Homeschooling surges as parents seek safer option for children

After a gunman opened fire on students in Parkland, Florida, the phones started ringing at the Texas Home School Coalition, and they haven’t stopped yet.

The Lubbock-based organization has been swamped with inquiries for months from parents seeking safer options for their kids in the aftermath of this year’s deadly school massacres, first in Parkland and then in Santa Fe, Texas.

“When the Parkland shooting happened, our phone calls and emails exploded,” said coalition president Tim Lambert. “In the last couple of months, our numbers have doubled. We’re dealing with probably between 1,200 and 1,400 calls and emails per month, and prior to that it was 600 to 700.”

Demands to restrict firearms and beef up school security have dominated the debate following the shootings, but flying under the radar is the surge of interest in homeschooling as parents lose faith in the ability of public schools to protect students from harm.

And it’s not just the threat of school shootings. Christopher Chin, president of Homeschool Louisiana, said parents are also increasingly concerned about “the violence, the bullying, the unsafe environments.”

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Constant Interruptions From Smartphone Can Impact Brain Chemistry, Scientists Say

Constant interruptions from alerts and messages on your smartphone can impact brain chemistry.

It can be hard to concentrate when you’re always being diverted by your phone. It’s a pattern that scientists say creates something they call the switch cost.

Research shows constant interruptions can create a different chemistry in the brain.

“There’s this phenomenon they call 'switch cost' that when there’s an interruption we switch away from the task that we were at and then we have to come on back. We think it interrupts our efficiency with our brains, by about 40 percent. Our nose is always getting off the grindstone, then we have to reorient ourselves,” said Dr. Scott Bea, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic.

The new reality for many is that technology has put the brain on high alert most of the time, waiting for the next notification. Doctors say when it happens, people can get little surges of the stress hormone cortisol, which can cause the heart rate to jump, some people to get sweaty hands and muscles can get a little tight.

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Evening Standard Sold Positive Coverage to Google and Uber

London’s Evening Standard newspaper sold favorable coverage to a number of companies, including tech giants Google and Uber, according to a report published by the watchdog group openDemocracy.

From openDemocracy:

London’s Evening Standard newspaper, edited by the former chancellor George Osborne, has agreed a £3 million deal with six leading commercial companies, including Google and Uber, promising them “money-can’t-buy” positive news and “favourable” comment coverage, openDemocracy can reveal.

The project, called London 2020, is being directed by Osborne. It effectively sweeps away the conventional ethical divide between news and advertising inside the Standard – and is set to include “favourable” news coverage of the firms involved, with readers unable to differentiate between “news” that is paid-for and other commercially-branded content.

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Samantha Bee Defends Calling Ivanka Trump a ‘C**t’ at TV Academy Awards

Embattled TBS late-night host Samantha Bee took the stage to accept a Television Academy Honors award Thursday night and defended calling White House advisor Ivanka Trump a “c*nt,” lashed out at the Trump administration “treating people legally seeking asylum as criminals,” and thanked her bosses at Turner Broadcasting for having her back.

“Our piece attracted controversy of the worst kind,” Bee said of the segment about the Trump administration’s immigration and border policies that ended with her calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c*nt” who needed to “do something about [her] dad’s immigration practices.”

“We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word, when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are wrenching children from their parents and treating people legally seeking asylum as criminals,” Bee added. “If we are OK with that then really, who are we?”

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Donald Trump Asks Why TBS, Time Warner Aren’t Firing Samantha Bee

President Donald Trump condemned comedian Samantha Bee’s foul-mouthed attack on White House adviser Ivanka Trump Friday morning, asking why the TBS late-night host is still employed despite her “horrible language” and “low ratings.”

“Why aren’t they firing no talent Samantha Bee for the horrible language used on her low ratings show?” the president posted on his @realdonaldtrump Twitter account. “A total double standard but that’s O.K., we are Winning, and will be doing so for a long time to come!”

Neither Turner nor its parent company have indicated that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes will follow the lead of Disney CEO Bob Iger, who called Valerie Jarrett to apologize for a tweet from Roseanne Barr just one day before Bee attacked Ivanka Trump.

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Melania Trump: Media Too Often Silent on Hate

Stephanie Grisham, Press Secretary and Communications Director for First Lady, issued a statement on behalf of Melania Trump Thursday in response to comedian Samantha Bee’s vulgar attack on Ivanka Trump.

“Time and again the Trump family and members of this Administration are subjected to false reporting, hateful rhetoric and outrageous lies all in the name of freedom of speech or comedy, yet the main stream media stays silent,” Grisham said in a statement.

“The double standard is truly astounding.”

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George Soros Pulls Out of San Diego’s District Attorney Race

A political action committee launched and bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros is pulling out of San Diego's district attorney race.

The California Justice & Public Safety PAC, which was established by Soros to support Geneviéve Jones-Wright, a far-left public defender, recently pulled an advertisement depicting District Attorney Summer Stephan as having a backlog of rape kits that needed to be tested. The ad came under fire for being false and misleading.

Now, the PAC is leaving the race entirely. Soros's PAC has cancelled all future advertisements in support of Jones-Wright, according to television station managers in the region.

Soros has spent hundreds of thousands on television advertisements, digital advertisements, and campaign literature and mailings in support of Jones-Wright after initially depositing $1.5 million into the California Justice & Public Safety PAC, the Washington Free Beacon previously reported.

