The New York Times Fails Logic Class, Chapter 46,080

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There’s an old saying that goes something like this:

“One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”

That would fit the NY Times editorial board.

In the United States, nearly one-third of adults, about 76 million people, are either “struggling to get by” or “just getting by,” according to the third annual survey of households by the Federal Reserve Board…

…Over all, the survey depicts an economy in which many Americans face daily hardship, while even the college educated — the presumed winners in the economy — still face big obstacles. The findings argue for continued low interest rates; for government policies and federal spending to help create good jobs at good pay; for affordable education that starts at preschool, thus fostering college-ready students; and for a safety net that can withstand today’s potent economic forces.

Oh really?

For the last 20+ years every hiccup in the economy has been met with “very low” interest rates. Rates have now been at emergency levels for a period of time approaching eight years.

It hasn’t worked to lift people out of that malaise, and the reason is obvious: The lower rates are the cheaperit is in “today’s terms” to borrow and those who can and do borrow first have “first mover” advantage.

Those entities are never those with fewer privileges and poorer net positions in life.

That means it’s never any of those who face said daily hardship that reap said advantage — it is instead those who exploit that segment of the population and they use it to screw everyone else!

Witness Uber, who is “leasing” cars to “drivers” at slavery-like conditions. How? Because “money is very cheap”, that’s how. How is it that Tesla, which makes cars nobody in the “struggling” class can afford, is in business with a loss-making enterprise? Same answer. How is it that college has gotten so expensive that you now can easily rack up $100,000 in debt to get a worthless degree and just three decades ago you could flip pizzas and pay cash to go to school? Same answer. How is it that the average new car loan is now six years and payments are often $500 or more, never mind the average new car sale topping $30,000? Same answer. Why has medical cost increasing at 7+% a year and now comprises 37% of the federal budget, doubling every 10 years for the last 2 decades — a trend that cannot continue for another 10 years as it will then consume more than the available cash ex interest payments? Same answer.

In 1920, faced with a massive over-capacity problem (fueled by speculative stupidity over the end of WWI, the return to civilian production and the boys coming home) and a crashing economy The Fed, then 7 years old raised interest rates into what was an incipient depression and the federal government balanced the budget.

The result? In 18 months the economy had fully recovered (as had employment) and we posted the highest rate of growth in industrial production ever recorded in American history.

The only reason that event is not called a Depression is that it was over almost before it began because instead of coddling those who were exploiting people in the most trouble and protecting those who had made foolish investment decisions with their capital surplus both the government and Fed instead pulled away the pacifier and allowed the markets and economy to do what it does when left alone — clear uneconomic decisions through bankruptcy and transfer of assets from those who did dumb things to those who do smart things.

There is no answer — ever — to be found in protecting idiocy, monopoly, exploitation and predatory behavior, all of which riddle our economic landscape today. The worst examples are found in exploiting those who have the least going on between their ears and thus the least ability to analyze and resist the siren call of “cheap money” — including young adults and those in the most-desperate of situations.

Thus the two biggest scams of today: College and medicine, along with all that surround both; the former has now generated over a trillion in debt that as a 25% delinquency rate (!!) and the latter routinely financially destroys any middle-class American who gets sick whether they have “insurance” or not, never mind being nearly one dollar in four that the federal government spends along with one dollar in five in the broader economy.

The NY Times editorial board either does know this and is in the back pocket of those doing the exploiting or they’re too stupid to survive.

Pick one, but don’t drink their grape Kool-Aid — it’s laced with cyanide. (For more from the author of “The New York Times Fails Logic Class, Chapter 46,080” please click HERE)

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GRIM MILESTONE: More Than 100 Million Working-Age Americans Do Not Have Jobs

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This is exactly what we have been expecting to happen. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy only added 38,000 jobs in May. This was way below the 158,000 jobs that analysts were projecting, and it is also way below what is needed just to keep up with population growth. In addition, the number of jobs created in April was revised down by 37,000 and the number of jobs created in March was revised down by 22,000. This was the worst jobs report in almost six years, and the consensus on Wall Street is that it was an unmitigated disaster.

