The decision of the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Flyers to ditch the songs and statues associated with 1930’s era songstress Kate Smith, has become a heated topic of conversation in the sports world.
However, few people have actually read the lyrics from the controversial songs once sung by the woman who is far better known for her stirring rendition of God Bless America.
Enter WFAN host and sports talk legend Mike Francesa.
On Tuesday, Francesa took several calls from people who claimed they were not offended by the lyrics from songs like That’s Why the Darkies Were Born. In order to see for himself, Francesa acquired the lyrics with the intent of reading them on the air. Once the WFAN host received the lyrics, he found it hard to get through.
The Yankees stopped playing Smith’s version of God Bless America this year, during the 7th inning stretch. The Flyers removed the statue to Smith that was once displayed in front of their stadium.
CNN’s late-night hosts on Tuesday marveled that some Democratic candidates are "way out there," now supporting enfranchising jailed terrorists.
Hosts Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon were speaking during their usual handoff between their two shows, when they took a moment to weigh in on the state of the Democratic candidates for president in 2020.
Cuomo said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), though not even a Democrat, has set the progressive agenda for Democratic hopefuls. "Top 2020 Democratic hopefuls have been following Bernie Sanders’s lead on many progressive policy stances," he said.
Cuomo worried about the extremes to which candidates might follow the Vermont senator. He pointed to Sanders’s recent support for letting murderers vote from jail.
"Last night, Senator Sanders said that people in prison, even terrorists like the Boston bomber, have the right to vote while they’re imprisoned," Cuomo said.
Lemon expressed shock at the position. "Uh, I’m stunned, as you can see," he said. "You can see on our faces and the responses."
"Listen, I’m glad we asked the question," Lemon said. "I think it’s going to be an issue."
He predicted it was going to be a campaign issue for those who had said "yes, they should be able to vote even the most awful people among us," or those who had said "we should have a conversation about it."
During a CNN town hall Monday, Harvard student Anne Carlstein asked Sanders about his support for voting rights for those convicted of terrorism, murder, or sexual assault.
"I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy," Sanders said. "Yes, even for terrible people."
Sanders described a vision of a "vibrant" democracy, in which everyone voted. "Even if they are in jail, they’re paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our Democracy," he said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) dodged the question when asked this week. "While they’re incarcerated, I think that’s something we can have more conversation about," she said.
Fellow 2020 candidates Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D., Ind.) both said this week that they oppose prison voting. Swalwell went further, saying those put away for violent crimes should "never" regain the right to vote.
Sen. Kamala Harris initially sidestepped the question on Monday, pointing to her support for ex-felons voting. "I have been long an advocate of making sure that the formerly incarcerated are not denied a right to vote," she said.
When asked whether that extended to "people who are convicted, in prison, like the Boston Marathon bomber, on death row, people who are convicted of sexual assault," Harris answered with wording similar to Warren’s.
"I think we should have that conversation," Harris said.
Cuomo noted that Harris had raced to retract her earlier view. "Do I think that people who commit murder, people who are terrorists should be deprived of their rights? Yeah, I do," she said. "I’m a prosecutor."
Lemon was unimpressed with the reversal. "Well, last night that’s not what she said," he said. "She can revise her position and change her mind, but I think that is going to be an issue."
Cuomo raised the specter of the radicalization of the Democratic party. "You know what it frames? It frames the proposition for voters as: these people are way out there in the Democratic Party. Wow have they gone far left."
In response to a horrific series of radical Islamist jihadist attacks Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka that killed 290 and left an additional 500 injured, Rick Noack of The Washington Post has decided that the proper subject of his ire ought to be…”far-right anger in the West.”
Yes, seriously.
