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Five Pennsylvania School Board Members Fight for Bathroom Sanity

Five Pennsylvania School Board Members Fight for Bathroom Sanity
Five Pennsylvania School Board Members Fight for Bathroom Sanity
Written By Laurie Higgins   |   11.18.16
Glimmers of light shimmer in the darkness that has been spreading within public schools.  The darkness is caused by a fog of science-denying ignorance imposed on school districts from within by teachers and administrators who view themselves as agents of social, political, and moral change and from without by “trans” activists from organizations like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the ACLU, and Lambda Legal.
The newest battle is taking place in Pine-Richland High School in western Pennsylvania where on September 12, 2016,  five courageous school board members voted to establish policy requiring students to use either the restrooms that correspond to their biological sex, or a single-occupancy “unisex” restroom, or a single-occupancy restroom in the nurse’s office.
But these generous accommodations were not enough for three gender-dysphoric students. Following the board decision, two boys who are pretending to be girls and one girl who is pretending to be a boy filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the district, the superintendent, and the principal.
One of the students, Jacob Evancho (brother of America’s Got Talent star Jackie Evancho) who now goes by the name “Juliet,” claims that before he was required to use sex-appropriate restrooms, “Pine-Richland was a safe, and kind…place. Everyone was so sweet.”
His comment illustrates one of the many problems with policies that permit gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. These policies teach all students that in order to be kind, sweet, compassionate, and inclusive, they must pretend that biological sex per se has no meaning relative to modesty, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy. Sex-integrated restroom and locker room policies teach all students that people’s  feelings about their sex trump their actual sex in private spaces.
But the school district is resisting. It has filed a lawsuit asking that the discrimination lawsuit be dismissed.
Lambda Legal, an organization that fights for co-ed restrooms and locker rooms for children and teens, and which is representing the three gender-dysphoric students in this lawsuit castigates the school district for their “shameful” actions, suggesting that opposition to co-ed restrooms renders gender-dysphoric students unable to “fully participate in their education.”
Why does requiring gender-dysphoric students to use restrooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share prevent them from being able to fully participate in their education, but requiring non-gender-dysphoric students (i.e., normal students) to use restrooms with persons whose sex they don’t share doesn’t prevent them from being able to fully participate in their education?
“Juliet’s” mother Lisa Evancho says this about the policy:

It makes me angry. It makes me wonder what kind of Neanderthals…think it’s appropriate to go in there and start picking on a particular segment of the population and make it all about them.

Why does the desire of normal students to use restrooms or locker rooms with only students whose sex they share constitute “picking on a segment of the population,” while demands by gender-dysphoric students to use restrooms or locker rooms with only students whose “gender identity” they share does not constitute “picking on a segment of the population”? Why is it unkind to require students to use restrooms with persons of their same sex but requiring  students to use restrooms with persons of the opposite sex is a sign of kindness?
If there are two distinct phenomena (i.e., biological sex which is constituted by objective DNA/anatomy/biology and “gender identity” which is constituted by subjective feelings/desires), why should restroom and locker room usage correspond to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex?
“Juliet” Evancho claims that using a single-occupancy unisex restroom “marginalizes” him. In reality, however, it is not the policy that marginalizes him. It is his decision to acquiesce to his disordered desire to be the sex he is not and can never be that marginalizes him.
No one should be compelled to pretend Evancho is what he is not. But that’s exactly what the Left believes should happen. Since in the dystopian world of “progressivism,” subjective feelings trump all other considerations—including morality and reality—everyone must bend the knee to feelings, including even disordered, irrational, science-denying feelings.
Well, let me qualify that: Not all feelings are treated equally. The feelings of modesty that boys and girls and men and women who don’t want to share restrooms or locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex experience mean nothing. In fact, to Leftists such feelings are Neanderthal, ignorant, and hateful and must be eradicated.