The funny thing is that the Obama administration says that the unemployment rate actually went down last month. Almost every month since Obama has been in the White House, large numbers of Americans that have been unemployed for a very long time are shifted from the “unemployment” category to the “not in the labor force” category. This has resulted in a steadily falling “unemployment rate” even though the percentage of the population that is actually working has not changed very much at all since the depths of the last recession.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that the number of Americans “not in the labor force” increased by 664,000 from April to May. If you believe that, I have a giant bridge on the west coast that I would like to sell you. The labor force participation rate is now down to 62.6, and it is hovering just above a 38 year low.

When you add the number of working age Americans that are “officially unemployed” (7.4 million) to the number of working age Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” (an all-time record high of 94.7 million), you get a grand total of 102.1 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

This is not a game.

So far in 2016, three members of my own extended family have lost their jobs.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoffs at major firms are running 24 percent higher up to this point in 2016 than they were during the same time period in 2015.

It was only a matter of time before those layoffs started showing up in the official employment numbers, and I fully expect that this trend will accelerate in the months ahead.

And here are some other brand new numbers for you to consider…

-Since Barack Obama entered the White House, 14,179,000 Americans have “left the labor force” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

-The quality of our jobs continues to deteriorate. In May, 59,000 full-time jobs were lost, but 118,000 part-time jobs were gained.

-Since September 2014, 207,000 mining jobs have been lost.

-We just learned that U.S. factory orders have declined once again. This marks the 18th month in a row that this has taken place, and we have never seen such an extended decline outside of a major recession.

-JPMorgan’s “recession indicators” have just soared to the highest level that we have seen since the last recession.

Needless to say, the financial community is pretty horrified by all of this news. They were expecting a much better jobs report, and many of them are not hiding their disappointment. Here is one example from the Wall Street Journal…

“This was an unqualified dud of a jobs report,” said Curt Long, chief economist at the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, noting “the unemployment rate fell, but for the wrong reason as labor force participation declined for the second consecutive month.”

And here is another example that comes from David Donabedian, the chief investment officer at Atlantic Trust Wealth Management…

“We can’t find a positive nugget in today’s job report. If we were looking for signs of strength in this report, there is nothing to hang onto here.”

But of course the mainstream media is doing their best to put a positive spin on these numbers. For instance, CNN just published a laughable article entitled “America’s economy is stronger than weak jobs report“.

And the White House insists that this new employment report really isn’t that big of a deal…

The White House doesn’t get “too disappointed” over the number of unemployed and underemployed Americans.

“I’ve been reacting to jobs numbers here at the White House for more than seven years, and what is true today has been true in the past, which is, we don’t get too excited when jobs numbers are better than expected and we don’t get too disappointed when jobs numbers one-month are lower than expected,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told CNBC.

But of course the truth is that it is a really big deal. We just received major confirmation that the U.S. economy has slipped into recession mode.

For months, I have been writing about how virtually every other indicator has been screaming that a new economic crisis had already begun.

But the employment numbers had remained fairly decent up until now. Employment is typically considered to be a “lagging indicator”, which means that it isn’t one of the first places we would expect to see signs of a recession show up. However, it is inevitable that the official unemployment numbers will reflect an economic downturn eventually, and that is what we are starting to see now.

What this means is that you probably have even less time to get prepared for what is ahead than you may have originally thought.

The U.S. economy has already entered the early chapters of the next great economic crisis, and most of the population is going to be caught totally off guard and will suffer tremendously.

If our leaders had made better decisions since the last crisis, things could have turned out differently. But instead, they continued to conduct business as usual, and now we will reap what they have sown. (For more from the author of “GRIM MILESTONE: More Than 100 Million Working-Age Americans Do Not Have Jobs” please click HERE)

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New Tunnel Unveiled in Bizarre ‘Demonic’ Ceremony

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The world’s longest and deepest rail tunnel was unveiled with a bizarre ceremony featuring a goat-man who dies and is resurrected, women simulating sex with each other and drone-like human workers marching to a rhythmic drum beat.

