Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 513)
Polls

Election 2016: People's Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Tracking Poll - Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein

Election 2016: People’s Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Tracking Poll – Trump vs. Clinton vs. Johnson vs. Stein

Hillary R. Clinton continues to lead Donald J. Trump in the People’s Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll, though the margin is down slightly. Mrs. Clinton now holds a 42.2% to 39.9% advantage over Mr. Trump, down from 6 points during the first week in August. While the race has tightened over the last 7 days, the latest results are still a dramatic shift from the roughly 5-point lead the Republican held in the first published results post convention.

One trend preventing the New York businessman from making a comeback has been a loss in support among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to Libertarian Party candidate and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. With a substantial number of white voters open to voting for one of the third-party candidates, he simply cannot afford too many defections. Gov. Johnson, at 9.8%, is now enjoying his highest level of support measured to date, while Dr. Jill Stein, at 4.1%, continues to draw a significant number of voters who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

“Gary Johnson is fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” says Dominic Ruggiero of Chino Valley, Arizona. “He is also a very likable fellow.”

Arizona is a state that has traditionally voted Republican on the presidential level but has been trending more Democratic, fueled by large flows of immigration from Latin American countries. We still don’t view this state as a typical battleground, but it could certainly become one if the Republican candidate’s share of the Hispanic vote doesn’t return to at least near pre-convention levels.

The People’s Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll, as well as aggregate public polling data, consistently show Mr. Trump outperforming the prior two Republican nominees among Hispanics. Gov. Mitt Romney earned just 27% in 2012, down from the 31% who backed Sen. John McCain in 2008. Over the last two weeks, however, his support has touched and hovered around a new low (21%). At it’s highest level immediately after the convention, 41% of Hispanics indicated they might support the Republican nominee, though that number has spent the most time in the low to mid 30s.

Only about one-fifth (22%) of Hispanics consider themselves Republican, while roughly a third (35%) say they are “strong” Democrats. Of the major ethnic voting blocs, Hispanics are among the most likely to consider themselves independent (44%). However, among these voters, Democrats have an edge (46% to 34%) when asked “do you think of yourself as more similar to Republicans than Democrats, more similar to Democrats than Republicans, or equally similar to Republicans and Democrats?”

On ideology, admittedly, the picture is more rosier for Republicans. But nevertheless Democrats have an edge, a substantial edge. Roughly 15% of Hispanics consider themselves “very liberal”; 30% consider themselves “moderately liberal”; and, 6% consider themselves “slightly liberal.” On the flip side, 13% consider themselves to be “extremely conservative”; 17% say “moderately conservative”; and, 4% consider themselves “slightly conservative.”

In total, the percentage of Hispanic voters who identify as “liberal” is 51%, or far above the national average, which is a little more than a fifth (22%), while those who identify as “conservative” is 34%, below the national average (38%). Hispanic voters remain the least likely to say they “expect to vote in the presidential election” in November, while black voters remain most likely to vote. White voters are a close second.

Worth noting, despite his polling troubles, Mr. Trump’s voters are not particularly discouraged and don’t appear deterred. We still find roughly the same levels of excitement and enthusiasm looking ahead to November than we did when he held a slight lead over Mrs. Clinton.

“America needs change! Corrupt politics are killing this country. We need someone who has NOT been a career politician to pull us back from the precarious edge we are standing on,” Sandra Taylor of Forest Park, Georgia told People’s Pundit Daily in a recent response. “Donald J Trump is a successful business man with a deep love for this country, regardless of the picture the media try to paint.”

Seventy-three percent (73%) of Trump voters say they “strongly support” their candidate juxtaposed to just 62% who say the same about Mrs. Clinton. While it could make a difference in a turnout election, a vote is a vote, despite how enthusiastically you cast it. Second, the Clinton campaign infrastructure is far ahead of the Trump campaign, which could make up the difference. Still, there’s little doubt Trump supporters are more loyal than Clinton supporters.

“Trump is a stronger candidate and speaks how he sees things,” Rajeev Bharol of Gilroy, Calif., said. “No politically correct lies.”