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National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Legislation

National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Legislation

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2015   NRA

Thanks to your continued calls and emails, NRA supported Right-to-Carry bills have seen increases in cosponsorships over these past few weeks.  Please continue to contact your elected officials and urge them to cosponsor and support these important bills:
S. 498 – Introduced by U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), this legislation would respect the rights of individuals who possess concealed carry permits from their home state, or who are not prohibited from carrying concealed in their home state, to exercise those rights in any other state that does not prohibit concealed carry.  This bill currently has 32 cosponsors.  Please contact your U.S. Senators at (202) 224-3121, and ask them to cosponsor and support S. 498.
H.R. 923 – Introduced by U.S. Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.), this legislation is the House companion bill to S. 498.  The legislation would also respect the rights of individuals who possess concealed carry permits from their home state, or who are not prohibited from carrying concealed in their home state, to exercise those rights in any other state that does not prohibit concealed carry.  This bill currently has 36 cosponsors.  Please contact your U.S. Representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 923.
H.R. 986 – Introduced by U.S. Representative Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), this bill would allow any person with a valid carry permit or license issued by a state to carry a concealed firearm in any other state that does not prohibit concealed carry.  This bill would also provide legal protection for law-abiding concealed carry permit holders against states that violate the intent of this bill.  This bill currently has 183 cosponsors.  Please contact your U.S. Representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 986.
H.R. 402 – Introduced by U.S. Representative Rich Nugent (R-Fla.), this bill would allow any person with a valid carry permit or license issued by a state to carry a concealed firearm in any other state that does not prohibit concealed carry.  The bill currently has 93 cosponsors.  Please contact your U.S. Representative at (202) 224-3121 and ask him or her to cosponsor and support H.R. 402.
NRA would like to thank the sponsors and cosponsors of these critically important bills.  Again, we ask that you contact your lawmakers today and ask them to cosponsor and support these bills.
You can contact your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative by phone at (202) 224-3121 or click here to write your lawmakers today.

Trump is right about NATO

Flags of the 28 NATO member countries

title

Time Magazine on Monday wondered aloud, “Can NATO survive a Donald Trump presidency?” Millions of Americans hope that it can’t, at least not in its current state.
Time, referencing Trump’s campaign talk of cutting some U.S. aid to NATO, reported that European leaders are very worried about the president elect’s level of dedication to protecting their nations.
From the report:

On Sunday evening, after the leaders of Europe had spent the better part of a week trying to guess the scale of Donald Trump’s contempt for the NATO alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, its secretary general, offered the U.S. President-elect a reminder of what that alliance has cost.
He didn’t give the sum in terms of money – as Trump has so often tried to do – but in the lives of European soldiers, more than a 1,000 of whom have died fighting alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan. As Stoltenberg wrote in the Observer on Remembrance Sunday: “Today of all days, we remember them.”
It was an oddly emotional statement from a man better known for bureaucratic platitudes, and it showed just how anxious the Europeans have become about the U.S. commitment to their defense.

On the campaign trail Trump was often critical of NATO allies who rely on U.S. military support but who infrequently make efforts to “reasonably reimburse” the nation for its help.
The president elect sent the political and media establishments into frenzy over the summer when he offered that U.S. aid to NATO allies under a Trump administration would be contingent on whether they “fulfill their obligations to us.”
Pro-NATO Trump critics have since argued that U.S. failure to go along with treaty organization would threaten a dominance the West has enjoyed since the organization’s inception in 1949.
But when they talk about western dominance, what they really mean is U.S. world policing.
Consider the breakdown of U.S. spending on NATO compared to that of other member nations.
Here’s a helpful chart Defense One published earlier this year:
nato_spending_chart
What that shows is that far more NATO countries are failing to contribute significantly to the organization than are surpassing contribution targets. The U.S., of course, is meeting nearly double its obligation at 3.6 percent of GDP.
And Greece, whose contribution as percentage of GDP was second highest (its economy remains in shambles), is increasingly friendly with Russia. Russia is currently NATO’s top boogeyman; and Greece is increasingly being called a pawn in NATO-Russia relations.
In other words, when Trump talks about NATO having turned from an effective military deterrent to a bureaucratic money pit benefiting most heavily from U.S. military largess, he’s only stating the obvious.
U.S. military spending on NATO will top out at more than $60 billion in 2016.

It’s important to remember that Trump has not advocated for a U.S. withdrawal from NATO as some fear mongers are claiming. So our NATO-enabled bases aren’t going to be disappearing any time soon. He simply has said that the U.S. can’t afford to continue its level of contribution to NATO while it isn’t meeting economic obligations at home. His statements suggest that he may renegotiate with NATO allies.
Of course, for anyone who adheres to the constitutional notion that the U.S.’s sole obligation is protecting its citizens, a full NATO withdrawal would be fine too.
And if deescalation of tension with Russia is as much a goal for Trump as he’s made it seem, NATO certainly isn’t going to help considering its repeated aggression toward the nation.
Constitutional lawyer and author Bruce Fein recently made that point in calling for the U.S. to cut its NATO entanglements:

In leaving NATO, the United States would dramatically lessen tensions or conflicts with Russia and strengthen our security against external aggression. Among other things, the stage would be set for a new treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two countries. Russia would probably claim a sphere of influence over its neighbors, but that would be unalarming. The United States has acted in the same way for more than two centuries, including the Monroe Doctrine, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the Panama Canal, and military ventures in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Nicaragua. To maintain that all nations are equal, but that the United States is more equal than others is to encourage war.

