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HUD Administrator Wants to Know Where $16 Billion Given to Baltimore Is

The national conversation over the decrepit state of Baltimore is heating up now that an official from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is joining the fight. Lynne Patton, a HUD regional administrator, went off on “crooked” Baltimore politicians and activists such as the Rev. Al Sharpton during an appearance on Fox News on…

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Google Green Summit Polluters: Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Celebs Arrive in Yachts and Private Jets

Google is the world’s No. 1 search engine and it can reveal important information even when it’s not being used. That was the case with the huge Google Camp Summit on climate change that went from being a way to lecture on global warming to a reminder how hypocritical liberals can be about the issue.

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Mario Lopez Attacked for Saying Parents Shouldn’t Let Their Children Choose Genders

Mario Lopez’s comments about it being “dangerous” for parents to allow their young children to choose their own gender have prompted a wave of blowback, with TV personalities, journalists, and other activists on the left criticizing the TV host on Twitter.

Lopez’s comments were made in a June video from PragerU in which the Extra TV host was interviewed by Candace Owens. “I’m never one to tell anyone how to parent their kids,” said Mario Lopez. But, he added, “if you’re three years old and you’re saying you’re feeling a certain way — you think you’re a boy or a girl…. I just think it’s dangerous as a parent to make that determination — OK, well, then you’re going to be a boy or girl.”

He added: “It’s sort of alarming. Just think of the repercussions later on.”

Owens noted that many kids and adolescents go through phases in which they explore their identities but quickly outgrow them.

Lopez responded that kids “don’t know anything about sexuality. You’re just a kid.”

The blowback crested on Tuesday after Yahoo! Lifestyle ran an article about the interview.

Netflix’s Queer Eye host Karamo Brown said: “I’m disappointed to read @MarioLopezExtra comments about parent’s who support their child’s openes about their gender identity. As a social worker I am trained to identify abuse or neglect of a child. Healthy & safe dialogue w/ kids is neither abusive, neglectful or ‘dangerous.’”

“I don’t think @MarioLopezExtra should be ‘canceled’. But I do believe he should be given the opportunity to learn why his comments are harmful to trans youth and their parents. Mario, I’m ready to talk when you are,” Brown added.

Holly Figueroa O’Reilly, a journalist who has written for The Washington Post and The Guardian, and is a founder of the Democratic activist group Blue Wave Crowdsource, lashed out angrily at Lopez, noting that 2 of her five children are queer. 

“Parents can tell the different between a 3 year old who pretends to be another gender for fun and one who feels they are living in the wrong body,” wrote Figueroa O’Reilly. “STFU Mario Lopez.”

Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization, also weighed in on the Mario Lopez interview, saying that his comments are “dangerous.”

The organization said its Parents for Transgender Equality Council “would be more than happy to educate you on this very subject of supporting trans youth.”

Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com

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Broke Iran Follows Venezuela, Will Remove 4 Zeros from Currency

Iran’s Central Bank announced Wednesday that the nation would rename the national currency, the rial, as the “toman” and “delete four zeros” from its value.

The move follows months of intense American sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and mimics a similar move to bolster the bolívar currency in Venezuela.

“The council of ministers, at a meeting presided by President Hassan Rouhani this morning, approved the central bank’s proposed bill to change the national currency from the rial to the toman and delete four zeros,” the Iranian Islamic regime said in a media statement, according to the government news outlet PressTV. As the reevaluation of the currency must pass through the dictatorship’s rubber-stamp legislature, it will not be confirmed until a final vote in the Iranian parliament.

PressTV admitted the plan to remove the zeros, an attempt to strengthen the currency’s value, “found traction after the national currency lost more than 60 percent of its value in 2018,” after the United States withdrew from the international nuclear deal with Tehran. The outlet blamed Washington for sending the rial into a “tailspin” and prices of basic goods in the country “through the roof.”

The administration of President Donald Trump walked out of the nuclear deal, formally the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), after collecting significant evidence that Iran was violating the provisions of the deal and using its windfall from sanctions relief to fund Hezbollah, support Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and spread the influence of Shiite terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East and Latin America.

While the Central Bank of Iran blamed Trump for having to change the value of the rial, changing the currency’s name was reportedly a matter of convenience.

“The reversal to the toman – in use until the 1930s – does away with a duel denomination which many visitors of Iran find confusing. While the rial is the official name, Iranians still make their calculations in toman,” PressTV noted. One toman will still be worth 100 rials, potentially suggesting that the name change is also a way of making the true collapse of the rial’s value less obvious.