A connection between Trump and his voters exists that is both difficult (if not impossible) to gauge by the numbers, which Clinton voters don’t feel. Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, it’s just as unclear whether there are enough of them.

The above survey results are taken from the responses of 1306 likely voters interviewed via Internet panel from August 12 to August 14, 2016. Respondents statements may include those give in the prior 7 days. Learn more about how we conduct interviews for the People’s Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll and survey methodologies here.

Hillary Clinton continues to lead Donald Trump

Politics

Obama-Guantanamo-Bay

President Barack Obama, center, is renewing his push to close Guantanamo Bay detention center, which remains a radical left position. (Photos: AP/Getty/PPD)

On Monday, 15 Guantanamo Bay detainees were sent to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the single largest transfer to date during the Obama administration. The Pentagon said the transfer consisted of 12 Yemeni nationals and three Afghans–to include Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard–to the UAE. The transfer also marks a last-minute, renewed push to reduce the number of Gitmo detainees so much that President Barack Obama can argue for closing the U.S. prison in Cuba.

Essentially, he wants the cost to no longer justify keeping the prison open in order to fulfill a campaign promise going back to 2008. As People’s Pundit Daily has repeatedly reported, Americans overall are against the closure of Guantanamo Bay, which opened in January 2002 and now only houses 61 detainees suspected of links to the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

During the Bush administration, 532 prisoners were released from Guantanamo, often in large groups to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. However, the recidivism rate, or the rate at which prisoners return to Islamic extremist activities, has only been revealed over the last few years and has increased over time.

Still, the latest detainees to be transferred in most part had been held without charge for some 14 years at Guantanamo. They were cleared for release by the Periodic Review Board, which is made up of representatives from six U.S. government agencies. Critics have characterized them as little more than political appointees doing the president’s bidding, despite the conclusions.

Lee Wolosky, the State Department’s special envoy for Guantanamo’s closure, thanked the UAE for accepting the 15 men, which he says ultimately helps to move forward on the detention center’s closure. The Pentagon claims the UAE successfully resettled five detainees transferred there last year, a claim critics dispute.

“The continued operation of the detention facility weakens our national security by draining resources, damaging our relationships with key allies and partners, and emboldening violent extremists,” Mr. Wolosky said.

President Obama announced in February 2016 that he would seek to close the detention center, a plan that was met with bipartisan opposition in Congress and among the American voter. According to a government report, U.S. intel officials believe upwards of 20 to 30 Guantanamo Bay detainees released by the Obama administration joined the Islamic State in 2015.

A recent Gallup poll found just 29% of Americans support closing the terrorist detention camp and moving its prisoners, while 66% oppose doing so. As with the latest PPD Poll, ideology is the most predictive factor when determining a respondent’s answer, not party preference or ID. A recent PPD Poll found just 28 percent of American registered voters supported Obama closing Gitmo, and 59 percent say the administration isn’t being truthful when they claim only 6 percent have returned to the War on Terror battlefield.

Voters simply don’t believe his administration over the U.S. intel community regarding the rate of return.

 

On Monday, 15 Guantanamo Bay detainees were

US

New York police officers walk with Oscar Morel, center, of Brooklyn, in New York, on Aug. 16, 2016. (Photo: AP)

New York police officers walk with Oscar Morel, center, of Brooklyn, in New York, on Aug. 16, 2016. (Photo: AP)

DEVELOPING: The NYPD arrested Oscar Morel on Monday in the shooting deaths of a New York City imam and his friend as they left a mosque over the weekend. Mr. Morel, 35, was charged with two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.

On Saturday, Imam Maulana Alauddin Akonjee and Thara Uddin were shot and killed near the Al-Fuquan Jame Masjid mosque in Ozone Park, a neighborhood in Queens, New York.

NYPD officials said Morel was arrested late Sunday night outside a Brooklyn apartment as he approached a vehicle that NYPD linked to an unrelated hit-and-run. Officials said it matched the description of the shooting suspect’s getaway vehicle. Muslim activist groups in and out of the neighborhood had called the killings a hate crime, though police have not yet given a motive behind the killings.

