53percenter's Blog

Politicians can solve all our problems.  At least, that’s what they tell us when they are trolling for our votes.

To be sure, they could solve a lot of them.

Take poverty, for example.

Back in the 1960s, when the New Deal was about to morph into the Great Society and the left needed a lot of poor people to hand out cash to, it set the poverty level.

A bureaucrat named Mollie Orshansky decided what a typical family needed to eat, then decided what that amount of food cost and set a percentage of that amount as what the poor could afford.

 After all, poverty is not a state; it is just a term to be defined.

If the government wanted fewer poor people, all it would have to do is lower the amount that defines “poverty.”

To most truly poor people in the world, America’s poor are filthy rich.

As the Heritage Foundation has reported, more than 80 percent of the poor have air conditioning, three quarters have a car, nearly two thirds have cable or satellite TV, half have a computer, and 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV.  The biggest health problem they face is obesity.

Ask a beggar on the streets of Calcutta if he thinks any Americans are “poor.”

Another example, from Florida.  The state keeps data on school safety problems, including fights.

Turns out, a few years ago, there were thousands of fights in public schools.  It sounded unsafe.  Public school officials grumbled.

So the state changed the definition of “fighting.”  As the Miami Herald found, the number of fights in Dade County schools dropped by about 90 percent.  There were not fewer fights; it is just that many of them no longer met the definition.

These examples show why language is important and why it is dangerous to let the Left tell us what language we may use or what it means.

Cutting babies to pieces is just “late-term abortions” (“health care”) that “remove tissue from the patient.”

Tax relief that allows people to keep more of what they earn is termed “tax expenditures” by the budget wizards in Washington who have driven the nation $22 trillion into debt.  Soon, no doubt, they will have a new term for “debt,” which sounds so…costly.

Therefore, whenever a politician is using deceptive language — such as calling illegal aliens “undocumented immigrants” — there usually is a reason.

Although he is no longer deemed suitable in academia, the incomparable William Shakespeare had Juliet say, “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The same is true of a skunk.  It won’t smell any better if you call it a rose.

Politicians can solve all our problems.  At least, that’s what they tell us when they are trolling for our votes.

To be sure, they could solve a lot of them.

Take poverty, for example.

Back in the 1960s, when the New Deal was about to morph into the Great Society and the left needed a lot of poor people to hand out cash to, it set the poverty level.

A bureaucrat named Mollie Orshansky decided what a typical family needed to eat, then decided what that amount of food cost and set a percentage of that amount as what the poor could afford.

 After all, poverty is not a state; it is just a term to be defined.

If the government wanted fewer poor people, all it would have to do is lower the amount that defines “poverty.”

To most truly poor people in the world, America’s poor are filthy rich.

As the Heritage Foundation has reported, more than 80 percent of the poor have air conditioning, three quarters have a car, nearly two thirds have cable or satellite TV, half have a computer, and 40 percent have a wide-screen HDTV.  The biggest health problem they face is obesity.

Ask a beggar on the streets of Calcutta if he thinks any Americans are “poor.”

Another example, from Florida.  The state keeps data on school safety problems, including fights.

Turns out, a few years ago, there were thousands of fights in public schools.  It sounded unsafe.  Public school officials grumbled.

So the state changed the definition of “fighting.”  As the Miami Herald found, the number of fights in Dade County schools dropped by about 90 percent.  There were not fewer fights; it is just that many of them no longer met the definition.

These examples show why language is important and why it is dangerous to let the Left tell us what language we may use or what it means.

Cutting babies to pieces is just “late-term abortions” (“health care”) that “remove tissue from the patient.”

Tax relief that allows people to keep more of what they earn is termed “tax expenditures” by the budget wizards in Washington who have driven the nation $22 trillion into debt.  Soon, no doubt, they will have a new term for “debt,” which sounds so…costly.

Therefore, whenever a politician is using deceptive language — such as calling illegal aliens “undocumented immigrants” — there usually is a reason.

Although he is no longer deemed suitable in academia, the incomparable William Shakespeare had Juliet say, “What’s in a name?  That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

The same is true of a skunk.  It won’t smell any better if you call it a rose.

President Donald Trump ripped television actor Jussie Smollett on Saturday, after the actor’s embarrassing hoax accusing Trump supporters of attacking him.

