Black American residents of Baltimore, Maryland, are now blaming a lower police presence for the city’s soaring murder rate despite three years of Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists insisting that police be pulled from their neighborhoods.
Baltimore has now experienced higher murder rates for three years in a row after riots and BLM-sponsored protests began rocking the city after the death of Freddie Gray, a suspect who died in police custody in the spring of 2015, National Public Radio (NPR) reported.
Since the riots, police morale has collapsed, and city officials began planning a lighter police footprint in response to complaints of residents and protest leaders.
But now, black leaders are blaming cops for the spiraling murder rate, saying that the police pullback has put them in danger.
The Rev. Kinji Scott, a Baltimore activist, is blaming city hall for leaving the neighborhoods unprotected.
“We wanted the police there,” Scott insisted. “We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.”
Scott and others are now pressuring the city to bring police back in as a deterrent to the soaring crime rate.
Despite the loud proclamations from BLM activists that the police are the problem, Scott and his fellow activists are now claiming that they never wanted police to go away.
In an interview with NPR, Scott claims only the progressive activists wanted cops to be eliminated:
No. That represented our progressives, our activists, our liberal journalists, our politicians, but it did not represent the overall community. Because we know for a fact that around the time Freddie Gray was killed, we start to see homicides increase. We had five homicides in that neighborhood while we were protesting.
What I wanted to see happen was that people would be able to trust the relationship with our police department so that they would feel more comfortable. We’d have conversations with the police about crime in their neighborhood because they would feel safer. So we wanted the police there. We wanted them engaged in the community. We didn’t want them beating the hell out of us, we didn’t want that.
Scott also blamed the city for not fostering a community atmosphere between police and the neighborhoods.
The primary thrust nationwide is what President Obama wanted to do: focus on building relationships with police departments and major cities where there had been a history of conflict. That hasn’t happened. We don’t see that. I don’t know a city—Baltimore for certain—we’ve not seen any changes in those relationships. What we have seen is that the police has distanced themselves, and the community has distanced themselves even further. So the divide has really intensified, it hasn’t decreased.
And of course we want to delineate the whole culture of bad policing that exists—nobody denies that—but as a result of this, we don’t see the level of policing we need in our community to keep the crime down in our cities that we are seeing bleed to death.
This is despite Baltimore protesters carrying signs that read things such as “disarm the police,” or wearing T-shirts promising to kill cops.
The reverend’s claims also seem to fly in the face of a list of 19 demands issued by protesters in 2015, one of which demanded that police be barred from entering certain buildings or parts of neighborhoods they had designated as “safe” from police. Clearly, the protesters wanted police removed from Baltimore’s neighborhoods. But now that they’ve gotten their wish, community leaders have suddenly realized what a bad idea such a pullback is.
The “populist surge” in Europe has far from peaked and is the most significant change to the European order since the end of the Cold War, a new report by former British left-wing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s own think tank has claimed.
Assessing what the report identifies as a “populist threat” as a means to defeat it and “renew the centre”, the globalist Institute for Global Change document questions widely-held assumptions that right-populist politics is an “interlude”, or blip in history which “optimistic” observers believe will burn out.
Blair Gifts Money to Set up New Anti-Populist ‘Institute
To the contrary, the Institute’s own research shows “the trend line suggests that populists will continue to gain strength in the next round of elections”, and particularly in Eastern Europe, the report noting: “Populists are strongest in Eastern Europe. They routinely out-compete the political mainstream and have already taken power in seven countries: Bosnia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia.”
Populism could instead prove to be “the new normal” and may “drive European politics into a more nationalist and protectionist direction… governments would move decisively towards restricting net migration flows; make access to some social benefits conditional on citizenship status; and undermine minority rights in key respects.”
Populist Woman Mayor Wins Rome by Landslide: ‘New Era’ Begins
Looking forward, the paper predicted that should the next decade see populist parties enjoying the same growth as they had in the past ten years, then nations like Germany and Sweden could too see themselves “vulnerable” to such movements.
The report comes as left-wing papers including The Guardian and New York Times mourned the “demise of Europe’s centre-left”, at the expense of the populist right, noting surging right-wing parties across the continent.
