Month: November 2018

According to the Huffington Post, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a classic Christmas film, is “problematic” and “marginalized reindeer.”

In a video shared to the official Huffington Post Twitter account, the outlet claims viewers are noticing the “tale may not be so jolly after all.”

The Huffington Post tweet reads: “The holiday TV classic “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” is seriously problematic.”

The holiday TV classic “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” is seriously problematic. 😳 pic.twitter.com/dOgqPF3bAP

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) November 29, 2018

The clip goes on to say Rudolph’s father verbally abuses him in the film and Santa berates Donner for his son’s nose.

The Huffington Post also claims the reindeer school coach in the iconic film encourages bullying and that the film has undertones of sexism, saying, Donner forbids his wife from joining the search for their son.”

Several tweets were shown in the clip that revealed how people felt about the classic holiday film in today’s time.

A now-deleted tweet shown in the clip said, “Yearly reminder that #Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a parable on racism & homophobia w/ Santa as a bigoted exploitative prick.”

The user who deleted one of the tweets used in the Huffington Post video said he received “trolls” in his mentions.

I have since deleted that tweet because I was being targeted by trolls and bots. So thanks @HuffPost for giving it new life and bringing a whole new class of trolls into my mentions.

Also, why is there a check mark next to my name? I’m not verified. Your video shows otherwise.

— Garytt Poirier (@Garytt) November 29, 2018

Another Twitter user whose tweet was used in the clip claimed the film lacked diversity by tweeting, “Santa’s operation is an HR nightmare and in serious need of diversity and inclusion training.”

Follow Kyle on Twitter @RealKyleMorris and Facebook.

A group of women from the Central American migrant caravan are calling for a hunger strike, asking for faster processing by the U.S. and Mexican authorities. The group plans to demonstrate outside the offices of Mexico’s National Immigration Institute in Tijuana.

The protest is expected to have a group of approximately 10 women who will stop eating if their demands are not met, Mexico’s Frontera.Info reported.

A handful of women in migrant exodus start hunger strike to protest long wait times for asylum: https://t.co/ZB6kFUjavB @fronterainfo @KPBSnews

— Jean Guerrero (@jeanguerre) November 29, 2018

The group is asking for U.S. authorities to expedite their asylum claims as well as asking Mexico to provide visas and other documents. They also demand an end to deporting caravan members.

Buzzfeed’s Adolfo Flores said the protest will be held at the Chaparral border crossing. The port of entry is the same where a group of caravan members tried to rush the U.S. border.

A group of women from the caravan just announced they’re going on a hunger strike in Tijuana to demand immediate Mexican temporary humanitarian visas while they wait for asylum in the US, the US to speed up the asylum process at the border, and stop to deportations of caravaners pic.twitter.com/2yJ6iIhjID

— Adolfo Flores (@aflores) November 29, 2018

The hunger strike is slated to start at 1pm at the Chaparral border crossing with about 10 women.

— Adolfo Flores (@aflores) November 29, 2018

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon.  You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com. 

Brandon Darby is the managing director and editor-in-chief of Breitbart Texas. He co-founded the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart.com.

As the caravan camps out in self-induced misery in Tijuana, and the left calls for the entry of more refugees (and asylees) into the U.S., a new report from the Federation for Immigration Reform shows that such imports don’t come cheap.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform Monday put the five-year price tag at $8.8 billion in federal and state costs, or nearly $80,000 per refugee. There are some 18 federal and state programs refugees can tap for financial help, including food stamps, child care, public housing and school loans.

On a yearly average, it is $1.8 billion, or $15,900 per refugee.  Included in that are enormous refugee resettlement costs such as $867 million in welfare, housing assistance and education.

