Breathless Reports About ‘Hate Groups’ Aim To Panic Americans Into Speech Controls The questionably sourced report was no doubt a clear enough justification for many people to continue culling speech freedoms online.By Brad Betters

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/breathless-reports-hate-groups-aim-panic-americans-speech-controls/

A cluster of events this past week marked a steepening in the upwards trend toward online censorship.

In a New York Times and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report about online extremism, authors claimed the social media sphere enabled a “global network of white extremists” to develop and that this has led to a “surge of white supremacist and xenophobic terrorism in the West.” Although grasping in its conclusions and broadly flawed, the report was no doubt a clear enough justification for many to continue culling speech freedoms online.

In a near-identical report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said certain social media platforms have become “round-the-clock digital white supremacist rallies.” They also conclude more policing from both industry and government must be done. Both reports coincided with social media executives being called to a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, where lawmakers demanded they do more to “stem white nationalist propaganda and hate speech online.”

The collective push to double down on a free-speech atmosphere already challenged post-Christchurch seems to beg the question: is it a surge in “hate” we’re witnessing, or a surge in “hate panic”?

The Feds Should Tell Every American Exactly What They’re Doing With Our Money Every Year By Kyle Sammin

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/15/feds-tell-every-american-exactly-theyre-money-every-year/

Congress should require that, within six months of Tax Day, the Internal Revenue Service must issue to all taxpayers a rundown of how much they paid, and what programs it went to fund.

Every April 15, Americans think about taxes. For something that grabs such a large part of our income, federal income taxes should be more prominent in our thoughts. Every day, every hour that you work, a piece of what you earn gets taken by the government before it even gets into your hands.

That is by design, and the withholding system not only guarantees the government the steady revenue it needs to function, but also makes sure that average taxpayers do not spend money that they will need to pay on tax day. The system is important—even necessary—to the functioning of a modern government, but it has one significant downside: people often do not realize how much they pay in taxes every year. That was shown to be especially true after the latest tax law changes: most people paid less in total taxes, but because their refunds may have decreased, they didn’t know it.

Candace Owens Has Shown Us the Way By Sebastian Gorka

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/candace-owens-has-shown-us-the-way/

How did this happen?

When did it become OK for one of the two major political parties in America to attack a young black woman, who works for an orthodox Jew, as a fascistic fan of Adolf Hitler after she was invited to testify before Congress?

When did it become OK for the representatives of the same party openly to label Israel, our closest friend in the Middle East, an “evil” state which has “hypnotized the West,” then libel their fellow representatives of having “dual loyalties” because they are Jewish, or to intimate that Israel simply shouldn’t exist?

And when did the all the leading names in that party’s list of candidates for president come to see it as obligatory to endorse a Green New Deal for the nation that has as its objective the outlawing of the internal combustion engine and air travel?

How Trump Masterfully Frames the Ilhan Omar Debate By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/15/how-trump-masterfully-frames-the-ilhan-omar-debate/

Donald Trump is the best thing to happen to the American Right in a good long while. The second-best thing to happen to the American Right is Ilhan Omar.

If Omar had been elected to Congress under previous Republican administrations, she would stand as yet another example of how Democrats’ hypocrisy regularly flies under the radar as it is dismissed by the mainstream media and Democratic leadership without a second thought.

But in the age of President Trump, the freshman from Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District has proven just how effective Republicans can be if they hold their rivals’ feet to the fire over their own bigotry—with the added bonus of forcing the media to talk about it.

Pelosi: AOC’s Progressive Faction Is ‘Like Five People’ By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nancy-pelosi-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-progressive-faction-like-five-people/

House speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed the progressive faction of her caucus led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “like five people.”

In a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday, Pelosi was asked whether she could unify the “self-described socialists” and the “moderates” among House Democrats.

“By and large, whatever orientation they came to Congress with, they know that we have to hold the center. That we have to go down the mainstream,” she responded.

“But it doesn’t look like that. It looks as if it’s fractured. You have these wings– AOC, and her group on one side,” interviewer Lesley Stahl continued.

“That’s like five people,” Pelosi replied.

“The progressive group is more than five,” Stahl said.

The European left’s ‘Extinction Rebellion’ is more radical than even the ‘Green New Deal’ By James Stansbury

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/the_european_lefts_extinction_rebellion_is_more_radical_than_even_the_green_new_deal.html

The Dems’ Green New Deal is simply an adaptation of the recent sustainability movement, but another movement with European origins is even more radical. Both use climate activism to disguise its core intentions of socialist indoctrination.

A review of a Finnish-to-English translation from “The Ilmastotiede blog” in “Watts Up With That?,” titled “The New Green Threat: Extinction Rebellion,” exposed the spinoff of the sustainability movement. Wikipedia describes it:

Extinction Rebellion (abbreviated as XR) is a socio-political movement intending to utilise nonviolent resistance in order to avert climate breakdown, halt biodiversity loss, and minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse.

