‘Insane’ wait time of 4.5 years for new patients to see specialist, Canadian doctor says

What happened?

  • Canadian doctor Joy Hataley, a family practice anesthetist in Kingston, Ontario, told CTV News she was “shocked” after trying to refer one of her patients to a neurologist at Kingston General Hospital and was told in a letter the wait time for new patients is 4.5 years.
  • The outlet said that while Hataley was used to long wait times — particularly from specialists — she called the 4.5-year delay “insane.”
  • “Initially I was just a bit stunned,” she told CTV News Toronto on Friday. “I actually thought I misread it.”
  • “I put my reading glasses on — because I am that age — to check if it was a 1.5,” Hataley added. “I couldn’t fathom it was a 7.5. I walked to a physician’s room nearby me just to verify that I was actually reading 4.5.”
  • She said such a wait time deems the referral moot: “Who knows what happens in 4.5 years?” Hataley noted to CTV News Toronto. “Will we even remember that we had a consult? Will we still be on the list?”
  • Hataley posted an image of the letter to Twitter and asked Ontario Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Kingston MPP Sophie Kiwala for an explanation:

What is Hataley saying about Canadian patient wait times in general?

  • “I sense that this is not a problem, I perceive, to be in isolation,” she told CTV News. “This issue is an issue for people across the country.”
  • “I don’t think this is the norm by any stretch of the imagination,” Hataley added, “but [the fact that] it even occurs at all is shocking.”
  • She also told the outlet she believes the system has “hit a wall.”
  • “My main message is: We need timely, consistent and reliable health care in our province and we do not have it,” she told CTV News.

What are other Canadian doctors saying?

  • Dr. Shawn Whatley, president of the Ontario Medical Association, told CTV News the wait times are “atrocious.”
  • Wealthier patients at least can travel to get care faster, he told the outlet, which creates “a massive two-tiered system.”
  • “We’ve known about it for 15 years where people with means can get procedures and test more quickly,” Whatley added to CTV News.
  • A 2016 Commonwealth Fund survey focusing on 11 developed countries found 56 per cent of Canadians waited more than four weeks to see a medical specialist compared to about 36 percent, which is  the international average, the outlet reported.

How are Canadian institutions reacting?

  • Kingston Health Sciences Centre told the outlet delays are “a challenge” across the board but the neurologist in this case is in high demand due to “referrals from a very large catchment area.”
  • “Ensuring the lowest possible wait times for all parts of our health-care system is a key priority, particularly including referrals from general practitioners to specialists,” Laura Gallant, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Long-term care, told Global News.

(H/T: Townhall)

via TheBlaze.com – Stories

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Bannon Backs New Limits on Carried Interest to Spur Long-Term Investment in Companies

Bannon Backs New Limits on Carried Interest to Spur Long-Term Investment in Companies



Steven Bannon is backing a House proposal to spur long-term investment in companies and limit the ability of hedge fund and private equity managers to take advantage of the carried-interest tax break.

Bannon told Bloomberg news that he is backing a provision in the House tax bill that would require investment managers to hold investments for at least three years to qualify for the lower capital gains rate on carried interest. This would encourage hedge funds and private equity funds to focus on longer-term investments, Bannon outlined in a statement to Bloomberg. He said:

I have long called for the elimination of the carried interest loophole but I believe that the proposal in the House tax bill requiring investments be held for a minimum of 3 years to qualify for capital gains is a good way of eliminating short-term financial engineering that benefits no one, while encouraging long-term investments that create good paying jobs.

Carried interest is the share of a hedge fund or private equity fund’s profit that gets paid to investment managers. This has traditionally been around 20 percent of the profit but can be much higher in some of the more sought after investment funds. Currently, tax authorities treat that income as capital gains so long as the underlying investment profit is based on capital gains. That means the profit is eligible for a tax rate as low as low as 23.8 percent instead of being subject to ordinary income tax rates, which go as high as 39.6 percent.

It is employed by managers of real estate firms and venture capitalists in addition to some hedge fund and private equity managers.

Other changes to the tax code may make carried interest less important. If private equity firms qualify for the 25 percent pass-through rate, for example. Some may choose to organize as regular corporations to qualify for the 20 percent corporate tax rate.

On the campaign trail, Trump said he would  he would eliminate the carried-interest tax break.

via Breitbart News

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Down the Memory Hole: Obama Stole the 2008 Primary with Help of DNC


It’s an odd experience to dig this information out of the memory hole.  No Democrat cares: no party leaders, no members of Congress, no journalists, and no ordinary people.  Democrats do not care about  rule of law or fair elections.  All of them feel morally entitled to win.  That is the corrupting influence of their identity politics that tars political opponents as moral reprobates.


Democrat primaries show us who they are: their will to power trumps every other value.  Progressives want permanent power, not a functioning republic.    They don’t accept fair and free elections – witness their dirty attempts to overturn the last one and deprive Trump voters of their victory. 


As Hillary might say, Democrat corruption, Hollywood corruption – it takes a village.


Like the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s abuses, one big dog gets punished, while the even bigger dog – Bill Clinton for sexual abuse, Barack Obama for political abuse – remains untouchable. 