Here is a portion of Noack’s piece, entitled, “Christianity under attack? Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West”:
To some, [the attacks were] further proof that Christians in many parts of the world are under attack. Several churches were targeted in Sunday’s bombing attacks, along with hotels and a banquet hall. At one Catholic church in Negombo, more than 100 people were killed. The attack took place on Easter, one of the most important dates on the Christian calendar. …
Regional branches and sites associated with Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party framed the Sri Lankan bloodshed as an attack “against us Christians,” even though the party officially claims to be open to members of all religions …
Local party branches in the city of Solingen and eastern Germany lashed out at journalists for initially refraining to establish a link to Islamist terrorism. Some far-right groups claimed hypocrisy and double standards, arguing that attacks on Christians failed to receive the same response as attacks on Muslims. …
Katie Hopkins, a British writer and provocateur, complained on Twitter that American liberal figures such as former president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were not using the word “Christian” to describe those killed in the church bombings. …
American far-right activists offered their own responses. “Followers of Jesus worldwide are being killed and otherwise terribly persecuted every day,” Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration aide now best known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, said on his radio show. “All too often, their losses go unremarked.”
Well, as it turns out and as The Daily Wire reported earlier today, Islamic State has belatedly taken credit for the Sri Lanka massacre. And as it turns out, “followers of Jesus worldwide,” to use Frank Gaffney’s language that Noack apparently deems so irksome, are those who attend church on Easter Sunday. Really, this is not rocket science.
What Noack really seems to have an issue with is notion of the oppressed Christian — but the oppression of Christian in Islamist and totalitarian societies is a well-known fact, as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh pointed out yesterday. And as Becket Adams of the Washington Examiner notes, “Christians in the Middle East have just survived a genocide attempt by ISIS. Christians in pitiless, autocratic regimes, including Iran, China, and North Korea, are subjected regularly to persecution. In fact, Christianity is the most harassed faith in the world, followed closely by Islam, according to the Pew Research Center.”
This is hardly the only recent instance of The Washington Post publishing a defamatory hit on Western conservatives. Just last week and in a similar cultural context, as The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported, The Washington Post published a disgraceful and calumnious smear against Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro:
Self-described “expert” on “far-right extremism” Talia Lavin has struck again, this time falsely accusing Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro of stoking the flames of racism against Muslims and pushing conservatives toward a race war over the destruction of Notre Dame cathedral. …
Shapiro, she claims, blew a dog-whistle for anti-Muslim violence when he commented that Notre Dame was a “monument to Western civilization” and “Judeo-Christian heritage.” To drive her point home, she juxtaposed Shapiro with Richard Spencer, perhaps the best known American neo-Nazi, as if Shapiro had anything to do with Spencer, whom Shapiro has repeatedly and vociferously condemned.
Lavin’s claims are downright bizarre. Notre Dame is, indeed, a monument to the civilization — the Western civilization — that built it over the course of several hundred years. It is not simply a work of art and architecture, but a monument to Christianity, and specifically Catholicism. It is a place of worship that houses one of France’s largest collection of holy relics and religiously-inspired art and sculpture.
The National Rifle Association on Monday called New York City’s proposed change to the gun law set to be examined by the Supreme Court a "feeble attempt to stop the lawsuit over the city’s unconstitutional firearm travel ban" that shouldn’t prevent the Court from hearing the case.
"New York City’s problem is they think they’re regulating a privilege instead of a fundamental, constitutional right," Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. "The city’s attempt to slightly modify its unconstitutional law is a nakedly transparent delay tactic. We are confident that the U.S. Supreme Court will reject New York’s shenanigans and allow the case to proceed."
The group’s statement comes in response to dueling court filings from lawyers representing New York City and the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.
Earlier this month, the city filed a motion informing the Court that a proposed rule change would address the complaints made by the gun-rights activists suing the city. It said the restrictions on traveling outside of the city with a legally owned gun would be reduced and gun owners would be able to legally travel to a few new locations with their firearms.
"The proposed rule," Richard Dearing, a lawyer representing the city, told the Court, "would amend S 5-23(a) to allow premises licensees to transport a handgun listed on their premises license directly to and from any of the following additional locations, provided that the handgun is transported unloaded, in a locked container, with the ammunition carried separately: Another premises of the licensee where the licensee is authorized to have and possess a handgun; A small-arms range/shooting club authorized by law to operate as such, whether located within or outside New York City; and A shooting competition at which the licensee may possess the handgun consistent with the law applicable at the place of the competition."