EXCLUSIVE: Polish Senator SLAMS ‘Offensive’ BBC Hit Job on Anti-Mass Migration Poland, Hungary
EXCLUSIVE: Top Polish Government Minister Hits Back at ‘Offensive’ BBC ‘Illiberal Democracy’ Smears
A senior Polish politician has hit back as the BBC airs a documentary on Poland and Hungary which accuses them of being anti-democratic.
Beyond protecting Europe’s borders, one of the areas of right-populist influence that apparently most concerned the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change authors was changes to institutions, across Europe often created or shaped in the post-war period and widely acknowledged to be totally in the hands of mainstream, politically-left management as a result of the famed “long march through the institutions”. One prominent example of such change being presently wrought by a European populist government is reform of the judiciary in conservative Poland.
A hangover of the old Communist system, the Polish government was elected on a platform of judicial reform to increase accountability in the courts, but has been relentlessly attacked by globalist institutions such as the European Commission for attempting to rebalance. Poland and Hungary are both key points of interest in the Tony Blair report, where the ruling parties of both nations are accused of emphasizing “a nationalism based on soil, blood, or culture”.
Despite the criticism, the report concedes “populist governments in Hungary and Poland are as popular as ever”.
Every Damn Things Seems To Trigger Me And So What If I Love Bernie Sanders.
While most of us are spending the day opening gifts and hanging out with family and friends, some are determined to find everything wrong with Christmas.
According to some on the left, here are five problematic things about Christmas:
Mistletoe:
Some feminists decided that the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe promotes a “rape culture,” with one feminist Twitter account writing that under the mistletoe, “male misogynistic tendencies to manifest themselves in reality.”
It is likely that the anti-mistletoe campaign started as a prank on feminists, but many feminists actually joined in earnestly.
‘Sexist’ Christmas Songs:
Feminist website Bustle has previously assembled a list of “sexist” Christmas songs. In the article titled, “8 Christmas Songs That Are Totally, Terribly Sexist,” Kadeen Griffins lists classics like, “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and “Baby It’s Cold Outside.”
She writes that “(s)ome of your favorite Christmas songs are kind of really sexist,” and that these Christmas songs “reek of a bit of antifeminism.”
1. “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” Has anyone ever actually listened to the lyrics of “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer”? That song is terrible! Thankfully, I don’t hear them playing it on the radio much, but the fact that it’s a novelty song that has been around since the ’70s doesn’t change the fact that it details a poor woman’s drunken death. To my knowledge, Santa doesn’t even get in trouble for it — unless you count in that TV film, wherein Grandma survives and Santa was framed.
Most Offensive Lyric: “It’s not Christmas without Grandma. All the family’s dressed in black. And we just can’t help but wonder, should we open up her gifts or send them back?” Priorities, much?
2. “All I Want For Christmas Is You”
To be fair, I’ve already written a separate article about how “All I Want For Christmas Is You” could stand to be more feminist. And by written a separate article, I mean I rewrote the song entirely. However, despite being one of my personal favorite Christmas songs, I don’t like the idea that the woman narrating the song doesn’t want anything for the holidays except a man — and that she’s relying on another man (Santa Claus) to get the aforementioned man for her.
Most Offensive Lyric: “Santa, won’t you bring me the one I really need? Won’t you please bring my baby to me?”
We are going to go eat and throw-up, then we will say I’m triggered.
3. “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
The fact that we have an entire song devoted to a woman’s infidelity — with Santa Claus, no less — but no such fun Christmas carol for a guy — despite Mrs. Claus being a thing — really says it all. (And giving this classic Christmas song another listen reveals that there might be something a little more insidious than simple infidelity at play. The child who snuck out of bed and witnessed this alleged instance of cheating apparently thinks it would be hilarious to report this back to Dad… for some reason.)
Most Offensive Lyric: “Oh, what a laugh it would have been if Daddy had only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night!” Um.
4. “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”
Listen, I understand that it’s a traditional fact that guys like to play with guns and girls like to play with dolls (or something), but we don’t need to reinforce gender stereotypes in our Christmas carols, okay? Update yourself to the modern century, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!” Let’s have the boys put aside the pistols and the girls put aside the dolls and roll out some gender neutral gifts, shall we?
Most Offensive Lyric: “A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots Is the wish of Barney and Ben. Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk is the hope of Janice and Jen.”