According to The New York Post, Morel admitted to police that he was at the scene during the time of the murders, but denied committing the crime.

“I did not shoot the guy,’’ Morel told police, though he also admitted to being the person caught on video sneaking up behind the two men. No alternative information was given.

Alvin Morel, the suspect’s brother, told The New York Post his brother felt hatred toward Muslims on September 11, 2001, the day of the horrific 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, he said it was “only temporary” and that he “now has no hate for the Muslims.”

The NYPD arrested Oscar Morel on Monday

Opinion

In Olde England, hunting was the privilege of the landed and the rich. The right to hunt depended on the number of acres owned or one’s income.

This inequity led English jurist William Blackstone to complain in the late 18th century that “50 times as much property (is required) to enable a man to kill a partridge as to vote for a knight of the shire.”

English colonists settling America wanted no part of the old country’s class-based rules. Anyone could hunt or fish in America.

But that is slowly changing, as the rich and politically connected employ new tactics to close off opportunities for hunting and fishing to the common folk. The most intense conflicts between the wealthy and locals are taking place in the American West — where there’s room for everyone, or so we thought.

First, a plea to non-hunting environmentalists to join sportsmen in the battle to preserve access to wildlife. Ordinary hunters seeking sport or food were not to blame for the near loss of the bison and the extinction of such species as the passenger pigeon, heath hen and Labrador duck.

The villains were commercial hunters who slaughtered wildlife for profit, shipping millions of hides, feathers and racks of game meat to American and foreign markets. Hunters started the American conservation movement over a century ago to stop the destruction.

Today, the biggest threat to wildlife is loss of habitat, a concern for all environmentalists. Another issue, the movement to privatize public lands, should also link hunters and vegan hikers in common cause.

Back to the politics.

In Montana, public access to the state’s wildlife now dominates the governor’s race. On one side, incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock is fighting private efforts to close off hunting and fishing grounds that Montanans have enjoyed for generations.

On the other, Republican Greg Gianforte is seeking to empower big landowners (like himself) to limit such access. In 2009, he sued the state to remove a public easement that gave anglers, walkers and others access to the East Gallatin River via his property. He accused the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks of using “extortion” to keep that river path open.

Through much of the rural West, wealthy out-of-state buyers are amassing huge tracts of land to create their personal duchies. (Gianforte is a multimillionaire from New Jersey.) They often break with the neighborly ways of an older West where landowners didn’t fret much over locals’ crossing their property.

The North American Wildlife Conservation Model is clearly under threat. Formulated by a group of wildlife biologists about 20 years ago, it regulates hunting, protects habitat and defends the right of every citizen to hunt and fish.

Colorful misfits like rancher Cliven Bundy make headlines for occupying federal land, but of more concern are serious proposals to turn land owned by all Americans over to state politicians and allied moneyed interests. Calling this a “land grab” is not an exaggeration.

The 2016 Republican Party platform officially calls for handing federal lands to the states. That’s after Utah passed a bill in 2012 demanding that more than 20 million acres of federal land be transferred to state officials. Eleven Western states have considered 37 similar bills. Six of them got through.

Happily, there has been pushback. Lawmakers in Wyoming and Oregon turned thumbs down to the awful (and radical) idea. Colorado and New Mexico actually passed bills affirming support for national forests, parks and wildlife refuges.

The battles over public lands and access to wildlife will rage on — among mining companies, Native Americans, sportsmen and their fellow environmentalists. We must not let money determine the outcome.

The battles over public lands and access

Opinion

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

We keep hearing that “black lives matter,” but they seem to matter only when that helps politicians to get votes, or when that slogan helps demagogues demonize the police. The other 99 percent of black lives destroyed by people who are not police do not seem to attract nearly as much attention in the media.

What about black success? Does that matter? Apparently not so much.

We have heard a lot about black students failing to meet academic standards. So you might think that it would be front-page news when some whole ghetto schools not only meet, but exceed, the academic standards of schools in more upscale communities.

