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News

LeadPages shuts down #anywhereButTarget web site to promote “diversity”

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One sexual assault lawsuit should finish off Target for good
One sexual assault lawsuit should finish off Target for good

This story is from the The Stream.

Excerpt:

A conservative corporate watchdog group’s effort to galvanize conservatives against Target’s restroom and changing-room policies was shut down on Thanksgiving Day by the server company hosting its website, because the campaign allegedly violated the company’s effort to “create an inclusive workplace” respectful of “diversity.”

In an e-mail, Leadpages Director of Operations Doug Storbeck ordered 2nd Vote to take down its #AnywhereButTARGET website. According to Storbeck, “at Leadpages, we strive to create an inclusive workplace that upholds the dignity of all people. We value, respect, and celebrate everyone’s individualities and honor their unique strengths from all different walks of life.”

2nd Vote’s campaign encouraged conservatives to shop #AnywhereButTARGET because of the company’s policy that allows males who identify as females to use the restroom and changing room of their choice. Conservatives have boycotted the retail giant, though Target executives said in August that a stock drop and an investment in single-sex restrooms was unrelated to the backlash.

Storbeck continued:

We believe that embracing diversity of thought and perspective encourages collaboration that leads to product innovation, diverse products and a successful business. Staying true to our core values is something we take very seriously and we feel this is reinforced in our Terms of Service. Specifically, and according to our Acceptable Use and Conduct policy (to which you have agreed), we prohibit any content which: “(g) is hateful or discriminatory based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality, ethnic or national origin, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or age or is otherwise objectionable, as reasonably determined by Ave. 81;”

For the reasons stated above, I am respectfully requesting that you to take down your #AnywhereButTarget landing page upon receipt of this notice, but no later than 8:00am CST on Thursday November 24, 2016.

Storbeck’s LinkedIn page says that he lives in the Minneapolis area, which is also where Target’s headquarters are located. The Stream was unable to determine whether this played a role in Leadpages’ decision.

The actual-email is linked in the Stream article, so you can see for yourself how someone can invoke diversity and inclusion to shut down a viewpoint that they disagree with. You need a college education in the liberal arts to call acts of censorship “diversity and inclusion”.

Fox 10 News reports on some of the diversity and inclusion that the Target CEO and Doug Storbeck celebrate:

An O’Fallon, Missouri man was arrested on April 23, 2015 after allegedly secretly filming women in a Target dressing room.

Matthew Foerstel, 26, faces felony charges for invasion of privacy in the second degree and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Foerstel has a plea hearing on Monday, May 2, 2016.

The Brentwood Police Department arrested Foerstel on April 23 after he allegedly held a camera phone under a dressing room door while a female shopper tried on swim suits at the Target store in Brentwood.

An officer went to Ranken Technical College to place Foerstel under arrest and reportedly found him in possession of a loaded handgun.

In 2013, Foerstel was convicted of invasion of privacy in St. Charles County for “knowingly and intentionally” filming an 11-year-old girl while she was partially nude inside a department store dressing room.

In case you are wondering, the CEO of Target, Brian Cornell, still thinks that men dressed as women should be allowed to use women’s bathrooms.

NewsMax explains:

Target CEO Brian Cornell defended the company’s transgender bathroom policy decision to shareholders while also denying that the $10 billion in losses suffered since had anything to do with the controversial decision, Breitbart reported.

The new policy, instituted seven weeks ago, allows transgender men and women to use the bathrooms and changing rooms of the gender they identify with at all Target stores.

That decision has been the impetus behind a boycott of Target by about 1 million Americans.

“We’re a company that believes strongly in diversity and inclusion,” LifeSiteNews quoted Cornell at Wednesday’s shareholder meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif. “We’re a company that is very guest-centered.”

All these people on the corporate left like to throw around words like “diversity”, “tolerance” and “inclusion”. But they don’t know what those words even mean.

Commentary

The true story of Thanksgiving: Squanto’s miraculous path to Plymouth

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"The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth" by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1914)
“The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth” by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1914)

God’s providence in action, as reported by Eric Metaxas in the Wall Street Journal.

