Nobody is disputing the fact that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants are censoring conservative material. In fact, this is probably the largest purge of conservative voices in the history of the Internet. Obviously this is going to cause large numbers of people to stop using their platforms, so why would they do this? Well, to some conservatives the answer is obvious. These social media giants watched Donald Trump use their platforms extremely effectively in 2016, and many believe that they are absolutely determined to never let that happen again. In fact, Mike Adams of Natural News is completely convinced that there is a concerted effort by these social media giants to steal the 2018 elections…
The realization is suddenly obvious: The Google / YouTube selective “censorship rampage” that has targeted conservative websites and content creators is a brazen, illegal scheme to interfere with U.S. elections and steal the 2018 mid-terms.
The systematic silencing of conservative views is necessary, of course, for Democrats to win enough seats to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the mid-term elections. Once control is established, Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump. Although the Senate would not likely prosecute that impeachment, the mere achievement of the U.S. House declaring “impeachment” would be enough to convince most brainwashed news consumers that Trump is somehow a guilty criminal (nobody will remember that Bill Clinton was also impeached by the House). From there, the 2020 presidential election is also stolen, and Democrats land their selected tyrant in the White House just in time for Ginsberg’s retirement from SCOTUS.
If voices on the left were being censored to the same degree as conservative voices, it would be really hard to make such an argument.
But the truth is that the numbers show that conservative voices are being hit extremely hard by the censorship while liberal publishers have been mostly “unaffected”…
Facebook’s January 12 announcement that it would begin to de-prioritize news publishers and their posts in users’ News Feeds has had a surprisingly profound and partisan impact. According to The Outline’s analysis of Facebook engagement data obtained from research tool BuzzSumo, conservative and right-wing publishers (such as Breitbart, Fox News, and Gateway Pundit) were hit the hardest in the weeks following the announcement, with Facebook engagement totals for February dropping as much as 55 percent for some, while the engagement numbers of most predominantly liberal publishers remained unaffected.
And this even applies to politicians as well. For example, President Trump’s engagement on Facebook has fallen 45 percent since the algorithm change…
The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%.
In contrast, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) do not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement.
Top conservative Facebook pages with daily traffic in the millions have seen 75% to 95% drop in traffic.
We can fight back. One of the primary ways that we can do that is by electing pro-Trump candidates all over the nation in 2018. Right now I am engaged in an extremely close race with three guys that did not want Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination in 2016, and I need your help to win on May 15th.
It is fundamentally wrong for the social media giants to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. I will fight online censorship as hard as I can in Washington, and if you believe in what we are trying to do I hope that you will stand with us.
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Whenever radical leftists have taken power anywhere in the world, they have always tried to shut down free speech.
They want to follow the same formula in the United States, but we are not going to allow them to do that.
There are millions upon millions of red-blooded Americans that still greatly love this nation, and this silent majority is rising up to take our country back.
YouTube is now claiming that its censorship of non-left-leaning accounts was an accident. They are placing the blame on “over-eager moderators” and say they aren’t really censoring anyone.
Let’s call this explanation from YouTube what it is: total and complete BS.
So, let’s get this straight, YouTube: your moderators “accidentally” gave Infowars, (a channel with over 2.2 million subscribers) two strikes, banned them from uploading videos for two weeks, and threatened a complete removal of the account on accident? No one’s buying it. Least of all those who have been censored.
According to YouTube, the whole censorship was just an accident caused by inexperienced new employees.
If those questioning the media’s “official narrative” of the events of the Florida school shooting needed any more evidence that they are on the right track, they’ve just gotten it. YouTube and Twitter are now scrubbing users who dare to question the students demanding gun control and the media’s account of the school shooting.
According to Natural News, starting a few days ago, both Twitter and YouTube began scrubbing all videos and tweets that don’t follow the “official narrative” on the Florida school shooting. Anyone who questions the wisdom of the school students-turned-propagandists (who were all probably eating Tide pods a week ago) is immediately banned and silenced with censorship. Only one side of this “debate” is allowed to exist: The side that worships the government and demands that all law-abiding Americans surrender their self-defense firearms because a group of traumatized school kids were shot at by their own lunatic classmate. –SHTFPlan
Make no mistake; YouTube isn’t apologizing for the “accidental” censorship of ideas they don’t like either. They are simply asking all to believe it was purely human error. A spokesperson told Bloomberg:
As we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals. We’re continuing to enforce our existing policies regarding harmful and dangerous content, they have not changed. We’ll reinstate any videos that were removed in error.
That’s an insincere statement at best, considering most of the videos were not harmful and didn’t contain any dangerous content; they were simply questioning the government and the mainstream media’s official narrative of the shooting events that took place in Florida. And when an event is used to limit the rights of those who committed no crime (aka, gun control), people should have every opportunity to have their voices heard and not be censored. They should have the right to seek out information that goes against the crowd.
Maybe YouTube finally got the message that people are fed up with their East Berlin tactics of silencing anyone they disagree with, so they tried to lie to cover up the fact that they were acting like the very Nazis they claim to loathe. But on the other hand, in light of Donald Trump’s comments on gun control, many (not all) right-leaning political pundits are silent. Isn’t it time to condemn the destruction of rights regardless of whom is doing it?
“When you tear out a man’s tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you’re only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
If this is all that Robert Mueller can come up with, he has just wasted enormous amounts of time and money. On Monday, Paul Manafort and his former business partner Richard Gates were charged with tax evasion, money laundering and being “unregistered agents of the government of Ukraine”. These charges have nothing to do with Trump’s campaign, and the Trump campaign is not actually mentioned in the indictment at all. Previously, I explained that once a special counsel is appointed, someone is going to end up getting indicted. Somebody must be charged with something, because a special counsel always feels the need to justify all of the time, money and energy that has been expended. But if this is all that Mueller can come up with, that is pretty pathetic.