Abdolnaser Hemmati, the governor of the Central Bank of Iran, claimed in remarks to Iran’s Mehr news agency that economic instability in the country’s foreign exchange market was an “illusion” created by Iran’s enemies. Mehr claimed that the Iranian economy had already begun to improve even though “nothing is felt at supermarkets, chain stores, bazaars, etc.” Citing a domestic expert, Mehr claimed that the U.S. sanctions currently starving the Iranian elite “can be an opportunity for Iran to reduce its reliance on oil revenues and move towards an … indigenous economy.”

Iran’s oil exports have reportedly fallen by 77 percent currently, compared to the same timeframe last year. Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell 4.9 percent over the fiscal year ending March 21 – significantly more than the World Bank’s prediction of a 1.9-percent drop.

The U.S.-funded Radio Farda reported last week that point-to-point inflation in Iran hit a record high that week at 48 percent, increasing at a slightly slower rate than it had in recent months but nonetheless significantly impacting the average Iranian’s ability to buy basic food and household goods.

“According to estimates made by the Iranian Statistical Center, a quarter of the income of an Iranian family is spent on foodstuff and beverages,” Radio Farda noted. “The increase in the price of food has been higher, nearly twofold, compared with other goods and services.”

In cutting zeros from the value of its national currency, Iran has adopted the policies of close ally Venezuela. Dictator Nicolás Maduro announced in March 2018 that, in response to the collapse of Venezuela’s economy after two decades of socialism, his government would cut three zeros from the value of the bolívar.

“I have decided to remove three zeroes from our currency and take all current currency out of circulation and instead implement a new currency with three fewer zeroes,” Maduro announced. Maduro ultimately removed five zeros, not three, and introduced the confusing “sovereign bolívar,” which triggered chaos at Venezuelan banks, as Maduro had also introduced a cryptocurrency, the “petro” recently to stabilize the economy.

Last month, Venezuela printed a 50,000-bolívar note to help citizens buy products, as their value has become too high to carry the necessary amount of money for purchases in a wallet. It is not clear at press time if the bolívar currently in circulation is the original or the “sovereign” variety.

Iran’s economy appears to be going the way of Venezuela’s after months of sanctions, which Tehran simultaneously claims have not harmed the glorious Islamic revolution while laying blame on them exclusively for the country’s economic woes. The sanctions, American officials have revealed, have damaged Iran’s ability to fund Shiite terrorist activities in the region that it invested heavily in following the signing of the JCPOA.

“Today by nearly every metric the regime and its proxies are weaker than when our pressure began. … Our pressure campaign is working. It is making Iran’s violent and expansionist foreign policy cost prohibitive,” Brian Hook, the State Department’s special representative for Iran, told Congress last month.

“In March, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, went on TV and made a public appeal for donations,” Hook noted. “Hezbollah has placed piggy banks in grocery stores and in retail outlets seeking the spare change of people.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

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Disney Features First Teenage Gay Couple In ‘Andi Mack’ Series Finale

The Disney Channel is apparently breaking barriers by featuring the first teenage gay couple on the show "Andi Mack."
According to Pink News, the revolutionary moment occurred during the show’s series finale, when the character Cyrus Goodman confessed to one of his classmates, TJ Kippen, that he has a crush on him. From the report:

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Rubio’s China Threat and Reagan’s Socrates Solution

America’s greatest economic and military adversary“This is not a game.  I can think of no more significant issue from the perspective of history than what is happening now.” — Senator Marco Rubio on Chinese domination of the geopolitical landscape and the global marketplace

Mr. Rubio’s stirring speech provides a sound and compelling overview of the near-term, multi-generational threat that China poses as it becomes the sole world superpower.  In fact, China has transformed itself into a superpower faster than any country in the history of mankind, and has become America’s greatest economic and military adversary.

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One day up close with San Francisco’s homeless crisis

The San Francisco Chronicle has put together a pretty deep look at San Francisco’s homeless crisis. The concept is to look at the story over the course of one long day, June 18th, from the perspective of 36 different journalists covering different aspects of it from several different vantage points. So we get the story of wheelchair-bound Alex Pierson aka “Shorty” who has lived on the streets for years and survives by panhandling with the help of his homeless friends:

Shorty is hurting. Like every day about this time, he needs his first hit of meth. He hasn’t eaten anything since the afternoon before, but his guts are so tight from the need for that hit, his nerves so jumpy, that he can’t eat. He sits with his homeless friends in his wheelchair under a palm tree across from the Ferry Building and fidgets.

“Hey, Zito, I need you to take care of me,” he tells 45-year-old James Zito.

Zito pulls out a little box of dope, rolls up a dollar bill, taps a line of speed onto a lottery ticket and takes a snort. Then he lays out a new line on the ticket and hands it to Shorty…

There’s little danger of cops busting him. In San Francisco, they focus on the big dealers, not the users.

