AZ Republic’s leftist skew conceals truth, distorts facts

Reports lack facts, sugar-coat hate monger

SRAZ has ventured into the mind-numbing arena of the AZ Republic’s irrational reports recently. The conjecture, extreme leftwing skew and wishing-it-were-so cover-ups are appalling.

May 27, we brought our readers, Major reason to steer clear of deceptive AZ Republic. It was followed on June 2, by AZ Republic: Foolish reports take center stage again. With these “reports” coming at breakneck speed, it’s difficult to keep up with them. They are not only foolish, they are deceitful.

Today we present a couple of headlined articles worth delving into:

 Headline Number One: “Lawmakers to Pentagon: Reverse transgender ban.”

Bear in mind there are 100 voting senators and 435 representatives. Both chambers hold Republican majorities. There were “over 100 members” who signed the letter written by U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy,III (D-MA) to Defense Secretary James Mattis demanding a reversal of the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people from military service. The policy originally authorizing transgender troops was instituted by Barack Obama.

Countless searches failed to locate a copy of the letter or any of the signers, though it reportedly concluded with this zinger: “If President Trump and his administration are committed to all of our service members, they will immediately reverse this bigoted ban.”

Headline Number Two: “Louis Farrakhan Jr, dies at Phoenix home.”

“His father, Louis Farrakhan,” according to the newspaper, “is known for preaching a conservative message of self-reliance and family values coupled with black empowerment, but has drawn criticism for fostering anti-Semitic views in the past.”

The past?

Louis Farrakhan, the head of the black separatist Nation of Islam, never preached conservative messages. His anti-Semitism has remained virulent, hateful and incites violence. In March 2018 during a Saviours’ Day event to commemorate the life of Nation of Islam founder Master Fard Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan had some choice descriptions of Jewish people. The “powerful Jews,” he told the audience inside Chicago’s Wintrust Arena, “are my enemy.” The Jews are also “responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.” He issued a threat to the Jewish community, saying , “Farrakhan has pulled the cover off the eyes of the Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”

In 1986, the Nation of Islam, moved its headquarters to Phoenix, where Farrakhan directed the group.

Farrakhan contemptibly claims Jews committed the 9/11 terrorist attacks in order to start a war between the West and the Muslim world, and to enable the “Jewish owner” of the World Trade Center to collect billions of dollars in insurance money.

National Review recently wrote about Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic tweets. He’s known for praising Hitler and derided Judaism as a “gutter religion.”

Even the radically leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, also known to foment hatred, refers to the Nation of Islam as a hate group. They can recognize one of their own, but the Arizona Republic wears blinders.

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AZ Republic: Foolish reports take center stage again

Transgender “migrants,” carping school principals rate front page coverage

Last weekend we ran a post titled, “Major reason to steer clear of deceptive AZ Republic.” It was an instant hit, garnering an exceptionally high number of hits, proving common sense still resonates.

Today we bring our readers yet another couple of reasons to ditch the newspaper. These latest Page One offerings shared the same issue on Wednesday, May 30.

First we bring you “Looking for a safe place to call home.” You might be inclined to think this concerns abandoned pets up for adoption, but you’d be wrong. The article details the “new struggles” of “transgender migrants.” Their advocates — yes, they have advocates — say “U.S. officials haven’t done enough to protect transgender women from assaults and abuse.” The article continues to two full inside jump pages. The caption accompanying the above-the-fold photo identifies two of these “transgender migrants” by their femme name, continuing, “they often face difficulties in remote detention centers when applying for asylum in the United States.” They complain they are unable to get decent jobs and the only work open to them is in the “sexual servitude industry” working as prostitutes. One reported that “clients became enraged” when discovering the prostitutes ware born male. ‘Ya think?

Article two, also given prominent above-the-fold exposure is titled,” Principal: ‘D’ grade is public shaming.”  Numerous valley principals appearing at the State Board of Education meeting addressed their concerns that the low school grading labels hinder their success.

The principals have it exactly backwards. Their schools’ lack of success in teaching hinders the students, whose abysmal testing scores are reflected in the grades given to the schools by the state.

