53percenter's Blog

In November of 2017, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation released a poll of how millennials would prefer to be governed. Forty-four percent said they would like to live under socialism, compared to 42 percent under capitalism and 7 percent each for communism and fascism.

In short, that means 58 percent of people in a country considered the paragon of capitalism, which has afforded its citizens the highest living standard in the history of the planet, believe they would rather not enjoy the blessings of the system that’s provided them that standard of living.

Country musician John Rich — he of Big & Rich fame — isn’t terribly impressed with the Bernie bros or the Ocasio-Cortez orcs (yeah, I know, it doesn’t have the same alliterative ring that “Bernie bros” does, but I’m going to make it a thing). On Twitter, he had a message for all of the young types who believe we’d be better off living under a non-capitalist system.

“I hear many young folks are leaning socialist?” the singer wrote Thursday on Twitter.

“What if: Socialism was applied to schools? Some make A’s, some make F’s,” he continued.

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“According to Socialism, the teacher would average the grades and everybody gets a C. Sound good? Might want to study up on what you’re proposing.”

I hear many young folks are leaning socialist? What if: Socialism was applied to schools? Some make A’s, some make F’s. According to Socialism, the teacher would average the grades and everybody gets a C. Sound good? Might want to study up on what you’re proposing. #NOTHANKS

— John Rich (@johnrich) July 19, 2018

He added the hashtag “#NOTHANKS” at the end.

As you can imagine, there were plenty of responses to Rich’s tweet.

I’m a social studies teacher and I proudly teach our Constitution and the Republic in which we live. Your exact example is how I explain socialism to my 8th grade students. God bless you J.R.

— Jarred Turner (@jarredturner) July 20, 2018

This led to an angry response from a liberal — as well as a pointed rejoinder from Rich himself.

Hopefully they take away your teaching certificate. You shouldn’t be anywhere near children.

— Bobbie Bees (@BobbieBees) July 20, 2018

There it is…Socialists believe they know what’s best for everyone. If they don’t like you’re style or ambitions, they want to take them away. Thanks for at least being honest about it.

— John Rich (@johnrich) July 20, 2018

And that’s the kind of thing we have to be worried about — particularly when millennials don’t seem particularly interested in capitalism or freedom.

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“Millennials now make up the largest generation in America, and we’re seeing some deeply worrisome trends,” Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said after their poll was released last year, according to Fox News.

“Millennials are increasingly turning away from capitalism and toward socialism and even communism as a viable alternative.”

Perhaps they ought to remember the words of Mr. Rich in his own Twitter thread, however.

“Many Americans are taught that happiness is a right in the USA. It’s not,” Rich said. “The right to PURSUE happiness is guaranteed. Socialism says that all people should be ‘happy’ and in the same situation. That credo kills drive and dries up the spirit of entrepreneurism.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

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And just when you thought that the NFL’s national anthem policy was settled, cue yet another plot twist — with the president involved, no less.

On Thursday, the NFL and the league’s Player’s Association released a statement in which they said that “no new rules relating to the anthem will be issued or enforced for the next several weeks,” ESPN reported.

The statement came after the Miami Dolphins submitted potential disciplinary measures for players who disrespect the anthem, a move which severely irked those on the side of giving players the right to protest on the field.

“The NFL and NFLPA, through recent discussions, have been working on a resolution to the anthem issue,” the statement read. “In order to allow this constructive dialogue to continue, we have come to a standstill agreement on the NFLPA’s grievance and on the NFL’s anthem policy.

“The NFL and NFLPA reflect the great values of America, which are repeatedly demonstrated by the many players doing extraordinary work in communities across our country to promote equality, fairness and justice. Our shared focus will remain on finding a solution to the anthem issue through mutual, good faith commitments, outside of litigation.”

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Hoo boy. Haven’t we been here before? Why on earth would the NFL, just weeks before the regular season is set to begin, decide they wanted to dredge this beast up again? No mass shift in cultural consciousness has taken place in America; people are still against protesting during the national anthem. The compromise the league reached — allowing players who feel standing for “The Star-Spangled Banner” is simply too much for their delicately honed social-justice sensibilities to stay in the locker room — is about as close as anyone was going to get to making the greatest amount of people who care about the issue begrudgingly happy.