Extinction Rebellion was established in the United Kingdom in May 2018 with about one hundred academics… and launched at the end of October by Roger Hallam, Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, and other activists from the campaign group Rising Up!… The movement is unusual in that a large number of activists have pledged to be arrested and go to prison…

Participation appears confined to Western democracies (China and Russia are notably absent), and the tactics emulate hardcore leftist organizations such as Occupy. XR is much more aggressive than the Dems’ Green New Deal. Worldwide protests for climate change action are scheduled to start this week (we shall soon see if that happens). Notably, Stuart Basden, another founder, readily admits that XR is not really about climate change.

Valerie Jarrett Accused of Manipulating Book Sales to Get On NYT Bestseller List By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/valerie-jarrett-accused-of-manipulating-book-sales-to-get-on-nyt-bestseller-list/

Did you know that Valerie Jarrett, the former top advisor to Barack Obama, has a new book out? Even though we’ve been bombarded with promotions and news stories about Michelle Obama’s memoir, there hasn’t been a lot of hype about the new memoir published this month by one of Obama’s closest friends and confidants, who had a tremendous impact on his administration.

The hardcover edition currently ranks at #1,346 overall on Amazon. Last year my book, The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama, reach #485 on Amazon on July 25, 2018. Guess which book ended up on the New York Times bestsellers list, and which one didn’t? That’s right, Valerie Jarrett’s book Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward, is a New York Times bestseller, and my book outperformed hers on Amazon. My book, the Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama also hit #624 on Amazon… and it never made the New York Times bestseller list.

For sure, Amazon is only one retailer, but they have a huge share of the book market, and you can get a good sense of how well a book is doing overall by looking at its Amazon rankings. In particular, Amazon is crushing the digital book market. How is the Kindle edition of Jarrett’s book doing? At the time I wrote this, it is at #11,940. How about my book? The Kindle edition of my book is currently at #10,383 on Amazon. So, the Kindle edition of my book appears to be doing better than Jarrett’s right now, too. CONTINUE AT SITE

Five Times The Obama Administration Investigated Itself By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/trending/five-times-the-obama-administration-investigated-itself/

Each time they cleared itself of any wrongdoing.

Last week, Twitter declared that their own study of tweets by Democrats and Republicans last year proved there was no anti-conservative bias on their social media platform. It was amusing to see how the folks at Twitter considered this definitive proof that they don’t hold a bias against conservatives. It reminded me of how so many times the Obama administration attempted to control the narrative of their own scandals by investigating themselves and then clearing themselves of wrongdoing, with the expectation that the matter would be settled. Here are five examples of times the Obama administration investigated itself in the hopes of burying a scandal.

5. The Senate Seat For Sale Scandal

Few people seem to remember that even before Obama took office his presidential transition was under a cloud of scandal. Just over a month before he was to take office, Obama was implicated in a scandal involving his soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich had hoped to get a Cabinet position or ambassadorship in exchange for appointing an Obama-backed individual to replace him in the Senate. Obama’s top choice had been Valerie Jarrett, and offered to appoint Jarrett “in exchange for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services in the President-elect’s cabinet,” but she eventually opted to follow Obama to the White House as his top advisor.

Presidential Hopeful Marianne Williamson Proposes Federal ‘Department of Peace Creation’ By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/trending/presidential-hopeful-marianne-williamson-proposes-two-new-federal-departments/

Marianne Williamson, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has proposed the creation of two new federal agencies: the Department of Peace Creation and the Department of Children and Youth.

Williamson was asked how the Department of Peace Creation would differ from the State Department.

“Well, the State Department works with international issues and I do believe that we need a far more robust relationship between the State Department and the Defense Department. I have great respect for the U.S. military. We all should and must. My father fought in World War II and as I said, you know, you’re the president. You’re the commander-in-chief but I see the military like the surgeon. If you’re going to have surgery, you want to have the best surgeon,” Williamson said during a CNN town hall on Sunday evening.

“And I don’t think anyone would doubt that America has to have the best possible military but at the same time, you avoid surgery, if at all possible. Even Donald Rumsfeld, who was the secretary of defense for George Bush, said we also have to wage peace.

Horrific Honor Killings in Phoenix By Meira Svirsky

https://clarionproject.org/honor-killings-in-phoenix/

A Muslim man in Arizona was arrested for four honor killings — his wife, two daughters and the man with whom he believed his wife was having an affair.

According to Phoenix Police Sergeant Tommy Thompson, “[Austin Smith] said that the reason he shot these individuals is because in God’s eyes, it was all right for him to deal with someone in this manner who had been involved in adultery, extramarital affairs.”

Smith also told police he killed his seven-year-old daughter because she was “weeping for the wicked.”

According to court documents, he said spared his three-year old who was found hiding under a bed because she reminded him of himself.

As in many cases of honor crimes, some will protest this was merely a case of domestic violence (not withstanding the horrific nature of the crime). And in truth, what is the difference?

Quite simply, even though we don’t know Smith’s psychological profile, we can surmise someone capable of killing his children in cold blood – not to mention his wife and her suspected lover – has to be deranged on a certain level.