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If you’re a celebrity and your life is threatened by any major terrorist organization, what’s the safest way to protect yourself? Guns, of course — whether it be a gun on your person or in the hands of trained security guards.

Whose lives are possibly being threatened by a terrorist organization? Those of actor George Clooney and his wife Amal, unfortunately. Amal is an attorney specializing in international law and human rights who has brought a court case against the Islamic State in a French court. That’s bound to attract attention from the group, and it’s making George rightfully nervous.

Which celebrities have been conspicuously against guns? George and Amal Clooney, of course, who were major supporters of the March for Our Lives; Amal has blamed mass shootings in America on “guns, and how widely and easily available they are.”

So, let’s start with the basics. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, George Clooney told a podcast that his family was in danger due to the case Amal was bringing on behalf of Nadia Murad, who claims Islamic State group terrorists captured her back in 2014.

The Yazidi woman says that the group trafficked her as a sex slave. If the case succeeds, those who were responsible could face justice in an international court.

TRENDING: Trump Tells Reporters Just How Far His Declassification Goes: ‘We Are Exposing Everything’

No matter what you think of the Clooneys, this is a pretty noble cause, I think anyone would admit. However, it comes with a certain amount of danger.

“My wife is taking the first case against ISIS to court. We have plenty of issues,” Clooney said on the podcast. “Real, proper, security issues that we have to deal with on a fairly daily basis.

“We don’t want our kids to be targets, so we have to pay attention to that. But we also live our lives, we don’t hide in corners.”

And, as Clooney noted, it’s difficult to hide when you’re one of the most recognizable couples on the planet.

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“My wife and I wanted to walk with our kids in Central Park and that’s just not possible,” he said. “We’ve tried. We walk out the door and everyone surrounds us. There’s a bounty on my kids heads for a photo.”

So, how do you manage that kind of risk? Protection. But Clooney and his wife have both come out with the one constitutionally protected form of protection there is, the firearm. Last year, Clooney and his wife gave a half-million dollars to the March for Our Lives, the series of pro-gun control protests after the Parkland shooting.

“Our family will be there on March 24 to stand side by side with this incredible generation of young people from all over the country, and in the name of our children Ella and Alexander, we’re donating 500,000 dollars to help pay for this groundbreaking event. Our children’s lives depend on it,” a statement from Clooney read, according to Reuters.

While Clooney declined to be interviewed by Parkland students for the event, he went on to co-sign the aims of young activists in a letter published in The U.K. Guardian.

“The fact that no adults will speak on the stage in D.C. is a powerful message to the world that if we can’t do something about gun violence, then you will. The issue is going to be this, anyone you ask would feel proud to be interviewed by you, but it’s so much more effective if it’s young people,” he wrote.

RELATED: Smug Amal Clooney Now Blaming Trump for Violence Against Journalists in Other Countries

“Amal and I stand behind you, in support of you, in gratitude to you,” he said. “You make me proud of my country again.”

The two attended the march, however, and Amal Clooney made it clear to Vogue that she believed guns were to blame for violence in America.

“I’ve seen lots of commentary where people have tried to say, ‘This isn’t about having too many guns or allowing semiautomatic and automatic weapons to be purchased too easily — surely this is about mental health, or about violence and movies,’” she said. “The fact is, there are violent movies all over the world, and there are mental-health issues in other countries. But this doesn’t happen in other developed countries. The difference is guns, and how widely and easily available they are.”

Statistics don’t bear this out, but whatever. The point is that the couple is in grave danger, the kind of danger where self-defense would be highly useful.

Of course, the Clooneys could be availing themselves of protection of the armed sort, which would be better for them but profoundly hypocritical. They wouldn’t be the only ones who believe in protection for me, but not for thee — as if your safety didn’t matter.

One would hope that this threat would shake Clooney out of his anti-gun stance. Then again, the ability of Hollywood stars to handle cognitive dissonance knows no bounds.

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Wade Heath of Mediaite got an exclusive blast of anger from a set of former pro-Trump contributors at CNN. They have been the "fig leaf" of balance on an overwhelmingly anti-Trump lineup of anchors, correspondents, and pundits. These men say the same thing conservatives viewers do: CNN thinks the only good Republicans is a Never Trumper. 

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight declared President Donald Trump the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln, insisting that his “every” political move has been correct.

In the first of two videos entitled “To my fellow Americans,” the Ray Donovan star praised Trump’s efforts to combat the political left and their “absurd words of the destruction.”

“People of the Republican party, I know you will agree with me when I say that our president has our upmost respect and love. This job is not easy, for he is battling the left, and their absurd words of destructions,” the veteran actor began. “I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again, that our nation has been built on the solid ground from our forefathers. And there is a moral code of duty that has been passed on from President Lincoln.”