One by one, they requested their specific schools grades be bumped up a notch or the system that alerts parents to the success or failure rate of individual schools be discarded altogether. These are representatives of the same public schools that abandoned their students — over 180,000 of them statewide — for a week, while the REDsforEd teachers went out on strike demanding a 20 percent salary hike.

The Arizona State Board of Education’s website states:

Arizona Revised Statutes § 15-241 requires the Arizona Department of Education, subject to final adoption by the State Board of Education, to develop an annual achievement profile for every public school in the state based on an A through F scale. The development of the Accountability System was informed by public input through 17 public hearings across the state and a survey that yielded almost 1700 responses. Additionally, a broad-based committee consisting of school administrators, teachers, parents and data experts provided the Board with additional input.

The system measures year to year student academic growth, proficiency on English language arts, math and science, the proficiency and academic growth of English language learners, indicators that an elementary student is ready for success in high school and that high school students are ready to succeed in a career or higher education and high school graduation rates.

This accountability is what the left-wing union educrats* are fighting.

* Open Secrets notes its data for the current election cycle was updated by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, May 21, 2018.

 

French Inaction on known terror suspects brings more death

Islamic terrorism returns to France, knife, not gun used

The NRA has become a convenient whipping boy for the left, in instances where mass murder is committed with a gun. But increasingly, terrorist acts are carried out by vehicles being used as weapons, deliberately plowing into crowds. Knife attacks are becoming more frequent here and in Western Europe. The Boston Marathon carnage was carried out by two brothers, whose parents had come to the United States seeking political asylum. They used pressure cookers as explosives, but still the NRA takes the brunt of the blame.

France suffered another bloody attack on Saturday. The assailant, who was shot and killed by police, has been identified as Khamzat Azimov, 21, a native of Chechnya, who  became a French citizen in 2010. Witnesses reported Azimov repeatedly yelled, “Allahu akhbar” during the Paris attack. The French press reported that “a video emerged Sunday online purporting to show the attacker swearing allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”

Not long after the rampage that killed one and seriously injured four others in a busy tourist area, the Islamic State took responsibility for the carnage.

France has a state security anti-terrorism watch list on which this most recent knife wielder has appeared since 2016 — but the attacker was neither detained nor deported. This was the second deadly attack in two months by a person flagged on the watch list. More than 230 people In France have been killed by ISIS-inspired jihadists in the past three years.

Without acknowledging the lack of follow-up on the collected data, French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux said, “It is, once again, a way of life, our way of life, which has come under a cowardly attack.”

News accounts defended the government’s defenseless actions referring to renewed calls for enforcement as originating from “the conservative opposition.”

Sound familiar?

The leader of France’s largest opposition party renewed his call on President Emmanuel Macron to detain “the most dangerous individuals” on the watch list and expel all foreigners listed on it. “There is no longer room, Mr. President, for this blind inaction which has lasted too long,” Laurent Wauquiez of the conservatives Les Republicains said in a statement.

“What use can this file be if we don’t use it to ensure that these time bombs cannot do any harm on French soil?” National Front leader Marine Le Pen wrote on Twitter.

But Griveaux contended: “Unfortunately, there is no way of stopping this sort of incident from happening.” The security watch list was a key tool for police and intelligence services, he said, adding that “experts were opposed to using it as a basis for roundups or deportations.”

Paris is nearly 4,000 miles from Washington, D.C. though the same foolish arguments leave citizens at risk.

A simple solution to halt AZ pedestrian deaths

Common sense enforcement needed, not study committees 

Arizona has a problem with pedestrian fatalities. According to data released by the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), which lists by state, we have the highest rate in the entire nation. Hawaii, which is not a border state, has the lowest. Making the numbers even more compelling is the fact that Maricopa County has the unenviable distinction of coming in second in fatalities of all U.S. counties.

The City of Phoenix, under the thumb of leftwing Mayor Greg Stanton —– a self described “progressive,” now running for congress —- jumped into action with the creation of a board to study the crisis. ‘Complete Streets’ has made recommendations after blaming the high fatality rate on our “streetscape.”