Again, that has a lot to do with why NATO has made such an effort to aggravate Russia and the Hillary Clinton campaign worked so hard to make Americans feel as though the two nations were again at Cold War levels of disagreement. Without the threat of the kind of World War from which NATO grew, its existence as anything more than a vehicle for laundering defense dollars begins to seem exceedingly pointless.

Defense spending must be for actual defense

military122214In a disturbing indication of how difficult it would be to bring military spending in line with actual threats overseas, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R – TX) told President Obama last week that his war funding request of $11.6 billion for the rest of the year was far too low. That figure for the last two months of 2016 is larger than Spain’s budget for the entire year! And this is just a “war-fighting” supplemental, not actual “defense” spending! More U.S. troops are being sent to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and the supplemental request is a way to pay for them without falling afoul of the “sequestration” limits.

The question is whether this increase in U.S. military activity and spending overseas actually keeps us safer, or whether it simply keeps the deep state and the military-industrial complex alive and well-funded.
Unfortunately many Americans confuse defense spending with military spending. The two terms are used almost interchangeably. But there is a huge difference. I have always said that I wouldn’t cut anything from the defense budget. We need a robust defense of the United States and it would be foolish to believe that we have no enemies or potential enemies.
The military budget is something very different from the defense budget. The military budget is the money spent each year not to defend the United States, but to enrich the military-industrial complex, benefit special interests, regime-change countries overseas, maintain a global U.S. military empire, and provide defense to favored allies. The military budget for the United States is larger than the combined military spending budget of the next seven or so countries down the line.
To get the military budget in line with our real defense needs would require a focus on our actual interests and a dramatic decrease in spending. The spending follows the policy, and the policy right now reflects the neocon and media propaganda that we must run the rest of the world or there will be total chaos. This is sometimes called “American exceptionalism,” but it is far from a “pro-American” approach.
Do we really need to continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars manipulating elections overseas? Destabilizing governments that do not do as Washington tells them? Rewarding those who follow Washington’s orders with massive aid and weapons sales? Do we need to continue the endless war in Afghanistan even as we discover that Saudi Arabia had far more to do with 9/11 than the Taliban we have been fighting for a decade and a half? Do we really need 800 U.S. military bases in more than 70 countries overseas? Do we need to continue to serve as the military protection force for our wealthy NATO partners even though they are more than capable of defending themselves? Do we need our CIA to continue to provoke revolutions like in Ukraine or armed insurgencies like in Syria?
If the answer to these questions is “yes,” then I am afraid we should prepare for economic collapse in very short order. Then, with our economy in ruins, we will face the wrath of those countries overseas which have been in the crosshairs of our interventionist foreign policy. If the answer is no, then we must work to convince our countrymen to reject the idea of Empire and embrace the United States as a constitutional republic that no longer goes abroad seeking monsters to slay. The choice is ours.

American students must be taught conservative values in our schools

David Limbaugh: A Response Needed to Leftist Attacks
David Limbaugh: A Response Needed to Leftist Attacks
Written By Monte Larrick   |   11.16.16

 

Renowned author and commentator David Limbaugh says if America is to remain strong young people must be taught conservative values in our schools. He’s also calling on Christians to defend those values in our culture and in the courts.

 

Homer33C Schilling School third-graders plant tulip bulbs in memory of their buddy Tristan

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News Release
Homer CCSD 33C
Goodings Grove Luther J. Schilling William E. Young William J. Butler
Hadley Middle Homer Jr. High
Contact: Charla Brautigam, Communications/Public Relations Manager
cbrautigam@homerschools.org | 708-226-7628
________________________________________
For Immediate Release:
Nov. 18, 2016

Schilling School third-graders plant tulip bulbs in memory of their buddy Tristan

Springtime flowers will always remind Schilling School students of their buddy, Tristan, a third-grader who passed away much too soon.
This week, his classmates planted tulip bulbs in front of the school in his honor.