In case you haven’t seen the news yet, the following is a brief summary of what Manafort and Gates are being charged with…
Manafort and his former business associate Richard W. Gates III acted as “unregistered agents of the government of Ukraine, the indictment says.
“In order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, Manafort and Gates laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships and bank accounts.”
They’re also accused of tax evasion and making “false and misleading statements” to federal investigators.
No special counsel was needed for this. If Manafort and Gates evaded taxes and laundered money, those are issues that could be dealt with through normal law enforcement channels.
In the end, this has nothing to do with Trump’s campaign, and it is more evidence that this is simply a politically-motivated witch hunt.
On Monday we also learned that Trump’s former foreign policy adviser had been “secretly arrested” back in July…
A former Donald Trump campaign adviser was secretly arrested in July and has pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about contacts with Russia during the 2016 campaign, according to court documents unsealed by special counsel Robert Mueller on Monday.
The former Trump foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, admitted to making “numerous” false statements to the FBI about his repeated efforts to arrange an “off the record” meeting between Trump campaign officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s office. He is now cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, according to the unsealed court records.
This is potentially more serious, but once again, there is nothing here that would indicate that President Trump was involved in any wrongdoing whatsoever.
Understandably, President Trump’s response to these developments was quite pointed…
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. on Monday, Trump tweeted:
“Sorry, but this is years ago, before Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign. But why aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????”
“….Also, there is NO COLLUSION!,” the president tweeted moments later.
And the timing of all of this is quite odd.
Just when the Uranium One scandal is seriously heating up, all of a sudden Mueller comes out with indictments?
I am not the only one that thinks this is strange. The following comes from Natural News…
But this is all a deliberate distraction from the exploding Uranium One and Fusion GPS scandals, both of which are ensnaring not just Hillary Clinton but also James Comey and even Robert Mueller himself, who was head of the FBI when Clinton rubber stamped the selling of U.S. uranium supplies to Russia.
Over the last few days, for example, the US DOJ has granted approval for an FBI informant with detailed knowledge of the Clinton / Comey criminality to testify before the U.S. Senate. That testimony will be on the record in a few weeks, and it will result in criminal indictments against Obama era officials and Clinton cohorts who have been running a massive collusion cartel for at least the last eight years.
In the end, I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Mueller himself in some very hot water.
In case you are not familiar with the Uranium One scandal, the following is a pretty good summary from the Blaze…
In 2010, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) voted to appropriate the sale of mining company Uranium One, to Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom, thus handing 20 percent of US uranium supply to Russia. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on CFIUS when the committee unanimously approved the Uranium One deal. Information has recently surfaced showing that Russian officials routed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation prior to the the Uranium One deal.
And even potentially more serious is the fact that Hillary Clinton’s campaign helped fund the now infamous “Trump dossier” that included completely fabricated information.
The fact that the Clinton campaign attempted to hide their role in funding the dossier could get them into a massive amount of legal trouble.
But thanks to Mueller, for the moment the focus is on the special counsel investigation, and Judge Napolitano believes that Mueller is going to use these indictments to try to get someone to testify against Trump…
“Bob Mueller is following the standard M.O. of federal prosecutors,” the judicial analyst continued. “You’ve got a totem pole, you’ve got somebody at the top of the totem pole, that’s your big prize: no surprise, it’s the president of the United States.”
“You’re going to indict people going up the totem pole to see if you can squeeze them. Threaten their ruination, by loss of liberty or loss of property to get them to turn evidence against the top guy.” Napolitano added.
In the end, it isn’t going to work.
There is absolutely no evidence that Trump did anything wrong, and Mueller should be ashamed of himself for dragging this thing out for so long.
Unfortunately, very few members of Congress are calling for this investigation to be shut down. When I am elected, that is something that I am going to do immediately. This investigation is a total witch hunt, and if you stand with President Trump I hope that you will send pro-Trump candidates like me to Washington.
Because if anti-Trump forces have their way, this investigation will go on indefinitely until they can find some possible way to impeach Trump following the 2018 mid-term elections. In fact, Senator Warner is saying that Mueller’s probe will almost certainly be “a complex and likely lengthy investigation” because of these new developments…
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is also investigating Russia-Trump ties, called Monday’s developments in a statement “a significant and sobering step in what will be a complex and likely lengthy investigation by the Special Counsel. That is why it is imperative that Congress take action now to protect the independence of the Special Counsel, wherever or however high his investigation may lead.”
His office also said he wants bipartisan members of Congress to “make clear” to President Trump “that issuing pardons to any of his associates or to himself would be unacceptable, and result in immediate, bipartisan action by Congress.”
Of course the Democrats want this to go on forever, because they want to get rid of Trump by any means necessary.
In the end, there is only one outcome of this investigation that is acceptable.
It needs to be shut down, and it needs to be shut down immediately.
[image: AP Photo/Susan Walsh]Some political figures truly embody the classic role of the divider; their purpose seems to be to agitate and provoke, to instigate conflict rather than mediate peace. Al Sharpton and Nancy Pelosi come to mind. Let’s not forget John McCain or Lindsay Graham. Barack Obama was known as the “great divider” for much of his presidency. While many leftists would argue that Donald Trump is the “most divisive” president in generations, I think the mainstream media has proven far more provoking than he has. In the case of Charlottesville, we see a whole host of individuals and institutions seeking to promulgate continued social tensions well beyond anything Trump has done. One of these individuals is Joe Biden.
In a short essay for The Atlantic, Joe Biden was quick to capitalize on the death of a protester in Charlottesville at the hands of an apparent white nationalist, spewing forth a host of cliches on “dark forces” creeping out from the hidden corners of America to smother the light and happiness of the silent Kumbaya majority like some kind of J.R.R. Tolkien novel.