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Federal Agency Known for Fraud & Waste Finances Own Attacks

Here’s an amusing—and unbelievable—story about the most overtly communist agency in the U.S. government financing its own attacks with taxpayer money. A nonprofit that receives millions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is suing the agency in federal court for suspending a controversial Obama program with far-reaching racial and ethnic housing quotas.

Known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), the policy aims to transform nearly all of the nation’s neighborhoods with unprecedented low-income housing quotas and preferred ethnic and racial formulas. AFFH also requires federal and local governments to spend tens of millions of dollars annually gathering statistics on racial and ethnic concentrations in America’s neighborhoods.

In January HUD Secretary Ben Carson delayed the implementation of AFFH, which he describes as a government-engineered attempt to legislate racial equality. This month Carson finally suspended the contentious program altogether, revealing in a statement that the tool used to comply with AFFH is confusing, difficult to use and frequently produced unacceptable assessments. In its 18-page Federal Register notice HUD states that it has spent over $3.5 million on technical assistance for the initial round of AFFH submissions from local governments across the nation. “HUD is withdrawing the Tool to produce a more effective and less burdensome Assessment Tool,” the notice reads. “These improvements to the Tool will make it more effective in assisting program participants with the creation of meaningful assessments with impactful fair housing goals to help them plan to fulfill their legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.”

A lawsuit was quickly filed against HUD and Carson by a group of leftist organizations and the lead plaintiff is the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), a nonprofit dedicated to ending housing discrimination and fostering diverse, inclusive communities through advocacy. Based in Washington, D.C., NFHA receives a chunk of change from HUD as well as left-wing billionaire George Soros.

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More Evidence of Political Coverup in Dem IT Security Scandal

More evidence has surfaced about the disturbing political coverup of grave national security violations committed by the Pakistani who ran House Democrats’ information technology. His name is Imran Awan and last year he was arrested on bank-fraud charges at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. while trying to flee to his native Pakistan. Even after getting fired by some members of Congress for stealing computers and data systems, Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, kept him and let him have access to her emails and files as well as the password to the electronic device she used for DNC business. At one point, Awan had access to the computers of dozens of members of Congress, including those on the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees. Judicial Watch has launched an investigation and is pursuing public records.

The government’s bizarre failure to prosecute Awan for the national security violations he appears to have committed points to a political coverup that’s dangerous, craven and borders on traitorous. A House Office of Inspector General investigation determined earlier this year that Awan and his relatives committed numerous violations of House security policies, including logging into the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times without authorization. The same news agency that reported that story published alarming new revelations in the case this month, concluding that “Democrats appear to want to keep the case out of court” because “a trial could expose their reckless IT practices.” It turns out that, not only has Capitol Police failed to make any arrests, it inadvertently gave evidence to defense attorneys that was supposed to go to prosecutors. It gets better; prosecutors appear to be sharing information with someone on Capitol Hill who in turn is leaking it to Awan’s lawyer.

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Black unemployment rate hits new RECORD LOW in May

The unemployment rate for black workers hit new record lows in May, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

Black unemployment fell sharply to 5.9 percent, beating out the 6.6 percent record low that was set a month earlier.

President Trump has cheered the record low unemployment rates seen for black workers on his watch. He and his supporters have pointed to the falling numbers for black workers as proof that Trump is working to better the lives of all Americans, even as Trump's critics continue to say Trump is a racist who should be removed from office.

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With Shootings on the Rise, Schools Turn to 'Active Shooter' Insurance

Gun violence costs lives -- and money. The financial burden can overwhelm governments, especially when they're small or struggling.

After every mass shooting, more calls come in: from private companies, from large stadiums, and -- increasingly -- from government agencies and public schools. They all want to talk about the same thing. “We probably have seen a tenfold increase in inquiries since Parkland,” says Paul Marshall, an insurance broker for McGowan Program Administrators, an underwriter based in Ohio. “People just feel vulnerable when [a shooting] happens. And that’s when we get phone calls, because it feels inevitable and very difficult to manage.”

Since the February attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which killed 17 and launched a nationwide push for additional gun control measures, at least seven South Florida school districts have purchased about $3 million worth of “active shooter” coverage from McGowan. This kind of coverage, which the insurance broker first began offering in 2016, is a small but rapidly growing slice of the company’s portfolio. There’s no database that tracks which school districts carry this type of coverage, but Marshall says his company is consistently seeing 20 percent increases in the number of inquiries month over month. Other insurance companies are also seeing an increase in inquiries and purchases of this type of insurance. Over the course of one week shortly after Parkland, Hugh Nelson, senior vice president at Southern Insurance Underwriters Inc., says he received half a dozen inquiries. According to Reuters, while some insurance companies have offered these policies since 2011, many more have sprung up since 2016.

It’s one trend following another, deeply troubling one: The incidence of active shooter events is going up. According to FBI data, the average number of shootings per year jumped from 6.4 between 2000 and 2006 to 16.4 in the period from 2007 to 2013. (Overall, active shooter incidents, which the FBI defines as events in which an individual is actively engaged in attempting to kill people in a populated area, claimed 1,043 lives between 2000 and 2013.) In 2014 and 2015, that number rose again, to 20 shootings per year. About 10 percent of those occurred on government property, while an additional 24 percent occurred in schools. In fact, according to data recently compiled byThe Washington Post, since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., some 208,000 children at 212 schools have experienced gun violence on campus.

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Job Gains for Foreign-Born Workers Outpace Native-Born Americans

The employment situation in the United States is increasingly positive for foreign-born workers, while native-born Americans’ job gains are growing at a much smaller rate.