Every spring, when the beautiful flowers appear, they will remind all of us of Tristan and his friendship, Principal Candis Gasa told the students.
Like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/homer33c?fref=ts&ref=br_tf

NRA urges continued vigilance on 2nd Amendment/revolt against liberal billionaires

George Soros at World Economic ForumFor many voters whose primary focus in the 2016 election was the 2nd Amendment, Donald Trump’s victory is quelling fears about the future of American firearm rights. But the nation’s top gun lobby is warning that the White House victory will embolden efforts by liberal billionaires and their legislative counterparts to disarm citizens.
National Rifle Association head Wayne LaPierre recently urged the organization’s 5 million members to continue fighting for the 2ndAmendment with the “same urgency and determined action that ended the political future of Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Clinton made no secret about her plans to clamp down on Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights— and American gun owners worried about the future of the Supreme Court responded in massive numbers by voting for Trump.
But LaPierre warns that Clinton’s anti-gun backers—liberal billionaires like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg— are already working to regroup and find new avenues to push their anti-firearm agenda.
He told supporters: “The truth is, the anti-gun billionaires have only one goal: the absolute eradication of the Second Amendment freedom for the average American citizen. Not for their security forces, their families and themselves. But for you: the everyday American who stormed the polls in an act of ultimate defiance of the elites. They will continue to enjoy the support of an openly dishonest media that truly hates your right to speak, your right to worship and your right to vote. And most of all, your right to keep and bear arms.”
If Trump makes good on his promises to vigorously defend the 2ndAmendment at the federal level, gun grabbers are expected to divert more resources to promoting anti-firearm regulations at the state and local level.

Unless they are vigorously challenged in the courts, these harsh new gun laws could effectively disarm hundreds of thousands of Americans without ever making national news.
Last week, Americans in three states got a taste of what may be coming.
In Nevada, voters passed a ballot measure aimed at closing the so-called gun show loophole. The new law will make private gun transfers between residents subject to the same scrutiny as retail gun sales, including requiring background checks.
Californians, meanwhile, voted to make their already draconian gun laws harsher by passing laws to ban the sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds and requiring background checks for ammunition purchases.
A similar proposal was narrowly defeated in Maine.
Perhaps the most extreme of the new state gun laws, however, comes from the state of Washington. Voters there opted to make it possible for friends, family, law enforcement, nosey neighbors—or just about anyone, really— to accuse a gun owner of being dangerous, thus giving police the ability to suspend 2nd Amendment rights without due process.
Each of those new gun laws was backed by anti-2nd Amendment groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety. Both groups are heavily funded by, you guessed it, liberal billionaires like Soros and Bloomberg.
“Make no mistake: Moms will not allow the outcome of one election to deter us. It’s up to us to stand between the president-elect and the NRA’s vision of more guns for more people,” Moms Demand Action said in a statement following Trump’s win, adding that the group is prepared to “fight back on day one of Trump’s presidency.”

Will County beefs up security with armed deputy

Will County beefs up security with armed deputy

Will County will beef up security at its administration building in downtown Joliet by once again having a sheriff’s deputy armed with a gun.
The busy two-story office building, at 302 N. Chicago St, where the county board meets and where residents get marriage licenses, vote and pay taxes, is currently patrolled by a private security guard armed with a Taser.

The plan to add a deputy armed with a gun next month was not prompted by any incident, officials said.
“It’s just the environment we live in,” said Nick Palmer, chief of staff for County Executive Larry Walsh.

“People are looking for a higher level of security with shootings happening around the country,” he said.
Sheriff’s deputies typically attend county board meetings now, and they previously provided security at the county building. But the previous sheriff, Paul Kaupus, pulled them off that assignment because he needed them to patrol the streets, he said.
The current guard will depart when his contract expires Dec. 1, Palmer said.
Having part-time deputies provide security during regular business hours and after hours meetings is a “very cost effective” solution, he said. The estimated $55,000 cost is “not much more” than the county now pays the private security guard.
But having a private security firm provide armed guards was too expensive, he said, adding that they are “more comfortable” with a sheriff’s deputy who is “fully trained.”
Because of the number of people who come to this building, Palmer said they are “not done with security enhancements,” but he declined to be specific.
Some officials would like to see metal detectors or hand held wands, but “to go through that to pay taxes or get a birth certificate is a bit much,” he said.
County employees are encouraged to wear identification badges on lanyards to distinguish them from the public, he said.
There is no plan to allow county board members, who have concealed carry permits, to bring guns into the building, Palmer said. That is currently banned.
This summer, board member Steve Balich proposed a resolution to allow elected officials to carry concealed firearms in to county and forest preserve properties, believing that it could save the county money.
A potential shooter could easily spot a uniformed officer, but would not know which board members were packing a gun, Balich reasoned. His resolution was never acted upon.