The grin fades in moments. Shorty rolls a few feet away and lights up a pipe bowl of pot.

“The drugs, the addiction, are a damper on my life,” he says quietly, and Zito nods, overhearing. “You think we want to depend on this stuff? No. Deep down, we really want normal lives.”

But some of the stories are surprising. For instance, Jimmie Wu is a veteran living in an Econoline van by choice. He’s getting money every month and is attending college but figures it’s crazy to pay rent in a city like San Francisco. By living in his van, he’s managed to save tens of thousands of dollars for his future.

Some of the vignettes in the piece are presented in the form of animated cartoons. Some are audio files. And there are some videos like the one of a police officer trying to wake a man sleeping in a hammock slung in a tree 15 feet off the ground. There’s also a video of one man who says he doesn’t like it that women find him scary or that people cross the street to avoid him. But looking at him, I wouldn’t blame any woman who did so. People on drugs are unpredictable.

One aspect of the story touched on several times is the city’s public transit. This is where homeless people with nowhere else to go eventually wind up.

Methodically walking through each railcar, BART police Sgt. Nick Mavrakis and Officer Youn Seraypheap remind everyone aboard that this will be the end of the line — literally. The train is headed to San Francisco International Airport from Powell Street, with no train returning to the city.

The officers are looking for homeless people. They find one in DeShawn Evans, who is sprawled across the seats.

“You gotta get up, sir,” Mavrakis says. “You can’t take up two seats. Sit up, please.”

Evans, 24, slowly rises. When the cops leave, he slumps back down.

Not all of the end-of-night encounters end as easily. When a bus driver was unable to get a homeless man sleeping in the back to leave her bus at the end of the night, she wound up having to call the police:

“The bus driver asked you to get off,” one says, “so it’s time to get off.”

Evans sits up petulantly, stomps off the bus and walks a half block up Fremont Street, where he curls up in a doorway next to a parking garage for the Salesforce West building. Less than 10 minutes later, a flashlight is pointed his way.

“Move!”

Evans jabs his leg at the private security guard’s shin.

“Don’t you kick me!” the guard says, and calls the cops. Fifteen minutes later, two officers show up.

“Sir, it’s the Police Department. Wake up.” Nothing. “Sir, if you don’t sit up on your own we’re going to grab you.”

Suddenly, Evans begins demanding they call an ambulance. “Call the f— ambulance, what the f—?” he says.

He stands up, cursing the cops and spitting at them. He moves off toward Powell Street BART Station. He’ll wait for it to open at 5 a.m. so he can get on a train and go back to sleep.

The whole story is worth a look. It’s amazing to think that you could repeat this journalistic exercise every day with completely different homeless people and it would take many months before you’d need to go back to the same people. The overall impression is that despite all the money the city is spending on cleaning and keeping people from settling in one place, they aren’t anywhere close to tackling this problem.

Clearly, drugs and addiction (and mental health) are behind a lot of the chronic homelessness depicted in the story but facing that head-on is not really something San Francisco seems prepared to do. There’s a brief discussion of forcing people to get help for their addictions but it’s just one small paragraph which seems equivalent to throwing one’s arms in the air in surrender:

Forcing mentally ill people in need of help into treatment is a decades-old hot-button issue with no end in sight. New city and state laws to make conservatorship easier don’t come close to answering the problem, or the debate: Is it more humane to lock people into facilities, or wait for them to come to treatment voluntarily?

And that’s it. I was left with the impression San Francisco will continue to be at the mercy of this crisis until the discussion above gets more than a passing thought. In any case, good work by the Chronicle putting together this excellent piece looking with some detail and clarity at what is really happening on the streets.

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Get Woke, Go Broke: Gillette Loses BILLIONS After Sexist and Lecturing #MeToo Razor Ads

In January Proctor & Gamble and Gillette decided to run razor ads trashing men and “toxic” masculinity in a courageous ad campaign.

The company decided the best way to promote their product was to attack their customer base.

The new ad highlighted sexist and bullying white males in the United States.

Of the 43 abusive males in the ad – 42 were white. 7 of the hero men out of 8 in the ad were black.

The ad did not do so well.  Many users promised to avoid the product.

The ad had 642,000 down votes after its first two days on YouTube.

All that wokeness did not pay off for Gillette and P&G.
Gillette lost $8 BILLION in the second quarter.

Reuters reported:

P&G reported a net loss of about $5.24 billion, or $2.12 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, due to an $8 billion non-cash writedown of Gillette. For the same period last year, P&G’s net income was $1.89 billion, or 72 cents per share.

It looks like trashing their consumer base with feminist lecturing was not such a good idea, huh?