The city said the changes would resolve the issues central to the case and asked the Court to delay hearing the case until after the rule change went into effect.
"If adopted in accordance with established procedures, the proposed rule would render this case moot before the parties complete the merits briefing in this case," Dearing said. "For this reason, I also write to request that the Court stay the current briefing schedule pending final action on the proposed rule."
"This litigation has been ongoing for more than six years," Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for the group, told the Court. "Throughout those six years, respondents have vigorously defended the City’s novel handgun transport ban, which prohibits law-abiding New Yorkers from taking their licensed handguns anywhere—including any legal destination outside of the state of New York—other than the meager seven authorized shooting ranges within the limits of the 8.5-million-person city."
The group argued there is no reason for the Court to delay proceedings in the case even if the city does end up changing their law.
"This Court routinely grants certiorari despite the possibility that subsequent government action could move the proverbial goalposts or otherwise shape the issues being reviewed," Clement said. "If this Court routinely stayed the briefing in cases involving potential government action of that nature, it would be difficult for cases involving potentially unlawful government action to be briefed at all. There is certainly no reason to put the briefing on hold here merely because respondents have initiated a rulemaking process."
The NRA said the city’s proposed law change is evidence that it knows its gun law violates the Second Amendment and is merely an attempt to prevent the Supreme Court from reinforcing precedents set in other landmark gun-rights decisions.
"The City of New York clearly knows that its current restrictions on the carrying and transportation of lawfully owned firearms are unconstitutional and will fail under any standard of constitutional review, as the NRA has been saying for years," Cox said. "This is nothing more than a naked attempt by New York City to resist Supreme Court review of policies that even New York must recognize as inconsistent with the holdings in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago. The City of New York did not respect its citizens’ Second Amendment rights before the Supreme Court granted review in this case and it will not respect them going forward."
A restaurant that declared it would charge men 18% more than women for the same service will close its doors at the end of the month.
Handsome Her, a vegan café in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, will close its doors on April 28, writing on Facebook that the two women responsible for running the business “are off to our next adventure up north where we will be doing some hands-on work, something we have missed sorely whilst being at 206 Sydney Rd, Brunswick.”
There is no indication that the restaurant is closing as a result of charging men more than women – a policy that was implemented back when the restaurant opened and only applied one week a month.
As the Sydney Morning Herald reported in 2017, when Handsome Her made headlines for its charge-men-more policy, the café posted a chalkboard outside with three rules:
House Rules, Rule #1: women have priority seating. Rule #2: men will be charged an 18% premium to reflect the gender pay gap (2016) which is donated to a women’s service. Rule #3 respect goes both ways.
The question naturally arose as to how an establishment can claim to respect both genders when it is clearly discriminating against one.
The wage gap in Australia, as in the United States, comes not from discrimination (though that’s not to say discrimination never happens) but from the different choices men and women make in their careers. Women tend to go into lower-paying fields or positions that offer more flexibility – leading to fewer hours worked. Women also tend to leave the workforce to have children. The “wage” gap does not compare the actual earnings of men and women working the exact same job, but the average earnings of men and women across all jobs and industries.
Yet activists, like those at the Handsome Her café, use the difference in average earnings to claim women are not treated equally in society, or are undervalued.
In announcing the café’s closing, owners also announced a “last hurrah” to be held on April 28. The event will offer “a pay as you feel scheme from 3pm until our stock runs out for all food items on both our day and night menus (think rice bowls, steamed buns, jackfruit burgers etc)…” The proceeds of the event will be donated to Maiti Nepal, an organization works to prevent human trafficking, specifically in Nepal.
In addition to a policy of charging men more, Handsome Her also wrote in its farewell note that it “tried to demonstrate ways of doing business more ethically and responsibly by abandoning take-away cups, single use straws and napkins, by shopping locally and supporting women owned businesses.”
The business said it donated to multiple feminist causes and “strived to bring lesbianism back into fashion.”