A documentary by Hillary supporters on Obama’s cheating and abuse was reported on Fox & Friends only in 2010; at the time of the election, no one would cover their complaints. Read about it here.


In one documentary interview, civil rights activist Helene Latimer recounts seeing an elderly woman being intimidated at the polls. “As she approached the entrance way to go into the building, one of the young men said to her, ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home because you’re not voting here today.'”


“It’s our right as Americans to be able to vote and everybody was alerted, we went to press, we went to Fox, we went to CNN, nobody wanted to hear the story (in 2008),” Gaston told Fox’s Alisyn Camerota. “Nobody wants to deal with this.”


From “How Obama Used an Army of Thugs to Steal the 2008 Democratic Party Nomination”:


… the Obama Campaign… encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stalk them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices and stop their right to vote.


Political junkies will recall that Obama gained crucial momentum after his surprise win of the Iowa primary.  He won in Iowa by breaking the law and busing in supporters to vote.  Everyone in Iowa could see it with their own eyes – and that includes the entire national press corps.


Dr. Long spent several months studying the caucus and primary results, published here


“After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states… my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process,” she said.


In Hawaii, caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants.  In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary.  They flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets.  Union members were told they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.


Two thousand Texas Democrats filed official complaints, in outrage and total frustration, against Obama’s lawless tactics. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign’s actions “amount to criminal violations” and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement.  Nothing happened.


Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.


Bernie Sanders supporters are justifiably angry that the superdelegates gave the nomination to Hillary.  The Washington Post reports in 2008 Hillary won the popular vote in the nomination process.  She was neck and neck with Obama in the delegate count.  Yet the DNC pressured the superdelegates who were pledged to Hillary to flip their votes.  From the Washington Post:


In 2008, the superdelegates became infamous — and essential. That year, as in this one, they helped the party’s front-runner cross the threshold by releasing endorsements around the final primary.  The irony was that the 2008 election, a near-tie, ended with pro-Clinton superdelegates flipping to support then-Sen. Barack Obama.


The Post makes it sound like the superdelegates flipped themselves.  Hillary delegates tell us the  DNC did the deed:


Basically, the delegations would meet and the leadership would say, ‘We need to vote for Obama. You need to basically switch your vote from Hillary to Obama.’ Even though in some 16 or 14 states it was required by law that the delegation needed to vote for the candidate that they represented on the first ballot. Those state party chairs were still manipulating that delegation to break the law and vote for Obama.”


As early as April, Virginia’s party leaders pressured their superdelegates:


Another Clinton superdelegate, senior Democratic strategist Mame Reiley, said she understood targeting undecided superdelegates, but including longtime Clinton supporters only created ill will.  “If we wanted to have a nominee decided in June then we’d have scheduled the convention in June,” Reiley said. “It sort of makes me wonder what they’re afraid of.”


In May 2008, Hillary wrote to the superdelegates, begging them to respect the popular vote.


As we reach the end of the primary season, more than 17 million people have supported me in my effort to become the Democratic nominee – more people than have ever voted for a potential nominee in the history of our party. … And with 40 and 35 point margins of victory, it is clear that even when voters are repeatedly told this race is over, they’re not giving up on me – and I am not giving up on them either.


Clinton trounced Obama by half a million Democrat votes in the 2008 Democrat primaries.  She bettered him among women, seniors, Latinos, the working class, those earning less than $50,000 and first-time voters.  Clinton won the primaries where it is harder to cheat; Obama’s delegate count was based on his fraudulent caucus wins.  Polls showed Clinton beating McCain and Obama losing.  Rasmussen showed Clinton was more competitive than Obama by 16 points.  Yet 100% of the superdelegates threw the nomination to the weaker, less popular candidate.


Senator Obama’s win in Indiana was used by the Democratic leadership to call for the party to unify behind him.  But Obama lacked the minimum number of signatures to legally run   In 2013 two county election board workers were convicted on felony charges for forging hundreds of signatures to get Obama on the ballot.  Separately, Acorn was caught turning in 5,000 fraudulent voter registrations.


In Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.


“All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”


As a Heritage Foundation expert on election fraud explains, Obama’s Indiana victory was at a crucial juncture. 


Had this fraud been discovered, Barack Obama would have been disqualified from the primary ballot in a major state…the course of the campaign—and history—could have changed. …


The Indiana fraud was uncovered in 2011 by a Democrat Yale college student.  The inquiring mind wants to know –did anyone bother to check Obama’s victories in other close primary states?


Nees said the fraud was easy to detect “because page after page of signatures are all in the same handwriting.”


Some of the Obama campaign abuses Democrat voters testified to in “We Will Not Be Silenced,” are disturbing in the extreme.  The documentary is available in four parts on YouTube here. (hat tip canadafreepress.)


In Texas, Hispanic voters were told to go home before they got a chance to sign the caucus sheets, so their vote was not counted.  In Indiana, parents were livid that their high school children were taken out of school, bussed to vote and told to vote for Obama.


The most emotional report is from a Civil Rights activist who had marched with Martin Luther King (Part 3, 3:54). 