“In addition to great incompetence and corruption, The Smollett case in Chicago is also about a Hate Crime,” Trump wrote on Twitter.

Trump commented during his trip to Japan, at about 5:43 a.m. where he was staying.

He referred to Smollett’s phony story that he was attacked by two Trump supporters who shouted, “This is MAGA Country!” before they accosted him in the city of Chicago.

“That turned out to be a total lie, had nothing to do with ‘MAGA COUNTRY,’” Trump wrote. “Serious stuff, and not even an apology to millions of people!”

Although Chicago prosecutors dropped the 16 felony charges against Smollett for staging the fake attack, an Illinois judge ordered Thursday that his criminal case file be unsealed for the public to see.

The Pentagon recently released data stating that 24 of the 34 million Americans aged 17–24 — 71% — are ineligible to serve in the military, due to obesity, a criminal record, or lacking a high school diploma.  The 24 million are also ineligible for most careers.

I’d be willing to bet the 71% is actually too low, if you add drug use into the mix.

Why are approximately three out of four young American adults fat or uneducated or criminals?  Kids aren’t born that way; they’re made that way.  Where are their parents?

The College Board, which administers the SAT college entry exam, recently announced that the test will assign an “adversity score” for each student, to determine social and economic backgrounds.  Students will not be told their scores, so they won’t know their “
We don’t need no stinkin’ SATs, adversity scores, LSATs, GREs, or any other BS standardized test.  What America’s future educators; lawyers; lawmakers; and, most importantly, parents, need is a GUT: a Grown Up Test.  Hell, I say test some adults!

Village Idiots All Around

The results of the GUT will confirm whether the child was raised by present, loving but tough parents or by the Democrats’ “it takes a village,” “fundamental transformation” “democratic socialism” useful idiocy.  I’ve long said these ideologies, while mostly the same at their cores, are political terrorism.  The Pentagon’s data confirm that our future holds some real and alarming national security concerns.

The questions of the GUT are inspired by my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child is Becoming a Democrat.  I avoid policy and hone in on parenting.  I believe that if my playbook is followed, we can ensure that future generations of our youths grow up to be, well, grown-ups.  Here’s a sampling of the questions:

• Is one’s race, sex, ethnicity, or country of origin equal in value to his skills, achievements, qualifications, or accomplishments?
• Does one deserve a trophy or medal just for showing up?
• Does “inequality is the new equality” pass constitutional muster?
• Should one who thinks at age 40 the same way one thought at age four be considered a grown-up?

The vast majority of these troubled youths and young adults live in cities run by Democrats for tens of thousands of consecutive days.  These cities are rife with single or no-parent homes, the highest rates of gun violence and death, failing schools, inter-generational familial poverty, rampant drug abuse, and little to no economic mobility.  Any dumb-dumb can procreate; it takes actual work to raise children to be law-abiding, productive adults.

To answer the “why?,” there’s a two-pronged approach: cause and intent.

The cause is the Democrat culture of zero accountability; little to no law and order; and myriad conspiracies about imagined racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination and victimization.  Having said all this, adults are responsible for their own decisions.  There’s the rub, however: tens of millions of Americans adult in age aren’t adult in thought, which dictates behavior.  Reality is like gravity: it’s the same for everyone.  Gravity doesn’t care about your race, sex, ethnicity, or bathroom of choice.  How one interprets reality is derived from whether one is grown up or not.  Politics is downstream from culture, and nowhere is that truer than in Democrat-run municipalities.

If there’s concurrence on the cause, then that brings us to the uncomfortable intent question: is the cause coincidental, incompetence, or intentional?  The evidence, in no way, supports coincidental or incompetent.  Both are statistically — dare I say, scientifically — impossible. 

Politics is never coincidental.  Incompetent?  Sure.  But even a broken clock is correct twice daily.  So what explains the same ills all across America, in Democrat city after city, for generation upon generation?  The only logical explanation is that the destruction of cities, the nuclear family, and communities is deliberate.  If this is true, then the Democratic Party is the most dangerous group in the history of our republic, foreign or domestic.

The Parents-Kids “Best Friends” Myth 

Kids should not be political pawns, but I often joke that someone is going to indoctrinate your children.  If it’s not you, the parents, then the Democrats will exploit and engineer your kids into Vladimir Lenin idol-worshiping societal burdens, who will seek to impose their anti-American idiocy unto our lives, our children’s schools, our rights, and our businesses. 