5. “Santa Baby”
I mean, the entire song is essentially someone trying to seduce Santa Claus in order to get a bunch of Christmas presents. Male or female — though the song is traditionally sung by females and directly references being a “good girl” — it’s still a bit awkward to be breathily requesting that Santa get you cars and rings because you called him baby. All the women who independent, throw your hands up at me!
Most Offensive Lyric: “Think of all the fun I’ve missed. Think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed. Next year I could be just as good… if you’d check off my Christmas list.” Sigh.
6. “Twelve Days of Christmas”
o be fair, “Twelve Days of Christmas” and I have always had problems with one another, mainly because when I was a child I had no idea what they were talking about with some of the items my “true love” was giving to me for Christmas. However, now that I am an adult, I realize how weird and awful it is that my true love is sending me people for Christmas, let alone crowds of people. Take back your ten lords a’ leaping, sir! I’m not into slavery.
Most Offensive Lyric: “On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me: eight maids a’ milking…” a.k.a. the exact moment my true love started sending me people.
7. “Santa Tell Me”
“Santa Tell Me” might have only just come out, but, yes, I’m going to call it out for sexism. Don’t get me wrong. I love Ariana Grande’s latest Christmas hit and I’ve listened to it several times since its debut. However, I have to be the one to reiterate something that many Christmas songs don’t seem to realize: you don’t need to be in love with someone, or in a romantic relationship, to feel happy or fulfilled this Christmas. Say it loud, say it proud. Can someone please write a song about that? (Taylor Swift, I’m looking at you.)
Most Offensive Lyric: “Now I need someone to hold, be my fire in the cold.”
8. “Baby It’s Cold Outside”
“Baby It’s Cold Outside” is a Christmas song so problematic that many covers just outright change the lyrics. You know why. You knowwhy. If you don’t know why, let me be the one to ruin this for you: there’s a line that subtly references the female singer being drugged by the male singer. That alone makes the entire song ten times creepier and ten times more sexist than it would be otherwise, hence why that line is frequently removed.
Most Offensive Lyric: “The neighbors might think… (Baby, it’s bad out there.) Say, what’s in this drink? (No cabs to be had out there.)” Cue shuddering.
‘Racist’ Jingle Bells Song:
Boston University professor Kyna Hamill recently wrote about “Jingle Bells” and its supposed racism, Fox News reports.
She writes that the song has “racist origins,” pointing to its performances in blackface from the 1800s.
She also writes, “Although ‘One Horse Open Sleigh,’ for most of its singers and listeners, may have eluded its racialized past and taken its place in the seemingly unproblematic romanticization of a normal ‘white’ Christmas, attention to the circumstances of its performance history enables reflection on its problematic role in the construction of blackness and whiteness in the United States.”
Wrapped Gifts:
According to a“Religious Diversity and Holidays” memo given to some University of Minnesota students and staff, “bows/wrapped gifts” are not “appropriate.”
I know I am a professional victim.
Also listed as not appropriate on that list is Santa Claus, bells, doves, and menorahs, The College Fix reports.
Hallmark Christmas movies:
Some have taken issue with Hallmark Christmas movies, as they are full of largely white and straight people.
An article published to Slate.com bleats that the movies, “brim with white heterosexuals who exclusively, emphatically, and endlessly bellow “Merry Christmas” to every lumberjack and labradoodle they pass. They’re centered on beauty-pageant heroines and strong-jawed heroes with white-nationalist haircuts.”
It continued, “There are occasional sightings of Christmas sweater–wearing black people, but they exist only to cheer on the dreams of the white leads, and everyone on Trump’s naughty list—Muslims, gay people, feminists—has never crossed the snowcapped green-screen mountains to taint these quaint Christmas villages. “Santa Just Is White” seems to be etched into every Hallmark movie’s town seal.”
Salon.com also wrote an article about the movies, saying the Hallmark channel gives a “homogeneous view of the holiday,” that’s “leaving minority actors out in the cold.”
In all seriousness, go hangout with your friends and family. Merry Christmas.
This Goon Thinks Transgender Grown Ass Men Should Be Called Women
President Donald Trump has re-nominated radical sexual identity activist Chai Feldblum, the architect of former President Barack Obama’s LGBT agenda, to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Feldblum is a nightmare of a nominee for those who value religious freedom, private property rights, and the science-based standard that there are two sexes – male and female. As Obama’s most liberal gender ideology activist, Feldblum has said that whenever LGBT issues conflict with religious liberty and private property rights, religious liberty and private rights should lose.