The Gotthard Base Tunnel was dedicated in Switzerland with male and female workers wearing orange jumpsuits and marching robotically like soldiers obeying their commands.

Young men and women appear dressed in white underwear, while two of the women engage in simulated lesbian sex. These individuals represent the masses who will ride the trains through the tunnel.

Charisma magazine questioned the motives of the organizers of the ceremony, which was broadcast to millions and meant to celebrate a project that took 17 years to complete, extending 35 miles through the Alps and costing more than 11 billion Euros, making it the longest and most expensive tunnel on record . . .

The tunnel winds through the Swiss Alps and is said to be a sterling example of European unity in an age of rising nationalism and closing borders. (Read more from “New Tunnel Unveiled in Bizarre ‘Demonic’ Ceremony” HERE)

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Katie Couric Accused of Deceptive Editing in Second Documentary

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Katie Couric’s 2014 documentary Fed Up includes instances of deceptive editing similar to 2016’s Under the Gun, according to several people familiar with the making of the film.

Fed Up, which focuses on obesity and the food industry, was directed by Stephanie Soechtig and produced by Couric. The film includes two interviews with figures who hold viewpoints counter to the narrative of the film, and sources say both interviews include at least one misleading or deceptive edit intended to embarrass the interviewee.

Dr. David Allison, an interview subject in the film and the director of the Nutrition Obesity Research Center, says he was a victim of shoddy journalism. “What she did to me is antithetical to not only just human decency and civility but it is antithetical to the spirit of science and democratic dialogue,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.

After a brief exchange in the film between Allison and Couric over whether or not sugary beverages contribute more to obesity than other foods, Couric asks Allison about the science behind his objections. Allison then begins to explain before stumbling and asking Couric if he could pause to “get his thoughts together.”

Allison said Couric had told him it would be all right to pause and gather his thoughts at any point during the interview if he felt he needed to. (Read more from “Katie Couric Accused of Deceptive Editing in Second Documentary” HERE)

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Trump vs. Reagan: What Is a Conservative?

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Many of Donald Trump’s supporters have compared him to Ronald Reagan. It is quite instructive that Trump himself picked up the 1980 Reagan campaign slogan, “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Trump speaks positively of Ronald Reagan, and, like Reagan, claims to be a conservative.

“Of course Trump is a conservative,” writes a Trump enthusiast at Townhall. “Actually on the most important issues of the day, he’s the most conservative GOP Presidential candidate since Reagan.”

Many longtime Reagan conservatives beg to differ. The Trump comparisons make them bristle.

But if Trump insists he is a conservative, then it is incumbent upon him to do something that ought to be fairly simple: explain how and why he is a conservative. He should tell us—as Reagan often did—what conservatism means.

That was never a problem for Ronald Reagan. Reagan remains the prototype of modern conservatism. He is the ideology’s standard-bearer. In the dictionary next to the word “conservative” there should be a photo of Ronald Reagan.

So, let’s start with Reagan’s understanding of conservatism—a good yardstick with which to try to size up Trump. In fact, to narrow the comparison even tighter, I will go with a Reagan definition of conservatism that he provided prior to the presidency, without the aid of a White House speechwriter scripting him.

On February 6, 1977, Reagan spoke to CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, a venue he would address no less than 13 times through his final year in the White House, not missing a single CPAC during any year of his presidency. (Donald Trump bailed out of CPAC this year.)

On this particular date, which happened to be Reagan’s 66th birthday, he acknowledged that conservatism is often described differently by “those who call themselves conservatives.” Nonetheless, differing claims by different people calling themselves “conservatives” does not mean that we cannot identify certain common conservative principles. To that end, Reagan stated:

The common sense and common decency of ordinary men and women, working out their own lives in their own way—this is the heart of American conservatism today. Conservative wisdom and principles are derived from willingness to learn, not just from what is going on now, but from what has happened before.

The principles of conservatism are sound because they are based on what men and women have discovered through experience in not just one generation or a dozen, but in all the combined experience of mankind. When we conservatives say that we know something about political affairs, and that we know can be stated as principles, we are saying that the principles we hold dear are those that have been found, through experience, to be ultimately beneficial for individuals, for families, for communities and for nations—found through the often bitter testing of pain or sacrifice and sorrow.