I got out of my car and there was this lady, probably about 80 years old, who was slowly walking up the street. As she was approaching the entranceway to go into the building, one of the young men called to her ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home, because you’re not voting here today.’ She turned and walked away. The pain that I felt, because of the people who have fought for African Americans to have the right to vote… While I was standing there, there were other people approaching, maybe four or five, and when they heard that they all turned and walked away.


In Texas, elderly Hillary voters were also turned away from voting:


Part 3, 7:20, The two women saw that these women had Hillary stickers on them… so they weren’t going to let them caucus. They said ‘Oh, you must be in some other caucus.’ I said ‘Look lady, I’m from Chicago and I know tricks like this. Let me see that book or we’re going to get the precinct captain over here and we’re going to look and find the names together. I guarantee this woman’s in here, because she’s not a liar. She’s ninety years old and has been looking forward to this. Don’t tell me she’s not in the book.’ Well then, wouldn’t you know it, … she magically found her name in the book and let her go be a part of the caucus… I noticed that that was not happening for any of the Obama people, they were just getting waved right through.”


Fixing the nomination for Obama didn’t end with secret lawbreaking.  There was the infamous ruling by the DNC to not count the primary votes in Florida and Michigan, where Clinton won.  These two states were allotted 796 superdelegates.  After their ruling, Clinton came up 137 delegates short.


The Democrat primary process is not this corrupt and ugly by accident.  This is not a problem found in both parties.  It is characteristic of our leftist party, and its leading politicians, because they feel morally entitled to hold power, and are given cover by the mainstream media.  The Democrat lust for power destroys other civic virtues. They lie to voters about themselves, they lie to voters about this country, and they lie about their own elections. 


In 2008, Obama used the obvious but unstated threat of black voters boycotting the election to silence even Clinton, who knew very well he was cheating.  In 2016, Hillary adopted not only Obama’s identity politics but his cheating in the primaries.  She did it her own way, by buying the DNC, which had been cleaned out by Obama and left $24 million in debt.  (President Obama, it turns out, did that non-stop fundraising for his personal foundation, Organizing for America, not the party.) 


Obama, I suspect, is now busy destroying Clinton via his surrogates, trying to set her up as the fall guy for the administration’s corruption of the FBI and spying on candidate Donald Trump.  Neither Obama nor Hillary can reconcile themselves to honest elections, where there is a chance they lose. 


President Trump won free and on the square, relying on his message and his voters.  The Democrats are at their wits’ end.  They can’t scare Trump, they can’t fool Trump voters, and they can’t silence the conservative websites.  What was done in the dark is coming to the light.


The country is shocked, shocked that the DNC colluded with the Hillary campaign to anoint her as their nominee. In her 2015 caper, Clinton made a backroom deal with the DNC. In 2008, Barack Obama used outright election fraud and thuggery, the tried and true Chicago methods. to steal the nomination directly from the voters.  When he got far enough, the DNC pressured Hillary’s pledged superdelegates to violate their voters’ wishes and award Obama an unearned victory.


Obama’s illegal shenanigans in the 2008 Democrat primaries were far worse than Clinton’s – and will never be widely reported.  


It’s an odd experience to dig this information out of the memory hole.  No Democrat cares: no party leaders, no members of Congress, no journalists, and no ordinary people.  Democrats do not care about  rule of law or fair elections.  All of them feel morally entitled to win.  That is the corrupting influence of their identity politics that tars political opponents as moral reprobates.


Democrat primaries show us who they are: their will to power trumps every other value.  Progressives want permanent power, not a functioning republic.    They don’t accept fair and free elections – witness their dirty attempts to overturn the last one and deprive Trump voters of their victory. 


As Hillary might say, Democrat corruption, Hollywood corruption – it takes a village.


Like the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s abuses, one big dog gets punished, while the even bigger dog – Bill Clinton for sexual abuse, Barack Obama for political abuse – remains untouchable. 


A documentary by Hillary supporters on Obama’s cheating and abuse was reported on Fox & Friends only in 2010; at the time of the election, no one would cover their complaints. Read about it here.


In one documentary interview, civil rights activist Helene Latimer recounts seeing an elderly woman being intimidated at the polls. “As she approached the entrance way to go into the building, one of the young men said to her, ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home because you’re not voting here today.'”


“It’s our right as Americans to be able to vote and everybody was alerted, we went to press, we went to Fox, we went to CNN, nobody wanted to hear the story (in 2008),” Gaston told Fox’s Alisyn Camerota. “Nobody wants to deal with this.”


From “How Obama Used an Army of Thugs to Steal the 2008 Democratic Party Nomination”:


… the Obama Campaign… encouraged and created an army to steal caucus packets, falsify documents, change results, allow unregistered people to vote, scare and intimidate Hillary supporters, stalk them, threaten them, lock them out of their polling places, silence their voices and stop their right to vote.


Political junkies will recall that Obama gained crucial momentum after his surprise win of the Iowa primary.  He won in Iowa by breaking the law and busing in supporters to vote.  Everyone in Iowa could see it with their own eyes – and that includes the entire national press corps.