As the U.S. continues to import more than 1.5 million legal immigrants a year, job gains between April 2017 and April 2018 reveal that much of the economic opportunity is going to foreign-born workers rather than native-born Americans.

For example, job gains for foreign-born workers grew about 3.6 percent, year-to-year labor data reveals. Meanwhile, native-born workers’ job gains grew at a measly less than one percent during that same time period.

This means that employment for foreign-born workers grew about four times faster than native-born Americans between April of last year and last month.

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Inside a porn addiction clinic with patients as young as EIGHT

On the street outside his good looks and charming smile might catch the eyes of passersby, but in here he keeps his head down and avoids looking directly at the receptionist.

He is one of Britain’s growing number of pornography addicts, whose shocking secret is one click away from destroying his life forever.

“What gives you a thrill one day doesn’t do it for you the next,” he later explains.

“You’re always looking for a greater buzz and then it leads you into a darker place you never believed possible.”

And one expert in the field now claims porn addiction is affecting children as young as eight. He knows, because he’s treating them.

“This a physical dependency – people are self-medicating with porn and each time they need a greater, more hardcore hit,” reveals Rob Watt, who has over 13 years experience treating addicts.

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Additional Medicare Information Sessions Scheduled

Medicare-eligible State of Maryland retirees (age 65 & older) will no longer receive prescription drug coverage under the Maryland State health plan, effective

Jan. 1, 2019, the Maryland Department of Budget and Management, Employee Benefits Division has announced.

These Medicare-eligible Maryland State retirees have until Dec. 31, 2018, to enroll in a Medicare Part D plan for prescription drugs, at their cost, to ensure there is no gap in their coverage.

Choosing a new drug plan, and navigating the Medicare maze, can be confusing at best. Where can you find help to choose the best Medicare prescription plan for you?

MAC, Inc., the Area Agency on Aging, is ready to help with information sessions.

Additional free sessions, for Medicare-eligible State of Maryland retirees (age 65 & older), and others needing information on how to sign up for Medicare prescription coverage, have been scheduled as follows:

 Monday, June 4, from 2 to 3 p.m., at MAC, Inc.

 Tuesday, June 5, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Ocean Pines Branch of the Worcester County Library

 Tuesday, June 5, from 11 a.m. to noon at the Westover Senior Center

Thursday, June 7, from 2 to 3 p.m., at the Pocomoke City Branch of the Worcester County Library

 Wednesday, June 13, from 2 to 3 p.m., at the Charles and Martha Fulton Senior Center in Snow Hill

 Tuesday, June 19, from 1 to 3 p.m., at the Hurlock Senior Center

In addition, the following Medicare enrollment how-to programs are being offered for the do-it-yourselfer:

 Wednesday, June 6, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., at MAC, Inc.

 Tuesday, June 12, from 10 a.m. to noon, at MAC, Inc.

Advance registration is required for a DIY session. To register, call 410-742-0505, ext. 113.

Advance registration is required for a DIY session. To register, call 410-742-0505, ext. 113

For more information about Medicare enrollment and how MAC can help, or to learn more about MAC services, call 410-742-0505.

MAC is a member agency of the United Way of the Lower Eastern Shore.

Leading BDS Organization Tied to Palestinian Terrorist Groups

An American umbrella group of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel facilitates tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes numerous U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, according to a new report.

The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a Virginia-based nonprofit that coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations, is a fiscal sponsor of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), which is based in the West Bank and Gaza, Tablet magazine reported Friday.

The BNC, created in Ramallah in 2007, counts the Council of National and Islamic Forces, commonly known as PNIF, among its members. Five different U.S-designated terrorist organizations are members of PNIF: Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

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Abbas refused to meet Democrat delegation

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas refused to meet with a delegation of Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives that visited Israel two months ago, in protest of the Trump administration’s policies toward Israel, Haaretz revealed.

According to the newspaper, Abbas’ refusal to meet the delegation caught its members by surprise, because many of them are constant critics of the Trump administration and were hoping to hear Abbas’ point of view about Trump’s policies while visiting the region.

The delegation, led by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, visited Israel and Jordan in late March. It comprised 11 representatives, including two members of the House Intelligence Committee. They held lengthy meetings with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and King Abdullah II in Amman, Jordan.

The delegation also met with Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who thanked the members of Congress for their unwavering support for Israel and for the aid budget approved by Congress for Israel’s anti-missile defense program amounting to $705 million in 2018, the largest sum ever approved for the program.

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Deadbeat son claims he’s too broke to pay child support

He’s not just a deadbeat son, he’s also a deadbeat dad.

Michael Rotondo — the 30-year-old upstate man whose own parents sued him to get him out of the house — complained he was too broke to pay child support for his 8-year-old son, yet somehow managed to plunk down nearly $10,000 for a storage unit that has housed his busted 1989 Chevy Camaro for the past five years, according to court records obtained by The Post.

Rotondo fought the mother of his child tooth and nail in Onondaga County Family Court in 2016 when she asked for an increase in support — from a mere $25 a month.

“He terrorized me,” the 33-year-old woman railed to The Post Friday, hours after the unemployedRotondo was kicked out of his parents’ Camillus home by court order following eight years of rent-free living.

The single mom, who asked to remain anonymous, said Rotondo owes about $2,500 in child support. He was ordered to pay $56 a week last year by a judge after the mom filed a petition in October 2016, court papers show.

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Why New York refuses to identify rotten teachers

The biggest irony of Albany’s push to delink student test scores from teacher evaluations — as a bill passed Thursday by the Senate Education Committee would do — isn’t that Gov. Andrew Cuomo now wants credit for the effort, after having championed the linkage for years. It’s that Cuomo’s war to make the scores count was lost long ago, so why bother to make it official?