But no. Brace yourself — autumn is coming, and with it a whole lot of social media noise and 4,000-word think pieces about how your real problem, if you think well-remunerated athletes ought to stand for our national anthem, is that you’re probably an inveterate racist.

Before all that, however, President Trump let the world know how he would deal with the situation.

The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again – can’t believe it! Isn’t it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no pay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2018

“The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again – can’t believe it!” the president tweeted Friday. “Isn’t it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no pay!”

This marks the third season that the anthem is set to be a major issue. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick started the trend in earnest. Things mushroomed last year after the president said, during an Alabama rally for Republican senatorial candidate Luther Strange, that if any player kneeled during the anthem, he would “get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired.”

While the NFLPA was still fighting the new policy, things had generally died down. For now, players are either supposed to stand for the anthem or stay in the locker room. The controversy about whether Colin Kaepernick is still a good enough player for the NFL and whether he’s worth the baggage or the farrago of nonsense he tends to spew whenever he’s asked about politics and has returned to a simmer. There was something of a detente on one of the hot-button cultural issues of the latter half of this decade, even if it wasn’t the solution myself or most patriots would have picked.

And all of a sudden, we have tweets like one from comedian Christopher Titus, who first suggested that Trump remove himself from a certain part of Vladimir Putin’s, um, anatomy, and then declared that “THEY HAVE THE 1ST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO KNEEL. LIKE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHEAT ON YOUR WIFE, REPEATEDLY. HOWEVER, YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHEAT ON YOUR COUNTRY, TRAITOR. ALL CAPS! SO YOU KNOW WE MEAN IT.” (The original tweet, including the vulgarism, is here.)

You’re going to hear a lot of nonsense like that over the next few weeks. I chose this tweet because beyond the false equivalencies, ad hominems and the fact that all caps doesn’t mean anything aside from the fact that the typist is an intellectual teenager, it contains the biggest fallacy the left has pushed during the anthem debate: There is no First Amendment right to free speech at your place of work.

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Want proof? Here, try this one weird trick that will make you shed your employment status in a hurry: Go into work on Monday and tell everyone in your office that you’re now a member of a militant political movement that believes Joey Buttafuoco should be installed as world dictator for life, and that everyone who doesn’t pledge fealty to the cause will be thrown into jail come the revolution. Then burn an American flag in the nearest public space for good measure.

Now, what you have is every right to say and do this without fear of arrest, all thanks to the First Amendment. What you won’t have, at least after going through that spiel, is a job. That’s because your boss is totally within their rights to regulate problematic speech in an employment environment, whether it’s general-issue crankery or offensive rhetoric.

I’m not saying that kneeling for the national anthem is as offensive as my hypothetical “Buttafuocoism.” (It’s also not as funny.) What I am saying is that there’s little to no protection for political speech in the private sector.

If there wasn’t a union involved, the NFL could do what Trump recommended — and, given its viewership issues, probably would be considering it strongly. As for its new policy, the league is likely well within its rights to set down ground rules involving the anthem. That it’s chosen to very publicly rip the scab off at this moment — instead of quietly rejecting the Dolphins’ solution as it worked in equivalent quietude with the NFLPA, as they would have been well-advised to do — is proof that the NFL is the sole author of so many of the problems it now faces.

Donald Trump isn’t going to shut up. Neither are patriotic Americans who feel that disrespecting the flag is also disrespecting the country and those who have fought and died for it. This is a losing issue for the league, and they know it. Yet, if they can’t even stick by their own watered-down solution just months after they implemented it, how is it ever going to go away?

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We all remember going away to camp during the summer, whether it was just day camp or one of the lakeside-cabin variety. It was good times. Playing basketball. Doing crafts. Learning to look forward to the day when workers of the world (with the help of a bunch of academic-minded, street-fighting radicals) throw off their shackles and ruthlessly shiv the ruling class, the bourgeoisie and pretty much everyone who disagrees with them.

What, you don’t remember that last part? Well, clearly you haven’t gone to Camp Kinderland in Tolland, Massachusetts. No, that sentence isn’t exactly on the agenda there, but given that one of the activities is having kids make antifa flags, I’m going to guess it’s not too far of a leap.

According to The Daily Caller, Camp Kinderland is a social-justice themed summer program for kids in one of America’s most liberal states.

