Published on May 15, 2019


Come on, if there was one thing kids’ TV programming was desperately crying out for, it was a gay cartoon rat getting married, teaching us all a timely lesson about “diversity.”
So, that’s exactly what the season premiere of the Public Broadcasting Service’s (PBS) “Arthur” cartoon delivered. The episode featured a surprise wedding between the titular aardvark’s humanoid rat teacher and his male partner who appears to also be an aardvark…as CNN put it, “leaving us all in happy tears.”

While many people seemed unsurprised that Mr. Ratburn, a ‘man’ whose principal interests include eating cake and bird-watching, turned out to be a homosexual, there were, nonetheless, heavy celebrations across social media post-nuptials.
Indeed, social justice warriors everywhere were hardly able to contain their glee over the inter-species, same-sex pairing up. If nothing else, the episode confirmed that even kids just barely out of toddlerhood can no longer avoid being pummelled with lessons about identity politics.
Arthur has been on the air for a whopping 22 SEASONS, making it the longest running children’s cartoon on television. So, perhaps we can chalk its success up to being so very in tune with the zeitgeist — and its willingness to take on responsibilities that might otherwise be left to parents. Like lessons about gay marriage, for example.

Should decisions of when and how to teach children about adult relationships really be made by television producers trying to impart their personal values onto everyone else’s kids? Regardless of whether the relationship is heterosexual or same-sex, marriage is hardly a topic many people would expect to be cropping up in a cartoon for four-year-olds.
What’s next? Are busy parents going to have to start vetting the shows their toddlers are watching and pick ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ ones depending on their own political persuasions? Can a parent not sit their child in front of a television show without wondering what wisdom and life lessons the friendly animated characters are going to be imparting next?
Of course, there’s no grave danger in a child learning about marriage and the basics of sexuality (some people are gay, some are straight, etc.), but are these topics really age-appropriate for the under-fives?
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It’s not the first time that PBS has dealt with same-sex relationships in a supposedly child-friendly manner, either. The publicly-funded network ran an episode in 2005 which ambitiously featured two lesbian couples. Although, it appears on that occasion, “Arthur” was a bit ahead of its time and it was forced to pull the episode following parental complaints.
In a statement to People magazine, the network commented on the importance of accurately representing “the diversity of communities across the nation,” as well as the “wide array of adults in the lives of children who look to PBS KIDS every day.”
Social media reaction varied from extreme excitement that wedding bells were finally ringing for Mr. Ratburn to concern that PBS had taken their efforts to promote diversity and educate young kids a tad too far. Some were even downright angry that the channel had decided to “burden” children with thoughts of sexuality and adult relationships, homosexual or otherwise.


By ARTHUR LYONS
The vast majority of the 23 pages that were banned supported Italy’s currently governing coalition made up right and left wing populist parties La Lega (The League) and the 5-Star Movement (MS5), Italy’s La Stampa reports.
Facebooks cited ‘hate speech’ and ‘divisive content’ regarding vaccines, immigrants, and Jewish people as justification for the drastic move.
Apparently, the tech giant’s decision to ban these pages was informed by a report which was created by a leftist NGO by the name of Avaaz, which claims to focus on environmental campaigns and what they regard as ‘human rights’.
A spokesperson from Facebook commented, saying, “We thank Avaaz for sharing its research so we could investigate…We are committed to protecting the integrity of the EU elections and around the world. We have removed a series of false and duplicate accounts that violated our policies on the subject of authenticity, as well as several pages for violation of the policy on changing the name.”
“We have also taken action against some pages that have repeatedly spread misinformation. We will take further measures if we find other violations,” the spokesperson added.
In Avaaz’s report, which was presented to Facebook earlier this month, the NGO claimed that it had discovered 14 Italian networks operating on social media platform which included 104 pages, 6 groups, with a reach of more than 18.2 million individual users.
Of these networks, actions taken by Facebook this week targeted 23 of its pages – totaling nearly 2.45 million individual users and 2.44 million interactions over the past three months.
On top of this, Facebook has also apparently ‘weakened’ pages that it has arbitrarily deemed to be spreading content containing ‘fake news’ – presumably limiting their visibility to Facebook users.
Facebook asserts that its primary motivation for banning these pages was that the page creators had initially chosen page themes which didn’t cite any involvement with political parties or movements, but which had later switched the themes.
Included among the banned pages are ‘Lega Salvini Premier Santa Teresa of Riva’, ‘We want the 5-Star Movement in government’, which had 129,000 followers and nearly 700,000 interactions in just three months, ‘Lega Salvini Sulmona’ — which had 307,000 followers – ‘We Are 5 Stars’, as well as ‘Beppe Grillo for President’.
Facebook’s most recent efforts in Italy to influence this May’s European elections are only the tip of the iceberg, according to Italian media.
Earlier this month, Facebook opened up a ‘war room’ in Dublin, Ireland with 40 teams of full-time engineers, researchers, threat specialists, scientists, and experts for each country who devote their efforts to the European electoral campaign, according to the Italian La Repubblica.
Apparently, there are 500 individuals working on the elections, with the help of 21 so-called ‘fact checkers’, working in 14 different languages.