From the start, the 2010 state law calling for test results to figure into teacher ratings was a sham. Cuomo himself later called it “unworkable by design.” Its real goal was to snag $700 million in federal “Race to the Top” money, and moving toward evaluations based on test scores was required for that.

Since then, the mandate has been delayed, revised, superseded and suspended so often it might as well never have existed. United Federation of Teachers boss Mike Mulgrew even admitted he deliberately “gummed up” talks with Team Bloomberg to stop it from taking effect in the city.

New York’s teachers unions were simply never going to allow their members to be graded in any serious, objective way, let alone fired on the basis of their performance. Indeed, to this day, poor student scores on state tests haven’t led to a single teacher being terminated under that 2010 law or any of its updates.

The latest “moratorium” isn’t even set to expire until next year. And if the test score-eval linkage were to take hold (no chance of that), the unions would still have another two years to delay it again, before any teacher could face consequences.

Meanwhile, in every year since 2012, unreformed evaluations have deemed no more than 1 percent of teachers to be “ineffective.” That’s not because 99 percent of teachers are stellar or kids are so high-performing: Last year, 60 percent of students flunked state exams.

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Opening the White House to the Muslim Brotherhood

One of the unfortunate side effects of Roseanne's racist tweet implosion involving Valerie Jarrett is that it may put off limits the documented influence held by the Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama administration – influence that was so great that we handed over a loyal ally, Egypt, into its control for a time.

The key player in Obama's administration is the Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett. Her role in the Obama administration has been likened to the mysterious Rasputin in the era of the Russian czars:

Her influence is shown by an account in Richard Miniter's book "Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him."

It relates that at the urging of Jarrett, Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission. Seems she was concerned about the possible political harm to Obama if the mission failed.

Then there is Huma Abedin, wife of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner and top aide to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. She is expected to assume the Jarrett role in a Hillary Clinton White House. Her affiliations and loyalties are also suspect:

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Americans Tell Washington Post They’re ‘Sick’ of Mass Immigration

A handful of Americans residing in Gainesville, Georgia say they’re “sick” of mass immigration to the United States, telling Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post that they “feel like the minority” in their own country.

The Washington Post‘s latest profile by Jenna Johnson interviews nine Americans about their views on immigration. While six of the Americans said they supported amnesty for illegal aliens and didn’t have an issue with current legal immigration levels — the U.S. admits more than 1.5 million immigrants a year — three Americans interviewed for the piece voiced their opposition to the current immigration crisis.

Susan Henthorn, 61-years-old, said her neighborhood is rapidly changing because of immigration and wants to see it stop.

“I’m sick of it,” Henthorn, 61, said of immigrants illegally coming to her community, where she has lived for 30 years.

Another American, Art Gallegos Jr., said he supported President Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and wants to see illegal immigration stopped. Gallegos is a first-generation American from Mexico.

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MSM Issue Four Corrections After Falsely Claiming Trump Separating Families at Border

The establishment media suffered a major blow over the past 48 hours, being forced to issue four corrections after falsely claiming that President Trump enacted a policy to separate border-crossing parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a list compiled by the White House, the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Seattle Times all had to issue corrections to their false immigration reports.

A New York Times report and a USA Today report both had to issue corrections after they claimed that the Trump administration had “lost track” of nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors who had crossed the southern border and been resettled across the country.

As the New York Times correction notes, those unaccompanied minors are not in federal custody anymore...

With Ebola at a 'critical point' in Congo, aid groups scramble to limit the outbreak

MBANDAKA, Congo - The two brothers of Adalbert Wanza made a 170-mile round trip voyage on foot, boat and motorcycle through Congo's dense rain forest to bring him, and ultimately the rest of the world, grave news.

A visitor had died while in their home village, Ikoko-Impenge. A local priest buried him with ritual honors, including giving the corpse its last food and drink. Days later, the priest and most of his family were dead, too. When he heard the story, Wanza, the Catholic bishop of Mbandaka, knew it could be Ebola, which is endemic in the forest, and contacted health officials. Lab tests would prove him right.

Over the next three weeks, the most serious outbreak of the virus since a devastating epidemic in West Africa between 2014 and 2016 spread from deep within the rain forest to bigger towns and finally to Mbandaka, a regional hub of nearly 1.2 million people at the confluence of the Congo and Ruki rivers.

As of Friday, 37 cases of Ebola had been confirmed, four of them in Mbandaka, where it can more easily spread. Twelve confirmed cases resulted in death, as have an additional 13 suspected or probable cases.

The outbreak has triggered a massive effort to contain it, led by the Congolese government and the World Health Organization, and aided by numerous aid groups. Dozens of health workers are bringing experience from the West African epidemic.

They are also bringing an abundance of caution..

SAMANTHA BEE’S ADVERTISERS BEGIN TO JUMP SHIP

A number of companies that once ran commercials during Samantha Bee’s “Full Frontal” have begun to pull out after she made a controversial joke aimed at Ivanka Trump.

Both Autotrader and State Farm severed ties with the network in the wake of outcries after Bee referred to President Donald Trump’s daughter as a “feckless c***” during the hostess’s Wednesday night broadcast.

“Thank you to those who reached out regarding our sponsorship of ‘Full Frontal,'” Autotrader said in a statement from its official Twitter account Thursday. “The comments expressed by Samantha Bee were offensive and unacceptable and do not reflect the views of our company. As a result, we have suspended our sponsorship of ‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.'”

