Even Democrat "jokes" are hate expressions

Florida Democratic representative Alcee Hastings made a disturbing joke about no one trying to save a drowning President Donald Trump during a rally on Sunday.

Hastings was speaking at a rally in Sunshine, FL when he repeated a joke he heard from Ari Silver, the son of former Florida state legislator Barry Silver.

“I will tell you one joke,” Hastings said. “Do you know the difference between a crisis and a catastrophe?”

“‘A crisis is if Donald Trump falls into the Potomac River and can’t swim,'” Hastings said, retelling the joke. “‘And a catastrophe is anybody saves his ass.'”

The crowd cheered and whooped in delight at the joke.

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Youth Unemployment Hits 50-Year Low Under Trump Admin

Before the 2016 presidential election, countless “experts” predicted economic doom and gloom if Donald Trump were to win.

Now, coming up on two years since President Trump took office, a chain of positive economic news could be summarized in four words: Experts are often wrong.

First, even the president’s opponents were forced to admit that everything didn’t fall apart the moment he took office. As Trump has frequently reminded his critics, unemployment numbers for blacks and Hispanics are near record lows, even as he’s attacked as an enemy of minorities.

Now, there’s even more good news for the Trump economy. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that young people are doing very well on the job front.

“From April to July 2018, the number of employed youth 16 to 24 years old increased by 2.0 million to 20.9 million,” the BLS said.

“The unemployment rate among young Americans fell to its lowest level in more than 50 years this summer,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Trump himself proudly shared that information via Twitter on Friday, in a post that was “liked” over 84,000 times.

Perhaps the most interesting observation is that many of the groups who have been reluctant to vote for Trump — black Americans and young people, for instance — are benefiting the most from his presidency.

The majority of millennials, 55 percent, voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton over Trump in the 2016 election, according to an analysis of exit poll data from USA Today.

At the same time, a stunning number of younger Americans seem enamored by political promises that would almost certainly be disastrous for jobs and the country overall.

“(M)ore Millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country (44%) than in a capitalist one (42%). … The percentage of Millennials who would prefer socialism to capitalism is a full 10 points higher than that of the general population,” said a 2017 Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation/YouGov survey, which we reported on last year.

“It seems that the majority of America’s largest generation would prefer to live in a socialist or communism society than in a free enterprise system that respects the rule of law, private property, and limited government,” the foundation said.

Maybe it’s a cliched statement, but the youth in America might not know how good they have it. By almost every measure, life for Americans of all backgrounds is better than it has ever been and offers dramatically more opportunities compared with world standards.

The simple fact is that there are plenty of jobs for young people who want to make money and countless career options for almost anyone who is willing to show up and apply themselves.

Why so many young Americans are jaded and disenchanted despite living in a time of peace and opportunity may come down to a matter of messaging. If conservatives want to advance their ideas, communicating the principles that have made America great to the next generation is extremely important.

That may take a while … but pointing out how good things actually are in 2018 is definitely a strong start.

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Fox News Breaks New Viewer Record, Swamps CNN’s Entire Brand

Though far from perfect, Fox News has nevertheless set itself apart from the rest of the mainstream media by providing more balanced and fair coverage of the political scene than their blatantly left-leaning competitors.

And it looks like they have been rewarded for that by American news consumers.

Fox News has been crushing their cable competition consistently for years, but especially within the past several months. Now, that domination appears to have been expanded to the internet side of American media consumption, where Fox has typically lagged behind its competitors.

In a news release from Fox, it was revealed that the network’s website outperformed that of chief rival CNN in terms of total page views for the first time ever.

On top of that, it was also revealed that FOXNews.com beat out other top brands such as CNN.com, NewYorkTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com in terms of engagement and time spent on the site by individual readers.

That revelation came from analytics data compiled in July 2018 by comScore, which showed that Fox had obtained roughly 1.5 billion total multi-platform views as compared to 1.4 billion garnered by CNN.

