This is a backup copy of the original blog
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
January 31, 2022
Democrats Rushed to ‘Reimagine’ Policing in Washington State. Now It’s Unsafe
SEATTLE—Democrats in Washington state rode the wave of anti-police sentiment after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Their goal was to “reimagine policing,” and it’s exactly what they did.
Consequently, Washington experienced a surge of violent crime. Now Republicans, and even some Democrats, are rushing to fix as much as possible.
With total control of the state Legislature, Democrats used the 2021 legislative session to rush through sweeping “reforms” that dramatically changed policing in the state. These passed bills clamped down on police use of force and detainment, banned departments from deploying large-caliber weapons, and even prohibited most high-speed chases.
Prior to the changes, police officers could use reasonable suspicion as a reason to detain a suspect. But thanks to a bill designated as HB 1310, an officer may use force only when making an arrest.
To make an arrest, though, an officer must have probable cause—a much higher standard than reasonable suspicion. If an officer detains someone or uses force under the reasonable-suspicion standard, thanks to the passage of SB 5051, he or she may lose police certification.
In the real world, this means if an officer sees someone acting suspiciously around an abandoned building in the middle of the night, in a neighborhood that is experiencing a rash of arson, the officer cannot detain that person.
The officer merely may ask the suspect to submit voluntarily to questioning. If the person suddenly flees, the officer may not pursue, because he didn’t witness a crime.
This issue has had the biggest impact on our communities that are overwhelmed by homelessness, where it’s common to see someone experiencing a public episode related to mental health or drugs.
Democrat politicians long have complained that armed police officers should not respond to calls involving citizens in crisis. They’re getting that wish now, and living with the consequences.
‘We Cannot Use Force’
Since law enforcement officers in Washington state are restricted to using force only when making an arrest, unless a crime is committed, officers are not allowed to touch the person in crisis, even if it’s to get him into a patrol car for transport to a mental health evaluation.
Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney, in a recent interview on my Seattle-based talk radio show, said these occurrences are frequent and put other residents at risk.
Fortney recalled dispatching deputies and medics to a family dispute involving an adult in the middle of a mental health crisis. These first responders found the man lying down in the back of a pickup truck.
“We’re talking to him, you know, we’re keeping distance,” Fortney recalled. “We and the medic determined that he needs help … but this is the crux of the issue: Unless that person in crisis is willing to walk on his own accord into the back of the aid unit and go to the hospital and get the help, we cannot use force because of this new legislation.”
The man in this example ended up running away, the sheriff said, and there was nothing authorities could do since he had not committed a crime. But he would end up doing just that.
“We watched him run away,” Fortney said. “He jumps fences. He enters someone else’s home unlawfully after he shed his clothing. And that homeowner had to hold that person in crisis at knifepoint until we were redispatched and had to go deal with, now, the new issue that came up.”
It’s not the only circumstance where law enforcement officers have to stand by helplessly. They’re now put in positions where they are forced to watch suspects flee in vehicles, since legislation known as HB 1054 bans nearly all vehicle pursuits.
Limiting Pursuit
The law bars police from pursuing a suspect unless there’s probable cause that he committed a violent offense or sex crime, or a reasonable suspicion that the driver is impaired.
But that’s not all.
Prior to the pursuit, the law says an officer must consider whether a suspect poses “an imminent threat to the safety of others and the safety risks of failing to apprehend,” and a supervisor must give permission for the officer to pursue.
Imagine having to satisfy this law within seconds, at risk of losing police certification if you get it wrong.
It’s why the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office and police in neighboring Douglas County could not pursue a man who was driving a stolen bus. Law enforcement didn’t have probable cause that the man committed a violent crime.
The following evening, police made an arrest. Unfortunately, it came after the suspect left the bus and stole a front-end loader. Police said he crashed the vehicle into the home of his estranged wife.
The incident would have ended differently if cops weren’t stymied by Democrat lawmakers whose understanding of policing extends only to trusting activists who claim officers roam the streets looking to harass or hunt so-called BIPOC (black, Indigenous, and people of color).
Law enforcement agencies and the experts that run them were mostly cut off from helping draft the state legislation. That approach recently cost the life of a police dog.
Officers from the Seattle Police Department responded to a panicked call about a man, armed with a machete, who was trying to break into a home. When they arrived, the man was running away, wearing nothing but a bath towel.
Wielding a knife as well as the machete, the man refused to comply with orders to stop as he ran toward oncoming traffic.
The Death of Jedi
Officers called a K-9 unit to assist. A police dog named Jedi was unleashed not long after the man briefly advanced toward a cop and then turned back to the oncoming traffic with no apparent interest in stopping.
The man hacked Jedi multiple times with the machete, then stabbed the dog with the knife. The brutal violence was caught on police body cameras.
Jedi died of his wounds. The police dog’s handler was injured during the melee. Other cops on the scene shot and killed the man.
The dog’s death was needless; the K-9 unit itself was unnecessary.
HB 1054 banned police use of large-caliber firearms and ammunition under the ridiculous notion that police departments were becoming militarized. The legislation didn’t include a carve-out for nonlethal firearms such as 44 mm sponge-tipped rounds. Lawmakers unfamiliar with weapons or policing thought that a large caliber coincides with lethality.
“I say this with 100% certainty, having years of experience in patrol and SWAT, and having worked beside K-9 more times than I can count,” a Seattle police officer told me. “Had responding officers had 40 mm launchers to deploy on that suspect, Jedi would almost certainly be alive today. The suspect might also be alive today, receiving treatment.”
Other officers reached out to convey that same message.
After Democrats passed their legislation last year, law enforcement officials immediately raised red flags—the same ones that had been ignored by the Democrats who pushed through the legislation.
Lawmakers knew they erred and responded with ludicrous advice from the two state representatives who spearheaded the “reform” efforts.
Scrambling to Make Fixes
State Rep. Jesse Johnson, D-Federal Way, argued that his bills were being “misinterpreted.” Although news outlets that are antagonistic to police also made this claim, Johnson acknowledged that his legislation had “unintended consequences.”
Meanwhile, state Rep. Roger Goodman, D-Kirkland, advised police to ignore the ban on large-caliber weapons because “no one caught” that mistake. Goodman promised that “there are not going to be any sanctions” imposed on officers who use nonlethal weapons.
Good luck finding a cop who will trust that legally untenable position. Judges don’t look to interviews given by a lawmaker if pressed on a case.
Officers in law enforcement agencies that have decided to break the law and keep nonlethal tools are choosing not to use them. Take former King County Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht, for one.
“In my mind, while I was sheriff, the decision that [the law] disqualified the carrying of less-lethal weapons for the Sheriff’s Office … I wasn’t going to take that chance for the members of my organization at that time,” Johanknecht, whose term ended in December, told me.
Now Democrats are hastily trying to fix some of their hastily passed legislation. It’s quite ironic.
They’re attempting to clarify when officers may use force so that they would not be barred from intervening in a crisis fueled by a mental health issue or addiction. They’re also changing the weapons ban so that it applies only to rifles.
But one fix is providing controversial.
Introduced by Goodman, the Democrat from Kirkland, HB 1726 would allow law enforcement officers to revert to the reasonable-suspicion standard when using force in a criminal investigation. It would allow officers to use force “to effect a temporary investigatory detention when there is reasonable suspicion that the person has committed or is committing a violent offense, a sex offense, an assault, or domestic violence.”
The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington opposes Goodman’s bill because it would expand the use of force
*************************************************
1,800 Sign Letter Urging Fidelity Charitable Not to Bow to Leftists’ Demands
More than 1,800 financial advisers, investment professionals, recipients of charitable donations, and others signed a letter sent last week urging Fidelity Charitable to protect donor privacy and philanthropic freedom, following a petition from left-wing groups targeting certain groups receiving donations.
The letter was in response to a petition from Unmasking Fidelity, a coalition of far-left advocacy groups. The activists are demanding that Fidelity Charitable disclose contributions over the past five years to a select group of 10 mainly conservative organizations, among them the Alliance Defending Freedom, Turning Point USA, and the Family Research Council.
“We are writing to you about our continuing concern that Fidelity Charitable’s Donor-Advised Funds (FC DAFs) contribute to tax-exempt non-profits that promote anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-Black or anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies that enable white supremacist and fascist violence,” the Unmasking Fidelity petition reads.
Fidelity Charitable, an arm of Fidelity Investments, is a 501(c)(3) organization that enables investors to donate to a wide range of tax-exempt organizations. It distributed $9.1 billion to charities in 2020, making it the nation’s top grant-maker, according to its website.
Fidelity Charitable describes itself as “cause-neutral” and says it “does not limit grant-making to specific charitable activities or fields of interest, to specific geographical or demographic criteria, or to specific organizations based on political, religious, or philosophical grounds.”
The response letter to Unmasking Fidelity was published by the Philadelphia Statement, a group that claims to combat cancel culture and promote free speech. Among the signatories was Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
“Americans should be able to donate to charities and nonprofit organizations without the fear of being harassed by left-wing political activists,” Roberts wrote on Twitter.
“We write in response to Unmasking Fidelity’s list of demands that would jeopardize donor privacy and charitable choice,” the letter stated. “As a leader in philanthropy, Fidelity Charitable has an outsized opportunity (and responsibility) to resist demands to inject polarization, division, and enmity into charitable giving.”
The letter cited the recent Supreme Court case Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, in which the court’s 6-3 majority in June held that California’s donor-disclosure regulations violated First Amendment rights.
“Requiring that nonprofits disclose their donors not only exposes existing donors to the threat of doxing and harassment, but also discourages charitable giving and participation in the marketplace of ideas,” the Philadelphia Statement letter said. “Public advocacy is for everyone, not just those able to weather abuse. And donors have good reason to fear abuse. In our present age of cancel culture and social media mobs, too many are quick to ostracize, lambast, and threaten those with whom they disagree.”
Stephen Austin, a spokesman for Fidelity Investments, told The Daily Signal that Fidelity Charitable allows its more than quarter-of-a-million donors to bring their own values and perspectives to their giving.
“We conduct a robust review of each grant recommended by our donors, to ensure the organization is in good standing with the IRS and the funds are used for charitable purposes,” Austin said. “The IRS, not Fidelity Charitable, has oversight over an organization’s tax-exempt status.”
***************************************************
Liz Cheney Trounced: RINO Crushed in Latest WY Poll, Trump-Backed Challenger Get 10 Times More Votes
GOP Rep. Liz Cheney may be the mainstream media’s favorite Republican, particularly given her work on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee. In her native Wyoming, however, she’s a bit less popular.
According to the Casper Star-Tribune, a straw poll among state GOP activists taken Saturday by the Wyoming Republican State Central Committee saw Cheney lose big, with 59 votes for her top challenger in this year’s GOP primary, Harriet Hageman, compared to only six votes for the incumbent representative.
The movement to unseat the GOP’s biggest RINO began almost as soon as Cheney announced she would be voting to impeach then-President Donald Trump in January 2021 — and it’s something we’ve stayed on top of here at The Western Journal. We’ll keep bringing you updates to one of the most critical primary races in the country. You can help us bring America the truth by subscribing.
The straw poll was taken among 71 of the 74 individuals who make up the state central committee — three representatives from each Wyoming county and members of the state party. That means it can, in certain cases, be deceiving. In a 2020 straw poll, for instance, now-Sen. Cynthia Lumis lost to the GOP chairman of Sheridan County — then went on to beat him by a nearly 50-point margin in the actual primary, the Star-Tribune reported.
“I think it’s a good sign. It’s not an endorsement, but these are the county activists,” Hageman, a lawyer who has been endorsed by Trump, said after the straw poll, according to the Star-Tribune. “There will be lots of polls over the next eight months [before the August primary], and they will all show different things
The state party can’t officially endorse anyone, although Natrona County Committeeman Joe Mcginley told the Star-Tribune the vote “smells like an endorsement to me.”
“Whether that is the true intention of the state … or not, that’s what it appears to be.”
The state GOP had already censured Cheney and stripped her of party recognition, so the loss is no surprise. The nearly 10-to-1 margin might be, however.
Granted, Cheney and the state GOP have been at loggerheads of late. According to the Star-Tribune, Cheney used the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to note that there “are people in the state party apparatus of my home state who are quite radical. And some of those same people include people who were here on Jan. 6th, include a party chair who has toyed with the idea of secession.”
“If Ms. Cheney wants to continue to pick a fight with the majority of Wyoming Republicans and accuse the vast majority of being deplorables and radicals, then of course she can continue that foolish ploy,” the Wyoming GOP said in a statement in response, according to The Washington Times.
“She can also continue to engage in the politics of personal destruction with other Republicans – which is her specialty and only real qualification to sit on the farcical January 6th Commission — but that is unlikely to improve her position in the polls.”
Moreover, when it comes to the 196,179 registered Republicans who’ll be voting on Cheney’s fate this coming August, they don’t seem too thrilled with her, either.
Polling in the race has been scant thus far, but it doesn’t look good for Cheney. According to the Washington Examiner, Hageman was up by 20 points in a December poll, 38 percent to 18 percent. While that poll had a large number of undecideds, a poll taken in July found only 23 percent of potential GOP primary voters said they would vote for Cheney against 77 percent who wouldn’t, the Examiner reported.
And then there’s this number: 70.4. That’s Donald Trump’s percentage of the vote in Wyoming in the 2020 election, vs. Joe Biden’s 26.7 percent. Given that Wyoming only has one House seat and Trump enjoyed widespread support in the state — particularly among Republicans — this doesn’t augur well for Cheney’s chances in August.
Donald Trump Jr. was more than happy to call attention to the results of the straw poll and revel in them, it’s worth noting. The former president’s son tweeted Saturday that “Republican voters in Wyoming are sick and tired of being represented by a Pelosi puppet like Liz Cheney.
**********************************************
One More Time: It’s Not ‘Gun Violence’ It’s Gang Violence
Every time you hear a politician or a media personality mention “gun violence,” you should mentally translate that phrase to “gang violence.” Not only that, but ask yourself if that politician or media outlet has an agenda by mislabeling gang violence as something entirely different.
Obviously politicians who have enabled the “criminal justice reforms” that have directly resulted in the out-of-control increases in violent crime across America don’t want to talk about criminals and gangs. In fact, California’s Gov. Newsom even went so far as to actuall apologize for using the word “gang” when describing the organized groups of criminals who commit crimes (otherwise known as ‘gangs’).
Rather than correctly identify those who commit the majority of violent crimes in this country, countless failed and inept politicians like the Land of Lincoln’s Governor J.B. Pritzker and Murder City, USA’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot instead blame law-abiding gun owners.
They continue to promote more gun control laws and more government spending to redirect peoples’ attention away from the failures of their feckless policies and misplaced spending priorities.
As for the media, there’s a reason the great majority of Americans don’t trust them any more. Nine percent of Americans now have “a great deal” of trust in what they hear in the media. To put that into perspective, roughly four percent of the population think lizard people “control our societies by gaining political power.”
Too many of today’s media members are nothing more than Democrat party operatives with bylines who dutifully spout leftist talking points. They willfully ignore stories that are bad for their political allies and their agenda. Or they cover them…with a pillow. Until they stop moving.
At the same time, they’re quick to castigate law-abiding gun owners for the actions of actual criminals, terrorists, and lunatics who commit crimes with firearms.
The next time you see some politician or candidate talking about the problem of so-called “gun violence,” call them out on it. Pols usually squirm if you make them address the real issue that drives the majority violent crime in cities: gangs.
In centers of corruption like Chicago, they may aggressively deflect the discussion away from gangs because a lot of gangs in places like Chi-town have some very cozy relationships with local elected officials to provide votes in exchange for the politicians avoiding discussions about gang-related crimes.
As for the media, do the math. If they’re trumpeting talking points like “gun violence,” they’re probably gaslighting you about other topics too. Look deeper to see what else they’re lying to you about.
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/one-more-time-its-not-gun-violence-its-gang-violence/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
January 30, 2022
To kill a classic: school ditches Harper Lee
The United States is grappling with the legacy of one its greatest books over fears its handling of race may make teachers and pupils uncomfortable.
School authorities have pulled To Kill a Mockingbird from a required reading list for children aged 14 to 15 because it was a “difficult book” that raised “thorny subjects”. Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel about a white lawyer defending a black man wrongly accused of rape in Alabama in the 1930s has long been a staple in schools, as well as the subject of deep controversy. It frequently appears on lists for both America’s greatest novels and its most banned.
A school board in Mukilteo, near Seattle, removed the book from its ninth grade curriculum, claiming it “reflects a time when racism was tolerated”.
The book’s use of a racial slur was also cited as a reason to remove it, while Atticus Finch, the lead character depicted as a hero in the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, has been accused of not taking a harsh enough stance against racists.
John Gahagan, a school board member, said he read the novel last week for the first time in 50 years. “It’s a difficult book and a lot of thorny subjects are raised,” he told The Seattle Times.
“We felt that some teachers may not feel comfortable guiding their students through it.”
He said the novel “reflects a time when racism was tolerated”, adding: “Atticus is in everyone’s memory the great hero, but in fact he was kind of tolerant of racism around him. He described one of the members of a lynch mob as a good man.”
Gahagan, who emphasised To Kill a Mockingbird was not being banned and teachers were free to choose to teach it, also objected to Lee’s use of the n-word. “It never has a discussion about why that word is bad, why it is hurtful or why it should not be used,” Gahagan said. “You don’t really get the perspective of the pain that might cause people of colour.”
Despite the controversy surrounding To Kill a Mockingbird, it remains immensely respected and loved. Last month it won a New York Times poll of the greatest books of the past 125 years, with readers saying it had changed their lives and transformed how they viewed race.
Lee, who was white, died in 2016 at the age of 89. Her estate has been contacted for comment.
*******************************************
America's monetary authorities are doing nothing to stop the destruction of America's savings
Australia's top financial commentator, TERRY MCCRANN notes the inaction on inflation by the Fed
The only actual policy decision the Fed made at its first meeting back for the year was to print yet another $US30bn of money through February.
So for all the talk of the Fed ‘turning hawkish’ in the face of high single-digit US inflation that it could no longer ‘not see’, it’s actually continuing in near-hyper pump-priming mode for at least another month.
It’s not only still printing money, it’s kept its official interest rate at zero (technically, 0-0.25 per cent), saying only that it expects it will “soon” be appropriate to raise it.
In his press conference, Fed chairman Jerome Powell made it explicit that “soon” was the next meeting.
“I would say that the committee is of a mind to raise the Federal Funds rate at the March meeting,” Powell said.
Let me point out that is all of a month-and-a-half away. Unlike our Reserve Bank which meets monthly – next Tuesday, and then again on March 3 - the Fed won’t meet again and (possibly/probably) hike until March 16.
Gee, talk about hastening slowly; the Fed would not only be outdistanced but twice-lapped by a sluggish clapped-out snail.
The Fed is quite simply a disgrace.
It’s hard to know which is the more pathetic – that pitiable spineless individual who’s its purported ‘leader’ or the nine vegetables sitting around the board table nodding compliantly like funfair dummies.
Talk about so unknowingly announcing your own ineptitude, I doubt that I’ve seen a more revealing admission than the key sentence in the Fed statement.
“With inflation well above 2 percent and a strong labor market, the Committee expects it will soon be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate.”
Inflation well above 2 per cent, and yet it would only be “appropriate” to raise, from zero let me remind you, “soon”? Not now, immediately; far less two, or indeed six months ago?
Inflation in the US has actually been over 5 per cent – the Fed is supposed to keep it no higher than 2 per cent - since the middle of last year and is now at 7 percent.
So this was like noting that Hitler had marched into Poland – or Putin into Ukraine – and that so “soon” it might be “appropriate” to start spending a few more dollars on defence.
The Fed has spent that last year variously ‘not seeing’ inflation in the US or dismissing it as ‘transitory’.
Now at least it “sees” the inflation, but is desperately trying to go softly-softly in fear of Wall St throwing a tantrum – when it should be precisely targeting a huge drop in the share market and significant rises in interest rates across the yield curve.
This is because asset values – the most obvious ones of shares and property, but also bonds, both government and corporate – are grotesquely over-inflated and all down to those zero rates and trillions of dollars of Fed-printed money.
I’ve loosely suggested the Dow needs to go back below 20,000 as an indicator of what’s needed to get back to economic and financial sanity, with our index going back (at least) below 5000.
That’s why I’m not particularly impressed by the claims of Wall St “adjusting” to Powell’s – fake and spinelessly pathetic – supposed “hawkishness”.
The Dow has come back all of 9 per cent from its early-January ludicrous record high, but it’s still around 34,000; although tech stocks have taken a (very slightly) bigger hit, with the Nasdaq off 15 per cent.
The Fed should have ‘surprised’ the greediest people on the planet by – so very belatedly - hiking 0.5 per cent. It really should have been 1 per cent but I would have taken 0.5 per cent.
**********************************************
Pennsylvania Court Rules Mail-in Ballots Unconstitutional
The Commonwealth Court ruled that Act 77, which allowed residents no-excuse absentee vote by mail in Pennsylvania, violates Article VII, Section 1 of the Pennsylvania constitution.
Commonwealth Court President Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt wrote, “If presented to the people, a constitutional amendment to end Article VII, Section 1 requirement of in-person voting is likely to be adopted. But a constitutional amendment must be presented to the people and adopted into our fundamental law before legislation allowing no-excuse mail-in voting can be ‘placed upon our statute books.'”
The ruling states, “Act 77, inter alia, created the opportunity for all Pennsylvania electors to vote by mail without having to demonstrate a valid reason for absence from their polling place on Election Day, i.e., a reason provided in the Pennsylvania Constitution.”
“The central question presented in this matter is whether Act 77 conforms to Article VII of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which article governs elections,” the ruling continues. “In resolving this question, we recognize that ‘acts passed by the General Assembly are strongly presumed to be constitutional’ and that we will not declare a statute unconstitutional ‘unless it clearly, palpably, and plainly violates the Constitution. If there is any doubt that a challenger has failed to reach this high burden, then that doubt must be resolved in favor of finding the statute constitutional.’”
The Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement to Forbes it “disagrees with today’s ruling and is working to file an immediate appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.”
Pennsylvania’s Act 77 that greenlit no-excuse, mass mail-in voting in 2019 was actually a compromise forged between legislative Republicans and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. Republicans voted for it 27-0 in the Senate, and 105-2 in the House. Democrats did not support it in the Senate and split their votes against it in the lower chamber.
Mass mail-in ballots should absolutely be banned across the country. It leaves so many doors open for doubt and cheating, just as we saw in the 2020 election chaos.
https://dailypatriotreport.com/pennsylvania-court-rules-mail-in-ballots-unconstitutional/
**********************************************Liberties Are Only Kept Safe by the Limitation of Government Power
An old fight continues
I was recently struck by the explosion of the federal government’s size and reach, as well as its apparent ambition to super-size itself even more, in an unusual way.
I had been looking up something in one of my old public finance textbooks, when I came across a section on the size and growth of government. What struck me was that the authors used exclamation points (an almost extinct species in such writing) over two decades ago to describe government’s expansion, particularly at the federal level. But the rate at which government has recently metastasized leaves those exclamation points in the dust. We would also have to use all caps today (as in “YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE WON”). From said book: total expenditures by all levels of government in 1990 were substantially smaller than just one of the recent stimulus bills.
That explosion of the federal government’s grasp, and the extent to which its attempted reach exceeds its grasp, has made limits on federal power once again among the most central political issues. Unfortunately, ignorance of our Founding severely impoverishes that discussion.
A good example comes from Richard Henry Lee, born January 20, 1732. Lee put forth the motion calling for the colonies’ independence. He was a leader in the Continental Congresses. He was elected Senator from Virginia, even though he opposed the Constitution’s ratification for lacking “a better bill of rights.”
But particularly important to America’s creation were Lee’s essays under the pseudonym, The Federal Farmer. His Letters from the Federal Farmer, which were both widely published in newspapers and sold thousands of copies as a pamphlet, provided impetus to the Bill of Rights, and his words deserve remembering:
We must have our rights maintained
A free and enlightened people...will not resign all their rights to those who govern...they will fix limits to their legislators and rulers...[who] will know they cannot be passed.
[Hope] cannot justify the impropriety of giving powers, the exercise of which prudent men will not attempt, and imprudent men will...exercise only in a manner destructive of free government.
National laws ought to yield to inalienable or fundamental rights—and ...should extend only to a few national objects.
It must never be forgotten...that the liberties of the people are not so safe under the gracious manner of government as by the limitation of power.
Our rights must be equal
I can consent to no government, which...is not calculated equally to preserve the rights of all orders of men.
We ought not...commit the many to the mercy, prudence, and moderation of the few.
In free governments, the people...follow their own private pursuits, and enjoy the fruits of their labor with very small deductions for the public use.
The people have a right to hold and enjoy their property according to known standing laws, and which cannot be taken from them without their consent.
Every government is a threat to our rights
We cannot form a general government in which all power can be safely lodged.
“Should the general government...[employ] a system of influence, the government will take every occasion to multiply laws...props for its own support.
Vast powers of laying and collecting internal taxes in a government ...would be...abused by imprudent and designing men.
Men who govern will...construe laws and constitutions most favorably for increasing their own powers.
Our countrymen are entitled... to a government of laws and not of men... if the constitution...be vague and unguarded, then we depend wholly on the prudence, wisdom and moderation of those who manage the affairs of government...uncertain and precarious.
Liberty, in its genuine sense, is security to enjoy the effects of our honest industry and labors, in a free and mild government.
How can we protect ourselves from government abuse?
All wise and prudent people...have drawn the line, and carefully described the powers parted with and the powers reserved...what rights are established as fundamental, and must not be infringed upon.
The powers delegated to the government must be precisely defined... that, by no reasonable construction, they can be made to invade the rights and prerogatives intended to be left in the people.
We must consider this constitution, when adopted, as the supreme act of the people...we and our posterity must strictly adhere to the letter and spirit of it, and in no instance depart from them.
Why...unnecessarily leave a door open to improper regulations?
The first maxim of a man who loves liberty should be never to grant to rulers an atom of power that is not most clearly and indispensably necessary for the safety and well-being of society.
Our true object is...to render force as little necessary as possible.
Historian Forrest McDonald described Richard Henry Lee as committed to the belief that “men are born with certain rights, whether they are honored in a particular society or not,” and the result was that he was “imbued with an abiding love of liberty and a concomitant wholesome distrust of government.” And he made that plain to anyone who was willing to hear, as when he said “To say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying.”
His generation had learned of the need to keep government within narrow limits, as there are very few areas in which it can advance our general welfare, as opposed to some Americans’ welfare at other Americans’ expense. At a time when those limits have been eroded to the point that people can wonder if there are any surviving limits in many areas, we could benefit by relearning the wisdom Lee helped pass on nearly three centuries ago.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13965&omhide=true&trk=rm
***************************************************Conservative Activist Brandon Straka Sentenced to Home Detention and $5,000 Fine
A conservative activist has been sentenced to three months of home detention and a $5,000 fine.
Brandon Straka, 45, of Nebraska, was sentenced on Monday for his participation in the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich accused Straka of abusing his online platform to encourage people to attack on Jan. 6 and defend the events that unfolded on that day.
“Election challenges are fought in the courts, not by storming the Capitol,” Friedrich said, calling Straka’s use of social media “deeply disturbing.”
Straka, a Democrat-turned-Republican, pleaded guilty in October to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment.
Straka founded the “WalkAway” movement, which encourages disenchanted Democrats and liberals to move right. The former hair stylist in 2018 posted a video titled “Why I left the Democrat Party,” which went viral.
He told the judge he and his social media followers don’t condone violence. Straka said his relationship with his fans and followers isn’t just about politics, “it’s about love.”
“It’s not who they are, and it’s not who I am, which is why they love our movement,” he said.
Straka didn’t enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and wasn’t accused of doing so. According to court documents, he was accused of encouraging protesters to take a police officer’s shield.
Straka in a statement said he joined in chants after he “observed others yelling to take a U.S. Capitol Police Officer’s shield,” and told the judge he was “deeply sorry and ashamed,” the Huffington Post reported.
“Even if he didn’t personally engage in violence or property destruction during the riot, Straka encouraged and celebrated the violence of that day,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Brittany Reed wrote in a court filing.
WUSA-9 reported that the judge was skeptical about the defendant’s statements.
“He wants me to believe he was there completely oblivious to what was going on around him, that he was just a peaceful protester, and it’s very hard to believe that based on his conduct and his statements,” Friedrich was quoted as saying by the news outlet.
Straka’s attorney, Bilal Essayli, accused prosecutors of attacking Straka’s First Amendment rights and “attempting to make a public example of a prominent Trump-supporting influencer.”
However, Friedrich said Straka wasn’t being punished for his political views or personal beliefs.
“None of the criminal conduct to which Mr. Straka has admitted is covered by the First Amendment,” the judge said.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Straka and Essayli for comment.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*************************************************************
January 28, 2022
America undergoing a dangerous experiment
Thanks to the Biden Administration’s unofficial open-borders policy, some two million unauthorised migrants crossed into the United States last year, intent on heading north to ‘sanctuary cities’. No wonder. Apart from providing generous welfare, local officials refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.
The sanctuary city phenomenon is just the latest manifestation of a totalitarian movement intent on destroying from within, the basis of American society. It doesn’t matter that conferring the rights of citizenship on those who are non-citizens violates the American Constitution. Some states even permit undocumented migrants to obtain driver’s licences, and New York City has just given 800,000 non-citizens a vote in local elections. Who needs citizenship?
Not all Americans approve. Many are abandoning their homes in sanctuary states to move to places like Florida, Texas, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Over the last decade, the tri-state area of New York lost over a million people, while Californians watched 1.625 million comrades take their skills, capital, taxes and businesses with them as they moved to places where governments respect the federal Constitution and reflect their traditional values and beliefs. The headquarters of tech giants Oracle and Hewlett-Packard, whose roots can be traced back to the founding of Silicon Valley, are among departures.
But, in common with its woke counterparts, California’s problems are of its own making. They include unfulfillable public pension promises and a vast social safety net, beyond the capacity of its remaining workers and businesses to fund. This is unsustainable.
Indeed, what we are seeing is the emergence of two Americas, based upon two conflicting philosophies. One champions authoritarian control, the other economic growth and freedom.
In his book, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail, founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, Ray Dalio, warns this growing ideological divide raises a ‘dangerously high risk’ of a US civil war within the next decade. He outlines the six stages of the internal order/disorder cycle, which end in civil war. He argues the US is currently at stage five — bad financial conditions and intense emotional conflict.
Dalio observes how voters move to electorates which match their beliefs, crowding out those who don’t, and how they watch different television stations and believe different facts. The number of cross-party friendships is at an all-time low. People today are inclined to excuse bad behaviour when it comes from their side and exaggerate it when it comes from the other.
It is clear the current state of America is the result of decades of self-loathing indoctrination and policies which have deliberately confused welfare dependence with compassion. Poorer communities have become perpetual incubators of poverty and violence. Almost 70 per cent of black children are born to single mothers and, as the Brookings Institution confirms, ‘the policy implications for out-of-wedlock births are staggering’. Single mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor and to instill in the minds of their children a sense of victimhood and learned helplessness. This, in turn restricts social mobility and entrenches inequality. America’s ten ‘most dangerous cities’ bear witness to this trend.
The immediate response is to decriminalise the law and to demonise and defund the police. This has proven to be a disaster and hits poorer communities the hardest.
It is now obvious that America is in the final stages of a social experiment gone horribly wrong. How it is resolved only time will tell. However, the woke states are running out of other people’s money and there is no sense that capitalist states will bail them out.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/uncivil-war
*******************************************Sinema: A principled Leftist
Democrats and progressives are furious not because Senator Kyrsten Sinema shamelessly flip-flopped or put her career ahead of her convictions, but because she refused to do so.
On a wide array of issues, Senator Kyrsten Sinema is as progressive as they come.
The Arizona Democrat is a one-time Green Party activist who has been an ardent champion of LGBTQ rights, an unwavering supporter of abortion access, a proponent of stiffer gun control regulations, and a defender of affirmative action. Over the past year, her votes in the Senate have aligned with President Biden's position 97.5 percent of the time. In fact, out of 41 major bills and nominations tallied by the website FiveThirtyEight, Sinema has voted with the president on all but one.
But because of that one — her vote last week against eliminating the 60-vote requirement to end a filibuster — Sinema has been denounced and demonized by her fellow liberals and Democrats.
She has been labeled a "traitor" to her "constituents" (Representative Jamal Bowman of New York), a "moral disgrace" (Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin), "a sellout" (Senate candidate and former US representative Abby Finkenauer of Iowa), and an "anti-democratic tool" (CBS star Stephen Colbert). She has been excoriated by one MSNBC host for "upholding white supremacy" (Tiffany Cross) and slammed by another as "a menace to the continuation of American democracy" (Keith Olbermann). She has been censured by the executive board of the Arizona Democratic Party.
Yet no one was blindsided or misled by Sinema's vote, which was consistent with the position she has articulated since entering the Senate three years ago. "Whether I'm in the majority or the minority, I would always vote to reinstate the protections for the minority," she said in 2019. "It is the right thing for the country."
In other words, Democrats and progressives are furious not because Sinema shamelessly flip-flopped or put her career ahead of her convictions, but because she wouldn't do so. In the teeth of cruel mockery, open harassment, and the loss of financial and political support, Sinema declined to betray her principles. John F. Kennedy had a term for senators like her. He called them "profiles in courage."
https://jeffjacoby.com/25968/there-a-term-for-senators-like-kyrsten-sinema
*********************************************Time for Mayor Eric Adams to “Put Up or Shut Up” on New York City's Crime Wave
There are people who would refuse a visit to the “Big Apple”, even if they won a free all-expenses-paid trip. However, to millions of New York City residents, our country’s largest metropolis is the “apple of their eye”.
Big cities are like that. Their appeal is often in the eye-of-beholder. Nevertheless, no matter if you live in a massive metropolis, or a sleepy little rural community, you aspire to live in a safe and secure environment.
For decades, New York City, and to be fair, dozens of other liberal-run U.S. cities, has been anything but. During the last two years, crime in the Big Apple has skyrocketed. The insane “defund the police” movement and liberal policies by former mayor Bill de Blasio's are to blame.
When you handcuff your law enforcement officers and refuse to crack down on criminals, this is the logical result. However, like most liberal-run states and cities, logic seems to elude these people. Their logic is fewer police officers will make the bad guys repent their evil ways.
Common sense points to the exact opposite. Bill de Blasio is no longer the Mayor of New York City. Many are thankful “Comrade Bill” and his fanatically liberal policies are gone. However, New York City is still “solid blue” when it comes to its political colors.
Despite suffering through de Blasio's abysmal liberal policies, especially those on crime, New Yorkers still seem bent on electing a Democrat to run their city. Eric Adams is the latest Democrat to basically run away with the election.
Adams buried his Republican, Curtis Sliwa, by nearly 40 percentage points. The 2021 New York City Mayoral Election met the definitive definition of a landslide. In sports jargon, it would be deemed a blowout.
Adams won in no small part because he is a Democrat in a heavily liberal city. However, the newly elected mayor of the Big Apple ran on a bunch of promises as well. Eric Adams ran on his strong ties to law enforcement.
In a city befallen by skyrocketing crime, being a retired police captain was a huge plus on Adams’ resume. Having political experience as a former NY State Senator, Adams seemed to possess all the tools to lead the country’s biggest city.
Likewise, Adams has developed the “art of the good political speech”. He seemed to know how to push all the right buttons with New York City voters. In one of the most crime ridden cities in the nation, Adams mentioned all the right talking points when addressing the crisis.
But now that he’s swept his way into office, some are insisting it’s time to “put up or shut up”. As New York City mourns yet another slain police officer, New Yorker’s say it’s time to stop talking about crime and do something about it.
With the freshness of the slaying of NYPD Officer Jason Rivera fresh in everyone’s mind, Adams has vowed to “roll out a real plan”. Nevertheless, this proclamation, however wonderful it sounds, still doesn’t offer a single strategy for ending a wave of violence in the city.
These “proclamations” of “I have a plan” have a nice ring to them on social media, but they’re little more than idle fodder. What bothers people the most is, despite all the talk, Adams hasn’t mentioned a single strategy.
Radical liberal policies within the city and across the state of New York have fueled the crisis. Albany, New York, is where the pitiful bail reform legislation was approved. In addition, New York City’s streets are full of neglected people.
Inside this wave of mental illness and depravity is a criminal element that the system keeps replenishing. An alarming number of New York law enforcement officers have either quit or retired in disgust. Bill de Blasio even shut down some critical NYPD departments.
New York City has a worsening public homelessness crisis. In addition, they approved laws that drop dangerous criminals back on the street within hours of arrest. Incorporate a reduced number of police, no one should be surprised.
The city has turned into a real-life version of the fictional “Gotham City”. However, there is no “Batman” ready to fly in and save them. New Yorkers are counting on newly elected major Eric Adams to do that. Understandably, it’s his job.
Eric Adams is also a politician whose secondary job is to talk a lot. He’s obviously got that aspect of being mayor down. Nevertheless, it’s time to put up or shut up. But in a city as dysfunctional as the Big Apple, no one should be holding their breath.
In a city where liberal Democrats have a stranglehold on political offices, the prospects are bleak. Adams, despite all his noble rhetoric, must contend with a radically liberal state capitol. The New York City District Attorney has already gutted prosecutorial powers.
In light of the recent police officer death, Albany legislators are screaming the famous old fallback “gun control”. They ignore the fact the gun used to kill Rivera was stolen. Eric Adams may really want to curb violence in his city.
However, he better not expect much help from his radical liberal cronies. Maybe it’s time to cast an ominous winged shadow across the New York City skyline. Perhaps it’s time for Gotham to summon a “real Batman”.
***********************************************
Trinity of Terror – Mainstream Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats
While people are galvanized at the mention of Donald Trump, one thing he accomplished was to lay bare the dangerous alliance of the mainstream media, Big Tech, and the Democratic Party. This covert relationship was always there, we all suspected it, but it took a lightning rod like Trump for them to show their true colors. These entities together no longer do they attempt to hide their contempt of conservatives. It is open season, and they are using all of the tools at their disposal in this battle for the soul of America.
They use their influence to shape thinking. This is done through withholding information from the citizens, or simply proclaiming any uncomfortable information as a conspiracy theory or ‘disproved.’ Phrases like ‘proven false narrative,’ are tossed about freely. When that doesn’t work, they simply lie, or reshape the truth to fit their narrative. There is little effort given to presenting information in a balanced manner.
We saw it with the claims that Russia influenced the election – all disproven, but the years’ long smear campaign that was unleashed had done its job, creating the impression in many people that it was a truth. For four years the media claimed that Trump was using his office to generate profit, but not a bit of credible evidence to that claim has ever surfaced. Did Big Tech label these as a proven false narrative? No. Unlike previous President’s, it became open season on Trump’s children and wife.
Let’s not forget Hunter Biden. How could we? he’s the smartest guy Joe Biden knows. When it was clear that the information about his finances and the Big Guy’s links to them would hamstring the Biden campaign, Big Tech simply removed it and the mainstream media refused to cover it. Rather than let the electorate form their own opinions, they simply made the story go away. It is a case of guilt by omission.
take our poll - story continues below
Did SCOTUS make the right decision on medical mandates for large businesses?
The events of January 6 are regularly called an ‘insurrection’ by the media, but no one has been charged with insurrection. There was no possible way that any actions that could have been taken that dark day would have allowed the President to remain in power. Yet we are constantly water-boarded with an out of control protest being called something that has yet to be proven in court. Just because they use that word, doesn’t necessarily make it so.
According to all three elements in this unholy alliance, the 2020 election was pristine – not a single instance of corruption. This would be a first for Presidential elections since the election of George Washington, yet we were told that Biden’s election could not be questioned. Look at how Twitter dealt with it…anyone that posted that they had doubt of the election were labeled a ‘QAnon conspiracy supporter’ and had their accounts removed. Five years ago, this kind of Stalinesque purge would have garnered outcries of censorship with demands for action. Instead, while tens of thousands of conservative voices were silenced, while the Democratic Party gloated. The media barely covered this mass censorship of opposing viewpoints, further establishing their culpability in this alliance.
Remember the news media saying that Trump ordered Lafayette Park cleared for a photo op? That was proven to be an outright lie, but who ever apologized for it, or was held responsible? No one. In the real world, if you made a highly publicized mistake, you would lose your job. There are no repercussions for the media running with outright lies, or for Big Tech censoring views that they don’t agree with. When they are caught, no one loses their jobs or is publically held accountable. At most, a tiny retraction is run, often months after they have inflicted their damage, and even then, it is buried.
It has gone so far now that there are cries to have conservative media channels blocked from cable or satellite TV. The reason is simple – there can only be one voice in the American electorate – that of the progressive left. All other voices are silenced.
Liberals like to gloss over their relationship with the media and Big Tech. That is because it works to their advantage. If this kind of orchestrated online terror campaign was waged against them, they would be the first calling for regulations and controls.
This trinity of terror is a direct threat to our democracy. It makes fair elections all but impossible because only one narrow and dark perspective is offered to the American people. There is no one held accountable for unilaterally censoring differing opinions that don’t fit the desired left-wing narrative.
https://flagandcross.com/trinity-of-terror-mainstream-media-big-tech-and-the-democrats/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
January 27, 2022
Biden poised to name first black woman to Supreme Court
Ha! He has to get his nominee past Manchin and Sinema and both could say no to anyone extreme. It will be a difficult pick for him
The US Supreme Court is set to get its first black woman, with the retirement of liberal justice Stephen Breyer paving the way for Joe Biden to make the historic nomination ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
One year into his first term, the groundbreaking pick may be exactly what the US President needs to reinvigorate his Democrat base after months of policy setbacks.
While Breyer’s retirement won’t alter the balance of power on the bench - conservatives will still make up six out of the nine sitting judges - it will give Biden his first chance to shape America’s top judicial body as it oversees issues such as abortion, immigration and gun rights.
What’s more, appointing an African American woman to the nation’s highest court would deliver on a key election commitment, galvanising Democrats and activists to turn up and vote in critical battlegrounds come November.
There’s no shortage of younger, highly qualified, and potentially more progressive candidates who could be nominated to replace Breyer, an 83-year-old centrist who has served on the bench for 27 years.
The frontrunner is 51-year-old DC Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Biden elevated last year from the Federal District Court to the US Court of Appeals.
Also in the mix are many other accomplished black women, including former Obama administration official Leondra Kruger, who is now an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California; J Michelle Childs, who has been a district judge in South Carolina for the past decade; and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill, who served as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defence and Educational Fund.
*******************************************
Ric Grenell Reveals Who Is Acting As ‘Shadow President’ for ‘Weak’ Biden
I will be the first to admit that I had hoped that justice would be done and those who spied on Trump and his campaign would be held accountable and trust would be restored in our federal ‘law enforcement’ agencies.
Well, that didn’t work out, now did it?
Instead of those people engaged in the coup being held accountable, they are not RUNNING THE White House & OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. To say ‘this is not good’ is the understatement of the century.
Newsmax reported:
‘Ric Grenell, who served as acting director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration, is blasting Susan Rice and says she is acting as a “shadow president.”
His comments came during an interview on CPAC Now. An excerptof the interview was posted on Twitter by the Conservative Political Action conference.
“Susan Rice has been appointed as domestic policy adviser,” he said. “ That’s a joke. She doesn’t know anything about domestic policy.
“So, she’s a foreign policy expert that’s been placed in the domestic policy role. And that is just a clear signal that all of our international issues, our foreign policies, are going to be treated like domestic policy.
“This is a problem for the Democratic Party. The foreign policy mess that they are creating is a mess because they are placating the far-left domestically. It’s part of that cancel culture.+
Rice and Biden Via Politico
“They’re beating up on Israel because it pleases the far-left. They are trying to reach out to Iran and pretend like the Iranian regime should be respected because it pleases the far progressive left. This is the upsidedown world of the Biden administration. President (Joe) Biden is too weak to stop the progressive left from taking over the domestic and foreign policy. (Vice President) Kamala (Harris) does not understand what’s going on…
“And Susan Rice is really happy that Biden is so weak. We have a shadow president in Susan Rice and no one is paying attention.”
Rice is the former national security adviser for President Barack Obama. At one point she had emerged as a serious contender for consideration for Biden’s running mate in 2020.
Rice has faced criticism over her role in the failed Benghazi response that left four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador, dead.
She was also implicated in the unmasking of Americans in intelligence reports during the presidential transition. Some of those Americans turned out to be Donald Trump associates. Rice has denied any wrongdoing.’
They said they were going to ‘fundamentally change’ the United State of America … they weren’t kidding.
https://uafreport.com/mark/ric-grenell-reveals-who-is-acting-as-shadow-president-for-weak-biden/
*************************************************How woke whites hurt black communities
In August 2020, a business professor from the University of Southern California gave a Zoom lecture in which he counselled his students against the overuse of filler words such as “um” or “you know”. The professor was teaching American and international Chinese students management communication skills, so he explained that in Mandarin, “the common (filler) word is ‘that, that that … In China, it might be na-ge, na-ge, na-ge.”
Anonymous black students accused the academic of racism and harming their mental health by using a Chinese word that sounded like the n-word. They called for him to be sacked.
Astoundingly, the professor was suspended while the university launched an investigation into his past student evaluations, checking for signs of cultural or racial insensitivity. None were found and he eventually resumed his job – though not the communications course he had been delivering for years. Meanwhile, news of the American students’ complaint reached China, where social media commenters said that punishing an academic for using a common Chinese word amounted to discrimination against Mandarin speakers.
American academic and author John McWhorter refers to this incident in his latest book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. As its provocative title suggests, McWhorter’s book is a scorching denunciation of the politically correct excesses that masquerade as anti-racism across many university campuses and public and private institutions in the 21st century.
He's a white man with a brown skin, by the look of him
He clearly supports that unfairly targeted USC professor. He quips that a black student who feels a Mandarin word that “sounds kind of like the N-word deprives him of his ‘peace and mental well-being’ urgently needs psychiatric counselling”.
McWhorter – who is African-American – does not merely expose the perverted logic and evangelical fervour of woke ideology; he also argues that white activists are endorsing reforms – such as moves to “defund the police” in high-crime African-American neighbourhoods – that can only harm those communities.
“The ideology in question,’’ he writes, “is one under which white people calling themselves our saviours make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species and teach black people to revel in that status.’’
This quote gives you some idea of McWhorter’s take-no-prisoners rhetorical style.
As a black intellectual, he expects to be dismissed as “traitorous” and “self-hating” by a “certain crowd” for writing his scathing polemic. But he reasons that white and black readers who have bought into “unempirical virtue signalling about race” will be more likely to accept a critique of the new ideology if it’s written by an African-American. “I consider it nothing less than my duty as a black person to write this book,” he says.
In Woke Racism, he argues that a well-meaning but insidious form of anti-racism has hardened into a dogmatic religion that sees white privilege as the “original sin”, and weaponises cancel culture to end careers and undermine reputations. This religion, often policed by smug activists whom he calls the “Elect”, has anointed particular writers and thinkers – whose views are treated as sacrosanct – as their clergy.
Those authors include Robin DiAngelo – the white woman who penned the runaway bestseller White Fragility – and black writer Ibram Kendi, who has said it is impossible to be “not racist”. McWhorter argues DiAngelo’s book engages in “Orwellian poppycock” and he dismisses its central argument about white people being too “fragile” to admit their racial privilege: “ ‘You’re a racist, and if you say you aren’t it just proves that you are’– is the logic of the sandbox.”