This narrative is nothing new. It is the narrative that was promoted throughout the 2016 presidential election cycle as well as the Brexit debate in the U.K. — the notion that dangerous and “ignorant” portions of the citizenry in western society (labeled “populists”) are quietly organizing for a last stand against the “inevitable evolution” of progressive multiculturalism and globalism. They are presented as the throwbacks, the cave people, the Cro-Magnons, the people who refuse to get with the times and embrace the social justice revolution. They are, according to gatekeepers like Biden, in the way.
While a host of names and labels are used to define this group of malcontents preventing society from achieving full-blown Utopia, we all know who establishment snake oil peddlers are really referring to: conservatives.
The racism subplot to this scripted conflict has always been present. When the vote on the U.K. exit from the European Union proved successful, the automatic accusation in the media was that this was driven by “hidden racism,” along with the consistent idea that older generations were trying to live off the backs of younger generations while interfering with “natural” shifts in cultural consciousness. These claims were greatly amplified during the rise of the Trump administration.
I have to say, these assertions are fascinating to me. The amount of propaganda and projection involved is truly staggering.
Biden’s hope along with other establishment con-men, I believe, is that he can continue to simplify the narrative down to a series of false associations. White nationalists were present at Charlottesville? Indeed. White nationalists were standing in defense of the confederate statue issue? Yes. White nationalists faced off against Antifa counter-protesters? Certainly. A white nationalist drove his car into a group of counter-protesters and killed one of them? It would seem so, though I still think the man deserves a fair trial before being convicted in the media. But here is where Biden and his ilk deliberately go off the rails in order to incite wider tensions…
At this point, the narrative moves from facts to wild assumptions and misconceptions. White nationalists were present in Charlottesville, but does this mean everyone (or even most people) in Charlottesville protesting in defense against the removal of confederate statues was a racist? No. Does this mean that people who support the existence of confederate statues are automatically racists? No. Does this mean that anyone that stands in opposition to groups like Antifa is a racist or a fascist? No. Just because one man acted violently in response to Antifa and other leftists groups, does this mean that Antifa represents the “good guys” in Biden’s little screenplay? No.
But this is the story we are being sold. Not just by Biden, but by many other political interests. I would specifically reference a recent panel of Trump supporters by CNN, during which the “journalist” was dismayed to discover that none of the people involved was willing to play along with the message that Donald Trump’s response to Charlottesville was anything other than logical.
I want readers to take note of a specific assertion made by CNN, as well as Biden, here — the assertion that it is the job of leftist groups like Antifa to “fight” or even destroy “hate groups” or “fascist groups.” CNN outright compares Charlottesville to World War II, claiming that because the allies were justified in going to war with Nazis back then, that Antifa is justified in going to war with “Nazis” today. But again, when you consider the reality that Antifa and similar groups associate all conservatives with fascism, this narrative opens the door to a level of intolerance and violence that is unacceptable and also misplaced.
Beyond that, it seems to me that CNN, Biden and others are happily supporting the false assumption that “hate speech” is not protected speech in America. I don’t personally care for the white nationalist platform, being that skin color and genetic background is ultimately irrelevant, and as I noted in my last article, some of these groups end up being led by government paid provocateurs. But these groups still have the Constitutional right to protest grievances in public spaces. It does not matter how distasteful one person or another finds them to be.
Laughably, Biden spends the majority of his diatribe in The Atlantic admonishing the very existence of these groups as if they are a threat to the constitution. Stating:
“The giant forward steps we have taken in recent years on civil liberties and civil rights and human rights are being met by a ferocious pushback from the oldest and darkest forces in America. Are we really surprised they rose up? Are we really surprised they lashed back? Did we really think they would be extinguished with a whimper rather than a fight?
…Today we have an American president who has publicly proclaimed a moral equivalency between neo-Nazis and Klansmen and those who would oppose their venom and hate.
We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort and support
….This is a moment for this nation to declare what the president can’t with any clarity, consistency or conviction: There is no place for these hate groups in America. Hatred of blacks, Jews, immigrants — all who are seen as “the other” — won’t be accepted or tolerated or given safe harbor anywhere in this nation.”
Biden has the audacity to concoct this fallacy and then associate it with the “defense of the constitution” at the end of the article. I guess the “medal of freedom” he received as a surprise gift from Barack Obama was just a meaningless trinket after all.
I don’t know that anyone claimed a “moral equivalency” between racists and people opposed to racism. That is not what the confederate statue issue is about anyway. What I do know, though, is that under the law every group present at Charlottesville had a Constitutional right to be there, regardless of how Biden or others view their “morals.”
I would point out that many people, myself included, actually find the communistic fanaticism of Antifa and other social justice groups to be a much greater threat to the freedom and stability of our nation than anything white nationalist groups promote. But many conservatives, myself included, still defend Antifa’s right to free speech in public places as long as they do not interfere in the free speech rights of others. This is something leftist groups are not willing to do. These groups should be thanking their lucky stars for conservatives and conservative principles, otherwise they might have been stomped out of existence a long time ago. It is conservative thought that defends the rights of any group or individual, acting in accordance with the law, to speak freely in public forums.
It is conservative thought that defends the speech of Antifa. It is conservative thought that defends the existence of confederate statues. And yes, it is conservative thought that defends the speech of white nationalists and many others. This does not mean we necessarily agree with any particular group’s position. The nature of the speech is irrelevant. In this kind of open social environment, ideas can do battle, rather than people. When one group begins to assert preeminence and says the speech of others is now unprotected, the door is opened wide to battles between people, rather than ideas.
If a person does not agree with certain views, they can always go back home, or back to their own private websites and forums. But, as soon as they enter the public sphere, they are not entitled to insulation from the ideas of other people.