“While it is a shame to lose the physical space (and we understand how essential it is for women and lesbians to hold space), we leave knowing that the communities we have made transcend the trendy vegan café on Sydney Rd, Brunswick. We look forward to continuing Handsome Her in a variety of other, more creative ways and expanding our efforts to drive change with flexibility and mobility throughout Australia,” the owners wrote.
The Supreme Court’s conservative justices seemed ready Tuesday to preserve the Trump administration’s addition of a question about a person’s citizenship status to the 2020 decennial census.
The case, Department of Commerce v. New York, is the high court’s first direct look at an administration policy since it upheld the "travel ban" last year, SCOTUSBlog reports. It concerns the administration’s attempt to add a question asking respondents "is this person a citizen of the United States?" to the 2020 census.
That question has appeared on the long-form Census for decades, as well as on the American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, two large-scale annual surveys conducted by the Census Bureau to estimate key statistics about the population.
But this fact did not deter objectors from the left, who argued that it would reduce response rates among illegally resident people. This, they argued, would lead to inaccurate estimates of figures used to calculate federal aid and congressional apportionment, among other things.
This concern was strong enough that a group of 17 states, lead by New York, sued the Department of Commerce to get an injunction on the question. They argued that the decision to add the question was "arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law," in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. A lower court agreed, enjoining the addition of the question, at which point the administration appealed to the Supreme Court.
At oral arguments on Tuesday, however, it seemed like the balance of the court was swinging against New York. Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh directed most of their questions towards the state’s lawyer, with Kavanaugh arguing that Congress gave the Secretary of Commerce "huge discretion" to select questions.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, for their part, pushed back on the idea that a citizenship question would reduce response rates in-and-of itself, suggesting that other factors which differentiate citizens and non-citizens may explain any disparities. The liberal justices, for their part, seemed intent on agreeing with the claim that a question about citizenship would undermine the accuracy of the census’s count.
"There’s no doubt that people will respond less," Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.
A decision in the case is expected over the summer. The Census will be carried out beginning April 1, 2020.
NewsGuard, the blacklisting arm of Microsoft, is still deliberately misleading Americans into believing debunked Russia Collusion Hoax headlines are credible.
On Monday, Breitbart News reported on the top 51 debunked Russia Collusion Hoax stories spread by the establishment media over the last few years. A spot check of the first 12 stories on that list shows that the NewsGuard’s seal of approval — a big, green checkmark — still appears next to almost all of those stories!
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The blacklisters at NewsGuard argue that it is not signing off on individual stories. Rather, it only signs off on the news outlets publishing those individual stories. But as you can see in the screengrabs above, that is disingenuous. That big, green checkmark of approval still sits next to some of the most misleading stories in history and it is deliberately placed next to the hoax headline — not the outlet.
This is an obvious attempt to mislead causal news readers into believing proven lies about President Trump are true.
Some of these stories might have been updated, but their misleading headlines remain and each of these stories should have been retracted, not spun into “almost true” or merely amended but still loaded with provably false insinuations.
NewsGuard and its corporate media confederates have so rigged the system that unless the news outlet in question fixes the false headline on its own (as Talking Points Memo did below), the lying headline, the fake news lives on forever.
What’s more, why is NewsGuard giving its seal of approval to news outlets that published lie after lie after lie?
Naturally, NewsGuard is blacklisting Breitbart News (a red checkmark sits next to all of our headlines), even though we got the Russia Collusion story 100 percent correct.
What’s more, unlike all the establishment outlets NewsGuard offers its seal of approval to, Breitbart News also got the Brett Kavanaugh story correct, as well as the Covington Catholic High School, George Zimmerman, and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” stories.
Nevertheless, NewsGuard marks every single one of our correct stories as inaccurate.
In all my decades of following the media, I have never seen a more Orwellian attempt to mislead people by deliberately labeling lies as truth and truth as lies — all in service to Big Brother, the political establishment.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
TEL AVIV – The Trump administration announced Monday that it is offering up to $10 million for any information leading to the disruption of terror group Hezbollah’s financial networks in a bid to bankrupt the terror organization.