He does not deny the existence of white privilege “in terms of one’s sense of belonging”. After all, whites are the default category in western societies and see themselves reflected in authority figures. Nonetheless, he accuses the Elect of pushing “a catalogue of contradictions” and imposing an “ideological reign of terror” under which white people are meant to feel permanently tainted by their privilege, even if they are poor, while black people are meant to believe that “the essence of your life is oppression”.
He calls the new religion Third Wave Anti-Racism. While first wave anti-racism activists fought slavery and segregation, and second-wavers battled racist attitudes in the 1970s and 80s, third wave reformers insist that “racism is baked into the structure of society, white ‘complicity’ in living with it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them’’.
McWhorter is no card-carrying conservative. He is a respected linguist who teaches at Columbia University and has published more than 20 books including The Power of Babel – an account of how different languages evolved – and Losing the Race, in which he argued that racism’s most poisonous legacy was the defeatism that had infected black America.
He is that rarest of intellectuals – a bravely outspoken academic who cannot be easily classified as left or right-leaning. He is not against the “basic premise” of Black Lives Matter, sensible police reform or the left per se. “What happened to George Floyd was revolting,” he writes. Rather, he is “arguing against a particular strain of the left that has come to exert a grievous amount of influence over American institutions, to the point that we are beginning to accept as normal the kinds of language, policies and actions that Orwell wrote of as fiction”.
Take The New York Times food writer who was suspended in 2020 for “passingly” criticising world-famous Asian celebrities Chrissy Teigen and Marie Kondo. The Anglo food writer was accused of “punching down” on non-white women. Yet as McWhorter points out, Kondo and Teigen have far more power and influence than the humble hack who was temporarily exiled from her workplace.
The new anti-racism, argues McWhorter, reaches well beyond those individuals whose careers are damaged by saying something the gatekeepers object to. He says it is costing “innocent people their jobs. It is colouring academic inquiry … and sometimes strangling it like kudzu.” In the US, the ideology has infiltrated school-parent meetings, American school and university curriculums and progressive media outlets such as National Public Radio.
The new-wave ideologues do not “genuinely care about the welfare of black people”, he argues, as they insist, for example, that Americans should turn a blind eye to “black kids getting jumped by other ones in school”. Here, he documents how, over the past decade, US teachers have been accused of racial bias because black male public school students from impoverished backgrounds were over-represented in suspension and expulsion statistics.
After the suspensions were labelled racist, under-reporting of violent incidents in schools grew. This led to higher tolerance of classroom disruption and compromised learning in public schools often dominated by non-white students. McWhorter concludes: “The Elect(’s) … religious commitment numbs them to the harm their view does to real children living their lives in the real world.’’
Meanwhile, he claims an ideology that characterises objectivity, command of the written word and punctuality as “white things” is being “foisted on” school districts across America. This is an unsettling development that deserves more attention than McWhorter gives it. It has parallels with how, in some remote Australian Aboriginal communities, western education has at times, been painted as a threat to traditional Indigenous culture, rather than as a tool of empowerment.
McWhorter is a contributor to The New York Times. Even so, he calls out the double standards inherent in the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize to black NYT journalist-turned-academic Nikole Hannah-Jones, despite her widely-attacked claim in the 1619 project that one of the “primary reasons” for the American War of Independence was the preservation of slavery.
He argues, as have prominent historians, that Hannah-Jones’s claim is “quite simply false” (It was later modified by the NYT). Nonetheless, says McWhorter, “our current cultural etiquette” requires that it be “broadcast” in educational materials. Among white woke folk, such reluctance to point out Hannah-Jones’s contentious interpretation of historical documents may “feel like a kind of courtesy, but it is actually patronisation”, he writes.
Interestingly, McWhorter is not the only writer of colour to have resonated strongly with readers by criticising woke posturing, double standards and hypocrisy. Woke Racism made The New York Times bestseller list when it was published late last year and an earlier 2021 release, Woke Inc by American-Indian entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, also surged to the top of the sales charts. Ramaswamy’s book offers an insider’s account of corporate America’s woke “scam”, including aggressively-marketed social justice measures which camouflage business practices that undermine human rights and employees’ rights.
Importantly, Woke Racism is not just a blistering takedown of the Elect’s soft bigotry. McWhorter also proposes practical solutions to entrenched African-American disadvantage, including ending the war on drugs that sees many black men jailed, thus rendering them permanently unemployable and leaving their children without father figures.
He also recommends teaching phonics rather than the whole-word method, as the former is more effective at turning children from impoverished homes into accomplished readers. Thirdly, he wants vocational training for African-Americans to be “as easy to obtain as a college education”. For many poor Americans, black and white, “attending four years of college is a tough, expensive and even unappealing proposition”, yet the debate about educational advancement often focuses solely on university admissions.
While McWhorter asserts that racism remains a real problem, he also contends that “most Americans’ racial attitudes have progressed massively beyond what they were a few decades ago”. Woke activists deny or “talk around” this reality. This should not surprise us, because as McWhorter points out in his courageous, illuminating and beautifully-written book, “with progress, the Elect lose their sense of purpose”.
***************************************************
The Church of England's diversity mission has gone too far
Now embracing racism
Is the Church of England on a mission? It should be, of course. But it appears to have confused its purpose of preaching the gospel with seeking to make itself more representative. From now on, at least ten members of the House of Bishops, part of the General Synod, must be from an ethnic minority. This will help create a ‘church that truly embraces people of global majority heritage at every level of its life,’ says the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell.
But it’s hard to reconcile Cottrell’s words with those of Paul to the Galatians:
‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’
For the Christian, skin colour should make no difference in spiritual terms. The enlightened Anglican hierarchy of the 19th century certainly understood this. In 1864, the church braved controversy and appointed its first black bishop, Samuel Crowther. An ex-slave freed in 1822 by the Royal Navy’s West Africa squadron, Crowther was jointly presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration by a colonial prelate and the bishop of Winchester.
While his appointment was historic, it owed nothing to his skin colour. Yet, to borrow the words of Martin Luther King, the House of Bishops’ new scheme risks judging people on the colour of their skin, not on the contents of their heart. There is no doubt the initiative is entirely well-meaning. It will, it is said, make church leadership more representative. But it is still worryingly wrong-headed, and needs to be fought hard.
A church, which very creditably opposed apartheid in South Africa – and many of whose members called out overt racism here in the 1950s and 1960s – is making a serious mistake in setting up what is essentially an official non-white constituency within the Anglican communion.
To make matters worse – and while this was surely not the aim of those who dreamed up this plan – it seems to carry an implicit suggestion that non-white Anglicans are not just as capable of arguing about theology and church government as others and need special help to get their view across. Both these developments should have any decent worshipper, white or non-white, up in arms.
In a church’s governing body, by all means it is right to ask that all shades of spirituality or theology – liberal and conservative, high church and evangelical, and so on – be able to have their voice heard and be represented. But whatever the position with secular governments, it is not the function of a church to be representative of – or promote the interests of – other secular social groups, whether denominated by politics, social class, or race.
Ironically at a time in the liturgical year traditionally associated with prayers for church unity, we have here a suggestion that the church as an institution should become explicitly race-conscious. It’s as if one’s spirituality somehow varies according to a person’s ethnicity or tribal origin. But this is exactly the kind of thought that Christianity has always opposed.
A great deal of religion two thousand years ago was indeed depressingly particular; it was perfectly normal for your acceptability as a worshipper to depend on your ethnicity, position or allegiance. Christianity was as radical as it was – and as attractive – precisely because it turned this view on its head; it openly defied orthodoxy by drawing no distinction at all between those whom it sought to proselytise.
Whatever an average worshipper in a socially-distanced pew may think, these days the talk in General Synod, and on bishops’ benches, is not so much about making the world conform to God’s law as ensuring God’s law as interpreted by the church fits in as neatly as possible with secular trends. Activism aimed at social justice, anti-racism, human sexuality, or whatever, now largely trumps matters of the spirit.
About 60 years ago Michael Wharton, writing the Peter Simple column in the Daily Telegraph, saw a development of this kind coming. You may remember his caricature Dr Spacely-Trellis, the go-ahead Bishop of Bevindon, who habitually referred to Jesus’s disciples as his staff of trained social workers.
The antics of the House of Bishops in calling for things to be seen through the prism of race are not what we should expect from any religious body. But they are exactly what you would expect of a coven of social workers in the Stretchford conurbation. What was a joke in the 1960s is, to the church’s discomfiture, now depressingly real.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/the-church-of-englands-diversity-mission-has-gone-too-far
********************************************Psaki Attacks DeSantis as ‘Crazy’ After FDA Halts Monoclonal Antibodies
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki framed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s objection to the Food and Drug Administration pulling the Emergency Use Authorizations for monoclonal antibodies treatments as “crazy” on Tuesday.
“The FDA yesterday withdrew the EUA for some monoclonal antibody treatments because they don’t work against Omicron,” a reporter asked. “But Florida continues to push for the treatment for people in the state. What’s your response to Governor DeSantis and what’s your message to the people in Florida?”
This was Psaki’s response. Watch:
“Well, let’s just take a step back here just to realize how crazy this is a little bit,” she said. We’ve approached Covid treatments like filling a medicine cabinet. We’re not relying on one type, one brand, or treatment, we invested in and continue to buy a variety across monoclonal antibodies, pre-exposure prevention therapies, and oral antivirals.”
“We have provided 71,000 doses of antivirals to Florida, including 34,000 additional treatments that do work against Omicron just this last week. I’m sorry about a range of those treatments, I should say to be clear.”
“What the FDA is making clear is that these treatments, the ones that they are fighting over, that the governor is fighting over, do not work against Omicron, and they have side effects,” she said with a straight face. “That is what the scientists are saying. We have sent them 71,000 doses of treatments that are effective against Omicron, and are effective also against Delta. And they are still advocating for treatments that don’t work.”
“We’ve seen unfortunately from the beginning in our pandemic response, a range of steps or pushes that have been made through social media platforms, unfortunately from the mouths of elected officials advocating for things that don’t work, even when we have things that do work, injecting disinfectant, promoting other pseudoscience, sowing doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters, and now promoting treatments that don’t work,” she went on. “We know it works, vaccines and boosters, we have a range of doses of things that do work and treatments and we are providing those to Florida.”
Psaki is therefore casting people who tout the efficacy of many early treatments as crackpots and crazies, comparing their usage to a belief in ‘pseudoscience’ and dredging up the misleading talking point about ‘injecting disinfectants,’ a slight on Donald Trump that has been taken out context.
The controversy exploded late Monday when the FDA has pulled the EUAs, causing thousands of monoclonal antibody (mAb) treatment appointments to be suddenly canceled. There was strong evidence that the mAbs were helping Covid survival rates under the Delta wave, but even Regeneron stated in December that the effectiveness of the treatments had waned — similar to how the vaccine and booster efficacy has waned.
“We’ve seen unfortunately from the beginning in our pandemic response, a range of steps or pushes that have been made through social media platforms, unfortunately from the mouths of elected officials advocating for things that don’t work, even when we have things that do work, injecting disinfectant, promoting other pseudoscience, sowing doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters, and now promoting treatments that don’t work,” she rambled on.
“We know it works, vaccines and boosters, we have a range of doses of things that do work and treatments and we are providing those to Florida,” she added.
The Florida Department of Health had made an announcement on Monday about the FDA’s “abrupt decision” to pull the EUAs for bamlanivimab/etesevimab as well as Regeneron.
“This evening, without any advanced notice, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for bamlanivimad/etesevimab and REGEN-COV,” Florida Health announced. “The revised EUAs do not allow providers to administer these treatments within the United States.”
The Florida Health Department informed patients that their appointments for the Covid-19 treatment have been canceled. DeSantis had set up infusion sites in five counties: Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval, and Seminole.
“Florida disagrees with the decision that blocks access to any available treatments in the absence of clinical evidence,” the announcement continued. “To date, such clinical evidence has not been provided by the FDA,” it added.
Gov. Ron DeSantis demanded the Biden administration reverse “its sudden and reckless decision” in a statement.
“Without a shred of clinical data to support this action, Biden has forced trained medical professionals to choose between treating their patients or breaking the law,” DeSantis said. “This indefensible edict takes treatment out of the hands of medical professionals and will cost some Americans their lives. There are real-world implications to Biden’s medical authoritarianism – Americans’ access to treatments is now subject to the whims of a failing president.”
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
January 26, 2022
What the Senate Filibuster Assault Means
Washington wisdom once held that while Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were the public faces of Democratic reluctance to breaking the Senate filibuster, others in the caucus quietly supported the duo. But on Wednesday night, 48 out of 50 Senate Democrats voted to use the “nuclear option” in an attempt to overturn election laws in most states.
That means the partisan abolition of the Senate’s 60-vote requirement for most legislation is no longer an abstraction. It’s an institutional Democratic Party position—a trigger that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has committed to pull as soon as he has 50 votes and a co-partisan as Vice President. Democrats may have failed to ram their legislation through this week, but they have changed the nature of the U.S. Senate merely by trying to make it a majoritarian body for the first time. The fallout should start in this year’s midterms in competitive states.
***
Mr. Schumer brought partisan voting-rules legislation to the floor Wednesday despite the insistence of Sens. Sinema and Manchin that they wouldn’t change Senate rules to allow it to pass with only 50 votes. Democrats then embarked on a flight of procedural fantasy, claiming they could prevail by demanding only a “talking filibuster”—a meaningless distinction as their version would still guarantee the legislation could be rammed through.
They lost 48 to 52, but the paucity of Democratic dissenters is astonishing given recent Senate history. Dianne Feinstein, the senior Senator from California, went along after defending the filibuster well into the new Congress. She said last June that she might scrap the filibuster if “democracy were in jeopardy,” but “I don’t see it being in jeopardy right now.”
Newsletter Sign-up
Opinion: Morning Editorial Report
Chris Coons, the Delaware Senator who cultivates a bipartisan reputation, also voted to destroy the filibuster. In 2017 he led a coalition of 32 Democrats declaring they are “united in their determination” to maintain it. Twenty-nine GOP Senators also signed Mr. Coons’s letter. That’s right: While only two Democrats still back the filibuster under Mr. Biden, more than half of the Republican caucus supported it as a guardrail on their own majority under Donald Trump.
Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, who had been noncommittal on the issue, also fell in line, though he faces a competitive election this November. He likely fears a Democratic primary challenge, but his vote will put new issues at play in the general election. Now that he’s committed to torch Senate rules on a partisan basis, a simple Democratic majority could add states to the U.S. or pack the Supreme Court.
When rules constrain Senate partisanship, voters in swing states can view candidates as independent figures rather than partisan foot-soldiers. Now that changes: To elect even a 50-50 Senate with a Democratic President could be to authorize much of the progressive agenda.
This will be a hard perception to shake on the 2022 campaign trail for Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire and Michael Bennet in Colorado, both of whom also signed Mr. Coons’s 2017 letter, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. Raphael Warnock of Georgia benefited in his 2021 runoff election from Mr. Manchin’s 2020 promise that he wouldn’t eliminate the filibuster in a 50-50 Senate. Now voters need to keep in mind that Mr. Manchin’s commitment means nothing if Democrats pick up two seats in 2022.
As for Republicans, the next GOP Senate majority will now be under much more pressure to eliminate the filibuster as a pre-emptive procedural strike. Populist Senators will point to this week’s vote to say that Democrats are planning to change the rules as soon as they get back into power. GOP leader Mitch McConnell and other institutionalists will have more trouble talking them down.
The intellectuals pushing to kill the filibuster claim the Senate’s structure is biased against Democrats, and may lock them out of power for a decade. That claim is wildly exaggerated—weren’t Democrats eyeing a 53 or 54 seat majority in 2020? But if it were true, then it would be even more short-sighted to dismantle protections for the minority party.
***
Speaking of short-sighted, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are already opening the door to primary challenges to Sens. Manchin and Sinema. Good luck keeping the seat with another candidate in West Virginia, where Mr. Trump won by 39 points. Progressives want to take revenge on a moderate Democrat by easing the path to GOP Senate majorities.
This week’s filibuster vote undermines checks and balances in the U.S. political system. With the rise of straight-ticket voting, Presidents are increasingly elected with congressional majorities. The limitations on what those majorities can do is rapidly attenuating, and if voters don’t send a contrary message, the result will be a combustible mix of greater polarization, partisan brinkmanship and heightened election stakes.
********************************************
Industrialist Sir Richard Arkwright condemned for profiting from the slave trade, says English Heritage
Not remotely a balanced perspective
The legacy of Sir Richard Arkwright, the British inventor credited with pioneering factory production in the 18th century, has been reassessed due to his profiting from the cotton trade during the Industrial Revolution.
English Heritage has included claims that the mill owner benefited from a system which “exploited enslaved workers from Africa”, in updated online information for his blue plaque.
The update, made as part of a review of blue plaques launched in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, has drawn criticism from historians concerned that history is being viewed only through the lens of the slave trade, and that ordinary workers could also be found guilty by association with a cotton industry that was supported by slavery.
New online information stated: “Arkwright’s wealth from the cotton industry was inextricably linked to the transatlantic slave trade which reached its peak in the 18th century. The system exploited enslaved workers from Africa to work under horrifying conditions in the cotton plantations in the Americas.
“It is inevitable that any mill working in Britain at this time would have sourced the majority of their cotton from the slave plantations. As such, mill owners such as Arkwright both contributed to and benefitted [sic] from, the slave trade.”
In the 1770s, Sir Richard developed a “carding” machine which sped up the process prior to spinning, along with spinning frames speeding up the process of turning cotton fibre into workable yarn.
He used these machines in a string of mills, including a major complex in Cromford, Derbyshire, where his creation of a disciplined working day of 13-hour shifts, involving mechanised manufacturing, led to him being nicknamed the “Father of the Factory System”.
However, the factory system was criticised at the time, especially for making use of child labour, which made up a large proportion of Sir Richard’s workforce, and for subjecting workers to dangerous and inhumane conditions.
Concerns have been raised that English Heritage’s update on Sir Richard, which ties him to the slave trade, could also attach to guilt to factory workers who indirectly benefited from the cotton trade by working in his mills.
Prof Robert Tombs, a historian at the University of Cambridge, said: “Richard Arkwright, a working-class man who invented a machine for spinning cotton, is apparently being blamed for slavery, because most cotton was grown by slaves. So presumably workers in cotton mills, their dependents, and all their customers are also responsible.
“By this logic, everybody was to blame – which is perhaps the best conclusion, as slavery and other forms of coerced labour were part of the world economy for millennia, and created much of what we now consider ‘world heritage’.”
Prof Neil Biggar, a theology expert at the University of Oxford, has criticised the viewing of Sir Richard’s legacy purely through the lens of slavery, calling it a “politically biased, monomaniacal focus”.
Dr Zareer Masani, a historian on British colonialism, said: “Reducing all history to that of slavery and then tracing links to it, however tenuous, of most people of influence, especially in the 18th century, has become a popular pastime with our new arbiters of taste since Black Lives Matter.”
He added that this analysis misses the “ills of factory labour far closer to home”.
*********************************************
Who is Labour's hero? A nurse who stopped a man seeing his dying wife
For once there is an actual difference between Labour and the Tories. And in one official tweet by the Labour Party, you can see what it is.
The tweet was issued by the Labour Party on January 13 and has attracted remarkably little attention.
In truth, it should have led every bulletin and been on every front page, for it takes you directly into the mind of Sir Keir Starmer and all the other lockdown fanatics, in a way never previously possible.
It approvingly quotes a nurse, whose name is given as ‘Jenny, NHS nurse’. She says: ‘I remember May 20, 2020 vividly. I spent hours on the phone to a man who was in the hospital car park, utterly desperate to see his wife.
‘He begged, wept, shouted to be let in but we said no – for the greater good of everyone else. She died unexpectedly and alone, as the Government had a party.’
I feel sorry for ‘Jenny’, because she was deluded by fear propaganda and did not really know what she was doing. But I still think that what she did was terribly wrong.
If I had prevented a husband from seeing his dying wife ‘for the greater good of everyone else’, while the poor man begged and shouted for mercy, I might now keep quiet about it.
Even more, I might feel a deep sense of regret and shame that my self-righteous officiousness had so utterly blinded me to the simple human necessity for kindness above all.
God knows we are all capable of appalling cruelty, but it is never worse than when we think we are doing it for a good reason. This is why all Utopias end with the idealists arresting and then killing those who will not conform to the new paradise. The fanaticism of the Covid authoritarians is frantic mainly because they think that what they are doing is unquestionably right.
You don’t want people like Jenny running the Government.
**************************************************
Woke cancel culture crazies demanding candy must now be 'all-inclusive'
Just when you thought the insanity of cancel culture couldn’t get any crazier, it just did. We’ve watched decades-old pancake syrup symbols get canceled. Beloved children’s book characters have been canceled. Iconic butter logos have evaporated. Sports’ teams are left mascot-less.
We need to appreciate that cancel culture targets people, places and even things. Nothing is outside its crosshairs. The reasons for getting canceled usually revolve around some heinous behavior. Sure, some people do bad things and earn well-deserved condemnation for such.
However, many of the targets of this “wave of crazy calls for societal cancellation” are inanimate objects. Statues are a huge focal point of the “wacko wokies”. If anything offends these sensitive souls, it needs to be erased. There’s no debate. There’s no discussion. It must go.
Cartoons, especially, have been under a weary assault from the cancel culture mob. An iconic Warner Brothers skunk, Pepé Le Pew, was canceled for seemingly being a little too provocative with a lady cat. When we first heard this one, we thought it was a bad joke. It wasn’t.
The cancel culture police skunked a cartoon skunk. Charles Blow, a radical New York Times rag contributor, instigated the whole Pepé the Pew scandal. Somehow, we’re not surprised. Books have been canceled. If a t-shirt slogan offends some wokie, expect it to be up for cancellation.
It’s like a modern-day lynching. However, don’t tell the woke mob that. Actor Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr. Bean, said it pretty succinctly. He sees cancel culture as “a medieval mob looking for someone to burn.” No one is exempt from this radical legion of doom.
It doesn’t matter how long ago someone did something or said something wrong. If you made an irredeemably insensitive comment as a teenager, expect to feel the wrath of the cancel culture police. Again, it’s a mob looking for victims; often innocent victims.
The cancel culture police incessantly attack politicians, conservatives, of course. President Donald Trump has been the most prominent. Two social media companies slammed shut the former president’s ability to communicate on social media. It’s a disgrace.
Even though a chunk of the things targeted by cancel culture seem senseless, we’d think candy would avoid prosecution. Nope, cancel culture and the wokists’ all-inclusive agenda just hit one of America’s favorite little chunks of chocolate, some with peanuts.
M&M’s are either racist or homophobic; we’re uncertain which. Or at least that’s the opinion of the cancel culture police. So, the problem needs to be corrected by making these little bite-sized delights “all-inclusive”. Yep, we’re not kidding.
Mars Wrigley owns the M&M Candy franchise. The obviously “woke company” issued a heartfelt statement about their beloved little candy guys and gals. They announced “a global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong and society is inclusive.”
Sure, we’re all for things that make society better. Everybody deserves to feel like they belong. That should be a noble goal for every human being. But how in the world can candy be all-inclusive? Well, we’re about to expose you to some of the craziest cancel culture notions yet.
You see, the little green ones in your M&M bag, their “peachy legs” and “stiletto boots” are somehow potentially offensive. No kidding, that’s one of the company’s all-inclusive changes. Some M&M eater, in their infinite wisdom, felt the “green guys” were too sexualized.
We’re sorry, but if someone can generate sexualized thoughts about a green, bite-sized piece of candy, there’s a specially padded room necessary. Now, the brown M&M’s didn’t avoid scrutiny either. They must have the heels on their little boots lowered to “professional height”.
We’ll give you a chance to catch your breath if you’re laughing as hard as we did. Oh, and the little rivalry between the green and brown M&M’s? That’s over. Company spokespersons insist these rival candies will be “together, throwing shine and not shade”.
Now, there were some very positive changes made. Ahem. The little orange M&M’s will finally get their sneakers tied properly. I guess that must have broadcast some sort of “slacker” connotation. And we’re certain everyone is left asking one critical question.
What are they going to do with those big bullies, the red M&M’s? These nefarious red instigators will now start to be nicer to their fellow candy members. Take a deep breath now. The wave of cancel culture is so far out of control, it’s impossible to keep up.
Sometimes it’s funny, but usually it’s not. Kansas City Chiefs and Atlanta Braves fans better leave their favorite headdress at home on game day. The Washington Redskins are now a mascot-less team. The Cleveland Indians bid a fond farewell to Chief Wahoo.
This is a crackdown on things that seem meaningless. If it weren’t so sad, it really would be funny. However, these clowns are totally serious. Better clean up your act, “Donald”. You’re one “Duck” who might be the next victim on these “quack’s” list to be publicly "tarred and feathered".
**************************************************
It takes 8 years to get an apology from the London police after their disgusting behaviour
Even the sergeant in charge was complicit
Dr Konstancja Duff has previously described suffering lasting trauma following her treatment by police, who arrested her on suspicion of obstructing and assaulting police on 5 May 2013 after she tried to hand a “know-your-rights” legal advice card to a 15-year-old being stopped and searched in Hackney.
While Dr Duff, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, was later cleared of the charges in court, she was taken to Stoke Newington police station, where her clothes were cut off with a pair of scissors after she refused to co-operate with officers.
CCTV footage recently released to her as part of a civil lawsuit against the force, which has now reportedly agreed to pay her compensation, “backed up what I had said in my statements for years and years”, Dr Duff said, alleging that she had faced “a barrage of misinformation” with claims that officers had been acting professionally out of concern for her safety.
In the footage, published by The Guardian, Sergeant Kurtis Howard, who was in charge of the custody area – and was cleared of wrongdoing by a disciplinary panel in 2018 – can be heard directing colleagues to show Dr Duff that “resistance is futile” and to search her “by any means necessary”.
“Treat her like a terrorist, I don’t care,” he adds.
Following the search, during which Dr Duff alleged she was pinned to the cell floor with her legs tied together and touched inappropriately, a male officer asks: “Didn’t find anything untoward on her, ladies?” One female officer replies: “A lot of hair.”
In another clip, one officer references a “smell”, and another says: “Oh, it’s her knickers.”
Dr Duff told The Guardian that the CCTV exchanges exposed “the culture of sexualised mockery, the dehumanising attitude” displayed while she was strip-searched, adding: “The crucial issue is that racism, misogyny [and] sexual violence, are normalised in policing.
“And the way in which they treated me, the fact that’s normal is shown by the way that at every level of the system it was rubber-stamped for eight years.”
In an apology, Inspector Andy O’Donnell from Scotland Yard’s directorate of professional standards, reportedly told Dr Duff: “I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely and unreservedly apologise for the sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language used about you and for any upset and distress this may have caused.
“I hope that settlement of this claim and this recognition of the impact of what happened that day will enable you to put this incident behind you.”
The Met said in a statement: “In November 2021, the Met settled a claim following the arrest of a woman in Hackney in May 2013. We have sincerely apologised to the complainant for the language used while she was in custody and any distress caused.
“Following the conclusion of the civil claim, allegations of misconduct relating to these comments were referred to our Directorate of Professional Standards and are currently being investigated. This investigation remains ongoing.”
London mayor Sadiq Khan was among those to react with dismay on Monday to the “utterly disgraceful” incident. “I strongly condemn the derogatory and sexist actions towards Dr Duff,” he tweeted. “The Met are right to have apologised for this appalling incident. Women in our city must be able to trust the police.”
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
January 25, 2022
Decision to grant Katie Hopkins a visa referred to human rights watchdog
The description "Far Right" is often carelessly used. In the case of Hopkins, it mainly seems to refer to her swingeing criticisms of Muslim immigration, Africans and fat people. While such criticiisms are politically incorrect they nonetheless seem widely shared among people, particularly in private. So her offence seems principally to be that she is a prominent person who is outspoken -- a rare thing in the entertainnmdent industry. She has taken part in many British TV programs so is well-known in Britain
Her inadvertent use of the term "final solution" is always held against her because the Nazis used it but she was clearly NOT advocating genocide. Does the fact that the Nazis once used a term make it forbidden for ever after? Hitler used the German words "Reich" and "Volk" quite centrally in his messages. Does that forever stain those words? It would seem not -- as the old East German Communist regime used those terms prominently (Reichsbahn; Volkseigenebetrieb).
A decision to grant a visa to far-right commentator Katie Hopkins is reportedly under investigation by the nation’s human right watchdog.
The Australian Human Rights Commision this week agreed to investigate the decision following a complaint from the Australian Muslim Advocacy Network, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
In its complaint, an AMAN spokerson alleged Ms Hopkins views were given more weight than the human rights of other Australians.
“It can be reasonably inferred from this statement that Ms Hopkins’ freedom of expression, and those who would agree with her in Australia, was given more weight than the human rights of Australians who would be adversely affected by vilification,” they said.
The British provocateur was last year granted a visa to appear in Seven‘s Big Brother VIP, arriving in the country while Sydney was in the midst of their second wave.
She was also granted a travel exemption to enter the country, prompting fury of many Australians stuck abroad.
But after bragging about reckless behaviour throughout her stint in hotel quarantine, Ms Hopkins’ visa was cancelled.
************************************************
Gen. Flynn Faces Loss of Honorary Doctorate as University Poised to Punish Him for Standing Against Tyranny
In 2014, the University of Rhode Island conferred an honorary degree on Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and already a URI graduate.
Flynn would retire that August and go on to become national security advisor for President Donald Trump. He was then charged with lying to the FBI in 2017 in an incident that, with each new piece of information that drops about it, looks increasingly like a frame-up designed to get information on the Russia collusion hoax.
In December 2017, he reached a plea deal on the charges, but he tried to withdraw his guilty plea due after new representation argued in May 2020 that the government had acted in “bad faith” and “vindictiveness,” as well as in “breach of the plea agreement.”
Then-Attorney General William Barr moved to dismiss the charge, telling CBS News it “undid what was an injustice” and the FBI interview that led to the charge had no legitimate basis but was instead a “perjury trap.” Flynn was subsequently given a pardon by Trump.
************************************************
Fascism: Socialism’s Smarter Brother
In recent years, American politics has been plagued with mutual assertions on both sides of the aisle that the other party is pursuing a fascist agenda. It would therefore behoove many – especially those on the far left claiming to be fascism’s diametric opponents – to gain a greater understanding of what fascism actually entails. They might find that fascism and socialism are far from mutually exclusive.
In fact, fascism and socialism are fundamentally unified around one guiding principle: societal revolution, and the subsequent totalitarian ideological control by the state.
Merriam-Webster defines fascism as “A political philosophy, movement, or regime…that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stand for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.”
Historian Emilio Gentile – one of the world’s foremost scholars of fascism – describes it as a political ideology with an “extra ingredient” that creates a “political religion.” Gentile contends that this ingredient – essentially, totalitarian control – is found in fascist and Bolshevik states alike.
Fascist principles are often co-opted by left-wing populism, the roots for which are based in a socialist vision for a society incorporating a more equitable distribution of resources. This is precisely what transpired in Hugo Chavez’s communist Venezuela. Chavez rose to power on a populist wave, bent on redistributing the massive oil wealth that had accumulated in the upper echelons of Venezuelan society. Much and more has been written of the failures of the Chavez regime, and can be explored elsewhere. But, in addition to utter economic ruin, these socialist reforms came to engender “a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human rights guarantees.”
For more clear-cut links between socialism and fascism, one can examine the most infamous historical examples of fascism’s adoption throughout inter-war Europe in the years leading up to World War II. Each of fascism’s proponents was either formerly a socialist, or espoused socialist principles to a significant degree.
In France, prominent French Socialist Party member Leon Deat led the “neo-socialist” movement that became a backbone of the Nazi-allied Vichy government.
In Belgium, Deat’s socialist counterpart and close ally Hendrik de Man adopted a similar perspective, urging “a state plan based on a mixed economy, central direction of that economy, inflationary fiscal policies, and Keynesian deficit financing – the achievement of which would be brought about by an alliance between the proletariat and the middle classes.”
The Union Socialiste Republicaine (USR) represented the combined efforts of Deat and de Man, and has been described as a “fascist movement” with “left-wing goals.”
In Britain, the British Union of Fascists (BUF) was formed by Oswald Mosley and his allies. Mosley had been a strong force within the British Labour Party, and espoused Keynesian-influenced policy goals centered around centralized economic planning. Once Mosley developed enough influence, he began thinking bigger, adding elements of state-run corporatism that originated in the Italian fascist experiment.
Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was the author of that experiment. Mussolini, himself a former revolutionary socialist, argued that only through centrally controlling all corporate activity could the ultimate objective of a totalitarian state be achieved.[1] Italy in turn became the model upon which Adolf Hitler’s fascist vision for Germany was based.
Hitler – whom French historian Francois Furet has referred to as “Lenin’s younger brother”–preached socialist ideals from the outset.
One of his early speeches contends socialism to be “the final concept of duty, the ethical duty of work, not just for oneself but also for one’s fellow man’s sake, and above all the principle: Common good before own good.”
Yet another proclaims, “We must on principle free ourselves from any class standpoint…there are no such things as classes… there can only be a single people and beyond that nothing else.”
As time transpired, this socialist movement came to be riven with corporatist influence. Elaborating in 1931 on his proposed economic plan to revitalize Germany’s floundering economy, Hitler argued “The program demands the nationalization of all public companies, in other words socialization…the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State… the Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.”
Links to socialism are not confined to Hitler’s public orations. Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda and Hitler’s closest ally, once claimed “The future belongs to the dictatorship of the socialist idea of the state.”
Early Hitler opponent and German war minister Wilhelm Groener condemned: “There is no doubt that many members of the SA and SS were in the recent period militants of communist organization. Their goal is and remains communism.”
Upon a visit to Germany during Hitler’s rise, Simone Weil detailed, “The whole German youth, in almost every social milieu is driven…by a violent feeling of hatred towards capitalism and a burning desire for a socialist regime.”
German industrial titan Alfried Krupp stated, “They want a sort of Bolshevism with jack-boots but without a brain.” Ironically, the Krupp company would shortly thereafter be suborned by the Nazi cause, and become the primary supplier of Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
The Nazi Party – officially, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – was able to achieve its level of control by unifying disparate elements of society and eliminating all dissent. Hitler institutionalized his dogmatic agenda by allying himself with Big Business – such as Krupp, I.G. Farben, Siemens, and many others – rather than destroying it.
In summation, the primary difference between socialism and fascism is that fascism is smarter. Fascism recognizes the power potential of suborning private enterprise, and nationalizing those private enterprises in service of its unadulterated socialist objectives.
Unfortunately, the cautionary tale of Nazi Germany is increasingly ignored, as history often is.
Within the United States in particular, this is a cautionary tale that is manifesting before our eyes, illustrated by the ever-increasing clamor for socialist policy initiatives to combat predatory capitalism, the monopolization of Big Tech, and the mainstream media’s naked censorship of those who diverge from their proscribed ideology.
Yet, it is the leftist alliance with Wall Street and corporate stakeholders, as evidenced by the advent of ESG scores and the institutionalization of corporate social responsibility, that provides the greatest cause for concern. It is eerily reminiscent of the corporatism inherent to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.
In the aggregate, this alliance represents nothing less than a centralization of power from all corners of society, on a scale similar to, yet greater than, that perpetrated by the Nazis 80 years ago. This overarching cohesion is working to create a totalitarian political religion, one that is bent on destroying economic freedom and individual liberty.
Italian political sociologist Luciano Pellicani convincingly concludes: “Fascism and capitalism are two antithetical realities. If the principles of the first prevail, the principles of the second – full property rights, absolute freedom to buy and sell according to the laws of the market, the logic of profit and competition, etc. – are inevitably seriously restricted, if not annihilated altogether.”
In conclusion: socialism, fascism, it makes no difference. The latter is, and has always been, simply a more sophisticated extension of the former. That sophistication is what makes fascism so much more dangerous. That sophistication is why it took the combined might of the entire free world to combat fascism in history’s most devastating war.
So, if you were interested in societal control, which of these would you pick? Which has the better track record of success?
Which seems reminiscent of what is occurring in America today?
You tell me.
https://humanevents.com/2022/01/20/fascism-socialisms-smarter-brother/
************************************************Beware, America’s Youth Is Embracing Authoritarianism
The intrinsic Fascism of Leftism is coming out
One of the more peculiar developments over the past few decades is the rather sudden transformation of America’s youth from independent-minded, anti-establishment, culture warriors into like-minded, pro-establishment, collectivist cowards.
Although the seeds of this conversion were planted years ago, they are now in full bloom.
Consider, for example, how America’s youth have reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. For more than two years, thousands of colleges and high schools have remained closed for in-person learning for extended periods of time, literally ruining the lives of untold young Americans.
Ordinarily, at least in years past, this spectacle would have produced a backlash of epic proportions. See, for instance, college students’ Vietnam draft protests in the 1960s.
However, here we are in 2022, with millions of young Americans being deprived of a proper education, with nary a peep of protest.
In fact, instead of demonstrating against the tyrannical edicts that have turned their lives upside-down, it appears as if a significant number of young Americans actually agree with creeping authoritarianism.
The COVID-19 pandemic, or more rather, the authoritarian reaction to it, seems to sit all too well with today’s youth, which is something that should concern the rest of us.
The results of a new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports and The Heartland Institute illustrate the degree to which young Americans are acceptive of authoritarianism.
For instance, 34 percent of likely voters strongly or somewhat favor “a proposal for federal or state governments to fine Americans who choose not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Given that COVID-19 is much more lethal to the elderly, one would assume that older Americans favor this proposal more than young Americans. That assumption would be incorrect; 45 percent of Americans aged 18 to 39 support this measure compared to only 27 percent aged 40 to 64, and 30 percent aged 65 and over.
The same pattern emerged when likely voters were asked if federal or state governments should require citizens remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Almost half of those who support this position were under the age of 39.
Perhaps most emblematic of the authoritarian mindset of today’s youth is their zealous acceptance of tracking the unvaccinated via a smartphone app or wearable device to ensure they are quarantined or socially distancing from others. Among the 28 percent of likely voters who somewhat or very favor this Orwellian tactic, 43 percent were aged 18 to 39. On the other hand, only 17 percent of those age 65 and over support this while 23 percent of those aged 40 to 64 are on-board.
Suffice to say, despite the fact that COVID-19 poses little to no threat to America’s youth, this cohort is by far the most willing to accept authoritarian measures to supposedly combat the virus.
Yet, as mentioned above, this should not be all that surprising. In recent years, America’s education system has rejected freedom of speech while embracing “safe spaces,” “speech codes,” and “trigger warnings.”
This has created a generation that errs on the side of groupthink and is reluctant to engage in critical thinking, let alone the search for truth.
Moreover, today’s youth have grown up in a mass surveillance, social media-centric state, in which privacy and individualism are no longer virtues, but shunned by society.
It is for these reasons, and many more, that I am genuinely concerned about the future of liberty in the United States. To their credit, the authoritarian left has worked strategically in infiltrating academia, Hollywood, and many societal institutions, indoctrinating an entire generation to be more receptive to authoritarianism.
However, this does not mean individual liberty will go the way of the dinosaurs. If there is absolutely one thing we have learned over the past two years, it is that the current education system must be reformed.
From increased interest in school choice to the proliferation of trade schools, the tide could be finally turning.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.” If this is the case, we have much work to do.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
24 January, 2022
Why So Many People Still Don’t Understand Anti-Semitism: Unlike many other bigotries, anti-Semitism is not merely a social prejudice; it is a conspiracy theory about how the world operates
Yair Rosenberg oversimplifies below. The conspiracists he describes do exist but there are many non-conspiracists who simply dislike Jews on account of behavior they claim to have have observed among Jews. It is foolish either to ignore or demonize such people. I say more on varieties of antisemitism here:
http://jonjayray.com/semitism.html
Most people do not realize that Jews make up just 2 percent of the U.S. population and 0.2 percent of the world’s population. This means simply finding them takes a lot of effort. But every year in Western countries, including America, Jews are the No. 1 target of anti-religious hate crimes. Anti-Semites are many things, but they aren’t lazy. They’re animated by one of the most durable and deadly conspiracy theories in human history.
This past Saturday in Texas, another one found his mark. According to the latest news reports, Malik Faisal Akram traversed an ocean to accomplish his task, flying from the United Kingdom to America in late December. On January 15, he took Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel hostage for more than 11 hours. When it was all over, Akram was dead and his captives were not. The hostages escaped after their rabbi engineered a distraction, drawing on security training he had received from the Anti-Defamation League and other communal organizations. Something else most people don’t realize is that many rabbis need and receive security training.
Speaking about Jews as symbols is always uncomfortable, and that’s especially the case when bullet holes are still fresh in the sanctuary. But the sad fact is, that’s why the Texas congregants were attacked in the first place: because Jews play a sinister symbolic role in the imagination of so many that bears no resemblance to their lived existence.
After Akram pulled a gun on the congregation, he demanded to speak to the rabbi of New York’s Central Synagogue, who he claimed could authorize the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman serving an attempted murder sentence in a Fort Worth facility near Beth Israel.
Obviously, this is not how the prison system works. “This was somebody who literally thought that Jews control the world,” Beth Israel Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker told The Forward. “He thought he could come into a synagogue, and we could get on the phone with the ‘Chief Rabbi of America’ and he would get what he needed.”
Gary Rosenblatt: Is it still safe to be a Jew in America?
I happen to know Angela Buchdahl, the rabbi of that New York synagogue, and I think she would make an excellent chief rabbi of America. But no such position exists. Jews are a famously fractious lot who can rarely agree on anything, let alone their religious leadership. We do not spend our days huddled in smoke-filled rooms plotting world domination while Jared Kushner plays dreidel in the back with Noam Chomsky and George Soros sneaks the last latke.
The notion that such a minuscule and unmanageable minority secretly controls the world is comical, which may be why so many responsible people still do not take the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory seriously, or even understand how it works. In the moments after the Texas crisis, the FBI made an official statement declaring that the assailant was “particularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community.” Of course, the gunman did not travel thousands of miles to terrorize some Mormons. He sought out a synagogue and took it hostage over his grievances, believing that Jews alone could resolve them. That’s targeting Jews, and there’s a word for that.
The FBI later corrected its misstep, but the episode reflects the general ignorance about anti-Semitism even among people of goodwill. Unlike many other bigotries, anti-Semitism is not merely a social prejudice; it is a conspiracy theory about how the world operates. This addled outlook is what united the Texas gunman, a Muslim, with the 2018 shooter at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, a white supremacist who sought to stanch the flow of Muslims into America. It is a worldview shared by Louis Farrakhan, the Black hate preacher, and David Duke, the former KKK grand wizard. And it is a political orientation that has been expressed by the self-styled Christian conservative leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, and Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran’s Islamic theocracy.
The fevered fantasy of Jewish domination is incredibly malleable, which makes it incredibly attractive. If Jews are responsible for every perceived problem, then people with entirely opposite ideals can adopt it. And thanks to centuries of material blaming the world’s ills on the world’s Jews, conspiracy theorists seeking a scapegoat for their sorrows inevitably discover that the invisible hand of their oppressor belongs to an invisible Jew.
At the same time, because this expression of anti-Jewish prejudice is so different from other forms of bigotry, many people don’t recognize it. As in Texas, law-enforcement officials overlook it. Social-media companies ignore it. Anti-racism activists—who understand racism as prejudice wielded by the powerful—cannot grasp it, because anti-Semitism constructs its Jewish targets as the privileged and powerful. And political partisans, more concerned with pinning the problem on their opponents, spend their time parsing the identity of anti-Semitic individuals, rather than countering the ideas that animate them.
In short, although many people say they are against anti-Semitism today, they don’t understand the nature of what they oppose. And that’s part of why anti-Semitism abides.
This ignorant status quo has proved deadly for Jews, and that alone should be enough for our society to take it seriously. But it has disastrous consequences for non-Jews as well. This is because people who embrace conspiracy theories to explain their problems lose the ability to rationally solve them. As Bard College’s Walter Russell Mead has put it:
People who think “the Jews” run the banks lose the ability to understand, much less to operate financial systems. People who think “the Jews” dominate business through hidden structures can’t build or long maintain a successful modern economy. People who think “the Jews” dominate politics lose their ability to interpret political events, to diagnose social evils and to organize effectively for positive change.
For an example, just look at what happened in Texas. An anti-Semitic gunman took a synagogue hostage in the false hope that its parishioners could somehow free a federal prisoner. That prisoner herself was sentenced to 86 years in jail after she tried to fire her Jewish lawyers at trial, demanded that Jews be excluded from the jury, and declared that her guilty verdict came “from Israel and not from America.” One hateful person after another was destroyed by their own delusions. And such debilitating delusions can reverberate outward.
“Anti-Semitism has real impact beyond just hate crimes,” the civil-rights activist Eric Ward once told me. “It distorts our understanding of how the actual world works. It isolates us. It alienates us from our communities, from our neighbors, and from participating in governance. It kills, but it also kills our society.”
Yair Rosenberg: Removing a hyphen won’t stop anti-Semitism
Neither Mead nor Ward is Jewish. The former is a noted white historian and the son of a southern priest; the latter is a Black activist who fights white nationalism. Yet despite coming from different places, both have devoted much of their work to combatting anti-Jewish prejudice, and for the same reason: It threatens democracy itself.
“Anti-Semitism isn’t just bigotry toward the Jewish community,” Ward explains. “It is actually utilizing bigotry toward the Jewish community in order to deconstruct democratic practices, and it does so by framing democracy as a conspiracy rather than a tool of empowerment or a functional tool of governance.” In other words, the more people buy into anti-Semitism and its understanding of the world, the more they lose faith in democracy.
Numerous historical case studies attest to anti-Semitism undermining its adherents at a large scale, from the defeat of the Nazis, who spurned scientific advances simply because they were discovered by Jews, to European countries that hobbled themselves for centuries by expelling their Jewish populations.
“The rise of anti-Semitism is a sign of widespread social and cultural failure,” Mead writes. “It is a leading indicator of a loss of faith in liberal values and of a diminished capacity to understand the modern world and to thrive in it.”
Seen in this light, one attack on one synagogue is not just a hate-crime statistic. It is also a warning. The mindset of a madman in Texas might seem alien to us today. But if we do not find a way to confront the conspiratorial currents that threaten to overtake our society, we may find ourselves hostage to the very ideas that animated him.
************************************************
Enough with the political correctness
People are intrinsically good and want to please each other. We may have our quirks and foibles, but to be part of a successful society we need to get along, and the majority of us do.
I am a great believer in thinking outside the box, so I am a huge fan of people who innovate and create new paradigms in technology, science, philanthropy, and other ways of thinking that improve everyday life.
So I’ve been musing for a while now, how did we find ourselves in this perverse ‘woke’ culture where we are afraid of even thinking a politically incorrect thought? How does this happen to a whole society?
Most people believe in the premise of ‘treat others as you would like to be treated’. Common sense tells us that this especially applies to those that may be a little different. Different culturally, in appearance, or behaviour – all of these things require a degree of tolerance. It used to be called ‘respect’. It was given regardless of racial origin, sexual preference, gender, or medical situation. No one would force you to be best friends with strangers, but there was an understanding to be kind, courteous, and respectful when you happened to cross paths.
How on earth did we get to a place where we are legally forced to identify certain citizens and then subject them to regulations that diminish both their human rights and our common sense? How did Critical Race Theory worm its way into corporate, government, and even military training mandates?
I believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. I am advocating for no discrimination at all. But we need to understand how this transformation happened to our civilisation.
Australia has become a ridiculous place where some people have more rights than others. The colour of our skin determines both social privilege and whether we are allowed to feel shame or pride toward our heritage. It can even be used to deny access to a career in order to ‘positively discriminate’ in favour of others. How did it become politically incorrect to talk about these things with close friends?
Just as there are out of the box thinkers who advance society, there are those who do the opposite. They inhibit innovation and regress progress. The ‘People of Discontent’. Making the world a better place is just too much work… For them, it is easier to cover up their inadequacies and incompetencies by making others look bad – to discriminate and divide – blame and enrage – rather than build bridges. You cannot change the past, but you don’t need to destroy it either. There is so much opportunity in the ‘now’ and even more in the future.
The LGBT community, in all its current forms, has the right to expect to be treated like everyone else – with dignity and respect. All decent people would agree, but these People of Discontent needed more. And so we find ourselves living in a world where kindergarten children are being taught – not only about a myriad of genders – but finishing school unable to understand the basics of male and female. Surely kids need to understand the concept of gender before exploring the next few thousand variations?
The majority of us sincerely agree there should be no discrimination based on sexual preference, so why does society sanction ‘diverse’ workplaces based on sexuality rather than competence? Public corporations have adopted this lunacy, mandating workshops and training sessions to explore identities that should remain a private matter. No one puts a stop to this because everyone is afraid of being perceived as politically incorrect.
Riots, looting, and the burning of cities were excused because Black Lives Matter are an identity-based political movement. I don’t remember having different laws and courts for African Americans. There have been black lawyers, judges, and even a president for two terms. Yes, decent people acknowledge there were black neighbourhoods where it was tough to stay a law-abiding citizen, but circumstance does not define a generation. During the Black Lives Matter riots, black policemen in black neighbourhoods became the enemy – is the irony of that not farcical?
Those People of Discontent began by making us feel good about acknowledging obvious discrimination and saying ‘no’. Then they saddled us with ‘collective guilt’, and finally, they started going too far. They made us scared to disagree. We were intimidated into more and more extreme segregation and badgered into supporting causes that sounded good in principle but raged into the burning of cities, looting of businesses (ironically owned by hard-working black people), and total destruction of lives and livelihoods of those least able to afford it.
Those People of Discontent used our good intentions and good nature to pull us into a cesspool of wokeness that is now seeing history rewritten and its statues destroyed. Future generations will not be able to make their own judgements about history because of what good people have allowed in the name of being politically correct.
I would like to suggest we all congregate and be proud to be citizens of whichever country we have chosen to call home. Unite as Australians who do not tolerate discrimination of any kind, people who are respectful and kind to all and celebrate personal origins. We should go forward as true Aussies who can joke around with no one taking offence and everyone being embraced.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/enough-with-the-political-correctness
********************************************It’s Official: It’s OK to Be Racist If You’re the Left Pushing COVID-19 Mandates
Following the lead of other leftist-run cities, the District of Columbia just instituted a new COVID-19 mandate that requires anyone who wants to dine at a restaurant, go to a movie, or workout at a gym to show proof of vaccination.
But a big part of the story that many in the media seem to ignore is that in this majority-black city, run by a black mayor, the D.C. government is also requiring people to show a photo ID to prove that they are the actual owner of the vaccination card they present.
Hold on a minute! Wasn’t it just a few short months ago—as the battles over election reform raged in the states—that we were told requiring photo ID to vote was racist and discriminatory because black folks couldn’t get IDs? In fact, it was considered so racist that businesses, sports teams, and celebrities boycotted entire states.
Now, by the left’s own definition, the District of Columbia just instituted a whole new level of systemic racism. And it’s certainly affecting the black population—the District’s largest racial group—disproportionately.
Since the mandate’s announcement in late December, I’ve been scouring the legacy media looking for news reports and media pundits who are labeling this new photo ID requirement racist, “the new Jim Crow 2.0,” the marginalization of people of color, and the other assorted slurs that were hurled at proponents of voter ID just months ago.
Not surprisingly, I haven’t seen one such headline.
Back in December, District officials initially said citizens wouldn’t be required to present an ID with their vaccination card. While such an absurdity seemingly made sense to the left, it made the vaccination card system entirely useless. One could just borrow the card of a friend or relative and have free reign of the city.
Remarkably, this idea of unverified vaccination IDs raised eyebrows for one local news outlet. When Washington’s ABC affiliate questioned Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, about the inconsistency, she reversed course and stated that photo ID would be required.
Of course, requiring proof of identification—whether along with a vaccination card or at the voting booth—is not and never has been racist, and this majority-black city run by a black mayor just proved it. The real issue here is the government attempting to coerce people into getting injected against their will and taking away their ability to use public accommodations when they refuse.
While the District has created medical and religious exemptions to the mandate, individuals are required to take a COVID-19 test and present it within 24 hours to enter a covered business. Tests can be costly and, at present, have been in such high demand that they can be hard to find, making this a high hurdle. Requiring a new test every 24 hours will only make compliance costlier and tests scarcer.
Perhaps that was the intent.
The mandate will hit Washington’s black population the hardest. Nearly 45% of the population is black. And according to the D.C. government’s own coronavirus statistics, it is the least vaccinated racial group, with only 49% of the population partially or fully vaccinated as of last week. That means over half of the black population is now barred by the government from going out to eat, to a sporting event, or to the gym.
Essentially, Washington is forcing its largest—and its most vaccine-hesitant population—to either get vaccinated or be barred from most indoor venues. That is hypocrisy that only the left could get away with.
But it’s not just hurting patrons. Hundreds of thousands of tourists from across the country who would normally come to the nation’s capital and patronize restaurants, bars, and museums but aren’t vaccinated now won’t be patronizing them at all. The result? Another economic blow for D.C. businesses—nearly 30% of which are black-owned.
I won’t hold my breath waiting to see the massive protests form in the streets, as happened in many cities over voter ID requirements. I’ve heard zero calls for woke companies to stop doing business or hosting conferences in the District. And there are no celebrities or politicians condemning the mayor or the city council or threatening boycotts.
Is it because they actually realize that requiring photo ID was never racist to begin with and they’ve simply been using that lie to scare people into fearing commonsense voting reforms? Or is it because the photo ID argument is an easy way to demonize and marginalize those they disagree with politically? Or is it because, in the end, they really don’t care about the plight of black people or anyone else who gets in the way of their sacred leftist policies like vaccination mandates?
The answer is, of course, all of the above
********************************************
Fact Checkers Make Exception for Liberal-Leaning News Outfit
If there was ever a reason to doubt the authority and authenticity of the mission of the so-called “fact checker” organizations it is this: There are more than one of them.
You see, if “facts” and “truth” were binary, there wouldn’t be a glut of competing companies out there attempting to sell their services to social media corporations and other media outlets. We wouldn’t have any disparity whatsoever. There would be one fact-checking group because, as stated in their creeds, there should be but one set of “facts”.
The entire industry is a bit of a scam, if we’re ready to be that honest with ourselves. And, if we’re not, there are plenty of examples out there of these companies massaging the narrative in order to maintain their lucrative contracts.
NewsGuard, the establishment “news rating” project that claims to fight untrustworthy media outlets, is cautiously defending NPR as the establishment media outlet continues to claim that U.S. Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Sonya Sotomayor are at odds over masks, even after a statement from both Justices and Chief Justice John Roberts debunking the story.
On Tuesday, NPR released a story claiming that Justice Sotomayor had opted to work remotely after Justice Gorsuch refused a request from Chief Justice Roberts that all justices mask up when on the bench.
Later in the day, a Supreme Court source told Fox News that neither Justice Roberts nor Justice Sotomayor had made any such request.
But then:
Despite the total breakdown of the initial story, Newsguard refuses to make any judgments on NPR’s reporting, arguing that the situation is still unfolding.
Prior to the statement from Chief Justice Roberts, Newsguard maintained that the facts of the story were still unclear.
“There are two conflicting reports, one from NPR and one from Fox News, both citing anonymous sources,” said Matt Skibinski, general manager of Newsguard. “It’s hard to say anything definitive about either report without more information.”
But Newsguard cannot hide from this fact:
However, even after all three Justices named in the story – Gorsuch, Sotomayor, and Roberts – made public statements debunking it, while NPR refused to issue a correction, Newsguard maintained that the story was still unfolding.
Perhaps one of the several other “fact checking” corporations would like to take a stab at it?
https://flagandcross.com/fact-checkers-make-exception-for-liberal-leaning-news-outfit/
********************************************FINALLY! NBC Airs Segment on Biden's Crumbling Black Voter Support
The hits just keep on coming for President Joe Biden! On Thursday night's edition of NBC Nightly News, anchor Lester Holt sent his chief White House correspondent Kristen Welker down to South Carolina to interview African American voters about their softening support of President Biden.
As he did earlier in the show, Holt reported on "Biden's challenges as he begins his second year in office." Holt added that among these challenges is Biden's "falling support among black voters who lifted his once struggling campaign." Holt then handed the segment off to Welker for her report from South Carolina.
The first black Biden voter Welker interviewed was "Helen Bradley, one of President Biden's most fervent supporters telling us she is disappointed." Welker asked her if she thought that "President Biden has fought hard enough for the priorities of black voters?" Bradley didn't beat around the bush, she answered "I do not."
Bradley believes Biden didn't fight hard enough for the so-called "voting rights" bill. However, she didn't just criticize Biden from the left. Like most Americans, she is deeply concerned with skyrocketing inflation. She told Welker "when you go to the grocery store, you find things three and four times higher than it used to be. But our paychecks are not three and four times higher."
Welker also interviewed two other South Carolina voters, Langston Brooks and Fletcher Smith. Brooks, like Bradley, was also concerned with the rising cost of goods. While Smith was more concerned about Biden's failure to reach out to black voters in South Carolina and the country at large.
Welker then reported on the devastating NBC poll admitting Biden's crumbling support among black voters is "not just in South Carolina. Our NBC News poll shows black support for President Biden has dropped 19 points since April. Now it's down to 64 percent."
Once again, credit where it is due, NBC could've spiked the poll and ran a segment on another topic. Instead, they told their viewers the truth.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
23 January, 2022
INSANE: Poll Shows 45% Of Dems Approve Sending Unvaccinated To ‘Designated Facilities’
Hitler and Stalin would have lots of followers in modern-day America
A Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey taken this month revealed an astonishing number of Democrats surveyed were perfectly comfortable sending Americans who were not vaccinated to “designated facilities or locations.”
When asked, “Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal to limit the spread of the coronavirus by having federal or state governments require that citizens temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine?” Forty-five percent of Democrats answered they favored such an idea. Among all voters surveyed, 71% opposed the idea; 78% of Republicans and 64% of unaffiliated voters said they would “strongly oppose” such an idea.
Additionally, although 66% of likely voters would oppose government using digital devices to track unvaccinated people to ensure that they were quarantined or socially distancing from others, 47% of Democrats approved of the idea.
Nearly half (48%) of Democrats favored federal and state government having the capacity to levy fines or imprisonment on people who publicly questioned the efficacy of vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications. Only 27% of voters agreed, including 14% of Republicans and 18% of unaffiliated voters.
A whopping 59% of Democrats favored a government policy that required citizens remained confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies, if they refused to get the COVID vaccine. 61% of all voters opposed that, including a huge 79% of Republicans and 71% of unaffiliated voters.
Most frighteningly, 29% of Democrats favored temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if the parents refused to get the COVID vaccine. Only 7% of Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters agreed.
Forty-eight percent of voters viewed Dr. Anthony Fauci unfavorably; 45% viewed him favorably.
Chris Talgo, senior editor and research fellow at The Heartland Institute, explained, “After two excruciatingly long years, likely voters are beginning to question the federal government’s handling of the pandemic. First and foremost, likely voters are beginning to sour on Dr. Anthony Fauci, who seems to have lost credibility after countless flip-flops.”
“Moreover, almost half of likely voters oppose President Biden’s vaccine mandates, which seem less about stopping the spread of COVID-19 and more about increasing the power of the federal government,” he continued. “When asked about several other potential strategies, such as fining those who refuse to get vaccinated, the consensus among likely voters is that the federal government should do less, not more.”
This week, the Salt Lake City Tribune suggested that the National Guard keep people in their homes if they were unvaccinated for COVID-19, writing:
Were Utah a truly civilized place, the governor’s next move would be to find a way to mandate the kind of mass vaccination campaign we should have launched a year ago, going as far as to deploy the National Guard to ensure that people without proof of vaccination would not be allowed, well, anywhere
**************************************************
Jordan Peterson: Why I am no longer a tenured professor at the University of Toronto
I recently resigned from my position as full tenured professor at the University of Toronto. I am now professor emeritus, and before I turned sixty. Emeritus is generally a designation reserved for superannuated faculty, albeit those who had served their term with some distinction. I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office. I loved my job. And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me. But that career path was not meant to be. There were many reasons, including the fact that I can now teach many more people and with less interference online. But here’s a few more:
First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers. This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE). These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked. My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students. I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions. And this isn’t just some inconvenience. These facts rendered my job morally untenable. How can I accept prospective researchers and train them in good conscience knowing their employment prospects to be minimal?
Second reason: This is one of many issues of appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture. Not least because there simply is not enough qualified BIPOC people in the pipeline to meet diversity targets quickly enough (BIPOC: black, indigenous and people of colour, for those of you not in the knowing woke). This has been common knowledge among any remotely truthful academic who has served on a hiring committee for the last three decades. This means we’re out to produce a generation of researchers utterly unqualified for the job. And we’ve seen what that means already in the horrible grievance studies “disciplines.” That, combined with the death of objective testing, has compromised the universities so badly that it can hardly be overstated. And what happens in the universities eventually colours everything. As we have discovered.
All my craven colleagues must craft DIE statements to obtain a research grant. They all lie (excepting the minority of true believers) and they teach their students to do the same. And they do it constantly, with various rationalizations and justifications, further corrupting what is already a stunningly corrupt enterprise. Some of my colleagues even allow themselves to undergo so-called anti-bias training, conducted by supremely unqualified Human Resources personnel, lecturing inanely and blithely and in an accusatory manner about theoretically all-pervasive racist/sexist/heterosexist attitudes. Such training is now often a precondition to occupy a faculty position on a hiring committee.
Need I point out that implicit attitudes cannot — by the definitions generated by those who have made them a central point of our culture — be transformed by short-term explicit training? Assuming that those biases exist in the manner claimed, and that is a very weak claim, and I’m speaking scientifically here. The Implicit Association test — the much-vaunted IAT, which purports to objectively diagnose implicit bias (that’s automatic racism and the like) is by no means powerful enough — valid and reliable enough — to do what it purports to do. Two of the original designers of that test, Anthony Greenwald and Brian Nosek, have said as much, publicly. The third, Professor Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, remains recalcitrant. Much of this can be attributed to her overtly leftist political agenda, as well as to her embeddedness within a sub-discipline of psychology, social psychology, so corrupt that it denied the existence of left-wing authoritarianism for six decades after World War II. The same social psychologists, broadly speaking, also casually regard conservatism (in the guise of “system justification”) as a form of psychopathology.
Banaji’s continued countenancing of the misuse of her research instrument, combined with the status of her position at Harvard, is a prime reason we still suffer under the DIE yoke, with its baleful effect on what was once the closest we had ever come to truly meritorious selection. There are good reasons to suppose that DIE-motivated eradication of objective testing, such as the GRE for graduate school admission, will have deleterious effects on the ability of students so selected to master such topics as the statistics all social sciences (and medicine, for that matter) rely upon completely for their validity.
Furthermore, the accrediting boards for graduate clinical psychology training programs in Canada are now planning to refuse to accredit university clinical programs unless they have a “social justice” orientation. That, combined with some recent legislative changes in Canada, claiming to outlaw so-called “conversion therapy” (but really making it exceedingly risky for clinicians to do anything ever but agree always and about everything with their clients) have likely doomed the practice of clinical psychology, which always depended entirely on trust and privacy. Similar moves are afoot in other professional disciplines, such as medicine and law. And if you don’t think that psychologists, lawyers and other professionals are anything but terrified of their now woke governing professional colleges, much to everyone’s extreme detriment, you simply don’t understand how far this has all gone.
Just exactly what am I supposed to do when I meet a graduate student or young professor, hired on DIE grounds? Manifest instant skepticism regarding their professional ability? What a slap in the face to a truly meritorious young outsider. And perhaps that’s the point. The DIE ideology is not friend to peace and tolerance. It is absolutely and completely the enemy of competence and justice.
And for those of you who think that I am overstating the case, or that this is something limited in some trivial sense to the universities, consider some other examples: This report from Hollywood, cliched hotbed of “liberal” sentiment, for example, indicates just how far this has gone. In 2020, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the Oscar people) embarked on a five-year plan (does that ring any historical bells?) “to diversify our organization and expand our definition of the best,” They did so in an attempt which included developing “new representation and inclusion standards for Oscars,” to, hypothetically, “better reflect the diversity of the movie-going audience.” What fruit has this initiative, offspring of the DIE ideology, borne? According to a recent article, penned by Peter Kiefer and Peter Savodnik, but posted on former NY Times’ journalist Bari Weiss’s Common Sense website (and Weiss left the Times, because of the intrusion of radical left ideology into that newspaper, just as Tara Henley did recently, vis a vis the CBC): “We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers — all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma. … How to survive the revolution? By becoming its most ardent supporter. … Suddenly, every conversation with every agent or head of content started with: Is anyone BIPOC attached to this?”
And this is everywhere — and if you don’t see it, your head is either in the sand or shoved somewhere far more unmentionable. CBS, for example, has literally mandated that every writers’ room be at least 40 per cent BIPOC in 2021 (50 per cent in 2022).
We are now at the point where race, ethnicity, “gender,” or sexual preference is first, accepted as the fundamental characteristic defining each person (just as the radical leftists were hoping) and second, is now treated as the most important qualification for study, research and employment.
Need I point out that this is insane ? Even the benighted New York Times has its doubts. A headline from August 11, 2021: Are Workplace Diversity Programs Doing More Harm than Good? In a word, yes. How can accusing your employees of racism etc. sufficient to require re-training (particularly in relationship to those who are working in good faith to overcome whatever bias they might still, in these modern, liberal times, manifest) be anything other than insulting, annoying, invasive, high-handed, moralizing, inappropriate, ill-considered, counterproductive, and otherwise unjustifiable?
And if you think DIE is bad, wait until you get a load of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scores . Purporting to assess corporate moral responsibility, these scores, which can dramatically affect an enterprise’s financial viability, are nothing less than the equivalent of China’s damnable social credit system, applied to the entrepreneurial and financial world. CEOs: what in the world is wrong with you? Can’t you see that the ideologues who push such appalling nonsense are driven by an agenda that is not only absolutely antithetical to your free-market enterprise, as such, but precisely targeted at the freedoms that made your success possible? Can’t you see that by going along, sheep-like (just as the professors are doing; just as the artists and writers are doing) that you are generating a veritable fifth column within your businesses? Are you really so blind, cowed and cowardly? With all your so-called privilege?
And it’s not just the universities. And the professional colleges. And Hollywood. And the corporate world. Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity — that radical leftist Trinity — is destroying us. Wondering about the divisiveness that is currently besetting us? Look no farther than DIE. Wondering — more specifically — about the attractiveness of Trump? Look no farther than DIE. When does the left go too far? When they worship at the altar of DIE, and insist that the rest of us, who mostly want to be left alone, do so as well. Enough already. Enough. Enough.
Finally, do you know that Vladimir Putin himself is capitalizing on this woke madness? Anna Mahjar-Barducci at MEMRI.org covered his recent speech. I quote from the article’s translation:
“The advocates of so-called ‘social progress’ believe they are introducing humanity to some kind of a new and better consciousness. Godspeed, hoist the flags, as we say, go right ahead. The only thing that I want to say now is that their prescriptions are not new at all. It may come as a surprise to some people, but Russia has been there already. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks, relying on the dogmas of Marx and Engels, also said that they would change existing ways and customs, and not just political and economic ones, but the very notion of human morality and the foundations of a healthy society. The destruction of age-old values, religion, and relations between people, up to and including the total rejection of family (we had that, too), encouragement to inform on loved ones — all this was proclaimed progress and, by the way, was widely supported around the world back then and was quite fashionable, same as today. By the way, the Bolsheviks were absolutely intolerant of opinions other than theirs.
“This, I believe, should call to mind some of what we are witnessing now. Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices — which we, fortunately, have left, I hope — in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past — such as Shakespeare — are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood, memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what color or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”
This, from the head of the former totalitarian enterprise, against whom we fought a five decades’ long Cold War, risking the entire planet (in a very real manner). This, from the head of a country riven in a literally genocidal manner by ideas that Putin himself attributes to the progressives in the West, to the generally accepting audience of his once-burned (once (!)) twice-shy listeners.
And all of you going along with the DIE activists, whatever your reasons: this is on you. Professors. Cowering cravenly in pretence and silence. Teaching your students to dissimulate and lie. To get along. As the walls crumble. For shame. CEOs: signalling a virtue you don’t possess and shouldn’t want to please a minority who literally live their lives by displeasure. You’re evil capitalists, after all, and should be proud of it. At the moment, I can’t tell if you’re more reprehensibly timid even than the professors. Why the hell don’t you banish the human resource DIE upstarts back to the more-appropriately-named Personnel departments, stop them from interfering with the psyches of you and your employees, and be done with it? Musicians, artists, writers: stop bending your sacred and meritorious art to the demands of the propagandists before you fatally betray the spirit of your own intuition. Stop censoring your thought. Stop saying you will hire for your orchestral and theatrical productions for any reason other than talent and excellence. That’s all you have. That’s all any of us have.
He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. And the wind is rising.
****************************************
Manchin: 'We Already Have Laws to Ensure People Have Voting Rights'
On Tuesday, Senator Joe Manchin told reporters that we already have laws and rules in place to make sure people "have the right to vote. We have that." He added that even if people “act like we’re going to obstruct people from voting. That’s not going to happen.”
A reporter asked, “There are a lot of people out there who are saying that you’re making it so that they’re not going to be able to vote in the next election?”
Manchin replied, “The law’s there. The rules are there. And basically, the government. The government will stand behind them and make sure they have the right to vote. We have that. The things they’re talking about now are in court. Marc Elias has an awful lot in court. The courts have struck down, like in Ohio, they struck down the gerrymandering. Things are happening, okay. We act like we’re going to obstruct people from voting. That’s not going to happen.”
https://dailypoliticalnewswire.com/manchin-we-already-have-laws-to-ensure-people-have-voting-rights/
******************************************Not One Corpse Has Been Found In The ‘Mass Grave’ Of Indigenous Children In Canada
The whole story, it seems, was concocted to stir up hatred against Christians and stoke outrage. It succeeded.
Remember last summer when a mass grave containing the remains of hundreds of children was found on the grounds of a former government boarding school for indigenous children in British Columbia, Canada?
In the seven months since this shocking news broke, not one body has been found, and not a single shovel-full of dirt has been excavated from the site in question. Contrary to the worldwide media coverage last summer, nothing, in fact, has been “discovered” on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
In a healthy society, this would be a scandal. A story that grabbed headlines for a week and inspired arson attacks that destroyed dozens of churches in Canada turns out to be based on flimsy, unexamined evidence at best, and an outright, pernicious lie at worst.
You might remember the overblown coverage. CNN breathlessly reported on what it called the “gruesome discovery.” The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation appended a warning label to its coverage, saying “this story contains details some readers may find distressing.” The Washington Post declared that news of the mass grave had “dragged the horror of Canada’s mistreatment of Indigenous people back into the spotlight.” Every corporate outlet took it for granted that a mass grave containing hundreds of corpses had indeed been discovered—corpses of children, no less. They reported it as fact.
Politicians quickly fell in line. Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau tweeted that the discovery “is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.” British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was “horrified and heartbroken.” The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called it “a large scale human rights violation,” and called on Canada and the Vatican to investigate.
Tribal leaders in Canada went further and said the discovery was evidence of “mass murder of indigenous people,” that it was an “attempted genocide.” Some of them compared the priests and nuns who ran the boarding schools to Nazis, implying that, like the Nazis, these people should answer for their crimes.
Flags were lowered to half-mast. Calls were issued for an inquiry. Important and serious people said there must be a reckoning with Canada’s racist past. Lamentations poured forth from Catholic bishops for the church’s role in running these government boarding schools.
And then came the arson. In June, dozens of churches across Canada, most of them Catholic and some of them more than a century old, were burned to the ground. No church was safe. As my colleague Chris Bedford reported at the time, “In Calgary, 10 churches of various denominations were vandalized in a single night. A few days later, a Vietnamese church was set on fire — just hours after it held its first full service in more than a year.”
Overall more than two dozen churches in Canada have been targeted over the past few weeks — and people are cheering it on. Not just anonymous people, either: On June 30, Harsha Walia, the executive director of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, responded to a story of another church arson, saying ‘Burn it all down.’
Others rallied to her defense. Naomi Sayers, a lawyer and blue Twitter checkmark, said ‘I would help her burn it all down … and also, I would help anyone charged with arson if they actually did burn things.’
At the heart of all this was a press release issued at the end of May by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, saying that ground-penetrating radar had revealed the remains near the site of the Kamloops school, one of the largest such schools for indigenous youth that operated from the 1890s to the 1970s. “It’s a harsh reality and it’s our truth, it’s our history,” Chief Rosanne Casimir said at a news conference. “And it’s something that we’ve always had to fight to prove. To me, it’s always been a horrible, horrible history.”
The investigation was supposed to continue in conjunction with the British Columbia Coroner’s Office. The radar findings were only preliminary, and the eventual discovery of the “mass grave” containing the remains of children “as young as three years old,” which no one seemed to doubt, would confirm what “was spoken about but never documented” in the community.
That was more than seven months ago. Not a single corpse has been exhumed from the site since then. No human remains, of children or anyone else, have been found and confirmed as a result of the radar search.
The person who performed the ground-penetrating radar survey, a “conflict anthropologist” named Sarah Beaulieu, said at news conference back in July that the “probable gravesites” could not be confirmed unless excavations were done. Her investigation covered only two acres of the total 160-acre site and, she said, had “barely scratched the surface.”
Professor Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, recently published a detailed essay in The Dorchester Review on what has been found at this and similar sites — and what hasn’t. There is no evidence, writes Rouilliard, in any of the historical records kept by the government, that deaths of indigenous children at these schools were ever covered up, or that any corpses were ever deposited in mass, unmarked graves which were kept secret, and parents of the children were never informed, as tribal groups repeatedly charged and the media dutifully repeated last summer.
***********************************************
The deep state is no conspiracy theory
In 1958, Aldous Huxley foresaw a congestion of power able to shape and defy popular will. “Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature,” he predicted. “The quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism.”
The changes, according to the author of Brave New World, would be almost imperceptible. “All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial,” he continued. “Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”
The Deep State today is Huxley’s prophesy arrived. Like it or not, Americans live inside a power complex and thought machine that radiates from Washington, DC. Concentrated in blue metro counties and states, its moving parts and wheels, as with a clock, enable us to live in the exacting polity, economy, and culture that we do.
In lofty circles, it is said that the Deep State is a far-right conspiracy theory, nothing more. The very words elicit an eye-roll and a smirk. But what else synchronizes uncountable public agencies and their private-sector partners — wink-wink — in the absence of executive statesmanship? What has made the wheels of government go round and round this last year, and if we are honest, for a very long time?
Surface government, elected and appointed, is only its polished clock-face. Television and newspapers report the ticks and tocks daily. Right now, this clock-face looks like something melting, or covered with ants, a surreal dreamscape straight out of Salvador Dali.
Seeking to federalize election rules, in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris compared last year’s Capitol riot to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Biden likened adversaries of “voting rights” to the ardent segregationists of the 1960s.
The spectacularly inept Harris matters because Biden’s crumbling façade could collapse at any minute. And there she is, the nation’s prospective jeweler-in-chief, the overseer of what Charles Hugh Smith schematizes as “a vast structure that incorporates hard and soft power — military, diplomatic, intelligence, finance, commercial, energy, media, higher education — in a system of global domination and influence.”
The Deep State is not a conspiracy or a cabal but a consortium of shared statist assumptions propelled by high-minded or financial self-interest. K Street’s mercenary lobbyists push boondoggles. True believers and single-interest advocacies pride themselves on their tunnel vision. The actual bandits are few.
The Deep State includes the federal civil service and its satellites in states, counties and municipalities, funded by and loyal to central power. It includes the military forces and defense industry; money, banking, credit, and finance; research universities; oil and energy, transportation, housing, food, and utilities; and, of course, the all-important electronic ether.
From the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Centers for Disease Control to the S&P 500, progressive monoculture has enveloped segments of the Deep State that previously resisted identity politics. The manufacture and propagation of progressive opinion give the New York Times and Washington Post unique power inside its multifoliate complex. (The Murdoch empire fashions an “acceptable” counter-message.) Message journalists have no illusion about the malign energies they can channel left or right.
Progressive mind managers include Endeavor super agents Ari Emanuel and Mark Shapiro, Def Jam music producer Rick Rubin, and Netflix’s Reed Hastings. Jeff Bezos’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions know no limit. Bill Gates, Tom Steyer, and the MacArthur Foundation are in on the game. The New York Times’s 1619 Project seeks to erase American historical memory.
Woke has been trying for years to drum limited-government nationalists out of public life, calling them white supremacists and deplorables. Highly contestable outlooks on equity, race, acceptable speech, and biology stand inside public life as revealed virtue or expedient virtue. Woke can be a liturgy or a useful hustle. A malleable, celebrity-struck electorate wants its politics fast, simple, and preferably juicy. Junk news gets the eyes and clicks. Social media is trying to get inside your head, and knows how to do it better each year.
Promoted and funded by the Deep State, multicultural and therapeutic wrecking engines invade private institutions and endowments, forcing “diversity” makeovers. National courts and nonprofit lawyer-activists codify matters once left to private judgment, families, and churches. Litigation functions to delay justice and to sidestep public will and oversight.
The moral arrogations of our times are said to be about justice and equality, but they are actually about the redistribution of power, wealth and status at the expense of property holders and taxpayers, targeting white America as devils. Claiming moral advantage, the unscrupulous and the predatory have used race, sex, and inequality to damn and destroy their foes.
However sound his policies, the charmless narcissist Donald J. Trump has made for an easy political target. His still-potent cult of personality does not offer constitutionalists great hope, nor does it have much to do with conservative principles. His tenacity and aura in fact galvanize progressive misrule. Meanwhile, the Biden administration and its allies conjure a legion of right-wing terrorists. Using health emergency and fears as a wedge, they engage in psychological and legal warfare against anti-statists and localists, now raising the specter of voter suppression.
Whatever the outcome of current power struggles, the Deep State needs rules and sanctions to protect its material bounty and interests. Government, education, technology, industrial and financial systems cannot be altered very much without seizing the engine. Irreconcilable public disputes, reckless resets, or mass emotional upheavals, and the risk is pandemonium.
As Huxley feared, America’s thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators seek to shift authority exclusively in their direction, and “voting rights” is the latest turn in the seizure. Yet inflation and inequality, border implosion, lawbreaking and vagrancy, racial divisions, and medical realities intrude on would-be leftist magic.
“We will not wake up after the lockdown in a new world,” the irrepressible French writer Michel Houellebecq predicted at the onset of Covid. “It will be the same, just a bit worse.”
Two years later, the gas pump tells us to Go Green. The ATM asks us — before we can secure our money — to Celebrate Juneteenth or Save the Planet. Meanwhile, most Americans just hope their $100 fast cash will buy something close to what it did a year ago — and that they don’t get mugged retrieving it.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/the-deep-state-is-no-conspiracy-theory/
********************************************Britain privileges cyclists
Needlessly obstructing mototorists is fine
Cyclists will be told to ride in the centre of the lane to make themselves more visible to motorists under far-reaching changes to the rules of the road intended to improve safety and “unleash our nation of cyclists”.
The updated Highway Code, which takes effect on Saturday, will also encourage cyclists to ride two abreast and require motorists to leave a minimum of 1.5 metres (nearly 5ft) when overtaking.
Even if there are adjoining cycle lanes and tracks, cyclists will not be obliged to use them.
The rules make it clear that cyclists, including children, are not permitted to ride on the pavement. Only pedestrians and wheelchair or mobility scooter users are allowed to do so.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
22 January, 2022
Men and women's brains really do work differently! Scientists find 1,000 genes that are more active in one gender than the other, making males sexually assertive and females more maternally protective
Everybody knew this once. It is only feminists who doubt it
It's often said that men and women's brains work so differently that one sex is from Venus and the other is from Mars. Well now a new study supports this hypothesis after finding 1,000 genes that are much more active in one gender than the other.
It looked into how male and female mouse brains differ by probing areas that are known to program 'rating, dating, mating and hating' behaviours.
The behaviours — for example, male mice's quick determination of a stranger's sex, females' receptivity to mating, and maternal protectiveness — help the animals reproduce and their offspring survive.
These differences are also likely reflected in the brains of men and women, the researchers from Stanford Medicine said.
A separate study by a team from the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of 900 men, women and children aged eight to 22. From the scans they were able to create a complete road map of the connections in each of their brains, called their connectome.
All connectomes are based on a common set of wiring between the regions of the brain, such as connecting the region which deals with speech to that which processes hearing, giving a fixed frame of reference for researchers.
But the team found subtle differences in how brains were wired in men and women.
The maps show that men's brains may be hardwired for better special awareness and motor skills, while connections in women's brains are wired to give them an edge in memory and social cognition.
The findings could help to shed light on brain diseases and behavioural conditions which progress faster in one sex than the other.
Analysing tissue that was extracted from these brain structures, the scientists found more than 1,000 genes that are substantially more active in the brains of one sex versus the other.
'Using these genes as entry points, we've identified specific groups of brain cells that orchestrate specific sex-typical behaviours,' said study author, Nirao Shah, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences and of neurobiology.
Sex-typical social behaviours have been built into animals' brains over millions of years of evolution. Male mice, for example, quickly distinguish the sex of strangers infringing on what they've deemed their turf. If the intruder is another male, they immediately attack it. If it's a female, they initiate a whirlwind courtship.
Female mice exhibit maternal rather than territorial aggression, attacking anything that threatens their pups. They're vastly more inclined than males to guard their youngsters and retrieve any that stray. Their willingness to mate varies powerfully depending on the stage of their cycle.
'These primal behaviours are essential to survival and reproduction, and they're largely instinctive,' Shah said.
'If you need to learn how to mate or fight once the situation arises, it's probably already too late. 'The evidence is pretty clear that the brain isn't purely a blank slate just waiting around to be shaped by environmental influences.'
Some of the genes the researchers discovered are also established risk factors for brain disorders that are more common in one or the other sex, they said.
Of 207 genes already known as high risk for autism spectrum disorder, which is four times as common in men as in women, the researchers identified 39 as being more active in the brains of one or the other sex: 29 in males, 10 in females.
They also identified genes linked to Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis, both of which tend to afflict women more than men, as being more activated among female mice.
The researchers believe that males need some genes to be working harder, and females need other genes to be working harder — and that a mutation in a gene that needs high activation may do more damage than a mutation in a gene that's just sitting around.
The study also pinpointed more than 600 differences in gene-activation levels between females in different phases of their estrous cycle. In women, this is referred to as the menstrual cycle, but female mice don't menstruate.
'To find, within these four tiny brain structures, several hundred genes whose activity levels depend only on the female's cycle stage was completely surprising,' said Shah, who has devoted his career to understanding how sex hormones regulate sex-typical behaviours.
The brain structures the researchers focused on are shared among mammals, including humans.
'Mice aren't humans,' Shah said. 'But it's reasonable to expect that analogous brain cell types will be shown to play roles in our sex-typical social behaviours.'
He added: 'The frequency of migraines, epileptic seizures and psychiatric disorders can vary during the menstrual cycle,' Shah said.
'Our findings of gene activation differences across the cycle suggest a biological basis for this variation.'
Previous attempts to find gene-activation differences between male and female rodent brain cells have come up with only about 100 of them — seemingly too few, the researchers believe, to generate the numerous profound differences in known instinctual behaviour.
'We wound up finding about 10 times that many, not to mention the 600 genes whose activity levels in females vary with the stage of the cycle,' Shah said.
'In all, these add up to a solid 6 per cent of a mouse's genes being regulated by sex or stage of the cycle.'
************************************************
Hate crimes in NYC skyrocket: Attacks on Asians up 343% and Hispanics up 700% from 2020 to 2021
We are not told the skin color of the attackers but I don't suppose we need to be told
Hate crimes surged a shocking 96 percent in the Big Apple throughout 2021, new data from the NYPD has revealed, as Manhattan's woke DA announced on Friday that he'll be expanding the hate crimes unit to address radically motivated attacks.
Asian hate crimes skyrocketed 343 percent from 2020 to 2021 as the pandemic rattled on, with 133 Asian Americans experiencing terrifying and dangerous experiences of discrimination, according to the new data, which was first reported by Fox News.
Hispanic hate crimes were also up a staggering 700 percent last year with a total of eight people being harassed or harmed in 2021, up from one in 2020.
Overall, the City That Never Sleeps city saw a 96 percent increase in bias crimes throughout 2021, as more and more New Yorkers are being attacked in the streets, pushed onto subway tracks, and harassed for their gender, race and religion.
A total of 538 hate crimes occurred throughout 2021, compared to 275 in 2020.
Only three categories declined in the number of attacks: African Americans, generalized religion and other, the data show. It is not clear what is considered 'other.'
Despite 'religious' hate crimes decreasing overall, Muslims and Jews did see an increase of 180 and 54 percent from 2020 to 2021, respectively.
African Americans saw an 11 percent decrease in bias crimes against them, with the NYPD reporting 33 attacks, down from 37. Caucasian Americans saw a 100 percent increase, but the total number of attacks remains one of the lowest, with only 20 attacks.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, 48 - who recently found himself in hot water after downgrading many crimes and claiming that 'prison is a last resort' - is now saying his office will expand the hate crimes unit, created in 2018, to help address the increase in radically motivated attacks.
'Our [Asian American and Pacific Islander] brothers and sisters have been spit upon, coughed at, told to go back home. In my office we are deepening our capacity,' he said on Friday.
'We're expanding our hate crimes unit so that we can give these cases the resources that they deserve.'
Bragg, the first black man to hold his position, said on Friday that he would be expanding resources by partnering with local communities to 'strengthen our community ties,' but commended the existing 'small' hate crimes team for having 'great leadership.'
************************************************
All criminals are welcome appears to be the policy of the New York district attorney
With the departure of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the election of Eric Adams, a Democrat who at least rhetorically voiced support for the police and law and order, some hoped that worrying crime trends in New York City would be reversed.
The early signs aren’t promising.
Newly-elected Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg released a “day 1 memo” highlighting how various crimes—some quite serious—will no longer be prosecuted under his leadership.
One of the crimes his office won’t prosecute is armed robberies of businesses. Suspects in those cases who make off with less than $1,000 in stolen goods will now be charged with the lesser crime of petty larceny, a misdemeanor.
Among the other crimes his office will no longer prosecute are resisting arrest, fare beating, prostitution, and trespassing. Basically, the only criminals who will now face serious jail time are murderers.
It gets worse.
“Even when Bragg does intend to seek jail sentences, the penalties will not be stiff,” wrote Seth Barron at City Journal. “Bragg says that the maximum sentence sought for any offense will be 20 years, and that his office will never seek life without parole. If 20 years is the maximum sentence for the worst offenses, expect a severe discount on sentences for other offenses across the board.”
If these policies seem familiar, that’s because they mirror a path charted by other radical, left-wing district attorneys across the country, like Chesa Boudin in San Francisco and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.
These district attorneys have made policing nearly impossible, as even in the cases when an already stretched thin and beleaguered police force is able to arrest criminals, they are very soon put back out on the street.
Things aren’t working out well in those cities. Violent crime is soaring, and other types of crime—Like mass retail looting—are also on the upswing.
The situation is so terrible in San Francisco that Mayor London Breed, who defunded the police, recently called for an end to the “reign of criminals and the city,” and announced that the city would pursue more aggressive policing.
We’ll see if they follow through.
The problem remains that whatever the mayor and police department do to clean up criminality, those measures can be easily undermined by an out-of-control district attorney who simply refuses to bring criminals to justice in the name of social justice.
That’s what may soon happen in New York.
Like many big, blue metropolitan areas, New York has been hit with a massive surge in violent crime since the summer of 2020. Yet, despite the trend, New York has generally been safer than other cities, thanks to the crime fighting policies of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and others who cleaned up Gotham in the 1990s.
It seems many have forgotten the lessons of the very recent past.
The New York district attorney said that his policies were meant to “marry fairness and safety.” But given the details of his memo, it’s clear this marriage is a sham.
Some prominent New York leaders expressed concern with Bragg’s memo.
The New York Police Department’s newly appointed police commissioner Keechant Sewell said she thought they could put public safety at risk.
“I have studied these policies and I am very concerned about the implications to your safety as police officers, the safety of the public and justice for the victims,” she wrote in an email to police officers.
Should anyone be surprised though? Bragg ran on an explicitly progressive message. He is just carrying progressive ideas about defunding the police and “restorative justice” through to their logical conclusions.
The evidence is already coming in that criminals are learning that they have the keys to the city, and there’s little the justice system will now do about it.
A New York Post report on Wednesday highlighted a case in which Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Jay Weiner told an ex-convict being charged with misdemeanor petit larceny that his case “two weeks ago would have been charged as a robbery,” and that he was “lucky” that he wouldn’t face a long prison sentence.
The man, who had a lengthy criminal record, threatened a drug store owner with a knife and allegedly stole thousands of dollars in items.
Naturally, he didn’t show up to his follow-up court appearance after being released without having to post cash bail. New York abolished bail for minor crimes in 2019. Not great when almost all crimes are now considered minor crimes.
As a recent Wall Street Journal editorial’s headline noted, the new district attorney’s policies will make New York a “sanctuary city for crime.”
It’s not exactly a wild prediction to say that other hardened criminals in the city will likely realize that today can be their lucky day, too.
Unfortunately, this is not just a problem for New Yorkers or people living in cities with other radical district attorneys and irresponsible political leaders. Our cities becoming hives of violence and criminality will affect everyone. Like an infected wound, the lawlessness will allow criminality to spread as more dangerous people are let out on the street to act with impunity.
The progress this country made on crime in the last few decades will very soon evaporate and we will have to go through the arduous process of setting things right.
We all pay when progressive fantasies about restorative justice and crime become reality, and reality comes back to slug us all in the face.
***********************************************
Biden is failing because he abandoned his mandate
by Jeff Jacoby
I WAS WRONG about Joe Biden.
In his inaugural address a year ago this week, Biden pledged to pour his "whole soul" into "bringing America together" and "uniting our people." He urged Americans — sincerely, I believed — to "see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors," to "treat each other with dignity and respect," and to "join forces, stop the shouting, and lower the temperature."
Far more than any previous president, Biden emphasized unity at his inauguration; it was the core and quintessence of his first speech as the nation's chief executive. True, nearly all presidents talk about bringing Americans together and rising above partisanship, but it seemed to me that Biden really meant it. I thought so for two reasons:
First, it was what he had campaigned on. Biden's most important message as a candidate for president was that he was no Donald Trump, stoking anger, demonizing critics, and widening the political rift. Rather, Biden said, he would bring to the White House his experience of working with legislators of both parties and fashioning compromises to get things done. With the possible exception of his vow to "shut down" the coronavirus, Biden's central promise was that he would be the political healer America needed — a "president who doesn't divide us but unites us . . . who appeals not to the worst of us but to the best." During the home stretch of the 2020 election, that was Biden's closing pitch to the electorate: not a policy agenda but a commitment to lead Americans in freeing themselves "from the forces of division . . . that pull us apart, hold us down, and hold us back."
Second, in the days following his election, Biden not only kept stressing the need to achieve cooperation, unity, and less ferocious political discourse, but also explicitly identified that as his mandate. "Now that the campaign is over," asked the president-elect, "what is our mandate?" His answer: "Americans have called on us to marshal the forces of decency and the forces of fairness. . . . Let this grim era of demonization in America begin to end — here and now."
That was exactly right, not just as moral sentiment but as hard-headed political analysis. Voters had elected Biden by a comfortable margin in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, even though a solid majority, 56 percent, said they were better off than they had been before Trump's election. On the issues, more Americans agreed with Trump than with Biden. It was his character that cost Trump the election. His obnoxious, bellicose, divisive, unpresidential behavior — that was what most of the nation wanted no more of. Biden's mandate was clear: to not be Trump and to usher in a period of reconciliation.
Given the centrifugal forces invariably unleashed by politics in a society as evenly divided between two parties as America is these days, maybe that was always a pipe dream. But Biden never tried.
Hardly had the fine words of his inaugural address receded in the rearview mirror than his commitment to healing and peacemaking faded. Soon it became clear that the new president had yielded to the temptation to push the sweeping, expensive, transformational agenda championed by his party's left-wing base — vast new spending measures, statehood for the District of Columbia, a student debt bailout, higher corporate taxes, a major expansion of the welfare state, and much of the radical Green New Deal. Biden was "a proud moderate during his three and a half decades as a senator, but he has fallen in firmly with the progressives as president," concluded The Atlantic in September. And the further leftward he moved, the more intolerant his rhetoric became.
With his "voting rights" speech in Georgia last week, Biden hit an atrocious low. The president who a year ago had beseeched Americans to see those with whom they disagree "not as adversaries but as neighbors," to "stop the shouting and lower the temperature," loudly slammed 52 senators who won't back his call to blow up the filibuster and pass his party's aggressive election bills as "domestic enemies" and acolytes of George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis. His language was so unhinged and intemperate that even his ally Dick Durbin, the Democratic Senate majority whip, deplored it.
At the one-year mark of his presidency, Biden is failing utterly at the singular task he set himself: to bring the nation together. In a new Quinnipiac poll, a plurality of Americans (49 percent) say that he is doing more to divide the country than unite it. Fully 64 percent of respondents in a CBS News-YouGov survey released Sunday say the word "unifying" cannot be applied to Biden's presidency. The president's failure is reflected in his own unpopularity: Just 33 percent of the public approve of the job he is doing, while 53 percent disapprove. I really expected better of the man. My bad.
https://jeffjacoby.com/25944/biden-is-failing-because-he-abandoned-his-mandate
*****************************************************M&M’s unveils new ‘progressive’ characters
M&M’s has unveiled a “progressive” overhaul of its iconic characters to better represent themes such as female empowerment.
The Mars-owned chocolate brand revealed the new look and feel of its multi-coloured, anthropomorphised characters Thursday, saying it was “on a mission to create a world where everyone feels they belong”.
“As an iconic brand that’s been around for over 80 years, it’s really important that we’re evolving over time as well, and one of the most powerful ways we can do that is through our beloved characters,” M&M’s global vice president Jane Hwang told Cheddar News.
“We’ve done a deep look at them both inside as well as out, in terms of reflecting new looks, personalities and backstories.”
The Green M&M has ditched her high-heeled boots for sneakers, and will “better reflect empowerment and confidence and be known for more than just her shoes”.
“You’re going to see Green and Brown together being a supporting force for women who are throwing shine and not shade,” Ms Hwang said.
Orange, meanwhile, will suffer from anxiety issues to better reflect young people.
“You’ll also Orange really embrace his true self, worries and all, and not be afraid to express it,” she said.