Full text:

The story of how the Pilgrims arrived at our shores on the Mayflower—and how a friendly Patuxet native named Squanto showed them how to plant corn, using fish as fertilizer—is well-known. But Squanto’s full story is not, as National Geographic’s new Thanksgiving miniseries, “Saints & Strangers,” shows. That might be because some details of Squanto’s life are in dispute. The important ones are not, however. His story is astonishing, even raising profound questions about God’s role in American history.

Every Thanksgiving we remember that, to escape religious persecution, the Pilgrims sailed to the New World, landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. But numerous trading ships had visited the area earlier. Around 1608 an English ship dropped anchor off the coast of what is today Plymouth, Mass., ostensibly to trade metal goods for the natives’ beads and pelts. The friendly Patuxets received the crew but soon discovered their dark intentions. A number of the braves were brutally captured, taken to Spain and sold into slavery.

One of them, a young man named Tisquantum, or Squanto, was bought by a group of Catholic friars, who evidently treated him well and freed him, even allowing him to dream of somehow returning to the New World, an almost unimaginable thought at the time. Around 1612, Squanto made his way to London, where he stayed with a man namedJohn Slany and learned his ways and language. In 1618, a ship was found, and in return for serving as an interpreter, Squanto would be given one-way passage back to the New World.

After spending a winter in Newfoundland, the ship made its way down the coast of Maine and Cape Cod, where Squanto at last reached his own shore. After 10 years, Squanto returned to the village where he had been born. But when he arrived, to his unfathomable disappointment, there was no one to greet him. What had happened?

It seems that since he had been away, nearly every member of the Patuxets had perished from disease, perhaps smallpox, brought by European ships. Had Squanto not been kidnapped, he would almost surely have died. But perhaps he didn’t feel lucky to have been spared. Surely, he must have wondered how his extraordinary efforts could amount to this. At first he wandered to another Wampanoag tribe, but they weren’t his people. He was a man without a family or tribe, and eventually lived alone in the woods.

But his story didn’t end there. In the bleak November of 1620, the Mayflower passengers, unable to navigate south to the warmer land of Virginia, decided to settle at Plymouth, the very spot where Squanto had grown up. They had come in search of religious freedom, hoping to found a colony based on Christian principles.

Their journey was very difficult, and their celebrated landing on the frigid shores of Plymouth proved even more so. Forced to sleep in miserably wet and cold conditions, many of them fell gravely ill. Half of them died during that terrible winter. One can imagine how they must have wept and wondered how the God they trusted and followed could lead them to this agonizing pass. They seriously considered returning to Europe.

But one day during that spring of 1621, a Wampanoag walked out of the woods to greet them. Somehow he spoke perfect English. In fact, he had lived in London more recently than they had. And if that weren’t strange enough, he had grown up on the exact land where they had settled.

Because of this, he knew everything about how to survive there; not only how to plant corn and squash, but how to find fish and lobsters and eels and much else. The lone Patuxet survivor had nowhere to go, so the Pilgrims adopted him as one of their own and he lived with them on the land of his childhood.

No one disputes that Squanto’s advent among the Pilgrims changed everything, making it possible for them to stay and thrive. Squanto even helped broker a peace with the local tribes, one that lasted 50 years, a staggering accomplishment considering the troubles settlers would face later.

So the question is: Can all of this have been sheer happenstance, as most versions of the story would have us believe? The Pilgrims hardly thought so. To them, Squanto was a living answer to their tearful prayers, an outrageous miracle of God. Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford declared in his journal that Squanto “became a special instrument sent of God” who didn’t leave them “till he died.”

Indeed, when Squanto died from a mysterious disease in 1622, Bradford wrote that he wanted “the Governor to pray for him, that he might go to the Englishmen’s God in heaven.” And Squanto bequeathed his possessions to the Pilgrims “as remembrances of his love.”

These are historical facts. May we be forgiven for interpreting them as the answered prayers of a suffering people, and a warm touch at the cold dawn of our history of an Almighty Hand?

America is truly a blessed nation. Why this story is not taught in all the schools of the nation is beyond me.

News

Did the most unqualified president ever really have a “scandal-free” administration?