State Farm soon followed suit, telling TheWrap it had asked TBS “to suspend our advertising.”

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Teens are jumping ship on Facebook for rival platforms

Teens are unfriending Facebook in droves as they move to cooler social media platforms, a new study says.

The percentage of American 13-to-17-year-olds on Mark Zuckerberg’s social network now sits at 51 percent, down from 71 percent in 2015.

The new numbers come from a Pew Research survey of teens and technology use, which found that Facebook now trails significantly behind Instagram and Snapchat — which 72 and 69 percent of teenagers say they use, respectively.

It was a 20 percent jump for Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, and a 28 percent pop for Snapchat.

The most popular platform for teens, however, was the video streaming site YouTube, which 85 percent of teens said they use for music and video.

The dip wasn’t unexpected for Facebook — the social network has struggled to stay relevant with younger audiences as their parents signed up to monitor their child’s social presence and stayed after the kids moved on to the visual nature of Snapchat and Instagram’s picture-based services.

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APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ ON US CURRENCY

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the federal government can lawfully print “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency.

Though the result is a victory for those eager to preserve vestiges of religion in public life, conservative litigators warn the substance of the opinion could redound to the benefit of progressives.

The plaintiffs are a coalition of atheists, humanists, and a Jew who claim the motto’s appearance on U.S. currency burdens their deeply-held beliefs, in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the First Amendment. The non-believing plaintiffs say the inscription forces them to carry and spread a message with which they disagree, while endorsing a religious position they hold to be false. The Jewish plaintiff says the epigraph compromises his religious practice to the extent that it implicates him in the unnecessary printing and destruction of God’s name, which is sinful under Mosaic law.

They further claim the explicitly Christian history of the inscription denies equal dignity to their religious views, a breach of the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.

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The Week in Public Finance: Can the IRS Stop States' Tax Reform Workarounds?

The IRS wants to thwart state efforts to avoid the new cap on state and local tax deductions. It's unclear whether that would be legal -- or effective.

Now that three states have created workarounds to a part of last year's federal tax overhaul, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is trying to stop others from following.

Last week, the IRS announced that it would propose regulations that address attempts by states to help their residents avoid the new federal cap on state and local tax deductions. So far, California, New Jersey and New York are nearing passage of laws that would allow residents who owe more than $10,000 in state and local taxes to pay the remainder into a state charitable trust. Because charitable contributions are still tax-deductible under federal law, the state trust contribution offers residents a workaround.

It’s no surprise, says Jared Walczak, a senior analyst at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, that the IRS is striking back. “The IRS was never going to be fooled by these workarounds."

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Florida family awarded just 4 cents for Gregory Hill's death by cop

A Florida family was awarded just four cents after a jury found a local sheriff partially liable for the death of a 30-year-old man who was shot by a police officer while inside his garage.

The family sued officer Christopher Newman and Sheriff Ken Mascara alleging wrongful death for the 2014 shooting of Gregory Hill, according to CNN.

Hill, a father of three, was shot by Newman three times after partially opening the garage and then closing it.

Police were investigating a complaint of loud noise when they arrived at the residence.

Newman claimed Hill was brandishing a firearm at the time. The officer was not charged with a crime.

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Hate-Promoting SPLC Smears Bolton’s Chief of Staff, Media Run with It

The controversial left-wing hate group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is spewing out misinformation about Fred Fleitz, National Security Adviser John Bolton’s newly named executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council.

“We’re deeply alarmed by this trend of people associated with hate groups joining the Trump administration,” a statement from SPLC said, referring to the respected Center for Security Policy (CSP) where Fleitz was senior vice president before taking a post with the Trump administration.

SPLC’s statement says that CSP is “known for propagating wild conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact but do stoke a climate of fear and violence against American Muslims.”

This despite SPLC’s “hate map” that targets groups because of their religious convictions or ideology it finds unacceptable — a map that a man said inspired him to go on a shooting spree at the Christian Family Research Center (FRC) in Washington, DC.

On Aug. 15, 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins, 29, entered FRC brandishing a gun and was thwarted by a security guard who suffered a gunshot wound but was able to subdue the shooter, preventing what could have been mass murder.

Corkins told the FBI he targeted FRC after finding it listed as an “anti-gay” group on SPLC’s website.

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California City Considers Awarding Stipends to Those ‘Most Likely to Shoot’ Others, Government Subsidizing Criminals Is Called ‘Advance Peace’

A California city is seriously considering a program to pay residents "deemed most likely to shoot somebody," on the premise that paying them will make crime less likely.

Michael Tubbs, mayor of the Bay Area city of Stockton, defended the idea of giving money specifically to the people most likely to shoot others. He would give a stipend of $1,000 per month to those who "stay the course" after an 18-month program.

"Stockton is about to award stipends of up to $1,000 a month to residents deemed most likely to shoot somebody," the Los Angeles Times's Steve Lopez reported. "This program is called Advance Peace, and it's modeled after a crime reduction program in the Bay Area city of Richmond."

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REPORT: OBAMA ADMIN TRIED TO TAKE OVER FBI’S INVESTIGATION INTO TRUMP CAMPAIGN

Speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday, Solomon also revealed that the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign weeks or even months before they had a formal predicate required to use sources:

And that’s very important. The rules say you can’t use sources until you have a predicated investigation. The predication is July 31st, 2016. My sources and documents that I’ll be able to make public tomorrow will show that there were contacts going on by people identified as informers, informants, people who provided information begin much, much earlier than July 31st.