“We actually know Orange as the most relatable of the characters in the crew based on some conversations we’ve had with gen Z, which we know is the most anxious generation.”
The M&M’s website includes new “profiles” for the characters – Yellow, Red, Orange, Brown, Blue and Green.
“Which M&M’s character are you?” it reads. “The world needs all colours. Which one do you add to the mix?”
Green’s bio says her “best quality” is “being a hypewoman for my friends”.
“I think we all win when we see more women in leading roles, so I’m happy to take on the part of supportive friend when they succeed,” it says.
Ms Hwang said M&M’s would also be using a wider colour palette in its branding, and would be placing more emphasis on the ampersand in its name.
“It’s a distinctive element of the M&M’s logo that connects the two Ms together, and it’s really a signal of our belief as a brand that we are better together,” she said.
Reaction on social media was mixed. “I will no longer be buying M&M’s. I’ve had enough of this woke nonsense,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Nobody asked for this. Especially women who have loved the Green M&M for years. Bring back the boots!” another said.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
21 January, 2022
UK inflation jumps to 30-year high of 5.4% as cost of living crisis deepens
An old saying applies here. "When America sneezes, the world catches cold". For instance: Greenie thinking in the Biden administration has led to various attacks and restrictions on the oil industry. Fracking in particular has been hit. So while America was an oil exporter under Trump it is now a net importer.. So America now has to buy lots of oil from overseas. And, as ever, increased demand moves prices upward. But that higher price is paid by everyone, not just Americans. And that's inflation -- or at least a substantial part of it. Oil price rises have effects across the board
There are of course other upward pressures on prices worldwide. Supply chain problems caused by Covid and the government response to it are a major factor too
UK inflation has risen to a near-30-year high of 5.4%, driven higher by rising prices for food, furniture, clothes and housing costs. This deepens the country’s cost of living crisis, and heaps pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates at its next meeting in February, following December’s surprise hike.
Sterling rose 0.8% against the dollar to $1.3837 after the data, and was also supported by the surge in UK bond yields. The two-year gilt yield rose to its highest level since March 2018.
Related: UK inflation rises to highest level in almost 30 years at 5.4%
Related: Inflation is back, and there’s plenty more in the pipeline
Related: ‘I’m not getting through the month’: five Britons on the cost of living crisis
Crude oil prices are up for a fourth day and hit seven-year highs, after a fire on a pipeline from Iraq to Turkey briefly halted oil flows, raising fears about supply. Brent crude touched $89.05 a barrel, its highest level since October 2014 while US light crude climbed as high as $87.08, also the highest since then.
The explosion that set off the fire on the pipeline in the southeastern Turkish province of Kahramanmaras was caused by a falling power pylon, not an attack, a senior security source told Reuters.
European stock markets are trading between 0.2% (Italy) and 1% (France) higher. On Wall Street, US stock indices were boosted by upbeat results from a spate of companies such the consumer giant Procter & Gamble and the banks Bank of America and Morgan Stanley, which wrapped up the bank earnings season.
*************************************************
AT&T Gets Woke: 'White People, You are the Problem'
AT&T is getting woke....step two is to go broke...which is exactly what is going to happen if they keep up this nonsense.
In Christopher Rufo's latest article for City Journal, he exposed the communication company for teaching ideas that “racism is a uniquely white trait” and that white people are “the problem.”
Rufo is a leading reporter on the CRT-takeover of American companies and education.
He reported that AT&T’s CEO John Stankey launched a CRT-based program last year that sought to teach employees that the company has an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and to agitate for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”
“According to a senior employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues, with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises. White employees, the source said, are tacitly expected to confess their complicity in “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” or they will be penalized in their performance reviews.
As part of the overall initiative, employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to “keep pushing for change,” with suggested “intentions” such as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.” “If you don’t do it,” the senior employee says, “you’re [considered] a racist.” AT&T did not respond when asked for comment," Rufo wrote.
He also exposed the program's internal portal, which insists that white people are to blame for racism. It tells employees, “White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror.”
The portal also says, “White people, you are the problem. Regardless of how much you say you detest racism, you are the sole reason it has flourished for centuries.” Rufo also reports that the portal tells employees that “American racism is a uniquely white trait,” “Black people cannot be racist,” “ [white women} have been telling lies on black men since they were first brought to America in chains,” and that all whites “enjoy the opportunities and privileges that white supremacy affords [them].” Someone named Dahleen Glanton authored that page in the portal.
I am glad I have Verizon right about now.
https://dailypatriotreport.com/att-gets-woke-white-people-you-are-the-problem/
***************************************Judge rules against Michigan gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the mdhhs in lawsuit
Michigan’s proud residents have experienced some of the worst policy decisions in the nation. Only supplanted by certain excessive restrictions in New York and California, Michiganders have experienced the heavy hand of a power hunger governor.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer has bombarded Michigan people with an incessant number of tyrannical orders and restrictions. Nothing she has done has had any effect on case counts in her state. She is one of dozens of power hunger blue state governors who have abused COVID.
However, her orders have helped destroy hundreds of Michigan businesses. Nevertheless, one business may have helped to stem the tide of blue state governor destruction. The Iron Pig Smokehouse sued the state of Michigan, namely Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
The Northern Michigan restaurant sued to overturn Whitmer’s unscientific, tyrannical block on indoor dining. Otsego County Judge Colin Hunter ruled in favor of the restaurant’s managing partnership, Moore Murphy Hospitality LLC.
In November, at Whitmer’s order, the state health department closed indoor dining and placed a heavy restriction on capacity. The owner of the Iron Pig Smokehouse resisted. They defied the order, continuing to amass violations and the accompanying heavy fines.
The Gaylord restaurant filed a lawsuit in Otsego County District Court. The resulting decision by Judge Hunter is a welcome sense of relief for the thousands of businesses across the nation, business owners who have suffered through these unnecessary shutdowns.
The Iron Pig lawsuit requests $25,000 in damages. They allege, rightfully according to the Michigan Constitution, that Whitmer lacked the authority to impose such mandates. Judge Hunter says they are correct. Like other blue state governors, Whitmer violated her authority.
The court clearly indicated that “In order to have the full force and effect of law, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services emergency order must draw its authority from a lawful delegation of power.” The court focused on a precise constitutional question.
The ruling contends; the director of MDHHS did not have the authority to enact such a mandate, regardless of any order to do so from the Michigan governor. Furthermore, the ruling cited multiple precedents, establishing that the mandate violated the separation of powers.
In support of their legal argument, lawyers for the plaintiff drew on a Michigan Supreme Court ruling from last year. That ruling pointed to a 1945 case where it was ruled that a governor’s order to close bars and restaurants was unconstitutional.
Like every tyrannical lockdown and business closure leveled throughout liberal states, each is a violation of our constitutional rights. The evolution of COVID-19 has also proven these heavy-handed mandates to be unsuccessful at stemming any surge in cases.
These Draconian power grabs have done nothing but destroy American businesses. Thankfully, one Michigan judge applied common sense. Americans are exhausted from COVID-19. However, they are more exhausted by the senseless power grabs from liberal Democrats.
*********************************************
Trump Banned From Banking
This did not get much attention when it broke a few weeks ago, so here it is again …
Do you remember when they said this would only happen to Alex Jones and Laura Loomer?
Any student of history knows that once the tyranny starts, it never ends.
The fact that they have chosen to go straight to the top first, for the man who was President of the United States yesterday speaks volumes about how emboldened these corporate cartels are.
The Hill reported:
A Florida bank announced Thursday that it has closed down former President Trump’s account, joining a growing list of entities that have cut ties with the former president following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
In his financial disclosures, Trump had stated he had two money-market accounts with Banks United, The Washington Post reports. The accounts held somewhere between $5.1 million and $25.2 million.
“We no longer have any depository relationship with him,” said Banks United, without giving reasons for its decision to shutter the accounts.
Another Florida bank, Professional Bank, last week announced that it would be cutting ties with Trump, saying it would no longer conduct business with the former president or his organizations.
Signature Bank in New York and Deutsche Bank have also said they will no longer be conducting future business with Trump. Signature Bank notably took a strong stance against Trump and his allies in Congress, calling for him to resign and saying it would not conduct business with lawmakers who had objected to certifying the presidential election.
Deutsche Bank is seeking to resolve more than $300 million in loans, reportedly looking to offload the loans onto another lender due to the negative press their dealings with Trump has caused. Deutsche Bank’s relationship with the Trump Organization is under a civil investigation by New York attorney general Letitia James.’
Make no mistake, this will go down in history as one of the modern, digital, nights of the broken glass.
They did it to Trump … how long until they do it to me … or you?!
https://uafreport.com/mark/trump-banned-from-banking/
*************************************************What is the most brutal truth about Ayn Rand's beliefs?
Before I tell you what I consider the most obvious truths about Ayn Rand beliefs, I want to, first, dispel one of the most persistent myths about Ayn Rand, and also to fill out some context.
The myth is that Ayn Rand had been traumatized by the brutality of the Soviet regime; that her whole philosophy was supposedly a reaction to the horrors that she experienced in the early years of the USSR. The actual truth is (1) different; and also (2) complicated. The Soviet regime committed some astounding acts of brutality, but Rand experienced none of them. (And to the extent that she despised empathy, it is difficult to imagine that she was traumatized, or that her worldview was formed, by brutality that happened to other people.) Her family lost its pre-Revolutionary wealth, true, but that’s just one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that her parents chose to throw their lot with the new regime knowing exactly what it was all about; they invested in it — not unlike how many of my fellow Americans today are willing to part with fortunes to install Trump as dictator. The Rozenbaums had ample means to do what plenty of other wealthy Russians did as the situation in late-czarist Russia heated up: transfer their wealth abroad and become respectable white emigres. France, Germany, the US, Australia, Argentina, Brazil — all these were wide-open to people like Ayn Rand’s parents. They chose to stay in Russia. It was a calculated decision, and the family — including Rand — with the exception of the period from 1919 to 1921, when everyone in Russia had it bad — actually led a comfortable existence by Soviet standards of the early 1920’s. It was a decision with which Ayn Rand clearly did not agree, but this alone does not obviate the fact that Rand’s life in the Soviet Union was better and more privileged than the vast majority of its population at the time. For the record, she also was never a dissident and never ran into the sharp end of the Cheka. She may have despised them, but she never experienced their brutality personally.
The woman who would become known as Ayn Rand, was born Alyssa Rozenbaum in St. Petersburg in 1905. Her father was — according to some sources, including Rand herself, but by no means all — a wealthy pharmaceutical entrepreneur and, judging by his surname, and the fact that he lived and prospered outside the Pale of Settlement, a “cross-out” (vykrest) — someone of Jewish background who strategically converted to Russian Orthodoxy in order to escape the restrictions to which the Tzarist regime subjected Jews. Her mother reportedly was a crass social climber, who made no secret of the fact that she married Rozenbaum for his money, and openly lamented to her friends that she could have done better.
Little Alyssa attended an exclusive private school for girls. When she was ten years old, a teacher assigned the class a theme, “What I like about being a child”. The next day, Alyssa handed in a ten-page scathing denunciation of childhood. For the record, this was before the Bolshevik Revolution.
After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Rozenbaums fled to Yalta, which was under the control of the White Army, and where Alyssa and her two younger sisters continued to attend school. However, unlike most people of their economic standing (if not social class — the Rozenbaums were still Jews in the eyes of the Russian aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, no matter how hard they celebrated Christmas), they did not proceed to flee to Istanbul and from there to a new home in Western Europe, South America or the United States. I wonder if the resentment that Alyssa surely felt from being in a social no-man’s land — a Russian Orthodox Christian officially, but one of Hebrew extraction, who experienced no technical, legal disabilities but was still treated as a social inferior by the Russians and as an apostate by Jews — was the true cause of her “atheism”, rather than a profound self-examination. I say that simply because so much of what Ayn Rand believed seemed to be motivated by naked revanchism.
In any event, the Rozenbaum family could have emigrated … but didn’t. Instead, they returned to their native city, now patriotically/xenophobically renamed Petrograd. Most of what we know about this period of Ayn Rand’s life comes from Rand herself. Life was hard, which is something I believe, because Rozenbaum’s business had been confiscated, and the economy was a wreck. However, the misery that Russia endured during the period from 1919 to roughly 1921 was universal, and can hardly be blamed entirely on the Bolsheviks. The country had just emerged from its participation in World War I, which had plunged it into a deep recession and exhausted it both economically and in terms of the human cost. It was, following the Bolshevik Revolution, in the midst of a devastating civil war, in which the White Army, supported by foreign troops, attempted to retake power for the Tzar.
But, as the country emerged from this nightmare, the Rozenbaums … were doing okay, actually. They were living in Petrograd, apparently not afraid of persecution. Alyssa enrolled in Petrograd University, which was then the country’s most selective institution of higher learning. This, despite the fact that her high-bourgeois background should have disqualified her. Ironically, had it not been for the Revolution, Alyssa would not have been able to attend the university either: the Russian academia under the old regime utterly excluded women. It excluded women so hard, girls could not even audit courses in universities, never mind pursue degrees.
According to Rand, she and a bunch of other students were, in fact, expelled for being “bourgeois” a month before graduation, but then complaints by some “visiting foreign scientists” shamed the government into re-enrolling them, and she was able to graduate. This probably has a grain of truth in it, but on the whole, it sounds preposterous. Foreign luminaries sometimes — sometimes —succeeded in shaming the Soviet government into stopping persecution of people who were intellectual celebrities and well-known abroad. However, the idea of some random “foreign scientists” successfully pressuring the GPU (KGB forerunner) into leaning on the university to re-enroll a bunch of unknowns who weren’t even in science programs to begin with, does not sound credible to me. Nor does it sound credible that Alyssa and her friends so deeply impressed “some foreign scientists” with their intellectual conversation that said foreign scientists proceeded to get all up in the face of the GPU. It is indeed surprising that Alyssa was allowed to attend the country’s flagship university given her background, but this suggests far more strongly that her father informed for the GPU and its predecessor, the Cheka; and very likely Alyssa herself. (I am a former Soviet myself. My grandparents and their siblings lived through the same period of time as Ayn Rand, in the same places. One — indeed, the only — way to circumvent the Soviet regime’s discrimination against the former bourgeoisie was to become a snitch.) It also explains why the Bolshevik government apparently left the family in peace, and why Rand was able to obtain an exit passport and emigrate to the United States without triggering catastrophic consequences for her parents and sisters.
Incidentally, if you don’t know this already, do you want to take a wild guess what Ayn Rand majored in? If you guessed “philosophy”, God bless you, ye gullible creature, but no, sorry, no prize this time. She majored in social pedagogy. It was a new study track whose purpose was to pump out young ideological functionaries who would then create and operate a system for indoctrinating the older and more ossified Russian public in the new ideology and political culture.
As a former Soviet, who grew up when the wild immediate post-Revolutionary and Stalinist years were still within living memory, there is something that I find extremely exasperating when discussing Ayn Rand with Americans. Her fans in this country see no conflict between the facts that, on the one hand, she attended the most selective university in the early Soviet Union, was enrolled in a program for shaping ideological propagandists, and was able to publish an article; and, on the other hand, that she suffered brutal repression at the hands of the Bolshevik government. Those two things cannot, in fact, both be true, but alas, people living here have no idea what totalitarianism is actually like. In reality, the Bolsheviks quickly established a cast-iron death grip over the intelligentsia, particularly over who got to be in it. No way in HELL would this government have permitted a student to enroll in the social pedagogy track of Petrograd University unless she was thoroughly vetted, and those at the levers of power found her ideologically reliable. And someone of Ayn Rand’s background would have to bend over backwards to prove her reliability and ideological orthodoxy. This, more than anything else, tells me that Rand had an accommodation with the new regime, the regime which she would later claim was so odious to her.
Same thing with that Pola Negri profile Ayn Rand had published while still living in Soviet Russia.
The government absolutely controlled all publications. Everything was subject to thorough censorship. And, the regime totally controlled whose blatherings got to be published, particularly when it came to new authors who weren’t already known. Again, no way in hell would this regime allow the publication of anything by some young whipper-snapper from a bourgeois background unless its ideological police was certain the author would be a reliable, loyal propagandist. These restrictions would apply even to something as insignificant as a puff piece on Pola Negri. The fact that Ayn Rand’s profile of Negri got published once again demonstrates she was far more comfortably integrated into the Bolshevik regime than she would later let on.
I should mention as a side note that the only source for almost everything we know about Ayn Rand’s life before her immigration to the United States is Ayn Rand herself. Or, at least, the English-language sources are limited to Rand’s own claims and reminiscences. So how much weight to give these claims depends on how far you trust Ayn Rand to be truthful about herself and her antecedents. For instance, the fact that she wrote and published an article about Pola Negri while still in the USSR is easily verified. Her claim that she wrote a play at the age of eight, and her first novel at the age of ten? Not so much.
Was she really a St. Petersburg native? (That I believe. Her whole obnoxious, condescending, superior, more-intellectual-than-thou schtick was classically St. Peterburgian. Yes, I’m partly joking, and as a Moscow native, I just couldn’t resist; but, as the Russian saying goes, there is a bit of a joke in every joke.)
Was her father really a wealthy entrepreneur who had all his property confiscated by the Bolsheviks? English-language sources (based on Rand’s claims) all say so. But Russian-language sources reveal that Rand’s father was actually a drugstore manager — a salaried employee — but that he himself did not own any drugstores. He worked for a pharmacy owned by his brother-in-law. According to Russian-language sources, the Rozenbaum family was well-to-do and lived very comfortably, but it wasn’t nearly as rich as Ayn Rand would later claim, her father wasn’t an entrepreneur, and he owed what prosperity he had to corporate nepotism. The Rozenbaums — again, according to Russian sources — lived in a spacious (by standards of the time) apartment above the drug store in which Ayn Rand’s father worked. Another apartment in the building was occupied by Ayn Rand’s uncle-by-marriage, who also owned the drug store, so it’s a safe bet the uncle also owned the apartment in which Ayn Rand’s family lived. Dad had a good gig, but it seems dubious he had much in the way of property for the Bolsheviks to confiscate. As to the uncle’s fate, he disappeared from history after the Revolution, which I take to mean he took everything he could carry away and wisely skedaddled.
So I guess the most essential brutal truth about Ayn Rand was that she was willing to bend the truth, and sometimes probably to outright lie, to promote herself. And she possibly has done far worse, though this is admittedly speculation on my part based on some circumstantial stuff.
The brutal truth about Ayn Rand is that she became a teacher of evil. She wrote from an early age, so we have a pretty good idea of where she stood on various issues in her early twenties, no less than in her sixties. Her personality shows no evolution — a telling sign of the vacuity of her “philosophies”. From an early age, she admired serial killers, rapists and others who showed brutality to “the weak”, and despised the softer side of humanity, such as empathy, generosity or familial bonds. I would submit that the only reason she didn’t become a Nazi is that her Jewish background disqualified her. But apart from that, she was a fascist through and through.
As a writer, she was only successful because she wrote right-wing porn. Her writing is wordy, stiff and pompous. Her dialogue is wooden, her characters two-dimensional, and her stories boring. She also engaged in name-dropping. Her knowledge of Western philosophers was superficial, and she did not understand them, whether she criticized or purported to embrace their views. She was a moralist — not a philosopher. A moralist, and an immoral one at that.
She also clearly didn’t understand how the world works, or else she substituted her own wishful thinking for reality. She didn’t understand, for instance, the process of technological innovation. In her works, a tiny group of entrepreneurs know how to do all the things, which of course begs the question why they even have employees. But most of the world does not understand their inventions, or how to make their products. John Galt has invented a magic alloy, and he is literally the only one who knows how to make it. When he flounces, his entire industry craters, because literally no one else in the world knows how to make this magic alloy or understands the scientific writings he left behind.
This is, of course, horse****. The magic of science is done by teams of people, and depends heavily on the transfer, sharing and accumulation of knowledge. In the real world, the departure of an executive never leads to a company immediately collapsing. Apple continued to make iPhones even after Steve Jobs left; hell, even after he died. The idea that a handful of brilliant billionaires literally keep the civilization going is insane. And deeply, deeply stupid.
So these billionaires leave civilization and secret themselves in some very secluded locale. No one can find them, because, of course, now that they are gone, no one knows how to fly planes, read maps, analyze legal documents, monitor radio signals and so forth. Somehow these titans of industry are entirely self-sufficient in their “gulch” and never need to import anything from the outside. Perhaps therein Galt invented some magic farming and manufacturing methods which allowed these people to produce all the food, tools and goods they needed without getting their hands dirty, and still left them enough time to pontificate. In the absence of the hoi-polloi, who built their houses? Who cleaned them? Who cooked their food? Who babysat their children? Who treated their cancers? Who weaved their cloth and made their schmattehs? Probably they invented a magic solution to all of humanity’s needs, but humanity is not worthy of the knowledge.
The notion of Galt’s Gulch is laughable, except for how truly depressing it is to see so many supposedly smart people take it seriously.
The brutal truth about Ayn Rand was that she was an angry, obnoxious little snit, who invented an absolutely bizarre vision of how a civilized society should function and who appealed to the worst in people by extolling qualities that have been considered vices across history.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
20 January, 2022
'Racist' Teddy Roosevelt statue is removed from outside NYC's Natural History Museum
It's true that TR did share the disrepect for blacks that was typical of his era but that is a very minor aspect of what he said and did. He was a great patriot
A towering statue of President Theodore Roosevelt has been removed, under cover of darkness, from outside New York City's American Museum of Natural History - after more than eight decades on the museum's steps.
The 'Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt,' commissioned in 1925 and unveiled to the public in 1940, depicts Roosevelt on a horse, with a Native American man and an African man on foot at his side. It has been criticized by some as a symbol of colonialism and racism.
It was removed under cover of darkness in an operation involving a crane and tarpaulin around 1am on Wednesday.
The New York City Public Design Commission voted last June to remove it, the museum said on its website. Its new home will be the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, where it will remain on long-term loan.
In early December, two weeks after the removal was announced, the museum covered the statue under tarp and scaffolding.
The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, which is set to open in Medora, North Dakota in 2026, announced their agreement with the City of New York for a long-term loan two weeks ago. No information on how long the loan is intended to last for has been provided by the museum.
The Roosevelt statue was commissioned by the Board of Trustees of the New York State Roosevelt Memorial in 1929 and welcomed guests at the front of the American Museum of Natural History since 1940.
The statue has long been criticized, however, for its depiction of Roosevelt on horseback alongside a black man and Native American, which critics have said signifies a racial hierarchy in which Roosevelt stands higher than the other two.
*********************************************
'We Muslims in America undeniably have an increasing anti-Semitism problem'
A Duke University professor has called on his fellow Muslims to confront the 'increasing anti-Semitism problem' within their community in wake of the Texas synagogue terror attack.
Abdullah T. Antepli, a professor of the Practice of Interfaith Relations at the Duke Divinity School, took to Twitter Sunday saying members of his faith have a 'moral call for action for the soul of Islam and Muslim' to address the hatred towards Jews.
He also took aim at Rep. Ilhan Omar for over past anti-Semitic commentary, including a comment she made in 2019 suggesting that Israel’s allies in American politics were 'all about the Benjamins'. That was a reference to cash which was widely interpreted as an anti-Semitic trope, and which Omar later apologized for.
'We North American Muslims need to have the morally required tough conversations about those“…polite Zionists are our enemies…”“…The Benjamins!!!...” voices and realities within our communities,' Antepli wrote.
'We MUST! Without ands and buts, without any further denial, dismissal and or trivializing of the issues… we need to honestly discuss the increasing anti-Semitism within various Muslim communities.'
Antepli's comments come just hours after an FBI Hostage Rescue Team on Saturday night stormed Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas - near Fort Worth - ending a 10-hour standoff with police by accused gunman Malik Faisal Akram, who disrupted a Sabbath service and took the rabbi and three other people hostage.
Akram, 44, of Blackburn, England - who was reportedly armed with 'backpacks of explosives' - had demanded the release of convicted Pakistani terrorist Aafia Siddiqu - known as Lady Al Qaeda - who police say was referred to as his sister.
The four hostages were all released unharmed. After the incident, the Jewish community and President Joe Biden renewed calls to fight anti-Semitism.
The FBI has sparked fury after claiming that they had yet to find evidence that the attack was anti-Semitic.
'Houston! We have a problem,' Antepli tweeted. 'Not going anywhere….quite the contrary getting worse.'
He argued that North American Muslims need to hold honest discussion about anti-Semitism without any 'further denial, dismissal and or trivializing of the issues'.
The professor alleged the community has failed to address Jew-hatred 'honestly, morally and accurately'.
'I am really sick and tired of the over all defensiveness and tribal nature of our reaction to this alarming internal problem,' he wrote.
'We are better than this! We can no longer pretend the problems of anti-Semitism within us does not exist. There are more urgent moral calls than “Let’s not bring shame to our already vulnerable communities..”'
The professor also called out American leaders - specifically Omar - who he suggests further the anti-Semitism problem.
'The Benjamins,' he wrote, quoting a February 2019 tweet from Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, that caused outrage among her party and other leaders.
'Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team wrote at the time.
'We are and will always be strong supporters of Israel in Congress because we understand that our support is based on shared values and strategic interests. Legitimate criticism of Israel's policies is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate that the United States and Israel share. But Congresswoman Omar's use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel's supporters is deeply offensive. We condemn these remarks and we call upon Congresswoman Omar to immediately apologize for these hurtful comments.'
Omar apologized for for using old anti-Semitic tropes about Jews and money in her tweets but stuck to her guns in blasting the problems of lobbyists and their financial influence in politics.
'Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,' Omar said in a statement in 2019.
'My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole,' she added. 'We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize.'
'At the same time, I reaffirm the problematic role lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry. It's gone on too long and we must be willing to address it,' Omar added. She tweeted out her statement with the words: 'Listening and learning, but standing strong.'
Sunday, responding to the Texas hostage situation, Omar tweeted: 'Thank God for the freeing of the hostages. Blessings to the members of Beth-Israel synagogue and the entire community.'
She was just one of several lawmakers issuing their support for the synagogue and members of the Jewish faith.
*********************************************
The seductions of government
People have been conditioned to think in terms of entitlement because governments keep throwing 'free' things at them.
While we know these government giveaways are all paid for by someone, many recipients don't care about that. In their mind, they want benefits now without reaching into their own pockets.
Whenever an individual or group of people are so dependent on others for their dopamine hit, they are easily manipulated into compliance. When they complain, any threat to remove their access to that benefit prompts a change in behaviour.
That's where we are at now.
If you don't comply with government demands then you will lose the ability to use services, attend public houses or restaurants or funerals.
Once that principle has been established and accepted, then the coercion can be applied across all manner of circumstances.
In Germany, there are media reports that only triple jabbed people are now allowed to go to restaurants. In Queensland, only double jabbed people can attend the pubs and clubs. In the Northern Territory, the unjabbed are confined to their own homes.
Incredibly, most people accept these arbitrary decrees as if it is in their interest.
They aren't but in a society where government dishes out all the goodies, most will comply lest they lose the largesse of the gift giver.
That is the real danger of big government. In the worlds of former US President Gerald Ford; A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Email from Cory Bernardi
********************************************
Health fascism has become a Hollywood dystopian sci-fi
Some of you might recall the 2013 film Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. It is about a ravaged Earth in the future where the poor and medically deprived live, while the wealthy elites and medically protected live on a luxurious space station called Elysium that orbits around it. Max (Damon) is exposed to radiation and given only five days to live. The rest of the movie involves him trying to make it up to Elysium and get his much-needed healthcare.
Hmm, sound familiar? It should. The stuff of shocking dystopian novels and films is now fully upon us. Consider this – a good friend in WA just told me: ‘My dad is scheduled for surgery for cancer in a few weeks. The surgery has now rung my parents and said that he cannot have the surgery unless he has a first dose of the vaccine. Wow. They would just leave him to die of cancer instead.’
Wow indeed. Talk about heartless bastards and health fascists. The fundamental rule of medicine for millennia has always been, ‘First, do no harm.’ Refusing to treat patients because they are making informed health choices is wrong. Making them the subject of unjust discrimination is the height of cruelty and inhumanity.
Our various human rights’ charters make this quite clear. For example, Article 25:1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights says this: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.’
And the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights says a similar thing: ‘The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health’ (Article 12:1).
Yet countless individuals are now being denied medical treatment, and are being treated as second-class citizens when it comes to health care. Numerous states and nations are moving this way. Consider this headline from two months ago: ‘Singapore withdraws free health care for Covid patients who are ‘unvaccinated by choice’.
Thankfully, some are resisting these sorts of moves: ‘Australia’s peak doctors body has criticised an ‘unethical’ proposal to charge unvaccinated people for their medical care that is being considered by the New South Wales government.’
This denial of health care is morally repulsive. A few months ago, an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal by law professor John Coggon (also a member of the Bristol Population Health Science Institute, and an honorary member of the UK Faculty of Public Health) appeared.
He asked, ‘Should treatments for Covid be denied to people who have refused to be vaccinated?’ He offers five compelling reasons why we should never head down this path, and then concludes:
‘For any or all of the above reasons, it is not ethically justifiable to institute a policy of medical treatment prioritisation that discriminates between people on the basis of their willingness or otherwise to be vaccinated. Looking to moral judgment of patients would alter basic principles underpinning NHS care, and would wrong those whom it denied access to treatment. It would arbitrarily single out one irresponsible choice. And it would compound social inequities while missing its moral target and placing unfair burdens on healthcare practitioners. It should not feature in resource allocation decisions.’
The man I mentioned above had paid taxes all his life, and he is entitled to get the health care he needs and that he helped to subsidise. But sadly there are far too many stories like this that we learn of every day. It seems in the name of ‘keeping us safe’ and ‘not killing grandma,’ our policies are now such that not everyone will be kept safe, and we will deliberately kill (or let die) grandma and grandpa – and anyone else who does not comply.
Our governments – drunk on power and control – are fully involved in the creation of a two-tiered society where grossly immoral and unjust discrimination takes place at the most crucial of levels: in the access to basic goods and service, to travel, to education, and even to healthcare.
Our leaders are effectively saying, ‘You get the jab or else. Do as we demand or you can just die.’ Never mind the legitimate concerns so many have about the efficacy and safety of Covid vaccines. Never mind the human rights declarations that speak of the vital need for there to be no compulsion in medicine, and the need for full voluntary informed consent.
If hospitals and emergency rooms are not turning away those making irresponsible choices – such as drug addicts and heavy drinkers – it should not be turning away those who in my view are making very responsible choices about things like vaccination.
We now have a new class of lepers and untouchables who are being denied the basics of life – even healthcare. All because they believe in the fundamental human right to decide for themselves what healthcare they will receive. For refusing to have a questionable substance jabbed into their bodies (not just once, or twice, but perhaps in perpetuity), they are now being denied life-saving medical treatment – even for cancer.
In the case of Elysium, we had the evil Delacourt (Foster) forcibly preventing mere earthlings from getting access to healthcare. In Australia’s dystopia, we have McGowan in WA and other premiers doing much the same. We once simply read these books and watched these films for entertainment, knowing they were just works of fiction and science fiction. Little did we know that they in fact would soon become accurate depictions of government policy in Australia and the West.
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/01/health-fascism-has-become-a-hollywood-dystopian-sci-fi/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
19 January, 2022
Political Preferences and Public Policy
Emotions matter a lot more than policy in determining vote
Social scientists who study elections tend to assume that voters have public policy preferences and that parties and candidates design their platforms to conform with those preferences. In fact, the direction of causation (mostly) goes the other way. Members of the political elite draw up their platforms, and voters adopt the policy preferences of those candidates and parties.
Public policy issues are numerous and often complex, with compelling arguments on all sides. Meanwhile, citizens and voters, as individuals, have no influence over public policy outcomes, so they have little incentive to become informed.
Voters know that their one individual vote will have no influence over an election outcome. Think about this yourself. If you had voted for Joe Biden for president in the last election, who would be president today? If you had voted for Donald Trump, who would be president? And if you didn’t vote in the election, who would be president? The answer to all those questions is Joe Biden.
Realizing that their one vote will have no influence over public policy, voters vote for candidates and parties that make them feel good about themselves rather than considering whether the policies those candidates and parties support are good policies. If their friends or family members support a candidate, people get a good feeling of group solidarity by supporting that candidate. If voters think of themselves as having a certain ideology or political orientation, they will vote that way to reinforce that political identity.
Citizens and voters anchor on political identity. It might be a party, a candidate, or an ideology. Most of their political preferences are then derivative of that identity. People don’t think: I support a woman’s right to have an abortion, I support more gun control, I believe the government should be more involved in health care, and I think impediments to voting should be relaxed. Therefore, I am a Democrat. The reasoning goes the other way. People identify as Democrats; therefore, they support a woman’s right to have an abortion, more gun control, and so forth.
Citizens and voters adapt their public policy preferences from the political elite–the people who actually determine public policy. One implication is that citizens and voters have less influence over public policy than a romantic notion of democracy would suggest. The political elite tells voters what to think, and they fall in line behind their leaders.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/01/14/political-preferences-and-public-policy/
********************************************Washington Cashes In on Inflation
The country may be upset with inflation, but in many ways political Washington has never had it better. Covid-19 has been the excuse for record government spending and the abuse of regulatory power such as vaccine mandates and an eviction moratorium. And now we learn that tax revenue is rushing into the Treasury even as politicians plead poverty.
That’s the news you haven’t read about last week’s December budget review from the Congressional Budget Office. The budget gnomes report that federal receipts in the first fiscal quarter, from October to December, increased by a remarkable 31%. That’s a cool $248 billion increase to $1.05 trillion for the quarter.
Individual income taxes revenue soared by 55% in the quarter, or $189 billion, to $536 billion. Corporate income taxes rose 44%, or $30 billion, to $99 billion. Payroll taxes and a variety of other receipts, including a 16% increase ($4 billion) in remittances from the Federal Reserve, made up the rest.
This boom for the Beltway reflects the strong growth in nominal GDP. With 7% inflation, nominal GDP is increasing by double digits, which leads to higher nominal profits, wages and salaries. Washington gets the revenue windfall from taxes on those nominal increases even if average wages for workers falls behind inflation, as they did last year by 2.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A 7% rate of inflation is Christmas all year ’round for the federal government. State governments are also reaping revenue windfalls.
CBO says the federal government still had a $377 billion budget deficit in the first fiscal quarter as outlays increased 6%, or $75 billion, to $1.43 trillion. The spending increases came mainly from the pandemic-related transfer payments passed by Congress last March. That included increases of $59 billion in refundable tax credits (mainly the higher child allowance), $21 billion more for food and nutrition (mainly food stamps), and $18 billion more for schools.
The lesson here is that Washington doesn’t need a tax increase. As the economy grows, the revenue will keep flowing, even if the pace of increase slows. Even amid Covid’s Omicron variant surge, the economy is growing smartly and doesn’t need new spending. Everyone who wants a job can get one—or two. The economic problem is inflation, which is hurting workers even as it rewards politicians.
***************************************
HS Football Coach Fired for His Post-Game Prayers Will Have His Case Heard by the Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Friday it will hear the case of a former assistant football coach in Bremerton, Washington, who was removed from his job because he refused to stop praying on the field.
Joe Kennedy, a devout Christian who coached at Bremerton High School, started kneeling and offering silent or quiet prayers that evolved into him giving motivational speeches to players that frequently included religious content and prayer.
After a game in October 2015, Kennedy knelt on the 50-yard line. He was then surrounded by other coaches and players, as well as spectators who came onto the field from the stands.
A week later, after again praying on the field, he was placed on leave. The Bremerton School District did not re-hire him for the following season.
Kennedy sued. What followed was a series of lower court decisions that sided with the school district.
In 2016, a U.S. District Court judge in Tacoma declined to issue a preliminary injunction requested by Kennedy asking the court to have the school district re-hire him immediately.
In 2017, the Ninth Circuit ruled that Kennedy was not entitled to immediately get his job back because he took advantage of his position when he prayed on the field after games.
In 2019, Supreme Court declined to review the case in which the court’s conservative wing made its concerns known.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh that “the Ninth Circuit’s understanding of free speech rights of public school teachers is troubling and may justify review in the future.”
In 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Leighton ruled in favor of the school district’s motion for summary judgment and Kennedy’s lawyers appealed.
On Friday, the Supreme Court announced it would hear the case, according to The Hill.
Kennedy’s attorneys were pleased.
“No teacher or coach should lose their job for simply expressing their faith while in public,” said Kelly Shackelford, the head of First Liberty Institute, which is representing Kennedy, in a Friday statement after the nation’s highest court agreed to hear the case.
“By taking this important case, the Supreme Court can protect the right of every American to engage in private religious expression, including praying in public, without fear of punishment.”
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represents the school district, was less enthused about the Supreme Court taking the case.
She said the district had followed the law, characterizing Kennedy’s actions as “coercive prayers.”
“This case is not about a school employee praying silently during a private religious devotion,” she said in a Friday news release. “Rather, this case is about protecting impressionable students who felt pressured by their coach to participate repeatedly in public prayer, and a public school district that did right by its students and families.”
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The case is expected to be argued in spring, with a ruling to follow in June, NBC News reported.
*********************************************
The Senator Fauci Called a ‘Moron’ Is Now Publishing Disclosures Much of the Public’s Never Seen
The Republican senator who was mocked as a “moron” by Dr. Anthony Fauci has posted revealing details about Fauci’s finances on his website.
Based upon those documents and analysis by Adam Andrzejewski at Forbes, during the pandemic year of 2020 as many Americans were struggling to survive, the Fauci household raked in about $1.7 million overall.
During a Tuesday hearing, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said that Congress and the American people should be getting a full disclosure of Fauci’s finances.
“All you have to do is ask for it,” Fauci said. “You’re so misinformed, it’s extraordinary.”
Fauci later said the information Marshall seeks “is totally accessible to you if you want it.”
“We look forward to reviewing it,” Marshall said.
Then came a hot mic comment from Fauci. “What a moron,” Fauci said softly “Jesus Christ.”
Marshall then demanded copies of unredacted records of Fauci’s finances Friday. When he got them, he put them online, according to a news release on Marshall’s website.
“Dr. Fauci lied to the American people. He is more concerned with being a media star and posing for the cover of magazines than he is being honest with the American people and holding China accountable for the COVID pandemic that has taken the lives of almost 850 thousand Americans,” Marshall said in a statement on his website.
“Just like he has misled the American people about sending taxpayers dollars to Wuhan, China to, fund gain-of-function research, about masks, testing, and more, Dr. Fauci was completely dishonest about his financial disclosures being open to the public – it’s no wonder he is the least trusted bureaucrat in America. At the end of the day, Dr. Fauci must be held accountable to all Americans who have been suing and requesting for this information but don’t have the power of a Senate office to ask for it,” he said.
The documents on Marshall’s website cover a wide variety of income sources.
Andrzejewski, a Forbes contributor, posted a detailed analysis: He noted that over all, “the Fauci household’s net worth exceeds $10.4 million.”
The Fauci family income for 2020 totaled $1,776,479, he wrote, “including federal income and benefits of $868,812; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $113,298; and investment accounts increasing by $794,369.”
The Forbes post said Fauci’s investment account was worth $8.4 million and his wife’s investments came in at $2.1 million, with a variety of accounts contributing to that total.
“Some on the right have speculated that Fauci may have profited off the pandemic. The disclosures show that he’s invested in fairly broadly targeted mutual funds, with no reported holdings of individual stocks,” Andrzejewski wrote.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made $434,312 in salary in the 2020 fiscal year, while his wife, Christine Grady, the chief bioethicist at the National Institutes of Health, earned $234,284, Andrzejewski wrote, noting that the documents put the salary of Fauci’s wife at $176,000 for FY2020.
Figures for the 2021 fiscal year, which ended in September, have not yet been made available.
Writing for the Center for Public Integrity, reporter Liz Essley White noted that while the documents Marshall wanted are available if anyone is familiar with the rigmarole to get them, that does not mean the process is as transparent as it ought to be.
“It doesn’t need to be this difficult to obtain documents that the law gives the public the right to see. Congress could change this by requiring agencies to preemptively post the financial disclosures of high-level career officials like Fauci, as the government does for political appointees and senators,” she wrote.
To that end, Marshall has said he will file the Financial Accountability for Uniquely Compensated Individuals Act, or FAUCI Act, to make financial disclosure information easily available.
https://ijr.com/senator-fauci-called-moron-publishing-disclosures/
**************************************Trump is right. The election was rigged
David Flint
It was inevitable that 6 January would be used in a desperate attempt to breathe life into a regime undoubtedly America’s worst in living memory. Yet again, a compliant media beat up an incident which the authorities encouraged, one which resulted in no deaths attributable to the trespassers, but during which a Capitol police officer shot dead a female air force veteran without any apparent justification.
The mainstream media still report the untruth that President Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was compromised by widespread fraud. His claim is neither false nor is it restricted to fraud. It is centred on manifest breaches of the plain words of the Constitution which demonstrate, conclusively, that the election was rigged.
Not that the fraud was insubstantial. Despite media polling which could not have been more wrong, the election was significantly closer than in 2016. If only 22,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin were found to be Trump’s and not Biden’s, the Electoral College would have been tied with the decision constitutionally going to Trump.
Fraud seemed to be everywhere. A key example was the announcement on the night of the election, when Trump was clearly leading, that counting in key states would close because of a water leak in one place. Scrutineers (‘observers’) were sent home. Then, without re-calling the scrutineers, counting was resumed in the early hours. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s lead was dramatically and overwhelmingly reversed. Only a well-paid defence lawyer could say with a straight face, that this was not fraud.
Television viewers across the world were subsequently amazed to see a security video showing counting after scrutineers had been sent home, where boxes of votes were pulled out from under the tables. Viewers also saw scrutineers seated either at such a distance from the counting that they could see nothing, or outside the room with the viewing window papered over.
The respected African-American Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas makes the important point that the absence of strong evidence of systemic fraud is not, in itself, sufficient for the public to have faith in the integrity of elections.
‘Also important,’ he says, ‘is the assurance that fraud will not go undetected.’ The system has to be such that the declared results will be accepted by the losers.
Americans used to have this by adopting crucial reforms which have been undermined in recent years. These are the secret or ‘Australian’ ballot, a single election day, and the fair administration of the elections. Subject to an overriding legislative power vested in Congress, the Constitution makes it clear that it is for state legislatures, and state legislatures only, to regulate elections.
Invariably ignored by the mainstream media, the constitutional mandate in Article 1, Section 4, could not be clearer: ‘The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof…’.
A vast number of breaches of this provision by state governors, bureaucrats and often elected partisan state judges resulted in the whittling away of these key safeguards.
But both the secret ballot and the single election day are crucial to ensuring electoral integrity.
One notorious method was the mail-in ballot, especially where the roll is so questionable that it is even larger than the population of the constituency.
The vastly extended periods for voting and the receipt of mail-in votes makes a mockery of the longstanding legislative prescription of the election always being on ‘…the Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November’.
Discussing the results with a conservative Australian former politician sceptical about Trump’s objection, he asked me to suggest something he could read showing systemic electoral fraud.
Pointing out Trump’s objection was not just about fraud, I recommended he read the pleadings in the Supreme Court case, Texas v. Pennsylvania, where Texas and 17 other states alleged that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin violated the Constitution by changing election procedures through non-legislative means. (Today I would also recommend Mollie Hemingway‘s recent superb book, Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections.)
The Court squibbed hearing this case on a mere technicality. Apart from those brave souls, Justices Alito and Thomas, the judges must have been terrified about the violence likely to be unleashed by the Democrats’ terrorist arm, the BLM. After a summer of unmitigated violence, and for daring to hear an abortion case, Senate Democrat Minority Leader Charles Schumer made this threat from the very steps of the Court:
‘I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.’
(Schumer would be in gaol if he did that in Australia.)
As for the election, the real losers are not only the American people, but a world dependent on American leadership to defend freedom.
Through a rigged election, a corrupt establishment removed probably the greatest president since at least Ronald Reagan, in terms of achievement at home and abroad.
The establishment has waged a constant war against Trump from using a ‘paid-for’ fake dossier about Russian collusion to brief the electoral college in an attempt to overthrow the 2016 election, to the Obama administration, in its dying days, working out ways to protect officials who had lied to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign.
Their final success was to install an administration led by an under-achieving career politician, patriarch of a family demonstrably involved in the sale to foreign plutocrats, including Chinese communists, of access to and influence in the very heart of Washington, a betrayal of both the American people and the free world.
But they have not succeeded in their ultimate goal of destroying Trump and that for which he stands.
Now that Americans have seen what the establishment has planned for them, Trump and indeed Trumpism is, in terms of support, more unassailable than at its high point in 2020, which even those who rigged the election have to concede.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/01/trump-is-right/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
18 January, 2022
Why is it still considered OK to be ageist?
Lucy Kellaway does well below to set out the problem of unreasonable discrimination against old people. I am 78 myself but retired early from the workforce to concentrate on business so have had none of the problems described below.
Lucy does however ignore the elephant in the room when she looks at the cause of ageism. She is right in saying that older people do tend to have handicaps such as poor memories and discomfort with new technology but ignores a major problem: Appearance. Youth is the beauty ideal in our society. And that has its reasons. Our health is best in our youth and it is undoubtedly an exciting time with intimate relations. I had a ball for many years.
So for whatever reason, the physical appearance of the old counts against them A young person is felt to look better and more desirable as company. And that counts. Appearances count, and can count very heavily.
A graphic realization of that is the desperate attempt by many women to retain their youthful looks. Cosmetic empires are built on that. It's a reasonable recognition of the relevance of physical appearance in our society. People don't like an aged appearance and don't want it around themselves
In my own case my looks deteriorated at the expected pace but I was still doing well into my 60s. The crunch came in my 70s. When a long relationship came to an end, I had difficulty finding a new one.
So I don't think that rebelling against the limits of the aged will do much good. The aged themselves have to promote and demonstrate the assets they do have. And they are many. Some are mentioned in passing below. We have so many that it is rather churlish to rail against areas in which we have handicaps. We should be grateful for a life well-lived instead. And if our life was not well-lived we should look at why and accept what cannot now be changed -- JR
In September 2018 Ian Tapping, a project manager at the Ministry of Defence, called a meeting with HR. He had been in dispute with his employer and wanted to make a bullying and harassment claim. In the course of the conversation his HR manager asked when he intended to retire — Tapping, who was in his early sixties, subsequently quit and sued the MoD for age discrimination.
Last month he won his case. A judge ruled that it is illegal to ask someone about retirement plans unless they have raised the subject themselves, which had not happened in this instance. Such a question was ageist, said the judge, as it would not have been put to a 30-year-old.
The verdict was duly reported in the Daily Mail and the paper’s readers, who like nothing better than a spot of outrage, were well and truly disgusted. This country has gone mad, they exclaimed.
Given that the average Mail reader is only a couple of years younger than Mr Tapping, the hostility was odd. Ageism is so rampant that they are likely to have been the butt of it themselves. A 2021 World Health Organization survey found that every second person holds ageist attitudes, while according to the National Barometer of Prejudice and Discrimination, a 2018 study undertaken for Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, 26 per cent of people experienced age discrimination in a year.
Survey after survey establishes the same things: people over 50 find it harder to get job interviews (unless, perhaps, they are applying to be president of the US) and are more likely to be eased out of existing jobs.
The ruling last month seems an obvious case of progress. It rightly puts retirement on a par with pregnancy — over the past couple of decades, employers have learnt not to ask a young woman when she plans to have a child, unless they want to end up in court. Now it turns out that the same principle applies to older workers.
