution.  As such, these examples are rarer than the other, more honest argument among gun control activists that I’ve encountered. 

Generally, this latter group of gun control advocates rightfully concede that the Second Amendment does protect an individual right to own firearms, but that the Founders just never imagined weapons as deadly as an AR-15, for example.  They argue that it was never meant to protect those kinds of deadly firearms, despite the fact that the deadliest firearms on the planet at the time of the Constitution’s ratification (the same used by regulars in the British army, for example) were clearly meant to be legally kept in law-abiding American citizens’ homes. 

But in the end, all these arguments boil down to one thing — what gun control advocates think Americans “need.”  Irrespective of the mental gymnastics needed to philosophically get there, the closing statement in these arguments for gun control invariably goes something like this: “Why does anyone need a [insert any arbitrarily chosen gun, or gun accessory, of some specific caliber, muzzle velocity, rate of fire, cosmetic accoutrements, magazine size, etc., here]?”

We proponents of limited government and individual rights can, and often do, present substantial arguments as to why such firearms might be necessary to protect ourselves against evil neighbors or government agents who might choose to infringe upon our right to life and liberty, and why the gun control proposals being offered would be ineffective. 

We might point out, for example, the data showing that there is absolutely no evidence that “assault weapon” bans and gun confiscation programs (like the much-touted Australian “buyback”) do anything at all to reduce homicide rates.  We might mention that violent crime and murder rates have fallen sharply since the National Assault Weapons Ban was lifted in 2004 (as I did in 2013, here), despite the number of firearms owned by individuals in this country growing dramatically in the years since, and the prevalence and expansion of concealed and open carry laws in many states.  We might also point out that the CDC has observed that guns are used as a means of self-defense in “about 500,000 to more than 3 million” instances annually, clearly signifying the value of gun rights in protecting Americans’ lives and preserving their liberty.  Or, we might argue, as David French does at National Review, that “for the Second Amendment to remain a meaningful check on state power, citizens must be able to possess the kinds and categories of weapons that can at least deter state overreach, that would make true authoritarianism too costly to attempt.”

But you might notice that all of these arguments, however correct and practical they may be, are not effective in moving gun control advocates’ away from their quest to rob us of our individual rights.  That is because they are clearly arguing on the grounds of raw emotion, and they are therefore incapable of adequately appraising facts and reason.  They are making what they believe to be a moral argument — if you don’t “need” the thing that they surmise you shouldn’t have, then why should you be allowed to legally own it?

Our moral objection to that question should be abundantly clear.  If it is, indeed, my legally protected “right to keep and bear arms,” and it’s true that this right “shall not be infringed” by the federal government, then the question about why I might need an AR-15, or any other arbitrarily maligned firearm, is inconsequential.  The more appropriate question to ask is why anyone else believes that he has the right to demand that the federal government take that explicitly defined right away from me, or any other law-abiding citizen. 

We are constantly besieged by variations of this argument about an American’s “need” being required to justify the most fundamental of American rights, and these arguments exist well beyond the debate around gun rights.  Leftists incessantly entreat Americans with the question, for example, “why should someone need X millions” of legally acquired dollars?  Our response shouldn’t be to ponder or address why someone else might need that amount of money.  That question is utterly irrelevant.  What we should be asking is, what right of mine do I own to demand that the government take their individual property rights from them?

The “ultra-millionaire” wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren has proposed is, without question, an unconstitutional violation of individual property rights.  But it’s seductive, because the masses buying into it care more about their moral indignation resulting from someone potentially having more money than he or she might “need” than about the individual right to property which would be unmistakably stolen from those Americans who are targets of any new “wealth tax.”

Direct taxes, according to the Constitution ratified in 1788, must be applied by the federal government in a strictly limited manner which is consistent with “apportionment” of taxes collected among the states and according to the census.  To get around this restriction and allow the government to discriminately tax individuals’ incomes, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed in 1913, which “permits the imposition of a federal income tax without regard to apportionment among the states.” 

But even with the Sixteenth Amendment in place, there are still some strict limitations to the government’s power to tax. To be clear, progressively taxing income is technically legal due to the Sixteenth Amendment, though it is still morally wrong and inconsistent with property rights as originally protected by the Constitution, I’d argue.  However, taxing an individual’s assets, or “wealth,” is a horse of a different color.  To this day, there remains no enumeration in the Constitution of a power to levy a direct tax on “personal property” which is “imposed solely by reason of its being owned by the taxpayer.”

In other words, if an “ultra-millionaire” has $100 million in a bank account or a brokerage account, the interest and earnings can be legally taxed by the government, and are.  However, the assets (i.e., property), upon which the owner has already paid taxes, cannot be legally taxed again until there is further transmission of the property. This is a profoundly clear distinction, and yet Warren is promising that, under her presidency, she would actively seek to violate the Constitution and tax that property.

I am not an “ultra-millionaire,” and short of winning the lottery or something, I’ll never be one.  I don’t know any other “ultra-millionaires” personally, either.  But that doesn’t change the simple fact that they, whoever they may be, should also enjoy the protection of their property rights under the Constitution.  This is the only way to ensure all Americans’ equal protection under the law, and this, I believe, is the only correct moral position.

Individual rights, such as the right to property and the right to “keep and bear arms” in order to preserve one’s life and liberty, are not “rights” at all if it is broadly imagined that they can be selectively stripped when the whims of politicians and activists demand it.  We cannot continue allowing the Left to focus the debate about individual rights around the arbitrary and malleable “needs” of Americans that are defined by the government and the media.