“When push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, ‘I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win,’” Maggie Gallagher reported at the Weekly Standard in 2006, after interviewing Feldblum when the news broke that Catholic Charities in Boston would need to place adoptive children with same-sex couples in order to remain a licensed adoption agency.
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline first wrote of Trump’s re-nomination of Feldblum who, if confirmed, will serve until 2023. He explains:
The Trump administration hoped to smuggle Feldblum’s nomination through the Senate with minimal fuss. As we reported, and Newsweek confirmed, there was talk on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of getting her nomination through committee without a hearing, during “executive session.”
Mirengoff further observes, “It’s astonishing that a radical LGBT activist and Obama nominee who faced fierce resistance the first two times she was before the Senate was (is?) on the verge of being confirmed with virtually no fuss now that the White House and Senate are controlled by Republicans.”
Christian Adams at PJ Media notes the mysterious nature of Trump’s re-nomination of someone who would appear to be at odds with much of the president’s agenda:
Feldblum is the ideological architect of all of the most radical LGBTWHATEVER agenda items of the Obama presidency: transvestites in girls locker rooms, lawless expansion of federal employment oversight, you name it.
So why would Feldblum be renominated?
There is backstory on Feldblum that hasn’t been fully reported. All of the normal clearance and vetting procedures usually used for Senate-confirmed nominees were short-circuited. Her nomination was rushed through the Senate HELP Committee. Feldblum even bragged to some that her goal was to trick Republicans before they knew what was happening.
Currently, Democrats have a majority on the EEOC, and Republicans were reportedlyhoping to trade a confirmation of Feldblum for a confirmation of two Republicans to give the GOP the majority.
“It seems obvious that getting a GOP majority on the EEOC a couple of months early is not worth five more years of Chai Feldblum, plus the likelihood that she will become Chair of the Commission if Democrats win the presidency in 2020,” Mirengoff explains. “ It’s not even close.”
In an update, Mirengoff says he has confirmed that the Feldblum nomination has been “hotlined,” a situation in which “Senators are informed that unanimous consent will be sought to confirm a nominee … If no one objects, the nominee is confirmed.”
“In this case, I’m told, there are Republican Senators who intend not to consent, at least as things stand now,” he added.
The EEOC is one of those “independent” – read rogue – federal agencies created by Congress that exercises considerable power with no accountability to American citizens. The commission is not part of one of the three branches of government, yet still does its share of legislative, judicial, and executive decision-making. Actually operating as part of a “fourth branch of government,” the EEOC – in the parlance of Trump himself – is smack in the middle of “the swamp.”
Daniel Horowitz at Conservative Review observes Trump’s re-nomination of Feldblum “comes at a particularly dangerous time, as the EEOC is bringing a number of lawsuits encouraging the courts to enshrine the sexual identity agenda into Title IX of the Education Amendments and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”
“She is the lead architect of Obama’s transgender agenda, mandating that schools and states bring one gender into private dressing rooms of the opposite gender,” Horowitz notes. “Under her tenure, the EEOC has codified the entire sexual alphabet soup agenda, including ‘sex stereotyping,’ into the Civil Rights Act without approval from Congress. An ‘independent’ agency, indeed!”
Remember that This Transgender Called Will Smith Out For Being Gay?
Will Smith delved into politics at a press event for his latest filmBright this week, calling the country’s current political environment a “natural reaction” to what he described as the more favorable years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The 49-year-old actor — who has previously teased a future run for public office himself — did not mention President Donald Trump by name but speculated about the country’s future during Wednesday’s event in Beverly Hills for Netflix’s Bright, a dystopian police thriller directed by David Ayer that reportedly cost the streaming service $90 million.
“This is the purge, right?” Smith said, according to Indiewire. “This is the cleanse, this is what happens. This is the natural reaction to the amount of light that came into the world when Barack Obama was the president.”
“We had to expect that [the pendulum] was going to go the other way,” he added. “As a cleanse – this is the darkness before the dawn.”
The actor went on to add that he believes the current political climate will reveal “what the next age of humanity” will be going forward.
“It’s going to be really interesting to see how humanity reacts to it, and it’s going to be a f**king mess. It’s going to be a mess, but it’s the mess in the cleanup,” he said. “It’s the mess and the purge before that new, real light shows up.”