This may require quite some adjustment, as that sort of question is asked all the time. When I discussed the case with a 56-year-old friend, she said her boss at the world-famous consumer goods company where she works had that very week asked: “Am I correct to assume you intend to be on the organisational chart at the end of 2022?” Which was a fancy way of implying he would not be sorry if the answer was no.
Not only will employers have to adjust, they will need to do so snappily, as there are so many more older workers about. In 2012, a quarter of the UK workforce was over 50 — by 2050 it will be over a third. On average, men in the UK now work till 65, two years longer than in 2000. Women now retire on average at 64, up from 61 20 years ago.
Although ageism is everywhere, few victims choose to do a Tapping and take their employers to court. Even though it has been illegal in the UK to discriminate on the basis of age since 2006, such cases make up only a negligible percentage of the overall workload of employment tribunals. “It’s still under the radar,” says Lyndsey Simpson, founder of the employment website 55/Redefined, “because people don’t want to go on the record. They think they’ll be attacked and they think it will be career-limiting. I’ve lost count of the number of men who are turned down for jobs and are told: you are overqualified, or you don’t meet our diversity requirements.”
Last month, when 62-year-old Adam Boulton left his post as political editor of Sky News, he told the Times it was by “mutual decision” and that the channel was concentrating on “the next generation”. He added: “Television is very sensitive to the idea of diversity.” There seemed to be no irony in his remark — the thought that true diversity should also include age had not occurred either to him or his employer.
Not only is age the poor relation in diversity policies, it is still perfectly acceptable in polite society to be rampantly ageist. In The Atlantic last month was an article bemoaning the fact that America no longer generates big ideas in culture, science or business. One reason for this, said the writer (35), was that the people in charge were getting older — and older people were not so good at coming up with new ideas. If he had said that women were less creative, he would have been cancelled on the spot. But this aspersion, which he made little attempt to stand up, sailed through all checks and balances and, once published, caused minor grumbling rather than full-on fury.
Our blindness to ageism is particularly puzzling as it is a prejudice not against people who are different from us (other races, genders etc) but against our future selves. According to Ashton Applewhite, the US anti-ageism campaigner and author, this hostility is a product of fear. We dread getting old because we overexaggerate the risk that we will end up in an old people’s home, senile and smelling of pee.
Fear may be part of it, but there is something else going on too. The ageism against my generation — I am 62 — feels personal. We aren’t allowed to feel discriminated against because we’ve had it so good.
I mentioned this article to a 25-year-old friend at the school where I teach. She rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t feel bad for you boomers. You guys have got the pensions. You’ve destroyed the climate. I live in a rented flat with illegal cladding — you live in a huge house. All the power structures in society benefit you. How many top people in companies or politicians are under 30?”
I pointed out that 2m older people in the UK live below the poverty line. I said older people are expected to tolerate discrimination of a sort that other groups are belatedly being freed from. She scoffed; I challenged her to unload her view of boomers.
“Technophobes! Narrow-minded!” she began.
“Borderline alcoholics! Stuck in your ways! Terfs!” chimed in another twentysomething who shares the same office.
The first then added: “But it’s not all bad. You guys are useful for advice on mortgages.”
OK, I thought, age discrimination cuts both ways. “Snowflakes!” I yelled back at them. “Entitled! Lazy!”
In a way, the slanging match was fun and was a sign of how well we get on. These are my two best friends at school and mostly we seem to be a living example of why age diversity at work is good for everyone. We all agree that our differences make our working lives better (as well as being good for our students). But our debate made me uneasy and left me wondering if there is some ugly stuff lurking under the surface.
***************************************************
Judge Deems WI Election Commission’s 2020 Election Behavior Unlawful, Drop Boxes Illegal
Ballot drop boxes don’t necessarily imply fraud, but they open the door to the possibility of fraud. The possibility of election fraud creates doubt in the integrity of the election process. It’s as simple as that.
The absentee ballot drop boxes widely deployed in Wisconsin during the 2020 election have been ruled unlawful by Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Michael Bohren, according to Just the News.
According to Bohren, the Wisconsin Election Commission overstepped its authority in issuing instructions to election officials concerning the use of drop boxes, sent out in March 2020 and again in August 2020.
The WEC guidance had enough potential impact on the election process to require approval by the state Legislature. The Legislature never got the chance to approve it. Bohren called the WEC’s move a “major policy decision that alter[s] how our absentee ballot process operates.”
The judge ordered the WEC to recant the instructions in a ruling that could have a large impact on Wisconsin’s midterm elections. The ruling will likely be appealed.
This isn’t the first time the WEC has found itself in hot water.
Racine County sheriff’s investigators found evidence of voter fraud at a local nursing home last year, according to Just the News. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling accused the WEC of not only allowing but encouraging nursing home staff to fill out ballots for residents.
It doesn’t end there.
The WEC, on its own authority, ruled that voters could invoke the status of “indefinitely confined” in order to cast absentee ballots. Because of this, 250,000 people were allowed to vote without adhering to standard voter ID requirements. The “indefinitely confined” status was rarely invoked until the WEC ruling.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court found that the WEC erred in allowing voters to invoke the “indefinitely confined” status if they did not, in fact, have a severe illness or disability.
******************************************
RNC Warns: Democrat Election Reform Essentially ‘Freedom to Cheat Act’
Republican leaders are warning against the left's push for federal election reform, declaring that the Freedom to Vote Act is essentially a ploy to cheat elections.
“We call it the Freedom to Cheat Act,” explained Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said of the Freedom to Vote Act during a call with reporters.
“It eviscerates state voter ID laws, which 36 states have passed,” she continued. “This bill eliminates states’ more secure voter ID requirements, replacing them with a process that is rife with fraud.”
Breitbart reports:
The sweeping bill would order states with voter ID laws to widen their accepted forms of voter identification to allow for several alternatives, including forms of identification that do not contain a photo.
The influential conservative thinktank Heritage Foundation, which has actively been lobbying states to tighten their election processes, deems “model” voter ID rules to be those that require voters to present a government-issued ID that contains a photo and makes clear that the voter is an American citizen when they go to cast their ballot. In December, Heritage scored states on this metric and found six states, including Georgia — a state that has become ground zero in the fight over election laws — received perfect scores in regard to voter ID laws specifically. Another 22 states received at least partial credit or more for their voter ID laws.
“Democrats don’t want free and fair elections. They want elections only Democrats can win," added National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. Rick Scott.
“We’ve watched this last year, they’ve had a difficult time, the Democrats, passing their radical agenda so they want to change the rules,” he said. “They want to change the rules so they can ban voter ID, even though it’s very popular around the country.”
********************************************
Waukesha Massacre Undermined the Charlottesville Myth
The sound of screams replaced the music as a red Ford Escape slammed into the crowd, killing six people and wounding more than 60 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on Nov. 21. Amid the bloodbath that evening were dead and dying victims as old as 81 and as young as 8. Their killer, Darrell Brooks, a 39-year-old black man and Black Lives Matter supporter, had deliberately driven into them. The Christmas parade slaughter was everything that the establishment claims Charlottesville was.
The Waukesha bloodbath fell out of the news and down the memory hole overnight, presumably because it recalled too vividly the events in Charlottesville during the 2017 Unite the Right rally, and suggested unwelcome comparisons. While Waukesha did not elicit ruling class outrage, Charlottesville has become part of our national mythology, a day of shame for millions of Middle Americans. It has been used to justify destroying historic American national symbols and to further empower the regime that dominates our lives, lest we repeat that awful day.
The most obvious difference between the two incidents is also the most inconvenient one for an establishment built upon political correctness. James Fields, who was 20 when he drove into a crowd at Charlottesville, did not, though troubled, have a previous criminal history. He is also white.
Brooks, however, boasts a formidable list of criminal acts spanning two decades and across multiple states. When he struck in Wisconsin, Brooks had an outstanding warrant related to a sex offense in Nevada. And, in a video unearthed on Twitter, he admitted to impregnating a minor and to being a child sex trafficker. That’s just for starters.
Documents obtained by the Daily Mail reveal that Brooks shot his nephew in July 2020 in the heat of an argument over an old cell phone. His bail was initially set at $10,000, but Milwaukee County judge David Feiss lowered it to $500. Brooks was out by February 2021. According to Fox News, three months later while out on bail, Brooks was arrested in Georgia after he savagely beat the mother of his child.
Six months later, upon his release by Georgia authorities, Brooks capitalized on the charity of the criminal justice system when, on Nov. 2, he punched and ran over the same woman, this time in Milwaukee. Brooks was booked the next day, but prison wouldn’t hold him long, even though the red flags were flying. A pretrial risk assessment dated Nov. 5 certified him as a severe public threat. Nevertheless, he posted a $1,000 bond on Nov. 11, the same day he was scheduled for a plea and sentencing hearing related to the July 2020 incident.
Less than three weeks later, Brooks plowed into the crowd of mostly white parade goers in Waukesha, purposely aiming for people and avoiding vehicles. The town’s black police chief, Daniel Thompson, who helped lead a protest in Waukesha during which his officers knelt before Black Lives Matter demonstrators amid the June 2020 riots in that city, told the local press he was unsure about Brooks’ motive.
However, the killer’s political views and Facebook posts provide unmistakable clues. Brooks had posted about “knocking out white people” and enslaving them. He explicitly supported Black Lives Matter, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black supremacist group. Brooks even bragged about being a “terrorist” in one of his rap songs.
Still, the authorities claim that Brooks was merely leaving the scene of his latest domestic dispute, although they admitted that police were not pursuing him at the time. They say he passed a side street which would have taken him around the parade, and that he intentionally penetrated barriers intended to stop traffic. Brooks showed no remorse after the slaughter.
In an open letter to the media, his mother blamed the system for his crimes. Brooks is mentally ill, she said, and should have received treatment, but instead got a “jail cell.” Had Brooks truly received what he deserved at the hands of Milwaukee County authorities, six people would still be alive and scores more would not have been seriously injured by Brooks’ Nov. 21 attack.
His mother’s statement also undermined Brooks’ appeals for sympathy. “Darrell did not come from a bad family like many people have said. He came from a loving Christian family and is the grandson of ministers,” she wrote. In other words, Brooks had been given every chance to succeed by his family and the justice system. Still, Brooks only pities himself. “I just feel like I’m being [made out to be a] monster—demonized” and “dehumanized,” he told Fox News Digital in his first jailhouse interview.
It took a slaughter of innocents for Court Commissioner Kevin Costello to slap Brooks with a $5 million cash bail, which the Milwaukee branch of Black Lives Matter attempted to raise to free Brooks. Costello assured the public that the “extraordinarily high” bail was warranted, as if he needed to explain himself for not giving Brooks his umpteenth chance, which is far more than what James Fields received.
Given Fields’ background, one would think he should have received the same compassionate touch with which the media has covered Brooks. In 1996, before Fields was born, a drunk driver killed his father. He grew up a quiet but troubled kid who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of six. He was admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice by the time he was 10, diagnosed with schizoid personality disorder, and his social life was characterized by isolation and limited social interactions outside of his relationship with his disabled mother.
A high school teacher with whom he was close said Fields “was a very bright kid but very misguided and disillusioned.” He noted Fields’ flirtations with radical ideas: “I feel like I failed and that we all failed.” Fields’ mother reported fits of violence to the police when he was in the eighth and ninth grades. She told officers that he was on anger medication. But Fields quit taking those drugs when he learned that they would prevent him from joining the military—a recruiter reportedly explained that he needed to drop the medication.
After graduating in 2015, Fields managed to enlist but washed out a few months later. He worked as a security guard making $10.50 an hour when the Unite the Right rally was organized to prevent the removal of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville. Fields had been off his medication for two years by that time.
Skirmishes erupted on the first day of the rally, Aug. 11. The second and final day would be one of utter chaos, where right-wing protesters and left-wing counter-protesters were seemingly encouraged to fight. According to FactCheck.org, the ACLU of Virginia tweeted on the evening of Aug. 12 that the Charlottesville police had been ordered “not [to] intervene until given command to do so.” The president of a New York Black Lives Matter chapter told a CNN affiliate that the “police actually allowed” both sides to “square off against each other” while watching from afar. “It’s almost as if they wanted us to fight each other.”
In the aftermath, the city commissioned a report prepared by Timothy Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney in Virginia, to review the mistakes made by law enforcement. It noted that on Aug. 12, just before Fields accelerated into the crowd of counter-protestors, the Charlottesville Police Department called medics to a parking lot where a militia member had been hit with a rock in the head. The police left the scene once the ambulance departed, and the militia members also prepared to leave as counter-protestors descended on them. “Aerial footage shows that one of their cars accelerated to flee the counter-protestors, nearly running one of them over,” the report states. “The crowd of counter-protestors reacted angrily, kicking and swinging objects at the car,” while others were seen “chasing on foot” as it sped away. The report mentions other instances of counter-protestors harassing rallygoers in their vehicles and blocking traffic while swarming the streets.
When Fields attempted to drive out of the area, he encountered a large crowd in the street between him and the intersection where two other cars were waiting. Footage of the incident shows Fields slowing down a bit on the approach, although a counter-protestor had previously confronted him with a rifle, which presumably had him on edge.
In a since-deleted Facebook post, Dwayne Dixon, a leftist UNC teaching assistant professor and an Antifa member, bragged: “I used this rifle to chase off James Fields from our block of 4th St. before he attacked the marchers to the south.” As Fields neared, the crowd appeared calm—until a counter-protestor hit the back of his Dodge Challenger with what appeared to be a baseball bat and Fields slammed down the accelerator. When the dust settled, one person would die alongside 35 wounded.
Unlike Brooks, Fields was immediately denied bail. Though he and much of the GOP have remained silent about Waukesha, South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott declared the Charlottesville crash “an act of domestic terror” within three days. Since Fields had no criminal record, the prosecution relied heavily on his political views and social media posts to establish motive—all things that have been deemed out of bounds in assessing Brooks’ motives.
Nor did Fields’ documented history of mental illness matter, though it has become central to the Brooks narrative. During Fields’ trial, as reported by The Hill, prosecutors stated, “In sum, any mental health concerns raised by the defendant do not overcome the defendant’s demonstrated lack of remorse and his prior history of substantial racial animus.” Mental illness is for violent nonwhites; peckerwoods are diagnosed with “white rage.”
In the end, Fields, a young first-time offender, received two life sentences without the possibility of parole and an additional 419 years on top of $480,000 in fines. A jury also found the rally organizers liable and put them on the hook for more than $25 million in damages.
Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm, the man who admitted that Brooks’ bail was set “inappropriately low,” had, some years earlier, conceded that someday his liberal policies would get someone killed. “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet,” Chisholm told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2007. According to TMJ4 News, in 2021 alone, 10 other domestic abusers tried by Chisholm had cash bonds set at $1,000 and subsequently went on to commit additional felonies while awaiting trial, just like Brooks. A complaint to remove Chisholm was filed by Milwaukee County taxpayers in mid-December, which Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers promised to review.
Every society has myths that underpin its religious, moral, and social regulations. They explain why we must speak, think, and act a certain way. The myth of Charlottesville is intended to brand ordinary Americans with a mark of shame. It is by way of such shaming that the ruling elite gains power and legitimacy. A little thing like the Waukesha massacre cannot be allowed to undermine that.
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/waukesha-massacre-undermined-the-charlottesville-myth/
********************************************Liberal City Gets Dose of Reality After Raising Minimum Wage to $19.50/Hour
I’m not quite sure if it’s the majority position among conservatives when it comes to minimum wage, but my opinion is that there should be no minimum wage.
Whatever an employer offers and whatever an employee accepts as wages should be between them and the government should have no say whatsoever.
It’s not that I believe that workers should be paid less, I think they should be paid what they’re worth and what they mutually agree upon. If a guy is willing to work for a lesser wage because the job doesn’t require much effort and he just wants that easy sort of life, then so be it. He can always say no and go somewhere else, but someone might be happy with that.
So often I’ve seen job postings in which they don’t mention what the pay for the position is. This seems like an absolute waste of time. What sort of employee are they looking for?
I think businesses should be upfront about what they’re willing to pay and the people who come to apply for that job has that expectation that this will be how much they earn.
That said, the left believes that the minimum wage should be higher. In some cases, they think it should be much higher. I’ve seen some people say that the minimum wage should be upwards of $20-$30 per hour. This is pure insanity and would bankrupt businesses and destroy our economy completely.
One city, however, had a taste of what that looks like after the minimum wage shot up to $19.50 per hour.
According to The Blaze,
Portland is currently under a citywide COVID state of emergency, something the City Council had an opportunity to repeal last month, but refused. That failure meant the state of emergency would still be in effect come Jan. 1, which was the date that the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ordered the city’s hazard wage to take effect.
Because Portlanders demanded a minimum wage hike and their City Council refused to take responsibility and repeal the city’s state of emergency, every employer in town was suddenly forced to pay workers at least $19.50 per hour. And they would have to continue to do so until the council got its act together.
Thankfully some business owners and their supporters were willing to make a stink over the whole ordeal.
The Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce made its voice heard, telling its members to let the City Council know what they thought.
“Large chains will be able to absorb the added costs of a $19.50 minimum wage, but small businesses in Portland will not be able to absorb these costs without direct increases in prices or cuts to services and staff,” the chamber said, according to the Press Herald. “This strikes directly at our local economic self-reliance and makes it just that much harder for local organizations to compete.”
Some business owners expressed concerns and said that minimum wages of $19.50 per hour would mean they would have to leave Portland because that just becomes unsustainable.
Eventually, the City Council voted 8-1 last week to lift the state of emergency and thereby cut the minimum wage by $6.50 to $13, effective Jan. 13 or Jan 14
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
17 January, 2020
Being logical, rational and reasonable is no defence against Leftist hate
Nathan Cofnas
According to the mainstream narrative about race, “white supremacy” is an all-controlling social force responsible for bad outcomes such as racial disparities. According to an alternative narrative popular on the far-Right, Jewish influence is a similarly powerful force, which explains outcomes disliked by those on the Right, such as multiculturalism and mass immigration.
Last year, I published a paper in the Israeli philosophy journal Philosophia arguing that both the woke and the far-Right narratives are wrong and rooted in similar errors. I focus on the work of Cal State Long Beach psychologist Kevin MacDonald. MacDonald argues that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy,” and that Jews were a necessary condition for the triumph of liberalism, which he sees as bad for white gentiles. His approach is similar to that of MSNBC anchors who cherry-pick (real or imagined) examples of racism and then spin fanciful stories about how these isolated cases illustrate a “system” of “white supremacy.” MacDonald points to examples of prominent Jews promoting liberalism, ignores prominent liberal gentiles, and claims to find evidence that Jewish liberals are secretly motivated to undermine gentile society for the benefit of their co-ethnics.
In my paper I address three specific false claims made by MacDonald and other advocates of the anti-Jewish narrative: Jews (a) are highly ethnocentric, (b) hypocritically promote liberal multiculturalism for gentiles/Western countries but not for Jews/Israel, and (c) were responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the US.
Why bother refuting MacDonald? Why not just dismiss him as an antisemite? There are at least three reasons to engage with him. First, some respected scholars have (publicly or privately) endorsed his ideas. Second, Jewish influence is a legitimate topic for scientific investigation, and his theory cannot be dismissed a priori. Third, he has been enormously influential on the far-Right, and many of his readers interpreted the lack of a refutation as proof that there are no good arguments against his views. So both scholarly and political considerations dictate that he should be given a fair hearing.
On January 1st, MacDonald’s reply to me, “The ‘Default Hypothesis’ Fails to Explain Jewish Influence,” appeared online in Philosophia. I strongly agree with the decision to publish this. If there are compelling reasons to publish my side of the debate, then the other side should be given a chance to make its case. MacDonald’s response meets the normal standards of publishability, ergo it should be published. Mainstream scholarship in all areas with which I am familiar (philosophy, psychology, nutrition, etc.) often distorts sources, cherry-picks facts, and the like. The fact that MacDonald’s scholarship displays these flaws does not, therefore, seem like a sufficient reason to deny him (but no one else) the right to reply to criticism.
But many philosophers do not think that controversial ideas should be discussed—let alone defended—in academic journals. And so the backlash swiftly followed. On January 2nd, Philosophia’s associate editor Moti Mizrahi called on the editor-in-chief Asa Kasher to “reconsider” the publication of MacDonald’s paper, then resigned in protest.
The next day, University of South Carolina philosophy professor Justin Weinberg, who runs a popular philosophy blog called Daily Nous, wrote a post attacking Philosophia, MacDonald, and me.
When I first started writing on conspiracy theories about Jews, I thought this would win me some political correctness points. After all, I say there is not a Jewish conspiracy! But, as I discovered, that’s not how it works. The only way you’re allowed to criticize a politically incorrect idea is to call its proponents a slur ending in “-ist,” “-ite,” or “denier.” If you try to provide evidence against it then you are guilty of taking the evil idea seriously and therefore just as doubleplusungood as someone who actually believes it. Luckily, I don’t care about gaining political correctness points, or I would live my life very differently.
The original version of Weinberg’s post (archived here) begins with the calumny that both MacDonald and I agree that “Jews insinuated themselves into positions of power and influence, ‘transforming America contrary to white interests.’” This is of course the opposite of what I argue. As I say in the abstract, one of the three main points of my paper is to refute the claim that “Jews are responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the United States.” And I have never framed my critiques of leftism in terms of “white interests.” After I complained, Weinberg revised his opening sentence slightly. But his post still says that the fact that an Israeli journal published these papers must pose a challenge to “presumptions of [the] debate” that both MacDonald and I accept—as if I, too, believe in a Jewish conspiracy to censor discussion of Jews.
This is not the first time Weinberg has spread such lies about me after I crossed an ideological red line. In 2020, for example, he published a guest post falsely claiming that I support racial segregation in education. Once again, thousands of philosophers will read an outrageous lie about me. Weinberg did this without even providing a link to my paper where people could see what it actually said and quickly discover that he was misrepresenting it.
Nor did Weinberg provide a link to MacDonald’s paper, which he portrayed as a mad, nonacademic, antisemitic rant. (I will say more about this misrepresentation in a moment.) Many philosophers in the Daily Nous comments section and on social media have said that MacDonald’s paper should be retracted and/or that this isn’t a legitimate topic for discussion in an academic journal. But no one produced good arguments for these positions.
In one of the most upvoted comments on Daily Nous, SUNY Buffalo philosophy professor Lewis Powell notes that MacDonald’s work “has been roundly rejected by his own former institution, at the level of his department all the way up to the entire academic senate.” For Powell, this is an important reason “why we shouldn’t engage [MacDonald] academically.” If you’re looking for an idea that’s not worth considering, I cannot think of a better example than we shouldn’t discuss X because X has been rejected by some faculty senate. (After I pointed out how ridiculous this is, Powell denied saying what he clearly said.)
Powell also blames me for “elevating [MacDonald’s] non-serious non-academic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories into more serious academic venues by engaging them.” Other commenters similarly compare MacDonald’s work to theories like flat-earthism that do not merit serious discussion. But here’s the thing: MacDonald’s work is not like flat-earthism, nor is it “non-academic.” I have suggested that his arguments are based on “systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts.” But, as I mentioned earlier, so is a great deal of mainstream scholarship that is published without controversy. MacDonald provides quotes and evidence—most of which are not completely made up—that on the face of it seem to support his case. An intelligent, informed reader cannot immediately know what’s wrong with his arguments. If MacDonald had employed his talent for misrepresentation and cherry-picking in the service of wokism—if he concluded that whites rather than Jews are the source all of the world’s problems—he would have had a distinguished career publishing in leading journals.
Lingnan philosophy professor Derek Baker suggests that “a journal could adopt ‘We’ll publish any controversial idea—except Nazi conspiracy theories’, as its editorial policy, and that would work fine.” Although this might sound good in theory, such a policy might not be so fine in practice. Virtually all conservatives have views that would be considered in some broad sense to be “Nazi conspiracy theories” by many liberal academics. Every Republican president and presidential nominee since World War II has been compared to Hitler by many on the Left. (It didn’t start with Trump.) The 2024 Republican nominee, as well as everyone who votes for him or her, will no doubt be seen by many academics as “literally Hitler.” Even liberals who deviate slightly from woke orthodoxy—such as Kathryn Paige Harden, who acknowledges that genes play a role in individual differences in ability and personality—are sometimes accused of holding Nazi views. Who is going to decide what views count as “Nazi conspiracy theories” that are disqualified from discussion in journals?
Under the editorship of Asa Kasher, Philosophia has been one of the few respected journals in the field that is open to publishing work defending genuinely controversial views. Not coincidentally, it has also featured some of the most interesting philosophy papers in recent years. The fact that it is an Israeli journal run by Jewish editors makes the publication of MacDonald’s paper a particularly bold statement: all sides of a debate should be heard, and we are not afraid of Kevin MacDonald’s arguments.
https://quillette.com/2022/01/13/philosophers-want-to-censor-kevin-macdonald/
****************************************************Hillary Clinton criticizes 'white moderates' with quote from MLK after Senators Sinema and Manchin backed the filibuster and killed Biden's voting rights plans
Hillary Clinton took a thinly veiled dig at Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin on Friday, tweeting out a Martin Luther King quote about 'the white moderate' who ends up blocking 'the flow of social progress.'
It came less than 24 hours after the two holdout senators effectively killed President Biden's hopes of pushing through voting rights legislation.
As if there were any doubt at what she meant, she cheekily added: 'This is a subtweet.'
After combining to first weaken and then stop Biden's huge Build Back Better spending plans last year, the two centrist senators on Thursday restated their opposition to reforming the Senate's filibuster rule.
That meant Biden and his party lieutenants would need 60 votes to steer through his package of voter protection measures - an impossible task given Republican opposition.
Clinton, a former Democratic presidential candidate, offered the words of King in response.
'MLK Jr. said: “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress,"' she tweeted.
'This is a subtweet.'
King's line - taken from his 1963 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' - set out his disappointment with some white people allied to the civil rights cause, who said the right things but balked at the direct methods necessary to get results.
*****************************************
Another Muslim hater with a conspiracy theory about Jews
A woman who who worked as a volunteer with victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster and claimed on Facebook that victims of the blaze were 'burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice' has been found guilty of stirring up race hate.
Tahra Ahmed, 51, posted 'virulently' antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, with one sent just days after the fire in West London that claimed the lives of 72 people.
An Old Bailey jury deliberated for eight hours to find her guilty - by a majority of 11 to one - of two charges of stirring up racial hatred by publishing written material.
During the trial, prosecutor Hugh French said Ahmed's posts in January and June 2017 had 'crossed the line as to what is acceptable in a liberal society'.
On June 18, 2017 - four days after the disaster - she posted a video on Facebook of the blaze and referred to it as a 'Jewish sacrifice'.
She stated: 'I've been at the scene, at the protest and at the community meetings and have met many of the victims...some who were still in the same clothes they escaped in.
'They are very real and genuine, their pain and suffering is raw and deep and their disgusting neglect by authorities continues.
'Watch the footage of people trapped in the inferno with flames behind them.
'They were burnt alive in a Jewish sacrifice.'
Ahmed went on to link Grenfell to an antisemitic conspiracy surrounding the 9/11 terror attacks in New York in 2001.
On June 18, 2017 - four days after the disaster - she posted a video on Facebook of the blaze and referred to it as a 'Jewish sacrifice'. Pictured: Grenfell Tower ablaze on June 14, 2017
An earlier post, on January 26 2017, also set out an antisemitic conspiracy theory, jurors were told.
Police launched an investigation after a story was published in The Times newspaper on December 11, 2017, focusing on some of those who attended public meetings after the fire.
An examination of Ahmed's Facebook account revealed a history of antisemitic comments, the court heard.
Mr French said that, while Ahmed's Facebook account demonstrated 'strongly held beliefs', the two posts identified were 'clear demonstrations of racial hatred'.
The prosecutor said: 'Looking at the language of the posts, the crude racial stereotyping and the insulting tone, the Crown say that you can infer that she posted them either intending to stir up racial hatred (or) that racial hatred was likely to be stirred up.'
**********************************************
Land of the free? Liberty has dwindled for most Americans over past 20 years because federal government has encroached on freedoms previously decided by individual states
Americans' freedoms have been gradually eroded over the last 20 years, a new study has found, with the COVID-19 pandemic giving local officials more power over everyday life.
A new study by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank that promotes individual liberty, limited government and free markets, has assessed each of the 50 states under 23 different categories and produced an overall ranking.
The most and least free states are unchanged - New York being the least free, followed by Hawaii and California, and New Hampshire, Florida and Nevada being the most free.
The three least free states all have Democrat governors; two of the three freest states have Republican governors, except Nevada, ruled by Democrat Steve Sisolak.
William Ruger and Jason Sorens, the Cato Institute researchers who compiled the annual report, said that their analysis showed individual liberties were being curtailed across the board.
'Although the rights of some have increased significantly in certain areas, for the average American, freedom has declined generally because of federal policy that includes encroachment on policies that states controlled 20 years ago,' they state.
They looked at factors that varied depending on the state - such as taxation, marriage restrictions, rules around wearing seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorbikes, and marijuana and gambling laws.
New Hampshire, whose motto is 'live free or die', unsurprisingly came at or near the top on most metrics - although they were at the bottom of the rankings for land use and marriage equality.
'We ground our conception of freedom on an individual rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and property as they see fit, so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others,' the authors wrote.
'This understanding of freedom follows from the natural-rights liberal thought of John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Robert Nozick, but it is also consistent with the rights-generating rule-utilitarianism of Herbert Spencer and others.'
Florida was ranked the freest state, with no individual income tax. 'Florida does especially well on economic freedom, and even more so on fiscal policy,' the authors write. 'Indeed, it is our top state on both.
Florida is followed by Tennessee and third New Hampshire.
'The Volunteer State lacks an income tax, and both state and local tax collections fall well below the national average,' the report notes.
New Hampshire's overall tax burden is well below the national average at 8.1 percent. The state government taxes less than any other state but Alaska.
The average individual income tax rate for all taxpayers is 13.3 percent, according to a Tax Foundation report from February 2021.
All three states have Republican governors.
EDUCATION
Arizona, Florida and Indiana are leading the way when it comes to education, taking into account requirements and restrictions for private and homeschools.
The most restrictive states are North Dakota, ranked 50, followed by Nebraska and Michigan
'North Dakota remains the very worst state in the country for educational freedom,' the authors write.
'Private schools and homeschools are both more harshly regulated than anywhere else, and the state has no private or public school choice.'
The Cato Institute recommends that Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, eliminate teacher licensing, mandatory state approval, and detailed curriculum requirements for private schools, and reduce the notification and record-keeping burdens on homeschooling families.
Maryland - ranked 46th for educational freedom - 'is one of the least free states in the country, and it has had this status since the beginning of our time series in 2000,' the authors write.
Homeschools and private schools are tightly regulated, the latter more so, thanks to mandatory state approval and teacher licensing.
The state raised the years of compulsory schooling from 11 to 12 in 2014, and then to 13 in 2017.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
16 January, 2022
The Chinese are insecure about their eyelid shape
In a remarkable example of a cultural cringe, Chinese have taken Western eyes as the ideal. It is common throughout Asia among those who can afford it to have their eyelids "done" by a plastic surgeon. They beat themselves up over it
Chinese netizens have been debating about “squinty eyes” in the last few weeks. The debates centred on a series of advertisement posters from Three Squirrels, a Chinese snack maker, featuring a model with small, narrow eyes.
At the heart of the controversy is the perception by some Chinese netizens that these ads invoked the “slanted eyes” stereotype associated historically with Western racism against Asians. On that basis, they accused Three Squirrels of being “unpatriotic” and “insulting China”.
The Three Squirrels controversy is not an isolated instance. Recently, Mercedes Benz and Dior also came under fire for depicting models with small, narrow eyes in their ads. Chinese animated film I Am What I Am, a story about a boy and his friends chasing their dreams and becoming lion dancers, have come under attack for the eye shape and size of the main characters.
Hypersensitivity
This torrent of outcry underscores China’s political and social environment. Deteriorating relations between China and the US, paranoia about external and internal enemies, Chinese state propaganda, and social media dynamics have made the soil conducive for nationalist discourse.
The Chinese party-state and a portion of the Chinese public have become hypersensitive to perceived insults. This hypersensitivity is hurting China’s relations with the broader world and eroding political tolerance at home.
Yes, the “slanted eyes” stereotype has a long history of association with Western racism against Asians. One prominent example of this is the fictional character Fu Manchu, the personification of the “yellow peril” threat to Western society.
And, indeed, the label “slit eyes” and its associated pulled-eye gesture are highly offensive to Asians even though Western mainstream societies no longer consider Asian eye features as a mark of racial inferiority.
Regardless, today’s racists, like their predecessors, tend to assert their superiority by exaggerating minor variations in human genetics. A slightly more pronounced epicanthic fold becomes “slit-eyed”; a slightly different skin tone becomes “yellow”.
But the Chinese critics are overreacting. They are projecting their nationalist agendas, paranoia and sensibilities onto the aesthetic expressions and intentions of others.
In the case of Three Squirrels, this is a local Chinese company selling to Chinese consumers. Why would it intentionally “insult” its customers by getting into bed with Western racism? It makes no sense whatsoever. A better explanation is that the company was trying to capitalise on international fashion trends.
Some idiots have attacked the model featured in the ads for her looks, labelling her “unpatriotic”. How can the features of one’s eyes be “unpatriotic”? Can the shape of a cloud or the contours of a mountain be “unpatriotic”?
In the eyes of the beholder
Large, double-lid eyes are considered beautiful by the Chinese mainstream. This preference is so strong that millions of young Chinese feel the need to undergo double eyelid surgery every year. Some critics have internalised this preference so deeply that they seem incapable of comprehending that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder: “are you telling me some people find small eyes beautiful? That’s absurd!”
The more sophisticated critics argue that the Three Squirrels controversy underlines the cultural and aesthetic hegemony of the West. They say that China needs to fight western oppression by developing its cultural and aesthetic confidence. Central to this narrative is the idea that bad apples in China are helping the West by self-Orientalising.
But this argument is fatally flawed. First, the standard of beauty varies across time and cultures. For much of China’s dynastic history, tiny feet and small eyes, for example, are considered physically appealing. The mainstream standard of beauty in China today is a distinctively modern product, one heavily influenced by western material culture and aesthetics.
Second, despite calls for emancipation, these critics are having the opposite effect: enforcing conformity of aesthetic expression. Ironically, their aesthetic intolerance is stigmatising their compatriots with small, narrow eyes, the very features that were used historically by Western racists as symbolism for Asian degeneracy.
Moreover, times have changed, aesthetic tastes have shifted, and aesthetic symbols are being repurposed. Small, narrow eyes and other Asian physical features have actually become cool among many Western youngsters due to the global influence of Asian culture.
Yet, some Chinese critics are trapped in the past. Unable to transcend their own prejudices and ignorance, they fail to see the transformative potential of embracing diversity.
A mature society allows space for political and aesthetic pluralism. The Chinese don’t need any more shackles on freedom of expression, including self-imposed ones introduced in the name of liberation.
https://www.neican.org/brief-103-big-eyes-small-heart/
*************************************************Why Voter ID Requirements Make Sense
Last March, 220 of the 221 Democrats in the House—but not one Republican—voted to pass the For the People Act.
The introduction to the bill claimed it had the following purpose: “To expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.”
“Congress also finds that states and localities have eroded access to the right to vote through restrictions on the right to vote including excessively onerous voter identification requirements,” said the bill.
One section of the bill carried this title: “Permitting use of sworn written statement to meet identification requirements for voting.” It says:
Except as provided in subsection (c), if a state has in effect a requirement that an individual present identification as a condition of receiving and casting a ballot in an election for federal office, the state shall permit the individual to meet the requirement—(A) in the case of an individual who desires to vote in person, by presenting the appropriate state or local election official with a sworn written statement, signed by the individual under penalty of perjury, attesting to the individual’s identity and attesting that the individual is eligible to vote in the election; or (B) in the case of an individual who desires to vote by mail, by submitting with the ballot the statement described in subparagraph (A).
“The [Election Assistance] Commission,” the bill said, “shall develop a preprinted version of the statement described in paragraph (1)(A) which includes a blank space for an individual to provide a name and signature for use by election officials in states which are subject to paragraph (1).”
So, if this bill were to become law, a person could simply sign a preprinted government form and drop a ballot in a mailbox without presenting anyone with an identification.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., has offered a slightly stricter bill in the Senate. It is called the Freedom to Vote Act.
One part of this bill is headlined: “Voter Identification and Allowable Alternatives.” It says in part: “If a state or local jurisdiction has a voter identification requirement, the state or local jurisdiction—(A) shall treat any applicable identifying document as meeting such voter identification requirement.”
“The term ‘applicable identifying document’ means, with respect to any individual, any document issued to such individual containing the individual’s name,” the bill says.
It then stipulates that this document can only have expired within the past four years. “The term ‘applicable identifying documents,’” says the bill, “shall include any of the following (so long as that document has not expired or, if expired, expired no earlier than four years before the date of presentation).”
Some of the “applicable identifying documents” then listed in the bill are completely reasonable: “A driver’s license or an identification card issued by a state, the federal government, or a state or federally recognized tribal government.”
Some are more dubious: “A bank card or debit card.”
So, if this bill became law, a debit card that expired in 2021 would be a valid identification for someone voting in 2024.
It is not unreasonable in the 21st century to require people who want to vote to demonstrate that they are legally eligible to do so by presenting a valid form of identification.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/01/12/why-voter-id-requirements-make-sense/
**********************************************The Great Re-sorting Is Here
Americans have been fleeing the most liberal states in mass numbers. Those numbers are about to increase even more.
Between July 2020 and July 2021, approximately 352,198 residents of New York state embarked for warmer climes. Over that same period, the District of Columbia lost 2.9% of its population. California lost 367,299 people via net domestic migration. Illinois, another failing blue state, saw a net domestic out-migration of 122,460 people.
Where did all these blue state refugees go? To red states, of course. Texas picked up 170,307 Americans migrating from other areas. Florida picked up 220,890 people. Arizona picked up 93,026. Idaho had the fastest annual population increase in the nation.
The only region of the country to gain population was the South, which now holds 38.3% of the total population of the country—and which picked up 657,682 Americans migrating from different areas. The Northeast is now the least populous region in the United States, and saw a net population decrease of 365,795 residents. All net increase in population in the West was due to births and international migration, not domestic moves.
It’s not just individuals—it’s companies. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, just signed the largest-ever lease in downtown Austin for floors 34 through 66 of the tallest tower in the city. Elon Musk has relocated his company headquarters to Texas. My own Daily Wire relocated in 2020 from California to Nashville, Tennessee.
In other words, red state governance is a magnet; blue state governance is a disaster. Yet blue states cannot change course. They cannot simply jettison their adherence to failed ideas like single-payer health care or voting for illegal immigrants. To do so would be to acknowledge error. And so instead, they are banking on unearned moral superiority—virtue signaling—to fill the gap where good governance should be.
Thus, red states are grandma-killing hellholes (where blue state legislators vacation); red states are brutal suppressors of voting rights (where Stacey Abrams wants to run for governor again); red states are filled with vicious dog-eat-dog trickle-down capitalists (who must be taxed to pay for national spending programs).
None of this is bound to convince Americans to vote Democrat. It’s not designed to do so.
Democrats have banked on a consistent electoral strategy since former President Barack Obama’s 2012 victory—the strategy of driving out a base comprised of minority voters and college-educated women. But that strategy is collapsing—as Ruy Teixeira, once the nation’s leading proponent of that strategy, admitted in November, “If Hispanic voting trends continue to move steadily against the Democrats, the pro-Democratic effect of nonwhite population growth will be blunted, if not cancelled out entirely, and that very influential Democratic theory of the case falls apart.”
It’s falling apart in real time. But Democrats can’t pull out of the tailspin. They’re too invested in the lie that their programs are popular to notice how many Americans are calling up U-Haul.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/01/12/the-great-re-sorting-is-here
***********************************************49 Pro-Life Groups Urge Senate Opposition to Biden’s Nominee for FDA
A coalition of pro-life organizations expressed opposition Wednesday to the confirmation of President Joe Biden’s choice to run the Food and Drug Administration, saying the nominee has used selective research to push approval of mail-order abortion pills and to ignore their risks.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on Biden’s nomination of Dr. Robert Califf to be FDA commissioner. Califf previously served in the position during the final 11 months of President Barack Obama’s administration, from Feb. 22, 2016, to Jan. 20, 2017.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Califf would replace Dr. Janet Woodcock, who has served as the acting commissioner for the past year.
While Califf was at the FDA helm, the agency in 2016 reduced the reporting and safety requirements on chemical abortions, making a pregnant woman’s death the only adverse event the FDA required to be reported. Previously, the FDA had required that severe, life-threatening adverse reactions be reported.
In December, the Biden administration’s FDA moved to weaken long-standing safety regulations against mail-order abortion drugs to allow for at-home use without medical oversight.
“Now, the Biden administration seeks your consent to return Dr. Robert Califf to the top spot at the FDA, where he will be asked to approve mail-order chemical abortion,” says the coalition letter from 49 pro-life leaders, spearheaded by the Susan B. Anthony List. “With a track record of rubber-stamping abortion industry demands and with permanent authorization of unsafe mail-order abortion hanging in the balance, Califf is the wrong choice for FDA commissioner. We urge you to vote ‘no’ on his nomination.”
The coalition letter notes that during Califf’s confirmation hearing in front of the committee, he didn’t address his role in weakening safeguards against the abortifacient drug.
“Instead, he told the committee that he trusted that any decision made by the FDA would be based on the best available data,” the coalition letter says. “There is a cruel irony in the fact that FDA data is ‘woefully inadequate’ data, due to Califf’s own decisions while serving as FDA commissioner during the Obama administration.”
The “woefully inadequate” reference was to a 2021 study published on the approval of chemical abortion medication that said:
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System is woefully inadequate to determine the post-marketing safety of mifepristone due to [the system’s] inability to adequately assess the frequency or severity of adverse events.
The reliance solely on interested parties to report, the large percentage of uncodable events, the redaction of critical clinical information unrelated to personally identifiable information, and the inadequacy of the reports highlight the need to overhaul the current [Adverse Event Reporting] System.
The coalition letter notes that even with the lack of data, there were 20 reported deaths from chemical abortions and about 600 life-threatening emergencies, and more than 2,000 other severe events reported.
“Califf has a record of putting the abortion lobby’s extreme agenda ahead of women’s safety and the lives of unborn children,” Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement Wednesday. “There is little doubt he will permanently authorize mail-order abortions if confirmed to lead the FDA. The Senate must protect mothers and children by rejecting his nomination.”
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
14 January, 2022
George Monbiot does not like Britain's attempt to rein in Gypsy lawlessness
George is a veteran Green/Leftist. He thinks "mobile people" should be given free land and their chronic criminality should be ignored
At last, we are waking up to the astonishingly oppressive measures in the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, intended to criminalise effective protest. At last, there has been some coverage in the media, though still far too little. The Labour party is finally feeling some heat, and may find itself obliged to stop appeasing the Daily Mail and vote against the government’s brutal amendments in the House of Lords next week.
But as we focus on this threat, we’re in danger of forgetting something else buried in this monstrous bill. It’s the provision that turns trespass from a civil into a criminal offence, allowing the police to arrest people who are Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (GRT) and confiscate their homes, if they stop in places that have not been designated for them. Under the proposed law, any adult member of the group can be imprisoned for up to three months. Given that authorised sites and stopping places cannot accommodate the GRT people who need them, this is a deliberate attack on a vulnerable minority.
Put these elements together – the curtailment of protest and the persecution of a minority, alongside blatant corruption and barefaced lies, the bypassing of parliament and the new power in the nationality and borders bill enabling the government arbitrarily to remove people’s citizenship – and you see the makings of an authoritarian state. These measures look horribly familiar to anyone cognisant of 20th-century European history. But they also have deep roots in Britain’s peculiar brutalities.
Similarly, people who are Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have been deprived of places where they can lawfully stop, and then punished for the absence of provision. According to a study by the Community Architecture Group, between 1986 and 1993 roughly two-thirds of traditional Travellers’ sites, some of which had been used for thousands of years, were blocked and closed. Then, in 1994, John Major’s Criminal Justice Act granted the police new powers against GRT people stopping without authorisation. With a cruel and perverse twist, the same act repealed the duty of local government to provide authorised sites, and removed the grant aid funding these sites. Partly as a result, a recent study by the group Friends, Families and Travellers found that, of the 68 local authorities they surveyed, only eight had met their own identified need for Gypsy and Traveller pitches. Though there is a long waiting list of GRT households seeking authorised sites and stopping places, official pitches have declined by 8% in the past 10 years.
Now the new bill would enable the police to confiscate people’s vehicles (in other words their homes) on the mere suspicion of trespass. When their homes have been seized and their parents arrested, GRT children are likely to be taken into care. The police bill would deprive this minority of everything: homes, livelihoods, identity, culture, even their families.
And, like the homeless people trapped between the Vagrancy Act and the housing qualification, it would put people who are Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in an impossible position. To apply for an official pitch, you must demonstrate “proof of travelling”. But if you don’t have access to official pitches, travelling will put you outside the new law. In other words, it is not a particular behaviour that is being criminalised. It is the minority itself.
The new authoritarianism meshes with a very old one, that harks back to an imagined world in which the peasants could be neatly divided into villeins (good) and vagrants (bad), where everyone knew their place, geographically and socially. Of course, the demonisation of mobile people, whether Roma or asylum seekers, does not extend to the government ministers and newspaper editors who might shift between their pads in London and their second homes in Cornwall or Tuscany. It’s about the rich controlling the poor, as if democracy had never happened.
**************************************
How This Labor Department Nominee Threatens 59 Million Workers
According to a study by Upwork, 59 million Americans, or 1 in 3 workers, performed independent work in 2021. And 9 out of 10 of them believe that “the best days are ahead” for freelancing.
(Freelancing, independent work, contracting, gig work, and self-employment all describe work that individuals perform independently instead of for a traditional employer).
But that could all change if the Senate decides to confirm David Weil to run the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division.
Weil’s track record in that same position under the Obama administration, and his statements and efforts to attack independent workers, would not only dampen their bright outlooks, but could put their entire livelihoods and ways of living on the line.
Independent work was growing even before the pandemic, as a desire for more flexibility and autonomy caused some people to shift from traditional employment to independent work. The pandemic has only increased the desire for greater flexibility and autonomy. In 2021, 56% of non-freelancers said they are likely to freelance in the future.
Another factor contributing to the rise in independent work is that the be-your-own boss model opens doors to work for people who otherwise couldn’t work. In 2021, 55% of independent workers said they were not able to work for a traditional employer because of personal circumstances such as their health or child care needs.
Independent workers are also significantly happier with their jobs and work-life balance, with about half of independent workers saying that no amount of money would cause them to switch from freelancing to traditional employment.
Many businesses—especially smaller ones—rely heavily on independent contractors to grow and compete with bigger companies. Employers with four or fewer employees use seven contractors, on average, to run their businesses.
Yet, the policies advocated by Weil deny that working for oneself could be better than working for a traditional employer and having one’s workplace conditions, compensation, and hours universally set by a labor union.
One of the Biden administration’s and Weil’s primary goals it to implement the PRO Act—a Big Labor wish list that includes upending independent contracting.
But that’s just the start. Among other things, the PRO Act would also: take away workers’ privacy and their right to a secret-ballot election; upend the labor market by overturning the franchise business model; invalidate 27 states’ right-to-work laws; and legalize secondary boycotts (subjecting neutral businesses to union-led strikes, boycotts, and harassment).