There are in fact whole chains of charter schools where black and Hispanic youngsters score well above the national average on tests. There are the KIPP (Knowledge IS Power Program) schools and the Success Academy schools, for example.

Only 39 percent of all students in New York state schools who were tested recently scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100 percent of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy school scored at that level in math. Blacks and Hispanics are 90 percent of the students in the Crown Heights Success Academy.

The Success Academy schools in general ranked in the top 2 percent in English and in the top 1 percent in math. Hispanic students in these schools reached the “proficient” level in math nearly twice as often as Hispanic students in the regular public schools. Black students in these Success Academy schools reached the “proficient” level more than twice as often as black students in the regular public schools.

What makes this all the more amazing is that these charter schools are typically located in the same ghettos or barrios where other blacks or Hispanics are failing miserably on the same tests. More than that, successful charter schools are often physically housed in the very same buildings as the unsuccessful public schools.

In other words, minority kids from the same neighborhood, going to school in classes across the hall from each other, or on different floors, are scoring far above average and far below average on the same tests.

If black success was considered half as newsworthy as black failures, such facts would be headline news — and people who have the real interests of black and other minority students at heart would be asking, “Wow! How can we get more kids into these charter schools?”

Many minority parents have already taken notice. More than 43,000 families are on waiting lists to get their children into charter schools. But admission is by lottery, and far more have to be turned away than can be admitted.

Why? Because the teachers’ unions are opposed to charter schools — and they give big bucks to politicians, who in turn put obstacles and restrictions on the expansion of charter schools. These include politicians like New York’s “progressive” mayor Bill de Blasio, who poses as a friend of blacks by denigrating the police, standing alongside Al Sharpton.

The net result is that 90 percent of New York City’s students are taught in the regular public schools that have nothing like the success of charter schools run by KIPP and Success Academy.

That makes sense only politically, because it gains the money and the votes of the teachers’ unions, for whom schools exist to provide jobs for their members, rather than to provide education for children.

If you want to understand this crazy and unconscionable situation, just follow the money and follow the votes.

Black success is a threat to political empires and to a whole social vision behind those empires. That social vision has politicians like Bill de Blasio and Hillary Clinton cast in the role of rescuers and protectors of blacks from enemies threatening on all sides. If politicians can promote paranoia, that means bigger voter turnout, which is what really matters to them.

That same social vision allows the intelligentsia, whether in the media or in academia, to be on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. That’s heady stuff. And a bunch of kids taking tests doesn’t look nearly as exciting on TV as a mob marching through the streets, chanting that they want “dead cops.” Black success has very little to offer politicians or the intelligentsia. But black children’s lives and futures ought to matter — and would, if politicians and the intelligentsia were for real.

We keep hearing that "black lives matter,"

Opinion

On Sept. 30, the end of fiscal year 2016, the national debt is projected to reach $19.3 trillion.

With spending on the four biggest budget items — Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense — rising, and GDP growing at 1 percent, future deficits will exceed this year’s projected $600 billion.

National bankruptcy, then, is among the existential threats to the republic, the prospect that we will find ourselves in the not-too-distant future in the same boat with Greece, Puerto Rico and Illinois.

Yet, we drift toward the falls, with the issue not debated.

Ernest Hemingway reminded us of how nations escape quagmires of debt: “The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”

“Debauching the currency,” Lenin’s depiction, is the way we will probably destroy the debt monster.

Hemingway’s second option, war, appears to be the preferred option of the war chiefs of the Beltway’s think-tank archipelago, who see in any Putin move in the Baltic or Black Sea casus belli.

What our Cold War leaders kept ever in mind, and our War Party scribblers never learned, is the lesson British historian A. J. P. Taylor discovered from studying the Thirty Years War of 1914-1945:

“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.”

Another existential threat, if Western man still sees himself as the custodian of the world’s greatest civilization, and one yet worth preserving, is the Third-Worldization of the West.