I sometimes hear parents say they and their children are “best friends.”  When uttered, I need a defibrillator for my shortness of breath and cardiac arrest.  Parents who believe they’re best buds with their children may as well just scream “Allahu akbar,” because the vast majority of those kids will grow up to vote for Democrats who apologize for, and are petrified of, Islamic supremacists who strap suicide bombs to their bodies.

I may not be able to prove it, but I guarantee you some of the 24 million young adults the Pentagon reported on were “best friends” with their parents — if they had parents at all. Senator Kuckoo Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a declared Democrat 2020 presidential nominee, believes that parents and teachers are responsible for raising children.  Nah, Kuckoo, wrong; teachers teach, and parents parent.  Yes, teachers, coaches and other community leaders complement parents, but parents are responsible for raising their children.  Period.  If Kuckoo wants “it takes a village,” she should move to the Islamic Republic of Iran or to Venezuela.  Her statement disqualifies her from being president.  Get Kuckoo a GUT, and fast!

Good and decent people can sometimes be bad parents.  I’m a relatively new father, so I’m still learning and, I hope, keeping the screw-ups to a minimum.  Let him who has not fatherly or motherly sinned cast the first stone.  Somewhere along the way, though, parents abdicated their responsibilities to the devoutly secular god known as the State.  I don’t believe it’s too late to right the ship, but we’re never more than a generation away from loss of liberties.

Democrat policies are guaranteed to fail our nation and our children.  Grown-ups of America, unite!  More than ever, our children need us.

Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat.  He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.

The Pentagon recently released data stating that 24 of the 34 million Americans aged 17–24 — 71% — are ineligible to serve in the military, due to obesity, a criminal record, or lacking a high school diploma.  The 24 million are also ineligible for most careers.

I’d be willing to bet the 71% is actually too low, if you add drug use into the mix.

Why are approximately three out of four young American adults fat or uneducated or criminals?  Kids aren’t born that way; they’re made that way.  Where are their parents?

The College Board, which administers the SAT college entry exam, recently announced that the test will assign an “adversity score” for each student, to determine social and economic backgrounds.  Students will not be told their scores, so they won’t know their “
We don’t need no stinkin’ SATs, adversity scores, LSATs, GREs, or any other BS standardized test.  What America’s future educators; lawyers; lawmakers; and, most importantly, parents, need is a GUT: a Grown Up Test.  Hell, I say test some adults!

Village Idiots All Around

The results of the GUT will confirm whether the child was raised by present, loving but tough parents or by the Democrats’ “it takes a village,” “fundamental transformation” “democratic socialism” useful idiocy.  I’ve long said these ideologies, while mostly the same at their cores, are political terrorism.  The Pentagon’s data confirm that our future holds some real and alarming national security concerns.

The questions of the GUT are inspired by my upcoming first book, 10 Warning Signs Your Child is Becoming a Democrat.  I avoid policy and hone in on parenting.  I believe that if my playbook is followed, we can ensure that future generations of our youths grow up to be, well, grown-ups.  Here’s a sampling of the questions:

• Is one’s race, sex, ethnicity, or country of origin equal in value to his skills, achievements, qualifications, or accomplishments?
• Does one deserve a trophy or medal just for showing up?
• Does “inequality is the new equality” pass constitutional muster?
• Should one who thinks at age 40 the same way one thought at age four be considered a grown-up?

The vast majority of these troubled youths and young adults live in cities run by Democrats for tens of thousands of consecutive days.  These cities are rife with single or no-parent homes, the highest rates of gun violence and death, failing schools, inter-generational familial poverty, rampant drug abuse, and little to no economic mobility.  Any dumb-dumb can procreate; it takes actual work to raise children to be law-abiding, productive adults.

To answer the “why?,” there’s a two-pronged approach: cause and intent.

The cause is the Democrat culture of zero accountability; little to no law and order; and myriad conspiracies about imagined racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination and victimization.  Having said all this, adults are responsible for their own decisions.  There’s the rub, however: tens of millions of Americans adult in age aren’t adult in thought, which dictates behavior.  Reality is like gravity: it’s the same for everyone.  Gravity doesn’t care about your race, sex, ethnicity, or bathroom of choice.  How one interprets reality is derived from whether one is grown up or not.  Politics is downstream from culture, and nowhere is that truer than in Democrat-run municipalities.