Dr. Long spent several months studying the caucus and primary results, published here


“After studying the procedures and results from all 14 caucus states… my conclusion is that the Obama campaign willfully and intentionally defrauded the American public by systematically undermining the caucus process,” she said.


In Hawaii, caucuses ended up with more ballots than participants.  In Nevada, Obama supporters upturned a wheelchair-bound woman who wanted to caucus for Hillary.  They flushed Clinton ballots down the toilets.  Union members were told they could vote only if their names were on the list of Obama supporters.


Two thousand Texas Democrats filed official complaints, in outrage and total frustration, against Obama’s lawless tactics. The party acknowledged that the Obama campaign’s actions “amount to criminal violations” and ordered them to be reported to state and federal law enforcement.  Nothing happened.


Thanks to these and other strong-arm tactics, Obama won victories in all but one of the caucuses, even in states such as Maine where Hillary had been leading by double digits in the polls.


Bernie Sanders supporters are justifiably angry that the superdelegates gave the nomination to Hillary.  The Washington Post reports in 2008 Hillary won the popular vote in the nomination process.  She was neck and neck with Obama in the delegate count.  Yet the DNC pressured the superdelegates who were pledged to Hillary to flip their votes.  From the Washington Post:


In 2008, the superdelegates became infamous — and essential. That year, as in this one, they helped the party’s front-runner cross the threshold by releasing endorsements around the final primary.  The irony was that the 2008 election, a near-tie, ended with pro-Clinton superdelegates flipping to support then-Sen. Barack Obama.


The Post makes it sound like the superdelegates flipped themselves.  Hillary delegates tell us the  DNC did the deed:


Basically, the delegations would meet and the leadership would say, ‘We need to vote for Obama. You need to basically switch your vote from Hillary to Obama.’ Even though in some 16 or 14 states it was required by law that the delegation needed to vote for the candidate that they represented on the first ballot. Those state party chairs were still manipulating that delegation to break the law and vote for Obama.”


As early as April, Virginia’s party leaders pressured their superdelegates:


Another Clinton superdelegate, senior Democratic strategist Mame Reiley, said she understood targeting undecided superdelegates, but including longtime Clinton supporters only created ill will.  “If we wanted to have a nominee decided in June then we’d have scheduled the convention in June,” Reiley said. “It sort of makes me wonder what they’re afraid of.”


In May 2008, Hillary wrote to the superdelegates, begging them to respect the popular vote.


As we reach the end of the primary season, more than 17 million people have supported me in my effort to become the Democratic nominee – more people than have ever voted for a potential nominee in the history of our party. … And with 40 and 35 point margins of victory, it is clear that even when voters are repeatedly told this race is over, they’re not giving up on me – and I am not giving up on them either.


Clinton trounced Obama by half a million Democrat votes in the 2008 Democrat primaries.  She bettered him among women, seniors, Latinos, the working class, those earning less than $50,000 and first-time voters.  Clinton won the primaries where it is harder to cheat; Obama’s delegate count was based on his fraudulent caucus wins.  Polls showed Clinton beating McCain and Obama losing.  Rasmussen showed Clinton was more competitive than Obama by 16 points.  Yet 100% of the superdelegates threw the nomination to the weaker, less popular candidate.


Senator Obama’s win in Indiana was used by the Democratic leadership to call for the party to unify behind him.  But Obama lacked the minimum number of signatures to legally run   In 2013 two county election board workers were convicted on felony charges for forging hundreds of signatures to get Obama on the ballot.  Separately, Acorn was caught turning in 5,000 fraudulent voter registrations.


In Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.


“All the signatures looked exactly the same,” Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. “Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same.”


As a Heritage Foundation expert on election fraud explains, Obama’s Indiana victory was at a crucial juncture. 


Had this fraud been discovered, Barack Obama would have been disqualified from the primary ballot in a major state…the course of the campaign—and history—could have changed. …


The Indiana fraud was uncovered in 2011 by a Democrat Yale college student.  The inquiring mind wants to know –did anyone bother to check Obama’s victories in other close primary states?


Nees said the fraud was easy to detect “because page after page of signatures are all in the same handwriting.”


Some of the Obama campaign abuses Democrat voters testified to in “We Will Not Be Silenced,” are disturbing in the extreme.  The documentary is available in four parts on YouTube here. (hat tip canadafreepress.)


In Texas, Hispanic voters were told to go home before they got a chance to sign the caucus sheets, so their vote was not counted.  In Indiana, parents were livid that their high school children were taken out of school, bussed to vote and told to vote for Obama.


The most emotional report is from a Civil Rights activist who had marched with Martin Luther King (Part 3, 3:54). 


I got out of my car and there was this lady, probably about 80 years old, who was slowly walking up the street. As she was approaching the entranceway to go into the building, one of the young men called to her ‘If you’re not voting for Obama, go home, because you’re not voting here today.’ She turned and walked away. The pain that I felt, because of the people who have fought for African Americans to have the right to vote… While I was standing there, there were other people approaching, maybe four or five, and when they heard that they all turned and walked away.