Additionally, Solomon explained how the text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page prove the Obama administration was trying to take over the investigation despite conflicting reports from Obama Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.

In Rhodes’ book, “The World As It Is,” he claims Obama didn’t find out about the investigation into the Trump campaign until after the election.

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Hostile Architecture: How Cities Are Designed To Control Your Behavior

If you've ever wondered why you can't get comfortable on a public park bench, we've got the answer. You're not going to like it.

Picture this: You’re out for a walk in your local park, and you start to feel a bit tired.

Fortunately, you see that there’s a bench nearby. You sit down, catch your breath, and enjoy the fresh air. You’re so comfortable that you almost drift off—and, in the process, you almost fall off of the bench. The sloped surface won’t hold you for long. In fact, it’s slightly uncomfortable. You start to get a bit angry: why would the city pay for such a shoddily designed bench?

As it turns out, the city planners know exactly what they were doing. The structure in question might look something like this.

Located in Japan, this particular installation is touted as an “anti-homeless” bench. It’s designed to be inconspicuous, but it has a devious purpose: Give tourists a place to catch their breath while sending the homeless on their way.

In fact, many city planners choose designs that discourage loitering. You might have seen benches in your own town with “armrests” that prevent tired citizens from laying down. Others have shallow, tilted seats, which allow a person to get comfortable—but not too comfortable.

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FBI Releases Docs Showing Hillary’s State Department Shopped Benghazi Story to Compliant WSJ Reporter One Week After Attack

The FBI released new documents Friday showing Hillary’s State Department pitched a Benghazi story to a Wall Street Journal reporter who enthusiastically complied.

Hillary Clinton’s State Department gave stand down orders to Special Ops forces ready to go in and help Americans who were surrounded by hundreds of Islamic insurgents in Benghazi, Libya on September 11-12th, 2012.

The movie ’13 Hours’ gives personal accounts from eyewitnesses who were in Benghazi when Islamic terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound.

We lost FOUR Americans that night. Tyrone Woods, Sean Smith, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and Glen Doherty. Never forget.

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10 Diseases You Can Get From Your Cats and Dogs

It’s estimated Americans own a whopping 78 million dogs and 85 million cats, according to the American Pet Product Association, but the down side of our love for animals is that every year tens of thousands of Americans will get sick from diseases spread between animals and people.

These are called zoonotic diseases and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, six out of ten known infectious diseases and three out of four emerging diseases in people are spread by animals.

So while animals can provide incredible psychological and physical benefits to humans, it’s important to note that even a healthy looking animal can carry harmful germs that can cause illness and even death.

“While anyone can become sick from pet related infections, if you or someone you live with has a compromised immune system, you should talk with your doctor before getting a family pet,’ Dr. Jessica Stull, MD., an internist at Kelsey-Seybold Clinic in Texas, tells Newsmax Health.

Here are 10 top diseases spread by domestic animals:

Where The Girls Go, Men Will Surely Follow?

Last night, (Free Pool Night) was a huge success once again. You know you've done something right when you have 2 to 1 women over men. Everyone had a blast. Best Friday night we've experienced since I got involved. Thanks everyone. 

FBI violated own rulebook with Trump campaign ‘spy’

The FBI’s own guidelines restrict the deployment of informants to spy on Americans, such as the bureau’s decision to plant a human source among Donald Trump’s presidential campaign aides.

The cautionary regulation is contained in the FBI’s nearly 700-page Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide. The restrictions are prompting national security analysts to say the FBI should have heeded its own rulebook, which encourages alternatives to human spies in any investigation, much less one into a presidential political campaign.

The FBI should have focused, they say, on Russian agents who were meddling in the election by hacking computers and by spewing false information on social media.

Instead, the bureau, during President Obama’s administration, took the momentous step of recruiting a national security academic, Stefan Halper, to spy on Trump associates by striking up what seemed to be innocent professional contacts.

Mr. Halper was a “confidential human source,” an official category of spy that is regulated by the FBI’s domestic investigations directive. The FBI completed an updated document in 2013 and posted online a redacted version in 2016.

Human sources are regulated under a program called “Otherwise Illegal Activity,” or OIA..

More here

Texas Governor Unveils Plan for Armed Veterans in Schools

Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) security plan in response to the Santa Fe High School attack includes placing armed veterans in Texas schools for defense of students and teachers.

Details are set forth in the School and Firearm Safety Action Plan, released May 30, 2018.

The plan calls for a greater law enforcement presence throughout Texas schools by all means necessary. This includes having officers use schools as a stop for “breaks, lunch, or to file reports.” Abbott’s plan also asks schools “to provide office space for a local or state law enforcement official to work from.” He is asking the state to consider grants to help school’s offset the cost of providing such space and accommodating a great law enforcement presence.

Abbott’s plan also focuses on the use of retired police officers and employing veterans to serve as armed patrols in Texas schools:

Abbott is also focused on arming more teachers.

More here

Israel Destroys Hamas Underwater Attack Drones

TEL AVIV – The IDF released additional information on the more than 65 sites it targeted in the Gaza Strip in response to the 100 rockets and mortars launched from terrorist groups there, saying the targets included weapons manufacturing facilities and a stash of unmanned submarines that Hamas was preparing to use for attacks on Israeli naval targets and underwater infrastructure.

“The IDF strike damaged the immediate stockpile of weapons available to the terror organization and also affected the financial investment required to develop weapons in the future. The strike of these terror sites is a significant blow to Hamas’ military buildup capabilities,” a statement by the military said.