For the advocates of bigger government, that’s a good thing, given the growing numbers of bureaucrats needed to “service” such clients.  More clients, more costs; more costs, more bureaucrats.  What’s more, half of these refugees and asylees (the terms are used interchangeably in the report because refugees come from their home countries, while asylees apply from the U.S.) stay on Medicaid for five years or more, meaning their incomes stay low, either based on their low skill levels and inability to assimilate or because they have high health care costs and keep their incomes low to ensure a free ride.

The Democrats want more of this.  Here’s one report calling for it from lefty Quartz just today.

3. Widen the scope of those who qualify for asylum

Nazario says the US also needs to focus on the asylum seekers who are most at risk of violence in their home countries.  In June, then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions said that immigration judges would no longer be able to consider domestic violence or gang violence as general grounds for asylum, reversing an Obama-era precedent.  Sessions described domestic abuse and violence as “personal crimes.”  This ”reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of domestic violence, harkening back to an era when rape and partner abuse were viewed as private matters as well as of the brutality and scope of gang violence,” said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s the usual lefty solution of throwing taxpayer money at a problem instead of going to the root of the problem, which is the problems in the refugees’ home countries, as well as the benefit disparity between what’s on offer in home countries and first countries of refuge and the vast banquet of benefits available to U.S. refugees and asylees inside the U.S.

Seriously, we could cut the cost in half by handing each refugee a stack of $40,000 in bills in exchange for his staying out of the U.S., which shows just how bad the whole situation is.

President Trump has cut the vast numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. sharply, but that move has just brought more fury from the left, which sees these refugees and asylees, dependent as they are on government services and unlikely to change that situation, as major sources of new Democrat votes.

Eighty thousand bucks could also do a lot of good in these refugees’ home countries or wherever their first countries of refuge are.  Pity it won’t get there, given the Democrats’ insistence on importing more and more of this poverty – and inability to succeed in the U.S. as their means of virtue-signaling.  It makes no sense.  And the report’s conclusion, that the U.S. should step up helping refugees in their home countries and first countries of asylum, makes a lot of sense.

Image credit: PressTV of Iran, via YouTube screen shot.

As the caravan camps out in self-induced misery in Tijuana, and the left calls for the entry of more refugees (and asylees) into the U.S., a new report from the Federation for Immigration Reform shows that such imports don’t come cheap.

According to the Washington Examiner:

The Federation for American Immigration Reform Monday put the five-year price tag at $8.8 billion in federal and state costs, or nearly $80,000 per refugee. There are some 18 federal and state programs refugees can tap for financial help, including food stamps, child care, public housing and school loans.

On a yearly average, it is $1.8 billion, or $15,900 per refugee.  Included in that are enormous refugee resettlement costs such as $867 million in welfare, housing assistance and education.

For the advocates of bigger government, that’s a good thing, given the growing numbers of bureaucrats needed to “service” such clients.  More clients, more costs; more costs, more bureaucrats.  What’s more, half of these refugees and asylees (the terms are used interchangeably in the report because refugees come from their home countries, while asylees apply from the U.S.) stay on Medicaid for five years or more, meaning their incomes stay low, either based on their low skill levels and inability to assimilate or because they have high health care costs and keep their incomes low to ensure a free ride.

The Democrats want more of this.  Here’s one report calling for it from lefty Quartz just today.

3. Widen the scope of those who qualify for asylum

Nazario says the US also needs to focus on the asylum seekers who are most at risk of violence in their home countries.  In June, then-attorney-general Jeff Sessions said that immigration judges would no longer be able to consider domestic violence or gang violence as general grounds for asylum, reversing an Obama-era precedent.  Sessions described domestic abuse and violence as “personal crimes.”  This ”reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of domestic violence, harkening back to an era when rape and partner abuse were viewed as private matters as well as of the brutality and scope of gang violence,” said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

It’s the usual lefty solution of throwing taxpayer money at a problem instead of going to the root of the problem, which is the problems in the refugees’ home countries, as well as the benefit disparity between what’s on offer in home countries and first countries of refuge and the vast banquet of benefits available to U.S. refugees and asylees inside the U.S.