With most of the PRO Act’s radical agenda not possible through regular order nor through the reconciliation process, a Wall Street Journal commentary noted, “The White House will deputize the Labor Department to implement as much of it as possible through regulatory fiat. Weil would be a chief enforcer, and history shows he won’t be shy.”
Weil’s tenure over the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division under the Obama administration included regulatory measures that made it harder for people to work for themselves and harder for businesses—especially smaller ones—to grow and thrive.
The attack on franchise businesses under Weil—based on an academic paper he wrote about it as opposed to any real-world experience—was estimated to have cost franchise businesses as much as $33.3 billion annually, reduced employment by 376,000 jobs, and caused a 93% spike in lawsuits against franchises.
The Trump administration undid that damage—rightly determining legal liability based on whether a company has direct and immediate control of a worker. But now, the success and survival of thousands of franchise brands—including about 730,000 individual franchise operations and 8.4 million workers—could be on the line, including 39% of female franchise owners who say they would not have been able to own their business without the franchise model.
And Weil has proven his audacity to ignore statutory limits of administrative authority. If confirmed, Weil will likely attempt to revive his previous overtime exemption rule that was determined “unlawful” by a federal court in 2016. The judge in that decision—Obama-appointee Judge Amos L. Mazzant III—said, “the department exceeds its delegated authority and ignores Congress’ intent.”
The labor market is incredibly strong right now and a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic has been increased flexibility, autonomy, and more family-friendly workplace policies. Most workers don’t want to step back two years in time, less yet more than half-a-century to the one-size-fits-all industrial-era union model Weil wants to impose.
Moreover, with agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration already overstepping their statutory authority through vaccine and testing mandates on private employers, Congress shouldn’t arm the Department of Labor with someone who has proven his penchant for overstepping authority.
**************************************************
Who Is Ray Epps? DOJ Won’t Say
Top federal law enforcement officials have declined to answer numerous questions about Ray Epps, the Arizona resident captured on video encouraging Jan. 6, 2021, protesters to breach Capitol Hill.
Controversy has surrounded Epps in recent months due to questions about his possible connection to law enforcement. Despite video evidence of him making repeated calls for action, Epps hasn’t been charged in relation to the Jan. 6 incident, and his photo has been removed from the government’s list of most-wanted people from the event.
The Democratic-led House committee investigating the breach reportedly stated on Jan. 11 that it has interviewed Epps, and that Epps denied any connection to law enforcement.
But at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier that day, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) were unsuccessful in obtaining answers about Epps.
Cruz asked Jill Sanborn, FBI assistant director for national security, 10 questions about Epps and other potential undercover feds, none of which received substantial answers.
Sanborn admitted that she is aware of Epps, but said she doesn’t have “specific background for him.”
When Cruz asked whether Epps worked with the FBI, Sanborn declined to answer—likewise for when Cruz asked about whether federal informants participated in the riots, encouraged the riots, or removed barriers.
“I cannot answer that,” Sanborn responded to each query.
“Five seconds after Mr. Epps whispered to a person, that same person began forcibly tearing down the barricades. Did Mr. Epps urge them to tear down the barricades?” Cruz asked.
“Similar to the other answers, I cannot answer that,” Sanborn replied.
Cotton asked a similar line of questions to Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of DOJ’s national security branch.
Olsen said he wasn’t aware of any plainclothes officers among the Jan. 6 crowd, and that he didn’t know whether any undercover agents entered the Capitol.
“Your answers are all ‘I don’t know,’” Cotton said. “Did you prepare for this hearing? Did you know it was happening before this morning?”
Olsen also said he didn’t have any information about Epps.
“This was a man on the most-wanted page for six months. Do you really expect us to believe that you don’t know anything about him?” Cotton asked
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/who-is-ray-epps-doj-wont-say_4205684.html
*************************************************Joe Biden's workplace COVID-19 vaccine mandate blocked by US Supreme Court
The US Supreme Court has blocked President Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccination-or-testing mandate for large businesses, with the conservative justices deeming the policy an improper imposition on the lives and health of many Americans.
Mr Biden voiced disappointment with the conservative-majority court's decision to halt his administration's rule requiring vaccines or weekly COVID-19 tests for employees at businesses with at least 100 employees.
Mr Biden said it was up to states and employers to decide whether to require workers "to take the simple and effective step of getting vaccinated".
The court was divided in both cases, centring on pandemic-related federal regulations at a time of escalating coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant in a nation that leads the world with more than 845,000 COVID-19 deaths.
It ruled 6-3 to block the rule involving large businesses — a policy that applied to more than 80 million employees.
The court's majority downplayed the risk COVID-19 specifically posed in the workplace, comparing it instead to "day-to-day" crime and pollution hazards that individuals face everywhere.
The court said it was not an ordinary use of federal power, but instead "a significant encroachment on the lives — and health — of a vast number of employees."
The court said the rule affecting large businesses, issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),
"Permitting OSHA to regulate the hazards of daily life — simply because most Americans have jobs and face those same risks while on the clock — would significantly expand OSHA's regulatory authority without clear congressional authorisation," the court added.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
13 January, 2022
Strange bigotry about red hair in England
In other places that I am aware of, red hair is more likely to attract positive comment. My father was a redhead and he was almost always addressed by a nickname that referred to his red hair: "Bluey" And no offence was intended or taken
The report below refers to "Britain". That is sloppy. It is the English who are the offenders. There are far too many redheads in Scotland for red hair to be a significant issue there
So why are the English often so hateful about red hair? I think it is because red hair is exceptionally common in Scotland and Ireland -- historic foes of England in war. Old prejudices die hard
An amusing report below about redheads having more sex. My very lively first girlfriend was a 16-year old redhead and there have been four redheads in my life -- two of whom I married
UPDATE: I am still in touch with that 16 year old Australian girlfriend -- now in her '70s -- and she confirms that her red hair has been all good in its effects
Red-haired children need more protection from gingerism and prejudice, a human rights charity has claimed.
Bullying people for their barnet was not 'harmless banter' and leads to abuse and suicide, Equalities and Human Rights UK said.
They said the discrimination has been present for thousands of years across the world but was 'particularly acute' in Britain.
It comes after a teaching assistant was fired for bullying including one case where he joked about a child's hair colour.
CEO of Equalities and Human Rights UK Chrissy Meleady slammed the idea of it being a 'laugh to belittle, demean and abuse' red-haired children.
She claimed it can be 'very harmful stripping these children of their positive self-identity and confidence' and could lead to 'trying to die by suicide'.
She told the Sheffield Star: 'Bullying red-haired people is one of the last socially accepted forms of prejudice against people for a trait they were born with, researchers say.
'It's not 'harmless banter' researchers say, due to the consequences and adverse impact of the bullying.
'Whilst it might be seen as a laugh to belittle, demean and abuse these children for being red haired or their phenotyical characteristic, it can be very harmful stripping these children of their positive self-identity and confidence and worse it can lead to school refusal, health problems, self-injurious behaviour and even children wanting and trying to die by suicide.'
Ms Meleady told how a family physically abused their baby for its ginger hair because they thought it was the 'mark of the devil'.
She said another was thrown down the stairs and was hit with a brick by other girls during bullying.
She added: 'There needs to be more done to protect red haired children, not just from gingerism or anti-red haired prejudice and abuse from other children, but from school and other settings members who model the bullying and abuses to red haired children.'
Last week a teaching assistant from St Wilfrid's Primary School in Sheffield was dismissed from his job after 13 years over bullying complaints.
The man, who has not been named, allegedly 'humiliated' a young vulnerable boy when he gave him a girl's name in the classroom.
He was also accused of searching the internet for 'Gingerphobia' during a lesson on Vikings, which saw a red-haired child teased by his friends.
Despite Ms Meleady's claims, a study in October found redheads were enjoying more romantic encounters.
The study's authors noted women with red hair – up to nine per cent of European females – 'tend to be the subject of various stereotypes about their sexually liberated behaviour'.
And in Britain, the report said, has more redheads than any other European country.
The Czech researchers wanted to find a connection between red hair and sexual behaviour, collecting data from 110 women (34 per cent red-headed) and 93 men (22 per cent).
The academics from Charles University, Prague, found redheaded women – but not men – reported greater sexual desire and activity over the past year.
Redheads had more sexual partners, 'higher sexual submissiveness' and started sex at a younger age.
The academics said: 'The apparently more liberated sexual behaviour in redheaded women could be the consequence of frequent attempts of potential mates to have sex with redheaded women.'
Katerina Sykorova, who compiled the report, said: 'The intensity of their sexual activity was relatively higher than the intensity of their sexual desire.
'This suggests that it is not the redheaded women's own initiative but higher demand for them which might be responsible for their higher sexual activity and higher number of sexual partners.'
The study said redheadedness was determined by 'the quantity, ratio, and distribution of the two main types of the pigment melanin: eumelanin and pheomelanin'.
**********************************************
German Anti-Cartel Agency Targets Google, Warns Amazon, Apple and Facebook They Could Be Next
The German government’s antitrust office has announced that Google meets its standard for regulation, a step toward possible action against the Big Tech giant.
“The Federal Cartel Office can now tackle concrete forms of behavior that harm competition,” office president Andreas Mundt said, according to Reuters. “We have already started looking more intensively at Google’s processing of personal data and the topic of Google News Showcase.”
The decision means that over the next five years, Germany can investigate Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company.
The website TechCrunch called the action “as significant as it is unexpected.”
Germany’s FCO said in a release that “Google is of paramount significance for competition across markets.”
“The company has an economic position of power which gives rise to a scope of action across markets that is insufficiently controlled by competition,” the agency said.
Mundt said Google is not alone.
“We are vigorously conducting other proceedings against Amazon, Apple and Meta, formerly Facebook,” he said.
A Google spokesperson said the company has done nothing wrong.
“We are confident that we comply with the rules and, to the extent that changes are necessary, we will continue to work constructively with the FCO to find solutions that enable people and businesses in Germany to continue to use our products,” the spokesperson said.
The FCO began probing Google’s use of personal information in May, followed in June by looking at the selection of news offered in its Google News Showcase.
Germany’s move comes as French officials fined Facebook and Google more than 200 million euros, about $226 million, saying the companies made it too difficult to avoid being tracked online, according to The Hill.
The two tech giants “offer a button allowing the user to immediately accept cookies,” but they do not provide an option to “easily refuse the deposit of these cookies,” a data privacy watchdog announced in fining Google 150 million euros and Facebook 60 million euros.
“Several clicks are required to refuse all cookies, against a single one to accept them,” the group said.
“The restricted committee considered that this process affects the freedom of consent: since, on the Internet, the user expects to be able to quickly consult a website, the fact that they cannot refuse the cookies as easily as they can accept them influences their choice in favor of consent,” it added.
In Europe, websites must ask users before tracking them, according to The Associated Press.
***********************************************
DOJ Opens ‘Domestic Terror’ Task Force with No Federal ‘Domestic Terror’ Statute
In the mainstream media, it is becoming very apparent that an effort to equate the MAGA Movement with “domestic terrorism” is underway, and has been for well over a year.
This is yet another avenue of attack that the liberals are using to demonize their Republican counterparts ahead of the 2022 midterm election – a contest that looks more and more like the GOP’s to lose with every passing week.
Now, as the far-right continues to bear the weight of this new media-bred moniker, the Justice Department is getting serious about tackling “domestic terror”.
The Justice Department is establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism, the department’s top national security official told lawmakers Tuesday as he described an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, testifying just days after the nation observed the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, said the number of FBI investigations into suspected domestic violent extremists has more than doubled since the spring of 2020.
“We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Olsen said.
But there appears to be one major problem:
But the issue remains politically freighted and divisive, in part because the absence of a federal domestic terrorism statute has created ambiguities as to precisely what sort of violence meets that definition. The U.S. criminal code defines domestic terrorism as violence intended to coerce or intimidate a civilian population and to influence government policy, but there is no standalone domestic terrorism charge, meaning prosecutors have to rely on other statutes.
With no clear-cut definition of how to proceed, there are fears that the DOJ could be making this up as they go. And, given that they are working under a Democratic administration who’s already worked to vilify the MAGA masses, there’s no telling what sort of policies could be adopted in the coming months.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
12 January, 2022
China Locks Down World’s Third-Busiest Port City, Potentially Disrupting Global Supply Chain
China’s industrial city of Ningbo and home to the third-largest container port in the world, has been under lockdown due to a recent COVID-19 outbreak. Analysts suggest that the lockdown measures could cause more disruption to the global supply chain.
According to Chinese state-run media Global Times, Ningbo City in Zhejiang Province is under lockdown after detecting at least 23 cases of the CCP virus. The outbreak was reportedly concentrated in Beilun District, the core area of the Ningbo port, putting many local truck drivers and essential port personnel under quarantine.
China’s “dynamic zero-COVID” policy has put the Beilun District under a level I emergency lockdown since 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 1, immediately after several CCP virus cases were confirmed.
According to China’s National Health Commission, the areas where the outbreak occurred were separated into closed zones, controlled zones, and prevention zones based on the transmission risk level, putting them under different management protocols.
Presently, the closed and controlled zones of Beilun District cover 4.66 square kilometers (1.8 square miles) and contain 37,000 people. Those in the closed zone are under full quarantine, leaving home is strictly prohibited, all commercial outlets are closed, and basic daily necessities are delivered to the door. The controlled zones allow only essential personnel to enter, not exit, following the “do not leave unless necessary” protocol.
Ningbo-Zhoushan Port is the second-largest container port in China and the third-largest in the world. It had a 1.1-billion-ton cargo throughput for three consecutive years. Beilun District is the core area of ??Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, and its closed and controlled zones are near the cargo terminals.
Ningbo Marine, a Chinese freight transportation company, said the lockdown is having a considerable impact on short-term imports and exports in the Beilun port area and the Ningbo-Zhoushan Port as a whole, primarily because the port’s essential personnel and truck drivers are quarantined. In addition, the closed zones have temporarily blocked the main roads entering and leading out of the port city, as well as many highways and terminal entry channels.
According to Ningbo’s local news network, there are more than 20,000 trucks in Beilun District, while only around 7,600 were given special passes to enter and leave the port.
The report said that locking down Beilun District’s trucking industry will affect not only its foreign trade and freight forwarding but also impact the shipping and logistics of the entire Zhejiang Province.
*****************************************************
Hollywood will barely dare whisper it but the woke revolution that has driven out white men and ensures that every production is ideologically sound will kill the entertainment industry
A few years ago, the editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter pitched a story to the newsroom.
He had just come back from lunch with a well-known agent, who had suggested the paper take a look at the unintended consequences of Hollywood's efforts to diversify.
Those white men who had spent decades writing scripts—which had been turned into blockbuster movies and hit television shows—were no longer getting hired.
The newsroom blew up.
The reporters, especially the younger ones, mocked the idea that white men were on the outs. The editor-in-chief, normally self-assured, immediately backtracked. He looked rattled.
It was a missed opportunity.
The story wasn't just about white guys not getting jobs. Nor was it really about the economics of Hollywood.
It was about the stories Hollywood told and distributed and streamed on screens around the globe every day.
It was about this massively lucrative industry that had been birthed by outsiders and emerged, out of lemon groves, into a glamorous, glitzy mosh pit teeming with chutzpah and broken hearts and unbelievable success stories that had made the American Dream a real, pulsating thing—for Americans and billions of other people who thought that if you could imagine something, anything, you could will it into being.
It was a story about who we aspired to be.
After the meeting, a reporter approached another editor about pursuing it. The editor told the reporter to drop it.
No one, he said, at The Hollywood Reporter—one of a handful of trade publications that covers the ins and outs of the entertainment industry—was going to risk blowing up their career over this.
The 'explosion of woke,' as one longtime producer put it, didn't come out of nowhere.
Hollywood had always pushed boundaries—from the 1947 'Gentleman's Agreement,' which confronted antisemitism, to 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' (1967), which tackled interracial marriage, to 'All in the Family' (1971-1979), which grappled with race and women's liberation.
The original run of 'Will and Grace' (1998-2006), did more to advance the cause of gay marriage than anything else pre-Obergefell.
And then there were the villains: The vast majority—from the Terminator to Hannibal Lecter to Gordon Gekko—were uber-white: an Austrian (robot), a Lithuanian, a WASPy, pinstriped capitalist. (For the insider's list, see this from The Hollywood Reporter.)
But it wasn't until 2015—when the #OscarsSoWhite controversy engulfed the 87th Academy Awards—that studio chiefs and producers really started to rethink how they did business.
This gained momentum in 2016, and even more in late 2017, with #MeToo.
Then came George Floyd, and, in the summer of 2020, everything that had been happening in slow motion started to happen much faster.
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences—the industry's central nervous system—had been founded in 1927, and now it had 8,469 voting members. It had tried over the years, and especially since Donald Trump's election, to catch up with the zeitgeist, inviting into its ranks a record number of new members who were black, Latino, women or foreign-born.
But that wasn't going to cut it any longer.
So, in September 2020, the Academy launched its Representation and Inclusion Standards Entry platform (or RAISE).
For a movie to qualify for Best Picture, producers not only had to register detailed personal information about everyone involved in the making of that movie, but the movie had to meet two of the Academy's four diversity standards—touching on everything from on-screen representation to creative leadership. (An Academy spokesperson said 'only select staff' would have access to data collected on the platform.)
The Academy explained that movies failing to meet these standards would not be barred from qualifying for Best Picture until 2024.
But producers are already complying: In 2020, data from 366 productions were submitted to the platform.
Meanwhile, CBS mandated that writers' rooms be at least 40 percent black, indigenous and people of color (or BIPOC) for the 2021-2022 broadcast season and 50 percent for the 2022-2023 season.
ABC Entertainment issued a detailed series of 'inclusion standards.' ('I guarantee you every studio has something like that,' a longtime writer and director said.)
To help producers meet the new standards, the filmmaker Ava DuVernay—who was recently added to Forbes' list of 'The Most Powerful Women in Entertainment' along with Oprah Winfrey and Taylor Swift—last year created ARRAY Crew, a database of women, people of color, and others from underrepresented groups who work on day-to-day production: line producers, camera operators, art directors, sound mixers and so on.
The Hollywood Reporter declared that ARRAY Crew has 'fundamentally changed how Hollywood productions will be staffed going forward.'
More than 900 productions, including 'Yellowstone' and 'Mare of Easttown,' have used ARRAY Crew, said Jeffrey Tobler, the chief marketing officer of ARRAY, DuVernay's production company.
Privately, directors and writers voiced irritation with DuVernay, who, they said, had exploited the 'post-George Floyd moment.' But no one dared to criticize her openly. 'I'm not crazy,' one screenwriter said.
Of course, Hollywood, like many industries, does have a clubiness about it. And pretty much everyone on the inside insists it should open up to those who had, for decades, been kept out.
But the heavy-handed mandates, the databases, the shifting culture—in which pretty much all white men were assumed to have gotten their jobs because they had the right tennis buddies or ZIP code or skin color—raised the possibility of a new kind of clubiness.
When asked whether ARRAY Crew was just replacing one kind of exclusion with another, Tobler sidestepped the question, saying the organization had sought to 'amplify underrepresented professionals.'
But the result has not just been a demographic change. It has been an ideological and cultural transformation.
We spoke to more than 25 writers, directors, and producers—all of whom identify as liberal, and all of whom described a pervasive fear of running afoul of the new dogma.
******************************************
Big Apple Mayor Affirms Plan to Allow Non-Citizens to Vote
There has long been a certain sort of pride that comes with being an American. We’re patriotic all on our own, sure, but we also hold a high regard for those who’ve come to this nation in order to seek the American Dream itself.
We’ve been regaled for decades with stories of rags-to-riches millionaires processed through Ellis Island. We’ve watched industrious people from all over the world work tirelessly to naturalize themselves, and we’ve been the first to applaud them as they reach their citizenship goals.
But there are concerns that immigration laws are relaxing to the point in which achieving citizenship is longer on the path toward participating in the American economy, and this has many conservatives concerned.
In New York City, these fears are manifesting themselves in a new way, with the recently-inaugurated mayor confirming his plans to uphold an allowance for non-citizens to vote.
Newly sworn in New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday that he supports legislation passed by the city council allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections.
“I believe that New Yorkers should have a say in their government, which is why I have and will continue to support this important legislation,” Adams, a Democrat who took office at the start of 2022, said in a statement. “While I initially had some concerns about one aspect of the bill, I had a productive dialogue with my colleagues in government that put those concerns at ease. I believe allowing the legislation to be enacted is by far the best choice, and look forward to bringing millions more into the democratic process.”
Some have feared that a swelling of non-citizen rights will continue to dilute the value of naturalization, and thus create a situation in which other nations’ people will be coming to America simply to ride our economic momentum and then export some of that wealth out-of-country.
https://flagandcross.com/big-apple-mayor-affirms-plan-to-allow-non-citizens-to-vote/
************************************************Black Lady Goes on Racist Rant, Attacks White Christian Conservatives as ‘Selfish’
On Monday, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid claimed that “white so-called Christian conservatives” are “selfish” people who believe that America was built for them.
Reid declared, “They’re white so-called Christian conservatives who feel like this country was built by them for them, and so everyone but them needs to suck it up and let them have their way or else. Their party, the Republicans, have gone from pretending to be the party of personal responsibility to unmasking themselves as the party of selfish people that cannot play well with others. And they even have their own cable networks plus something called GETTR, which kind of sounds like porn. Moving on.”
She continued, “So the special citizen says, ‘I don’t want to wear a mask, and if you try to attack me, I’ll attack the low-waged clerks at the store or at the Burger King. I don’t want to get the vaccine either. If people get sick from me, oh well, not my problem. Joe Rogan said it’s fine. My kids aren’t going to mask up to protect those other kids. F those other kids, their parents are probably commies anyway.’ Which usually means people who want rights for other people and who give a damn what happens to them.”
Reid added, “So this midterm election year, we’re going to find out which brand of citizenship is stronger, and the answer will tell us whether our democracy is strong enough to survive.”
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
11 January, 2022
The Leftist lies never stop
Forget any idea you’ve ever held about the “truth” and the application of “common sense” and hoping for its return to the mainstream politic and media in America.
From the looks of things, it’s gone. There seems to be zero interest in reviving it. And we are all doomed if we don’t take back control.
The last several days of this first week in 2022 proved excessively revealing. The world spun, we went back to work (as best we could,) but did we ever learn a thing or two about the left’s playbook for the year.
Here it is in a nutshell: literally make up anything you wish in order to “make your point.”
This isn’t surprising in theory. They’ve operated like this since we were all asked to believe that a guy who couldn’t fill 15 circled seating spots in an empty gym somehow defeated the guy who packed in 100,000’s of attendees in stadiums and airport hangers in sub-freezing weather.
It’s election cycle again so the plan is straightforward. Make up the most fantastic, breath-taking claims and pass them off as true.
Kamala Harris insists that you believe that the disruption of January 6 2020 was the equivalent of the downing of the twin towers of September 11.
Full stop.
Aunt Crazy should be dismissed from her job right there but sadly she will live to cackle nervously in days yet to come.
President Biden claimed this week that we lost several police officers in the events of the Capitol protests. Which we didn’t — not one. (We did however have a Capitol police officer shoot a service member from the Air Force at point blank range and kill her. But why confuse the confused-in-chief?)
The White House also released a graphic on social media this week “showing” that they are “creating” jobs in excess of 500,000 per month. They also graphed it with the jobs numbers of all other modern era administrations — which they supposedly dwarfed. The problem was they released the graph on the same day that the new jobs numbers were released clocking in at 199,000 jobs created for the month, missing the estimates of 400k+. So they literally missed the estimate by a margin larger than the number of jobs created.
Nancy Pelosi claimed this week that “Trump supporters” killed a soul on the Capitol grounds days after the protests. But how many “Trump supporters” hate the former president and are devout followers of Louis Farrakhan?
And no amount of dishonesty, gas lighting, or pure ignorance could beat the left leaning associate justices of the Supreme Court. Justice Elena Kagan claimed repeatedly that the vaccine would insure that elderly and vulnerable people wouldn’t get the newest CoVid variant despite the fact that the vaccines have performed poorly against the current strain.
Justice Stephen Breyer claimed 750 million new cases had been reported the day previous. There are less than half that number of living persons in America.
And Justice Sonia Sotomayor who couldn’t be bothered to be in attendance on the bench, presumably for health reasons, but was spotted that very night dining out in Washington DC with Democrat Senators Amy Klobuchar and Dick Durbin, was the most clownish of all. She went so far as to claim that there were more than 100,000 children hospitalized because of CoVid and “many of them” on ventilators.
A quick pull of the stats of the day showed 114,000 people (all ages) were currently hospitalized “with CoVid.” Only 20,000 or so of those in actual ICU units.
Children make up less than five hospitalizations out of every 100,000. And that follows the 48% increase from less than 3 out of 100,000 from weeks previous.
And as of this writing I was unable to source even one current account of a child on a ventilator due to CoVid.
Add to this the fact that New York finally stopped counting all persons “with CoVid” as persons hospitalized “DUE to CoVid.” In the first reports since the change the numbers dropped by an astounding 47%.
This amount of abject ignorance or flat out falsehoods all occurred in just the final two days of this past week. From every branch of government, from every level of office, from the lips of their very own leaders.
They are criminally dishonest, or they are the most buffoonish know-nothings in American history.
And a sizable wager would likely be won by betting they are both!
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2022/01/09/gaslighting-dishonest-buffoons-n2601601
*******************************************The filibuster has been bad, but repealing it would be worse
by Jeff Jacoby
IN A "Dear Colleague" letter on Jan. 3, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a warning: If Republicans continued to block the Senate from passing two sweeping elections-related bills supported by Democrats, he wrote, then the chamber would "debate and consider changes to Senate rules on or before January 17." That was a threat, as everyone understood, to invoke the "nuclear option" and blow up the filibuster. If successful, Democrats would no longer require 60 votes to pass their controversial measures; a bare majority would suffice.
That was on Monday. On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia came out against the nuclear option, saying he would find it "very, very difficult" to support any unilateral move to kill the filibuster. So did Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. During a Democratic caucus lunch, the news site Axios reported, she told her colleagues that "she will not support any effort to get rid of the 60-vote threshold."
So much for Schumer's threat to go nuclear. The filibuster is safe for now.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Arguments can be made both ways, but my view has long been that the filibuster ought to be reformed by returning to the rules that prevailed before 1970. The Senate should revive the old "talking filibuster," under which a senator or group of senators could indefinitely forestall a vote on any measure by the means Jimmy Stewart dramatized in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" — taking to the floor to speak and refusing to sit down until the majority agrees to compromise. When a filibuster was in progress, all other Senate business came to a halt.
Those two crucial stipulations — a filibuster had to be conducted in person and it superseded other Senate activity — made the maneuver both powerful and rare. Consequently, it was a weapon deployed with great caution. During the entire 19th century, for example, there were fewer than two dozen filibusters.
But in 1970, the rules changed. Under a new two-track system, a bill being filibustered would be put aside while the Senate took up other matters. Senators no longer had to emulate Jimmy Stewart to block a piece of legislation — they merely had to threaten to do so. In effect, the filibuster became a blackball, which could be overcome only with supermajority support. Before long, it was taken for granted that every significant bill needed 60 votes to pass.
Though the filibuster continued to exist, its core purpose had been inverted: A parliamentary tactic meant to ensure debate and encourage compromise had become an artificial gimmick to prevent debate. Mixed with the toxic partisanship and angry polarization that now dominate American politics, the modern filibuster's impact has been to make the Senate more dysfunctional and less deliberative.
And then there's the hypocrisy.
Dozens of Democrats are decrying the filibuster as an antidemocratic travesty, a threat to voting rights, an unconscionable obstruction of the will of the majority — even, as former president Barack Obama called it, a "Jim Crow relic." Yet as recently as 2017, a majority of Senate Democrats signed a bipartisan letter defending the filibuster and "opposing any effort to curtail the existing rights and prerogatives of Senators to engage in full, robust, and extended debate."
What changed? Democrats and their allies claim that the stakes now are so high, and the measures they support so urgent, that the nation can no longer afford any impediment to legislating by straight majority rule.
Here's a simpler explanation: In 2017, Senate Democrats were in the minority and a Republican was in the White House. Back then, Democrats were making vigorous use of the filibuster to block Republican priorities — over the next four years, they would filibuster hundreds of bills and nominations — while Donald Trump was the one clamoring to eliminate the 60-vote rule. "Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW!" Trump tweeted angrily. "It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!"
In a thoughtful Politico essay a few months ago, Ronald Weich, dean of the University of Baltimore Law School and a former top aide to senators Edward Kennedy and Harry Reid, warned his fellow liberal Democrats that if they kill the filibuster today, they will find themselves in a "nightmare" tomorrow.
In 2005, when he was a member of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Barack Obama stirringly defended the filibuster. "If the majority chooses to end the filibuster," he warned then, "the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse."
"Progressives pushing to end the filibuster are suffering from a bad case of amnesia," Weich wrote. "The past three decades, in fact, are filled with moments when the filibuster prevented Republicans from pushing through legislation that would have made America a far darker place." Personally, I think that some of the GOP legislation Democrats blocked would have made life in America considerably brighter. But Weich's essential point is that if Democrats deep-six the filibuster, they will enjoy no more than a short-term victory. Sooner or later, perhaps as early as next January, Republicans will regain control of the Senate. At which point — if the filibuster has been nuked — there will be nothing to prevent them from repealing with 51 votes whatever the current Senate passes by a similar bare majority.
In 2005, when Republicans were in the majority, they were tempted to do to the filibuster what Schumer and most Democrats want to do now. Obama, then a senator from Illinois, understood what was on the line.
"I understand that Republicans are getting a lot of pressure to do this from factions outside the chamber," he said in a floor speech. "But we need to rise above an 'ends justify the means' mentality because we're here to answer to the people — all of the people — not just the ones wearing our party label.... One day Democrats will be in the majority again, and this rule change will be no fairer to a Republican minority than it is to a Democratic minority."
It's one of the oldest rules in two-party politics: What goes around comes around. If only both parties could manage to remember it — at the same time.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25927/the-filibuster-has-been-bad-but-repealing-it
****************************************Where is the outrage over the killing of Baltimore police officer Keona Holley?
It was an iconic moment in the coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol: CNN anchor Don Lemon wept at video footage of police officer Daniel Hodges being crushed in a door by the mob. Officer Hodges survived but suffered headaches for a week.
If Lemon has cried over previous or subsequent attacks on officers, an informal search of the record does not reveal it. The rest of the media were similarly — and uncharacteristically — moved by the Jan. 6 assaults. The New York Times and other outlets ran long reports on the emotional trauma experienced by the Capitol defenders, none of whom was lethally injured in the attacks. In what might be a first in modern media history, the lieutenant who killed the unarmed Ashli Babbitt was even given a sympathetic interview on NBC, after half a year of media inattention to the seemingly unjustified shooting. The interracial aspect of that officer-involved killing (black officer, white victim) was not deemed noteworthy, unlike officer-involved killings where the races are reversed.
On Dec. 16, 2021, Police Officer Keona Holley was assassinated sitting alone in her patrol car at 1:30 a.m. in southern Baltimore. Travon Shaw, 32, a violent felon awaiting trial on a gun possession charge, shot her from behind, according to his accomplice — striking Holley twice in the head, once in the leg and once in the hand. A week after the ambush, Holley was removed from life support and died, leaving behind four children and a stricken police force.
A bystander filmed the aftermath of the shooting and posted the video on Instagram. He can be heard urging viewers not to report the assault, since the police harass members of the community.
Much of the media seem to have taken his advice. The New York Times has not run one story on the murder, though it has published in the interim several long features on police shootings and alleged police racism.
The Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post have covered the incident, but elsewhere, the coverage has been thin to nonexistent.
And yet the murder of police officers is, on a per-capita basis, a far more significant problem than fatal officer shootings of civilians. And the killing of police officers by black civilians is a far more significant problem than the killing of unarmed blacks by police officers. As of Nov. 30, 2021, 67 police officers had been feloniously killed by criminals. Conservatively using the 2019 national headcount of 697,196 sworn officers (now undoubtedly lower), 9.6 officers per 100,000 officers were feloniously killed through November.
As of Dec. 27, 2021, four unarmed black people have been slain by police officers since the start of the year, according to the Washington Post. The Post’s “unarmed” category includes violently resisting crime suspects. Those four unarmed black people represent .000008 percent of the nation’s nearly 47 million self-identified blacks, or less than 1/100 of one person killed by a cop per 100,000 blacks.
Rioters set fire to a multi-story affordable housing complex under construction near the Third Precinct. Protester and police clashed violently in South Minneapolis as looters attacked business on Lake Street on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 in Minneapolis.
Historically, black males have made up over 40 percent of cop-killers nationwide, though black males are 6 percent of the population. Conservatively estimating that 40 percent of the cop-killers this year have been black, 26 officers have been killed by a black suspect in 2021, for a rate of nearly four cops per 100,000 officers killed by black civilians. A police officer is about 400 times as likely to be killed by a black suspect as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police officer.
Murders of police officers were up nearly 56 percent through the end of November compared with 2020, a year that already saw surging anti-cop violence in the wake of the George Floyd race riots. Like the assassination of Baltimore officer Holley, those killings get almost no attention from the national media, since they occur disproportionately as part of the daily gun violence that afflicts inner cities and that is also beneath media notice.
Yet such officer killings strike at the very heart of our civilization. A society that turns its eyes away from attacks on law enforcement (except when they confirm a favored media narrative) is a society that is heading for anarchy. The crime wave of the last two years suggests that we are well on our way to just such a disintegration of law and order.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/where-is-the-outrage-over-the-killing-of-keona-holley/
************************************************Talk of an ‘insurrection’ is way off the mark
In 1983, Marxist revolutionaries, dedicated to the overthrow of the US government according to the FBI, detonated a bomb late at night in the US Capitol building, tearing a hole in the Senate wing as a warning to congress and the Reagan administration of worse to come if the US didn’t withdraw from Grenada in the Caribbean.
It was a heinous act of domestic terrorism, and a more calculated and dangerous one than the ramshackle mob that lurched into the Capitol on January 6 last year.
For Vice-President Kamala Harris, though, speaking last week on the first anniversary of the pro-Trump riot, January 6 was on par with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, a day that would change the course of history, perhaps more than any other.
For her, President Joe Biden, and what seems to be the entirety of the Democrat establishment, the anniversary marked an in “insurrection” – ie, an attempt to overthrow the government.
This is a ridiculous claim, yet emblematic of an age filled with deliberate and gross exaggerations and distortions for naked political self-interest.
January 6 was a protest gone wrong, and one that former president Donald Trump could and should have done more to rein in after it spiralled out of control. But that’s it.
After a year, not a single person of the 725 arrested has been charged with insurrection. Only a tenth have received criminal sentences. Government prosecutors have even had to resort to a law written to combat financial crime, the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, to find crimes with penalties tough enough to match the insurrection charge.
History teaches us real insurrections, especially successful ones, are dangerous and rare.
The Turkish generals, commanding thousands of troops, who failed to oust Recep Erdogan in 2016, would be shocked to learn the January 6 rebels’ weapons of choice: baseball bats, walking sticks, knifes, and even a few crutches.
Police recovered only a handful of guns among the protesters.
The picture of a relaxed Richard Barnett, with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s office desk, must have been taken before he got off the phone with the Pentagon to learn the world’s most powerful military wasn’t on board.
Then again, maybe the rioters were relying on the soaring rhetoric of the shirtless, horned man with face paint, the so-called QAnon Shaman, to win over congress, just as Napoleon had in his coup of 1799.
Relative bloodlessness is about all January 6 has in common with the Coup of 18 Brumaire.
No police and only a handful of rioters died on January 6, and those mainly by accident, including one who overdosed – a very inadvisable pursuit during an insurrection – and another who was trampled to death by other protesters.
Taking selfies with police can’t have helped the insurrection either, providing officers time to assess the enemy at close quarters and regroup.
Maybe, despite all this, Trump was frantically shoring up military support back at the White House? Actually, he was glued to cable TV and boasting about the size of the crowd to his staff, according to staff members. Augusto Pinochet wouldn’t have been watching the TV in 1973, when he seized power in Chile.
If January 6 illustrated what right-wing extremism was capable of in the US, American democracy appears safe indeed.
Even if the rioters had disrupted the certification of the election, congressional members would have come back the next day to finish the job – hardly a revolution – after the police had cleared the building.
Whatever January 6 was, it was doomed to failure.
“Those involved must be held accountable, and there is no higher priority for us,” Attorney-General Merrick Garland said in a fiery speech last week, vowing to leave no stone unturned in his search and prosecution of anyone involved in the riot, “present or not”.
Yet only a few years ago, in 2014, then chief judge Merrick Garland in effect rescinded charges against Elizabeth Ann Duke, one of the 1983 Capitol bombers, who skipped bail after her arrest in 1985 and remains on the FBI’s most wanted list.
So much for the sanctity of the Capitol.
Another of the bombers, Susan Rosenberg, had her jail sentence commuted by Bill Clinton on his last day in office in 2001; she now serves as a fundraiser for Black Lives Matter groups.
In his January 6 speech last week, Biden mocked, rightly, the idea that the 2020 election was “stolen”, pointing out that every legal challenge, even those heard before judges appointed by Trump and other Republicans, had failed.
But by calling January 6 an “armed insurrection”, none of the 71 per cent of Republicans who wrongly believe that would have changed their mind.
Far from fading into the background, in the year since January 6, Trump has grown more powerful in the Republican Party.
The implied characterisation of Trump supporters as insurrectionists patently hasn’t helped bring the country together.
It’s harder to dissuade others of ridiculous claims if you, yourself, are making ridiculous claims.
The abuse of language isn’t restricted to the January 6 riots. The pandemic has supposed created an “emergency” and “overwhelmed” the health system.
Covid-19 has not been a genuine emergency for some time, and very few hospitals in the world were ever “overwhelmed”, as ordinary people would understand those terms to mean.
English is a rich language. Reasonable people arguing in good faith, whatever their politics, should be able to agree on the facts.
The congressional committee charged with investigating January 6 will issue an interim report in the coming months.
It would be in Democrats’ as much as Republicans’ interest, as well as the cohesion of the US, to walk back the insurrection charge, which no one could seriously believe based either on history or semantics.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
10 January, 2022
Democracy isn’t dying
The Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, was a national disgrace, but almost more dispiriting is the way America’s two warring political tribes have responded. Democrats led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem intent on exploiting that day to retain power, while the Donald Trump wing of the GOP insists it was merely a protest march that got a little carried away.
We say this as a statement of political reality, not as a counsel of despair. Our job is to face the world as it is and try to move it in a better direction. So a year later, what have we learned?
In a speech on the anniversary of the deadly U.S. Capitol attack, President Joe Biden warned that Trump's "web of…
One lesson is that on all the available evidence January 6 was not an “insurrection,” in any meaningful sense of that word. It was not an attempted coup. The Justice Department and the House Select Committee have looked high and low for a conspiracy to overthrow the government, and maybe they will find it. So far they haven’t.
There apparently was a “war room” of motley characters at the Willard hotel and small groups of plotters who wanted to storm the barricades. But they were too disorganised to do much more than incite what became the mob that breached the Capitol.
The Justice Department says some 725 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged in the riot, linked mainly by social media and support for Donald Trump. About 70 defendants have had their cases adjudicated to date, and 31 of those will do time in prison. The rioters aren’t getting off easy.
They also didn’t come close to overturning the election. The Members fled the House chamber during the riot but soon returned to certify the electoral votes. Eight Senators and 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the electoral votes in some states, but that wasn’t close to a majority.
The true man at the margin was Mike Pence. Presiding in the Senate as Vice President, he recognised his constitutional duty as largely ceremonial in certifying the vote count. He stood up to Mr. Trump’s threats for the good of the country and perhaps at the cost of his political future.
In other words, America’s democratic institutions held up under pressure. They also held in the states in which GOP officials and legislators certified electoral votes despite Mr. Trump’s complaints. And they held in the courts as judges rejected claims of election theft that lacked enough evidence. Democrats grudgingly admit these facts but say it was a close run thing. It wasn’t. It was a near-unanimous decision against Mr. Trump’s electoral claims.
None of this absolves Mr. Trump for his behaviour. He isn’t the first candidate to question an election result; Hillary Clinton still thinks Vladimir Putin defeated her in 2016. But he was wrong to give his supporters false hope that Congress and Mr. Pence could overturn the electoral vote. He did not directly incite violence, but he did incite them to march on the Capitol.
Worse, he failed to act to stop the riot even as he watched on TV from the White House. He failed to act despite the pleading of family and allies. This was a monumental failure of character and duty. Republicans have gone mute on this dereliction as they try to stay united for the midterms. But they will face a reckoning on this with voters if Mr. Trump runs in 2024.
As for the Pelosi Democrats, the question is when will they ever let Jan. 6 go? The latest news is that the Speaker’s Select Committee may hold prime-time hearings this year, and the leaks are that they may even seek an indictment of Mr. Trump for obstructing Congress.
Really? Their constitutional power runs to impeachment, and they’ve already impeached Mr. Trump twice. As our friends at the New York Sun note, such a prosecutorial inquiry runs close to what the Constitution bars as a “bill of attainder” against a single individual. As a way of harming Mr. Trump’s future prospects, we suspect it would work about as well as both impeachments did.
We have an open mind about the Jan. 6 Select Committee, not least because an honest inquiry that laid out the facts could be helpful. But at this point it’s also hard not to see that playing up Jan. 6 has become the main Democratic election strategy for November.
One clue came recently from Marc Elias, the Democratic election lawyer and House insider. He tweeted on Dec. 20: “My prediction for 2022: Before the midterm election, we will have a serious discussion about whether individual Republican House Members are disqualified by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment from serving in Congress. We may even see litigation.” Mr. Elias would rip at democracy in the name of defending it.
* * *
None of this leaves much cause for optimism — but then we survived January 6, as well as more than a few bad Presidents. Keep your eye on the Constitution’s enduring principles and institutions, and who sustains or tears them down. That’s where self-government will live or die.
*************************************************
Biggest threat to democracy comes from leftist ‘elite’
A year after the end of one of America’s more colourful presidencies, post-Trump stress disorder shows no sign of abating. The telltale symptoms of PTSD were apparent in the neurotic commentary marking the first anniversary of the Capitol Hill riots: vivid flashbacks, altered cognition, irritability and depression.
“Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss,” wrote former president Jimmy Carter in The New York Times. The democracy the US had fought so hard to achieve abroad “has become dangerously fragile at home”, he said.
“Certain dates echo throughout history,” Vice-President Kamala Harris declared. “December 7th, 1941. September 11th, 2001. And January 6th, 2021.”
Harris’s rhetorical overreach demands a reality check. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2403 Americans and destroyed 19 US Navy vessels. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 killed 2996 people, destroyed four commercial aircraft, wrecked a wing of the Pentagon and demolished the World Trade Centre. In the Capitol Hill riot, one protester was shot dead, two died of natural causes, one appears to have been crushed to death and superficial damage was sustained to the building. The inauguration of President Joe Biden and VP Harris proceeded on schedule and without further incident 15 days later.
In an address to the nation on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, President Biden accused former President…
Taken at face value, the 2020 presidential election is an advertisement for a democracy that is in rude good health, albeit a little untidy in parts. So how, without resorting to pop psychology, are we to explain the widespread conviction that the system is almost beyond repair? The sentiment appears equally strong in Australia, surfacing in chin-stroking opinion articles in the woke-leaning press and driving the subtext of the ABC’s political coverage.
In his recent book, Democracy Under Siege, Frank Furedi coins the term “demophobia” to describe the panic felt by the elite towards democracy that began long before the election of Donald Trump. Its origins can be traced back to the 18th century at least when the development of democracy was stalled by a fear of the populace as an untamed beast that could not be trusted to vote intelligently or responsibly.
Today that same nervousness is seen in fear of the populism epitomised by Trump. It is frequently cast in psychological terms, as a disease infecting the body politic. When Carter and Harris bemoan the fragile state of US democracy, they actually want less of it. They want more responsibility to be assumed by the responsible elite, the anointed ones, blessed with a superior understanding of the world who can be trusted to do the right thing.
They possess a deep-seated conviction that most humans lack the moral and intellectual resources to determine the future direction of their society and are ripe for manipulation by populist demagogues. Critics of populism invariably conclude their alarmist accounts with the warning that unless populist movements are crushed, we will witness the rise of another Hitler, says Furedi.
The portrayal of populist politics as a symptom of psychological disorder has gained momentum, reaching its apotheosis with the candidacy of Trump in 2016. From that point on, the die was cast, in the view of the elite cast, whose unrestrained anger at Trump’s election went way beyond his obvious failings as a president and was blind to his surprising strengths.
The conviction that Trump would not have been elected were it not for his ability to cast something akin to a hypnotic spell over the populace culminated with the accusation Trump had incited thousands of his own supporters to overpower the inadequate security detail and seize control of the Capitol Hill Building. The incident is routinely described, without qualification, as an insurrection.
Sarah Ferguson’s investigation for ABC’s Four Corners last year helpfully pieced together action footage that caught the criminal actions of some protesters on camera and highlighted palpable failings by officials. Had the FBI taken available intelligence more seriously, had security provisions been tighter and riot control units been deployed, the unarmed rabble rousers could have been stopped in their tracks. Yet Ferguson falls back on the conventional wisdom that that sole responsibility belonged to “an unscrupulous demagogue … defeated, disgraced and now twice-impeached”, who had incited a crowd to bring “US democracy to the brink of destruction”. The protesters were “impassioned, resentful and easily roused”, judged Ferguson, “fragile and vulnerable to a president’s lies”.
When the elites speak about strengthening democracy, their goal is to dilute it by stepping in to protect the people from themselves. Debate must be curtailed through censorship if necessary. Important decisions must be made by panels of experts, the judiciary or supra-national forums, and elected parliaments must be neutered. The displacement of democratic decision-making by experts, technocrats and social engineers has been happening for decades. Covid-19 gave renewed impetus to the politicisation of expertise, “the tendency to endow experts with a monopoly over decision-making in a variety of areas that crucially affect everyone”, says Furedi.
Covid-19 is the excuse to bypass democratic responsibility the elites had been looking for. Political leaders around the world no longer see fit to justify policy decisions on the grounds that they are merely right. No message, statement or utterance could be made without the qualification that it was based on irrefutable expert advice. As things turned out, the combined expertise of the world’s technocratic class has been no match for the cunning virus, which has outwitted them at every turn. Yet the elite’s faith in the superior morality and omnipotence of experts remains undaunted.
The question left hanging by Furedi is what happens next, now the pandemic is in its waning phase and normal democratic business can be resumed. As the pandemic moves to an endemic phase, public health restrictions become redundant and responsibility can return to individuals to manage their own affairs. Decrees on vaccinations and masks should revert to the status of public health advice. There is precious little sign that is happening.
Where we stand in the current dispute over democracy reflects our assessment of the moral standing of our fellow human beings, their potential for development and fitness to run their own affairs. At its heart, pessimism about the future of democracy is merely a polite way of heaping condescension upon ordinary people.
*****************************************
UK: Tribunal sides with Catholic nurse harassed by NHS bosses for wearing cross at work
An Employment Tribunal has ruled that an NHS Trust harassed a Catholic nurse and directly discriminated against her for wearing a cross necklace at work.