It marks the first time that a monetary reward has been offered for intelligence relating to the Iranian-backed group’s funding.
A Forbesreport recently claimed Hezbollah to be the richest terror organization in the world, with an estimated annual income of $1.1 billion.
The announcement comes on the heels of the U.S. increasing pressure on Iran, of which Hezbollah is a proxy. On Monday, the U.S. announced that as of next month it would cease waiving sanctions on countries that purchase oil from Iran, including China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said bankrupting Hezbollah was one of the U.S.’s chief aims in its ongoing quest to choke Iran economically.
“We have watched Iran have diminished power as a result of our campaign,” he said. “Their capacity to wreak harm around the world is absolutely clearly diminished. I talked about it with respect to Hezbollah not being able to make payroll in a timely fashion.”
The Lebanon-based terror group is largely funded by Tehran, but has a vast network ranging from business investments, private donors and money laundering activities.
The State Department deemed Hezbollah a Foreign Terrorist Organization in October 1997, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in October 2001.
The U.S. said it would issue monetary rewards for any information identifying and thwarting “a source of revenue for Hezbollah or its key financial facilitation mechanisms … major Hezbollah donors or financial facilitators … financial institutions or exchange houses facilitating Hezbollah transactions … businesses or investments owned or controlled by Hezbollah or its financiers … front companies engaged in international procurement of dual-use technology on behalf of Hezbollah” and “criminal schemes involving Hezbollah members and supporters which financially benefit the organization.”
“I’m confident that the (reward) that we are offering today will provide incentives for people to come forward with information that will help us take down Hezbollah’s financial networks,” said Assistant Secretary for State for Diplomatic Security Michael T. Evanoff in a press briefing at the State Department.
The State Department highlighted three individuals as key Hezbollah financiers or facilitators about whom it seeks information: Adham Tabaja, Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi and Ali Youssef Charara.
“We will leave no stone unturned in our pursuit of information that will help us clamp down further on these individuals and on others they use to access the international financial system,” said Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea. “Either directly or via cash smuggling networks and other seemingly legitimate businesses and investments.”
“We will pay for bank records, customs forms, real estate transactions and anything evidencing money laundering or cash smuggling,” he continued. “The United States government is prepared to pay for this information, and we will award up to $10 million for leads that result in financial disruption. Whether by US law enforcement sanctions or other enforcement actions.”
In 2017, Politico published a report called “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” in which it exposed Hezbollah’s money laundering network and other crimes, which the Obama administration allowed to go unpunished as it hoped to close the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday called Ukraine’s newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky and extended an invitation to him to visit Israel.
Israel’s Ambassador to Ukraine Joel Lion said Netanyahu “congratulated him for his victory, expressed his hope to continue the good relations between our countries and invited him to visit Israel.”
Netanyahu also “thanked outgoing Ukrainian President Poroshenko for his friendship toward the State of Israel and the Jewish people,” he added.
In January, Poroshenko and Netanyahu signed a free trade agreement in Jerusalem.
Zelensky, a 41-year-old TV comedian with no political experience, was elected Sunday in a landslide victory.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said Zelensky’s victory showed Ukraine’s “vibrant democracy” after “five years of unrelenting Russian aggression.”
“The United States maintains steadfast support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its international borders and will continue to stand with Ukraine as it undertakes essential reforms,” Ortagus said in a statement.
“We look forward to working with President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky to advance our two nations’ shared goal of a secure, prosperous, democratic and free Ukraine,” she said.
Zelensky’s appointment means the Ukraine is the only country in the world outside of Israel to have both a Jewish president and a Jewish prime minister.
Ukraine is home to the fourth largest Jewish community in Europe.
In its annual report on anti-Semitism last year, Israel’s government singled out Ukraine for anti-Semitism.
In 2016, Netanyahu canceled the visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to Israel after Kiev voted to pass an anti-settlements resolution at the UN Security Council.