In addition to striking an attack tunnel and a weapons factory, the military also hit Hamas and Islamic Jihad naval forces, among them “advanced unmanned submarine vessels, capable of maritime infiltration and carrying out maritime terror attacks.”

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Candidate for Congress wants to legalize incest

Nathan Larson, an accountant who lives in Fauquier County, thinks it's okay for adults to have sex with children.

CATLETT, Va. (WUSA9) -- A Northern Virginia candidate running for Congress has some shocking, and dangerous views about children and women.

Nathan Larson, an accountant who lives in Fauquier County, thinks it's okay for adults to have sex with children.

And he wants to make it legal.

Normally, WUSA9 doesn't give people with abhorrent beliefs a platform to share those ideas. But in this case, since Nathan Larson is running for Congress, we would like people to know why he's running for Congress.

He says he wants to "restore liberty" and legalize incest for "personal freedom."

He said he thinks "the state should not interfere with people's decisions. Like if people were to say, well, the genetic quality might not be as good if people inbreed, they could say the same thing about a lot of people who have bad genetics who should be passing on. These days there's a lot of genetics tests. We can tell what kind of things people have."

What about the children's rights? Children cannot consent to sex with an adult.

Larson said: "Well, like with girls, I just believe that it should be for fathers to make those decisions. I believe in the patriarchal order."

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Lost Dog 5-31-18:

Female. 1 year old. Plott hound mix.
Color: brindle with white spotted chest and paws. White strip down her face. Medium size dog.

Timid and shy around new people especially men.

Last seen 9 pm on May 30th at South devision street in Salisbury MD

We changed her name to Lacey but she responds better to Xena.

She slipped out of her collar last night after we picked her up from her foster mom. We adopted her last night. She is microchiped however that information is not correct since we did not have any chance to change that information due to the fact we adopted her yesterday.

Phone: 240-839-8882

#MeToo movement gives pass to Democrats running for California governor

Gavin Newsom had an inappropriate affair with his employee. Antonio Villaraigosa cheated on his wife with a reporter assigned to cover him.

Yet the #MeToo movement, which has urged women to speak up about sexual misconduct allegations, has remained visibly silent about the sexual conduct of two prominent Democrats running for governor in California.

Some are calling it outright hypocrisy. Critics say the two abused their power and took advantage of vulnerable women – not unlike the allegations taking down powerful men all across the country.

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Did Michelle Obama successfully lobby ABC TV's president to fire Roseanne?

There are many angles to this week's Roseanne Barr controversy. This one caught my attention: on Tuesday afternoon, about twelve hours after Roseanne tweeted and quickly deleted her comments about Valerie Jarrett that almost instantly eviscerated her TV career, a Twitter user named Josh Cornett tweeted this:

BREAKING: According to sources ABC President Channing Dungey had a long conversation via phone with former First Lady Michelle Obama before deciding to cancel the Roseanne show. Michelle Obama was reportedly enraged and insisted an apology was inadequate......developing pic.twitter.com/ISgrA6oC7F
— Josh Cornett (@therealcornett) May 29, 2018

The tweet's sparse style was reminiscent of a headline or a tweet by Matt Drudge. It was slow to trend, but around 9:32 P.M. P.T. Tuesday, Roseanne retweeted someone who had retweeted Cornett's tweet. The retweeter had added, "This makes alot more sense then [sic] most things..." A few minutes later, Roseanne herself retweeted Cornett's original tweet and asked, "Is this true?"

During the next two days, Wednesday and Thursday, Cornett's tweet, thanks to Roseanne retweeting it, became a headline story around the world. Fox News on Wednesday was one of the first MSM sources to report it and to include the essence of the tweet in the story's headline: "Roseanne Barr says she may fight ABC firing, retweets claim Michelle Obama was behind ouster."

More here

Watch ICE director school liberal media about 'virtuous' illegal aliens

The PBS NewsHour attempted to ambush outgoing ICE director Thomas Homan, but instead, it inadvertently ended up giving viewers a true understanding of the nature of illegal immigration.

PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff started by playing a camera video of a child crying hysterically while her illegal alien father was being arrested by ICE. Woodruff said the father was a virtuous illegal alien who "only" had a DUI conviction and asked Homan if his arrest made the country safer.

Homan's answer: "Absolutely." He went on to tell Woodruff that 10,000 people a year are killed by drunk drivers. He added, "If the message we want to send to the rest of the world is it's okay to enter this country illegally as long as you successfully hide for ten years, as long as you have a U..S citizen child while you're here illegally, now you're immune from law enforcement, now you're immune from the laws of this country – if that's the message we want to keep sending, we're never going to fix this illegal immigration crisis."

Woodruff attacked again..

More here with the video

Trump: Major Drug Companies to Announce Voluntary Price Cuts Soon

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he expects major drug companies to cut prices on their products in two weeks, but did not provide details on which companies would do so or the means by which they would provide such reductions.

"You're going to have some big news. I think we're going to have some of the big drug companies in two weeks said they're going to announce, because of what we did, they're going to announce voluntary massive drops in prices," Trump said at a signing ceremony for a new law making it easier for seriously ill people to try experimental treatments.

Earlier this month, Trump unveiled the administration's plan to lower prescription drug prices, largely through regulatory authority, calling the plan "the most sweeping action in history" to reduce the cost of medicines for consumers.

