53percenter's Blog

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.  

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.

Actor John Cusack lashed out at supporters of President Donald Trump after a photo showed him sitting in his seat during a military salute at a recent Chicago Cubs game.

“I didn’t stand up for Boeing military salute – fast enough for some maga fuck – see? don’t even have taste not to brand weapons company all over score board,” John Cusack said soon after a photo of him sitting during a Cubs game Boeing Military Salute went viral on social media.

I didn’t stand up for Boeing military salute – fast enough for some maga fuck – see?
don’t even have taste not to brand weapons company all over score board

RT @QsSupervisor: What in the actual fuck does “tonight’s military salute” even mean ?

— John Cusack (@johncusack) May 23, 2019

Andrew Klavan discusses the series finale of the HBO fantasy series “Game of Thrones” and discusses how Democrats are becoming the dragon queen on Monday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show.” Video and partial transcript below:

Democrats are the dragon queen. They are the dragon queen. You know, last week we saw not just in my Stanford address, where they tried to start trouble, where the administration tried to start trouble and kind of shut me down and get people upset. But we saw — we had my friend on Michael Loftis the comedian, who told you how he couldn’t get his stuff sold because he was a right-winger. So, they want to silence him.

We saw Jenna Ellis, now Mrs. Reeves, Jenna Ellis Reeves, was blocked on Facebook for supporting Matt Walsh in his anti-abortion fight. We see all these people being thrown off. We see people using power without thinking about the fact that power contradicts the very things they are trying to achieve. And you know, I know they started out, or at least in their hearts, wanting to do good. I know they want to reverse racist policies of the past, but the Left has become truly, truly wicked in their racist ideas. You know, this is something enormous, identity politics which is racism with a smiley face, is simple evil. And I mean I see it all the time, I see like segregated dorms and colleges.

In my profession and storytelling, they now have a thing called “own story” which is you can only tell your own story or the story of people like you. We saw this with Elton John’s movie coming out and people started to complain about the fact that the actor who plays the gay Elton John is not himself gay, and Elton John, to his credit, came out said that’s garbage that is B.S. because it’s just a movie. But if you think about it, the thought … that there is something about it between a black person and a white person, between a gay person and a straight person; some barrier that keeps an artist, whose job is to portray all of humanity, that keeps them apart. So, they’ve come back to the kind of racism, the Left has come back to the kind of racism they practiced under Jim Crow. They keep saying, “Well that was different because now you got Nixon’s Southern strategy changing everything.” The same attitude. It is the same thing.

So, it’s evil stuff they’re pushing on people. They start out trying to do good; they wind up doing evil because they feel that they have got what’s right and they’re going to eliminate all choice. Eliminate all voices on the other side. And that is the journey of the dragon queen in “Game of Thrones.” But what we should have been doing instead of going on and saying I didn’t want this person to take the throne and I didn’t do this and why didn’t they say this on Twitter, which is what conservative Twitter looks like. We should have been saying “oh look the Democrats, the Democrats are the dragon queen, they have started out trying to do good and now they’re so convinced that only their way is good that they are going to enforce that on everybody else.” And what the queen says is they don’t get to decide. Those people that she’s liberating, she’s going to liberate them, and they don’t get to decide what’s good because she knows what’s good. She’s a Leftist. She becomes a Leftist.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is demanding that Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti apologize for agreeing with the Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem on a recent trip to Israel.

Garcetti, the first Jewish mayor in the history of L.A., said last week, according to the Los Angeles Times: “I support the embassy being here. Israel shouldn’t be the only country in the world that can’t determine where its capital will be.” He added that he disagreed with the way that President Donald Trump had moved the embassy in 2017-2018, saying “there is usually a process to these things rather than what seems like an overnight, one-sided, partisan move.”

In response, CAIR sent a letter to Garcetti on Sunday demanding that he retract his statement and that he apologize.