A very Leftist sheriff






Looking back







Anti-gun crusader gives Communist clenched fist salute



On Saturday, an enraged student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gave a fiery speech, and at its conclusion threw up a salute that ignited a firestorm on social media.

Far-left activist David Hogg attacked Republicans during his speech, saying, "I’m going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida."

Hogg continued with his Democratic talking points, stating, "Let's put the USA over the NRA."

Toward the end of his approximately four-minute speech, Hogg said, "Thank you. I love you all. God bless all of you and God bless America. We can and we will change the world!"

At that moment, Hogg threw up a salute that sent Twitter into a frenzy.

SOURCE







Instead of March for Our Lives, maybe it’s time to March for the Truth?

Follow the money.

It’s a strange political fact, but nearly every major anti-gun group has been a front group. The NRA is maligned 24/7 and yet it’s completely obvious whom it represents. Despite the efforts to tie it to everyone from firearms manufacturers to the Russians (if you can’t tie any random Republican thing to the Russians these days, you won’t be working at the Washington Post or CNN for very long), it represents its five million members. Anti-gun groups tend to represent shadowy networks.

Take Everytown, the noisiest and most dishonest anti-gun group on the scene. The one consistent thing about anti-gun groups is that that they are usually the opposite of what their name says they are.

Everytown for Gun Safety was formed out of two other groups: Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Both are actually front groups for Michael Bloomberg, the lefty billionaire and former boss of the Big Apple, who used New York City resources to host at least one of its websites.

So Everytown is really New York City.

March for Our Lives is on every cable channel, but who runs it? The photogenic teen fronts are out front. But it’s obvious to everyone that a bunch of teens don’t have the resources and skills to coordinate a nationwide movement. Instead it’s the experienced activists who are actually running things.

The March for Our Lives Fund is incorporated as a 501(c)(4). Donations to 501(c)(4) groups are not tax- deductible. And they don’t have to disclose donors. That’s why they’re a great dark money conduit.

But the March for Our Lives website suggests that donors who want to make a tax-deductible donation should write a check to the “March For Our Lives—Everytown Support Fund”. How will Bloomberg’s organization provide support for the supposed student group?

Why have two March for Our Lives Fund, one dark and one light? And why is one being routed through the godfather of the gun control lobby?

When it comes to March for Our Lives, the questions never end.

The March for Our Lives permit application was filed by Deena Katz, a co-executive director of the Women's March Los Angeles Foundation. This wasn’t just a little bit of professional activist assistance.

The application lists Katz as the “Person in Charge of Event”.

Katz is a former Dancing With the Stars and current Bill Maher producer.  She’s also the former owner of Talent Central, a Los Angeles talent agency, The leaked application lists her as the president of the March for Our Lives Fund.

Media contacts for March for Our Lives are being handled by 42 West. The agency is a full service PR firm operating out of New York and Los Angeles that represents major celebrities. 42 West was supposedly recommended by George Clooney who was one of a number of major celebrity donors.

Where did all those millions of dollars go? Good question.

“They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for," Jeff Kasky, the father of one of the students, claimed.

Who are those people? A leaked document reveals that the March for Our Lives Action Fund is actually overseen by six directors and is incorporated in Delaware.

So far we have Los Angeles, New York and Delaware, but not Florida.

Donations are being directed to, “March For Our Lives Fund, 16130 Ventura Blvd Ste 320, Encino, CA 91435.” That matches the listed office address on the application for the Wishnow Ross Warsavsky & Company. The tax firm appears to have no website.

The six directors learn toward Los Angeles.

There's Aileen Adams, the head of Do Good LA, who had served as the Deputy Mayor for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for Los Angeles. Adams was also UCLA's Vice Provost for Strategic Alliances.

Nor is she the only UCLA person on the list.

There's also George Kieffer, chair of UCLA's Board of Regents, who was named one of the most influential lawyers in California. He also held a variety of other political positions and headed the California State Protocol Foundation which funds expenses for Governor Jerry Brown.