What Biden and others are championing is at bottom the ideology of “futurism,” a movement launched in Europe and Russia in the early 20th Century driven by violent change or extermination of traditional principles. Futurism is often credited as being a precursor to both fascist and Bolshevist political movements (as well as globalism), and its core mantra is that all “new” ideas and systems must take precedence over old ideas and systems. New generations must advance the dominance of their ideologies over older generations. Heritage must die out. Traditions must be abandoned. Progress must be pursued.
The problem is, there are very few “new” ideas in the world. In cultural terms, society is cyclical. The same ideas come and go over the centuries; rehashed and rebranded, but certainly not new. What Antifa represents is classic communism and cultural Marxism. These are old ideals. The destruction of a nation’s history and heritage in the name of expedient political progress and “social justice” is a classic strategy turned into a science by the likes of Lenin and Mao. And this strategy is merely an extension of one of the oldest ideas ever — collectivist tyranny.
If we are to be honest here, the conservative philosophy of individual freedom and Constitutional liberty as a foundation of political life is the newest of ideas to be adopted by any culture in human history.
When we examine the mindset of the average American, there is definitely a sizable division. But, one thing the vast majority of us agree on is that government power is not to be trusted. Only 20% of Americans today believe the government will “do what is right” most of the time. The largest ideological group in the US according to recent polls continues to be conservatives. Conservative principles of limited government and individual liberty are the bedrock upon which America was founded. While many Democrats (and some Republicans) will insist upon larger government as the solution to all our societal ills, this is predicated on the notion that THEY are in control of that government. Place a host of Republicans in seats of power in Washington and the liberals become just as distrustful of the establishment as any hardcore libertarian (aka – true conservative).
You see, the fact is that most people are really conservative at heart until they think they have the reins of government in their hands. What Biden and other establishment elites want is to use government power as a temptation; a prize that will corrupt anyone that attains it and alienate anyone that doesn’t. In the case of his Atlantic article, Biden is luring leftists into stupidity and ruin. Biden WANTS domestic strife and conflict. He wants the left to believe they are fighting a righteous fight when they on the wrong side of history not to mention nothing more than cannon fodder. And they think he is actually on their side…
Biden claims that today we are in a battle “for America’s soul,” but the reality is that establishment elites and the useful idiots they employ are seeking to suffocate the soul of our nation so that they can build their own vision on top of the ashes. This is what futurists do. This is what communists and fascists do. This is what globalists do. America has survived as long as it has because some ideas never become outdated. The Bill of Rights and the Constitution itself are merely the legal embodiment of the eternal principles of natural law and individual liberty. What is new is the idea that these principles must be protected by government, that they actually RESTRICT government, and that, in fact, the only job government should really be concerned with is to ensure the continuation of these restrictions on leadership and these freedoms for citizens.
This is conservative. This is the soul of America. You cannot call for the exact opposite and still claim you are a champion of America’s soul.
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Officials at the University of California, Berkeley have determined that they simply cannot find a suitable campus venue to accommodate a speech by popular conservative writer Ben Shapiro — two months from now.
The Berkeley College Republicans announced plans for Shapiro to speak on the public campus on Sept. 14. That date will occur 56 days from now, on a Thursday.
The Republican student group has requested a space which can hold at least 500 people for the speech by Shapiro, a 33-year-old Harvard Law School graduate and a prolific political commentator.
The problem, the administrators explain in a letter, is that events — at least events featuring conservative speakers — must be “held at a time and location that allow for the provision of any required security measures.” Also, campus police “might rule out certain hours for the event” (which likely means any time in the evening, when more people could attend).
Morris Chaney swore up and down that she put forth “extensive efforts” in her sad, failed attempt to locate a 500-seat room on the 1,232-acre, 27,496-student, taxpayer-funded campus.
Shapiro isn’t buying it.
“Using ridiculous pretexts to keep conservatives from speaking is unsurprising but disappointing,” he said, according to Young America’s Foundation.
“We’ll find a way to get this event done, and UC Berkeley has a moral and legal obligation to ensure we do so.”
UC Berkeley officials insist that they are not trying to censor Shapiro or the Berkeley College Republicans through the use of bureaucratic obstacles, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
School officials point to the part of the letter from Greenwell and Morris Chaney which reads: “Mr. Shapiro is welcome on our campus.”
The administrators say they may be able to find a 500-person space on a different date, or a smaller space on Sept. 14.
UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said school administrators want to meet with members of the Berkeley College Republicans to determine a time and a place for Shapiro’s speech, they say.
“The way to do this is not by press release,” Mogulof told the Chronicle, “but by sitting down together.”
In its press release, Young America’s Foundation notes the impressive double standard achieved by UC Berkeley officials.
“An endless stream of liberal speakers continue to be granted opportunities to speak, unobstructed by time, place, or manner restrictions while conservatives are continually treated unequally, and repeatedly relegated to the margins of campus activity,” the conservative group says.
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Did you know that many members of Congress spend three or four hours a day “dialing for dollars” in cramped call centers that both parties have set up in Washington? I promised that I would keep all of you updated on what I am learning as I run for Congress, and what I learned the other day just about had me losing my lunch. I always imagined members of Congress spending long hours in their offices working on legislation and other important matters, but the truth is that most members of Congress are little more than glorified telemarketers at this point. Winning the next election is everything for most of these Congress critters, and so they spend far more time making cold calls to potential donors than doing anything else.
Have you ever had a politician call you up in the middle of the day begging for money? It is an absolutely disgraceful thing to do, but the truth is that money is the number one factor in determining election outcomes, and so our professional politicians have an endless appetite for it.