To my fellow Americans. Part 1. pic.twitter.com/srw4zXCRKJ

— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) May 25, 2019

In the second part, Jon Voight goes on to argue that America is “witnessing triumph” despite claims from the political left that it is in crisis.

“The country is stronger, safer, and with more jobs, because our president his every move correct,” Voight says. “Don’t be fooled by the political left, because we are the people of this nation that is witnessing triumph. So let us stand with our president, let us stand up for this truth that President Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. God bless America, and may God continue to guide this nation. Much love.”

To my fellow Americans. Part 2. pic.twitter.com/uhqpbzwHhS

— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) May 25, 2019

Last month, the 80-year-old star, who is also the father of actress and activist Angelina Jolie, sent a similar message of support to Fox News host Laura Ingraham against attempts by left-wing activists to pressure advertisers into boycotting her show The Ingraham Angle. 

“You know the truth is very important–right now most especially,” the Ali star said. “And those who believe in the truth are to be cherished. People like Laura Ingraham. They’re wonderful people who we need very much at this time, when our president is being attacked with lies and slanders from the media.”

“So I have a message for Laura, I want to send her my love, and I want to thank her for all that she does. God Bless Laura,” Voight said.

A message to my fellow Americans. pic.twitter.com/pRyr1MdonU

— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) April 22, 2019

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

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Among the many things that frustrate Americans about Washington,
D.C., is the unwillingness–not inability, but unwillingness–to solve problems.

One of many examples is the U.S. national debt, now more
than $22 trillion and counting.

As Heritage Foundation President Kay Coles James has
written, “The federal budget is at the core of our political system.
Everything the federal government does, from taxing, to regulating, to
providing services, to protecting our very freedoms, it does through the
federal budget.”

Liberals might dismiss the foundation’s “Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for Fiscal 2020,” but they shouldn’t. The document is based on verifiable facts. If implemented, Heritage claims, it would save trillions of dollars compared to projections by the Congressional Budget Office and produce a budget surplus by 2025.

Everyone knows “entitlements” are the main drivers
of debt and that politicians don’t want to reform them because they fear
attacks by the media and by their political opponents.

The “Blueprint” summarizes the problem:

Entitlement programs in the United States have expanded more than tenfold since their inception, but workers are nowhere near 10 times better off as a result … they often make them worse off, depriving them of autonomy, personal choice, and higher incomes and saddling them with a mountain of debt. Medicare and Social Security carry $70 trillion worth of unfunded obligations over the next 75 years–the equivalent of a $445,000 credit card bill placed on every U.S. worker.

Ponder that for a moment as you look at your credit card
statement.

Most people appear ignorant that the amount they pay into
Social Security and Medicare does not come close to covering the programs’
actual costs.

“According to the Urban Institute,” says the
Blueprint, “the average worker retiring in 2020 will have paid $135,000 in
Social Security taxes and will receive $193,000 in Social Security benefits.
The gap for Medicare is even larger; the average retiree in 2020 will have paid
$36,000 in Medicare taxes and will receive $229,000 in Medicare benefits
(excluding premiums paid by the retiree). This means that the average retiree
in 2020 will receive about 2.5 times as much in benefits as he or she paid into
the systems.”

There’s much more and members of Congress should read it,
along with the proposed fixes, which are as follows:

— Increase Social Security’s retirement age and index it to
life expectancy so that Social Security’s benefits would automatically adjust
to reflect individuals’ longer life spans and additional work capacity. This
would save $32 billion over 10 years and reduce Social Security’s 75-year shortfall
by 29 percent.

— Shift toward a flat antipoverty benefit so that the
program could better align its resources with individuals’ needs and help to
prevent more elderly people from living in poverty. This would save $645
billion over 10 years and reduce Social Security’s 75-year shortfall by 84
percent.

— Modernize the program’s spousal benefit to account for
the fact that most women earn Social Security benefits based on their own work
history. This would save $2 billion over 10 years and reduce Social Security’s
75-year shortfall by 3 percent.

— Use the chained consumer price index for Social
Security’s benefit calculations to provide a better adjustment for inflation.
This would save $12 billion over 10 years and reduce Social Security’s 75-year
shortfall by 11 percent.

— Reduce the payroll tax to give workers more choice in
deciding how to spend or save their earnings.

Reducing the debt and reforming entitlements is simple, but
not if you are a member of Congress. Too many prefer the issue to a solution,
because their primary goal is re-election. Sufficient numbers of voters must
demand reforms if there are to be any.

Unfortunately, too many have become addicted to government.
Their addiction, unless it is broken now, will cost future generations and risk
economic collapse.