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Senator reveals heinous criminals released via ‘catch-and-release’ at border

The Department of Homeland Security treats the expanded “Flores” decree like God’s word, releasing any illegal alien who crosses the border with a child, even if border personnel can’t confirm identities, criminal records, or whether they are threats Americans or to the children they’re using as golden tickets.

Senator James Lankford, R-Okla., announced at yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that border agents told him, on his recent trip to the border, that they found in two separate incidents that an alleged murderer and a convicted pedophile had each been released with a kid as part of the expanded Flores catch-and-release deadline of 20 days.

In one case, “they released an adult with a child and then found out two weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in their home country, and they just released him into the country, and they could do nothing about it.” In another case, “they had released an adult traveling with a child and then found out after they were released when they got their criminal records in from home country that, that was a convicted pedophile from that country now traveling with a child somewhere in our country, and because we couldn’t detain them for longer than 20 days and we couldn’t get those criminal records, they’re released in the country, and they’re traveling with a child.”

When Lankford asked acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan whether border personnel were able to verify criminal status within the arbitrary 20-day deadline by the courts, he answered, “Not efficiently.”

The reality is that these people are coming straight out of rural Central America and countries with extremely unreliable data. All they have to do is give a name and they are home free, thanks to a court order that defies the 1996 immigration law passed unanimously by the Senate stating that these people “shall be detained.”

Thus, the threat of those coming in as “runners” and “gotaways” while Border Patrol is strategically tied down by the cartels with the family units is obvious. All of those with massive criminal records who were previously deported now have a freer lane than ever to come right back in.

But it’s even more disquieting that would-be criminal migrants are so emboldened by the notion that we will give amnesty to anyone with a kid that a number of those coming with family units are criminals. Every day, I see stories from CBP on how they caught criminals, particularly those convicted of child sex crimes, coming in openly with groups surrendering to agents.

Just yesterday, for example, Border Patrol arrested a previously deported Guatemalan who had been “convicted of Lewd or Lascivious Conduct and Failure to register as a Sex Offender on July 31, 2015, in Jacksonville, Florida.” According to Border Patrol in Tucson, the alien convict, 52-year-old Pedro Nolasco-Garcia, was traveling “with” a group of 16 women and children who surrendered to agents.

I asked a border agent why someone would be so dumb as to come in knowing that CBP will discover his record. He told me that he is forced to release criminals or people whose status could not be verified all the time because of the rush to release anyone who comes with a child. “The entire focus is on treatment of the children, to the detriment of not only America’s security, but these children as well,” said the agent, who patrols the hardest-hit areas of the Rio Grande Valley. The agent in Texas, who is on an evidence collection team and administers fingerprints, told CR that they are catching many adult males who come with one child (not an entire family fleeing persecution) who think that despite their criminal record, they will benefit from catch-and-release.

“And they are not entirely wrong,” said the veteran agent, who must remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

“In every single group, almost without fail, there is someone with a criminal record, typically males with single kids,” the agent said. “There is a wide misconception about the majority of these people being females. They are overwhelmingly male. While we try to prioritize referrals for prosecution based on criminal history, we only have so many computers we can utilize and so many staff members.”

When I asked him if that means there are those with confirmed criminal records, even with convictions in the U.S., who have been released, he said, “Absolutely. … They are given a notice to appear in court like anyone else.”

According to Department of Homeland Security investigators, in a letter from DHS to a member of the House Oversight Committee obtained by CR, there were enough criminal convictions (just from their previous time in the U.S.) among the January 2019 caravan members to account for roughly one quarter of the entire group! Homeland Security Investigations identified a total of 860 people with U.S. criminal convictions among the 3,345 people who left Honduras, including “22 individuals convicted of assault or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, 27 individuals convicted of sexual offenses.” They also identified 47 gang members.

“So many of those coming here now have no records in the NCIC and are from countries that don’t share information with us,” said the agent I spoke to. “We literally have no idea who they are before we release them. They just give us a random name and birthdate and we have no way of verifying it.”

Why is the federal government giving foreign nationals a right to invade with such a dangerous scam of using children when the law actually says the opposite? Nothing in the Constitution can ever compel such carnage, but this policy emanated from a single California judge expanding the original settlement, which a Texas judge agreed doesn’t apply to cartel smuggling. And consider that 97.7 percent of family units are not even coming through California. Most are entering in Texas!

Also, consider the fact that well over 208,000 aliens have been released since Dec. 21, and we have no idea who they are. Thankfully, Border Patrol catches murderers, sex offenders, and gang members every day. But if those are the fish that are caught, one can imagine how many are in that pond and how few we catch when the net is so small and thin.

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