Why has Illinois become a stinking bog of degradation, violence, and fiscal collapse? It’s because we have scores of “leaders,” and activists who are as unable to distinguish right from wrong as they are unable to distinguish men from women. One of those activists is Oren Jacobson, devoted advocate for the slaughter of preborn humans, founder of Men4Choice, board member of pro-human slaughter Personal PAC, self-identifying “thought leader,” and self-promoter extraordinaire who recently said,

Everything we’re doing is focused on getting what are really millions of men—who in theory are pro-choice but are completely passive when it comes to their voice and their energy and their time in the fight for abortion rights and abortion access—to get off the sidelines and step in the fight as allies.

And here I thought men were supposed to shut up about abortion.

In an interview on MSNBC with Zerlina Maxwell after the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked, Jacobson emoted,

I want to say one thing to … all the women watching, everybody who can get pregnant, how deeply sorry I am that we’re in this moment. I’m feeling very emotional about that.

He had to add that last statement in case everybody who can get pregnant didn’t notice his phony voice-cracking indicating he was about to fake-cry. Jacobson wants everybody who can get pregnant to know he has Deep Feelings about the possibility that pregnant women—and men—may not be legally allowed to slaughter their offspring. Nuttin’ means nuttin’ without Deep Feelings.

And boy, oh, boy does the emotive Jacobson have Deep Feelings—deep feelings and a vivid imagination. The mere thought of women not being free to slaughter their unborn leads Jacobson to imagine a horrific dystopian handmaid’s tale where rapists roam free and women’s very humanity is denied:

If this is, in fact, the ruling that the Court will hand down, that in at least 13 states right away and most likely in 25 0r 26 states pretty quickly, a rapist will have more rights than a woman in those states. And it is beyond horrifying to imagine a future in which your humanity, your dignity, your ability to control your life is valued less than a rapist.

What precisely are the “rights” rapists will have that women will not in states that acknowledge the humanity of unborn humans? And how are the humanity and dignity of women diminished by recognizing the humanity and dignity of their offspring and protecting their right not to be exterminated?

I’m not exactly sure what the self-identifying “thought leader” Jacobson means when he says that restricting or banning human slaughter means women’s humanity, dignity, and ability to control their lives are “valued less than a rapist.” Rape is illegal, and if caught, rapists are arrested and punished.

Maybe he’s referring to opposition to abortion in cases of rape. Many people who believe in the sanctity, humanity, and dignity of all human life believe that humans created through criminal acts should not be punished for the crimes of their fathers. Such a belief does not constitute either a devaluation of women or an elevated valuation of rapists.

Rather than feeling horrified that 64 million humans have been slaughtered since 1973 because they were imperfect, inconvenient, or unwanted by their mothers, Jacobson is horrified that the killings may stop.

Jacobson sidestepped an awkward question from interviewer Maxwell who said the quiet part out loud, tacitly admitting that men and women use human slaughter as a means of contraception:

One of the things I think we need to talk about … is how men benefit from abortion. … There are men who would not be CEOs but for access to contraception. Tell us how men benefit.

Jacobson was politically canny and cunning enough to avoid responding to that question. Instead, he launched into an autonomy answer that—again—ignores the person with the most at stake and no voice whatsoever:

I want every pro-choice male to step into this out of an obligation to stand up for the freedoms to those most directly impacted. … You deserve the right, within the context of a healthy relationship, to make decisions with your partner that are in the best interest of your family. … In my own personal life, when we have had moments in planning our family … at no point did I give a rip what Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, or any other of these anti-abortion men with power across the country thought about what my wife and I should do. And that is why, to me … this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

When considering whether the “product” of conception between two humans is a human; whether that “product” has humanity, dignity, and value; whether the “product’s” body is her mother’s body; and whether a more developed human should be able to kill the “product,” I don’t give a rip what Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, J.B. Pritzker, Jared Polis, Jan Schakowsky, Gavin Newsom, Oren Jacobson, or any other pro-human slaughter men and women with power who refuse to recognize that abortion involves two human bodies thinks.

And that’s why this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

Jacobson continues with his dissembling and evasion:

The simple reality is that the men in America who oppose abortion, who are using their privilege and their power, are not shy, and they are not quiet. So, the question isn’t why shouldn’t men get loud. It’s why haven’t we been getting louder sooner.

Surely, Jacobson knows that men who support the legal right of women to off their offspring have been “using their privilege and power” to rob the unborn of their right to live. In fact, it was seven men, six of whom were white, who in a raw exercise of their power and privilege denied the humanity, dignity, and right to life of preborn humans in Roe v. Wade.

And surely, Jacobson knows why men haven’t “been getting louder sooner.” The reason is that feminist harpies have been shrieking for years that men have no right to speak on abortion—despite the fact that the babies killed have fathers too.

But I agree with Jacobson. Men should get involved. Men should donate to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and advocacy organizations.

Men, who should be the protectors of and providers for women and children, should march shoulder-to-shoulder with women in pro-life marches. Men should listen to the voices of women who were pressured to have their sons and daughters killed, who live with bone-deep grief and regret, and who are angry that their country tolerates the slaughter of thousands of babies every year.

And to quote Jacobson,

Men, your job is to carry the voices of those women to your peers and buddies, to call them, text them, post on social media about this, to start lifting up those voices and owning this conversation amongst your friends.

The very lives of humans depend on the voices of men and women who know truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jacobson-Another-Foolish-Illinois-Activist.mp3

The Biden administration calls it the “Disinformation Governance Board” (DGB—word on the streets is that it was going to be named the “Knowledge Governance Board,” but “KGB” was already taken).