(c) 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The post Heritage’s ‘Blueprint for Balance’ Has Real Fixes For Our Spending Crisis appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Presidential contenders are in a battle to out-give one another.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., proposes a whopping $50,000 per student college loan forgiveness. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., proposes free health care for all Americans plus illegal aliens. Most Democratic presidential candidates promise free stuff that includes free college, universal income, “Medicare for All,” and debt forgiveness.

Their socialist predecessors made promises, too.

“Freedom and Bread” was the slogan used by Adolf
Hitler during the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) campaign
against President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler even promised, “In the Third
Reich every German girl will find a husband.”

Stalin promised a great socialist-Marxist society that
included better food and better worker conditions.

China’s Mao Zedong promised democratic constitutionalism and
the dream that “farmers have land to till.” These, and other
promises, gave Mao the broad political support he needed to win leadership of
the entire country in 1949.

Socialism promises a utopia that sounds good, but those
promises are never realized. It most often results in massive human suffering.

Capitalism fails miserably when compared with a heaven or
utopia promised by socialism. But any earthly system is going to come up short
in such a comparison. Mankind must make choices among alternative economic
systems that actually exist.

It turns out that for the common man capitalism, with all of
its alleged shortcomings, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with
his everyday needs and desires. By most any measure of human well-being, people
who live in countries toward the capitalistic end of the economic spectrum are far
better off than their fellow men who live in countries toward the socialist
end. Why?

Capitalism, or what some call free markets, is relatively
new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way individuals amassed great
wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow man. With the
rise of capitalism, it became possible to amass great wealth by serving and
pleasing your fellow man.

Capitalists seek to discover what people want and produce
and market it as efficiently as possible as a means to profit. A historical
example of this process would be John D. Rockefeller, whose successful
marketing drove kerosene prices down from 58 cents a gallon in 1865 to 7 cents
in 1900. Henry Ford became rich by producing cars for the common man.

Both Ford’s and Rockefeller’s personal benefits pale in
comparison to the benefits received by the common man who had cheaper kerosene
and cheaper and more convenient transportation. There are literally thousands
of examples of how mankind’s life has been made better by those in the pursuit
of profits.

Here’s my question to you: Are the people who, by their actions, created unprecedented convenience, longer life expectancy, and a more pleasant life for the ordinary person—and became wealthy in the process—deserving of all the scorn and ridicule heaped upon them by intellectuals and political hustlers today?

In many intellectual and political circles, the pursuit of
profits is seen as evil. However, this pursuit forces entrepreneurs to find
ways to either please people efficiently or go bankrupt. Of course, they could
mess up and avoid bankruptcy if they can get government to bail them out or
give them protection against competition.

Nonprofit organizations have an easier time of it. As a matter of fact, people tend to be the most displeased with services received from public schools, motor vehicle departments, and other government agencies. Nonprofits can operate whether they please people or not. That’s because they derive their compensation through taxes.

I’m sure that we’d be less satisfied with supermarkets if they had the power to take our money through taxes, as opposed to being forced to find ways to get us to voluntarily give them our money.

By the way, I’m not making an outright condemnation of
socialism. I run my household on the Marxist principle, “From each
according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

That system works when you can remember the names of all
involved.

COPYRIGHT 2019 CREATORS.COM

The post Socialism Promises a Utopia, but Delivers Suffering appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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Drag Queen Vanessa Vanjie Mateo (Screenshot)
Chips Ahoy! is promoting a famous drag queen’s video endorsement of its cookies on Twitter.

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“Nancy Pelosi wants to be speaker of the House more than she wants to be a patriot,” LevinTV host Mark Levin concluded on the radio Tuesday evening of the California Democrat’s actions, after her attacks on President Trump torpedoed a bipartisan infrastructure meeting at the White House.

Levin pointed to news of a scheduled meeting earlier that day at the White House between congressional Democrats and President Trump about infrastructure. Immediately before that meeting, however, Pelosi attacked the president by telling reporters he was “engaged in a cover-up” in reference to the House of Representatives’ investigations against him.

Trump later left the meeting before announcing from the White House Rose Garden that he would not work with congressional Democrats until the Democrat-led investigations were brought to a halt.

“So I’ve said from the beginning, right from the beginning, that you probably can’t go down two tracks,” President Trump said. “You can go down the investigation track, and you can go down the investment track or the track of ‘Let’s get things done for the American people.’ I love the American people.”

Levin said that was the right move.

“You’re not going to sit down and do a deal with somebody who just accused you of a crime,” Levin said in defense of Trump’s decision.