In Texas, elderly Hillary voters were also turned away from voting:


Part 3, 7:20, The two women saw that these women had Hillary stickers on them… so they weren’t going to let them caucus. They said ‘Oh, you must be in some other caucus.’ I said ‘Look lady, I’m from Chicago and I know tricks like this. Let me see that book or we’re going to get the precinct captain over here and we’re going to look and find the names together. I guarantee this woman’s in here, because she’s not a liar. She’s ninety years old and has been looking forward to this. Don’t tell me she’s not in the book.’ Well then, wouldn’t you know it, … she magically found her name in the book and let her go be a part of the caucus… I noticed that that was not happening for any of the Obama people, they were just getting waved right through.”


Fixing the nomination for Obama didn’t end with secret lawbreaking.  There was the infamous ruling by the DNC to not count the primary votes in Florida and Michigan, where Clinton won.  These two states were allotted 796 superdelegates.  After their ruling, Clinton came up 137 delegates short.


The Democrat primary process is not this corrupt and ugly by accident.  This is not a problem found in both parties.  It is characteristic of our leftist party, and its leading politicians, because they feel morally entitled to hold power, and are given cover by the mainstream media.  The Democrat lust for power destroys other civic virtues. They lie to voters about themselves, they lie to voters about this country, and they lie about their own elections. 


In 2008, Obama used the obvious but unstated threat of black voters boycotting the election to silence even Clinton, who knew very well he was cheating.  In 2016, Hillary adopted not only Obama’s identity politics but his cheating in the primaries.  She did it her own way, by buying the DNC, which had been cleaned out by Obama and left $24 million in debt.  (President Obama, it turns out, did that non-stop fundraising for his personal foundation, Organizing for America, not the party.) 


Obama, I suspect, is now busy destroying Clinton via his surrogates, trying to set her up as the fall guy for the administration’s corruption of the FBI and spying on candidate Donald Trump.  Neither Obama nor Hillary can reconcile themselves to honest elections, where there is a chance they lose. 


President Trump won free and on the square, relying on his message and his voters.  The Democrats are at their wits’ end.  They can’t scare Trump, they can’t fool Trump voters, and they can’t silence the conservative websites.  What was done in the dark is coming to the light.





via American Thinker

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Pot Calls Kettle BLACK as Al Sharpton Blames Trump for ‘Toxic’ Race Relations

When it comes to those who depend on keeping racism alive largely because doing so is in their best personal business interests, there are few bigger grievance pimps that the Reverend Al Sharpton.

Since exploding onto the national scene in the 1980s due to his exploitation of a number of high profile New York City criminal cases, Sharpton has managed to make a nice living for himself as one who can find the tint of race in pretty much everything.

It not only pays the bills but he has risen to become one of the left’s greatest voices and even landed his own gig on Democrat propaganda network MSNBC.

A loud, overbearing, and flamboyant gadfly, Sharpton must be in his true glory now that Barack Obama and the Democrats have set race relations back decades and despite his advanced age, he remains relevant.

But Big Al is a chronic bull manure spreader and in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, he is blaming President Donald Trump for making race relations “more toxic” going back into his heyday to rip off the scabs of wounds that will never be allowed to heal thanks to Sharpton and his ilk.

In an opinion piece for NBC News entitled “Rev. Al Sharpton President Trump Is Exactly the Same Selfish Blowhard I Knew Back In New York”, one of the loudest empty barrels of all writes:

There were hopes last year that the executive office would temper some of this pettiness, but sadly we now see this is not the case. Rather than attempt to grow and learn, Trump has leaned into his role as divider-in-chief. This is exactly the same racially divisive, unapologetic blowhard I knew in New York.

And the results unfortunately speak for themselves. His ugly, contentious presidential campaign has translated into an equally ugly and divisive first year. Whether it’s attacking Congresswoman Frederica Wilson following the tragic deaths of four soldiers in Niger, hesitating to condemn white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, advocating for the firing of NFL players exercising their First Amendment rights, or politicizing terrorist attacks, Trump’s time in office has only made this country more polarized.

Put simply, Trump took America’s existing racial tensions and made them even more toxic.

A year ago, I wanted to believe that there was hope. I wanted to believe that this man who had spent years questioning President Obama’s birthplace might be humbled by his office. I wanted to believe that the gravity of the situation would eventually kick in, and he would work to achieve something admirable with his newfound power. I wanted to believe America was not in the hands of an unyielding demagogue incapable of growth. And I was wrong.

Sharpton also called Trump a “consummate narcissist and self-promoter” which would seem to be a perfect description of the face in the mirror that stares back into his ugly mug every morning.

There will never be an end to racism as long as there are cynics like Reverend Al who are able to benefit both financially and politically from exploiting resentments of those who are too quick to blame their own failures on a white supremacist society that has kept them down.

via Downtrend.com

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NAACP Calls on Gov’t to Eradicate National Anthem Once and for All

First they came for Confederate statues. That may have made you feel a bit weird, but most Americans have conflicted feelings about the South and the Civil War anyway. So, you likely didn’t make too much of a fuss.

Then the left came for Founding Fathers, like Washington and Jefferson, or men like Lincoln, all because they represent some form of “white supremacy.” That seemed a bridge too far, but you figured the mania would die down.