Smith — who plays a police officer tasked with tracking down a powerful weapon in a world in which humans live alongside mystical creatures in his latest film — has become increasingly politically outspoken in the last few years, in accordance with Trump’s own political rise.
As far back as December of 2015, Smith had said that “crazy” discussion surrounding Trump’s policy proposals, including building a security wall on the southern border, had made him consider his own run for office.
“If people keep saying all the crazy kinds of stuff they’ve been saying on the news lately about walls and Muslims, they’re going to force me into the political arena,” he said in an interview with CBS.
In August of last year, shortly before the election, Smith said Trump’s political rise had the benefit of allowing a “cleanse” of his ideology from the country.
“As painful as it is to hear Donald Trump talk and as embarrassing as it is as an American to hear him talk, I think it’s good,” Smith said then, according to the Associated Press. “We get to know who people are and now we get to cleanse it out of our country.”
Bright is due out December 22 on Netflix and in select theaters.
That’s right. Leave your brain at home. It’s not needed at college.
Here’s some of the most outrageous college classes of 2017-18: REPORT
A recent survey of course catalogs detailing classes taught at colleges nationwide this school year has revealed that current higher education trends include an emphasis on “queering” topics, teach that gender is a choice and a fluid construct, and argue that capitalism is evil.
That according to Young America’s Foundation, which recently published its annual survey of course catalogs, reviewing 2017-18 class offerings at more than 50 institutions, including the Ivy League, US News & World Report’s Top 10 liberal arts colleges, and other prominent schools.
The survey revealed a big push to “queer” topics, noting the University of Michigan offers “Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music,” Swarthmore hosts “Queering God: Feminist and Queer Theology” and “Queering the Bible,” Carleton College has “Queer Religion” and Middlebury offers “Queering Food.”
Academia also continues to argue that gender is not a biological mandate but rather some sort of spectrum, according to the survey’s results:
A topic du jour in this year’s report is gender, or lack thereof, perhaps. Northwestern University has a class titled “Beyond the Binary.” The school’s history department offers a medieval sexuality course on the “fluidity of sex and gender roles in an age before ‘sexual orientation.’”
In Indiana University’s Gender Studies program, students can enroll in “We’re All A Little Crazy: Gender, Madness, & Popular Culture,” which promises to discuss “resting b***h face” and “hails of ‘Yaaas, Queen!’” Wellesley College asks, “Beyond the social construct of gender, what are the actual differences between the sexes?” in its “What’s up with Men & Women?” course. Carleton College has a course to examine “how globalization and militarism are gendered.” Middlebury’s Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies Department has a class asking “What is your gender and how do you know?”
Meanwhile, progressive professors’ loathing of capitalism could be seen in courses such as Williams College’s “Racial Capitalism,” which aims to “interrogate the ways in which capitalist economies have ‘always and everywhere’ relied upon forms of racist domination and exclusion,” according to the class description.
At Amherst College, “Race and American Capitalism” explores “our present day reality of deeply rooted, and racialized, economic inequality,” the report found. Brown University also offers a course glorifying dictators Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, placing them “among the twentieth century’s most iconic figures,” the report added.
The survey also found many fringe classes students can chose from, too.
Some schools are offering bizarre courses that would be more at home on the pages of a satire, not a course catalog: The University of Kentucky offers a course titled “Vampires: Evolution of a Sexy Monster” that promises to answer the following questions: “What is a vampire? Where do they come from?” among others. Similarly, DePaul University students can take “Zombies: Modern Myths, Race, and Capitalism,” examining “the development of the zombie myth as a reflection of US societal concerns while using the lenses of Post-Colonial and Post-Marxist theory.” Brown University’s American Studies Department includes a course that uses specific objects “including sugar, milk, vibrators, and Spanx” as case studies “to critically consider how material culture informs and signals identity.” A few other course names that gave pause include Dartmouth’s “Black Feminisms in the French Atlantic,” Harvard’s “Trying Socrates in the Age of Trump” and “Leaning In, Hooking Up,” along with Princeton’s “Black to the Future.”
Young America’s Foundation cautions that this is just the tip of the iceburg.
“This is not an exhaustive list of every biased course offered by the schools sampled, but
should serve as an overview of the most egregious offenders,” the report states.