In addition, Fox also bested CNN for the fourth month in a row in terms of total page views, as Fox received about 1.45 billion compared to CNN’s approximately 1.22 billion total page views.

The release noted that FOXNews.com’s total multi-platform page views have increased by about 21 percent year-over-year, which now has them outperforming traditional legacy media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

To that point, Fox beat the website of The Times for the 7th consecutive month, this time by 457 million total page views.

Likewise, Fox beat The Post’s website for the 11th consecutive month by a margin of 887 million more total page views.

The FOXNews.com website now ranks third overall in terms of total unique visitors to the site — with 89.5 million unique visitors in the month of July — ranking higher than competitors such as The Times, The Post and CBSNews.com in terms of being a top-rated online news destination.

In this respect, Fox still trails CNN Brand and CNN.com, though Fox’s unique visitors total was up nine percent over this time last year.

However, Fox beat both versions of CNN in terms of time spent on the website by those visitors, as Fox ranked number one with almost 2.7 billion minutes, beating CNN Brand by 262 minutes and CNN.com by 491 million minutes.

The Fox release made it a point to highlight that they are the “most trusted source in news,” as per a recent Suffolk University/USA Today survey, and was the top-cited outlet as being the “most objective news source” in a 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation survey.

On top of that, the Fox News Channel consistently rates as a top-five cable network overall and has maintained their iron grip on the title of most watched cable news channel for 16 years running.

Based on the numbers of TV viewers and website readers, Fox is clearly dominating their competition, and they are doing so by living up to the mantle bestowed on them as being the “most objective” and “most trusted.”

Now, if only “fake news” outlets like CNN, MSNBC, the rest of the alphabet broadcast networks and legacy newspapers like The Times and The Post would consider being a bit more “objective” and trustworthy in putting out fair and balanced news reports like Fox, they may be able to reclaim the top spot in the media rankings from their better rival.

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Ben Carson Calls Out Zoning Regulations for Driving Up Housing Costs

Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), wants to pare back Obama-era housing regulations that he says do not do enough to address the real driver of housing costs: zoning regulations.

On Monday, Carson announced that he was looking to revise the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which sought to combat housing segregation by requiring local governments to perform extensive (and expensive) reviews on how concentrated their neighborhoods were along class and racial lines, and then to develop action plans to create more "balanced and integrated living patterns." Local governments that failed to fulfill either requirement would be cut off from a number of federal housing grant programs.

Carson said on Monday that he wants to replace the 2015 AFFH with new rules that focus on increasing the overall supply of housing.

"I want to encourage the development of mixed-income multifamily dwellings all over the place," Carson told The Wall Street Journal, saying, "I would incentivize people who really would like to get a nice juicy government grant" to reform their zoning codes.

According to the Journal, Carson specifically called out Los Angeles for its strict single-family zoning rules that limit the number of housing units that can be built in the city. "Of course you're going to have skyrocketing prices that no one can afford," he said.

That Carson would want to reform the AFFH rule is not terribly surprising, given that he has been a critic of it long before he was appointed HUD secretary. As far back as 2015, Carson criticized the AFFH rule as an example of "social engineering" and "failed socialism." As HUD secretary, he has already taken steps to weaken it, such as pushing back compliance deadlines for local governments until 2020.

What is surprising, however, is Carson's suggestion that the AFFH be retooled to tie HUD grants to localities loosening their zoning regulations.

This is a complete 180 from Carson's 2015 criticism of the AFFH rule, in which the then-presidential candidate fretted that the Obama administration's focus on housing desegregation would do too much to undo local zoning laws.

"The [AFFH] rule would fundamentally change the nature of some communities from primarily single-family to largely apartment-based areas by encouraging municipalities to strike down housing ordinances that have no overtly (or even intended) discriminatory purpose—including race-neutral zoning restrictions on lot sizes and limits on multi-unit dwellings," wrote Carson in a 2015 Washington Times op-ed.