Then there’s Nina Vinik who serves as the Program Director for the Gun Violence Prevention Program at the Joyce Foundation. The Joyce Foundation has been notable for its gun control efforts and it’s not surprising to find it here. The Joyce Foundation also set up the anti-gun Fund for a Safer Future.

One story claims that, "Several members of the Fund for a Safer Future are organizing internally to explore new ways of engagement in the wake of Parkland.” Another states that the Joyce Foundation, “funds research to help grantees understand how different audiences think about the issue. It's up to grantees to come up with tactics.” After Parkland, Nina wrote a militant editorial using some very familiar talking points, like, “Maybe it’s time to ask the Supreme Court about the rights of the Parkland parents to see their kids grow up.” The Joyce Foundation and Nina are based out of Chicago.

Over in Washington D.C., there's Vernetta Walker of BoardSource acting as the fund’s Secretary and Jeri Rhodes of the Friends Committee on National Legislation acting as its Treasurer.

And then out of Madison, Wisconsin, comes Melissa Scholz.

Florida is notably absent from the roll call. Instead the organization, one of a number of seeming incarnations of the March for Our Lives brand, draws on established activist talent from the usual places, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. There’s nothing particularly local about it.

March for Our Lives is funded by Hollywood celebs, it’s led by a Hollywood producer and its finances are routed through an obscure tax firm in the Valley. Its treasurer and secretary are Washington D.C. pros. And a top funder of gun control agendas is also one of its directors.

None of this has much to do with Parkland. The mass shooting by a mentally ill man who should have been committed and arrested long before he carried out his massacre was a political opportunity.

Now that opportunity is being exploited to the hilt by a professional class of political activists.

Gun control activists wring their hands over the NRA. They claim that a special interest lobby is illegitimately thwarting the “will of the people”. Yet it’s the anti-gun groups that are invariably false fronts. It’s very clear who runs the NRA. But the latest fake anti-NRA group is a nebulous shadow. Out front are the high school students and out back are the professional activists.

And who is really behind the whole thing? Hollywood celebs, Bloomberg, a network of organizations?

We know who supports the NRA. You can see NRA stickers on car windows even in the bluest cities in the country. But who really supports the anti-gun political network? You’ll need to spend hours sorting through paperwork, following the trail, comparing addresses and researching names, to even get a hint.

That’s what an illegitimate lobby thwarting the will of the people really looks like.

Instead of March for Our Lives, maybe it’s time to March for the Truth?

SOURCE





US Senate passes Taylor Force Act, slashing aid to Palestinians

United States funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) is set to be slashed after the Senate passed the Taylor Force Act as part of a $1.3 trillion spending package to stave off a US-wide government shut down.

The Act, which has garnered bipartisan support, would withhold a large chunk of Washington's financial aid to the Western-backed Palestinian leadership unless they cease payments to families of terrorists convicted in Israeli courts.

The bill's proponents, along with Israeli officials, say payments by the PA to families of those imprisoned in Israel for carrying out acts of terror serve as incentives for other would-be assailants.

The legislation is named after US citizen Taylor Force, who was killed by a West Bank resident who went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa Port in March 2016.

It protects some aid funding to the PA, including for wastewater projects that have been spearheaded by co-operation between Palestinians, Israel, the US and Jordan.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham succeeded in attaching the bill to the massive omnibus spending package that came up for a vote in the Senate in the early hours of Friday morning.

“Taylor was an American hero who was brutally murdered at the hands of terrorists,” Graham said in a statement before the bill's passing.

“Yet instead of condemning this horrific attack -- and so many others like it -- the Palestinian Authority pays monetary rewards to terrorists and their families.""These rewards for terrorist attacks are inconsistent with American values. They are inconsistent with decency, and they are certainly inconsistent with peace.”

The PA has strenuously opposed the bill, arguing that the payments are legitimate and it would be politically impossible to curtail them.PA President Mahmoud Abbas defended the payments to the families of Palestinian attackers last summer as "a social responsibility"

Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon lauded the move to end what he termed "pay to slay" payments."The passage of the Taylor Force Act is an important step towards finally ending the despicable practice of pay to slay & ensuring accountability in the Palestinian Authority.