Now, the left is coming for Francis Scott Key’s hymn to America.

According to the Sacramento Bee, the California chapter of the NAACP is calling for the removal of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as the national anthem.

And, given the state and the cause, you may not be surprised that a particular unemployed former NFL quarterback is being mentioned by supporters of ditching the anthem.

TRENDING: Sponsors Threaten NBC if They Continue to Show NFL Protests

The Bee reports that the California NAACP “began circulating among legislative offices two resolutions that passed at its state conference in October: one urging Congress to rescind ‘one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon’ as the national anthem, and another in support of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who launched a protest movement against police brutality among professional athletes by kneeling when ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played before games.”

“We owe a lot of it to Kaepernick,” said Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP. “I think all this controversy about the knee will go away once the song is removed.”

Well, first, it’s worth noting they may have had better luck getting Kaepernick back in the league if they circulated resolutions calling on the former 49ers quarterback to stop sabotaging his own chances at landing a job in the NFL (or perhaps a resolution that rechristens “interceptions” as “redistributionist passes.”)

Second, Kaepernick’s reasons for protesting the anthem are actually different from the NAACP’s. For his part, Kaepernick was protesting social injustice or something and police brutality blah blah blah Fidel Castro yadda yadda yadda Black Lives Matter or whatever.

The California NAACP, to its marginal credit, actually has a substantive problem with one of the later verses in the anthem, even though most Americans don’t know it exists since it never gets sung at sporting events (or anywhere, really):

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave

“Some interpretations of the lyrics conclude that they celebrate the deaths of black American slaves who joined British troops during the War of 1812 to gain their freedom,” the Bee reports.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” writer Francis Scott Key was a slave owner, as were many prominent individuals at the time. Some recent historians have also tried to pin an 1835 Washington D.C. race riot and lynch mob on Key for (as part of his role as the district’s attorney general), arresting an individual who was distributing abolitionist material.

RELATED: Olbermann Furious After Trump Refuses to Call for Death Penalty on Dead Shooter

Huffman openly admits she drafted the resolutions in response to President Donald Trump’s call to fire players who refused to stand for the national anthem, which doesn’t make the NAACP’s effort to get rid of the song entirely sound very reasonable — or sane.

“Trump got in the middle of it. He blew it out of proportion,” said a woman who admits she’s trying to replace a song that’s been the official national anthem since 1931 over a tossed-off line by the president during a campaign rally.

Instead, she says it’s time to find an anthem that isn’t “another song that disenfranchises part of the American population.” Let me be the first to recommend “The Ketchup Song” by Las Ketchup, because if we’re going to go ridiculous on this one we might as well go all the way. It’s in Spanglish, too, so you’ve got the inclusivity thing going on.

Thankfully, the NAACP effort has no chance of having any real effect whatsoever. However, it’s yet another reminder that the slippery slope of revisionism is a very real thing.

There’s been plenty of hyperbole used when it comes to toppling Confederate monuments or throwing fake blood on the statues of former presidents, but this takes it to a new level. Calling the national anthem “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon” — as if it were a tune lifted from a minstrel show — is nuclear-level hyperbole.

And you know what? It’s not like we can say we weren’t warned.

H/T TheBlaze

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NFL Collapse: Monday’s Game Was One of Lowest-Rated in History

It’s getting a bit superfluous to state that the NFL has a ratings problem. It’s a bit like saying that Greece has a budgetary shortfall or that Lindsey Lohan has career issues: The trope is so old and the issue so formidable that such simple language seems unsuitable for the gravity of the issue.

If you don’t believe it, believe the “Monday Night Football” ratings this week.

According to NBC Sports, the matchup between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers drew a 7.6 rating on ESPN.

Not only is that lower than last year’s Week Nine game between the Seattle Seahawks and Buffalo Bills, it was also the lowest-rated Week Nine “Monday Night Football” game since 2007 and one of the lowest-rated in history.

TRENDING: Sponsors Threaten NBC if They Continue to Show NFL Protests

There’s even more trouble if you look closer at those two games.

The 2007 game in question — which involved the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens — was essentially over at halftime, with Pittsburgh taking a 35-7 lead into the locker room on the way to a 38-7 victory.

While the Lions haven’t lived up to expectations and the Packers are without star QB Aaron Rodgers, who’s lost for the season, both teams are still within striking distance in the NFC North, particularly if the division-leading Minnesota Vikings continue to have their usual quarterback-related problems.

(The Vikings are currently starting Case Keenum at the position. For the uninitiated, the only more unreliable thing in the stadium on any given Sunday that Mr. Keenum is playing would be if there were a Yugo in the parking lot.)

And while the Lions-Packers game wasn’t exactly the most thrilling thing you would ever see, it was at least closer than the aforementioned contest between the Steelers and Ravens, with the Lions winning 30-17.

Now, we don’t want to subscribe to the fallacy of the single cause here. The NFL has a lot of problems, especially when it comes to ESPN’s “Monday Night Football.” There’s cord-cutting, traumatic brain injury, ESPN’s political drift to the left and the growth (and renewal) of other sports like basketball, soccer and baseball.