The tribunal found that Nigeria-born Mary Onuoha, 61, a theatre practitioner, was victimised by Croydon Health Services NHS Trust after she formally complained of discrimination she suffered for wearing the symbol around her neck.
On one occasion, an NHS manager even interrupted surgery to harangue the nurse about her small gold cross while the patient was in theatre under general anaesthetic. The manager ignored the fact that the anaesthetist present was wearing ear-rings and a pendant.
At the same time, other members of staff were allowed to wear turbans, saris, hijabs and skull caps without fear of sanctions. Often staff also wear lanyards or bunches of keys around their necks.
The Tribunal said the Trust constructively dismissed Mrs Onuoha “without reasonable and proper cause” and that her sacking, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, was unfair and discriminatory.
Her treatment breached her human rights and created a “humiliating, hostile and threatening environment” for her, the tribunal concluded.
Mrs Onuoha said: “I don’t think I could do my job without the cross. I draw my strength from looking at the cross.
“I am so proud to be a Christian and I am proud to wear my cross. It’s part of my life, its part of me and I am happy to have it on.”
According to the Christian Legal Centre, which supported the nurse, the outcome of the case develops a wider legal principle that employers cannot discriminate against employees for reasonable manifestations of faith in the workplace.
Mrs Onuoha was forced out of her job at Croydon University Hospital in South London in the summer of 2020 following what she described as a two-year campaign waged against her by superiors and NHS bosses.
During the full hearing in October last year, the Trust argued that wearing the cross necklace was an infection risk and that it was nothing to do with her Catholic faith.
But Employment Judge Dyal and the two other members of the tribunal disagreed, saying it was clear to them that such a risk was “very low”.
The Tribunal also stated that the rejection of Mrs Onuoha’s grievance was “offensive and intimidating”.
“It failed to properly grapple with the complexity of the issues,” they said. “No real thought seems to have been given to whether it was really appropriate to discipline the claimant for doing something that in fact many others in the workforce (including more senior colleagues who worked just as closely with patients) were doing unchallenged.
“Equally, no real thought was given to the claimant’s point that others were wearing religious apparel in clinical areas and that she should be treated equally to them.”
****************************************************
Anti-white-privilege protests have taken a detour into racial hiring quotas at top companies and college courses on “the Problem of Whiteness.”
The left is furious about “white privilege.” And while it’s true white people have benefited from major advantages over time, it’s a concept that is rapidly fading — especially now, as the reverse is coming true. Minorities are increasingly becoming privileged while growing numbers of white people face discrimination.
Diversity initiatives have been around for years, but over the past year and a half, innumerable companies and corporations have ramped up their efforts with the goal of “diversifying” their workforce. Tech giant Facebook, for example, has committed to half of its employees coming from “underrepresented communities” (i.e., black, Native American, and Hispanic) by 2023. Best Buy is hiring one person of color for every three new hires over the next five years. United Airlines has promised that at least half of the pilots they will train in the next decade will be women and “people of color” (currently, only 13 percent of pilots are people of color).
In May, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot suddenly declared she will only give interviews to “journalists of color” — something that would be an impeachable offense if the situation was reversed (only giving interviews to “white journalists”).
The push to promote people of color has become so pervasive that the most objective scientific institutions have seemingly become captive to woke ideology. For example, the NIH and CDC use taxpayer dollars to incentivize biomedical research labs to hire ethnic minorities because “research shows that diverse teams working together and capitalizing on innovative ideas and distinct perspectives outperform homogenous teams” — without quoting or citing any actual research.
Minorities are now even advantaged when seeking medical treatment. Last week, the New York City and state departments of health authorized life-saving antiviral treatment for COVID-19 for everyone belonging to a “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity” regardless of risk factors, but for whites, only those with risk factors are allowed it. The DOH cites its rationale as: “longstanding systemic health and social inequities have contributed to an increased risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
Meanwhile, the rise of minority advantage has come with a parallel war on whiteness, especially in academia. In June, the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association — “one of the world’s most respected publications in psychoanalysis” — printed a peer-reviewed paper entitled “On Having Whiteness.” The abstract of the paper describes “whiteness” as a “malignant, parasitic-like condition” requiring “effective treatment consist[ing] of a combination of psychic and social-historical interventions.” It adds, “there is not yet a permanent cure.” There are real, accredited university courses that instruct anti-white racism: “Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness” (Arizona State University) and “Abolition of Whiteness” (Hunter College).
Institutionalized anti-white bigotry has escalated to genocidal rhetoric. As Bari Weiss revealed in her recent Substack piece, Yale University hosted a lecture by Dr. Aruna Khilanani this year about the “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind,” where the speaker revealed her fantasies to kill white people. Other than university administrators later saying the lecture was found to have “tone and content antithetical to the values of the school,” the backlash was tempered. While social media erupted and Khilanani’s Manhattan-based practice is now closed for unknown reasons, she still has her license. One can only imagine the riotous demonstrations that would have reverberated across the country had Yale hosted a talk about “The Psychopathic Problem of the Black Mind.”
The upshot is that pro-minority bias is not only permitted but socially incentivized. Employers, professors and administrators are lauded for implementing radical diversity initiatives. As minorities are preferentially hired across the board and given a host of other benefits by way of their genetic lottery, we must fundamentally reframe our discourse surrounding race relations.
While “white privilege” may still exist in some margins of society, it no longer reflects the progressive era we live in.
https://nypost.com/2022/01/08/minority-privilege-is-now-more-common-than-white-privilege/
*********************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
9 January, 2022
Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?
BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats seem happy with their totally partisan Select Committee on Jan. 6. They will have activities this week including speeches by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at the Capitol.
Let me be clear: Those who broke into the Capitol, attacked police, and threatened members of Congress last year should be tried and brought strictly to justice. Further, Congress should seriously investigate what happened and how we can prevent it from ever happening again. But that’s not what is happening on Capitol Hill this week.
In the world of Big Government Socialist Democrats (nearly every elected Democrat in Washington) the riot last Jan. 6 is their best weapon to smear Republicans as unpatriotic. Just as the Russian Dossier, the Ukrainian phone call, and virtually every act of political theatre to defame Republicans has failed, this, too, will soon become an absurdity.
The reasons are simple.
First, Americans are worried about everyday life. As the Democrats are myopically stuck on partisan bickering, Americans see them actively not solving problems.
Each day that accelerating inflation increases prices, the Democrats lose ground with ordinary Americans.
Every school that is closed by Teachers’ Unions, despite evidence that distance learning hurts children—especially the poor and minorities—also hurts union-owned Democrat candidates.
Every report of people illegally flooding into the country with no COVID-19 testing or serious scrutiny hurts Democrats. (And when Americans learns more than a million of these people have been secretly sent around the country, they will get angrier.)
Every day that crime goes up, people are murdered, women are raped, carjackings multiply, and gangs openly steal from stores without consequences, it hurts the Democrats.
Every visit to the gas station hurts the Democrats.
When COVID-19 tests and medicine for therapies are not available after a year of total Democratic control in Washington, Democrats are the ones to blame.
When the number of cargo ships waiting outside Long Beach climbs to more than 120, and supply chains are halted across the country, the Democrats begin to be the party of incompetence.
The list goes on and on.
Second, clumsily rehashing the events of Jan. 6 is a double-edged sword. Serious unanswered questions about who was doing and saying what could embarrass Democrat allies and make them co-conspirators in accepting risks at the Capitol.
For starters, as a former Speaker, I know well that it is the Speaker’s responsibility to oversee the protection and defense of the Capitol. It is clear that Speaker Pelosi failed to do so—and it’s going to be deeply uncomfortable for Democrats to talk about that.
Further, House Republicans are beginning to ask about people such as Ray Epps, who was a suspected ringleader of the attack but has never been arrested. Some are suggesting he was an FBI asset (similar to the absurd case of the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer which was allegedly fostered and orchestrated by FBI agents). Attorney General Merrick Garland has, so far, refused to answer Rep. Thomas Massie’s question about FBI assets at the Capitol on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
House Republicans held a telephone press conference outlining the unanswered questions—and the Democrats’ efforts to block information that was unfavorable to them. Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, and Reps. Jim Jordan, Rodney Davis and Jim Banks outlined what they were trying to learn—and how they were being stonewalled by the House Democrats and the Biden Justice Department. They also pledged to use their majority next year to get to the bottom of unanswered questions. You can listen to the whole press conference here.
Lastly, the process of the select committee is only getting more corrupt and destructive. Using an outrageous, painful, and unacceptable event (which I fully condemn) to smear your opponents rather than find the truth will ultimately be repudiated by the American people.
The best explanation of this deliberate smear campaign is the new book “January 6,” by Julie Kelly. The book is a thoroughly researched case about what happened on Jan. 6 and what the Democrats have done since then to smear Republicans and conservatives. Kelly makes clear that the truth has been a casualty of the Democrats’ political theatre.
For all these reasons, Jan. 6 is going to be a disaster rather than an asset for Democrats. It will lead them to lose even more seats in November.
The Democrats can’t seem to break out of their commitment to Big Government Socialism, wokeism, cronyism, and corruption. Having Jan. 6 to occupy their minds makes them feel more secure even if the impact does not help them at all.
I am reminded of the great political scientist Samuel Lubell. He had a deep sense that he did not understand most of America, and he was passionate for Americans to teach him. So, Lubell was focused on knocking on doors and interviewing voters. As a result, he was one of the first to predict the rise of the Republican Party in what was then the solidly Democratic South.
In my own career, I never forgot the lesson Lubell learned at a 1952 election night party in New York City. It was a gathering of intellectuals. As Lubell surveyed the room, he realized no one there had voted for Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to be president. They were all liberal academics and they instead identified with Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee, as one of their own.
Lubell realized that Eisenhower had won in a landslide (ending the 20-year Democratic Party control of the White House) and yet none of his fellow intellectuals had voted for the winner. Worse, they had contempt for Eisenhower as “a golfing general.” Sure, Eisenhower led the allied armies in defeating Italy and Germany, but he wasn’t their kind of intellectual.
Lubell realized that cleverness and narcissism may not be sound tools for understanding politics in America. But listening to the real problems and real hopes of the American people would force an agonizing level of change for Democrats.
The focus on the Jan. 6 attack allows House Democrats to avoid rethinking their positions, focusing on real problems, or modifying their ideological fanaticism to try to find real solutions to real problems.
Americans will see right through the charade
****************************************
There Was No Insurrection on Jan, 6 But There Was A Coup
The debate is over. After a year spent investigating claims of election fraud, the media has determined that any fraud in the 2020 election was too insignificant to have changed the outcome and Joe Biden legitimately won. Now we can get back to our normal lives, or whatever passes for normal now…except that’s fiction.
In 44 BC, Roman Senators murdered Caesar, claiming they acted to protect the Republic. In fact, they simply sought power. Their coup d’état put the final nail in the coffin of a republic that had been dead in deed, if not name, for decades.
Coup d’états differ from revolutions in that they’re generally orchestrated by or include people within government who seize power—often by narrowly using or just threatening violence—resulting in a rapid transition of power. Revolutions are often longer affairs that include much of a country’s population and exponentially more bloodshed.
Most coups try to keep much of the society and government apparatus intact, merely changing who’s in charge. This illusion of continuity is intended to gain the population’s acquiescence by avoiding the appearance of a bloody civil war.
And that’s exactly what we got. While Donald Trump does not lie in a bloody toga on the floor of the Senate, America witnessed a coup d’état equally as vicious. Many will deny one took place because their guy won but, make no mistake, virtually every American knows one did, even if only 56% admit it.
The moment the coup began to reveal itself Americans knew something was amiss. Many went to bed on November 3rd believing that Trump was leading in enough states to secure an electoral victory, including in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin. Strangely, however, while America slept, densely populated Democrat counties like Fulton (Atlanta) in Georgia and Allegheny (Pittsburgh) in Pennsylvania “stopped counting“ votes only to “restart” later when Biden suddenly got enough votes to swing the state blue. Similarly, Philadelphia stopped “reporting” at 1 AM and later announced Biden had won the state.
The morning of the 4th, as cries of fraud came from red areas across the country, the side that cried “election fraud” for four years suddenly fell silent. Apparently, 2020 had become the “most legitimate election in American history“.
Joseph Stalin said, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” That’s exactly how we went from being a constitutional republic to a banana republic, but rather than the United Fruit Company or the CIA running the coup, it was Mark Zuckerberg, Democrats, the FBI, and the media.
Immediately after Biden was sworn into office Molly Ball of TIME Magazine wrote a glowing paean to the coup:
Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers, and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears. They executed national public-awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump’s conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction.
And as with any good coup, Democrats threatened violence: “The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country.” In this context, “protests” is a metaphor for Democrat-approved BLM and Antifa violence unleashed across America. Ball points out that, following Biden’s victory, Democrats called off the threatened violence: “There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs.”
While Ball’s homage may be insightful, the definitive account of the coup comes from Mollie Hemingway in “Rigged.” Unlike Ball, who couches everything about the coup in the fiction of patriots seeking to “protect” America from the fascist Donald Trump, Hemingway exposes how the leftist cabal set the table for the coup and, upon its execution, unleashed a propaganda machine to pretend the coup never happened.
Hemingway showcases incompetent GOP functionaries like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger empowering Democrats, led by the treacherous Marc Elias and Stacy Abrams, to make unconstitutional voting rule changes. From corrupt jurists ignoring legislation and others explicitly ignoring the Constitution and allowing arbitrary election rulemaking that favored Democrats to the FBI and the media spending years attacking Trump, Hemingway exposes the coup step by step. She demonstrates exactly how Mark Zuckerberg wrote a $400 million check and financed the coup d’état that undermined our Republic.
In perhaps the single most telling line in Rigged, Hemingway quotes a reporter for the Wisconsin Spotlight: “The City of Green Bay literally gave the keys to the election to a Democrat Party operative from New York.” (p. 222.) Similar dynamics played out across the country.
The model was simple. Red counties in half a dozen states gave their counts while blue counties stopped counting or reporting. Once the red totals were in Democrats knew exactly how many votes they needed to “produce” and those numbers magically started coming in. Georgia’s Fulton County gave Biden a 250,000 margin of victory, enough to win the state by 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. Pennsylvania’s Allegheny gave Biden a 150,000 vote margin, enough to take Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes out of 6.8 million.
When the dust settled, Biden was declared the 46th President with “81 million votes” to Trump’s 74 million. But Presidential elections come down to the Electoral College. Joe Biden won there because of three states and 103,000 votes: Pennsylvania, 20 Electors, by 80,000 votes; Georgia, 16 by 12,000; and Arizona, 11 by 11,000 votes.
After two months of being caricatured and called conspiracy nuts or white nationalists, almost a million frustrated Trump voters went to Washington on January 6th to demand Congress investigate the election. After a rally where President Trump explicitly said to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard“ a riot with a few hundred people broke out at the Capital and, suddenly, an “Insurrection” worse than anything “since the Civil War“ occurred. Anyone questioning the election was a guilty participant. That riot, which the FBI may have planned or empowered, suddenly changed the national conversation from investigating November’s coup to impeaching Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” And that was it. End of debate. Biden won and Trump tried to incite a coup. Any contrary ideas were verboten....
But of course, Americans know a lie when they see it and the debate isn’t really over. When the propagandists say there was no way fraud could have affected an election with 150 million voters, that’s a red herring. The cabal behind the coup didn’t have to affect 150 million votes. All they had to do was affect (or create) 100,000 well-placed votes, which is exactly what they did. Zuckerberg-funded Democrats in a few states merely had to wait until the red areas reported their totals and then magically produce more votes from their stopped or paused machines. And that’s how it’s done, a real-life enactment of Stalin’s adage, and it’s just another day at the office for Democrats.
Mark Anthony could only eulogize Caesar after the Ides of March, but Donald Trump is still very much with us. We still have an opportunity to reverse this treachery and avert the disaster that naturally follows when the Rule of Man subverts the Rule of Law. But will we seize it before it’s too late?
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/there_was_no_insurrection_but_there_was_a_coup.html
************************************************Donald Trump's appeal is undimmed
It’s tradition that US presidents retreat from public view for a time after leaving the Oval Office.The move is supposed to give the incoming president clear air to bring the nation together after an election, and give the outgoing president a break after their years of service.
It was always going to be different with Trump, not least because the days after he left office were dominated by his still active impeachment trial in the US Senate.
Just five weeks after he left office, Trump gave his first public speech at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference. "Do you miss me yet?" was his opening line.
Trump's post-presidency plan started in earnest, and the "end of Trump" chorus began to fade into the background.
He started publicly endorsing candidates in Republican primary contests, often as a way to enact revenge on party colleagues who voted to impeach him a second time.
Trump's trademark rallies returned in June 2021, including one at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, the event presidential hopefuls flock to in an election year.
The same month, his former advisor Jason Miller made clear how the former president was viewed by Republicans. "President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party," Miller said in an interview.
Trump became a regular guest in the US conservative media ecosystem, appearing on his preferred programs on networks like Fox News. Books with his name and face on them, written by the mainstream journalists he called "enemies of the people", topped the New York Times best-seller lists.
Trump's supporters were bombarded with requests for money like it was an election year, sometimes at least one plea per day for a month in 2021 according to the Independent.
As a result, the money continued to pour into his Save America PAC (an official fundraising organisation with a reported war-chest of $US85 million, with the PAC claiming it had nearly one million donors on its books in November.
The PAC then hired staff in Iowa, the first state to vote in the 2024 Republican primary.
While there was no shortage of Republicans lining up to take on the former president in the wake of the January 6 attacks, in the year since nearly all have fallen into two camps.
Those who've stuck by their guns have been pushed to the fringes of the party or retired from politics. The rest came crawling back to Team Trump.
To understand Trump's appeal in 2022 and beyond, it's helpful to start with the very things that delivered him the White House in 2016.
At this moment he can again embrace the outsider, anti-politician message he could never truly grasp in 2020 while the seat at the Resolute desk was his.
Analysis by Pew Research of Republican voters found the equal-most dominant block (23 per cent of voters who are Republicans or lean Republican) are among Trump's strongest supporters.
"Most say Trump definitely or probably is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, despite official counts showing that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner. And 79 per cent say there has been too much attention paid to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol," the research concludes.
Believing and repeating Trump's claims about the 2020 election has become a litmus test for any elected Republicans, and for those wishing to become one in the future.
On November 8 this year, Americans will head to the polls for the first nationwide elections since Joe Biden became president. It'll be a referendum on a lot of things in America, and Trump needs to decide how much he wants to involve himself in the election.
Advisers are reportedly urging him to play a quiet kingmaker role rather than put himself on the ballot, but the former president was never known for listening to anyone other than himself or staying quiet.
What little electoral evidence we have from 2021 also presents a muddier picture of the future for Trump than his meteoric rise back to the top of the Republican party might suggest.
Republicans will need more than just Trump loyalists if they want to win back the House and the Senate and land a serious blow on Joe Biden in November.
Trump remains widely unpopular with the broader American electorate according to an average of polls from FiveThirtyEight.
Can Republicans walk a tightrope of putting the spotlight on Trump that their base demands while not reminding undecided voters why they walked away from him at the 2020 election?
Democrats are confronted with a picture that's as muddy as the Republican one.
Do they run a campaign not focused on Trump (as some party insiders are suggesting) to replicate their 2018 midterm success?
Or does the party talk up the threat of Trump 2024 (as other insiders suggest) to replicate their 2020 success, and distract from their own unpopular president in the process?
Throughout 2021 Trump has winked, nodded, suggested, intimated and joked about a 2024 run at the presidency.
He was reportedly even talked out of announcing while Biden struggled with the US exit from Afghanistan.
Advisers were reportedly wary of making him a target of the upcoming 2022 midterms and of campaign finance laws that would kick in once Trump is officially a candidate.
It also keeps any Republican challengers to the throne at bay.
"He tacitly keeps the 2024 crowd on notice that nobody can move a major muscle until he decides what he's doing," Kellyanne Conway, one of Trump's former top aides, told the Washington Post.
Trump is no doubt bolstered by poll after poll that show him as the man Republicans want in 2024. A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showed 69 per cent of Republicans want Trump to run again.
When Trump is compared to the Republican alternatives, no challenger is even close.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll found 58 per cent of Republican voters it surveyed wanted Trump to run in 2024. The next closest challenger was former vice president Mike Pence on 13 per cent, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on nine per cent.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-08/trump-after-january-6/100736202
*************************************************There’s nothing more frightening than a woman in politics
Alexandra Marshall
It is difficult to argue that women are the less capable gender when they have spent the last ten million years outsourcing humanity’s physical labour to men in exchange for sexual favours.
This advantageous arrangement backfires on women from time to time, but in general, it has been a successful strategy to deal with the physical imbalance between the sexes. The question of ‘which is the more powerful gender?’ remains impossible to answer, with women frequently holding the reins of power by the balls.
The manipulation of men is so complete that, for most of modern history, a man who is unknown to a woman in distress will still protect her in order to honour the social norms of the time. Less generous feminists will claim that men only help women in the hopes of sleeping with them, but it seems that men enjoy the gentleman narrative and derive satisfaction purely from the act of rescuing.
Women play far less angelic games with men.
The competition to secure a position in society via a sexual relationship dominates the female experience. Whether intentional or not, female friendships can be defined by their preference in lover. The strongest relationships between women are frequently founded on opposing interests in men, ensuring that the women do not pose a threat to each other’s ambitions. This is pheromonal, not deliberate.
Men are not the hard done by ones in this scenario.
Not only do they have women competing for their attention, those women that succeed spend their considerable talents protecting the man and his position from everyone else, regardless of gender. The protection of a dominant woman has secured many of history’s political empires, while the maintenance of power is often left up to the scheming of wives, mistresses, mothers, and daughters.
When it comes to politics, women wield the power men publicly hold.
There is no need for the Australian government or individual political parties to impose gender quotas on Parliament. Women are uniquely adapted to the intricacies of politics. The issue is not a matter of merit or desire, but rather ‘style’. History shows us that women prefer secretive politics. They build webs of intrigue that span so deep into political and social regimes that men only become aware of the threads after they have been captured by a successful plot.
While men trade verbal blows and spend years fighting for an inch of land, a sideways glance from an attractive woman can undo a treaty between nations.
Men parade power – wear it on their chests, fly it on flags, demand that it be screeched from the battlefields, and crowd themselves into the halls of Parliament. Enticing women into this arena must be a natural process, not a forced system of activist revenge. The more women who are artificially thrust into unsuitable political positions and then fail, the less likely suitable women are to try their luck. Role models cannot be manufactured, they have to create themselves without reference to the feminist agenda.
If anything, modern feminism has begun to erode the power of women. Angry social movements have told women to make themselves unattractive as a symbol of ‘power’ – to throw off the chains of beauty and femininity in order to conquer the masculine world. The harsh biological reality is that there is nothing less powerful than an unattractive woman of middling ability. They occupy the same position in society as a weak man without the virtue of a bank balance.
Very few women who lack the gifts of nature rise to dominate men. The few that succeed possess a ruthlessness superior to their male counterparts – something that cannot and should not be replicated by the masses. These women, which form the exception to the rule, do not require the help of feminism. They have reigned throughout the centuries based upon the sheer force of their iron will – and continue to do so.
Modern feminism’s demands betray the fragility of its parasitic movement. The very last thing these activists want is a powerful, attractive, conspiring woman in a short skirt and high heels sauntering onto the political stage. Such a woman is beyond their control and certain to tear down the flimsy #metoo demands of incompetent quota-holders that survive on career handouts from party strategists.
If modern women are exposed to this scenario, the days of ugly feminist activism and saggy-breasted screeching are numbered. Women want to be beautiful. They want to be powerful. Once they realise that they can also be publicly political – who knows…
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/01/theres-nothing-more-frightening-than-a-woman-in-politics/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
7 January, 2022
Wokeism: the triumph of emotion over fact
The ability of humans to overcome our feelings (including rage, fear and lust) and make evidence-based decisions is the single most important reason for our progress.
The woke command to placate the feelings of select groups and fanatically pursue trendy causes while rejecting empirically grounded knowledge will only set back the flourishing of society. This is already happening.
However, we are affluent in both social and financial terms. It is only when this wealth is seriously depleted that the pursuit of knowledge will once again become the principal aim of society.
Until then, get ready for some suffering.
The damage done by making feelings more important than facts is unfolding in real time in the cradle of wokeism: the US.
In response to the abhorrent killing of an African-American, George Floyd, by a white police officer, lobby groups (such as Black Lives Matter) called for the disestablishment of police forces.
Rather than urging for Floyd’s killer to be appropriately punished and for police to be better trained, these activists actually felt it would be a good idea to defund the police.
Now think (don’t feel) about that for a moment. It is incontestably one of the stupidest ideas in history. Criminologists have known for decades that the best deterrent to criminal activity is to instil in people the belief that if they commit crimes they will be caught. This is best achieved by ensuring a high police presence.
This has been repeatedly proven by empirical studies.
Moreover, a number of natural social experiments (including the 1923 Melbourne police strike) showed that if the police numbers are radically reduced, chaos will ensue.
Despite this, many police departments across the US have been progressively starved of resources.
The result is unsurprising. The rate of violent crime and homicide has had its largest increase – more than 30 per cent in some US cities. This is on the back of a declining crime rate in the US for much of the past 25 years.
Now, just like that, crime is suddenly the second biggest concern of Americans (behind inflation).
Liberal cities such as San Francisco that aggressively defunded police departments are now furiously “refunding police” as a result of unprecedented levels of crime.
The surge in crime was utterly predictable. Every one of the thousands of law professors and criminologists in the US knew that no other outcome was possible.
The incredible thing is that the “defund the police” movement met no effective, expert pushback explaining how this policy would result in the preventable deaths of thousands of innocent people, many of them African-Americans.
Many criminologists did not speak up because they knew they risked being “cancelled” from their jobs and social circles if they expressed views contrary to this “social justice” cause.
This highlights the paradox of the internet. Its theoretically free flow of communication has not led to enhanced knowledge.
Rather, it has provided a vehicle for enhanced venting and emotional manipulation.
The internet gives every person a podium and the noise emanating from millions of daily posts hampers the ability of many people to distinguish between fact and agenda.
Truth is no longer binary but now depends on the extent to which people can stimulate the feelings of others and drown out opposing views by inflicting damage on the careers and social standing of people with dissenting views.
The thudding hypocrisy of woke-ism is that the advocates of social justice causes have become ruthless tyrants and oppressors.
They have shown no restraint in seeking to dismantle free speech (a cornerstone of democracy), the presumption of innocence and proportionately in punishment.
Former US president Barack Obama had no luck getting woke warriors to temper their blind rage.
In 2019, he pointed out that the “idea of purity and that you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke (is misguided). People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you.”
To this day, the smartest analysis of free speech dates back to British philosopher JS Mill who stated that “the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race … If the opinion is right, (people) are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth produced by its collision with error.”
Of course, no principle is absolute. Free speech can be limited, but only when it is necessary to prevent harm to others - for example, words that incite violence or defame others. In all other circumstances, suppressing free speech causes more damage to society and individuals than any emotional hurt (real or perceived) among those who decide to be offended.
Feelings are not unimportant but the trajectory of human progress demonstrates that stifling free speech and thereby compromising the search for knowledge is too high a price to pay for allowing rule by emotions.
https://fifthestatepress.com/posts/status-2021122909907
*********************************************'There are innumerable gender identities': JK Rowling is forced to defend herself in new trans row after she hit back at claim on US website that she believes there are only two genders
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is today at the centre of a fresh trans rights row after clarifying her views on sex and gender, telling fans: 'There are innumerable gender identities'.
The British author, 56, who has previously come under fire for her public views on trans issues, last night tweeted 'I've never said there are only two genders'.
The comment came in response to a US news website article reporting on a poll claiming that most Americans supported her views on gender.
But the Gloucestershire-born author, who last month had to call in police after activists posted pictures of her address online, said the question in the poll did not reflect her opinion.
Responding to the article, titled 'Most Americans Agree With J. K. Rowling, There are Only Two Genders', she wrote: 'Small but important point: I've never said there are only two genders. There are innumerable gender identities.
'The question at the heart of this debate is whether sex or gender identity should form the basis of decisions on safeguarding, provision of services, sporting categories and other areas where women and girls currently have legal rights and protections.
'Using the words 'sex' and 'gender' interchangeably obscures the central issue of this debate.
'If you're interested in what I actually said, see this - (in which I literally say 'trans lives matter' and 'trans rights are human rights.').
The article, featured on American news site CNS News, reports on a poll by US conservative polling group Rasmussen Reports in which it is claimed that 75 per cent of American adults 'agree with JK Rowling that there are only two genders'.
The poll reportedly was carried out via telephone and online, with 63 per cent said to have 'strongly agreed'. A total of 18 per cent are reported to have disagreed.
The article also includes a quote from a piece, penned by Rowling and posted on her website in June last year.
In the article, which remains on her website, she write: 'It's been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have, if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it's pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.'
The CNS article, acknowledges that 'Rowling does not dismiss transgenderism', but says that 'she has questioned how, politically, it is eroding the legal definitions of male and female'.
Rowling's Twitter response to the article sparked a mixed reaction last night, with some praising her comments, and others criticising.
One person to reply, Lucie Westenra, wrote: 'No, my social legal and medical existence is not a matter of debate, nor is my life the product of some kind of ideology.
'I have an involuntary, lifelong condition, and live in a society that recognises and protects that, which some wish to undermine.'
Another, Emerald Wilkins, wrote: 'You basically said… "I see that there are different gender identities… BUT I don’t think people who identify with them should have legal protections."
'The most pressing point of advocating for trans rights is to ensure legal protection from discrimination. Trans rights now!'
Another Twitter user wrote: 'I don't see you as transphobic. What I didn't like in part was the way you got your point across. With your reach comes a certain responsibility not to step on people's toes and hurt them - unlike in your private life when you talk about it with friends.
'Please don't get me wrong - just like you (probably). I think it's very important to stand up for your opinions - even if many people see it differently.
'That is democracy, that is freedom of opinion. I would have wished only, you would have bought them more often so over, as above.'
Another added: 'I wish both sides of the debate could see the nuance. It makes me sad that people seem to think perspective on this is either "you're with us or aganist us".
'You be almost entirely with someone but have a caveat or two.'
Though Rowling voice concerns as early as 2018, she became embroiled in the row over trangender rights in June last year after posting tweets which took issue with the phrase 'people who menstruate' used in place of the word 'women'.
She later Tweeted: 'If sex isn't real, there's no same-sex attraction. If sex isn't real, the lived reality of women globally is erased.
'I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives.'
Rowling's comments were applauded by some, but heavily criticised by others, who accused the author or transphobia.
*******************************************
China tell their footballers they must have their tattoos REMOVED 'to set a good example for society', as young players are banned from playing for the national team if they are inked
I think tattoos are a disfigurement so I have some sympathy for the Chinese view
Chinese footballers will need to undergo the painful process of having tattoos removed or risk being snubbed by the national team following a new order banning the body work.
The General Administration of Sport (GAS) have gone a step further than they did in 2018 when players were forced to cover up tattoos to continue playing.
In their latest move GAS have outlawed tattoos altogether and want any player with pre-existing tattoos to get them removed in order to 'set a good example' for Chinese society.
'The national team and the U23 national team athletes are strictly prohibited from having new tattoos, and those who already have tattoos are advised to remove them themselves,' the GAS statement said.
'If there are special circumstances agreed by the team, (players) must cover up the tattoos during training and matches.'
China has previous in wading into the appearance of its players with a women's football match in 2018 called off after players were told they were prohibited from playing with dyed hair.
'Athletes are not allowed to dye their hair, grow long hair [for boys], wear weird hairstyles, or wear any accessories,' rules of the Fujian Provincial Department of Education, reported by the South China Morning Post (SCMP), stated at the time. 'Otherwise, they will be disqualified from the competition.'
Tattoos have been treated with disdain in China but their popularity has increased among young adults, and many footballers.
Zhang Linpeng of Guangzhou FC is one such player known throughout Chinese football for his extensive ink.
But new rules look set to prove problematic for younger players with any fresh tattoos likely to result in expulsion from the national team.
Players in the national team have previously been seen playing with tape covering any visible tattoo areas.
The GAS went on to add that China's national teams, throughout age groups, should organise 'ideological and political education activities' that would 'strengthen the patriotic education' of its players.
The statement is headed 'Suggestions for strengthening the management of football players'.
It is anticipated that the Chinese FA will be charged with setting out disciplinary requirements for future national team call-ups.
**********************************************
Fur and foie gras set to be banned within months under new British Bill
Imports of fur and foie gras are set to be legally banned within months, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, an environment minister, pledged on Friday.
A new Animals Abroad Bill to be debated in Parliament in early 2022 will also seek to ban the import of 7,000 species of animal hunting trophies.
The announcement sparked a backlash, with the main fur industry body saying it was not popular and would damage relations "with fur producing countries like Canada and the US".
The head of France’s foie gras producers’ association has also been up in arms about the prospect of a ban, saying that she was “shocked and outraged”.
Lord Goldsmith set out the plans for the wide-ranging ban on BBC Radio 4's Today programme. The new legislation would cover "a whole bunch of issues like foie gras imports, fur imports, elephant attractions", he said.
One of the ‘toughest’ bans in the world
On hunting trophies, the peer said: "We are introducing a ban - it will be one of the toughest bans in the world, covering around 7,000 species, with no conservation exemptions.
"We will be legislating early [this] year. I am pushing very hard for us to get the earliest possible slot to do it."
The Animals Abroad Bill will also ban the import and export of shark fins and companies in the UK would be legally stopped from advertising "low-welfare animal practices abroad, such as elephant rides" for tourists overseas, government sources said.
Since the UK outlawed fur farming in 2003, more than £800 million worth of animal fur has been imported to Britain, according to figures from HM Revenue & Customs.
It is often used for hat bobbles, hood trims, boots and slippers, as well as coats from high-end stores.
However there has been growing pressure for a ban on fur imports and in May 2021 ministers launched a call for evidence on the implications of a block on importing and selling real fur.
The Telegraph disclosed in March 2021 how Guardsmen had splashed out tens of thousands of pounds on new pelts for their black bearskin hats ahead of any potential ban.
Last night Frank Zilberkweit, the chairman of the British Fur Trade Association, accused Lord Goldsmith of using the issue as a "personal hobby horse designed to appeal to a cabal of animal rights supporters".
"Such a move is not supported by other senior members of the Government including the Ministry of Defence that recently confirmed its support for natural fur.
"It beggars belief that there are those in the Conservative Party who think this is a priority rather than tackling the pandemic and cost of living crisis.
"We will not hesitate to challenge this nonsensical and personally motivated attack using all avenues open to us and have made clear that the Government should instead work with us on the existing welfare programmes already operating that guarantee standards in animal welfare."
He added that "banning fur in the UK would make no difference to animal welfare but would cost thousands of jobs, shut hundreds of businesses and effectively criminalise millions of consumers whilst damaging relations with fur producing countries like Canada and the US.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/31/fur-foie-gras-set-banned-within-months-new-bill/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
6 January, 2022
Anti-democratic Dems Suggest ‘Disqualifying’ GOP from 2020 Election Over Capitol Riot
If it sounds desperate, it’s because it is.
Democrats have been having a hard time convincing much of the nation that they support free and fair elections of late, and the latest liberal scheme is going to reinforce that stereotype immensely.
In the coming months, the nation will learn whether or not the oft-predicted “red wave” will sweep over Congress, presumably giving the Republicans a majority in both houses and a way to completely stall the Biden administration’s agenda. Given just how tough it has been for the White House to accomplish anything, this possibility seems to be ever more likely.
And so the Democrats, who were accused of “stealing” the 2024 election by and from Donald Trump, are now looking to simply “disqualify” GOP candidates from the midterms…while they still have the congressional power.
Some Democrats are using the anniversary of last year’s Capitol riot on January 6 to launch an effort to win the 2022 midterm elections by disqualifying Republicans who supported the effort to challenge the 2020 elections results as “insurrectionists.”
The effort, spearheaded by Russia hoaxer Marc Elias, aims to use a provision of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment that was crafted to disqualify former Confederates or anyone who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from holding federal office. Elias has pushed the effort for months.
The move is s divisive and controversial one, and comes at a time in which the nation is looking to heal as one.
This isn’t the first time that Elias has sought to paint the government blue with broad strokes, having been integral in the effort to politically smear Donald Trump as some sort of Russian asset back in 2016.
https://flagandcross.com/dems-suggest-disqualifying-gop-from-2020-election-over-capitol-riot/
*****************************************U-Haul Runs Out of Moving Trucks in California as Exodus Continues
U-Haul released its yearly report on Jan. 3. The overall results may not be surprising, but the scope of the report is.
The number of people fleeing governmental tyrannies and economic downturns — the two go hand-in-hand — has risen, the report appears to indicate.
With well over 2 million one-way truck rentals taking place annually, U-Haul is an authority on migration trends. Its network of operations covers all 50 states in the U.S. and 10 provinces of Canada.
Even with approximately 176,000 trucks, 126,000 trailers and 46,000 towing devices at their disposal nationwide, the company still ran out of inventory in California last year. Maybe that’s why the net loss of U-Haul trucks in California wasn’t as severe as in 2020. Nevertheless, California remained at the top of the list for outbound migration. Illinois came in second. Pennsylvania took third.
New York, a haven for criminals, came in sixth place, with Alabama in the fifth position and Massachusetts coming in fourth.
The winners of this contest likely won’t show up to claim their prizes.
All three of the top “winners” have liberal strongholds in major American cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia. All three of the cities are plagued by crime.
Steve Miller, former advisor to President Trump, told Larry Kudlow that the crime surge in Democrat-led cities is “now worse than it has ever been before.”
“There’s nothing compassionate,” Miller said, “about reorienting our entire society for the benefit of the sliver of people in this country who are malicious and violent.”
There’s nothing reasonable about it, either. Going soft on crime and being hostile to law enforcement is not only at war with reason, it’s a sure way to hell where reason becomes an impossibility.
On the other side of the equation, Texas wins first place for the state with the highest growth status. Second goes to Florida, and third place goes to Tennessee, which took first last year. All of these states have strong economies, but that’s not all. They are led by conservatives who don’t cotton to big government. They don’t reward crime. And they push back against draconian measures of the Biden administration.
In Texas, for example, Matt Merrill, U-Haul Area District Vice President of the Dallas Fort-Worth Metroplex and West Texas said, “We see a lot of growth coming from the East and West Coast. A lot of people moving here from California and New York. We also see a lot of people coming in from the Chicago markets. I think that’s a lot due to the job growth – a lot of opportunity here. The cost of living here is much lower than those areas. Texas is open for business.”
South Carolina, Arizona, Indiana, Colorado, Maine, Idaho and New Mexico make up the remaining top 10 growth states of 2021. Notice the trend. By and large, people are fleeing from liberal strongholds to conservative lands of the free.
The reasons people make the decision to move out of state, of course, are varied and complex. The overall trend, however, is clear. People love freedom and will uproot their lives and move to a new state when that freedom is threatened. It is as simple as that.
https://flagandcross.com/report-u-haul-runs-out-of-moving-trucks-in-california-as-exodus-continues/
*********************************************Manhattan’s New Soros-Backed DA Orders Armed Robberies to Be Charged as Mere Misdemeanors
Alvin Bragg, the new district attorney of Manhattan, New York, announced his office is downgrading charges for many felonies and will seek prison sentences for only a handful of crimes.
Bragg, a Democrat who was elected in November, outlined his policies in a “Day One Letter” sent to all staff on Monday, saying they were “effective immediately.”
“The Office will not prosecute the following charges, unless as part of an accusatory instrument containing at least one felony count,” the letter read.
The offenses that no longer will be prosecuted include marijuana misdemeanors, prostitution, resisting arrest, fare dodging and trespassing.
Bragg also said his office would “not seek a carceral sentence” except for homicides, violent felonies, domestic violence, some sex offenses, public corruption, rackets and major economic crimes.
“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo read.
The DA instructed prosecutors to “use their judgment and experience to evaluate the person arrested, and identify people: who suffer from mental illness; who are unhoused; who commit crimes of poverty; or who suffer from substance use disorders.”
This order from Bragg comes in spite of the fact that New York City saw a surge in crime last year.
WNYW-TV reported that the overall crime rate in New York City was up 11.2 percent in October compared with 2020.
Particularly, theft and larceny increased throughout the city.
“The number of robberies jumped 15.8% (1,450 v. 1,252) and felonious assaults increased by 13.8% (2,123 v. 1,865) year-over-year,” the outlet reported. “Grand Larceny and auto thefts were also up sharply in October compared to the same period last year. Auto thefts are up almost 15% for the year versus 2020.”
Last month, the New York Police Department reported an even bigger jump in November. “Overall index crime in New York City increased by 21.3% in November 2021, compared with November 2020 (10,186 v. 8,396),” it said.
Overall, the city has seen homicides increase about 50 percent and shootings double since 2019, the Daily Mail reported.
Bragg claimed in his letter that his “policy changes not only will, in and of themselves, make us safer; they also will free up prosecutorial resources to focus on violent crime.”
As a candidate, he was supported by leftist billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
“Mr. Soros also pledged $1 million to the super PAC Color of Change, aimed at helping another district attorney candidate, Alvin Bragg. A spokeswoman for the super PAC said that nearly $500,000 had been spent on Mr. Bragg’s behalf as of Friday,” The New York Times reported last June.
The New York Post reported in December that Soros’ wealth was flowing to candidates through political action committees in an effort to finance a change in criminal justice.
“The goal of the myriad PACs is focused on electing progressives to end tough policing and mass incarceration,” the Post said.
The impact of this effort across the country has not gone unnoticed.
“George Soros has quietly orchestrated the dark money political equivalent of ‘shock and awe,’ on local attorney races through the country, shattering records, flipping races and essentially making a mockery of our entire campaign finance system,” Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center in Virginia, told the Post.
Now that the Soros-backed Bragg is in office as Manhattan’s DA, many police officers are not happy with the changes he is making to the city’s criminal justice system.
“Bragg gives criminals the roadmap to freedom from prosecution and control of our streets,” Paul DiGiacomo, the head of the NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association, told the Post.
Patrick Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, the NYPD’s largest union, also voiced “serious concerns about the message these types of policies send to both police officers and criminals on the street,” the report said.
“Police officers don’t want to be sent out to enforce laws that the district attorneys won’t prosecute,” Lynch said. “And there are already too many people who believe that they can commit crimes, resist arrest, interfere with police officers and face zero consequences.”
The Post also quoted a Manhattan police officer as saying, “This is outrageous. He was elected to enforce the law. If he wanted to change them, he should have run for a state office.”
**************************************************
Leftist Nutcase Claims 'Trump Was Not Legitimately Elected in 2016'
On Tuesday, "The View" co-host Ana Navarro claimed that former President Donald Trump was not legitimately elected in 2016.
Navarro said, “There’s things which I think should transcend partisanship and should transcend politics, and a breach of the U.S. Capitol, an attack on our democratic principles and institutions should be one of those things. I really blame Republicans at the top for capitulating to Trump. I blame Trump for continuing this environment of lies and conspiracy theories and not accepting that he lost, and encouraging and promoting what happened, the big lie, and what happened on January 6. He bears responsibility. It’s not just me saying this."
She continued, "It was Kevin McCarthy saying this on January 6 — let me read to you what he said, Kevin McCarthy, ‘The president bears responsibility for today’s attacks on Congress by mob rioters.’ McCarthy said on the House floor. ‘He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump.’ Now just days later, that same Kevin McCarthy was at Mar-a-Lago kissing Trump’s ring.”
Navarro claimed, “We’ve seen Republican after Republican who on January 6 was shocked and calling for an investigation, and for truth and for reaction and action from Trump. We’ve seen them bow down to Trump because they want to stay elected and because they’re putting their own positions over democracy and over defending the U.S. institution of a legitimate election.”
She added, “Look, I felt that Donald Trump had not been legitimately elected. I felt he’d gotten help from the Russians, but you know what? It would have never occurred to me to take up arms against Donald Trump. That’s just not what we do in America. Our weapon of choice is voting, is democracy, it’s the ballot, and so I hope that people remember January 6. You know why? You know how? By registering to vote. By making sure they know where they have to show up to vote because there are elections this year, and they are so crucial.”
*************************************************
Bye bye Massachusetts
Jeff Jacoby
A FRIEND of mine who lived for many years on the North Shore of Massachusetts relocated to Kentucky in 2018 and has rejoiced ever since that it was among the best decisions he ever made. Compared to the Bay State, he reports, the housing where he lives now is more affordable, the taxes are lower, the winters are milder, the people are friendlier, and the politics are more congenial. Not even the tornadoes that tore up western Kentucky last month have dampened his satisfaction in no longer having to put up with all the things that he found so irksome about life in Massachusetts.
My friend's experience isn't anomalous. Each year, more people leave Massachusetts for other states than move to Massachusetts from other states. According to the Census Bureau, between April 2020 and July 2021, the population of Massachusetts shrank by more than 45,000. Only three other, much more populous, states — California, New York, and Illinois — experienced a greater net outflow of residents.
When it comes to domestic migration — the movement of people within the United States — Massachusetts has been on the losing team for quite a while. Back in 2003, the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts noted with concern that over the previous 12 years, Massachusetts had experienced a net loss of more than 213,000 people (not including foreign immigrants). The out-migration hasn't stopped. While the influx of people moving into Massachusetts from elsewhere in the United States has been steady, the Boston Business Journal observed in 2020, the tide of those moving out has swelled by 24 percent. And where are they going? The numbers fluctuate from year to year, but the Journal identified Florida and New Hampshire as the two "top states draining Massachusetts of the most residents."
Real-world evidence confirms that far more people relocate from Massachusetts to Florida or New Hampshire than the other way around.
Consider U-Haul's rental rates. To rent a 26-foot truck for a one-way move from Boston to Orlando this month will cost you $5,325, but the rate is just $887 for a move from Orlando to Boston. Why the steep disparity? Because the demand for one-way trucks from Boston to Florida is very high, while demand for trucks going in the other direction is very low.
The imbalance shows up even for destinations as close as Massachusetts and New Hampshire. U-Haul's rate to rent a truck from Boston to Manchester is $473. But it's just $208 if you're driving from Manchester to Boston.
To be sure, the choices Americans make about where to live and work are affected by all kinds of individual considerations — school, work, weather, family, cost of living. But the persistent attraction of Florida and New Hampshire also reflects the fact that they offer something Massachusetts doesn't: Could it be that neither imposes an income tax? When the states are ranked by overall tax burden, Florida and New Hampshire are among the least onerous. That can't be said about Massachusetts. Taxes are not the only reason that people pull up stakes and move, of course. But the steady (and costly) flow of Massachusetts residents to the Granite and Sunshine states speaks for itself.
Economist Mark Perry, who analyzes national domestic migration patterns, shows that on a range of economic and political measures, the Top 10 "inbound" states (currently Florida, Texas, Arizona, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada) differ significantly from the Top 10 "outbound" states (California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Louisiana, Maryland, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Michigan). By and large, inbound states have lower taxes, Republican governments, cheaper energy, greater fiscal stability, and a more pro-business environment. Outbound states are more likely to lean the other way.
Admittedly these are only broad patterns, and no state in either category fits the description precisely. And, as noted, every family's decision to move from one state to another is shaped by personal circumstances. But the data keep reinforcing the patterns. "There is empirical evidence that Americans and businesses 'vote with their feet' when they relocate from one state to another," writes Perry. "The evidence suggests that Americans are moving from blue states that are more economically stagnant . . . to fiscally sound red states that are more economically vibrant."