If there’s concurrence on the cause, then that brings us to the uncomfortable intent question: is the cause coincidental, incompetence, or intentional?  The evidence, in no way, supports coincidental or incompetent.  Both are statistically — dare I say, scientifically — impossible. 

Politics is never coincidental.  Incompetent?  Sure.  But even a broken clock is correct twice daily.  So what explains the same ills all across America, in Democrat city after city, for generation upon generation?  The only logical explanation is that the destruction of cities, the nuclear family, and communities is deliberate.  If this is true, then the Democratic Party is the most dangerous group in the history of our republic, foreign or domestic.

The Parents-Kids “Best Friends” Myth 

Kids should not be political pawns, but I often joke that someone is going to indoctrinate your children.  If it’s not you, the parents, then the Democrats will exploit and engineer your kids into Vladimir Lenin idol-worshiping societal burdens, who will seek to impose their anti-American idiocy unto our lives, our children’s schools, our rights, and our businesses. 

I sometimes hear parents say they and their children are “best friends.”  When uttered, I need a defibrillator for my shortness of breath and cardiac arrest.  Parents who believe they’re best buds with their children may as well just scream “Allahu akbar,” because the vast majority of those kids will grow up to vote for Democrats who apologize for, and are petrified of, Islamic supremacists who strap suicide bombs to their bodies.

I may not be able to prove it, but I guarantee you some of the 24 million young adults the Pentagon reported on were “best friends” with their parents — if they had parents at all. Senator Kuckoo Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a declared Democrat 2020 presidential nominee, believes that parents and teachers are responsible for raising children.  Nah, Kuckoo, wrong; teachers teach, and parents parent.  Yes, teachers, coaches and other community leaders complement parents, but parents are responsible for raising their children.  Period.  If Kuckoo wants “it takes a village,” she should move to the Islamic Republic of Iran or to Venezuela.  Her statement disqualifies her from being president.  Get Kuckoo a GUT, and fast!

Good and decent people can sometimes be bad parents.  I’m a relatively new father, so I’m still learning and, I hope, keeping the screw-ups to a minimum.  Let him who has not fatherly or motherly sinned cast the first stone.  Somewhere along the way, though, parents abdicated their responsibilities to the devoutly secular god known as the State.  I don’t believe it’s too late to right the ship, but we’re never more than a generation away from loss of liberties.

Democrat policies are guaranteed to fail our nation and our children.  Grown-ups of America, unite!  More than ever, our children need us.

Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat.  He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.

Rat-infested piles of garbage sat uncollected in Los Angeles just one mile from City Hall, NBC 4 reported this week.

You have to see this video to believe it.

“You’re getting a bird’s eye view of L.A.’s most notorious trash pile,” the report tells us. “It’s in downtown on Ceres Avenue, right between the Fashion and Produce District. Day and night, this spot and countless others are magnets for rats that could carry fleas infected with typhus and other diseases.”

Watch the video again… This breathtaking trash pile is not in some faraway place — it’s right in downtown. It’s between the Fashion and Produce District — and that’s “produce” as in food — and there are “countless other” spots like this … downtown.

And this comes just weeks after an NBC 4 report about an “infestation in Los Angeles City Hall of rats and fleas linked to typhus disease.” Good news, though, because “the city’s personnel department announced an increase  in cleaning and removal of trash from the Civic Center.”

The Civic Center was so filthy, Los Angeles City Hall was infested with rats and disease. Welcome to the Middle Ages!

When NBC 4 called the city’s services hotline, the network was told it could take up to 90 days for the Ceres Avenue trash to be hauled away.

Ninety days.

Ninety.

To pick up trash.

After the report aired, though, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti got the street cleaned up.

Now get this…

“Between 2013 and 2017, county residents reported a yearly average of nearly 60 cases [of typhus]. That’s twice as many the number reported in the previous five years.”

“Last year, a record 124 cases were reported in Los Angeles County.”

So what we have here is what NBC 4 describes as a “typhus epidemic” … in a  modern American city, in the modern American city.

Here, in the United States of America, in one of the richest cities in the world, in the 21st century,  we have an outbreak of a disease spread by rats attracted by piles of uncollected garbage.