The threat emanates from two factors: The demographic death of the native-born of all Western nations by century’s end, given their fertility rates, and the seemingly endless invasion of the West from Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Concerning the demographic decline and displacement of Western man by peoples of other creeds, cultures, countries, continents and civilizations, there is an ideological clash within the West.

Some among our elites are rhapsodic at the change. Worshiping at the altars of diversity and equality, they see acquiescing in the invasion of their own countries as a mark of moral superiority.

Angela Merkel speaks for them, or did, up to a while ago.

To those who believe diversity — racial, ethnic, religious, cultural — is to be cherished and embraced, resistance to demographic change in the West is seen as a mark of moral retardation.

Opponents of immigration are hence subjects of abuse — labeled “racists,” “xenophobes,” “fascists,” “Nazis” and other terms of odium in the rich vocabulary of Progressive hatred.

Yet, opposition to the invasion from across the Med and the Rio Grande is not only propelling the Trump movement but generating rightist parties and movements across the Old Continent.

It is hard to see how this crisis resolves itself peacefully.

For the hundreds of millions living in Third World tyranny and misery are growing, as is their willingness to risk their lives to reach Europe. And national resistance is not going to dissipate as the illegal immigrants and refugees come in growing numbers.

What the resisters see as imperiled is what they treasure most, their countries, cultures, way of life and the future they wish to leave their children. These are things for which men have always fought.

And, in America, is diversity leading to greater unity, or to greater rancor, separatism and disintegration? Did anyone imagine that, 50 years after the civil rights laws, we would still be having long hot summers in Ferguson, Baltimore and Milwaukee?

The crisis that South Carolina statesman John C. Calhoun had posthumously predicted in his “Disquisition on Government” has also come to pass.

The country would divide into two parties, Calhoun said. One would be the party of those who pay the taxes to government, the other the party of those who consume the benefits of government.

The taxpayers’ party would engage in constant clashes with the party of the tax-consumers.

In 2013, the top 1 percent of Americans in income paid 38 percent of all income taxes. The bottom 50 percent of income-earners, half the nation, paid only 3 percent of all income taxes.

A question logically follows: If one belongs to that third of the nation that pays no income taxes but receives copious benefits, why would you vote for a party that will cut taxes you don’t pay, but take away benefits you do receive?

Traditional Republican platforms ask half the country to vote against its economic interests. As a long-term political strategy, that is not too promising.

During the New Deal, FDR’s aide Harold Ickes, declared in what became party dogma, “We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”

And so they did, and so they do. But this is a game that cannot go on forever.

For, as John Adams reminded us, “There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”

Another existential threat, if Western man still

Economy

manufacturing-reuters

Surveys gauging manufacturing growth or contraction in Empire State. (REUTERS)

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey, the New York Federal Reserve’s gauge of manufacturing activity in the region, contracted in August. The headline general business conditions index fell five points to -4.2, down from a positive reading in July. The median economic forecast had called for an increase to 2.50.

In the Empire State Manufacturing Survey, one of the regional gauges proceeding the Institute for Supply-Management’s Manufacturing Report on Business, a reading above 0 indicates expansion, while below indicates contraction.

Labor market indicators pointed to little change in employment levels and hours worked. The employment index increased three points to -1.0, suggesting employment levels were little changed and the average workweek index gained to 2.1, pointing to a modest increase in hours worked.

The Empire State Manufacturing Survey, the New

US

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has put the National Guard on standby after one person was shot at a Milwaukee protest on Sunday. Police officers used an armored vehicle to obtain the victim and take them to the hospital after violence erupted for a second night following the police shooting of a black man.

Around 11 p.m., two dozen officers in riot gear confronted roughly 150 people who blocked an intersection near a fatal shooting Saturday afternoon before more arrived. Police were attempting to disperse the crowd and threatened arrests after protesters threw bottles and rocks at police and shots were fired.

Police Chief Edward Flynn said earlier Sunday the man whose death sparked rioting Saturday night was shot after he turned toward an officer with a gun in his hand. Chief Flynn also said the shooting was still under investigation and authorities were awaiting autopsy results. However, a silent video taken from the unidentified officer’s body camera shows he “certainly appeared to be within lawful bounds.”