Every two years, more than a billion dollars is spent on congressional elections, and those that are masters at raising money just keep winning over and over again. Something desperately needs to be done to fix our fundamentally flawed system, but neither party seems to have any desire to take the money out of politics.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives will only be in session for 147 days this year. But even on those days, members of Congress are not exactly spending much time doing what they were elected to do.
During an interview with 60 Minutes, U.S. Representative Rick Nolan told Norah O’Donnell that members of Congress are expected to spend about 30 hours a week “dialing for dollars” in their respective call centers…
Rep. Rick Nolan: Well, both parties have told newly elected members of the Congress that they should spend 30 hours a week in the Republican and Democratic call centers across the street from the Congress, dialing for dollars.
Norah O’Donnell: Thirty hours a week?
Rep. Rick Nolan: Thirty hours is what they tell you you should spend. And it’s discouraging good people from running for public office. I could give you names of people who’ve said, “You know, I’d like to go to Washington and help fix problems, but I don’t want to go to Washington and become a mid-level telemarketer, dialing for dollars, for crying out loud.”
This is utterly shameful, and if I end up getting elected I will never do it. In fact, I will push legislation to ban this practice.
Former U.S. Representative David Jolly was also interviewed by O’Donnell, and he admitted to her that Republican members of Congress are actually given a telemarketing script to use while making these calls…
Simply by calling people, cold-calling a list that fundraisers put in front of you, you’re presented with their biography. So please call John. He’s married to Sally. His daughter, Emma, just graduated from high school. They gave $18,000 last year to different candidates. They can give you $1,000 too if you ask them to. And they put you on the phone. And it’s a script.
In 2013, new Democratic members of Congress were given a “model schedule” for how they should be spending their time. On that model schedule, two hours a day were allocated for “committee/floor”, and four hours a day were allocated for “call time”. In other words, those members of Congress were expected to only devote two hours a day to doing the jobs they were elected to do and four hours a day to making telemarketing calls.
If we ever want to end this disgraceful system we need to take matters into our own hands.
Shortly after I announced that I was running for Congress, I was given a list of thousands of names in my district. It is the same list that other politicians are getting too. Even at this moment, people are having their dinners interrupted by desperate politicians that are “dialing for dollars”.
If this ever happens to you, write the name of that politician down and never vote for that individual again.
I have pledged not to participate in this shameful system, and if I get the chance I will work to abolish it. Yes, every campaign needs funding, but making telemarketing cold calls to people at home is not the way to do it.
In fact, these politicians are actually trained to interrupt you during lunch and dinner because those are apparently some of the best times for raising money.
It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths calling people asking them for money. And their only goal is to get $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 out of the person on the other end of the line. It’s shameful. It’s beneath the dignity of the office that our voters in our communities entrust us to serve.
Jolly is precisely correct.
Any politician that makes these sorts of calls is acting in a completely shameful manner.
If we don’t get the money out of politics, we are just going to end up with a bunch of sleazebags in Washington that spend most of their time on the phone bugging people for money.
Is that what we want?
Do we really want our laws to be made by those that can prove that they are the best telemarketers?
Nobody is supposed to talk about these things, and I suppose that this is yet another article that is going to get me into trouble.
But I don’t care. Our system is deeply broken and it needs to be fixed. Hopefully by shedding some light on these issues I have moved the ball in the right direction.
It has become exceedingly clear that the Democratic Party is in deep trouble. Close to 55 million dollars was spent on the race in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, and that shattered all kinds of records. Democrat Jon Ossoff was able to raise and spend six times as much money as Karen Handel and yet he still lost. This was supposed to be the race that would show the American people that the Democrats could take back control of Congress in 2018, and so for the Democrats this was a bitter failure. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee actually injected almost 5 million dollars into the race themselves, and Planned Parenthood threw in another $700,000. But after all of the time, effort and energy that was expended, Handel still won fairly comfortably.
There are no moral victories in politics. Republicans won on Tuesday in the most important special election this year. Democrats lost, as they have done in the other special elections in GOP-held seats this year.
For the national Democratic Party, the debate continues about developing a message that goes beyond attacking Trump, or assuming dissatisfaction with the president will be enough.
It has been a very long time since there has been so much national attention on a single House race. A number of high profile Hollywood celebrities became personally involved in Ossoff’s campaign, and they were absolutely devastated when he lost…
Celebrities who donated time and money to Ossoff’s campaign, including actresses Alyssa Milano and Rosie O’Donnell, used their social media accounts to react to the Democrat’s loss shortly after the election results were confirmed late Tuesday night.
Milano, who personally drove voters to the polls in April’s preliminary election and was actively campaigning for the Democrat for most of Election Day, tweeted simply: “Grouphug” and “Get in.”
Meanwhile, electronic music producer Moby and vocal Trump critic O’Donnell appeared to be frustrated by the results, with Moby questioning how Democratic “still can’t win” even with “buffoon” Donald Trump in the White House. O’Donnell tweeted: “DONALD TRUMP IS THE DARKNESS ITSELF.”
Where does the Democratic Party go from here?
Their anti-Trump message is not working, and their usual divide and conquer tactics are not working either.
At this point either the Democratic Party is going to have to reinvent itself, or they could be facing a long, painful string of election defeats for the foreseeable future. To say that things have not been going well for the Democrats lately would be a major understatement. I really like what Rush Limbaugh had to say about this on his radio show…
“You have no idea the degree to which the media and the Democratic Party are destroyed today. I’m talking about how they feel … which is complete and utter defeat, frustration and devastation,” he said on Wednesday, hours after Republican Karen Handel was a multiple percentage point winner over defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff.
“The dirty little secret is the media and the Democratic Party is turning off average Americans. They are not persuading, they are not convincing people Trump is a reprobate,” he continued. “They do not know how to beat Donald Trump. There are depressed and despondent.”
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Jon Ossoff lost.
All of the anger and violence that we have seen lately has greatly tainted the Democratic Party.