Americans finally realize mainstream media is taking them for a ride.

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Megyn Kelly attends The 2016 Barnstable Brown Kentucky Derby on Friday May 6, 2016 in Louisville, Kentucky. (C Michael Stewart/imageSPACE/Sipa USA/TNS)It took a presidential election featuring a criminally corrupt political dinosaur and a reality television star— but we’ll take it. A majority of Americans finally realize mainstream media is taking them for a ride.
For years the mainstream news media paradigm has been as disgustingly oversimplified as the nation’s inadequate two-party political system: Conservatives watch Fox and listen to Rush Limbaugh; Liberals watch MSNBC and listen to public radio.
Generalization? Yes. Inaccurate? Not really.
A couple great things happened in this election season, though, opening American news consumers’ eyes to the false choices with which they’re presented by media manipulators.
Hillary Clinton’s ability to manipulate leftist media elites was hampered by the extraordinary corruptness of her political persona. Suddenly, news outlets that fawned over Clinton while completely ignoring the damning series of leaks coming from transparency groups looked like sycophants at worst and, at best, totally incompetent.
Meanwhile, the so-called conservative media machine that is Fox News invested its energy in undermining true conservative candidates throughout the 2016 presidential primary season. Then, realizing their folly as Trump emerged as the likely nominee, they began attacking the president elect.
Unfortunately for the mainstream media, American voters have grown exceedingly tired of the products they peddle: welfare and war drums.
Clinton was the obvious MSM choice, Fox included— here’s looking at you, Megyn Kelly. The reasons were pretty simple: Clinton has the most establishment political connections, was most likely to grow American dependency on government and she likes a good war.
The media called this experience.
But despite all of the anti-Trump rhetoric and pro-Clinton polls and punditry, Americans rejected mainstream media’s message.
The right of center Media Research Center released some interesting data Tuesday that helps to illustrate why.

Via MRC:

7 in 10 (69%) voters do not believe the news media are honest and truthful.
8 in 10 (78%) of voters believe the news coverage of the presidential campaign was biased, with nearly a 3-to-1 majority believing the media were for Clinton (59%) vs. for Trump (21%).
Even 1/3 (32%) of Clinton voters believe the media were “pro-Clinton.”
8% of Trump voters said they would have voted for Clinton if they had believed what the media were saying about Trump.
97% of voters said they did not let the media’s bias influence their vote.

“There is an institutional bias at major media networks that must be repaired and I am highly skeptical that news executives are interested or capable of undertaking this responsibility,” said Brent Bozell, president of MRC.

And he’s right to be skeptical.
In fact, mainstream media is scrambling to regain its influence in the worst way possible: They’re mounting an assault on the alternative media sources so many disaffected American news consumers have turned to as their primary sources of information.
All of a sudden, conservative news stories on social media simply can’t be true and must be eliminated.  And alternative media is a threat to the nation’s future.
Has sort of a vast right-wing conspiracy ring, doesn’t it?
But, as droves of Americans are finally realizing, the army of alternative news bloggers picking apart daily headlines, investigating political wrongs and disseminating contrarian truths— often for salaries much closer to the average American’s than anyone working for Fox— aren’t the enemies.
The enemy is the army of elitist establishment politicians and billionaires who have a direct line to the nation’s highest paid national journalists— well compensated propaganda pawns.
Trump isn’t the face of it, just a symptom— but there is a revolution brewing. The revolution is against a political and economic establishment that sold working class Americans out decades ago and has manufactured the consent (to borrow from Noam Chomsky) of the ruled ever since.
Alternative media began working against the mainstream propaganda machine decades ago—and the internet has made it easier than ever. Now, the unofficial sources can reach the same masses as the networks.
The networks and other mainstream holdouts will get increasingly desperate and eventually implode under their own weight.
This happened years ago with many newspapers in towns and cities throughout the nation as local bedroom bloggers increased their audiences and became real competitors uninhibited by the longstanding bias and internal bureaucratic attitudes which hamper many traditional papers.
Believe it or not, there was a time when reporting the news was the bluest of white-collar professions. Incidentally, the majority of people also used to trust and respect the news media. What’s happening now is nothing more than a long-overdue market correction to return that respect and the voice of the press to the populace.