“Camp Kinderland is a multicultural summer camp and community that honors our progressive secular Jewish roots through our commitment to economic, racial, and social justice,” the camp’s description on its website reads.

“Kinderland’s summer programming and year around activities integrate progressive values with arts, recreation, and activism in a compassionate and caring environment.”

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Okay, so not someplace I would send my kids. But nothing necessarily violent or horrible. And then came this tweet from Dartmouth lecturer Mark Bray involving the, ahem, crafts they’re making this summer:

Oh boy. I can’t wait to participate in the bike-lock swinging exercises on the lawn after an organic lunch.

It’s unclear what role Bray might be playing at the camp. However, a copy of his book “Antifa: An Anti-Fascist Handbook” — a tome which was heavily praised by the media for heavily praising antifa — can be seen in one of the photographs. Bray is currently writing the introduction to an antifa comic. He also donated half of the proceeds of his book to antifa groups, just in case there was any question where his loyalties are.

Before we go any further, let me address the one argument I keep on hearing from soi-disant antifa members on social media: “We’re not violent, we’re just against fascism. What’s so hard to understand about that — unless you’re a fascist?”

Well, several things. First off, I’ve seen enough actions which have ended in violence to conclude that there is a very distinct element of the antifa movement that embraces preemptive violence. Secondly, antifa alone decides who’s a fascist, and the decision is hardly an objective one. Sometimes it’s actually white power or neo-Nazi groups.

More often, I’ve seen violence perpetrated against people simply for supporting the president. Antifa has been in a long process of deliberately defining down what constitutes a fascist so that they can put it under the aegis of anti-fascism — and thusly police it, often with violence or intimidation.

This all being said, why anyone would be indoctrinating kids into making antifa flags (to be exact, the dual red-and-black flags are actually the symbol of Antifaschistische Aktion, a German antifa group led by socialists whose logo has been appropriated by antifa groups worldwide) is beyond me. If, say, a vacation Bible camp started having kids make their own GOP logo, people would be flipping out — and I would totally be one of them.

There’s something significantly different when you enjoin children into a political party or movement they don’t understand, particularly when that movement is involved in street violence against individuals because they think those individuals’ protected political beliefs constitute violence against them.

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Thankfully, children turn into a rebellious lot. One hopes that the parents who turned their children over to this outrageous camp are faced with a legion of teenage Alex P. Keatons. It would serve them right.

As for Camp Kinderland, it’s time for these radicals to radically rethink their decision to include in their camp activities a paean to a loose association of groups that have openly declared they aren’t above violently policing what people say in public.

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The exchange between anchor Félix de Bedout and U.S. Senator Robert Menéndez on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court, aired on a recent episode of Unvision’s public affairs show Al Punto, is emblematic of what must change at Univision’s news division if there is to be an honest effort to engage U.S. Hispanics from all walks of life.

Watch as de Bedout, filling in for a vacationing Jorge Ramos, asks Menéndez about the Kavanaugh pick and then allows Menéndez to spew talking points unabated, as aired on Sunday, July 15th, 2018.

FELIX DE BEDOUT, UNIVISION ANCHOR: Senator, I have to move quickly to two current issues such as the nomination of a new candidate to the United States Supreme Court. Your opinion regarding the president’s nominee:

SEN: ROBERT MENENDEZ (D-NJ): This nominee, for me, is unacceptable, because he has shown through precedents that he has set in federal court that he is intolerant towards a series of the most important issues for our community- the issue of immigration, the issue of the rights that we have under the healthcare law, which has caused an opportunity for millions of Hispanics to have health care insurance. Civil rights, voting rights, workers’ rights…all of those elements where the United States Supreme Court decides what the law of the land is are at risk for our community and for the nation, and that’s why this judge is not acceptable to me.

There was no further discussion of the pick beyond Menéndez’ partisan talking points, and no one to advocate for Kavanaugh’s qualifications, experience, and record. Univision’s viewers are simply expected to take Menéndez’ partisan opinion (as elicited by de Bedout) as fact. This bit of hyperpartisanship that Univision attempted to sell as news analysis is part of former Chief Content Officer Isaac Lee’s legacy of “no two sides” journalism.