There’s a definition that every self-professing conservative needs to take to heart and mind. It is one you could find in conservative classics, such as Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, or glean from decades of reading William F. Buckley’s flagship publication of the conservative movement, National Review, or from the older Human Events—all of which Ronald Reagan read assiduously. Reagan had an informed comprehension of conservatism because he devoured these writings. He did the intellectual heavy lifting that facilitated his full conversion from a 1940s New Deal FDR liberal to a conservative trying to save the Republican Party from the Rockefeller Republicans who were not conservatives.

What Reagan said here in February 1977 is worth underscoring: The essence of conservatism is to preserve and conserve time-tested values that have endured for good reason and for the best of society, for citizens, for country, and for order—internal and external order (see Kirk’s The Roots of American Order). Again, think about that definition. Do not fall for the Leftist canard that cruelly caricatures conservatism as merely wanting to preserve anything and everything from the past, from slavery to Jim Crow to women not voting. Quite the contrary, conservatives want to preserve the values and ideals that are timeless and time-tested for the benefit of humanity, not the detriment. We conservatives cling to and seek to conserve and preserve not just any ideas but worthy ideas. If we merely sought to keep any, say, 19th century idea, then why aren’t we fighting for Marxism or some variant of socialism, as many of our “progressive” friends still do? That isn’t conservatism, regardless of what you heard about it from some liberal professor or clicked in a Google search.

In that same speech to CPAC, Ronald Reagan enunciated a number of conservative principles and positions: freedom and liberty, free markets, religious freedom, constitutional rights and protections, anti-communism, smaller government, local government, individualism, voluntarism, communities, families, self-reliance, hard work, common sense, reason, faith in God. (In my book on Reagan conservatism, I distill 11 principles that I believe capture Reagan conservatism.) He called for a prudent and just government that spends money wisely and whose stewards act with integrity and honesty. Here, too: we need a nation comprised of outer order and inner order, a virtuous government that is the product of virtuous citizens.

And finally, Reagan told CPAC that the time had come “to present a program of action based on political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called ‘social’ issues and those interested in ‘economic’ issues.” He wanted a complete conservatism that combined the two core strands of contemporary American conservatism (the social and economic) into “one politically effective whole.”

There is much more I could say about this, but let’s pivot to Donald Trump’s explication of conservatism. I’ll consider the two recent occasions where Trump was asked to give a definition.

In New Hampshire during an ABC News debate in February, Trump was asked point blank, “What does it mean to be a conservative?” In response, Trump stated:

Well, I think I am, and to me, I view the word conservative as a derivative of the word “conserve.” We want to conserve our money. We want to conserve our wealth. We want to conserve. We want to be smart. We want to be smart where we go, where we spend, how we spend. We want to conserve our country. We want to save our country. And we have people that have no idea how to do that, and they are not doing it. And it’s a very important word and it’s something I believe in very, very strongly.

Ironically, this definition (I’ve provided the entirety of Trump’s statement) does not suggest that he believes in conservatism “very, very strongly.” He might believe in conserving money and wealth very, very strongly, which is fine, but that isn’t a definition of conservatism.

There is no sense in Trump’s statement of any grounding let alone a rich or nuanced cognizance of conservative philosophy.

What’s worse, Trump gave that definition with a look of surprise and unpreparedness—with a deer-in-the-headlights look. That is worse because only two weeks prior he was asked the same question in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” where his response was shockingly dismal. The candidate this time should have been equipped to give a better answer.