The rest of America calls it the Ministry of Truth, a title derived from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

In a rollout almost as wildly inept as Biden’s exit from Afghanistan, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced its new effort to combat “disinformation.” After the past decade of Democrats spreading misinformation and disinformation, aided and abetted by leftist collaborators at the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC, conservatives are justifiably wary about the DGB.

While leftists have sent to their memory hole the mis- and dis- information they spread like manure all across the fruited plains, conservative Americans have not forgotten it.

Conservatives remember the mis- and dis- excrement leftists spread about the cause of the Benghazi attacks, Trumps alleged collusion with Russia (including Adam Schiff’s bald-faced lies), the lurid tall tale about urinating Russian prostitutes, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the origins of the Wuhan virus, and the efficacy of masks. No conservative in American believes this is the kind of misinformation or disinformation targeted by any agency under a Democrat administration.

Leftists in America’s power centers have a habit of spreading lies that they know are lies about conservatives. Leftists in America’s power centers have a habit of deeming stories critical of leftists “misinformation” or “disinformation” without doing any research to confirm their premature conclusions. And leftists in America’s power centers have a habit of justifying their refusal to report stories favorable to conservatives by deeming them misinformation or disinformation.

The timing of this announcement compounds conservative suspicions. The announcement came just before mid-term elections, just after the Biden administration announced it will be stopping Title 42 border expulsions, and just after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, vowing to make it a free speech platform.

Musk raised the hope that there will be no more algorithmic shenanigans that many believe were used by leftist-controlled social media platforms to throw the election to a senile recluse who refused to campaign and yet won by an alleged landslide.

And at the very moment that conservative hopes for the same kind of freedom leftists enjoy were raised, the DGB was born.

If the birth of the DGB weren’t bad enough, just take a look at the unprincipled, flakey head of the DGB: Nina Jankowicz who belts out obscene show tunes like a Broadway wannabe.

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson sent a letter to the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas expressing concerns about both the Jankowicz and the DGB that many Americans share:

Ms. Jankowicz herself has been a beacon of misinformation online.  She has published multiple tweets furthering the false media narrative about the Hunter Biden laptop. In one tweet she wrote, “IC has a high degree of confidence that the Kremlin used proxies to push influence narratives, including misleading or unsubstantiated claims about President Biden, to US media, officials, and influencers, some close to President Trump. A clear nod to the alleged Hunter laptop.” In another, she referred to the origins of how the media came into possession of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a “fairy tale about a laptop repair shop.” She has also posted tweets pushing the Trump-Russia collusion hoax and another implying the United States is as corrupt as Ukraine.

Now, DHS is creating a board to counter misinformation focusing on irregular migration and Russia and appointing a purveyor of misinformation to lead that effort. DHS is taking this action just weeks after announcing its plans to stop Title 42 expulsions at the southwest border, which has sparked a surge of illegal migrant crossing at the border, with CBP reporting an average of over 7,000 encounters a day in March 2022 compared with over 5,900 a day in February 2022. DHS even concedes it needs to be prepared to encounter 18,000 migrants a day at the southwest border once Title 42 is lifted.

You claim this Administration’s border policies are humane, but the crises caused by your policies have only added to the many tragedies caused by illegal immigration. I am concerned DHS’s Disinformation Board will only serve to silence or censor those voices critical of your disastrous policies and serve a political cover for your failure to secure the border.

Ironically, Jankowicz was against government oversight of speech  before she was for it:

Imagine that, you know, with President Trump right now calling all of these news organizations that have inconvenient for him stories that … they’re getting out there that he’s calling fake news, and now lashing out at platforms. I would never want to see our executive branch have that sort of power.

Here’s a revolutionary idea for the powerbrokers who want to run other people’s lives: How about finding a principle and then screwing it to a sticking place—like maybe your spine.

Just as leftists have defined conservative moral and ontological claims about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation “hate speech,” so they can ban it, leftists in the Department of Homeland Security will define news stories they hate “misinformation” and “disinformation,” so they can do likewise.

There is one bit of good news peeking out from behind the cloud of oppression that has issued from the penumbras formed by gaseous emanations expelled from the Biden administration. We have learned that the Biden administration has mastered the art of losing an election: Raise gas prices, raise food prices, make America oil-dependent again, make the world a more dangerous place, judge people by the color of their skin and their genitalia, open wide our Southern border, tell parents the government owns their children, and then tell Americans that a powerful, unaccountable government bureaucracy is going to decide which ideas and opinions constitute “misinformation.”

Yep, that should tap the last nail in Joe’s metaphorical coffin. Rational, liberty-loving voters of every color don’t want the government deciding what their children should be taught, which laws can be broken, or whose speech can be banned.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Biden-Administrations-Even-Harder-Fascistic-Turn.mp3

The ugly truth about leftists is that their desire for freedom extends only to members of the hive. Only worker bees enslaved to the drag Queen should be permitted to speak in the virtual public square. If Americans didn’t realize that before, they sure know it now from the unhinged responses of leftists to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. They don’t fear that Musk will clamp down on speech, or that he’ll create new algorithms that censor “progressive” speech, or that Twitter will ban news stories. No, they fear Musk will allow free speech on Twitter, including speech leftists hate, which leftists call “hate speech.” They unjustifiably fear Musk might treat leftists like Dorsey and Zuckerberg have treated the right.

One of the most eye-popping responses to Musk’s purchase came from MSNBC host Ari Melber who appeared completely ignorant of the irony dripping from his lips:

If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t even have to be transparent, you could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of it nominees. Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find about it till after the election.

Twitter employee and proud illegal “Latinx” Laura i. Gomez shares Melber’s concern that a free Twitter may prevent leftist candidates from being elected:

A M*sk-owned Twitter is one of the greatest threats to the 2022 and 2024 elections. We are f*cked if this happens.

What leftists most hate is the possibility that Americans will now be able to express freely their beliefs about topics like homosexuality, marriage, “trans”-cultism, and racist “anti-racism.” Leftists think conservative beliefs on these topics are offensive, destructive, and dangerous and want them censored, while they—leftists—should remain free to share their beliefs, which half the country finds offensive, destructive, and dangerous. Leftists arrogate to themselves the right to decide for the entire country which beliefs are hateful, dangerous, and should be censored.

Since the lion’s share of banning and shadow-banning by social media platforms pertains to dissent from their views of sexuality, a few words on that topic are in order.

For the umpteenth time, believing homoerotic acts or cross-sex impersonation are immoral and harmful does not constitute hatred of persons. Nor are public expressions of those beliefs calls to violence.

Moral disapproval of homoerotic acts and cross-sex impersonation no more constitute hatred of persons who engage in them than does moral disapproval of consensual adult incest, zoophilia, or polyamory constitute hatred of persons who engage in those acts. Yet, no one is accused of being “haters” for expressing disapproval of sibling “love,” animal “love,” or sexual profligacy. And public expressions of disapproval of these forms of “love” are not banned for violating “community standards” on social media.

(As a relevant aside, no public schools promote “acceptance” of these forms of “love”—not even in the service of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance. And here I thought to leftists “love is love.”)

The so-called “freedom” that Twitter, Facebook, and Ari Melber fancy is not the freedom Americans once cherished and led to the ACLU’s decision in the 1970’s to defend the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois—the home of many Jews and survivors of the Holocaust. The “freedom” leftists love is the tyranny that fascists everywhere love.

If Americans didn’t fear loss of employment over speaking freely, there would be even more free speech in the virtual public square. And if the ability to make a living in America—particularly in an America run by corporate behemoths—depends on censorship of ideas that leftists hate, the First Amendment means nothing.

Elon Musk is right:

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

The ACLU once believed that. In 1968, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a young black attorney working for the ACLU, defended the right of the National States’ Rights Party, a white supremacist group, to hold a rally. Looking back on her decision, Norton said,

[T]he reason that we had free speech, continue to have free speech, particularly as African Americans, is because nobody could keep us from speaking. They could keep us from using the same facilities, they could keep us from voting. But the First Amendment said that everybody can talk. It turns out that free speech is most important to those who have the least in our society.

Former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier expanded on the Holmes’ decision:

Eleanor won that case nine nothing in the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately anyone can be silenced. It depends who’s in power at a given moment, who they want to silence, whether they want to silence them for political reasons or for corrupt reasons. There can be all kinds of reasons to want to cut off somebody’s speech. And the only way to prevail in free speech cases is to stand for the principle of freedom of speech, to say that freedom of speech cuts across all ideological concerns, all other concerns, and that if anybody is denied the right to speak, it threatens the right to speak of everybody.

While the left blathers on about justice, they mete out injustice at every turn. For example, leftists talk a lot about the wealthy paying their fair share, but they talk little about how much of their money the wealthy voluntarily redistribute to projects that likely do a more efficient job of alleviating suffering than would a bloated, inefficient, corrupt government bureaucracy unaccountable to the public whose money they waste.

I, for one, am very glad that Elon Musk had a few billion dollars lying around to spend on a worthy project that will help preserve First Amendment rights that leftists have their deceitful and desperately sick hearts set on destroying.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Musk-v-Leftist-Hatred-of-Free-Speech.mp3

For over half a century, theologically orthodox Christians in America have been woefully late and buckets of ducats short when it comes to cultural degradation. Most seem to have no ability to read portents, and they stubbornly refuse to heed the warning of those who do. And so, the suffering that inevitably results when societies deny truth increases.

The church in America is blessed both with cultural prophets to whom God has given the gift of understanding the implications of ideas and with the freedom to speak. Let’s hope and pray that the church heeds the warnings of one of our finest cultural critics, the prescient Rod Dreher, author of the book Live Not by Lies.

In a recent post titled, “Secret Activists Queering Evangelical Churches?” Dreher blogged about the “diabolical” scheme of “trans” activists to destroy the church from within and without simultaneously, using deception and abusing the law to do it.

He described “an extraordinary telephone conversation with a friend who is a senior state leader in a nationally prominent Evangelical denomination, one that skews conservative on LGBT issues” who told Dreher, “you need to know what the next front in the culture war is.” Dreher recounts the conversation:

My friend told me that pastors in five different churches in the southern region of his state reported at the conference the same phenomenon. They have had strangers come and join their congregations, and six months or so later, come out as transgender, and demand their rights as official members of the congregation. It has happened to so many of these churches, in the same period of time, that they believe it is part of a concerted effort to undermine those churches. … [T]here is serious concern among the denomination’s lawyers that these undercover trans activists have found a legal way to force these congregations to capitulate on trans issues, or face ruinous lawsuits.

After posting his article, Dreher received emails that he appended to his original piece, one of which was from an academic who explained “how their former research center actively recruited interns to go into churches posing as parishioners to spread gender ideology.” (Dreher used the pronoun “their” to conceal the sex of the academic–not to capitulate to “trans”-cultism.)

Another email emphasized the nature and scope of the persecution to which “trans” cultists and their “progressive” allies hope to subject conservative Christians:

Lengthy legal procedures can be financially ruinous and just sap people’s strength. How many times was the Colorado baker sued? Maybe a Bush/Trump appointee will throw such cases out, but an Obama/Biden judge? May very well allow the procedure to continue–that’s the persecution. How much money and resources do these churches and denominations have?

The case doesn’t have to win to put churches out of business, it just has to drag and take up resources. Secularists have thousands and thousands of lawyers on standby chomping at the bit for causes like this and there are millions if not billions in funds from wealthy liberals for such purposes. There are tons of secular attorneys, think tanks, and professors in various academic fields willing to throw everything including the kitchen sink at coming up with new BS arguments. But even if the arguments are BS, some attorney has to argue they are BS. And the time, money, and resources are on the side of the enemy even if the law is not.

Finally, I doubt winning the case would even be the primary objective. Closing the churches is. Making Christians live in fear. Chasing the members away. Making people afraid to identify with their churches or as Christians. You can bet MSNBC and their ilk will widely publicize any such cases. Will Chase Bank continue to let such a church put their money in? Or give them a loan?

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/news-stories/lgbt-2017

https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/diversity-inclusion/534298-jpmorgan-chase-is-donating-5-million-to-these

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plot-to-politicize-banking-11579046350

Hard to keep a church building going if you can’t have a bank account. Haven’t we already seen banks purge political undesirables already?

Then there are the members. The activists will no doubt identify and expose the members. To the public and probably their employers. Joe the auto mechanic might be fine, but the medical doctors? Attorneys? Engineers? The people who carry the financial burden of your church? What do you think their employers will do? These people will be subjected to public struggle sessions by the activists/media. If they say the wrong thing, they could find themselves unemployed. How many members will even need that to run away and hide? Just being known to the public as a bigot might be enough for many members to disassociate.

The members themselves need to be prepared for persecution.

In addition to being spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually prepared for persecution, Dreher urges churches to follow the recommendation of attorneys his friend has consulted:

[O]n the advice of lawyers, the congregations are rewriting their bylaws to protect themselves from this kind of sneak attack.

A religious liberty attorney who responded to Dreher’s post emphasized the urgent need of churches to make changes:

[E]very church absolutely must have updated their Statement of Faith and related bylaws for the post-Obergefell era. If churches do not have detailed, clear “theologies of the body” that are written down, they will be vulnerable. You cannot wait until you get sued or challenged to address the issue. Do it now.

Dreher too implores churches to make changes immediately:

If you are a leader in a traditional/conservative congregation, denomination, or Christian school, I strongly urge you to contact Alliance Defending Freedom and get information on how you can protect yourselves legally.

But Dreher doubts whether American evangelical churches will accept the new reality given their recent history of mistaken credulity, and so they will remain unprepared for the kind of persecution the church has experienced elsewhere:

[I]t seems that most American churches, and American Christians, prefer to console themselves with the idea that everything is going to be just fine if we keep doing what we have been doing, only with more heart. This … is dangerously naive.

Dreher’s friend similarly laments the failure of the evangelical church to respond properly to the “peril” it faces, telling Dreher,

that he is deeply discouraged about the future of traditional Christianity in his denomination and in his state, saying that the leadership in so many churches prefer to keep their heads buried in the ground, because they can’t emotionally accept the reality of what is happening.

Either out of ignorance or infernal political “strategery,” leftists, including leftists who identify as Christians, will mock Dreher’s spot-on post as absurd paranoia. Ignore their forked-tongue noise. Dreher is right.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Rod-Dreher-Warns-Christians-About-LGBTQ-Assaults-on-Religious-Liberty.mp3

The dust that racist bullies tried to kick in the face of the honorable U.S. Senator Tim Scott for his crime of delivering a far superior speech in response to Biden’s lackluster recitation before a sparsely attended joint session of Congress has not quite settled.

In addition to delivering a poignant, inspiring speech, Sen. Scott committed the crime of rejecting the dogma spewed by leftists who detest tolerance, inclusivity, and free-thinking—especially from blacks whom they desperately need to keep chained to the Democrat Party.

In order to malign Sen. Scott, MSNBC’s oft-deceitful Joy Reid had to misrepresent what he said. In a scornful tone, she imitated Scott, saying, “This isn’t a racist country. There’s no racism here.”

The first problem is Sen. Scott never said, “There’s no racism here.” He said America is not a racist country—big difference that apparently escaped Reid.

America is constituted and defined centrally by the principles delineated in our founding documents—documents which assume the existence of God–and Americans can be justifiably evaluated in terms of how they align with those principles. The Left is now moving America at a precipitous pace away from the Constitution and God and toward racism and other forms of oppression.

Since there are racists in every country in the world, and racist acts—including speech acts—are committed in every country in the world, does Reid believe every country in the world is racist?

There are liars in this country (including at MSNBC and CNN) and every other country. Does that, in Reid’s view, make America and every other country lying countries? In Reid’s view, are MSNBC and CNN lying companies?

There are lazy people in this and every other country. Does that make America and every other country lazy countries?

There are egregiously selfish people in this and every other country. Does that make America and every other country egregiously selfish countries?

There are lawless anarchists who loot and burn private businesses in America. Is America, therefore, a lawless, anarchical country?

Joe Biden said America is not a racist country, and Kamala Harris said Americans are not racists. In Reid’s view, are they racists?

“Progressives” have spewed virulently racist comments at Sen. Scott in the hours and days since his response. In Reid’s view, is “progressivism” racist?

Not to be outdone by Reid in the creepy racism department, MSNBC host Tiffany Cross described the “inside” of Sen. Scott’s head as “hollow,” asserting that he represents “no one but the sleepy, slow-witted sufferers of Stockholm syndrome who get elevated to prominence for repeating a false narrative about this country that makes conservative white people feel comfortable.” Cross called him Mitch McConnell’s “tap dancer,” and a “token” who is “thirsty for white approval.”

That’s rhetoric that would make a KKK grand wizard smile.

Cross claimed that when blacks speak “an uncomfortable truth, like Nikole Hannah-Jones [author of the 1619 Project], the party that Scott claims is not racist gets big mad and tries to silence you.” Her evidence for the outlandish claim that Republicans try to silence black “progressives” was that “Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to scrap teaching of the 1619 Project.” Perfect encapsulation of the “progressive” belief that their freedom to do (or have) anything requires government subsidization.

Not using tax dollars or providing federal support for a particular curriculum does not constitute silencing it. And Republicans don’t object to the 1619 Project being taught in government schools because it articulates “uncomfortable” truths. They object to it because it’s a biased load of propaganda that many historians—including historians of color—find historically inaccurate.

While we digest the unsavory tripe that racist “progressives” are force-feeding us, trying to gaslight Americans into believing the freest, least racist country in the history of the world is “systemically racist,” let’s ruminate on a few questions.

Which political party supports the sale and purchase of humans (or genetic material to create humans)?

Which party separates children from mothers or fathers?

Which party declares some humans to be non-persons?

Which party denies children the freedom to go to good schools?

Which party tries to command persons of color what to think and say?

Which party is obsessed with skin color, averring that skin color matters more than character?

Are “progressives” like Reid and Cross concerned about the disproportionate number of black babies being slaughtered in their mothers’ wombs every year? Black Arizona State Representative Walt Blackman sure is:

Abortion impacts African Americans at a higher rate than any other population group. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an Abortion Surveillance Report. According to that report, black women make up 14 percent of the childbearing population. Yet, 36 percent of all abortions were obtained by black women. At a ratio of 474 abortions per 1,000 live births, black women have the highest ratio of any group in the country. …

A study by Protecting Black Lives, in 2012, found that 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s surgical abortion facilities are located within walking distance of minority communities.

In the past, we criticized the tobacco industry for targeting young people with their advertising. Recently, the nicotine vape industry has been criticized for similar practices. The prevalence of abortion providers in African American and Hispanic neighborhoods indicates the abortion industry is targeting too. It smacks of the eugenics-linked past of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her views of contraception and abortion as ways of diminishing the black population.

What do Reid and Cross call “progressive” support for the killing of black babies? What do they call “progressive” support for Planned Parenthood, which plants most of its abattoirs in the heart of black communities? What do they call “progressive” endorsement of fatherless families and the policies that incentivize them when studies show one of the chief predictors of success is being raised in a home with a father? What do they call “progressive” refusal to offer school choice to disadvantaged families of color? What do they call it when “progressives” teach children of one skin color that children of another skin color are “lesser than”? What do they call it when “progressives” hurl the epithet “Uncle Tim” at a black man for thinking freely?

I call the whole stinking mess systemic racism.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/systemicRacismProgressives_mixdown.mp3

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We learned this week that the love of money is the root of all evil. Well, we learned that in Scripture. This week purportedly conservative Christian governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson just reminded us of it when he sold out children to corporate interests.

For those still basking blithely in the afterglow of America’s once shining light or are socially distancing under a rock, the Arkansas legislature sent a bill to Hutchinson that would 1. prohibit doctors from the risky and experimental use of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones—some of the effects of which are permanent—for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, 2. prohibit surgeons from performing mutilating, irreversible cosmetic procedures on minors. and 3. prohibit the use of public funds, including Medicaid, for any of those barbaric, snake oil “treatments.”

The purportedly conservative, purportedly Christian Hutchinson vetoed this commonsense bill to protect children from procedures that are devastating young healthy bodies.

Hutchinson might reflect for a moment on who exactly is cheering his decision. Hint: It’s not conservatives. Oh, no, it’s the “trans”-cult; the “entertainment” industry; the medical industrial complex; the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party (i.e., CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYTimes, and Washington Post); soulless corporate America; BLM; the ACLU; and the Human Rights Campaign.

Word to Hutchinson: If all the good guys are criticizing you and all the bad guys are cheering you, maybe you made a disastrous decision.

On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Hutchinson defended his decision by appealing to conservative small government commitments—the last refuge of conservative scoundrels who want to embrace “progressive” positions on “social issues.” He also said, the bill “goes too far” because it would stop minors who are already being experimented on from continuing with dangerous “treatments” to conceal their biological sex.

Of course, small or limited government doesn’t mean no government. Nor does it mean abandoning children to the “trans”-cult and the godless profiteers who line their pockets with the lucre gained by chemically sterilizing children and lopping off parts of their sexual anatomy.

Many people, stunned by Hutchinson’s decision and not duped by his small government rationalization, look to corporate pressure as the real reason for Hutchinson’s alignment with the dark side.

In March Hutchinson appeared on another Fox News show and was asked about corporate “pushback” against legislation that promotes sexual sanity. Hutchinson responded,

We’re the home of some major global corporations here in Arkansas, they’re certainly worried about the image of our state.

Immediately after Hutchinson’s veto, left-leaning Tom Walton, whose family owns Walmart, issued this public pat-on-the-back to Hutchinson:

We are alarmed by the string of policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas. This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state. We support Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s recent veto of discriminatory policy and implore government, business and community leaders to consider the impact of existing and future policy that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities and economy.

Our Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that our “basic freedoms” include the freedom of children to stop puberty, take cross-sex hormones, and have healthy body parts cut off.

According to the Institute of Southern Studies,

Steuart Walton has been a generous donor to the Arkansas Republican Party as well as to Hutchinson’s campaign.

And Tucker Carlson reported that he “spoke with a source” who said that when the term-limited Hutchinson leaves office in 2022, “he would very much like a board seat” at Walmart.

There are some curious omissions in Hutchinson’s public statements on Fox News about the bill he vetoed.

For example, Hutchinson pointed to the depression and high rates of suicide among gender dysphoric minors. He implied that depression arises from gender dysphoria and can be alleviated by cross-sex hormone-doping. He didn’t seem to know that both depression and gender dysphoria could be symptoms of some other underlying problem. And he didn’t address studies showing that cross-sex hormone-doping can increase suicidal ideation or that suicidal ideation increases after “gender confirmation” butchery.

Hutchinson didn’t address the shocking increase in the number of adolescent girls now identifying as boys. Before the “trans”-cult stopped its slow titration of their ideological poison into the body politic, gender dysphoria affected a minuscule portion of the population and affected mostly boys, beginning between the ages of 3-5. Upwards of 80 percent of those boys eventually desisted from identifying as girls.

Now with the secular world promoting opposite-sex impersonation, particularly via social media, there is an explosion in the number of adolescent girls and young women suddenly identifying as male. As psychologists and sociologists know, girls are much more vulnerable to social contagions, like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and now cross-sex identification.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the politicization of the professional medical and mental health communities. For example, while “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies like to tout the American Academy of Pediatrics’ endorsement of the medical “transing” of children, they don’t like to mention that the pro-“transing” policy was created and voted on by fewer than 50 members of the now-67,000-member academy.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the increasing number of young women who “detransition” and deeply regret having taken testosterone and/or having had their healthy breasts cut off. These young women with permanently male voices and scarred chests that will never nurse a baby feel betrayed by the medical and mental health communities.

Hutchinson didn’t talk about the health risks from the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormones never tested for long-term cross-sex use, risks that include infertility; liver dysfunction; coronary artery disease; cancer; strokes; osteoporosis; and the development of gallstones, blood clots, hypertension, and pituitary gland tumors.

Hutchinson never talked about the ethics of turning healthy children into lifelong medical patients (You know who likes that? Endocrinologists and pharmaceutical companies, that’s who).

Someone should ask Hutchinson whether his limited government principles would lead him to oppose bans on limb amputations for those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder—a condition in which the sufferer experiences a mismatch between his bodily wholeness and his internal sense of himself as an amputee.

And what about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which was banned by the Stop FGM Act of 2020 and signed into law by former President Donald Trump? Would small government Hutchinson oppose a ban on the excision of female genitalia from a 14-year-old girl who, for religious or cultural reasons, wants her genitalia mutilated?

While leftists, practiced at the art of deception and the skill of Newspeak, describe the slicing off of female genitalia as “mutilation,” they describe the slicing off of breasts as “gender affirmation care.”

Since girls as young as 13 are having double mastectomies, a 2015 article by Derrick Diaz and published in the DePaul University Journal of Healthcare Law about cosmetic surgery for minors may offer some helpful insights:

Minors should not have access to cosmetic surgery unless found by a court to be medically necessary. … [I]f medical necessity has not been shown, then the service should be prohibited the same as any regulated service or product prohibited to minors.

…

[A] medical necessity determination can be made through a four-pronged analysis. First, does the impairment hinder a minor’s normal physical function; and, is the proposed surgery intended to treat a present or future clinically verifiable disease, deformity, or injury? Second, is the physical anomaly (1) objectively tangible, and (2) unusual or relatively common? Third, what is the state of the minor applicant’s psychological health? Fourth, would a reasonable minor in the applicant’s position be hindered from normal functioning by the condition (e.g., avoiding normal childhood/adolescent activities)?

…

[R]egardless of whether continued [legislative] noninterference is sound policy generally speaking, it is absolutely not so with regard to minors, as states have statutory mandates to protect their health and welfare. When it comes to cosmetic surgery on minors, states must have an intervening hand in preventing the potentially harmful effects of caveat emptor.

“Trans”-cultists and their allies try to get around this position by arguing that amputating the healthy, natural breasts of gender-dysphoric minor girls is “medically necessary.” But it’s not, and leftists have no conclusive, researched-based proof that it is.

On March 30, just days before his surprising veto, Hutchinson met with two “trans”-cultists—both men who pretend to be women, including “Evelyn” Rios Stafford, a justice of the peace in Arkansas, who pleaded with Hutchinson to veto the bill.

Did Hutchinson talk to any parents of teen daughters who suddenly started identifying as boys?

Did he talk to any young “detransitioned” women who grieve over their damaged bodies and the betrayal of adults who didn’t stop them?

Did he talk to any of the members of the American College of Pediatricians who oppose experimentation on the healthy bodies of children?

Did he consult with Abigail Shrier, the Wall Street Journal writer who wrote the book Irreversible Damage about the harm being done to adolescent girls?

Has he read any of the articles by historically leftist Jennifer Bilek who has been exposing the “money behind the rapidly growing juggernaut of transgenderism in American culture and beyond,” which she argues, “all leads back to the pharmaceutical and tech giants that now interface with LGBT NGOs which are driving the normalization of a biology-denying ideology.”

There is some good news emerging from Arkansas. The Arkansas legislature overrode Hutchinson’s unconscionable veto.