However, let’s face facts: At least part of the ratings freefall the league is experiencing has to do with the anthem protests and the league’s response to them.

The freefall certainly began accelerating rapidly the moment that Colin Kaepernick started the whole kneeling trend, and the politicization of sports this year has just made things worse for the league.

RELATED: Sponsors Threaten NBC if They Continue to Show NFL Protests

It’s worth noting that Lions owner Martha Ford has asked players not to kneel, although the venerable Packers have been one of the more active teams in terms of demonstrations. It’s gotten bad enough that one man rented a plan to fly over Lambeau Field with a banner that read “Real men and NFL owners should stand for our country.”

Week 10 might be a little better for the NFL and ESPN, at least as far as “Monday Night Football” is concerned. The 6-3 Carolina Panthers are involved, at least, although the unexciting Miami Dolphins and Smokin’ Jay Cutler are their opponents.

However, for fans who are boycotting the league over its perceived disrespect for the anthem, it could be the 1984 49ers facing off against the 2001 Patriots and they still wouldn’t watch.

And that’s the real problem.

H/T Deadline

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CA Gov. Jerry Brown’s War Against Reality… and the Climate

CA Gov. Jerry Brown's War Against Reality… and the Climate
California Gov. Jerry Brown says the world needs ‘brain washing’ on climate change. Sounding indeed brainwashed, Brown said, “The problem … is us. It’s our whole way of life. It’s our comfort … It’s the greed. It’s the indulgence. It’s the pattern. And it’s the inertia.”

I hate to be a party pooper but the totalitarian trio of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot also said the world needed brainwashing. But I digress.

via CanadaFreePress.Com

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INDECENT: TV Anchor Says Kevin Spacey Sexually Assaulted Her Teenage Son

A former television anchor says Kevin Spacey sexually assaulted her son in a Nantucket restaurant last year, and her son has filed a complaint with the local police department.

Heather Unruh, who spoke during a press conference about the incident Wednesday, says her son happened to meet Spacey in a Nantucked bar in the summer of 2016. Spacey brought Unruh’s son “drink after drink” she alleges, before he “stuck his hand down my son’s pants and grabbed his genitals.” Spacey then invited him to a private party, she says.

Her son “panicked” and “froze,” Unruh claims. When Spacey went to the bathroom, another patron came over to ask Unruh’s son if he was okay. When he responded that he wasn’t, the patron directed him to leave the bar.

“Obviously, she had seen something and knew that he was not. She told him to run,” the former anchor told media. “And he did. He ran as fast as he could all the way to his grandmother’s house.”

He did not file a report with the Nantucket police at the time, Unruh added, because he was embarrassed. “The victim, my son, was a star-struck, straight, 18-year-old young man who had no idea that the famous actor was an alleged sexual predator or that he was about to become his next victim.”

This week, however, the family contacted Nantucket law enforcement, who urged Unruh and her son to get the incident on record. The Nantucket Police department chief told CNN that they received Unruh’s report and that they are looking into the incident.

Unruh is urging the woman who told her son to leave the bar to come forward to corroborate his version of events.

Neither Spacey nor his representative responded to Unruh’s claims, but both Spacey and his attorney have categorically denied previous allegations, including one made by Richard Dreyfuss’ son, Harry.

The claims have been piling up, however, since actor Anthony Rapp first accused Spacey of indecent behavior last week, claiming that Spacey preyed on him when he was just 14. Spacey apologized for behavior he claimed was the result of too much alcohol and tried to head off further reports by claiming he was gay. Since then, several people have come forward to allege Spacey sexually harassed or assaulted them, including eight people who worked with Spacey on his hit Netflix show, House of Cards.

via Daily Wire

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Amnesty Would Threaten GOP Hold on House, Say Activists

Grass-roots campaigners are warning GOP legislators to oppose any amnesty in the pending Christmas budget battles.

“The mere fact that there is a conversation about a deal on amnesty … is an affront,” said Bill Gheen, founder of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, or ALIPAC, which helped block amnesties sought by President George W Bush in 2006 and 2007. Before the 2016 election, he said, “we were promised [by Donald Trump] this would not happen. We were promised strong immigration enforcement for years to come before any discussions about remaining illegal immigrants.”

“If they do the wrong thing on this, I think there is a very real risk the Republicans lose the House, and that means both [Republican] House members and Senators will suffer,” said Rosemary Jenks, the government affairs manager for NumbersUSA. She continued:

This is clearly a huge issue for Americans – it is why they elected Donald Trump — and unless House and Senate Republicans realize that, it is very dangerous terrain ahead for them. Think about the optics – – they failed on Obamacare, they failed on tax reform, but they pass an amnesty?

Trump cannot make a deal with the establishment because any deal will be violated by Democrats and their allied judges, said Ed Hunter, a GOP activist who runs the Overpasses for America branch in Maryland. “They will work  to convert [an amnesty for] 800,000 to 40 million,” he said, adding a warning: 

If you betray us on this, it is over. [Conservatives] will never vote for Trump again because this was his freaking promise in every rally — no amnesties, build the wall, make America great again.