That other Trump definition, offered to CBS in January, was at best a stream of consciousness, with occasional disconnected outbursts of random policy observations. Here is (verbatim) what he told CBS when asked for his definition of a conservative:

Well, I think it’s a person that doesn’t want to take overly risk. But I think that’s a good thing. I think it’s a person that wants to—in terms of government, I’m talking about—a person that wants to conserve, a person that wants to, in a financial sense, balance budgets. A person that feels strongly about the military, and I feel very strongly about the military. And, you know, you have some of these people they don’t even want to focus on the military, our military is falling apart. I feel very, very, and I have always felt very, very strongly about the military. By the way, if you look at vision, when you look at the word “vision,” I was the one that said, “take the oil,” I’ve been saying that for years, and I said, “take the oil, let’s take the oil,” and nobody would listen, then all of a sudden after Paris they started saying “maybe that’s right, we’ll take the oil.” They still don’t do it the proper way. You know, I was—which is a little bit different than a normal conservative—but I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq. A lot of these guys were all for the war in Iraq, look what that’s got us: We spent $2 trillion, we lost thousands of lives, we have nothing, we’re now handing Iraq over, just handing over to Iran. Iran is going to take over Iraq, and I said that was going to happen. I said that years ago, in 2003-2004, that Iran will take over Iraq with the largest oil reserves in the world. And that’s not a conservative position. When I was, you know, saying, don’t go into Iraq—I’m a very militaristic person, I’m very much into the military, and we’ll build our military bigger, better, stronger than ever before, but—and that’s safe, that’s actually the cheapest thing to do, opposed to what we have right now, but I was opposed to the war in Iraq. Most conservatives were gung-ho. I mean, these guys, every one of them, wanted the war in Iraq. Look where it got us.

Here again, what I’ve quoted is the entirety of Trump’s response. My transcript leaves out nothing.

Trump’s “definition” is, in short, anything but a picture of conservatism. To the contrary, what you just read is a picture of a non-conservative exploiting a conservative movement in order to try his hand at getting elected president via the Republican Party—the party of Reagan conservatism.

This definition from Trump is confusing, incoherent, and incomprehensible, and it is a vindication of legitimate concerns by true conservatives that Donald Trump as the GOP’s new standard-bearer is poised to do enduring damage to the modern conservative movement that Ronald Reagan did so much to advance.

Is Donald Trump a Reagan conservative? Certainly not by any definition he has hazarded to try to give. (For more from the author of “Trump vs. Reagan: What Is a Conservative?” please click HERE)

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What Hillary Did Just Before Vince Foster Killed Himself

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Hillary Clinton relentlessly browbeat her clinically depressed former law partner Vince Foster shortly before he committed suicide in 1993, according to notes from a final jailhouse interview with a former close business partner of the Clintons, the Free Beacon reports.

Jim McDougal, a close confidant of the Clintons for many years, said in a final interview before he died that Hillary had a “hard, difficult personality” and was “riding [Vince Foster] every minute” about Whitewater before Foster took his own life.

He called Bill a “master con artist” who wed Hillary after a “cold-blooded search” to find a politically beneficial wife. Mcdougall said Bill wanted to keep Hilary from succeeding in her own political career.

“I think it was a cold-blooded search by both of them [Bill Clinton and former Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker] to find political wives,” said McDougal. “Important who to choose, still hungover from the 60s and both looking for good credentials to back them up.”

“Hillary had credentials to clean up after Bill, he thought she’d keep him organized,” he said. “The truth is that [Bill’s former aide] Betsey Wright was the one who got him organized for his comeback.”

McDougal was a central figure in the Whitewater scandal and convicted of fraud in 1996 in connection to the controversial real estate partnership with the Clintons. He died in 1998 of a heart attack.

“When I saw Vince Foster to put Clintons out of Whitewater, he was clearly depressed, a clinical thing. He was star[t]ing conversation talking about aging, eyesight going, asked me to sign something,” said McDougal.

“Then Vince Foster committed suicide,” continued McDougal. “He had so much of their shit on his head and Hillary was riding him every minute.”

Foster, one of Hillary Clinton’s closest friends and advisers, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a Virginia park in 1993. He had been depressed and struggling to shield the Clintons from legal fallout over Whitewater.

The FBI looked into Foster’s death in 1993 and concluded that Hillary Clinton “triggered” Foster’s decision to take his own life after she publicly humiliated him during a White House meeting.

“Foster was profoundly depressed, but Hillary lambasting him was the final straw because she publicly embarrassed him in front of others,” Jim Clemente, a senior FBI investigator on the probe, told investigative reporter Ron Kessler.