World suffers from Trump shell shock — here’s what will happen next

A Hillary Clinton supporter watches in disbelief as results roll in, during an election night watch party on November 9, 2016 in Austin, Texas. (Sandy Carson/Zuma Press/TNS)I’ve been saying this for a long time, and I’ll say it again here — in life there are only two kinds of people:  those who know and those who don’t.  Some might claim there is a third option: those who don’t want to know.  In any case, if you want to be able to foresee geopolitical and social trends, you have to be one of the people who know.
Above all else, in order to know you must be willing to step outside of the confusion and theater of the circus and look at developments from above.  If you are biased and retain too many sacred cows you will never understand how the world works.  You will be too busy trying to reinforce your own fantasies to see anything else.
Beyond this, you must also understand that political and social developments are not random; they are either reactions to deliberate policies of special interests or they are driven by policies of special interests.  Therefore, these developments are predictable and can be calculated (to a point).
I usually refer to these “special interests” as global elites, or globalists, because that is how they often refer to themselves.  The point is, most of the events you see in the political world are engineered events designed to elicit a specific psychological response from you and the people around you.  You are not a human being to these people; you are either an asset to be molded or an obstacle to be disposed of.  This is how our world works.  Period.  And until we fully understand this and accept it, things will never change.
So, to be clear, if you understand the minds of globalists and understand what they want, you can understand the basic direction of the future.
It is this philosophy which has allowed me to consistently and accurately predict geopolitical and economic events that very few other people have been able to predict.  For example, I correctly predicted the Federal Reserve taper of QE, I predicted the inclusion of China in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights years in advance, I predicted the exact timing of the first Fed rate hike, I predicted the success of the Brexit referendum when most of the world and the liberty movement said it was never going to happen, I predicted that the Saudi 9/11 bill would pass, that Barack Obama would veto it and that congress would override his veto, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic candidate and that Donald Trump would be the Republican candidate for president of the U.S. and, for the past five months, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election.
People can either attribute these series of successful predictions to pure “luck,” or they can consider the possibility that I know what I am talking about.  I’ll leave that to them.
The real issue, though, is not that my predictions were correct.  What is more important is why they were correct.  To begin with, I am often correct because it is a fact that globalists influence events.  Globalists are human (at least partially); thus, they are predictable, making events predictable.  If you can see from the perspective of a globalist, you will know what they want and what they are likely to do to get it.
In a world without globalists I would have a hard time successfully predicting anything.
I never make a cold prediction without a concrete rationale for why I hold that view.  I always break down the reasons and evidence that bring sense to them.  Some analysts might be content to simply flip a coin and make a call without explanation; I am not.
As far as the Trump election win is concerned, this is what I said in June of this year:
“In light of the Brexit I’m going to have to call it here and now and predict that the most likely scenario for elections will be a Trump presidency.  Trump has consistently warned of a recession during his campaign and with the Brexit dragging markets lower over the next few months, he will probably be proven “prophetic.”
… Even if Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment conservative, his entry into the Oval Office will seal the deal on the economic collapse, and will serve the globalists well.  The international banks need only pull the plug on any remaining life support to the existing market system and allow it to fully implode, all while blaming Trump and his conservative supporters.
The mainstream media has been consistently comparing Trump supporters to Brexit supporters, and Trump himself has hitched his political wagon to the Brexit. This fits perfectly with the globalist narrative that populists and conservatives are killing the global economy and placing everyone at risk.”
All of my predictions are rooted in a particular premise; that the global elites have been, since 2008 at least, deliberately setting the stage for an evolving international financial crisis greater than any other seen in modern history.  This crisis is a means to an end.  Globalists use one strategy above all others to achieve their goals — the Hegelian Dialectic; problem, reaction, solution.
As I have documented for years, the elites openly call for the ultimate eradication of national sovereignty and the formation of a single world economy, a single world currency and, eventually, a single world government.  In order to make this omelet, they intend to break a few eggs (and collapse a few economies).  You can read my in-depth analysis and evidence of this in my article “The Economic End Game Explained.
I also specifically predicted the Brexit and the Trump win based on another premise; that the elites are allowing conservative movements to take political power in certain regions, only to remove stimulus support from the global economy afterward.  That is to say, I successfully predicted the Brexit and the Trump win because I understand and accept the reality that conservatives and liberty activists are not “winning;” we are being set up as scapegoats for a financial crash that the globalists already created.
Again, people can either say I am lucky or that there is something to my position, but the fact of the matter is I have been right and I will probably continue to be right.  This brings us to what will happen going into 2017.
The election of Donald Trump signals a sea change in not only global politics, but more importantly, global economic stability and social developments.  As frenetic and insane as 2016 has been, 2017 will be drastically more chaotic.  Some of these changes will be obvious, some of them will once again only be visible to a handful of people in the world.  Lets start first with my happier predictions…