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Obama claims that his administration has been free of major scandals
Obama claims that his administration has been free of major scandals

When Barack Obama was running for office, he promised to deliver a high degree of integrity and transparency. His teleprompter told him that he was going to be free of corruption and lawlessness, and he dutifully read those words out to his adoring fans. But after 8 years of Obama rule, does reality match his self-congratulating rhetoric?

Consider this article from the Daily Wire.

It lists 11 scandals that occurred during Obama reign of error:

  1. Operation Fast and Furious
  2. Benghazi
  3. The IRS targeted conservative organizations
  4. The DOJ seized Associated Press phone records as well as phone and email records from Fox News reporter James Rosen
  5. The NSA conducted mass surveillance against American citizens without a warrant
  6. The Obama administration paid ransom to Iran for hostages, and lied to the American people about it
  7. Hillary’s email scandal
  8. The Environmental Protection Agency poisoned a Colorado river
  9. The EPA also broke federal law in promoting a regulation
  10. The GSA scandal
  11. The Secret Service scandal

Surprisingly, Obamacare is not mentioned, even though Obama knowingly lied to the American people over and over about the true intentions and effects of the law – intentions and effects that are now understood by Americans who are being driven into bankruptcy by the law. The massive stimulus grants to Obama bundlers for “green energy” corporations that later went bankrupt are not mentioned. Giving green cards to refugees from Islamic countries without doing the proper background checks who then went on to kill Americans in terrorist attacks, (e.g. – Orlando, San Bernadino), is not mentioned. And of course the Democrat fascination with illegal immigration caused them to catch and release illegal immigrants who went on to commit crimes, including the murder of Kate Steinle. A lot more could be added to the list.

I think numbers 3 and 4 from the Daily Wire list above really show the character of the Obama administration: (links removed)

3. The IRS targeted conservative organizations. In 2013, Lois Lerner, who directed the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organizations Unit, admitted that Tea Party organizations were targeted under the agency, but blamed it on lower-level employees. Such organizations were heavily scrutinized with invasive questions. Since then, Lerner and IRS commissioner John Koskinen have denied any wrongdoing and have stonewalled congressional efforts to investigate the matter, citing computer crashes for being unable to turn over related emails.

Meanwhile, a federal court concluded in August that conservative groups might still be facing targeted scrutiny from the IRS. It has also been reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) knew about the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups as early as 2011.

4. The DOJ seized Associated Press phone records as well as phone and email records from Fox News reporter James Rosen. In the AP’s case, the DOJ was investigating a story involving “a CIA operation in Yemen that foiled an al-Qaeda plot in the spring of 2012 to set off a bomb on an airplane headed to the United States,” according to the Washington Post. The DOJ seized two months of phone records from the AP without informing the news outlet.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters,” Gary Pruitt, president of the AP wrote to Holder at the time. “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

In the Rosen case, the DOJ was investigating a story Rosen did involving North Korea and tracked “his movements and conversations,” according to Fox News, including phone numbers belonging to Rosen’s parents. The DOJ had listed Rosen as a “co-conspirator” under the Espionage Act in regards to the story—allegedly pressing a source for classified information. Rosen was never charged with a crime.

Fox News executive Michael Clemente called the DOJ’s actions against Rosen “downright chilling.” “We will unequivocally defend [Rosen’s] right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press,” Clemente said in a statement, per the Washington Post.

Basically, Obama has been running the United States like a little Banana Republic, similar to his atheist Marxist buddies Chavez (Venezuela) and Castro (Cuba). He has no respect from laws, and just used government as a weapon to attack his enemies. He truly was the first person to be president who knew nothing about the rule of law or the Constitution.  But when I raise these concerns to Democrat voters, they have no idea what I am talking about.

One of the reasons why Obama’s supporters are able to believe that he had a scandal-free administration is because they do very little critical thinking themselves, but merely rely on the words of the leftist mainstream media to tell them what reality is. Democrat voters literally have no idea about the fiscal situation and the foreign policy situation that Obama is leaving Trump, because they watch TV, and TV doesn’t tell them anything that is critical of Obama. I know that it is fun for leftists to tune in Jon Stewart and Bill Maher and think that they are informed about the world, but they really are not informed. They live in a bubble – a safe space where they only hear voices that agree with them, and voices that tell them how smart and special they are compared to those imbeciles who disagree with them. Feelings, not facts. That’s the Democrat way.