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Five Dominican Republic Migrants and 3 Roosters Intercepted near Rincon, Puerto Rico

AGUADILLA, Puerto Rico – U.S Border Patrol apprehended five illegal aliens from the Dominican Republic that were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard on Sunday near the coast of Rincon. Three roosters were found onboard the intercepted wooden vessel.

Jose Rodolfo Morla and Jose Alberto Santana-Mejia, citizens of the Dominican Republic, will appear today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce J. McGiverin, charged with a violation to Title 8, United States Code, Section 1326, for attempted re-entry after previous removal or deportation.

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The End Of Stimulus? (And The Start Of The Crash?)

Back in January of 2016 we saw what appeared to be, and in my opinion should have been, the end of the Everything Bubble blown by the word's central banking cartel.

The carnage started in the emerging markets. Highly-leveraged positions and carry trades began to unwind. That's a fancy way of saying that all the big, sophisticated investors -- who were busy borrowing heavily in countries with cheap money (the US, Japan, and Europe) and using that debt to speculate in markets offering higher yields (junk debt, emerging markets, stocks, etc.) -- began to reverse their trades.

It quickly devolved into a “Sell everything!” scramble. We saw the dollar spike and stocks fall -- with emerging markets taking the full brunt of the carnage as their stock markets rapidly fell into bear territory, their currencies fell, and their bonds were destroyed.

Until...

Very early one morning in February of 2016 everything U-turned and rocketed higher. Suddenly and magically, the panic was over. This wasn’t the invisible hand of the market at work; it was the very-visible hand of central bank intervention.

With the benefit of hindsight, we now have a clear picture of what happened. The central banks huddled together, a bold (desperate?) plan was hatched, and key printing presses around the world were sent into overdrive. In the months to follow, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) went on a record-breaking money printing spree:

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Daily Government Quotes

In God We Trust

JUNE 1, 2018

Words that must be displayed on every public school building in Louisiana by 2019 in order to comply with a new law signed last week by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Source: the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Why do we see kids being so violent? What's out there? What makes them do that? ... Pornography.

MAY 31, 2018

Congresswoman Diane Black of Tennessee, citing what she believes is a "root cause" of school shootings -- along with the deterioration of the family and violent movies.

Source: CNN

Have ya’ll tried grammar and style check?

MAY 30, 2018

Handwritten words at the top of a retired teacher's letter to the White House in which she pointed out the Trump administration's mistakes in its original letter to her. “When you get letters from the highest level of government, you expect them to be at least mechanically correct,” she said in an interview.

Source: Slate

What did I say about how disappointing the nyt has become…?

MAY 29, 2018

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, in an email to his staff. It was one of many released last week that reveal the mayor’s anger with the media and attempts to avoid them.

Source: Politico

Maybe if they ... see the bodies of dead police officers who've been shot, laying in their own pool of blood, maybe all these people that are supposed to be the 'party of law and order' will start ... enacting pragmatic reforms that are achievable.

MAY 25, 2018

Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, who has been outspoken about the need for gun control since a school shooting in his state this month left 10 people dead.

Source: Tribune News Service

Power outage and zombie alert for the residents ... due to extreme zombie activity.

MAY 24, 2018

Emergency alert sent to residents of a South Florida city in the middle of the night. There was a power outage, but city officials say there was no zombie activity and are investigating why it mentioned them.

Source: Tribune News Service

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Wicomico Dwelling Fire Vincent Street

NOTICE OF INVESTIGATION

Date:   May 31, 2018

Time:   3:15 p.m.

Location / Address:   913 Vincent Ave., Salisbury, Wicomico Co.

Type of Incident:  Fire

Description of Structure / Property:   One story wood framed single family dwelling

Owner / Occupants:   Chyvonne and Keith Bailey

Injuries or Deaths:  None

Estimated $ Loss: Structure:  $300                      Contents: $200

Smoke Alarm Status:   Present and activated

Fire Alarm / Sprinkler Status:  n/a

Arrests(s):  None

Primary Responding Fire Department:  Salisbury

# of Alarms: 1     # Of Firefighters:  10

Time to Control:  5 minutes

Discovered By:  Occupants

Area of Origin:   Interior of family room

Preliminary Cause:  Accidental, failure of electric cord

Additional Information:  The discovery of the fire by a juvenile family member led to the early notification of other family members who were also occupying the residence at the time of the fire.  Upon hearing the smoke alarm activation, the juvenile safely exited the residence with his younger sibling and performed the proper exiting and notification methods which he learned in school fire prevention. The juvenile’s actions saved the lives of his family members and extensive damage to his residence.

True That!

Caption This Photo 6-2-18

Tons of New Yorkers want to leave the city

One-third of New Yorkers want to ditch the Big Apple.

A study by brokerage and real estate listings hub Redfin found that 34 percent of its New York City users searched for properties outside of the city, Bloomberg reported.

It gets worse. Of that 34 percent, most looked at homes in our city’s archrival: Boston. The data, released earlier this month, also shows New Yorkers browsing homes in Miami and Atlanta.

It’s a nationwide phenomenon. Given rising prices and limited inventory, wannabe home buyers currently living in expensive cities are looking at secondary markets. Of the 21 percent of San Franciscans searching outside the Bay Area, most are eyeing cheaper Sacramento. Seattle residents are ogling less costly counties in sunny Los Angeles, while Washington, DC, dwellers examine nearby Philadelphia.

And while searches don’t reflect actual home purchases or relocations, Redfin says they’re a leading indicator of eventual moves.

Redfin senior economist Taylor Marr reported that, in 2015, Bay Area residents were searching outside the city for homes, and by 2016, census data revealed that San Francisco had lost residents.

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