What?  You haven’t previously heard that word? That’s because you’re not a liberal urban planner, public health advocate dealing with sustainability, and complete streets, multi-modal/transportation planning and design or health impact assessments. Many of the board members are “quality of life” specialists.

Check out the Complete Streets Advisory Board Roster and their specialties.

An assemblage of nearly a dozen such luminaries is impressive, if you’re into costly social transformation. They addressed the Phoenix City Council demanding council members accelerate the process and adopt the “Complete Streets Guidelines” to make streets safer for pedestrians.

The group blames pedestrian fatalities on economic conditions, demographics, weather, fuel prices, and the amount of time people spend walking. Ergo, if you’re poor, snow drifts are high, you have to walk while texting, you could be an accident waiting to happen.

Among the concepts to alleviate such deficiencies provided for in the guidelines are more sidewalks, reducing the rate of traffic, shade structures and trees, including increased night time lighting.  The slowing of traffic, more lighting and planting of trees clearly conflict with the need to reduce gas, electricity and water consumption previously favored by “sustainability” alarmists. 

There is a simpler and less costly way to address the increase in pedestrian deaths. Begin ticketing people who refuse to use marked crosswalks. This was once known as “jaywalking” and was a ticketable offense. Now officers in patrol cars, concerned about negatively impacting cultural mores, blithely sail past mothers standing on the median with a flock of tykes, waiting for a traffic break to hustle them across the busy street, ignoring the nearby crosswalk and traffic signal.

Crosswalks are routinely disregarded. The attitude is, lines in the street are put there by authority figures and should be avoided regardless of the fact that they save lives. It’s a foolish, often ethnic-based, power struggle that has made Arizona the leader in pedestrian deaths. This is a fact you can be certain the ‘Complete Streets’ committee won’t address.

Educrats offer sticks & stones to protect kids from violence

These administrators don’t have their party affiliation revealed, but we’re betting they’re liberal Democrat teacher’s union members *

Have you heard the good news?  Shootings taking the lives of innocent students and teachers are a thing of the past, thanks to the wisdom of William Hall, Millcreek School District Superintendent in Erie, Pennsylvania. The man is nothing if not innovative. Assumedly he devised this strategy himself, since we haven’t heard of anyone else wanting to share credit for it.

The Washington Free Beacon reports on the sheer brilliance of Hall’s foolproof idea to bring safety to our schools.

Bats! 

The 16-inch bats were recently distributed to each teacher following an in-service training day on how to respond to school shootings.

“This is a tool to have in the event we have nothing else,” said Millcreek Education Association president Jon Cacchione.  “Part of the formula now, is to fight back, and so I think the bats that were provided for the staff were symbolic of that.” Cacchione says he supports the decision to arm teachers with bats, which will be locked up in each classroom.

Hasn’t the “formula” always been to fight back? “Symbols” of retaliation against a shooter, are irrelevant to those who think lucidly.

Even though the school district he oversees is in Erie, you’ll notice the spelling is the same as the canal, not eerie, as in darkly sinister. The bats aren’t the nocturnal sort, either. They are small. and incapable of inflicting damage to a person with a gun.

Gong Erie’s Millcreek Distict even one better, the Hill reports David Helsel, the superintendent of Blue Mountain School District in rural Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania has armed students with buckets of rocks as a “last resort” against armed intruders.

Bucket of rocks! 

Every classroom now has a five-gallon bucket of rocks that students can hurl in the event there is an active shooter.

Our Constitutional framers, who enshrined the Second Amendment immediately following the guarantees of free speech and assembly in the First Amendment would be appalled by the blatant ignorance of these educrats. In 2008, the Second Amendment rights of the individual to keep and bear arms were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in  the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

Several years ago conservative radio personality Michael Savage wrote a book titled, “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” His words ring of brilliance.