After Foster’s death, files related to the Clintons’ investments were removed from his White House office.

They probably landed in her paper shredder.

McDougal’s ex-wife, Susan McDougal, was convicted of contempt of court in 1996 for refusing to answer questions about the Clintons and Whitewater in front of a grand jury. She received a full presidential pardon from Bill right before he left office.

McDougal also described Hillary as “generally a pain in the ass” and “very difficult for everyone, including Bill.” He said Bill seemed to privately enjoy the Whitewater scandal because it was damaging to Hillary’s future political career.

“She had a hard, difficult personality and it got truly released,” said McDougal. “When Bill got to be his own man again, I could see it starts up agains [sic].”

“I think Bill may actually like Whitewater because it makes certain it denies Hillary a position of honor and power in country [sic],” he added.

At the time of McDougal’s death he was still cooperating with federal prosecutors on their investigation of the Clintons’ involvement with the Whitewater real estate venture. The Clintons were never charged.

The controversy stemmed from the 1970s, when McDougal and his wife partnered with the Clintons to purchase a large tract of land in the Arkansas Ozarks. The unsuccessful investment became a national scandal decades later, after the New York Times reported on evidence of impropriety related to the deal.

A central question in the case was whether Bill Clinton used his political influence to help obtain a fraudulent federal loan for the McDougals. There were also accusations of kickbacks related to Hillary Clinton’s alleged legal work on behalf of the McDougals’ bank, Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan.

McDougal gave a candid, first-hand account of the controversy in his book Arkansas Mischief, written with Wilkie. He argued that the Clintons knowingly broke the law in Whitewater and other deals, repeatedly lied under oath, and accepted bribes while in Arkansas. He also claimed Bill and his ex-wife, Susan, had a long-standing affair that began during their marriage, free beacon reported.

McDougal’s friend and fellow prisoner Darren Wesley Williams wrote to the editor of the now-defunct George Magazine about how he liked Jim, who made him laugh. The guards were negligent he said in giving him his medication.

“In the T.V. room he’d have his arm slung over another chair,” Williams added. “If someone came up and asked to sit there he’d say, ‘no, I’m saving this for Bill.’”

Maybe there’s room for Hillary too. (For more from the author of “What Hillary Did Just Before Vince Foster Killed Himself” please click HERE)

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Illegal Aliens Kidnapping Children to Sneak Into U.S. As ‘Family Units,’ Feds Say

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Illegal immigrants are kidnapping children and bringing them across the border, hoping to appear to be families so they can take advantage of lax enforcement policies, the Obama administration told a federal appeals court on Tuesday.

Leon Fresco, a deputy assistant attorney general who handles immigration cases, made the stunning claim as he defended the administration’s policy of detaining illegal immigrant parents and children caught traveling together as they jump the border. After a federal judge last year ordered the families quickly released, Mr. Fresco said it’s served as an enticement for kidnapping.

“When people now know that when I come as a family unit, I won’t be apprehended and detained — we now have people being abducted so that they can be deemed as family units, so that they can avoid detention,” Mr. Fresco told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

He did not back up that claim in court, and did not respond to a follow-up email seeking comment. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles detention and deportation, declined to comment, citing the ongoing case, while Customs and Border Protection, which guards the border, did not respond to a request for comment.

But Peter Schey, the lawyer who argued in court on behalf of the families, and is in touch with hundreds of families as part of the lawsuit, said there’s no evidence to back up Mr. Fresco’s claim. (Read more from “Illegal Aliens Kidnapping Children to Sneak Into U.S. As ‘Family Units,’ Feds Say” HERE)

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Mother of Girl Who Lost Race to Transgender Athlete Speaks out — and She’s Furious

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In May, an Alaska high school student became the first transgender athlete to compete individually for a high school state championship. As TheBlaze previously reported, Nattaphon “Ice” Wangyot, who was born male but identifies as female, qualified and competed in the Class 3A girls’ sprints at the Alaska state meet, taking home third place in the 200-meter dash (27.3 seconds) and fifth in the 100 (13.36 seconds).