The Democrats have become the party of Kathy Griffin.
U.S. Representative Tim Ryan was right on the ball when he admitted that his party’s brand has now become “toxic” in much of the nation…
Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi as House minority leader late last fall, said she remained a political millstone for Democrats. But Mr. Ryan said the Democratic brand had also become “toxic” in much of the country because voters saw Democrats as “not being able to connect with the issues they care about.”
“Our brand is worse than Trump,” he said.
As I have discussed repeatedly, the left doesn’t have any positive vision for the future to offer the American people. They cannot win in the marketplace of ideas, and so they use anger, frustration, intimidation and violence as weapons. For quite a while the Democrats successfully used “the blame game” and divide and conquer tactics to win elections, but now the American people are seeing through the charade.
The more angry and violent the left becomes, the more the American people are going to turn against them. The following comes from Daniel Greenfield…
But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.
The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.
Of course it is quite true that the Republican Party needs to be cleaned up as well. Many establishment Republicans use labels such as “conservative” and “Pro-Life” to win elections, but then they end up government like Democrats. And so many members of Congress in both parties spend far more time and energy raising money for their next elections than they do serving the American people.
There is a reason why Congress only has a 17.6 percent approval rating at the moment. Both major parties should take that as a sign that they need to clean up their acts, because the American people are sick and tired of the status quo.
Gene Ponder, a teacher of Advanced Placement Government/Economics at Spanish Fort High School, compiled a list of 31 books for summer reading. Students only had to choose one book. Nearly every book is of the conservative to libertarian variety.
To no one’s surprise, there was a general freak out by the establishment statist educators.
Baldwin County Board of Education President Shannon Cauley told Gulf Coast News Today that she became aware of the issue through social media and alerted the superintendent.
“As a courtesy, the school principal called to let me know that the list had been removed and assignment canceled,” Cauley said in a Facebook post. “He’ll be sending an email to all senior students/parents to notify them that there will be no summer reading assignment for this AP government class.”
Superintendent Eddie Tyler confirmed that in a statement, saying the teacher had removed the reading list. It is no longer on the school website.
“Mr. Ponder’s reading list that is going around on social media has not been endorsed by the school system,” Tyler wrote. “The list has been removed by the teacher. Baldwin County Public Schools has a process to vet and approve reading lists so that a variety of sources are used. I expect all employees to follow our processes, procedures and policies.” (Miami Herald)
[snip]
Liberals have known that controlling a nation’s education system would give them future recruits for the liberal cause for generations. Adolf Hitler understood this. In Mein Kampf Hitler stressed “the importance of winning over and then training the youth in the service ‘of a new national state.’”
When an opponent declares, “I will not come over to your side,” he said in a speech on November 6, 1933, “I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already…. What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.’” And on May 1, 1937, [Hitler] declared, “This new Reich will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing.”
Does anyone think that Hitler would have allowed a competing educational system? “[I]n Germany there was Nazi truth, a Nazi political truth, a Nazi economic truth, a Nazi social truth, a Nazi religious truth, to which all institutions had to subscribe or be banished.”
It’s hard for many Americans to believe, but their schools have been taken over by an alien worldview designed to shape their children into non-thinking wards of the State.
Things will never be the same in America from this moment forward. When 66-year-old James Hodgkinson attempted to gun down as many Republican members of Congress as possible at a baseball field in Virginia, he permanently shattered the notion that we could go back to the way that things used to be in this country. At one time, Republicans and Democrats may have strongly disagreed with one another over the issues, but there was always a certain code of civility that everyone understood and respected. But now that is long gone, and if our politicians and the big media outlets continue to fuel the rising hatred in this country, it won’t be too long before we are dealing with widespread chaos and civil unrest from coast to coast.
Most of the anger and frustration that we are currently witnessing is being fueled by the left. On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh accused the left of openly promoting violence…
“I have been worried for quite a while about the cumulative effect or impact of this constant anti-Trump hysteria everywhere in mainstream media: New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC,” Limbaugh told listeners.
“It’s hysteria. It’s lies. It’s things that are completely manufactured about Trump personally, about Trump and Russia, about climate change, about any number of things.
“I have been very concerned about what all of this is doing to the average, base Democrat voter. I have sensed them getting more and more fringe and imbalanced, and the evidence for it is everywhere in the things that they tweet. They openly promote violence, and advocate some of the most despicable things happening to their political enemies.”
I have warned many times in the past about the civil unrest that is coming, and now many of my fellow conservative commentators are sounding the alarm as well. For example, in the aftermath of the attack in Virginia radio host Michael Savage made the following chilling statement to his audience: “We are at a boiling point. There’s going to be a civil war.”
No American should ever want to see such a thing happen, but the left just keeps getting more and more radical. And even Hillary Clinton recently stated that she has joined “the Resistance”. The following comes from Ann Coulter…
Recently, Hillary announced her steadfast opposition to the winning candidate using a military term, saying she’d joined the “Resistance.”
Imagine if Trump lost and then announced that he’d joined the “RESISTANCE.” He’d be accused of trying to activate right-wing militias. Every dyspeptic glance at an immigrant would be reported as fascistic violence.
But the media seem blithely unaware that the anti-Trump “Resistance” has been accompanied by nonstop militaristic violence from liberals.
In recent weeks, I have heard from so many people all over the nation that are extremely excited about the possibility of me running for Congress. But anyone that is considering running for public office these days has to consider the fact that they will become potential targets for violence. For example, just recently one very sick individual actually threatened to hang Utah Representative Jason Chaffetz…
“I feel very safe and secure at the Capitol,” Chaffetz said Wednesday. “We work in a fortress with literally thousands of people to protect us, but once we leave the Capitol, it’s a whole different equation.”