“The president of the United States cannot, must not be blackmailed by the Democrat House of Representatives,” Levin added. “He must not serve at their demand. He’s not their staffer. He’s not a defendant to the House of Representatives. … The president replied the way he should have replied.”

Listen:

Don’t miss an episode of LevinTV. Sign up for your FREE 30-day trial now!

The Media’s Biased Narrative Against Trump

Want to see the rest of the show? Get LevinTV: https://t.co/ICZsTSuMg1 pic.twitter.com/IPWY8R7IQk

— LevinTV (@LevinTV) May 22, 2019

The post Levin: ‘The president of the United States cannot, must not be blackmailed by the Democrat House of Representatives’ appeared first on Conservative Review.

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American voters like today’s economy so much that the percentage who say it is “excellent” or “good” represents 71 percent. That’s the highest total number in almost 18 years, according to a Quinnipiac University National poll issued on Tuesday.

The poll found 22 percent responded that the economy is “excellent” and 49 percent said it is “good.”

The majority of American voters also are happy with their own economic outlook.  

“Some 52 percent of American voters say they are better off financially today than they were in 2016, while 21 percent say they are worse off and 23 percent say they are the same,” the polling group says of its findings.

Quinnipiac reports, however, even with those positive numbers, President Donald Trump isn’t getting credit for those high economic scores or the fact that his policies have positively impacted the economy.

The poll asked: Do you think President Trump’s trade policies are good or bad for the U.S. economy?

Those who answered “good” were 40 percent compared to 48 percent who responded “bad.”

That is, however, better than his rating on July 2, 2018 — 39 percent good, 50 percent bad.

“American voters give Trump mixed grades for his handling of the economy as 48 percent approve and 45 percent disapprove,” the polling group reports.

“The nation’s economy is pretty darn good and President Donald Trump’s approval numbers are pretty darn awful,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll,” said of the poll. “So what to make of the good news, bad news mashup and how to correct it?”

When the numbers behind the good economy are broken down along party lines, 50 percent of Republicans answered “excellent,” where only 3 percent of Democrats choose that word to describe today’s economy.

But more Democrats rated the economy as “good” than Republicans — 51 percent to 42 percent respectively.

The telephone survey was conducted from May 16 – 20, 2019 across the country and included 1,078 “self-identified” registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.7 percent.

via Breitbart News

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Beverly Hills, California, voted this week to become the first city in the nation to ban the sale of tobacco products within the city limits, except for three high-end cigar lounges where the wealthy hang out.

The city council voted Tuesday to approve the ban, which would apply to gas stations, convenience stores, pharmacies, and grocery stores. High-end hotels are also exempt, but can only sell the products through concierge services.

Wealthy residents, including actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, lobbied the city to exempt their favorite haunts.

“Great cities are defined by their great people, places and institutions, and the Grand Havana Room is a signature location where these three things come together in Beverly Hills,” Schwarzeneggar wrote in a March 11 letter to the city panel considering the policy, according to CNBC.

“It is unthinkable that the city might adopt a policy that would intentionally or unintentionally cause the closure of this character-defining institution, and it should not do so,” he added.

Nick Miller, who operates a gas station in the city, told CNBC before the vote that it would hurt his business. Further, he told the outlet it was hypocritical of the city to carve out exemptions for the elite.

“The level of hypocrisy that has been displayed at this time by the Beverly Hills Council is just astonishing,” he said. “They’re allowing hotels to maintain the sale of cigarettes because apparently [sic] to somebody buying a $4,000 a night room.”

Hotels were exempted thanks to lobbying by the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. Chamber CEO Todd Johnson wrote a letter to the city on April 17 urging them to exempt hotels.

“Approximately 80% of our guests were from cities outside of the United States, many from cultures where smoking is more prevalent,” Johnson said in his letter, according to CNBC. “It is our concern that a ban on tobacco sales will deter such visitors, including prominent dignitaries, from staying in Beverly Hills, and will both hurt hotel revenues upon which the city depends as well as encourage people to stay elsewhere.”

Fox News reported that policy and management analyst for Beverly Hills, Logan Phillippo, provided a report to the city council warning about potential legal challenges.

“Courts have not yet reviewed citywide bans on tobacco sales, however, so there is still uncertainty as to whether a court would uphold this type of ban if challenged,” the report said. “Given that no other City in the United States has adopted a comprehensive ban on all tobacco products, the City is likely to face legal challenges.”

The report also explained how to implement the ban.

As Beverly Hills becomes the first city to ban the sale of tobacco to anyone but the wealthy, the U.S. Senate has introduced a bill that would increase the age that someone can purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21. The bill was introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA). The bill sends the message that an American is old enough to die for their country at age 18, but too immature to smoke for another three years.

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