By Joe Hoft
As somebody who’s worked on FISA applications, I can tell you how high it could go because under the FISA law itself the Attorney General has to approve the FISA application. So if the Steele dossier, which we now know was completely made up, was used as a basis for the FISA application, then you have somebody that was high up in the FBI that had to approve that. Somebody high up in the Justice Department had to approve that. Ultimately the Attorney General [Loretta Lynch] has to approve that.
And then a second thing we haven’t touched on yet is that appears that the FBI attempted to send undercover informants and agents to infiltrate the Trump campaign. There’s a whole other set of laws that are called the Attorney General guidelines which are supposed to only allow that in very, very rare circumstances. So I assume the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General and maybe FBI Director Comey all had to sit in on that decision and approve it…
In March 2017 we reported that President Trump tweeted that former President Obama had petitioned a court [at least] twice in order to wire tap current President Trump when he was running for office.
In his first tweet President Trump tweeted:
Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

The President next tweeted:
Is it legal for a sitting President to be “wire tapping” a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

We also reported that according to ABC News:
More than a thousand applications for electronic surveillance, all signed by the attorney general, are submitted each year, and the vast majority are approved. From 2009 to 2015, for example, more than 10,700 applications for electronic surveillance were submitted, and only one was denied in its entirety, according to annual reports sent to Congress. Another one was denied in part, and 17 were withdrawn by the government.
A very disturbing fact about the wire tapping request of President Trump is that the FISA Court turned down President Obama’s Administration’s first request to wire tap President Trump that was evidently signed off on by Attorney General Lynch. With only two known applications denied out of 10,700 from 2009 through 2015, the fact that the Obama Administration’s application was denied by the FISA Court is very disturbing. The odds of this happening were 0.02%.
Now we know that Carter Page was spied on by the Obama Administration and the information provided to the Court to spy on him was bogus.

Gregory broke four women’s world records during the competition in the squat, bench press and deadlift disciplines as well as total record in her weight class.
Following the event, Gregory thanked the US Powerlifting Federation for allowing her to take part in the competition as a female lifter.

However, the federation didn’t share enthusiasm over Gregory’s record-breaking performance after the obligatory doping control proved that the athlete should have performed in men’s category.
“The lifter exceeded the current female world records in this lifter’s age and weight category. This automatically calls for drug testing protocol which takes place at the end of every event. The drug testing coordinator for this event performed the drug test at which time it was revealed that this female lifter was actually a male in the process of becoming a transgender female,” the federation said in a statement.
“Our rules, and the basis of separating genders for competition, are based on physiological classification rather than identification. On the basis of all information presented to the Board of Directors for this particular case, the conclusion made, is that the correct physiological classification is male.”
The US powerlifting governing body annulled Gregory’s records admitting that the athlete should not have competed against women.
“Since the lifter’s gender classification for the purpose of our rules is not consistent with female, no female records will be broken by these lifts,” the statement reads.


By Charlie Spiering
“We never once discussed it when he was there,” Biden told the Associated Press. “There’s not a single bit of evidence that’s been shown in any reporting that’s been done that he ever talked about it with me or asked any government official for a favor.”
When he was vice president, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine if officials did not fire the country’s top prosecutor, who was pursuing a corruption investigation of an energy company while his son Hunter was serving on the board.
The connection was revealed in author Peter Schweizer’s best-selling book Secret Empires,and the reporting was confirmed in the New York Times.
Hunter Biden was paid as much as $50,000 per month while serving on the board, as his father led the Obama administration’s policy with Ukraine.
Biden’s “not a single bit of evidence” defense echoes former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s repeated assertion that there was no evidence of improper paybacks after she approved the Uranium One deal — despite receiving $145 million in pledges and donations for the Clinton Foundation.
Biden’s Ukraine connection made recent headlines after President Donald Trump’s personal attorney suggested he would travel to Ukraine to investigate the issue before ultimately deciding against it.
Biden criticized Giuliani for even considering the idea.
“I can’t remember any lawyer representing the president, conferring with the president, deciding to go overseas, where a government relies on U.S. largesse to try to get them to do something that everybody knows never happened,” Biden said during an interview with WMUR.
In the same interview, he also pointed to the reporting surrounding the conflict of interest.
“All the reports indicated that not a single, solitary thing was inappropriate about what my son did. He never talked to me. He never talked to anybody in the administration,” Biden said.
In his interview with the Associated Press, Biden defended his son’s role on the board.
“I have great confidence in my son,” he said. “He’s a man of great integrity.”

By
The article, titled “YouTube’s Newest Far-Right, Foul-Mouthed, Red-Pilling Star Is A 14-Year-Old Girl,” desribes a YouTuber going by the name “Soph,” who makes videos with social commentary about current events and culture, often filled with vulgar language one wouldn’t expect to come from a 14-year old girl.
Bernstein quickly makes his reason for publishing the article clear, seeming to make a call for her removal from the platform in his sub-title, writing: “‘Soph’ has nearly a million followers on the giant video platform. The site’s executives only have themselves to blame.”
The majority of his article is targeting one video in particular, where the YouTube star wears an Islamic chador and makes a joking apology for comments she made about Islam.
WATCH BELOW (WARNING, VULGAR LANGUAGE):
In the video, Soph uses absurdist comedy in her commentary about Islam, where she does touch on a lot of issues prevalent in radical Islam.
Starting off the video, she declares that she has “become a devout follower of the Prophet Muhammad,” describing it as mostly being a “f*** ton of fun,” despite having to be raped by her 40-year old husband.
She also discusses Muslim rape gangs, which are a very real thing in the Islamic world.
For doing this, Bernstein believes that YouTube should shut her down.
He claims that the platform is exploiting children by allowing them to have right-wing views on the platform, writing:
“Users — and more importantly to YouTube, advertisers — have over the past year started to hold the platform accountable for enabling the exploitation of children and exposing them to disturbing content. But this video reveals an entirely different way the platform is harming kids: by letting them express extreme views in front of the entire world. This is what indoctrination looks like when it’s reflected back by the indoctrinated.”
Since the release of the article, Soph appears to have begun facing targeting from YouTube, being temporarily blocked from uploading on the platform.
Along with trying to get her shut down, Bernstein called her father to try to get comment for the story, something Sophia Levin, the former New Yorker journalist who was fired after lying about an ICE agent being a Nazi did as well.