Chaffetz wants U.S. marshals to be charged with assessing threats against members of Congress and securing them in more high-profile and widely attended events.
Chaffetz was the focus of a March death threat in which a Florida man vowed in a voicemail to “hunt your a– down, wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamppost,” according to court records.
Could you imagine if your wife found that voicemail before you did?
But this is what the left is becoming. Because they don’t have any sort of a positive message to offer, they have to resort to threats, intimidation and violence. I have been writing about this quite a bit lately, and it turns out that Rush Limbaugh very much feels the same way…
They don’t have an agenda that’s optimistic and upbeat that they can run on, and they don’t dare be honest about their real agenda. So all they can do is to continue to do what they’ve been doing, and it’s not healthy, it’s not uplifting, it’s not inspiring. It isn’t representative or reflective of any of the traditional American values that for so long have united us. A sense of optimism, a sense of can-do, a sense of unity, a sense of nationhood. All of these things are under assault.
If the left continues to go down this path, the anger and the frustration are going to continue to grow, and eventually cities all over America are going to burn. This is the kind of a scenario that I laid out in The Beginning Of The End, and now it is actually starting to play out right in front of us.
Today, this nation is more divided than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. In fact, I expect even more anger and even more hatred as the divisions deepen.
Without each passing year, the left moves even farther to the left. It has gotten to the point where many on the far left actually refer to Hillary Clinton as a “moderate”, which is funny because at one time she was a cutting edge liberal.
On the right, there is an emerging movement to return to the values and the principles that this country was founded upon. So if the left doesn’t like current Republican leadership, then they really aren’t going to like the hardcore constitutional conservatives that are going to start replacing them.
We are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and the future of America is literally at stake.
It is a battle that we cannot afford to lose, because if the left wins there literally will be no viable future for our country at all.
The endgame of the radical left is a nation filled with hatred, anger and violence. Is this really a message that the American people are going to embrace? For decades, Democrats have been getting a tremendous amount of mileage out of “divide and conquer” tactics. In other words, they get one group of people to support them by pointing a finger of accusation at another group. Just recently, I published an article entitled “A List Of 100 Things That Liberals Hate About America”, and I could have easily doubled or tripled that list. The left specializes in hate, and the presidency of Donald Trump has been like throwing red meat to a bunch of sharks that are in a feeding frenzy. Lacking any kind of a positive message to share, the left is in the process of self-destructing as they show the entire world how intellectually and morally bankrupt they truly are.
The New York theater group that is producing a twisted version of “Julius Caesar” in which a character that is dressed up just like Donald Trump is viciously assassinated is a perfect example of what I am talking about. The following comes from Piers Morgan…
The play portrays Caesar as a tempestuous, petulant blond-haired businessman in an expensive business suit with an American pin flag and over-long ties who takes baths in a gold bathtub.
His wife Calpurnia has an Eastern European accent and wears designer clothes.
So, it’s Donald Trump.
It ends with Caesar/Trump being brutally murdered by Roman senators who fear he has become too power hungry.
Only in this case, the assassins are all women and minorities, two groups that Trump has been accused of marginalising.
By the end of the assassination scene, Trump’s shirt is absolutely soaked with blood, and it is quite obvious that the producers intended to create a spectacle that is as gruesome as they could possibly get away with.
But instead of reacting to this play with horror, many on the left are absolutely gushing over it. For instance, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria actually called it “a masterpiece”.
And despite all of the public outrage that we have seen in recent days, Time Warner, the New York Times and the New York City government plan to continue funding the production.
Even more alarming than “Julius Caesar” is the relentless campaign of violence and intimidation being waged by Antifa. They are supposed to be “anti-fascists”, but instead they employ many of the exact same tactics and methods that hardcore fascists used all the way back in the 1930s. If these radical leftists ultimately have their way in our society, free speech will become a thing of the past. The following comes from a National Review article…
Lately, Antifa have emerged as the militant fringe of #TheResistance against Donald Trump — who, they maintain, is a fascist, ushering into power a fascist regime. In Washington, D.C., Antifa spent the morning of Inauguration Day lighting trash cans on fire, throwing rocks and bottles at police officers, setting ablaze a limousine, and tossing chunks of pavement through the windows of several businesses. On February 1, Antifa set fires and stormed buildings at the University of California–Berkeley to prevent an appearance by Breitbart provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. (They succeeded.) In April, they threatened violence if Ann Coulter spoke on the campus; when the university and local law enforcement refused to find a secure location for her to speak, she withdrew, saying the situation was too dangerous.
In the end, these radicals are doing us a tremendous favor. As the left shows us what they are really all about, the American people are going to be so revulsed by what they see that they will look elsewhere for answers.
So when Kathy Griffin posed for her now infamous photograph with “Donald Trump’s severed head”, she did a tremendous amount of damage to her own political movement.
At first she issued a seemingly heartfelt apology, which was the right thing to do, but shortly thereafter she held an absolutely shameful press conference in which she blamed Trump for ruining her life…
In a news conference on Friday, Griffin’s attorney Lisa Bloom accused Trump and his family of “using their power to target her.”
“If you don’t stand up, you get run over,” Griffin said. “What’s happening to me has never happened in this great country. A sitting president of the U.S. … is personally trying to ruin my life forever.”
Bloom said the comedian was contacted by the U.S. Secret Service and said she has retained a criminal lawyer.
“As a result of the first family bullying her, she has been vilified, getting death threats, fired from multiple jobs and had multiple events canceled,” Bloom said.
But of course it wasn’t Trump that ruined her life.
She did that all on her own.
The reason why the left resorts to anger, hate, threats and violence is because they do not have the ammunition to win in the marketplace of ideas.