Sylville K. Smith, 23, fled a traffic stop on Saturday and was armed. Retired homicide detective Rod Wheeler said in an interview Monday that “on the surface, it appears this shooting was justified.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Tom Barrett, who ran multiple times unsuccessfully against Gov. Walker, said the video evidence clearly showed a gun in Smith’s hand. But he called for sympathy for the Smith family.

“A young man lost his life yesterday afternoon,” Mayor Barrett said. “And no matter what the circumstances are, his family has to be hurting.”

Indeed, Mr. Smith’s sister told The Associated Press that the family wants prosecutors to charge the officer, despite the facts. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said Mr. Smith was known to police and arrested 13 times. Online court records showed a range of charges against him, including misdemeanors and violent felony offenses. Chief Flynn added the officer had told Smith to drop the gun and he did not do so.

“It was in his hand. He was raising up with it,” Chief Flynn said.

Still, as was the case in so many other cities erupting in riots and violence, the evidence doesn’t matter to many. Six local businesses were burned in the riots along with an unknown number of vehicles, and seventeen people were arrested. Chief Flynn said four officers were hurt from flying concrete and glass, though all of them had been treated and released from hospital.

Milwaukee Alderman Khalif Rainey said black residents in the city are “tired of living under this oppression.”

“Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here?” he asked.

The National Guard will be answering that question tonight as 125 Guard members have already reported to local armories and await instructions. Chief Flynn said they would not be deployed unless needed, as 150 police officers specially trained in protests have assembled for Monday night, as well.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has put the

Opinion

Heidi-Heitkamp

North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is telling LGBT people in her state and beyond that she’s #GotYourBack.

Tread carefully, America. The skirmishes around the nation centered on rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders are not really about rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.

They’re about the decimation of the First Amendment and the destruction of traditional family. And the latest local battle to drive a wedge in the national norm is in Utah, where 25 groups dedicated to advancing the LGBT rights’ movement have signed on to a letter urging the Big 12, which is considering a team expansion, to turn a blind eye on Brigham Young University.

Of the Mormon school, the coalition wrote: “[BYU] actively and openly discriminates against its LGBT students and staff. In fact, through its policies, BYU is very clear about its intent to discriminate against openly LGBT students, with sanctions that can include suspension or dismissal for being openly LGBT or in a same-sex relationship. … Given BYU’s homophobic, biphobic and transphobic policies and practices, BYU should not be rewarded with Big 12 membership.”

But that’s typical special interest-driven bunk.

BYU, a private facility in Provo that’s owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, does in fact have policies regarding homosexual relations. It also has them – and curious, but the coalition’s letter doesn’t speak to this – for heterosexuals. In fact, the school’s honor code, which speaks to the need of students and staff to “demonstrate in daily living on and off-campus those moral virtues encompassed in the gospel of Jesus Christ,” is specific in its expectations for everybody who attends. It requires all BYUers to “be honest,” to live a chaste and virtuous life,” and to “participate regularly in church services.” It doesn’t even allow them to swear – or drink coffee or caffeinated tea.

It’s in the context of discussing the do’s and don’ts of proper BYUer behaviors that homosexuality is brought up, in a special section that makes clear: “Homosexual behavior is inappropriate.”

But before cracking the “see, I told you so” whip wielded by the rabidly pro-LGBT rights’ crowd, read a little bit more. Simply professing same-sex attraction is not a code violation.

“One’s stated same-gender attraction is not an Honor Code issue,” the policy reads. “[BYU] will respond to homosexual behavior rather than to feelings or attraction.”

That means an honor code violation is only given in those instances when students or staffers act on those sexual attractions. But here’s the part the LGBT agenda-drivers conveniently overlook and ignore: BYU’s sex-based prohibitions apply equally to homosexuals as well as heterosexuals. In other words: the honor code demands chastity for all unmarried students and staffers, no matter their sexual preferences.