Seriously, we could cut the cost in half by handing each refugee a stack of $40,000 in bills in exchange for his staying out of the U.S., which shows just how bad the whole situation is.

President Trump has cut the vast numbers of refugees admitted to the U.S. sharply, but that move has just brought more fury from the left, which sees these refugees and asylees, dependent as they are on government services and unlikely to change that situation, as major sources of new Democrat votes.

Eighty thousand bucks could also do a lot of good in these refugees’ home countries or wherever their first countries of refuge are.  Pity it won’t get there, given the Democrats’ insistence on importing more and more of this poverty – and inability to succeed in the U.S. as their means of virtue-signaling.  It makes no sense.  And the report’s conclusion, that the U.S. should step up helping refugees in their home countries and first countries of asylum, makes a lot of sense.

Image credit: PressTV of Iran, via YouTube screen shot.

Dick’s Sporting Goods saw sales slip during the past three months as a result of the corporate gun control the company adopted in February.

On February 28, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Dick’s was ending sales of commonly owned semiautomatic rifles and “high capacity” magazines. They also raised the purchase age for long guns to 21 years.

On April 17, 2018, Breitbart News reported that Dick’s was destroying unsold commonly owned semiautomatic rifles rather than sending them back to their respective manufacturers. Dick’s also made clear it would destroy its unsold “high capacity” magazines.

On May 2, 2018, the Federalist reported that Dick’s was paying lobbyists to pressure Congress to support more gun control.

On August 29, 2018, Breitbart News highlighted that Dick’s quarterly sales dropped, and the chain admitted that its corporate gun control contributed to the slump. Two days later, Dick’s reacted to dropping sales by adding hunting gear to the list of items it would remove from certain stores.

Now another sales quarter has passed, and Dick’s continues to be hurt by its gun control stance. The Washington Examiner reported, “Sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods dropped in the past three months amid backlash against tighter gun-sale restrictions following a mass killing early this year at a Florida high school.”

The Examiner added, “Revenue dipped 4.5 percent to $1.86 billion amid challenges in the company’s hunting business during the quarter through Nov. 3. Sales at stores open at least 12 months – a key metric for the retail industry – fell 6.1 percent compared to the prior year.”

The company plans to raise prices in 2019. It says the higher prices are due to expenses incurred via President Trump’s tariffs on products made in China.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

Update to this story.

Via Campus Reform:

A faculty union at Oakland University in Michigan purchased and distributed hockey pucks to faculty and students for defense in the event of an active shooter. The pucks are also being used to raise money for new electronic locks on classroom doors.

The move comes even as, per state law, Michigan colleges may opt-in to allow students to carry personal firearms on campus, provided they are legally owned with permits. The law was pioneered by campus gun advocates who believe that allowing law-abiding students to be armed on campus is the best way to deter potential school shooters.

Tyler Yzaguirre, president of the Second Amendment Institute holds that view.

“OU Police Chief Gordon and the OU faculty union have to be completely out of touch with reality to believe that throwing hockey pucks at an active shooter will stop them. Students and teachers have been armed with similar heavy objects, such as books, in active shooter situations, and that hasn’t stopped the shooter. So why would a hockey puck?” Yzaguirre told Campus Reform on Wednesday.

Keep reading…

Employees at Google have reportedly begun fighting amongst themselves over the company’s plans to develop a government-censored Chinese search engine, codenamed “Project Dragonfly.” Many employees are reportedly in favor of working with the communist regime.

The Verge reports that employees working for tech giant Google are divided over the company’s plans to launch a government-censored Chinese search engine, codenamed “Project Dragonfly.” Anger over the project has been previously reported on by Breitbart News, as many as 1,400 employees have already signed an internal petition requesting more information about the project while a smaller group of 400 employees have recently urged Google to abandon the project in an open letter published to Medium.com.