To the left, more government is the answer to just about every problem. But there is an inverse relationship between government and liberty. The bigger government becomes, the less liberty we have. Every new rule, regulation or law restricts our ability to live our own lives as we see fit in some way, and our founders intended for the federal government to be greatly limited because they wanted a nation where freedom and liberty would be maximized.
So the message of the left is fundamentally an anti-liberty message.
But it is really hard to win over voters with an anti-liberty message, and so that is why leftist politicians have to resort to “divide and conquer” and other tactics that distract voters from the real issues.
And unfortunately, those of us on the right have not always had a clear message because our party has been dominated for way too long by “big government Republicans”. It has been really hard to communicate a pro-liberty message when so many top Republicans have been responsible for growing the size of government on the federal, state and local levels over the past several decades.
In just a few weeks, I am going to release a new book with an exceedingly positive message for America. When it is ready, you will be able to find it on my author page. Yes, we are facing immense challenges as a nation due to decades of incredibly foolish decisions, but that doesn’t mean that we should throw in the towel.
What we really need is a new American awakening. We need to rediscover the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and our other founding documents. And we also need to rediscover the values and the principles that this nation was founded upon.
If we will embrace those values and those principles, we will have a chance to become “the land of the free” once again.
But if we continue to embrace the values that the left is trying to impose upon all of us, our future is going to be exceedingly bleak indeed.
If millions are leaving California because life there is so horrible, then why would those same people want to try to make their new communities more like the state that they just left? About five million people have migrated out of the state of California over the past decade, and most of them are leaving for very good reasons. The number one destination for ex-Californians is Texas, and this has caused the state to move a little bit to the left politically. For example, Trump beat Clinton by only about 9 percent in Texas back in November. It is getting to the point where many people in Texas are starting to resent anyone with a California license plate, because there are so many ex-Californians that would like to turn Texas into another version of their home state.
Similar things are happening here in Idaho. It seems like half the people that my wife and I meet are transplants from California, and some of them are exceptionally good people. Like my wife and I, a large number of them decided to move here because they wanted to find some place where they could live free. Needless to say, north Idaho seems like paradise to many that have just escaped the nightmare of living “the California Dream”.
But there are others that move up here from “the golden state” that are absolutely determined to impose their leftist values on all the rest of us. But if those values were such a failure in California, then why in the world would you want to bring them here?
It has been estimated that over a quarter of all new Idaho residents come from California. If they are coming here to embrace our way of life that is wonderful, but if they are coming here to try to change us that is another thing entirely.
In many ways north Idaho is very similar to northern California before it was completely spoiled. Not too long ago, KQED interviewed one ex-Californian that said that the wooded mountains here remind her of “the California she knew in the 1970s”…
When Adrien Koch retired last summer from her job with FEMA in the Bay Area, she and her husband resettled in the wooded mountains of north Idaho. They had visited only a few months before on a vacation but had quickly fallen in love. For Koch, Idaho reminded her of the California she knew in the 1970s.
“It’s kind of like a better time that’s gone by,” Koch says. “It’s a much slower pace, [and] people are more down to earth here.”
“I immediately tell people, especially if they’re not from California, I am not one of those people who want to change Idaho,” Koch says. “I love it the way it is, that’s why we’re here.”
But of course there are others that come here with the intention of making their new home much more “progressive”. Fortunately, the number of crazy leftists is still fairly limited at this point. Hillary Clinton only received 27.5 percent of the vote in Idaho last November, and so this is not going to become a blue state any time soon.
I just don’t understand why anyone would want to move to Texas or Idaho or anywhere else and try to make it more like California. Just consider the following…
-Los Angeles has the worst traffic on the entire planet, and San Francisco is not too far behind.
-Thanks to unchecked illegal immigration and sanctuary cities that are allowed to flout the law without consequence, gang activity and crime are growing problems in the state.
And of course the state legislature just continues to pass one insane law after another. The one that requires farmers “to cut methane emissions from dairy cows” by 40 percent by 2030 is one of my favorites…
In yet another attack on California businesses, yesterday Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill (SB 1383) that requires the state to cut methane emissions from dairy cows and other animals by 40% by 2030. The bill is yet another massive blow to the agricultural industry in the state of California that has already suffered from the Governor’s passage of a $15 minimum wage and a recent bill that makes California literally the only state in the entire country to provide overtime pay to seasonal agricultural workers after working 40 hours per week or 8 hours per day (see “California Just Passed A $1.7 Billion Tax On The Whole Country That No One Noticed“).
According to a statement from Western United Dairymen CEO, Anja Raudabaugh, California’s Air Resources Board wants to regulate animal methane emissions even though it admits there is no known method for achieving the the type of reduction sought by SB 1383.
And just recently, a group of California state legislators decided that it would be a grand idea to try to push through a single-payer healthcare system that would cost taxpayers 400 billion dollars a year…
With Obamacare under assault in Washington by Republicans who see it as a broken system that hamstrings people with high premiums and inadequate access to medical care, Atkins and Sen. Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, are pushing a bill through the state Legislature that would replace Obamacare with a government-run system.
Everyone would be covered, including undocumented immigrants. Under the proposal, there would be no need for insurance companies; no more monthly premiums or out-of-pocket costs for doctor visits and prescriptions.
The authors haven’t said exactly how they’d pay the projected cost of $400 billion a year, although they acknowledge it would use existing health care money in addition to new taxes.
If you follow my work on a regular basis, you know that political correctness is one of my pet peeves, and California has become the epicenter of political correctness in our nation today. Things have gotten so bad in the state that it is now considered to be a “mircoaggression” for professors in the University of California system to tell their students that “America is the land of opportunity” because it might offend someone.
When I was a young adult, I once dreamed of living right along the coast in California, but I couldn’t imagine living there now.
That once great state has become a symbol of everything that is wrong with America, and instead of making the rest of the country more like California, what we actually need to do is to make California much more like the rest of the country.