Since the race, Wangyot’s story has made national headlines, earning the 18-year-old Haines High School athlete widespread praise for contributions to the LGBT movement.

But not everyone was celebrating the high schooler’s success. After the story was reported by KTVA-TV, Jennifer VanPelt, a mother of one of the girls who competed and lost, took to the comments section of the news station’s article.

After one commenter named Stephanie Leigh Golman Williams noted with frustration that a runner named Aurora Waclowski, who “has been top three since freshman” year, was knocked off the awards podium by a male-born runner, VanPelt clarified that it was actually her daughter, not Aurora, who was cut.

“Actually Aurora was still given an award for 4th and was able to still stand up on the awards podium. It was my daughter who finished 5th that missed out,” she wrote.

(Read more from “Mother of Girl Who Lost Race to Transgender Athlete Speaks out — and She’s Furious” HERE)

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Sorry Miss USA, but Direct Combat Is Not a Beauty Pageant Stage

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Deshauna Barber is a first lieutenant in the Army Reserves and is getting a flurry of attention for her comment during the Miss USA pageant about women in combat roles. Her statements demonstrated little forethought on the issue, but, hey, why let the reality of direct ground combat against the likes of ISIS ruin a good “I am woman, hear me roar” moment? And hey, getting on the women-in-combat feminist bandwagon may have clinched her the Miss USA crown.

When asked about her thoughts on women in combat roles, the IT analyst from North Washington D.C. said, “As a commander of my unit, I am powerful. I am dedicated and it is important that we recognize that gender does not limit us in the United States Army.” And “I think it was an amazing job by our government to allow women to integrate to every branch of the military … We are just as tough as men.”

I confess that I don’t know what being an IT analyst in the weekend-warrior Army Reserves is like. I do know about IT in the Marines, and both being a Marine and supporting communications for deployed Marines is much harder, but it still ain’t direct ground combat. I’ve no doubt that Lt. Barber is powerful and dedicated, and a valuable — not to mention beautiful — addition to our Armed Forces. But she hasn’t trained and competed with male infantry. Her job in the Army reserves does not include orders to serve with men in the combat arms, and she knows nothing about it.

We have ample empirical data on the question of women in combat roles from recent testing, not to mention hundreds of years of experience learning what helps and what hinders victory in battle.

Barber will never bear the consequences of what she so mindlessly advocates. She’d be the one they shoot first as an easy target. And so beautiful, in her bikini and dangly earrings, or her be-makeuped soft-focus selfie in uniform. Not distracting at all. ISIS is not just laughing at us. They’re licking their chops at our self-imposed weakness. But we have our Charlie’s Angel delivering the Obama party line. She’s won the beauty pageant; just wait ‘til she starts her acting career.

Firebrand Gunnery Sergeant (Ret) Jessie Jane Duff, who served two decades in the Marines and advocates strongly that we should not diminish our combat readiness, had some choice tweets for the young LT:

In a recent interview Duff added this:

This was an ideal opportunity for her to stand up and stand for the enlisted women who will die in mass quantity in combat … She’s missing the entire data … Yes, we’re as mentally tough as men, but all data demonstrates that the women are performing at the bottom 25th percentile with men in infantry units. We’re setting them up for failure. Her speech, what she said was perfect if she had just closed with, “We should not lift a blanket policy without evaluating this closer because this isn’t about equality … this is about combat readiness and the mission is first.” That would have gotten just as much applause and people would have celebrated her for defending the women that have to go out there and perform with these men … Hand to hand combat? There is no equality in it. The men will decimate women in hand-to-hand combat.

This week we commemorate the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. Our reflections on young men storming the beaches of Normandy should remind us of the importance of defining precisely what is involved in “direct ground combat.” It’s great that Barber feels powerful, but the truth is that physically she’s a twig, and ISIS, or Iran or North Korea would make mince-meat out of her in five seconds.

She may be as tough as other keyboard commando Army Reservists, but she has no credibility on killing our enemies at point-blank range. She is no authority in comparison to three years and over 50 documents’ worth of scientific testing data submitted by the Marine Corps to the Pentagon, which showed that integrated units underperform on 69% of tasks and women get injured more than twice as much as men. Dedication has little relevance against these realities, which would severely degrade the lethality and survivability of our most elite fighting units.