The death of the mainstream media

This is an easy one.  The mainstream media with its insane regressive-progressives and elitist bias misrepresented the “Alt-Right,” the Trump campaign and anti-social justice movements during the entirety of the election process.  Not only this, but through Wikileaks the leftist media was made naked as numerous journalists and outlets were exposed; colluding directly with the DNC and the Hillary campaign to first bushwhack Bernie Sanders and then rig debates and polling numbers to show Clinton in a farcically superior position to Trump.
The mainstream media is now seen by the majority of Americans on the left and right as a lumbering rotting propaganda corpse that needs to be decapitated before it spreads its disease to anyone else.  I predict MSM outlet readership and viewership (with the exception of FOX News) will collapse even further than it already has and that they will be forced to consolidate until they fade out of existence.
As I have said for years, the mainstream media is dead, they just don’t know it yet.  Well, after this election, everyone knows.  The alternative media will take the place of the mainstream media.  We will be adopting their viewership and growing explosively over the next year while they shrivel.
They decided that their job was not to report the facts, but to manipulate public opinion.  They are liars and a disgrace to true journalism.  Good riddance.
That said, some people will argue that my position that the elites wanted a Trump presidency is not tenable exactly because the liberal media worked so hard to rig public opinion against Trump.  I will explain in my next article why these people are missing the bigger picture.

The crippling of social justice warriors

The SJW cult is not dead, but it has been crippled.  It is now a drooling bedridden quadriplegic eating its meals through a straw; a malfunctioning shell of a movement destined to be put out of its misery.
When I think of social justice warriors I think of the Island of Misfit Toys; nobody wants these people.  They are a detriment to everything they touch, including the Democratic party.  It was the zealotry of SJWs that caused conservatives to rally in anger around Trump.  It was they that awakened the sleeping giant.
One reason I was so certain Clinton had set herself up for a loss was her insistence that the Democrats adopt these hell spawn and their ideology.  By embracing politically correct rhetoric and accusing all opposition of being “deplorable” racists, sexists and homophobes, Clinton doomed her campaign from the very beginning.  Anyone with any sense could see the massive tide against SJWs growing on the internet.  In fact, I propose that the globalists, using the advanced web analytics at their disposal, saw it even before the rest of us did.
SJWs are a tiny minority in American society.  Their only strategy has been to use Alinsky tactics to make their movement appear much larger than it really is.  Through mutual aid in popular media, SJWs presented a fabricated consensus.  They made it appear as though they were the majority view and, thus, the superior view.
One fantastic result of the 2016 election has been the realization by conservatives that they are not isolated on the fringes of society.  In fact, in America at least, we are a considerable force to be reckoned with.  There is an old story of a Roman Senator 2,000 years ago who suggested the idea of forcing slaves to wear armbands to make them easily identifiable.  Another senator admonished the idea, stating “No, if they realize how many of them there really are, they may revolt.”
This is what Election 2016 did for conservatives — we have now seen that millions of us have arm bands and we are now in revolt.
I rarely comment on race issues because I don’t really see race as very relevant in most cases; but it has been the tactic of social justice cultists to constantly and brutally target straight white males as the monsters of history and therefore responsible for the ills and failures of every minority group today.  At this point I think it is safe to say that we will not continue to be scapegoats for the problems of people clamoring for victim group status any longer.

The end of polling

I was also confident in my prediction of a Trump win based on my knowledge of inconsistencies in modern polling methods.  The fact of the matter is, polling suffers from the same lack of objectivity that any other “science” can at times suffer from — the results will always be vulnerable to influence from the observer.  If the observer wants a particular outcome for the numbers, they will consciously or unconsciously rig their method to produce the desired result.
I saw this happen time and time again during the Brexit polls leading up to the referendum, and, as I stated many times before the U.S. election, the campaign polls seemed to be behaving the same way.  This is how you get media sources like Reuters claiming a 90 percent chance of a win by Hillary Clinton just before the election.  When pollsters weight their polls with far more democrats than republicans and when they poll the same groups repeatedly they are not going to get varied or honest data.
In the end, polls become propaganda tools rather than litmus tests.  The mainstream has tried desperately to explain why their polls were so utterly wrong, but it is too late for them.  After the Brexit and the U.S. election, no one is going to trust these numbers again.