Recall how Lee justified these institutional biases when he was President of Univision News:

ISAAC LEE, (FORMER) CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, UNIVISION: I think if you are an American journalist covering the Second World War, it’s not a problem for you to want the Nazis to lose. And I don’t think you need to be saying ‘Well, you know, the Allied Expeditionary Force Commander says this, and on the other hand the Fuhrer says that.’ I think it’s ok to understand that sometimes you have to be on the right side of the issues in history.

It is incumbent upon Lee’s successor to restore the credibility of Univision’s news operation, and to restore a brand of journalism that places facts and honest debate above liberal activism. 

 

Rob Reiner has a new movie named Shock & Awe that celebrates heroic liberal Knight-Ridder reporters who fought the Bush team’s case for war in Iraq. Liberal critics celebrated it as timely, but not as a great movie. It had stars in it – Woody Harrelson, James Marsden, Tommy Lee Jones, Jessica Biel, and Reiner.

Reiner was the primary promoter of his own film — with appearances on Jimmy Fallon and “news” shows like Morning Joe, often making the uninintentionally hilarious argument that never before has a flock of national media outlets lined up to sell a president’s agenda and paper over his scandals. 

Conservatives got a kick out of how Meathead’s movie flopped. In its first weekend, it grossed only $45,000. It debuted in only 100 theatres, but the per-screen average was a measly $459.

But the clips didn’t have this fun fact: Other new movies did noticeably better with far fewer screens. A coming-of-age movie directed by YouTube comedian Bo Burnham called Eighth Grade grossed $263,000 — in only four theatres. A movie from Amazon called Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot, about a disabled alcoholic cartoonist played by Joaquin Phoenix, grossed $83,000 — also in only four theatres.

It’s not a new trend for anti-Iraq war movies to flop.

Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs limped to a $15 million gross in 2007, despite ABC promoting the movie with a pile of interviews, and it cost $35 million to make. (But Europe liked it.)

Brian De Palma’s Redacted depicted two U.S. soldiers as child rapists, made $65,388.

Variety‘s review of Reiner’s film was blunt: “The shock is less than shocking and the awe is less than awesome.” The key words included “well-meaning” and “clunkily executed.” Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday also thought the movie had a “righteous” point, and yet “this earnest but starchy tale is saddled with windy, expository speeches that possess all the lyricism and spontaneity of a felt-tip pen squeaking on whiteboard.”

Back in 2012, Brent Bozell drew attention to Hornaday complaining the war movie Act of Valor, starring actual Navy SEALS. Hornaday lamented that using the real warriors meant it “crossed the line between entertainment and propaganda.” It grossed $70 million at the box office. Actor Dax Shepard tweeted: “Saw ‘Triumph of The Will’ tonight, oh wait, I mean ‘Act of Valor.’ great action.”

Maybe Reiner should have just recruited the actual journalists to give their own lectures about the horrid Bush administration. 

Verbal altercation turned physical.

Via WFLA:

An argument about a handicapped parking space led to a deadly shooting outside a Clearwater convenience store Thursday that was witnessed by the deceased man’s 5-year-old son.

No arrests have been made in connection with the shooting. Detectives are investigating to determine if the case meets the criteria of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office detectives say 24-year-old Britany Jacobs was driving her 2016 Chrysler 2000 when she pulled into the Circle A Food Store located at 1201 Sunset Point Road, and parked in a handicapped parking space outside the business.

Jacob’s boyfriend, 28-year-old Markeis McGlockton, and their 5-year-old son Markeis McGlockton Jr., got out of Jacob’s car and went into the convenience store.

Video from inside the store shows the two walking around and then paying for their items.

Detectives say Jacobs was waiting outside in the parking lot when she was approached by 47-year-old Michael Drejka. Drejka and Jacobs got into an argument about Jacobs parking in a handicapped parking space.

A witness saw Drejka and Jacobs arguing before walking into the store. While inside the convenient store, the witness alerted the clerk of the argument occurring in the parking lot.

According to witnesses, McGlockton left the store and walked over to Drejka who was still arguing with Jacobs in the parking lot. Video shows McGlockton forcibly pushed Drejka causing Drejka to fall to the ground.

Video then shows Drejka on the ground. He took out a handgun and fired one single round at McGlockton striking him in the chest.

Keep reading…

HT: 000 Buck