JUNE 13, 2019
The popular children’s cartoon, both enjoyed by young children, and strangely enough, older men called “bronies”, is celebrating Pride Month with an LGBT horse couple in one of its final episodes as the series comes to an end later this year.
At first glance one might be tempted to assume it’s a Sabrina the Teenage Witch situation i.e. two adult siblings as the legal guardians of their niece à la Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda. But it soon becomes evident that Holiday and Lofty are not siblings or even in-laws but in fact a romantic lesbian couple. In case there’s any lingering doubt Michael Vogel, a writer/producer for MLP and former vice president of development for Hasbro, confirmed their relationship via Twitter.
Screen shots of the episode, which has not yet aired in the United States but has already treated overseas audiences, reveals images of the two female horses kissing.
Apparently the “couple” was first announced in a 2017 children’s book associated with the show, and the lesbian horses’ romantic relationship was confirmed by the author on Twitter.
Comics Beat also added that the show’s creator, Chris Nee, is a “proud and out lesbian” who believes it is very important to sexualize children’s programming, noting the importance of depicting “depict positive queer representation in children’s entertainment.”
While the left and their allies in their entertainment industry are attempting to do all they can to sexualize children, President Donald Trump’s administration recently arrested nearly 1,700 alleged child sex offenders in a massive operation spanning from April to May.
By Patrick Howley
In response, the National Guard has warned its service members not to wear their uniforms in public while they are off duty, as the anti-pipeline protests intensify.
“I can confirm that the incident took place, and that there were National Guard soldiers that were involved,” National Guard lieutenant colonel Anthony Deiss confirms to Big League Politics. More than 80 people protested outside the Rapid City courthouse as the battle over the Keystone pipeline heads to court. The ACLU’s lawsuit against South Dakota governor Kristi Noem over a law seeking criminal penalties for “riot boosting” made its way to court Thursday.
“We’ve made National Guard soldiers and service members aware of the incident and what had happened and to maintain awareness when out in public in uniform, and if they see something out of the ordinary or suspicious to report that through the chain of command,” Deiss stated.
“While off duty is what we recommended,” Deiss said, confirming that the National Guard recommended that its soldiers not wear their uniforms in public while off duty.
“When they are off-duty, we make recommendations on what they should wear, but most service members when they’re off duty usually wear civilian clothes anyway,” Deiss said.
Shad Olson, South Dakota broadcaster and activist, first learned about the incident and wrote the following:
“It was an ugly lunchtime scene at a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Rapid City Wednesday as a group of Army National Guard soldiers were accosted, insulted and attacked by members of a large group of militant leftist oil pipeline protesters who have traveled to Rapid City to disrupt federal court proceedings regarding a new law that provides enhanced penalties for pipeline protesting on private property.
Witnesses say that police were called and that the restaurant manager was attempting to forcibly remove members of that protest group after their screaming chants of “Babykiller, Babykiller,” and profanity against the soldiers disrupted an otherwise peaceful meal for customers. As she was leaving, one woman set off a smoke device that triggered fire alarms and caused an evacuation of the restaurant.
Army National Guard soldiers stationed at Camp Rapid in Rapid City have now been instructed to avoid wearing their uniforms out and about in public until the conclusion of the federal court proceeding that has drawn more than a thousand leftist protesters to the Black Hills of South Dakota.”
The lists allow Google employees –who CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress in December never “manually intervene on any particular search result”– to suppress certain addresses in a user’s search results.
The Daily Caller claims to have seen screenshots of the lists in question. Google did not address whether its staff deliberately weed out certain political content, but did say they are working to filter out “inappropriate” search results.
The first list, titled “webanswers_url_blacklist,” lets staff block specific web addresses from popping up in Google’s ‘featured snippets’ when a user asks a question. Many of the pages blocked are op-ed articles, which a user could mistake for straight news reporting. This list appears to target opinion pieces in general, regardless of their political bent.
Another list, which the Daily Caller suggests was compiled by algorithm, blanket blacklists a host of conservative and “fringe” sites from appearing in the ‘featured snippets.’ The American Spectator, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and the website of Bring Your Bible to School Day are among those included. Several progressive sites, including Consortium News and a blog called Breitbart Unmasked also reportedly made the list.
That Google would censor conservative or “fringe” content will come as no surprise to some. The company, along with a bevy of other Silicon Valley tech giants, has been accused of harboring a liberal bias for several years now, with new stories of favoritism surfacing regularly.
A recent study found that Google’s search algorithms display a “left-leaning ideological skew,” while video footage of an internal company meeting recorded after the 2016 election showed executives calling Donald Trump’s victory “deeply offensive” and talking about using AI to fight populism in future.
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, implemented a blanket ban on “hateful” and “supremacist” videos last week. The ban, which came about after Vox journalist Carlos Maza led a campaign against conservative shock-jock Steven Crowder, swept away or demonetized thousands of videos critical of the social justice movement and several video reports on extremist movements by legitimate journalists.