Carson's change of heart has raised eyebrows and even caused some commenters to question the sincerity of his new talk about tackling restrictive zoning rules.

Nevertheless, the shift in thinking at HUD—even if it is just a rhetorical shift at the moment—is still cause for cautious optimism, says Vanessa Brown Calder, a housing policy expert at the Cato Institute.

"I do think that shift in attitude at HUD is huge, and I hope that it translates into educating local municipalities that these things are related, zoning restrictions and housing affordability," says Calder. "It does sound like there is going to be some attempt made to connect HUD subsidies to relaxing or reforming zoning regulations, so that I think that could be really important."

That this might come in conjunction with a paring back of the Obama-era AFFH rule is heartening as well, says Calder, given both the costs and shaky legal foundations of the 2015 regulation.

The original AFFH, she notes, cost cities some $55 million in compliance costs. Indeed, these costs were burdensome enough that many localities decided it would be cheaper to just not comply with the rule and forfeit HUD funding.

The legal basis for the 2015 AFFH rule—which is based on the 1968 Fair Housing Act—is also pretty thin, says Calder. The 1968 law, she notes, is focused on eliminating racial discrimination by landlords, not on creating a delicate racial and income balance across whole cities, as is called for in the Obama administration's 2015 rule

"Zero times in the Fair Housing Act do they talk about segregation. That seems kind of damning considering that's what [the AFFH rule] is all about," Calder tells Reason.

Carson has so far avoided calling for an end to the AFFH rule altogether, instead suggesting that it be revised so as to reduce the overall regulatory burden on local governments. That approach is in line with many of the Trump administration's other deregulatory actions, which emphasize reducing and streamlining federal regulatory burdens, rather than eliminating rules in their entirety.

Nevertheless, any reduction in the regulatory state is welcome, as is anything that draws attention to restrictive zoning laws that have reduced supply and raised prices in cities across America.

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Rand Paul: Trump Should Keep Revoking Ex-Obama Officials’ Security Clearances

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) is hailing President Donald Trump's decision to strip former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. But the Kentucky Republican doesn't think the president should stop with Brennan.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders accused Brennan, who led the CIA for most of former President Barack Obama's second term, of "lying." Brennan's "recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary," Sanders said, "is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets."

Sanders' remarks echoed the sentiments of Paul, who has spent weeks calling for Brennan, a harsh critic of Trump, to lose his clearance. Late last month, Paul wrote on Twitter that "Brennan and other partisans" should be stripped of their security clearances. He suggested Brennan has leveraged his clearance into gigs as a cable news talking head.

So it came as no surprise that Paul lauded Trump for taking away Brennan's security clearance. "I urged the President to do this. I filibustered Brennan's nomination to head the CIA in 2013, and his behavior in government and out of it demonstrate why he should not be allowed near classified information," Paul said in a statement. "He participated in a shredding of constitutional rights, lied to Congress, and has been monetizing and making partisan political use of his clearance since his departure."

In an interview yesterday with WKU Public Radio, Paul said he wants other ex-Obama administration intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, to lose their clearances as well.

According to the Kentucky Republican, Clapper lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee when he was asked in March 2013 by Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) if U.S. intelligence was spying on American citizens. "When he was asked by Sen. Wyden if the NSA was collecting information on Americans, private information, he said no and that was a lie," Paul said. "Later, Edward Snowden revealed that they were collecting all Americans' phone information."

Paul has previously come down hard on ex-Obama administration officials. Last month, he suggested that Brennan, Clapper, and Comey were "bad apples that need to be dismissed from the swamp of Washington." And in April, Paul accused Rice of committing a crime by unmasking the identities of associates to Trump.

While Paul wants Trump to keep stripping security clearances, many former officials are making the opposite case. On Thursday, a dozen ex-intelligence officials blasted Trump's "attempt to stifle free speech." According to the officials: "Decisions on security clearances should be based on national security concerns and not political views."

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