”Dragonfly would also enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely,” the employees wrote in the letter. “Given the Chinese government’s reported suppression of dissident voices, such controls would likely be used to silence marginalized people, and favor information that promotes government interests.”

But this week, TechCrunch published a letter from Google employees taking the exact opposite stance, signed by more than 500 Google employee the letter states:

Dragonfly still faces many difficulties and uncertainties, which can only be resolved by continuing efforts. The regulation requirements set by the Chinese government (like censorship) makes Dragonfly a challenging project. If we are not careful enough, the project can end up doing more harm than good. In any case, only with continuing efforts on Dragonfly can we learn how different approaches may work out in China, and find out if there is a way that is good for both the Chinese users and Google. Even if we fail, the findings can still be useful for bringing other services to China.

Google employees have protested a number of political moves by the company recently, but interestingly enough only half as many have opposed Project Dragonfly as opposed a project from the Pentagon which Google planned to help develop artificial intelligence for. In a letter published in April, between 3,100 and 4,000 employees  signed an open letter opposing Google’s involvement in the Pentagon’s “Project Maven,” which aimed to improve drone analysis using AI to better identify civilian and reduce the number of unnecessary casualties

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” the letter read. It would seem that many Google employees have an issue with helping the U.S. government and military, unfortunately not so many have problems with helping a Chinese dictatorship track and trace their citizens more easily through Project Dragonfly.

The raid on corruption in the United States Catholic Church that officially began with the Pennsylvania grand jury report this summer accelerated this week when 50 members of law enforcement agencies raided the offices of Cardinal DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They were reportedly searching for “secret archives” containing evidence for sexual abuse cover-ups, according to LifeSiteNews.

Cardinal DiNardo runs the diocese of Galveston-Houston; the members who raided his chancery were from the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, Texas Rangers, and Conroe Police officers.​

KHOU reports that the District Attorney’s office was searching for documents regarding Fr. Manuel LaRosa-Lopez, who was recently charged with four counts of indecency with a child. DiNardo has been accused by the victims of “not doing enough” to stop La Rose-Lopez. From the report:

A man and a woman claimed they were abused as teenagers by LaRosa-Lopez between 1998 and 2001 at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Both people accuse Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, who oversees the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, of not doing enough to stop La Rosa-Lopez. One of them said DiNardo promised her that the priest would be removed from any contact with children, only to later discover that LaRosa-Lopez remained in active ministry at another parish, St. John the Fisher in Richmond.

In a statement following the raid, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said that Cardinal DiNardo has been cooperating with law enforcement from the outset.

“The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston continues to cooperate, as we have since the outset, with this process,” said the statement. “In fact, consistent with Cardinal DiNardo’s pledge of full cooperation, the information being sought was already being compiled.”

The statement went on to say that the so-called “secret archives” raided by law enforcement were simply “confidential documents kept in a secure manner for the protection of the privacy of individuals — not unlike medical records.”

Earlier this week, just two days before the raid on Wednesday, Cardinal DiNardo penned an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle in which he defended the archdiocese’s handling of the La Rosa-Lopez case. DiNardo says that after meeting with one of La Rosa-Lopez’s male accusers in 2018, he was immediately removed from ministry.

“After our meeting, Father La Rosa-Lopez was removed from ministry,” DiNardo said. “The law requires that child abuse allegations are reported to either Child Protective Services or law enforcement. While we reported this allegation to CPS, we have reviewed our procedures and in the future we will contact both law enforcement and CPS simultaneously.”

Two other priests within the diocese that were previously accused of sexually abusing minors in the 1970’s and 80’s were allowed back into ministry only after law enforcement reviewed their case.

The raid on DiNardo’s chancery comes after the Vatican ordered the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to withhold their vote on sexual abuse reform measures until a meeting in February. The proposals would include an investigative body of competent lay members in good standing with the Catholic Church as well as a new code of conduct for American bishops.