In our upside-down “now,” where the Left is trying to hammer at us that one’s biological sex is meaningless, Nature simply will not comply, especially in the most violent activity known to mankind. As we’re fighting the most barbaric enemy we’ve ever faced, we need the manliest, most powerful, aggressive, testosterone-laden American alpha males that our taxpayer dollars can buy in order to destroy our enemies and come home quickly and in one piece. Miss USA is a beautiful stick who’d have no chance killing ISIS fighters in hand-to-hand combat.

Deshauna Barber makes a great poster, and now we all know what she looks like underneath her uniform. It’s Combat Barbie Miss USA. But direct ground combat is not a beauty pageant stage. Barber is the media’s latest darling for being a satisfactorily diverse and pretty package delivering the government-approved party line. Meanwhile technology has not alleviated the need for brute strength and speed that women simply don’t provide, and they bring with them serious additional risks that men simply don’t.

Meanwhile, the Senate is voting on whether to subject America’s young daughters to mandatory registration for the draft as combat replacements. The girl next door will not have stunt doubles to fill in for the bloody parts, and for her it won’t be about “a few women who want to.” (For more from the author of “Sorry Miss USA, but Direct Combat Is Not a Beauty Pageant Stage” please click HERE)

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FBI Director: Islamic State Still the Main Threat Facing the U.S.

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The director of the FBI said Tuesday that the Islamic State group is currently the main threat facing the United States, both in its efforts to recruit fighters to join its members overseas and to have others carry out violence in America.

Director James Comey said the IS group poses a third potential threat: a “terrorist diaspora” that he said will eventually flow out of Syria and Iraq and end up in Western Europe, where members will have easy access to the U.S.

“There’s three prongs to this ISIL threat,” Comey said. “The recruitment to travel, the recruitment to violence in place, and then what you saw a preview of in Brussels and in Paris — hardened fighters coming out, looking to kill people.”

He said officials are “laser-focused on that.”

Comey took questions from reporters Tuesday in the FBI’s Minneapolis office as part of a two-day visit to the region that included meetings with community leaders and local law enforcement. Comey responded to questions about the heroin epidemic, shootings involving officers and surveillance issues, but the bulk of his comments were about the Islamic State group.

Last week, three Minnesota men who were accused of plotting to join the IS group were convicted of conspiring to commit murder overseas — which carries a potential life sentence — as well as conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and other charges.

The defendants — Guled Ali Omar, 21; Abdirahman Yasin Daud, 22; and Mohamed Abdihamid Farah, 22 — were among a group of friends who prosecutors say recruited and inspired each other to travel to Syria. A total of 10 men were charged in the conspiracy; six pleaded guilty and a seventh is at large, believed to be fighting in Syria.

Comey said the FBI is continuing to focus on the Islamic State group, and there are close to 1,000 open cases nationwide involving people at various stages of recruitment. He said the group’s slick videos and propaganda can resonate with people of all ages, but seem to draw in people under 30 who are “unmoored” in some way.

He said he hopes the FBI’s work, including the convictions in Minneapolis, will send a message that “there will be severe consequences for people who go down that path.”

Comey added that the number of active IS-related cases hasn’t decreased, but the number of people seeking to travel to Syria has dropped since the end of last summer — going from about six to 10 attempted travelers each month to about one or two.

He said he can’t pinpoint the reasons for the trend, but it’s possible people are traveling to other Islamic State outposts, have been deterred by the outcomes of other criminal cases, or have been stopped by families and community members.

Another — and more disturbing — possibility is that some are staying in the U.S. and looking to carry out violence here, Comey said.

“It’s good news the traveler numbers have come down,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what to make of it yet.”

Comey was in Williston, North Dakota, on Monday to open a new FBI office that will focus on crime in the Bakken region, which has spiked with the oil boom. The FBI’s Minneapolis division covers Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. (For more from the author of “FBI Director: Islamic State Still the Main Threat Facing the U.S.” please click HERE)

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