If the whole LGBT movement is aimed at demanding and receiving equal rights and equal treatment – at getting the same types of societal benefits as heterosexuals – then the reaction to BYU’s honor code should be this: Mission accomplished. But it’s not. And that’s because the LGBT community’s clamor for rights at choice spots around the nation in recent months has little to do with justice and equality and everything to do with destroying societal roots, norms and standards.

In 2012, lesbian activist Masha Gessen said in a speech “it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist” and that sanctioning a man and a woman as the legal caretakers of children is ridiculous.

In 2013, the far-left Nation published opinions from LGBT activists Tamara Metz and Amber Hollibaugh who said, respectively, the next step for the movement was to “disestablish marriage” and to “queer” the country’s economy.

“I want a LGBTQ movement that queers the reality of Walmart line jobs, sex work and homeless shelters,” Hollibaugh wrote.

And in 2016, the Huffington Post’s “Queer Voices” section blasted this headline in a story about offering stock photographs of gays to wire services like Getty: “Redefining the ‘Traditional’ American Family in 7 Stunning Images.”

Meanwhile, the battle over bathroom genders goes on, with entities from the White House to Target retail demanding men dressed as women be given access to female facilities, and vice versa. But this BYU battle is a First Amendment religious freedom hit in disguise. What the coalition of LGBT groups is in effect saying in their letter is that Christian-based organizations have a right to their religious beliefs – so long as those religious beliefs don’t conflict or oppose the LGBT agenda. And they’re trying to steamroll that belief into the common culture via the sports world. Americans, particularly those of Christian faith and patriotic bent, take heed. BYU today; the local church tomorrow.

Most of the LGBT rights groups are

Elections

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Blair County Convention Center in Altoona, Pa. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Blair County Convention Center in Altoona, Pa. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

Donald Trump vowed “to go full blast” on the campaign trail day until Election Day and admitted he has “no choice” if he wants to win the election. The comments come at the end of a week that saw controversy and the candidate barnstorming battleground states including Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

“It’s set up and we have to do it. It’s so important. We have 90 days left and I wanna maximize the time,” Mr. Trump said Friday night. “I just feel that I have no choice. I have to really go full blast and get this thing done because we will make America great again.”

In Florida, the Republican presidential candidate held rallies in Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and Kissimmee, drawing more than 40,000 at events this week. Still, he continues to trail in the polls against Hillary Clinton, including the People’s Pundit Daily U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll. Though his polling numbers appear to have leveled out, he’s struggled to get back some of the voters he lost since his post-convention bounce.

“It’s not that Mrs. Clinton is rising, it’s that he has fallen so much,” said PPD’s senior political analyst Richard Baris. “He will likely continue to trail in the polls until he either expands his appeal among working class voters back to prior levels and regains the support of his party’s base.”

For the first time this cycle, the New York businessman seemed to acknowledge he could lose, though he didn’t at all seem to concede he will. At his second rally on Friday, Mr. Trump said the only way he will lose Pennsylvania is if “cheating goes on,” repeating his frequent claims that the election system is rigged. While the media had a field day with the comments, polling data show most Americans do not believe in the integrity of the electoral process.

“We have to call up law enforcement, and we have to have the sheriffs and the police chiefs and everybody watching. Because if we get cheated out of this election, if we get cheated out of a win in Pennsylvania, which is such a vital state, especially when I know what’s happening here, folks…[Mrs. Clinton] can’t beat what’s happening here,” Mr. Trump said in Altoona.

After a series of controversies, media created or not, the candidate tried to get back to his strong point this week–the economy. He gave a well-received speech to the Detroit Economic Club and another to the National Association of Home Builders in Miami, Florida. Mrs. Clinton also gave an economic address in Warren, Michigan, where she vowed to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership as president and other trade deals “that hurt the American worker.”

Mrs. Clinton had previously called the TPP the “gold standard” of trade deals, and longtime Clinton ally Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said she had changed her position for the election. As president, he said, she would not oppose the deal.

[brid video=”58765″ player=”2077″ title=”Donald Trump FULL interview with Mike Huckabee on Hannity 81216″]

Donald Trump vowed "to go full blast"

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe