A multicultural horror in Britain

A shocked mother was stopped in the street by two [African] men, who offered her £50 for her baby - and then tried to snatch her buggy as she fled.

The woman was stopped by the two men as she pushed her buggy along a road in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, on July 8, according to police.

The mother was pushing her child in a buggy at around midday when the two men - both aged between 20-30 and black, with one slim and the other muscle-bound - stopped her in her tracks.

One of the men, wearing a baseball cap and red jeans, asked her how much she wanted for her child, before offering £50.

The terrified mother tried to walk away, but the men followed her and one of them grabbed the buggy - but the woman manage to flee to a crowded area and the men walked off.

Assistant investigator Victoria Crocombe said she was appealing for witnesses to come forward.

She said: 'Thankfully no harm came to the mother and her young child during this incident but it has understandably left the victim upset and shaken.

'I'd like to take this opportunity to reassure the community that incidents of this nature are very unusual in Hertfordshire and we are working hard to identify the culprits.'

One man is described as black, aged between 20 and 30, of slim build and around 5ft 9in in height.

He was wearing a black baseball cap, a dark maroon Hollister top, red jeans, a silver belcher chain around his neck, and spoke with a London accent.

The second man is described as black, around 6ft 2in tall, of a large muscular build and aged between 20 and 30 years old.

A spokeswoman said: 'She elbowed one of the men in the side and ran off and called the police straight away.'

She said officers were dispatched to the scene, but that neither men could be found.

A police appeal for witnesses states: 'Officers are appealing for witnesses to come forward following an incident in Cheshunt.

'Just after midday on Friday, July 8, a mother was pushing her young child in a buggy along Hobbs Close when she was approached by two men.

'One of the men asked her how much she wanted for her child and then offered her £50.

'The mother then began to walk away with her child towards the High Street when one of the men reached out to grab the buggy handles.'

SOURCE






We Saved Our Democracy

Pat Condell tells it like it is








Target's Transgender Nightmare Comes True

Idaho police arrested a man — who identifies as a transgender woman — on one count of felony voyeurism Tuesday after he took pictures of a woman while she was changing clothes in a Target dressing room, the Post Register reported.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested 43-year-old Sean Patrick Smith, who reportedly identifies as Shauna Patricia Smith, the day after he was spotted reaching over the changing room wall with a cell phone taking pictures of a woman who was trying on clothes. The victim confronted Smith, who then ran out of the store.

The alleged incident took place on Monday. Authorities tracked down Smith after interviewing witnesses and reviewing security footage, local news stations reported. If convicted, Smith faces up to five years in prison.

Target announced in April that men who identify as women would be allowed to use the women’s facilities at the retail store. Soon after, a man recorded himself receiving permission from Target staff to use the women’s bathrooms after he explained that’s where he “feels comfortable.”

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Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform

After fending off attempts to change the Republican Party’s official position on LGBT issues and traditional marriage, a coalition of social conservatives cautiously celebrated an early victory Monday afternoon.

Before the Grand Old Party picks its presidential nominee formally, a select set of delegates on the platform committee will spend the week staking out Republican positions on everything from domestic to international issues definitively.

On the social issue front of the Republican platform, conservatives maintained a strict definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. They limited the use of single-sex bathrooms in public buildings to those of the same biological sex. And they defeated efforts to steer the party in a direction more in line with LGBT advocacy groups.

“There are those who are committed to undermining the conservative ideals that this party has long stood for,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Center and a Louisiana delegate to the convention.

“They’re an extreme minority, they’re committed to their view, and I think they will persist,” he told The Daily Signal Monday. “But I don’t believe they will prevail.”

To become a part of the party’s platform, those initial advances still need to be ratified by a majority of the 2,472 Republican delegates that will crowd onto the floor of Quicken Loans Arena next week.

But social conservatives seemed confident Monday afternoon that they had defeated an effort financed by billionaire Republican Paul E. Singer, according to The New York Times. His group, American Unity Fund, along with Log Cabin Republicans, aimed to hammer new gay rights planks into the platform.

The effort ultimately failed in the subcommittee on the family.

“I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I had heard that somebody was spending $6 million to get LGBT stuff into the platform,” Kansas delegate Mary Culp told The Daily Signal. “I would say that the effort fizzled.”

President Barack Obama’s bathroom directive took center stage. In a sweeping May proclamation, the administration instructed local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students. The directive suggested that schools that refuse to allow transgender students to use the single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with would potentially lose federal funds.

Addressing that policy in the platform is a political miscalculation, according to Anne Dickerson, a New York delegate who argued that the “discussion of bathrooms takes us down a rabbit hole quite a great distance.”

“I think this is a state issue,” she told her colleagues during a subcommittee hearing. “A lot of states, local municipalities, and schools who have transgender students have dealt with this issue rightfully at the local level.”

Though Dickerson declined to comment for this article, the New York delegate argued in committee that Republicans were blindly taking Democrats’ bait by elevating the issue in their platform.

Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, echoed that sentiment, telling The Daily Signal he’s frustrated by Monday’s development.

“This is a foolish issue to nationalize and talk about within the Republican Party platform,” he said. “It literally drags the platform into the gutter when so many people who are on this committee seem hell-bent with some obsession with bathroom use.”

Social conservatives on the family subcommittee justified their positions by insisting that the White House forced their hand. It was necessary to insert bathroom language in the platform, they argue, to offer a rebuttal and give local school districts guidance on the issue.

“Cowards would say this is not politically expedient, let’s not talk about it, let’s just let the president’s radical agenda go unchallenged,” Perkins told The Daily Signal. “This is not the party of cowards.”

In an interview last week with The Daily Signal, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said delegates on the platform committee should take up the issue to keep boys and girls in their respective bathrooms based on biology, not gender identity.

“The president had made a federal issue—and it’s amazing to be saying this—of bathrooms,” Cuccinelli said. “The president has done this, we didn’t. But if he’s going to pick the fight, we’re not going to back down.”

The fight over social issues comes as evangelical voters question where Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, stands on social issues.

Trump has been friendly toward former Olympian and current transgender advocate Caitlyn Jenner—who announced she will speak as a “transgender ambassador” at an event in Cleveland during the convention.

But recently the New York businessman announced his support of a North Carolina law that requires individuals to use public restrooms that correspond with their biological gender.

Social conservatives see the platform as a way to tether Trump to their brand of a pro-family platform. And so far, the Trump campaign has demonstrated little interest in challenging the party platform.

That’s good news for conservative groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List that were happy with the 2012 platform position on abortion, which looks unlikely to have significant changes.

“We’re going to remain vigilant, we want it [to] remain rock solid, and then we want to see Mr. Trump embrace this platform once it’s passed,” said Billy Valentine, the pro-life group’s director of government affairs, in an interview last week.

Though the party’s presumptive nominee disagrees with some GOP orthodoxies, coalition members say they’re confident that Republican doctrine on social issues will be conserved in the party platform.

SOURCE





Police veteran pleads for peace in heartbreaking post

A POLICE veteran’s gut-wrenching plea for compassion and understanding has touched thousands in the aftermath of a week of violence in the US.

Merri McGregor, a former police officer, took to Facebook to share her story. It included such harrowing details of what she’s experienced that it will no doubt change how many view those working in the police force.

She spoke about peeling a “dead, burned baby” from the front of her uniform shirt, and how she cried on the chest of a dead coworker who was unrecognisable from all the bullet holes.

The events of last week’s tragic Dallas shootings, where a lone gunman killed five police officers and injured seven others during a street protest, led to an outpouring of pleas for unity by fellow officers on social media.

What followed were nationwide reports of members of law enforcement being disciplined for speaking out after the horrific attack, including a senior Detroit police detective who was demoted after sharing a controversial Facebook post criticising the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yet, Ms McGregor, a 17-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, is garnering praise for sharing her story. In a powerful Facebook message, Ms McGregor recalls her first day on the job at age 21, posting a picture of herself in uniform, smiling as she headed out the door to her first night shift in 1998.

“Look at that smile on my face. I couldn’t have been more excited, more proud,” she wrote. “Armed with my dad’s badge that he wore for 25 years on my chest, one of my mom’s sergeant stripe patches in my pocket, my lucky $2.00 bill tucked into my bulletproof vest, a gun I was barely old enough to purchase bullets for on my hip and enough naive courage for a small army, I headed out the door ... my mom snapped this photo on my way.”

Ms McGregor then details her next 17 years in the police force, describing it as “a whole lot of heartache”. The 39-year-old mentions missed family holidays, sleepless nights, being shot at, watching colleagues die on the job, as well as “black eyes, torn ligaments, stab wounds, stitches, funerals, a head injury, permanent and irreparable nerve damage, five ruptured discs, some charming PTSD and depression issues ...”

But it is her graphic detail of what she has experienced that really touches a nerve.

“I’ve laid in wet grass on the freeway for three hours watching a team of burglars and orchestrating their apprehension, I’ve dodged gunfire while running down a dark alley in the middle of the night chasing a shooting suspect, I’ve argued with women who were too scared to leave their abusive husbands until they realised they had to or they would end up dead,” she wrote.

“I’ve peeled a dead, burned baby from the front of my uniform shirt, I’ve felt the pride of putting handcuffs on a serial rapist and I’ve cried on the chest of and kissed the cheek of my dead friend, coworker and academy classmate even though it was covered in his own dried blood and didn’t even look like him from all the bullet holes.

“I know what a bullet sounds like when it’s whizzing past your ear, a few inches away, I know what the sound of a mother’s shrilling scream is like when she finds out her son has been killed in the middle of the street and I know what it’s like to have to tell a wife and mother of 3 that her husband was killed in a car accident while on his way home from work.”

She continues: “Smells, pictures, sounds and sights are burned and engrained [sic] into our minds ... things we can never forget, no matter how hard we try; things that haunt our sleep at night and our thoughts during the day; things that we volunteered to deal with so that you don’t have to. Things I don’t want my sister, little cousins or YOU to even have to KNOW about.”

Ms McGregor’s emotion-charged post has been shared more than 130,000 times, with many applauding and thanking her for sharing her story. Others said the open letter brought them to tears.

The retired officer ends by imploring everyone to be more understanding and compassionate toward one another, saying, “We’re all SO much better than this.”

“Violence doesn’t cure violence and hate doesn’t cure hate.

“Are cops perfect? No. Are there bad cops? Yes.

“But please understand that the vast majority of police are good, loving, well-intentioned family people. They have husbands and wives and children and parents and pets and cousins and mortgages and electric bills and lawns that need cutting, just like you. They have hearts and consciences.”

After an overwhelmingly positive response to her initial post, Ms McGregor followed it up with a second Facebook message.

“Wow. I’m blown away. Never thought I’d air my private PTSD and depression issues to the world but maybe it was for the best,” she wrote. “I can’t do that job anymore, sadly. I’m not strong enough anymore, physically or emotionally, and I’m comfortable enough to be able to admit that now. Just know that my DPD people are still out there getting it done and they are some of the most amazing, honorable, brave people I’ve ever known.”

Ms McGregor’s post is in contrast with one by Detroit detective Nathan Weekley, a 17-year veteran of the department, who was demoted for writing on Facebook that the Black Lives Matter movement included “terrorists” and “racists” in the days following the Dallas shootings.

Separately, four Detroit men have been arrested over the past week for allegedly threatening to kill police on Facebook and Twitter, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said.

One tweet that led to an arrest referred to Dallas shooter Micah Johnson as “a hero”. He was charged with inciting injury to persons or property.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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