*Center for Responsive Politics

Leftist town council aims to disarm citizens

Banks join the curtailment of Second Amendment rights

At first glance, these folks — the mayor and members of the village board in the northern Chicago suburb of Deerfield — appear benign enough. On their bios they note that they are proud of their children, grandchildren and pets. One sings in a choral group, another is a retired sanitary engineer with a specialty in drainage. Among them are an accounting instructor and a lawyer.

In fact, they cast a dark shadow.

They also want to disarm the people in the community they serve, recently casting unanimous votes to ban legally owned semi-automatic firearms. The new law goes into effect June 13. Residents who don’t get rid of banned weapons by then face a fine of $1,000 a day.

Their actions are eerily similar to those imposed in Germany by Wilhelm Frick, the Nazi minister of the interior in 1938, when he issued “Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons.” Not only were Jews forbidden to own guns and ammunition, they couldn’t own “truncheons (clubs) or stabbing weapons.” In addition to imposing restrictions, the Nazis had begun raiding Jewish homes and seizing weapons. Other German citizens found the laws expanded regarding their ownership of firearms,

Putting his ignorance of our unique history and the rights we cherish on display, Deerfield Village Manager Kent Street said if more towns banned the weapons then it’s possible the state and federal government will too.

These are the 27-words with which Kent Street has a problem:

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

They comprise the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which our Founders thought important enough to put immediately following the First Amendment — guaranteeing freedom of speech and assembly.  Leftists are hard at work attempting to curtail our rights. Now they are joined by banks. Citigroup, Inc. bank is imposing restrictions on companies that use it to issue store credit-cards or for lending and other services, according to a Thursday memo issued by Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Mike Corbat, which included these deceptive words: 

“The policy was designed to respect the rights of responsible gun owners while helping to keep firearms out of the wrong hands, It is clear to me that most people believe there are areas of agreement and practical changes we can make to find common ground.”

The lender seeks to bypass the U.S. Constitution, Supreme Court and Congress. The move is being praised by gun restrictionists.

 The NRA gets it right….again. We urge you to read, “So They’re Not Coming for Our Guns, Eh? We call BS.” The commentary begins with a description of why the United States has a Second Amendment.

Firearm registration in Nazi German helped lead to the Holocaust, where millions of unarmed Europeans, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and systematically slaughtered.

 History is the greatest teacher —- if we pay attention.

McCain’s staff protest Trump’s pick for CIA director

Let’s cut to the chase. John McCain was diagnosed in July 2017 with what his Mayo doctors referred to as an aggressive, highly malignant form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma.

According to the American Brain Cancer Association, among the symptoms that can develop as a result of increased pressure on the brain are drowsiness, headaches, weakness, visual changes and memory and speech difficulties. 

McCain’s family would like us to believe that the seriously ill 81-year-old is sitting at home tweeting at breakneck speed and staying out of D.C. only due to concerns of catching the virulent flu that peaked in January. Daughter Meghan claims he might return to work “by summer.” McCain’s senate “events” page goes back to 2013 and ends July 2016.

His staff, worried about their own professional futures are obviously working overtime attempting to keep him relevant, since retirement is outside of his realm of rationality.

So when we read that ‘Never Trumper’ John McCain is vehemently opposed to Gina Haspel, President Trump’s choice as C.I.A. director, it naturally raises questions about who is actually pulling the opposition strings. 

In the statement, McCain supposedly demanded Gina Haspel, currently the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, must pledge “without reservation” to oppose the use of torture if she is to be approved as director.

“The torture of detainees in US custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history,” according to the left-leaning operatives running his office. “We are still dealing with the consequences of that desperately misguided decision.”

“Ms. Haspel,” they opine, “needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program during the confirmation process.”

Enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, were successfully used on two high profile al-Qaeda detainees in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 to retrieve information regarding the mass murder of nearly 3,000 people in New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, by Islamic extremists who commandeered commercial airliners to perpetrate unprecedented carnage on American soil.

America survived the grotesque nightmare they perpetrated, Terrorists and those aligned with them survived being dunked. No one died from waterboarding. Apologizing for using such interrogation techniques is absurd.