‘This will not go well’: YouTube cracks down on pundits & journalists after policy change
Though the right has made the most noise about big tech’s alleged censorship efforts, a growing number of left-wing voices have been sounding the alarm too. Facebook has been perhaps most overt in clamping down on anti-establishment content across the political spectrum, but Google has also come under fire for changing its algorithms to de-rank left-wing, socialist, and anti-war websites.
Journalist Max Blumenthal called the tech giants’ clampdown part of “a wider war on dissident narratives in online media.”
Published on Jun 11, 2019
JUNE 13, 2019
Two journalists were injured and six police officers were hospitalized in the clashes late Wednesday, according to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.
“Let me be clear – the aggression shown towards our officers and deputies tonight was unwarranted,” Strickland said in a statement.
The crowd launched bricks and rocks at Memphis police and multiple police vehicles were damaged; the windows of a local fire station were also smashed.
The violent clashes occurred in response to the reported death by shooting of a felony suspect, who was killed in a botched raid by US Marshals in North Memphis.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, agents attempted to arrest the suspect –who reportedly had multiple felony warrants–– but the man entered a car and began ramming police vehicles indiscriminately before exiting with a weapon.
Police opened fire and the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. It is, as yet, unknown how many shots were fired or how many times the suspect was hit. Memphis police were not directly involved in the shooting.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said it is “closely monitoring” the situation.
By Tony Lee
“The Case for Reparations” author Ta-Nehisi Coates and actor Danny Glover are reportedly set to testify before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the hearing’s stated purpose will be “to examine, through open and constructive discourse, the legacy of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, its continuing impact on the community and the path to restorative justice,” according to a Thursday Associated Press report.
The June 19 hearing also “coincides with Juneteenth, a cultural holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved blacks in America.”
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), who sits on the subcommittee, again introduced H.R. 40 earlier this year to create a reparations commission. Jackson Lee said her bill would create a commission “to study the impact of slavery and continuing discrimination against African-Americans, resulting directly and indirectly from slavery to segregation to the desegregation process and the present day.” She added in January that the “commission would also make recommendations concerning any form of apology and compensation to begin the long delayed process of atonement for slavery.”
“The impact of slavery and its vestiges continues to effect African Americans and indeed all Americans in communities throughout our nation,” Jackson Lee said. “This legislation is intended to examine the institution of slavery in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present, and further recommend appropriate remedies. Since the initial introduction of this legislation, its proponents have made substantial progress in elevating the discussion of reparations and reparatory justice at the national level and joining the mainstream international debate on the issues. Though some have tried to deflect the importance of these conversations by focusing on individual monetary compensation, the real issue is whether and how this nation can come to grips with the legacy of slavery that still infects current society. Through legislation, resolutions, news, and litigation, we are moving closer to making more strides in the movement toward reparations.”
Jackson Lee argued that despite the progress of African-Americans in the private sector, education, and the government in addition to “the election of the first American President of African descent, the legacy of slavery lingers heavily in this nation.”
“While we have focused on the social effects of slavery and segregation, its continuing economic implications remain largely ignored by mainstream analysis,” she continued. “These economic issues are the root cause of many critical issues in the African-American community today, such as education, healthcare and criminal justice policy, including policing practices. The call for reparations represents a commitment to entering a constructive dialogue on the role of slavery and racism in shaping present-day conditions in our community and American society.”
In the Senate, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a 2020 presidential candidate, introduced the companion legislation, saying creating a reparations committee “is a way of addressing head-on the persistence of racism, white supremacy, and implicit racial bias in our country.”
“It will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed,” Booker said in April.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in addition to nearly every Democrat running for president, has endorsed Jackson Lee’s bill.
And though Coates praised Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-CA) this week on the reparations issue, Warren, like nearly every other 2020 Democrat with the exception of former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, has squirrelly dodged questions about whether the United States government should make cash payments to the descendants of slaves.
By Joshua Caplan
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the panel’s chairman, claims the pair have been uncooperative in Congress’s “oversight” investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses,” Schiff said in a statement. “Both Michael Flynn and Rick Gates were critical witnesses for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, but so far have refused to cooperate fully with Congress.”
The California Democrat continued: “That’s simply unacceptable. The American people, and the Congress, deserve to hear directly from these two critical witnesses. We hope these witnesses come to recognize their cooperation as being with the United States, not merely the Department of Justice.”
Flynn and Gates are to turn over documents to the committee by June 26th and sit for an interview, under oath, on July 10th, the subpoena states.
Flynn admitted to making false statements to the FBI regarding conversations he shared with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2017, while Gates pleaded guilty to false statements and conspiracy charges related to political consulting efforts he and onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort undertook for Ukraine. The trio was charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into now-debunked collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
The development comes a day after Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor, hired seasoned lawyer Sidney Powell as his new counsel as he awaits sentencing.
The former Assistant U.S. Attorney is an outspoken critic of the Mueller probe and has called Andrew Weissmann, often referred to as the special counsel’s “pit bull,” the “poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.”
The move came after court filings revealed last week that Flynn terminated his lawyers Stephen Anthony and Robert Kelner of Covington & Burling LLP, as his counsel.
President Trump praised Powell’s hiring on social media Thursday morning, calling her a “great lawyer.”
“General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted.
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