Hey, guess which political party runs Los Angeles!

Since 1961, going back 58 years, Los Angeles has had one Republican mayor, who served only two terms between 1993 and 2001.

What’s more, there are 15 seats on the Los Angeles City Council. Democrats hold 14 of them — fourteen —  and they are each paid $184,610 a year, and still… The garbage is not getting picked up … in downtown … just a mile from City Hall.

I don’t mean to sound redundant, but…

The garbage is not being picked up, y’all.

Picking up garbage is one of the basic basics.

Picking up garbage is something the government is supposed to do.

The government picking up garbage is akin to a parent feeding her child, a doctor healing the sick, a teacher teaching, grass being green, water being wet… It’s just supposed to happen.

There’s no garbage strike in Los Angeles. There is no employee strike at all, and…

The garbage is not being picked up.

For those of you wondering what the City Council is doing, what this crack team of political leaders has found time to focus on, a simple DuckDuckGo search came up with a virtue-signaling plan to ban political contributions from real estate developers (which sounds like a massive First Amendment violation); a declaration of Tuesday as “John Singleton Day,” which sounds like a great idea after the goddamned garbage is picked up; the renaming of a street after the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, which sounds like a great idea after the goddamned garbage is picked up.

Here’s the Twitter feed for the president of the Los Angeles City Council, which looks like a combination of E! The Entertainment Network and an Oberlin College newspaper.

Folks … the garbage in downtown Los Angeles is not being picked up to the point that there’s a typhus epidemic…

But the Council did name a street after Obama.

How hard is it to pick up garbage?

Someone calls and says there’s a pile of garbage on the street, so the city sends a crew out with a truck to clean it up.

What’s the problem? Why is this complicated?

If required, the city hires more guys, buys more trucks, pays more overtime, or works out a deal with the company contracted to pick up trash… This shouldn’t be difficult or controversial because we are talking about picking up garbage.

My wife and I lived in Los Angeles for more than eight years, until the middle of 2011. The city is awful, the people are great, but are these good people now so robotically inclined to vote Democrat that something as basic as garbage pick-up can be botched to this extent without consequence?

We left L.A. because things kept getting worse, not better, and my guess is that a lot of other people did and are doing the same, which leaves behind only those who don’t care enough about garbage and rats and typhus to vote for some common sense, decency, and clean streets.

By the way, here in my current neighborhood in rural North Carolina, we are responsible for hauling away our own trash, and after having lived here 15 years I have never seen so much as one garbage pile, much less a rat.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson criticized those on the left, including James Clapper and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for questioning President Donald Trump’s decision to declassify information regarding the origins of the Mueller probe.

Partial transcript as follows:

The FBI has a lot more power than any single government agency. Its agents can legally break down your front door and shoot you. Its investigations can destroy your life even if you are innocent. It has happened to a lot of people recently. So the FBI absolutely must be above suspicion. If you sincerely cared about preserving our democracy as they claim they do, then you would immediately disinfect the FBI with sunlight. But James Clapper has no interest in doing that, neither does the rest of official Washington.

The only principle they care about is self-preservation, and they will say anything in its service. Congressman Adam Schiff of California responded to the declassification order this way, quote, “While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies. The cover-up has entered a new and dangerous phase. This is un-American.” End quote. Got that? Declassifying information is now a cover-up. It’s un-American. Keep in mind, this guy is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Adam Schiff is a complete nut case.

His allies in the media though are certainly more subtle than that. They know that cover-up isn’t a plausible way to describe declassification. It’s laughable. So instead, they are going with the term “distraction.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

Police are looking to charge more than 1,100 people who were arrested during last month’s “Extinction Rebellion” climate protests, a senior officer has said.

During the protests, activists laid down in the middle of busy public roads, glued themselves to the walls of financial institutions such as the London Stock Exchange, and even attempted to disrupt flights from Heathrow airport.

The protests also saw actress Emma Thompson fly 5,400 miles from America, using 1.67 tonnes of CO2 in the process, to join in the protests and recite a poem called ‘Mother Earth is Not Your Slut’.

The demonstrations lasted for 10 days in total and required a police presence of 10,000. It is estimated this cost the police force £7.5 million, which is more than half the money assigned by London mayor Sadiq Khan to assist with extra policing in the capital.