A similar bill in Israel that would cut Israeli funding by the same amount that the PA uses to pay terrorists' families is currently before the Knesset.

SOURCE






Military Changing Body Armor to Accommodate Women’s Long Hair

As women enter ground combat fields in larger numbers, the military services are working harder to make gender-specific accommodations for their gear -- even down to tweaking protective equipment to fit around longer hair.

According to presentations prepared by the Army and the Marine Corps for the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, both services are making independent changes to ensure gear fits correctly for women with hair buns.

A presentation prepared by Army Lt. Col. Ginger L. Whitehead, product manager for Soldier Protective Equipment, shows a recently introduced version of the Female Improved Outer Tactical Vest, or FIOTV, includes a yoke-and-collar assembly that dips in the back to accommodate a hair bun, along with other fit improvements to offer better ballistic protection for women.

Feedback from soldiers is also leading to helmet improvements, the presentation shows.

Women in uniform complained that the "X-Back" design of the apparatus holding the chin straps interfered with hair buns, making it difficult for the helmet to fit securely on the head, with the straps in the proper places. According to the presentation, the Army is introducing a female-specific "H-Back" apparatus that includes an opening for a bun.

This solution, along with improvements to retention straps to keep them from interfering with peripheral vision and cutting into earlobes, was "widely accepted by [the] female soldier community," the presentation showed.

A number of recent improvements to the Army's body armor design have come through the human factors evaluation process, in which female soldiers provide feedback and critiques on their own personal protective equipment and test out new gear.

"Often, these HFEs compare new equipment and legacy systems side by side in a counter-balanced test design," Whitehead's presentation stated. "Testing personnel measure all Soldiers participating in user assessments and operational tests to determine their individual percentile rankings for various body dimensions and to initially size and fit the tested equipment."

The Army began these research efforts in 2010.

The Marine Corps, which began an effort to expand the size range of its stock of personal protective equipment as infantry fields opened to women in 2016, now aims to fit all Marines from the 2nd percentile of female troops to the 98th percentile of males. Previously, gear only had to fit the 5th to 95th percentile of men. The change means another 8,856 smaller-stature and 5,711 larger Marines will get gear that fits, according to a presentation for DACOWITS from Lt. Col. Chris Madeline, the Marine Corps' program manager for Infantry Combat Equipment.

The Corps' new Enhanced Combat Helmet, which is set to begin fielding this spring, has design features that better accommodate the hair bun, according to the presentation.

The Plate Carrier Generation III system, which is currently in the design and contracting process, is shorter and 25 percent lighter than its predecessors, with a more modular fit, according to the slides.

The Marines are also working on an improved adjustable pack frame designed to fit better around body armor and offer better fit options to cover a range of sizes.

For services in which women have historically had to contend with protective equipment designed for men that often left them contending with gaping armholes and too-long torsos, even small adjustments, like room for hair buns, represent progress.

The Army and Marine Corps are not the only male-dominated services with blind spots in this area. Just last year, the Navy changed a policy governing how to wear ball caps that allowed women with long hair to wear them comfortably for the first time.

So far, the Army and Marine Corps have opted to expand size range and improve fit for the primary body armor vest and protective plates, rather than to design a full range of gender-specific protective gear.

In 2017, Lt. Col. Kathy Brown, then-product manager for soldier protective equipment at PEO Soldier, told Military.com that research had shown that form-fitting protective plates for women created their own fit challenges, and the Army had ultimately determined that it was not the best approach.

That answer, however, does not satisfy everyone.

Last year, Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., told Military.com that he found the solution "100 percent unacceptable."

"Men would be the first to cry out that the military adapt appropriate body armor ... to them if it was first designed for women," said Carbajal, who served in the Marine Corps as a mortarman and left the service as a sergeant. "It's really important that we provide the same appreciation and support for female soldiers and Marines that we do for men ... as a Marine myself, I find it does not correlate to the values of the institution."

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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