Liberty groups will get some breathing room (for a little while)

The steady drum beat of government antagonism for “patriot groups” is probably going to subside for a short time.  I happen to know that many militia groups and preparedness networks are breathing a heavy sigh of relief today after eight years of a hostile Obama presidency, the IRS sniping at liberty organizations and individual activists based purely on political reasons, the DHS profiling liberty activists as terrorists and the SPLC frothing at the mouth like rabid animals looking to use their ties to the feds as a means to sink their teeth into any conservatives with the guts to refuse participation in the system.
With conservatives launching into 2017 with complete control of government and a Trump mandate, it would seem that liberty groups have “won the fight” and have nothing to worry about.
That said, don’t get too comfortable, folks, because now we are going to discuss my negative predictions going into next year…

The final stage of economic collapse

Most Americans’ only relation to the economy is through the daily rise and fall of the Dow Jones.  If they see the Dow in the green, they go on with their day.  If they see the Dow in the red, they stop and question what is happening.  The election of Donald Trump has surprised many with a sudden rise, rather than fall, in stock markets.  But, as I told my readers before the election, it would be wise to wait a couple of weeks before trying to analyze these markets.
I predict first that central banks around the globe will further cut stimulus measures and that the Fed is now guaranteed to raise interest rates, probably in December before Trump even enters the White House.  I also believe that the process of initiating a market crisis will take approximately six months to become widely visible to the public.  As a consequence, I predict Trump and the Fed will enter into open hostilities against each other, which will erode faith in the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
By extension, Trump’s presence in the White House will exacerbate already-existing tensions with Saudi Arabia.  The Saudi 9/11 bill is just the beginning.  As a result, I believe Saudi Arabia will dump the U.S. dollar as the petro-currency, influencing numerous other OPEC nations to do the same.  I believe this will happen by early 2018.
In my view, for now, oil prices will be the best indicator for where stocks are headed in the next few months.
This is not something many Trump supporters want to hear.  Of course, the response in the liberty movement to my prediction that the elites would allow Trump into office was rather predictable as well.  In my article “Why the U.S. election has the entire world confused” I stated:
“I have not taken this position just to be contrary. If I think about it honestly, my position is truly a losing position. If I am mistaken and Clinton wins on the 8th then I’ll probably never hear the end of it, but that’s a risk that has to be taken, because what I see here is a move on the chess board that others are not considering. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong.
That said, if I am right, then I still lose, because Trump supporters and half the liberty movement will be so enraptured that they will probably ignore the greater issue — that Trump is the candidate the elites wanted all along.”
This seems to be the response from about half the liberty movement so far; a general blind faith and bias, clinging to the idea that the election (just like the Brexit) was a victory, and that conservatives had just won the culture war and defeated the globalists.  It’s funny how it wasn’t much of a controversy when everyone thought I was wrong about Trump winning in the first place.
There are two primary arguments that come up with these people. First, that my view on the influence of the elites is “unrealistic” and that the elites would have to be “omnipotent” in order to succeed in directing the outcome of these events so effectively.  I will address this argument in detail in my next article on the Trump presidency and what the consequences will be for us all if Trump turns out not to be a constitutionalist.
The second argument is that the elites “will never succeed” in blaming Trump and conservatives for an economic crisis that was decades in the making.  To the people that make this argument I say — I understand mass psychology far better than you do.
The reality is, half of America is already primed to blame Trump for everything that happens over the next four years (if we even make it that long).  Possession is nine-tenths of the law in the minds of many.  Beyond that, every meme in the global media and on the left is promoting the idea that Trump is an apocalypse in the making.  Even Germany’s Der Spiegal published its after-election magazine with a cover depicting Trump’s head as a giant comet hurtling towards the Earth.  Don’t tell me that Trump cannot be blamed for an economic crisis.  Only a complete idiot would suggest that he is anything other than the perfect scapegoat.
At bottom, it does not matter whether people believe the above predictions or not.  I have hundreds of emails from readers who called me a “tinfoil hatter” in the past and are now apologizing.  So, if you plan to react in a knee-jerk fashion to the notion that Trump and conservatives are being set up by the elites for a final financial flagellation, be sure to write two emails — one for today saying I’ve lost touch, and the other for tomorrow when you find out I was right once again.
— Brandon Smith

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