Extinction Rebellion Threatens to Shut Down Heathrow, One of World’s Busiest Airports, on Good Friday https://t.co/rBRwDmpHiv

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 18, 2019

In an official briefing on Friday, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor announced that the police would be looking to charge all those arrested in the protests in order to deter others from similar action in the future.

He said: “We have charged over 70. All the others are currently under investigation and we have got a dedicated unit of around 30 officers who are investigating those offences.

“It is our anticipation that we are putting all of those to the [Crown Prosecution Service] for decisions.”

Mr Taylor called for stronger punishments for those who break the law, saying, “I’m not saying going to jail, but we would like to see consequences for any activity at these events that is unlawful.”

“Protest is not illegal. There is nothing unlawful about protest,” he explained, but added that “the activity of some individuals at a protest can be unlawful.”

“What we are saying is at the moment there doesn’t seem to be much of a criminal deterrent for doing that and therefore, it doesn’t legitimise it but it does make it easy for that unlawful activity to take place. And what we would like to see is consequence, where the law is clearly broken and it goes beyond what is reasonable and a legitimate aim for a protest, for that to be recognised and for appropriate sanctions.”

Rich Actress Emma Thompson Flies 5,400 Miles to Protest Climate Change https://t.co/m6KkjE27C4

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 19, 2019

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

Gang members in London and the wider country are taking part in a deadly game in which they receive varying points for stabbing or shooting victims in different parts of the body.

The system of point scoring sees 50 points given for an attack on the head or face, 30 points for the chest, 20 for the stomach, and so on. The gang members often brag about the points they have racked up in rap videos posted to YouTube and other social media.

One such victim of this type of crime was Rhyhiem Barton, a 17-year-old boy who was shot in South London last year. Barton had himself been seen in a video rapping about “the scorecard” in a drill music video seen over 300,000 times.

Khan’s London: 14-Year-Old Boy Stabbed in Back and Head https://t.co/3Ms3f0wDYe

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 9, 2019

Barton was involved in a mentorship programme and his mentor, Sayce Holmes-Lewis, told Sky News: “Is there a literal scoreboard? Yes. People are keeping count of the attacks that each organisation is carrying out.”

Mr Holmes-Lewis continued: “You stab a person in the head or the chest you get a certain number of points. You get varying points for the severity of the violent act. Young people’s reality seems to be very warped when it comes to violence. They think it is a game. Taking somebody out and killing somebody is now fun.”

“These videos are not being taken down quickly enough and they should be screened before they go on,” he added.

“I know it’s very difficult with the high volume of traffic on social media but these are young people — young people are dying as a result of some of these things that are being released on YouTube, on Instagram and Snapchat and more needs to be done.”

Khan’s London: Children, Teenagers Behind Half of Knife Crime https://t.co/LvcqdCdfKq

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) February 5, 2019

In Ipswich last month, four young men were sentenced for the murder of Tavis Spencer-Aitkens. Aristote Yenge, 23, Kyreis Davies, 17, Isaac Calver, 19, and Adebayo Amusa, 20, stabbed Spencer-Aitkens 15 times.

They later bragged about the murder on social media, saying they were “scoring points like 23”. This is thought to be in reference to the high point scoring American basketball player Michael Jordan, who wore the number 23 on his jersey.

Chris Peddie, who works with young people affected by gang crime, said of the videos: “They are always ‘scoring points like 23’. It means they always get their target. They sing about ‘riding dirty, never clean’. It means they’ve always got drugs or knives or guns.”

He added: “The more violent the attack, the more points. You get a lot of points for the face and the head because it is visible.”

His warning comes as it was reported on Wednesday that a charity recommended children be taught grime rap and hip-hop in schools instead of classical music such as Mozart — to be more “relevant” to young people’s tastes and prevent school exclusions, somehow.

Knife Crime Epidemic Causing ‘Ripple Effect’ Across NHS https://t.co/WUWPVB00CI

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 15, 2019

Popular grim rapper Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr, or “Stormzy”, has produced music contains lyrics such as “beef with the champ, my man pulled out a shank, how you gonna scare me with this?” and “I don’t never ever slack, grab my gun and go to war (boy) I got brothers up in jail, going mad up in their cells”.

Stormzy is friendly with hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who described him as “one of London’s most inspiring young men” in 2017 and presented him the “Best Solo Artist” trophy at the GQ awards.