If Hutchinson’s relationship with God and truth are his first priorities—which they should be—then he should publicly confess his sinful decision and repent. Something tells me, however, that confession and repentance aren’t on his agenda.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Hutchinson via his official webpage. You can also call the governor’s office during normal business hours to give him and his administration feedback: (501) 682-2345

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Asa-Hutchinson-Sells-Out-Gender-Dysphoric-Children.mp3

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By now many Americans have learned what slimy, deceitful hypocrites California governor Gavin Newsom and his wealthy, well-connected friends are. In a stunning act of arrogant “do what I say, not what I do, PEONS,” he and his privileged co-scofflaws dined at an exclusive restaurant in Napa Valley—indoors without masks—in violation of his own rules.

His co-scofflaws included Dustin Corcoran, the CEO of the California Medical Association, and Janus Norman, the group’s lobbyist and senior vice president. Apparently, some medical professionals don’t really think dining indoors mask-less with friends puts their lives at risk. Now I’m waiting for all of Hollywood, the Democrat Party, and the faux-journalists at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post to explode in paroxysms of sanctimonious rage and primal fear at the prospect of the imminent deaths of all the people these twelve scofflaws will infect.

But don’t worry, Newsom is very very sorry he got caught.

The reality is many—perhaps most—leftists don’t believe the alarmist claims they exploit for political—that is, anti-Trump—purposes. In the midst of the first COVID-19 surge, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot commanded her subjects to forgo haircuts, while she—unmasked—had her hair done because she wanted to look good in front of the cameras and because she cares about her “hygiene”—unlike, presumably, her subjects. After the election, she joined her subjects in the street for a victory celebration and then promptly put the kibosh on their Thanksgiving celebrations saying, “You must cancel the normal Thanksgiving plans, particularly if they include guests that do not live in your immediate household.”

She followed that up with her Thanksgiving “advisory”:

– Stay home unless for essential reasons

– Stop having guests over—including family members you do not live with

– Avoid non-essential travel

– Cancel traditional Thanksgiving plans

Not to be outdone in hypocrisy or authoritarian intrusiveness, Oregon’s “openly bisexual” governor Kate Brown has issued these commands, which, if not followed, can result in  fines up to $1,250 or 30 days in jail:

• Private Social Events—limited to two households or six individuals in a closed group (including Thanksgiving)

• Wear a mask in your own home on Thanksgiving, only removing it when eating

• Don’t leave your home during the two-week shutdown

So much for “our bodies, ourselves.”

While in June Brown said “she believes the use of tear gas against protesters is unacceptable,” she is now working with “state police and local law enforcement” to ensure compliance with her Thanksgiving orders.  Think about that for a minute.

This is the same governor who allowed the creation of the potential super-spreader rebel state of CHAZ/CHOP in six blocks of Portlandia and who allowed mostly violent potential super-spreader protests to ravage the rest of Portlandia. So, does bisexual Brown really believe gatherings of ten are highly likely to be lethal gatherings?

Privileged leftists who dine at uber-swanky, $350 per person ($35-45 per glass of wine) restaurants are utterly cavalier about destroying people’s livelihoods while they do not themselves believe that socializing mask-less puts everyone in mortal danger. Newsom and other privileged Democrats wield their inordinate power recklessly, destroying countless small businesses while sating their gourmet appetites on the finest food the monied can buy.

When I refer to “alarmist claims,” I’m not suggesting that the Wuhan Red Death is not alarming or that the death rate is not tragic. I’m suggesting that the claims of leftists about the virus are alarmist in that they are not balanced by either the inclusion of all relevant statistics or by a modicum of humility about what is known about treatment and prevention.

For example, while leftists blame Wuhan virus spikes on the evil mask-questioners who walk among us purportedly like Grim Reapers, they rarely if ever discuss the worldwide Wuhan spikes in countries with more stringent lockdown and mask mandates.

When areas lock down, virus infections stall. When lockdowns end, virus infections increase. But we can’t afford the social, psychological, physical, and economic consequences of locking down forever.

Rational people understand that a contagion like the Wuhan virus will spread. What is needed are good therapeutics and herd immunity achieved via a combination of infections and vaccines. Social distancing for those most at risk of serious complications and/or death is wise. Social distancing for healthy people under 60, school closures, and business lockdowns are foolhardy at minimum and downright dangerous for many people.

While COVID-infected people should mask if they must go out, evidence that widespread masking of healthy people prevents COVID is scanty. According to the New York Times, a recent, large, randomized study out of Denmark provides evidence for what many have been saying:

The researchers had hoped that masks would cut the infection rate by half among wearers. Instead, 42 people in the mask group, or 1.8 percent, got infected, compared with 53 in the unmasked group, or 2.1 percent. The difference was not statistically significant.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Henning Bundgaard, stated that his study indicated that “not a lot” is gained “from wearing a mask.”

Perhaps it’s past time for political leaders to abandon mask mandates for children and healthy adults under 60. And surely, it’s past time for the mask-obsessed among us to stop verbally attacking those who choose not to mask as irresponsible, ignorant, uncaring, selfish, evil killers.

As the nightmarish 2020 draws to a close, there are reasons for optimism. President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed has  resulted in the development of not one but two highly effective vaccines at warp speed. As of this writing, both Moderna and Pfizer have developed vaccines that are about 95% effective, and evidence suggests that vaccine-induced immunity may last years and be more effective than immunity that develops from contracting COVID-19.

So, we have reasons to believe that in a few months, life will be able to return to normal. In the meantime, school closures must end. There has never been any science suggesting that schools should have closed. If children contract COVID-19, the statistical likelihood that they will survive is 99.99998%.