The grassroots pressure is rising as GOP Senators debate whether or not to combine an ambitious reform of the immigration system with a painful amnesty for some or all younger illegals, ranging in numbers from 690,000 to 3.3 million.

Trump released his immigration principles on October 8, which include an offer to accept an amnesty of some scale in exchange for ending chain-migration and the visa lottery. Both of those immigration rules allow immigrants to get green cards for their extended relatives, regardless of their skills, ideology or ability to assimilate.

Democrats are also contemptuous of the GOP’s inability to shape the immigration debate. On November 7, for example, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer predicted he will get Trump to sign an amnesty bill by using a few Republicans to get the amnesty into the end-of-year budget bill. “He won’t veto the bill,” Schumer said. “If DACA is in the omnibus, he will not veto it, is my prediction.”

For the moment, influential GOP Senators say they oppose a Christmastime amnesty. “The president made it very clear that he doesn’t want to see any DACA legislation as part of a year-end package,” Georgia Sen. David Perdue, told the media after the Senators met with Trump on November 2. Perdue is a co-author of the Trump-backed RAISE bill, which would raise Americans’ wages by ending the chain-migration inflow of new workers.

“This is not going to be part of the year-end omnibus or CR,” said Texas Sen. John Cornyn. The “CR” is Congress-speak for an end-of-year budget package.

GOP Senate Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell also dismissed the Democrats’ chance of passing a no-strings amnesty, saying that any bill would have to include offsets and safeguards. “I think there ought to be something related to making the American legal immigration system better, achieved along with DACA,” he said November 4, according to Politico. He continued:

It could be border security. It could be ending chain migration. It could be the diversity quotas. But something that tangibly improves the legal immigration system in this country, I think, ought to be attached to DACA.

But that vague list ranges ranging from token ‘border security” measures up to fundamental changes in the chain-migration system which has allowed Democrats to convert California, Virginia and other states into Democratic bastions. And his list also fails to include the most effective prophylactic against illegal immigration — the E-Verify law which penalizes companies who do not exclude illegal immigrants from hiring programs.

House GOP leaders have formed a task force to develop immigration legislation. But House Speaker Paul Ryan won’t say whether he will try to help Americans with a bill opposed by Democrats and business, or just slide by with a cheap-labor bill favored by business and Democratic pressure groups.

The GOP’s divisions and its record of support for mass immigration of Democratic voters have also bled out any trust among the GOP-voting activists.

A deal is impossible, said Hunter, because “you’re not going to get anything in return.” Trump should use his presidential powers to enforce the immigration laws, repatriate illegals and direct government agencies — such as the Corps of Engineers — to build the border wall. “We need to start playing hardball,” he said.

Any deal will be “a complete bait-and-switch,” said Gheen, adding:

Our backs are against the wall – we are already on the verge of being overrun by 20 million people illegally here. We are not going to concede one inch to this invasion or the people who are supporting it … The populists will see [an amnesty] as another surrender and sellout. Stop negotiating with those people … just enforce the law.

If the GOP blocks the Democrats’ Christmas amnesty, the legislators won’t push an amnesty deal in 2018 because of the primaries and the 2018 elections, he predicted. 

“We are ready and prepared to blow up any deal that is not good for America and Americans,” said Jenks at NumbersUSA. She continued: 

We will work with members of Congress, letting some of them know that there may be a way to do this — but it has to [end] chain migration and [require] E-Verify. I  think that Trump actually had a pretty major impact on the Senators he talked to, and they are actually talking about chain migration … but the House is not there yet …

There are two straightforward simple measures that will dramatically change and improve our immigration system — No. 1 is geting rid of chain migration [because] we should not have a self-selected, extended family immigration system … [and] No. 2 is E-Verify, which will have a bigger impact on illegal immigration than any other piece of legislation. Those two should be the minimum if anyone is serious about responding to the demands of American people. These are unbelievably popular issues, so there is no excuse for these two things to not be the absolute minimum.

To move the ball forward, she said, “the thing we really, really need is for Trump to say I will veto any bill that does not have X, Y and Z.”

 

 

 

 

via Breitbart News

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‘Transparent’ Star Jeffrey Tambor Accused Of Sexual Harassment By Transgender Assistant

Another famed actor has now had sexual harassment allegations made against him: Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Deadline that the company is investigating the claims made by Tambor’s former assistant Van Barnes, who is transgender.

Tambor has defiantly replied that no such harassment took place. He spoke to Deadline, and fired back:

I am aware that a former disgruntled assistant of mine has made a private post implying that I had acted in an improper manner toward her. I adamantly and vehemently reject and deny any and all implication and allegation that I have ever engaged in any improper behavior toward this person or any other person I have ever worked with. I am appalled and distressed by this baseless allegation.

Barnes had raved about Transparent, saying, “It’s really rewarding knowing that people are watching this show and taking it all in. It’s actually changing their views and opinions, especially with trans issues that they might not have known about before.”

Barnes appeared on E!’s I Am Cait with Caitlyn Jenner and the Amazon documentary anthology miniseries This Is Me back in 2015.

via Daily Wire

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