Follow Breitbart London on Facebook: Breitbart London

Well, folks, this is why the judiciary is so important: In a pithy decision which began with a line seemingly designed to bait the media, an Obama-era federal judge blocked Mississippi’s fetal heartbeat law.

The law, passed in February, would have banned most abortions after six weeks.

“Except when a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance with this section, no person shall perform an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining if the unborn human individual that the pregnant woman is carrying has a detectable fetal heartbeat,” the Mississippi bill read in part.

“Any person who performs an abortion on a pregnant woman based on the exception in this section shall note in the pregnant woman’s medical records that a medical emergency necessitating the abortion existed.”

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves blocked its implementation and found that the plaintiff in the case, Mississippi’s sole abortion clinic, is “substantially likely to succeed on the merits of this claim.”

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

But it was the first line of the judge’s decision that seemed to catch everyone’s attention.

“Here we go again,” Judge Reeves wrote.

“Mississippi has passed another law banning abortions prior to viability. The latest iteration, Senate Bill 2116, bans abortions in Mississippi after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is as early as 6 weeks lmp. [After last menstrual period.] The parties have been here before. Last spring, plaintiffs successfully challenged Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks lmp. The Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional and permanently enjoined its enforcement. The State responded by passing an even more restrictive bill, S.B. 2116.”

“This Court previously found the 15-week ban to be an unconstitutional violation of substantive due process because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that women have the right to choose an abortion prior to viability, and a fetus is not viable at 15 weeks lmp,” Reeves ruling continued.

“If a fetus is not viable at 15 weeks lmp, it is not viable at 6 weeks lmp. The State conceded this point. The State also conceded at oral argument that this Court must follow Supreme Court precedent. Under Supreme Court precedent, plaintiffs are substantially likely to succeed on the merits of this claim.”

Now, one could legitimately question whether or not Mississippi expected the bill to survive this challenge. After all, the end goal of most of this legislation is for it to end up before the Supreme Court in order to clarify the limits of — and possibly overturn — Roe v. Wade and other abortion-related decisions.

However, the fact that this ended up before Reeves is yet another reminder of why judicial appointments matter.

Reeves is one of the more high-profile judges at the district level. As the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger noted, he blocked Mississippi’s religious objections law back in 2016, a ruling that was reversed by the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. He’s also been openly critical of President Donald Trump’s judicial appointments, making parallels between conservative judicial philosophy and the KKK and segregation.

“When politicians attack courts as ‘dangerous,’ ‘political,’ and guilty of ‘egregious overreach,’ you can hear the Klan’s lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South. When leaders chastise people for merely ‘using the courts,’ you can hear the Citizens Council, hammering up the names of black petitioners in Yazoo City,” Reeves said in an April speech at the University of Virginia School of Law.

RELATED: Found: NPR’s Jaw-Dropping Guide To Undermining the Pro-Life Movement

“Dangerous,” “political,” “egregious overreach” and “using the courts” were all quotes from Trump, although they could have easily come from any Republican who feels the courts have been guilty of judicial activism. Clearly, we’re dealing with a man possessed of both impartiality and subtlety here.

Again, this ruling is hardly the end. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, a Republican, said in a statement that he would “encourage the Attorney General to seek immediate review of the preliminary injunction.”

“As Governor I’ve pledged to do all I can to protect life,” he wrote. “Time and time again the Legislature and I have done just that.”

#BREAKING Statement from @PhilBryantMS on U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves granting a preliminary injunction against Mississippi’s 6-week abortion ban he signed into law. @WJTV pic.twitter.com/1X5A9bDpqw

— WJTV Gerald Harris (@GeraldHarrisTV) May 24, 2019

However, the ruling underscores the importance of being able to send judicial appointments to the Senate to be confirmed. For eight years, Barack Obama was able to do that. When he couldn’t get enough appointments through the Senate, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option and ended the filibuster on judicial nominations. (Incidentally: Thanks, Harry.)

Reeves is a man who says that any politician who complains judges are “political” is resorting to the tactics of segregationists and the Klan without realizing the sad irony or the shamelessness involved. When it comes to headline-grabbing, here we go again, indeed. That’s not what the judiciary is for, however — and I would much prefer to have a president who recognizes that.

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