Annually, about 4,000 children die in car accidents with 630 of those being 12 or younger; 800 children drown; and in the 2019-2020 flu season, 188 children died. So far about 130 children have died from COVID-19. Anytime leftists want to impose a restriction on the freedom of others, they ask, “Isn’t saving the life of even one person worth the sacrifice?” So, are we going to prohibit all children from riding in cars except for essential activities? Are we going to prohibit all children from swimming in pools, ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans? Are we going to close schools every year during flu season? If not, why not?

Those parents whose children live in homes with at-risk family members can choose to keep their children home. Those teachers who are in an at-risk group can stay home. But all schools should open. Even leftist New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof recently and grudgingly admitted that Trump has long been right on school closures:

Trump has been demanding for months that schools reopen, and on that he seems to have been largely right. Schools, especially elementary schools, do not appear to have been major sources of coronavirus transmission, and remote learning is proving to be a catastrophe for many low-income children. …

Democrats helped preside over school closures that have devastated millions of families and damaged children’s futures. … In both Europe and the United States, schools have not been linked to substantial transmission, and teachers and family members have not been shown to be at extra risk. …  Meanwhile, the evidence has mounted of the human cost of school closures.

Leftists have provided ample evidence of their poor judgment, their Faustian willingness to abandon principles to acquire power, their Machiavellian abuse of power to circumscribe liberty, their hypocrisy, and their elitism. We better hope Americans awaken from their “woke” stupor before it’s too late.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Newsom-and-Lightfoot-and-Brown-Oh-My.mp3

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Written by David Limbaugh

The liberal media are urging Joe Biden to form a shadow government to upstage President Donald Trump‘s crisis response effort, which illustrates its consuming partisanship — and its insufficient attention to the health and welfare of the American people.

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle floated the idea during an interview with former Barack Obama staffer Jim Messina. Referring to Trump’s COVID-19 daily press briefing, Ruhle asked, “Should Joe Biden be counterprogramming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow Cabinet, shadow SWAT team, and getting up there at a podium every night, saying, ‘Here’s the crisis we’re in. Here’s what we need to do to address this’?”

I’ll concede that if Biden were to follow Ruhle’s ludicrous suggestion, Trump would be the biggest beneficiary. If some are still unaware of Biden’s diminishing competence, they would certainly learn of it in counter-press briefings. But let’s not get sidetracked with our own partisan ruminations when we should be working together to mitigate Americans’ medical and economic hardships.

Sadly, the media can’t get beyond their obsessive hatred for Trump to approach this moment with even minimal clarity. We witness this repeatedly at the briefings. Some reporters seek to elicit facts that will help inform the public, but far too many are there to grandstand, and to embarrass and shame the president.

They sling their gotcha questions, hoping to trick Trump into admitting he didn’t act quickly enough and isn’t effectively overseeing the distribution of equipment and other aid to the states. Some have very nearly accused Trump of causing American deaths.

Aside from the spuriousness of their claims, these questions are utterly inappropriate and counterproductive at briefings whose purpose is to update the American people on our battle against the coronavirus and on plans to reopen the economy.

Accusing President Trump of an initially tardy response, even if true (which it isn’t), distracts our attention from combating this pandemic. It may satisfy their Trump-hating lust, but it serves no constructive purpose. If they want to pursue yet another investigative crusade against Trump in time to damage him before the November election, how about they wait just a few more months while the adults try to alleviate real pain befalling real people?

The idea of a shadow government is not just ill-motivated; it is absurd. Who are these clowns kidding? The president’s principal medical advisers on this crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, are certainly not Republicans telling Trump whatever he wants to hear. If they’re paying attention, they also know that Trump is respectfully considering their every word and, in most cases, deferring to their judgment. The media were aghast when Birx shattered their narrative of Trump as an inattentive lummox. “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” said Birx. “I think his ability to analyze and integrate data that comes out of his long history in business has really been a real benefit during these discussions about medical issues.” So do I.

The media have tried to drive a wedge between Fauci and Trump, but neither of them would have it. Fauci has insisted that there is little, if any, inconsistency in their positions. There is no tension between Trump and these doctors in the briefings. Fauci has also been quite clear in disabusing Trump’s media prosecutors of their claim that Trump was delinquent in responding to the crisis — because if Trump was late, Fauci was even later.

So what would these armchair quarterbacks hope to accomplish through their fantasy shadow team, other than keeping Joe Biden in the limelight by presenting some bogus alternative to the administration’s leadership?

As it turns out, Ruhle wasn’t the first to pitch the shadow government concept. On March 23, Washington Post opinion writer Paul Waldman proposed it. “In Britain, the opposition party maintains a ‘shadow’ cabinet, a group of spokespeople assigned the same policy areas as the ministries of the government, to offer the opposition’s view on whatever issue is being discussed at a given moment,” wrote Waldman. “While Biden probably wouldn’t want to assign specific Cabinet positions now he could utilize both his own aides and people in the broader Democratic world to give the public a picture of what government under President Biden would be up to — and provide a contrast with the chaos, corruption, and incompetence that characterizes the Trump administration.”

The common thread uniting Ruhle, Waldman and the rest of the Trump-hating media cabal is their inability to see anything outside a partisan lens. Even now while thousands of Americans have died and millions are suffering financially, they can’t see past their unremitting contempt for him, and they can’t apply their energy toward helping Trump solve these problems instead of scheming of ways to unseat him in November.

Meanwhile, Trump has organized both his coronavirus task force and his Opening Our Country Council on a bipartisan basis, and he is working across party lines with businesses and state governments to address the crisis.

While the media have failed to make their case against Trump for incompetence and partisanship, they have resoundingly demonstrated their own — and the public is not likely to soon forget it.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is “Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.” Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.