Massachusetts certainly has its charms and advantages; countless Bay Staters would never consider moving anywhere else. But plenty of their neighbors feel differently. Year in, year out, tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents leave for good, and their numbers aren't replenished by newcomers from other states. My friend in Kentucky is happy he left, and he's clearly not alone.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25924/bye-bye-bay-state
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
5 January, 2022
Guards stood aside while Epstein was killed -- but they skate
When America was experiencing more fierce cultural division than it had in at least a generation, one issue united us all in the summer of 2019.
Right, left, black, white, gay, straight, Christian, atheist, far-left radical, alt-right contrarian, millions came together with a single voice to cynically and cheekily declare, all over the internet, in cable news appearances and epic photobombs that perhaps Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself.
I have a lovely cross-stitch of the phrase in my possession today. Not even kidding.
Of course, suicide was and remains the official cause of death for the notorious billionaire pedophile, whose links to Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump alike made him an enticing addition to headlines written for those across the political spectrum and well into its fringes.
take our poll - story continues below
Are Democrat Lawmakers using Omicron to lock Americans down before Mid-Term elections?
It is for this reason that many suspect the mysterious circumstances of his all-too-convenient death on the night of Aug. 10, 2019, as he awaited trial for child sex trafficking indicate that suicide may not, in fact, have been the cause of his demise.
This is also now why it is incredibly compelling to learn that the guards who were supposed to be watching him the night he supposedly hanged himself in his cell are no longer facing prison time themselves after a deferred prosecution agreement which included their full cooperation with the investigation into Epstein’s death.
Federal prosecutors asked a guard on Thursday to drop charges against Tova Noel and Michael Thomas, the guards who admitted to falsifying records to cover for their failure to conduct routine checks on their high-profile charge.
They were accused of sleeping and shopping on the internet instead of performing their duties.
Noel and Thomas complied with the deferred prosecution agreement they had reached with the state in May, during which they completed 100 hours of community service and cooperated with the probe into Epstein’s death.
This comes as Epstein’s longtime associate and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was found guilty of luring and grooming underage girls into their social orbit for Epstein and occasionally herself to sexually abuse.
The pair have been long accused of such sordid sex trafficking schemes as well as hosting hedonistic parties and getaways to Epstein’s various properties for their rich and powerful associates to also allegedly partake in underage sexual abuse.
Epstein has been linked to the likes of Clinton, Trump, Prince Andrew of the U.K. and Bill Gates, although it is only our 45th president who has not been accused of abusing an underage girl in his former associate’s company, and he once even banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after the latter tried to solicit prostitution from an underage girl at the resort.
Of course, it was nonetheless this link to the name of Trump that captured attention in 2019 following Epstein’s arrest and subsequent death. Considering it happened in a federal facility while Trump was still serving as president, this made for all the more widespread speculation that there was something fishy about the death of this high-profile federal prisoner.
Thus, why the “Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself” refrain became so popular. Whether it was the Clinton Deep State or the oft-demonized Trump administration that facilitated or even carried out a hit on Epstein, the thinking generally went, most Americans seemed to agree that there was something shady about the whole thing and that powerful people likely only wanted Epstein dead, but had the means to make it quietly happen.
I can’t possibly say if that is why these guards are no longer facing prison time.
I can say, however, that the fact that they’re not most certainly doesn’t ease the appearance of a cover-up.
There have been red flags all over the place from the get-go. While the New York Medical Examiner determined Epstein died by suicide, renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden begged to differ, saying that he’d never seen the kind of fracture that occurred in Epstein’s neck in another hanging suicide case across his 50-year career.
While in prison, Epstein told prison psychologists that he’d never kill himself and that (rather ironically for his preferred lifestyle) his religion didn’t allow it.
While a former cellmate of his said earlier this month that Epstein appeared “depressed” and “suicidal” just days before he died, this same cellmate said previously that the infamous inmate didn’t, in fact, come off as suicidal to him at all.
Clearly, it is not wildly unfounded to suggest that questions remain unanswered.
If these two prison guards aren’t guilty of the conditions that led to Epstein’s death … then who is?
******************************************
How fake science is infiltrating scientific journals
In 2015, molecular oncologist Jennifer Byrne was surprised to discover during a scan of the academic literature that five papers had been written about a gene she had originally identified, but did not find particularly interesting.
“Looking at these papers, I thought they were really similar, they had some mistakes in them and they had some stuff that didn’t make sense at all,” she said. As she dug deeper, it dawned on her that the papers might have been produced by a third-party working for profit.
“Part of me still feels awful thinking about it because it’s such an unpleasant thing when you’ve spent years in a laboratory and taking two to 10 years to publish stuff, and making stuff up is so easy,” Professor Byrne said. “That’s what scares the life out of me.”
The more she investigated, the more clear it became that a cottage industry in academic fraud was infecting the literature. In 2017, she uncovered 48 similarly suspicious papers and brought them to the attention of the journals, resulting in several retractions, but the response from the publishing industry was varied, she said.
“A lot of journals don’t really want to know,” she said. “They don’t really want to go and rifle through hundreds of papers in their archives that are generated by paper mills.”
More recently, she and a French collaborator developed a software tool that identified 712 papers from a total of more than 11,700 which contain wrongly identified sequences that suggest they were produced in a paper mill. Her research is due to be published in Life Science Alliance.
Even if the research was published in low-impact journals, it still had the potential to derail legitimate cancer research, and anybody who tried to build on it would be wasting time and grant money, she said. She has also suggested that journals could flag errors while articles were under investigation, so people did not continue to rely on their findings during that time.
Publishers and researchers have reported an extraordinary proliferation in junk science over the last decade, which has infiltrated even the most esteemed journals. Many bear the hallmarks of having been produced in a paper mill: submitted by authors at Chinese hospitals with similar templates or structures. Paper mills operate several models, including selling data (which may be fake), supplying entire manuscripts or selling authorship slots on manuscripts that have been accepted for publication.
The Sydney Morning Herald has learned of suicides among graduate students in China when they heard that their research might be questioned by authorities. Many universities have made publication a condition of students earning their masters or doctorates, and it is an open secret that the students fudge the data. The universities reap money from the research grants they earn. The teachers get their names on the papers as contributing authors, which helps them to seek promotions.
International biotechnology consultant Glenn Begley, who has been campaigning for more meaningful links between academia and industry, said research fraud was a story of perverse incentives. He wants researchers to be banned from producing more than two or three papers per year, to ensure the focus remained on quality rather than quantity.
“The real incentive is for researchers to get their papers published and it doesn’t have to be right so long as it’s published,” Dr Begley said. He recently told the vice-chancellor of a leading Australian university of his frustration with the narrative that Australia was “punching above its weight” in terms of research outcomes. “It’s outrageous,” Mr Begley told the vice-chancellor. “It’s not true.”
“Yes,” the vice-chancellor replied. “I use that phrase with politicians all the time. They love it.”
According to one publishing industry insider, editors are operating with an element of wishful thinking. This major publishing house employee, whose contract prevented him from speaking publicly, said when his journal started receiving a torrent of applications from Chinese researchers around 2014, the staff assumed that their efforts to tap into the Chinese market had borne fruit. They later realised that many of the papers were fraudulent and acted, but he was aware of other editors who turned a blind eye.
“Obviously there’s so much money in China and the journals have their shareholders to answer to, and they are very careful not to tread on Chinese toes because of the political sensitivity,” he said. “There’s a lot more they could do to sort the good from the bad because there is good science going on in China, but it’s all getting a bad name because of what some Chinese people have worked out — that there’s a market here for a business.”
Last month, SAGE journals retracted 212 articles that had clear evidence of peer review or submission manipulation, and subjected a further 318 papers to expressions of concern notices. The Royal Society of Chemistry announced last year that 68 papers had been retracted from its journal RSC Advances because of “systematic production of falsified research”.
To indicate the upswing in cases, German clinical researchers reported last week that in their analysis of osteosarcoma papers, just five were retracted before the millennium and 95 thereafter, with 83 of them from a single, unnamed country in Asia. University of Munster Professor Stefan Bielack, who published the study in Cancer Horizons, said some open access journals charged academics US$1500 to $2000 to publish their work, so they were more interested in publishing lots of papers than their scientific validity.
“There is a systematic problem and in some countries people might have the wrong incentives,” Professor Bielack said. “I think the journals have a major role. They all need to be more rigorous.”
The problem is not confined to China, but it has accompanied a dramatic growth in research output from that country, with the number of papers more than tripling over the last decade.
In 2017, responding to a fake peer review scandal that resulted in the retraction of 107 papers from a Springer Nature journal, the Chinese government cracked down and created penalties for research fraud. Universities stopped making research output a condition of graduation or the number of articles a condition of promotion.
But those familiar with the industry say the publication culture has prevailed because universities still compete for research funding and rankings. The number of research papers produced in China has more than tripled over the last decade, with dramatic growth over the past two years. The Chinese government’s investigation of the 107 papers found only 11 per cent were produced by paper mills, with the remainder produced in universities.
Until last year, University of NSW offered its academics a $500 bonus if they were the lead author in a prestige publication and $10,000 if they were the corresponding author of a paper published in Nature or Science. The system, which was designed to reward quality over quantity, was discontinued due to financial constraints.
But others have questioned whether the quality of a paper can be measured by the journal in which it is published, and an open access movement has sprung up in opposition to the scientific publishing industry, arguing that research paid for by taxpayers should be freely available to all.
Alecia Carter, an Australian biological anthropologist at University College London, said the emphasis on getting published in a high-impact journal rewarded sensational results over integrity, positive results over negative results and novel findings over building the evidence base. Researchers might inflate effect sizes or omit conflicting evidence because it muddied the overall story they were trying to tell.
“We as scientists know all these things that are wrong with the way the system is set up, but we still play the game,” Dr Carter said. “We’re all chasing the same thing.”
Dr Carter boycotts luxury journals, publishes as much as possible in open access journals and reports negative results, though this has come at a cost to her career. She was once asked at a job interview why she would bother reporting results that were not interesting.
“I said, ‘If it’s interesting enough to do the research then we should publish the results’.”
She did not get the job.
***********************************
It isn’t racist to believe in genetic differences
In November 1978 a woman approached the world’s leading expert on ants, told him he was wet and proceeded to pour a jug of water over his head.
The occasion was a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the head belonged to Edward O Wilson, who was about to deliver a lecture on sociobiology, a field in which he was a pioneer. But the attack was not only on him. It was an attack on truth, on freedom of thought and on scientific endeavour. And the attack isn’t over yet. There remains work to do resisting it.
Last month EO Wilson died, and the world lost one of its leading scientists. The professor had started by studying fire ants and his knowledge of ants was peerless. But he had broadened as he had aged and had begun to consider human beings. Humans are animals too, after all, so our social organisation, our behaviour, our hierarchies, our urges will, to some extent at least, be the product of our biology.
This, the foundation stone of sociobiology, seems an unremarkable observation, but it provoked a remarkable reaction. Marxists and radicals, well represented in American universities, saw it not as a scientific hypothesis but as a political attack. Their argument was that human behaviour was overwhelmingly the product of social and economic organisation. Humans were, in essence, a blank slate, one very much like another. If Wilson was right, then this idea was wrong. If Wilson was right, societies were going to be harder to change. If Wilson was right, people might not come out equal even with all the social engineering in the world. So Wilson simply couldn’t be allowed to be right.
The weapon of choice in the battle to take down sociobiology was the accusation of racism. Wasn’t Wilson arguing that the problems faced by African-Americans were a result of their biological inferiority? And didn’t he belong to the same intellectual tradition as the eugenicists and the Nazis, obsessed with breeding the “perfect” human?
At his lectures people chanted “Racist Wilson, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide”. Posters called him “the right-wing prophet of patriarchy” and encouraged people to bring “noisemakers” to his talks.
It is tempting to dismiss all this as juvenile student nonsense. The logical flaws in the arguments against him are glaring enough to be funny. It is absurd to argue that biological differences justify discrimination or, worse still, eugenics. And this would be ridiculous even if it were the case that Wilson was suggesting there were differences in abilities or character between races. But he absolutely was not.
Indeed one of the most useful results of studying the genetic and evolutionary basis of human behaviour has been that it has shown that the Nazis and other racists are wrong. And Wilson was quite clear about that. But unfortunately the accusation that Wilson was a racist was not made only by students. It was made by other academics seeking to protect unconvincing leftist ideas about social organisation. And it is still being made. A couple of days after Wilson’s death, Scientific American published an article by a University of California associate professor, reviving the charge of “racist ideas”.
It was an astonishingly muddled article whose vague arguments slip out of one’s hands every time one tries to grasp hold of them. Its appearance owed more to intellectual and political fashion than to rigour.
There are three reasons to rebut this challenge firmly. The first is that it is our duty to W.ilson, a very great scientist. His contribution to the understanding of animal behaviour – of ants, of humans, of all nature – has been profound and it would be both cowardly and a tragedy to allow his reputation to be attacked when he is no longer here to defend himself against a baseless charge.
The second and even more important reason is that Wilson was achingly, obviously right. How likely is it that human beings are the one species whose capacities and behaviour aren’t largely influenced by biology? If every other animal’s behaviour demands an evolutionary explanation, how can it possibly be that ours does not?
And the more knowledge advances, the clearer it is that individual behaviour and capacity varies because our genes vary. Alcoholism, obesity, academic performance, they are all strongly influenced by our genetic differences. Many of our abilities are heritable.
If we ignore this we are making social policy impossibly hard. As the egalitarian and geneticist Kathryn Paige Harden argues in her recent book The Genetic Lottery: “Genetic differences between us matter for our lives. They cause differences in things we care about. Building a commitment to egalitarianism on our genetic uniformity is building a house on sand.”
We don’t have to live with the outcome of genetic disadvantages. That would be like saying that although I’m short-sighted I shouldn’t be allowed glasses. But we do have to recognise genetic differences, or we end up denying glasses on the grounds that short-sightedness is the fault of capitalism and we need to nationalise the water industry first.
The idea that discovering natural difference in capacity is somehow right-wing is deeply puzzling. The truth doesn’t have a wing, it’s just the truth. But it’s not just that. There is a randomness to genetic inheritance, just as there is in economic inheritance. With the latter it is left-wing to observe this randomness and argue that we should help the disadvantaged poor. Why would people on the left not wish to even acknowledge the randomness of genetic inheritance? It is perverse.
The argument that genetic differences make society harder to change is neither a left-wing nor a right-wing one. It is what you decide to do about it that is either left or right-wing.
Yet Harden has found that merely asserting something that is clearly correct – that there are genetic differences and they matter – has brought accusations by leftist academics that she is the equivalent of a Holocaust denier. And it has been harder to win grants and positions.
Which is the third reason for defending Wilson and the study of sociobiology. Scientific methods and the search for truth matter. The accusation that sociobiology is racist rarely rises above the level of saying that as the Nazis were interested in genetics, genetics must be Nazi. It’s a bit like attacking Linda McCartney’s soya-based sausages on the ground that Hitler was a vegetarian.
As we develop our capacity to study our genes we are going to learn more about human nature. We must be allowed to talk about that, even if the things we discover unsettle political activists and the orthodoxy they have adopted. We must defend good science against bad politics.
If the controversy over EO Wilson teaches us that, than the great scientist will have rendered us one final service.
****************************************
The Big Lie & The Elastic Truth: How To Invent A Coup
As we approach the anniversary of the Jan. 6 “insurrection,” the unspoken truth is that Donald Trump had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the violent assault on the Capitol that day. The only chance of keeping Trump in the White House was not by invading the Capitol, but by keeping it secure while our representatives debated the validity of the election using the entirely constitutional process taking place inside the halls of Congress.
The electoral votes of at least five states were being challenged — not in a coup, but in a lawful manner also used by Democrats in earlier elections, following the procedures mandated by the Electoral Count Act of 1887. Republican senators and House members had lined up to make the case to the public and their fellow constitutional officers that something was rotten in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and that the election was therefore tainted. But the violence outside resulted in a sharply truncated debate inside that was virtually ignored, if not outright mocked or shamed, by the mainstream media. The riot instantly doomed any chance Trump had of prevailing in his argument that the election was stolen.
So ask yourself who benefited from the supposed coup at the Capitol. Not Trump. Not the Republicans who had put themselves on the line to support him with evidence of voting irregularities in several states. Cui bono? Who benefits? None other than the very Democrats who for the last year have worked tirelessly to discredit Trump and to find some way to disqualify him from being elected president again in 2024.
The latest claim is that Trump had criminally “obstructed an official proceeding of Congress” by encouraging his supporters to “Stop the Steal.” This is an absurd claim on several fronts.
First of all, Trump’s belief that the election was stolen is protected by his First Amendment right of free speech. So is his right to use the courts and Congress to seek redress of his grievances. There is no evidence he had advance knowledge of the riot or planned it in any way. As noted, the particular proceeding of Congress in question was the only hope Trump had of remaining in office beyond Jan. 20, 2021.
Moreover, the argument that Trump “allowed” the riot to take place because he did not send National Guard troops to intervene is wrong on both the facts and the logic of the case. As I showed in my last column, Trump did in fact request 10,000 National Guard troops to be deployed, but his request was ignored by the Pentagon, the speaker of the House, the Capitol Police and the mayor of Washington, D.C. Even more importantly, if Trump had used the power of the presidency to order a military presence at the Capitol, then the Democrats would have gotten exactly what they wanted — the appearance of a coup ordered by a reckless, out-of-control authoritarian who was trying to bend Congress to his will. In other words, Trump could not win that day no matter what he did. The violence made victory impossible.
But to argue, as Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi do, that Trump didn’t have a right to contest the election is to replace the rule of law with the rule of intimidation. The Democrats and their partners in the media have used all their assembled might to coerce Trump and his allies into silence. His only crime is that he won’t shut up about the election being stolen. Nor for that matter is he the only one who thinks that the election was fraudulent. Millions of us independently reached the same conclusion. If any of those supporters had turned to violence at the Capitol, they should be appropriately tried, convicted and punished for their misdeeds, but that’s not on Trump any more than it is on the rest of us who encouraged our fellow citizens to work to prevent the installation of Joe Biden as president as long as doubts persisted about his legitimacy.
But the Jan. 6 committee and its supporters don’t care about logic or facts. They trotted out text messages from Trump supporters condemning the violence and said that meant Trump himself must have supported the violence. They showed messages that indicated Trump had a strategy to try to prove to Congress and then to the Supreme Court that his rights had been violated, and they said that proved “the Big Coup.”
Goodness, they really didn’t need to wait this long if that’s all it takes to prove a coup! They could have just read Trump’s speech from the morning of Jan. 6. He never hid the fact that he thought he had been cheated out of victory, nor did he ever pretend he would go gentle into that good night the way Democrats hoped he would. But they already knew all that. In fact, they impeached him over the same speech and failed to convict him. If they tried to convict him on the same charges again, under any guise, they would have violated the intent of the Constitution’s protection against double jeopardy. Not that they care.
One last point: In general, the liberal elites appear to be incapable of recognizing that every argument has two sides. They honestly believe that whatever the Democratic leadership says is true, and whatever Donald Trump or his supporters say is false. Although this condition existed prior to the 2020 election, it was exaggerated afterwards to the point where we no longer have the expectation of honest debate. And that, contrary to the claims of politicians like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney, is the real danger to democracy.
When half the people are considered by the other half to be malignant, prevaricating miscreants, there is no hope for true democracy — rule by the people. The best you can expect is demi-democracy, rule of the people by half of the people. That may be the hope of the liberals, but they should be careful what they wish for. Despite their frantic attacks on the Deplorables, it is not yet certain who will prevail in the war they have unleashed. Not a war of weapons, but a war of words and a war of ideas.
On the Democrat side, there are threats and intimidation, warning American citizens not to step out of line. Wear your mask. Get your shot. Turn in your gun. Do what we tell you, and keep your head down. You’ll be fine if you obey.
On the other side, there is a rising chorus of voices, moms and dads, black and white, free-thinkers all, who ask for the right to raise their children as they see fit, insist on medical autonomy, expect elections to be fair, and don’t bow before authority unless it is legitimately wielded.
The choice of two diametrically opposed futures has not been so clear since the Civil War, and Democrats — just as they did in that great conflict — seem intent once again on proving the truth of Lincoln’s dictum that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/big-lie-elastic-truth-how-invent-coup
*************************************************JK Rowling has a spectacular list of achievements to her name but her courage in defying the cancel-mob is her crowning glory
By DAN WOOTTON
Let me start by emphatically stating that JK Rowling and I have never been friends or even allies. I haven't read a word of Harry Potter and a column I wrote in 2018 criticising her for being a Hollywood hypocrite over the #MeToo movement resulted in my lengthy court battle with Johnny Depp.
The column - headlined by my former newspaper on its website as, 'Gone Potty: How can JK Rowling be 'genuinely happy' to cast wife beater Johnny Depp in film? - posed a number of questions to the Potter creator, including: 'You admitted last year there were 'legitimate questions' about Depp's casting. What were these and how did you overcome them?'
In fact, at one point Rowling even threatened to sue me too.
She seemed mad that I had suggested re-casting Depp in the movies was 'the only decision that would show she's a woman of true character and principle, even when her famous friends are involved'.
But I held my nerve – aware the facts were on my side – and the very rich Scottish author eventually relented, with a few tough words from her over-paid lawyer thrown my way.
Depp didn't relent, as you may remember, losing the court case after his ex-wife Amber Heard agreed to give evidence for me, documenting his appalling record of physical abuse and mental torture.
Both Amber and I offered to meet with Rowling separately to explain what we knew about Depp's behaviour, but she rebuffed our attempts to reach out.
It was obvious to me that her close friendship with Depp – an actor who she idolised – had overshadowed principle on this issue, disappointing for someone who is undoubtedly an advocate for female victims of abuse, given she is one herself.
Following Depp's court humiliation, a chastened Rowling was finally forced to remove the actor from her Fantastic Beasts film franchise, which she should have done in the first place.
Despite that somewhat chequered history, I have become convinced these past two years that Rowling is one of our greatest Britons – and that verdict has nothing to do with child wizards in round spectacles.
Rather, it's because Rowling has been prepared to give up virtually everything she previously prized – including being a pin-up for the entertainment establishment – to stand up for the rights of women everywhere, with a nuanced but supportive view of the trans community that just so happens to go against the liberal orthodoxy.
In the cruel process of cancellation, she has learnt first-hand just how hypocritical Hollywood can be; virtually every showbiz industry figure has turned its back on one of its previously most popular figures to protect themselves from the social media hate mob.
Even Harry Potter film franchise stars like Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson, who all would have been no-marks without her, don't want to be associated anymore.
Rowling was left out of the new HBO Max reunion and saw her name axed from her own trailer for the next Fantastic Beasts instalment.
And today the MailOnline has revealed she's been cancelled by an Essex secondary school that specialises in performing arts.
Boswells School in Chelmsford axed Rowling as the namesake for one of its houses because of her 'comments and viewpoints surrounding trans people' following 'requests from students and staff'.
In a newsletter, the school added: 'Her views on this issue do not align with our school policy and school beliefs – a place where people are free to be.'
But one parent quite rightly fumed: 'This is censorship – JK Rowling is a good example of achievement through adversity. Not everyone thought she should go, a lot of schools seem to be doing the same thing at the moment sadly.'
The house has been re-named after the Olympic athletics champion Dame Kelly Holmes.
Which is ironic in itself, given that Holmes has also been criticised for supporting a campaign in 2019 that said sportswomen were at a clear disadvantage against trans competitors – another common sense position that has been weaponised by trans activists.
I imagine it's only a matter of time before Holmes is axed too and replaced by Eddie Izzard.
So what are these heinous views that have made Rowling persona non grata in polite society?
Well, she openly mocked a June 2020 article that described women as 'people who menstruate'.
Quite simply, she believes in biological sex.
Just like the scientist Robert Winston who received hate mail for stating the fact that, 'you cannot change your sex, your sex actually is there in every single cell in the body'.
Rowling also believes in the need for women to be protected from men in certain spaces like toilets and changing rooms.
So why will you have seen so many people online refer to her as transphobic?
Because they are intellectually dishonest.
In fact, Rowling has been clear to stress 'trans lives matter' and 'trans rights are human rights.'
She recently clarified her position further by writing: 'Small but important point: I've never said there are only two genders. There are innumerable gender identities.
'The question at the heart of this debate is whether sex or gender identity should form the basis of decisions on safeguarding, provision of services, sporting categories and other areas where women and girls currently have legal rights and protections.
'Using the words 'sex' and 'gender' interchangeably obscures the central issue of this debate.'
But here's the reality in all of this: JK Rowling is one of the first human beings on the planet to beat society's current obsession with cancel culture.
Now that she's no longer a member of the liberal establishment, quaffing champagne at posh events with elite multimillionaires, she's become a crusader for everyday women and should be taken very seriously by those in power.
These numerous bids to cancel her are only enhancing her position as a champion for females around the world.
She is adored and revered by ordinary folk who are roundly ignoring the various bids to silence her.
Hilariously, the far-left extremists at The Guardian newspaper removed an online form asking readers to nominate their '2021 Person of the Year' after an overwhelming number submitted Rowling.
When they revealed the list of 13 winners, they had to awkwardly explain: 'In a sign of the ongoing debate over gender issues, many readers also nominated the author JK Rowling.'
Rowling's platform is big enough to render her uncancellable. She has 14 million followers on Twitter alone, where she selectively shares her so-called controversial views, which are actually just common sense.
I think it's possible that in many decades time when her epitaph is written Rowling will be remembered for far more than being the author behind the best-selling book series of alltime.
She will go down as a truly modern feminist who fought back against those trying to destroy the hard-fought rights of woman adult human females to live freely and be protected.
I'm more than happy to forget her blind spot over Johnny Depp because she's become an unquestionable force behind fact-based feminism to protect the rights of women.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
4 January, 2022
Is America still the land of the free?
How did a motley and disorganized mob of idiots become an "insurrection" on Jan 6 last year? Comments below by Peter Baldwin, a former Australian Labor Party politician
What poses the greater threat to American democracy – the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or the political and institutional response to it?
This is a question well worth asking as the first anniversary of this episode approaches, especially now we have much more information on which to base an assessment than was available during the saturation media coverage in the immediate aftermath.
American left-wing columnist Glenn Greenwald, who co-founded online magazine The Intercept, is in no doubt. In several lengthy articles he compares the response to the riot with what followed the 9/11 attacks two decades earlier, of which he was – and is – extremely critical.
A frequent claim made by political figures and in the media is that the Capitol riot is, if anything, more serious than the 9/11 attacks. As such, it requires special legislation and special measures to refocus the “war on terror” on those depicted as domestic terrorists.
The Democrats have proposed a rewriting of the law pertaining to domestic terrorism that alters the focus almost entirely to the “white supremacist” threat. According to former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, the legislation has the bizarre effect of excluding jihadist terrorists from its ambit.
Who are these potential domestic terrorists who must be subjected to close surveillance, curtailment of their civil liberties, exclusion from any role in the military or even banned from airline travel?
It is not just the obvious candidates, such as those involved in right-wing militias. According to impeccably left-liberal American historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, the net should include anyone who continues to harbour or express doubts about the fairness of the 2020 US presidential election.
In an article in The Atlantic, Applebaum ruminates about the appropriate term for those who remain sceptical about the election – according to polling, most Republican voters. Here is her preferred term and who it should be applied to: “For want of a better term, I’m calling all of them seditionists – not just the people who took part in the riot, but the far larger number of Americans who are united by their belief that Donald Trump won the election, that Joe Biden lost, and that a long list of people and institutions are lying about it.”
Seditionist? Just for holding an opinion? You have to wonder if Trump derangement syndrome really is a thing, if one of the most respected and scholarly liberal writers can come up with this kind of stuff.
There seems to be a complete loss of perspective. Applebaum’s most recent book, Twilight of Democracy, surveys what she sees as the main threats to the liberal democratic order. And who would that be? The “deplorables”, of course, and their equivalents in other countries, the working-class people who in bygone times were a core part of the Democratic coalition, and those who speak for them.
Applebaum devotes an entire chapter to conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham. Yet the book makes no reference whatsoever to the encroaching threat posed by the growing power and influence operations of the Chinese Communist Party regime – undoubtedly the greatest threat to the liberal democratic order since World War II.
So, how to characterise the events of January 6, 2021?
Trump’s decision to call the mass rally for that day was reckless and futile, and his temporising before calling on the rioters to withdraw was culpable. Indeed, his entire conduct after the election was idiotic. Once the US Supreme Court decided on December 11, 2020, not to hear the detailed challenge filed by the Texas attorney-general, joined by other states, on the grounds that the state “lacked standing”, the realistic options for overturning the election result were over.
All the ploughing on after that achieved was the loss of two Senate positions in the Georgia run-offs, giving the Democrats a majority with the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.
As to the riotous conduct – the forcible entry into the Capitol Building – it is hard to think of a single figure of any political prominence who has defended it. These were criminal acts that led to deaths and serious injuries that warrant the appropriate and proportionate use of the criminal law. The disruption, albeit only for several hours, of the proceedings of the congress as it formalised the election outcome was a very serious matter.
Almost everybody can agree on that much. But that is not nearly enough for what the Democrats need to justify their war on “domestic terror”. This requires the inflation of what occurred to an insurrection, indeed an “armed insurrection”, a veritable coup d’etat, instigated by Trump and his supporters, a greater threat to US democracy than the 9/11 attack, some claiming the greatest threat since the civil war.
What would not be justified to stop an army of “seditionists” trying to violently overthrow the government? In the following weeks there was a succession of scary reports of likely further incursions, including on Inauguration Day. To ward off this possibility 26,000 troops were deployed around the Capitol – more than at the height of the civil war when the Confederate capital was a mere 200km away.
So, let’s try to get a sense of proportion here, starting with the “armed insurrection” claim that CNN and other parts of the media continue to affirm. On CNN’s Facts First web page, they point out that of the more than 700 people charged over the riot, three were charged with bringing a firearm into the Capitol precinct. Others brought items such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and pepper spray. In earlier congressional testimony, the FBI said no firearms were confiscated on the day.
Contrary to some early reports, the only use of firearms that day, and the sole death due to anyone’s deliberate action, was the shot that killed Trump supporter and military veteran Ashli Babbitt. Babbitt, all of 54.4kg and 1.57m tall, and unarmed, was shot in the throat without warning and at close range by a Capitol policeman as she crawled through the shattered door of the Senate chamber.
The treatment of this shooting by officialdom and the media was remarkable. Was serious consideration given to whether the shooting was remotely warranted, especially given that two heavily armed police were clearly visible directly behind Babbitt? Could the shooter really have felt he was in imminent danger? After an inordinate delay, and next to no media pressure, the Department of Justice issued a perfunctory statement that the shooting was justified – no grand jury investigation, nothing.
As far as most of the media were concerned, this was a non-event. Indeed, some articles implied that she deserved it. Babbitt should not have been there, but did she deserve a bullet to the throat? Clearly deplorable lives do not matter much.
The sheer dishonesty of mainstream media coverage in the days and weeks that followed the riot was extraordinary. It went beyond distortion to outright lying, exemplified by reporting on the death of Officer Brian Sicknick of the Capitol Police.
On the day of his death, media reports claimed he had been bludgeoned to death with a fire extinguisher by Trump supporters. This was known to be false almost immediately as his family reported Sicknick spoke to them on the night of the riot, stating he felt OK.
Yet the media persisted with the battered-with-fire-extinguisher account for weeks thereafter, belatedly switching to another lie that his death was caused by “bear spray” when it was revealed that he had suffered no physical trauma whatever.
The lying stopped only with the very late release of the autopsy report, which indicated Sicknick died of a stroke two days after the riot.
So if this was an attempt at a violent insurrection or coup, it would have to be the most incompetent such attempt in the history of the world. What do those who assert this imagine was the plan? Maybe they thought the QAnon shaman, the clown with the bearskin cape and wooden spear, could hold out with his companions and their three handguns against the might of the US military, like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae.
There was, undeniably, violence committed by a small minority of protesters. However, if you look through the list of charges (more than 700 in all), most are for things like “disorderly conduct”, “parading, demonstrating or picketing”, or “remaining in a restricted building”. The sentences being handed out for these offences so far have been at the top end of the possible range, in some cases exceeding even the penalties proposed by the prosecutors.
Furthermore, a large number of those charged have been held without bail in the most appalling conditions, including solitary confinement, prompting a DC judge to demand an investigation: “I find that the civil rights of the defendant have been abused. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6th defendant or not, but I find this matter should be referred to the Attorney-General of the United States for a civil rights investigation into whether the DC Department of Corrections is violating the civil rights of January 6th defendants … in this and maybe other cases.”
Alone among her colleagues, even senator Elizabeth Warren was moved to comment: “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging.”
The “armed insurrection” claim is just too ridiculous for words – especially given that, according to a reporter for the liberal New Yorker magazine who embedded himself among the “insurgents”, they had been instructed by the rally organisers not to bring guns.
At this stage, the main goal of the Democrats is to use the house committee inquiry into the riot currently under way to implicate Trump in the breaching of the Capitol, despite his words urging the crowd to make their voices heard “patriotically and peacefully”.
And what did the cunning Trump have in mind when he authorised the deployment of the National Guard several days before the riot?
After Ohio representative Jim Jordan signalled his intention to ask why these troops were not requested or deployed on the day, along with other potentially difficult questions, Nancy Pelosi used her authority as Speaker to ban Jordan and his colleague Jim Banks from serving on the January 6 committee.
This was an unprecedented step, nullifying the longstanding convention that party leaders select their representatives on committees. In protest, Republican house leader Kevin McCarthy withdrew all his party’s nominees. The only GOP representatives who agreed to serve were Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both vehemently hostile to Trump.
The result, not surprisingly, is that the committee hearings have amounted to little more than a propaganda exercise, a media circus, typified by the solemn reading out by Cheney of a series of text messages sent at the height of the chaos between various pro-Trump figures and the president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
The texts were released by Meadows in compliance with a congressional subpoena and were treated by parts of the media as a smoking gun implicating Trump. As I noted above, Trump’s conduct on and in the lead-up to the riot was futile, reckless and culpable. However, ironically, the texts actually exculpate him from the claim he conspired in and intended the breaching of the Capitol.
For example, a text from his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, reads as follows: “We need an Oval address. He has to lead now. It has gone too far and gotten out of hand. He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP.”
It would be strange, to say the least, if this was all planned by Trump, yet Donald Jr, reportedly one of his closest confidants, was kept out of the loop.
It is striking, and lamentable, that among the left-wing media the aforementioned Greenwald is almost unique in his preparedness to take up the issues described above.
What has become of the civil libertarians and human rights activists who would normally be the first to challenge and expose the kind of abuses described above?
This has not been without consequence for Greenwald. He was effectively forced out of The Intercept, which he co-founded. The reason? He insisted on reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story that blew up in October 2020, shortly before the election. The standard media narrative about this, at least at the time when it might have mattered, was that this was a Russian disinformation campaign designed to discredit Biden.
If so, why did neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden repudiate it at the time? How to account for the fact that the chief executive of Hunter’s business confirmed the veracity of the incriminating emails? Instead, they both went to ground, refusing to respond to questions about it – and the media, at least those members who were allowed anywhere near Joe Biden, played along dutifully, failing to even ask him any questions about the laptop (except for one brave soul who shouted a question and was excoriated by his colleagues for doing so).
The laptop story, which we now know to be based on accurate information, indeed effectively confirmed by Hunter Biden in a later interview, appeared first in the New York Post. Australian journalist Miranda Devine was closely involved, recently releasing a book on the subject.
If corroborated, it would be a genuine bombshell, indicating that candidate Biden could be seriously compromised with the US, and the West’s, most significant geopolitical adversary – the Chinese Communist Party regime.
Yet it was comprehensively suppressed, not only by other traditional media but also by the social media censors who prevented its transmission and sharing. The effective blackout meant that, according to one poll, 36 per cent of Biden voters were not even aware of the laptop story.
This bespeaks a mainstream media more concerned with running protection for the Bidens and undermining Trump than honest reporting, a departure from the traditional principle of journalistic objectivity that even the venerable New York Times makes no bones about, indeed defends.
This was demonstrated earlier during the Mueller inquiry into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. What transpired during this episode is profoundly disturbing, and not just because of media behaviour, but for the role played by key state instrumentalities such as the FBI, CIA and the Department of Justice.
For more than two years, the media relentlessly amplified any story supporting the Russian collusion narrative, which was finally put to rest when the Mueller report stated they were unable to find evidence of any such collusion.
This included the salacious allegations in the “Steele dossier”, prepared by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, a piece of opposition research indirectly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Yet it was the key piece of evidence provided to the court empowered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to issue warrants to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign.
More recently, as a result of indictments issued by special counsel John Durham, we now know the key information source for Steele had been interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, in the course of which he acknowledged that the Steele allegations were basically just rumours and bar talk. Yet the FBI continued to rely on this spurious information when filing two further FISA warrants that certified that the information in the Steele dossier was verified and corroborated.
The Capitol riot was an abomination, perpetrated by several hundred idiots. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, an armed insurrection or a coup warranting a new “war on terror” directed at a section of the domestic population subject to vilification because of the opinions they hold.
******************************************
Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has been banned from Twitter
Twitter heralded the new year on Sunday by deleting the account of congresswoman and contentious Donald Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, who incurred a fifth “strike” for posting Covid-19 misinformation.
Not to be outdone, within hours YouTube, owned by Google, removed a three-hour interview between popular American podcaster Joe Rogan and Robert Malone, one of the pioneers of mRNA technology, which underpins Covid-19 vaccines.
What they had to say was just too dangerous for you to hear, according to the social media giants, which have taken it on themselves to look out for your health (only as far as it relates to Covid-19).
Well, brace yourself, I’m going to tell you.
Malone, an immunologist with decades of experience and numerous peer-reviewed papers to his name, reckons we focus too much on vaccines and not enough on treatment, advocating greater use of drugs such as ivermectin for infected patients.
He also thinks the pandemic has fuelled what he calls “mass formation psychosis”: a lot of people doing neurotic, irrational things such as driving in masks or queuing up for hours without symptoms to be tested for a mild disease that’s endemic, or just lashing out at strangers minding their business who don’t want to wear a mask for hundreds of days.
Greene, meanwhile, who has made bonkers claims on other subjects, said Covid-19 deaths caused by “extremely dangerous” vaccines were being ignored, posting a chart from a publicly available source that seemed to suggest more than 20,000 Americans had died from Covid-19 vaccines. Greene was wrong to fearmonger about the vaccines, which clearly have reduced the severity of Covid-19. Even Trump recognised this, recently telling supporters they should get their boosters.
Yes, there have been some deaths, but they are rare and inevitable when a large share of the population is suddenly vaccinated. Greene’s early strikes, though, arose from claims Covid-19 was dangerous only for the over-65s and obese, and Covid-19 vaccines were failing – exaggerations, to be sure, but not entirely without factual merit.
Vaccine was a poor choice of word in hindsight given what most people thought that meant and what was originally promised: stopping transmission and infection. But who cares what they or I believe anyway? In the universe of terrible things to say on social media, their statements would not stand out.
Individuals have never had so much scope to check, relatively quickly, others’ claims on whatever topic from a variety of public and private sources. The idea social media giants or even public health officials and governments have a monopoly on truth is farcical. Science is a method, a process of debate. Almost by definition, there is no progress without a minority that challenges the consensus, making the tech censorship by scientists quite shocking.
What was “dangerous misinformation” a year ago is now acceptable. Zerohedge, for instance, a popular Twitter account that aggregates articles by sceptical investors, was deleted in February 2020 for suggesting SARS-CoV-2 might have leaked from a Chinese lab in Wuhan. A few months later Twitter restored the account, saying: “We made an error in our enforcement action in this case.”
Should we really punish and censure those who were ahead of the curve?
Unelected, high-income tech bros living in San Francisco shouldn’t be able to censor what individuals say based on vague “community guidelines”. It’s no good to say Google, Twitter and Facebook are private companies so can do what they want. In the 21st century, they own, indeed they are, the town square, where once, in liberal democracies at least, you could yell out whatever you wanted, no matter how crazy or misinformed.
Moreover, governments that typically say they respect freedom of speech shield tech giants from liability from what their users publish, protections without which they might not even exist. So they have social obligations to the constitutions and traditions of the nations in which they operate.
The internet was meant to liberate us from governments and publishers, not launch a new totalitarian conformist society. It’s early days, but the social media giants are beginning to mimic what their Chinese counterparts do, censoring and reporting individuals. “If we did it for Covid, we can do it for X and Y,” you’ll start to hear in a few years.
Free speech was never absolute. If some expression could obviously cause harm, such as yelling fire in a crowded theatre, the classic example, a case for restrictions could be made. But there’s no evidence tweets by politicians or three-hour videos with eminent scientists harmed individual, let alone public, health.
I suspect public health isn’t in fact a priority of the tech oligarchs, given it never was before 2020 and there were plenty of other harmful behaviours and claims that could have been censored. Will they ban alcohol advertising?
There’s plenty of evidence social media causes psychological harm, especially for teenagers. Anonymous users on social media still can say the most vile and hurtful things, and that’s OK. But heaven forbid anyone talk about hydroxychloroquine, which few people could even spell, or cast doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines, which most people have already taken.
Condemn the forced masking of five-year-olds, which two years ago would have been considered insane under these circumstances, and risk digital oblivion. Advocate for a Black Lives Matter national uprising and the inevitable violence that entails, and watch the likes roll in.
Two friends contacted me to say they were listening to Malone’s podcast with Rogan, having never heard of either. Censorship campaigns don’t work; they attract attention to people and ideas. Even if you intensely dislike Greene, Malone or their arguments, it’s important to speak out in favour of free speech.
Next time you might be in the frustrated minority.
*********************************************
The Ungracious Generation and Its Demonization of the Past
Victor Davis Hanson
The past two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decadeslong war on the American past. But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.
Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.
Yet, 21st-century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations, whose toil helped create their current comfort.
And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw more than 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?
What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them more than $30 trillion in national debt—much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?
What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and carjackings?
Were our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?
Was it actually moral to discard the “content of our character” and “equal opportunity” principles of the prior civil rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the “color of our skin” and “equality of result” superior?
Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only 6 in 10 Americans working? Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?
Are we proud that most standardized tests of student knowledge and achievement continue to decline, despite record investments in education?
Do we ever pause to consider that we enjoy our modern standard of living and security because we were once a meritocracy that quit judging our workforce by tribal affinities and ancient prejudices?
Our generation talks of infrastructure nonstop. But when was the last time it built anything comparable to the Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project—much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?
If prior generations were so toxic, why do we continue to take for granted the moral and material world they bequeathed to us, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to our airports, freeways, and power plants? Did we ever defeat anything comparable to the Axis powers or Soviet communism?
We know the symptoms of the current epidemic of hating the past.
One is Orwellian renaming and statue-toppling. Historical revision often responds to puritanical mob frenzies, rather than to democratic discussion and votes of relevant elected officials.
Where is the pantheon of woke heroes who will replace the toppled or defaced Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt?
Whose morality and achievement should instead be immortalized? Were the public and private lives of Che Guevara, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Margaret Sanger, and Franklin D. Roosevelt without sin?
Racial fixations tend predictably in one direction. In good Confederate fashion, we lump all individuals who look alike into inexact collectives of “white,” “black,” or “brown”—often to stereotype the supposed evils of so-called white supremacy.
But if we go down that tribalist and simplistic road of caricatured oppressors and oppressed, will future generations tally up each group’s merits and demerits, to adjudicate the roles of millions of individuals in making America worse or better?
What standard would they use to judge our ignorant world of racial stereotyping—proportional representation in Nobel Prizes, philanthropy, scientific breakthroughs, or lasting art, music, and literature versus statistics on homicides, assault, divorce, and illegitimacy?
Immigration—when legal, diverse, measured, and often meritocratic—has been the great strength of America, as typified by industrious arrivals who chose to abandon their own homeland to risk new lives in a foreign United States.
But if America is so flawed and so irredeemable, why in fiscal year 2021 are nearly 2 million foreigners now crashing its borders—illegally, en masse, and intent on reaching a supposedly racist nation that is purportedly inferior to those they abandon?
According to the ancient brutal bargain, assimilation and integration grant the immigrant as much claim to America’s present and past as the native-born. But then shouldn’t the antithesis also be true?
Shouldn’t immigrants at least respect those of the past who created the very country they now so eagerly desire, and died in awful places, from Valley Forge to Bastogne, to preserve?
Never in history has such a mediocre, but self-important and ungracious generation owed so much, and yet expressed so little gratitude, to its now-dead forebears.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/30/the-ungracious-generation-and-its-demonization-of-the-past
*************************************************James O’Keefe Undeterred After Recent FBI Raid, Legal Action Against Project Veritas
James O’Keefe, the founder of undercover news outfit Project Veritas, says he’s continuing his investigative work undeterred by the recent FBI raid of his and other Veritas reporters’ homes and a criminal investigation of Veritas by the Department of Justice regarding a diary allegedly belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
O’Keefe says materials unrelated to the Biden diary probe were unlawfully seized from him and his team during the raids.
“In this case, a special master has been appointed by the Southern District of New York and we’re continuing on with new stories,” O’Keefe told The Epoch Times. “We’re not stopping at Project Veritas. We keep moving forward.”
O’Keefe had asked in November for the appointment of a special master to supervise the review of the information on his phones, telling U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres that the devices contained sensitive information related to Project Veritas investigations and legal matters.
“In addition to attorney-client privileged materials, both phones also contain newsgathering materials which are critical to the exercise of a free press and protected by the First Amendment,” states O’Keefe’s motion, a copy of which was seen by The Epoch Times.
He said journalists have to keep telling the truth regardless of whether their character is attacked or they are threatened.
“You have to do the right thing, no matter what,” O’Keefe told The Epoch Times during a Turning Point USA event on Dec. 28.
O’Keefe says Project Veritas’s purpose is to investigate and expose corruption and fraud in public and private institutions. He said whistleblowers seek out his organization because they know it has journalistic integrity, adding that many of the large corporate media outlets collude with those in power instead of questioning them.
“Rather than investigate the people in government, rather than challenge those in authority, they echo those in authority,” O’Keefe stated during a November interview with The Epoch Times.
O’Keefe is set to release a new book this month, “American Muckraker,” which covers what he and his organization have experienced and learned on the front lines of investigative journalism.
“I spent five years writing this book, and it covers all these themes about privacy, ethics, undercover journalism, power, whistleblowing, suffering,” he said. “And it really takes you in from the perspective of a muckraking journalist in the 21st century—what it means to be a journalist, to fight the powers that be. Where do the boundaries lie on privacy, ethics, consent? What does it take? This is a handbook.”
O’Keefe’s organization has been hailed by conservatives, defended by media ethics organizations, and criticized by many on the left. According to Project Veritas’s website, they have eight legal cases that are pending against several liberal organizations and individuals, including The New York Times and CNN. They have won all seven of their previous lawsuits.
Despite being maligned by certain media outlets, pundits, and politicians, O’Keefe says he’s still hopeful for the future.
“I’m at risk of sounding like a hippie here, but I think that the issues that unite us are, in fact, more powerful than what divides us, and that was evidenced by the fact that the ACLU defended me,” he said.
“I don’t think we’re as divided as people would have us believe.”
************************************************
France takes down EU flag from Arc de Triomphe after Right-wing anger
French authorities took down a temporary installation of the European Union flag from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Sunday after Right-wing opponents of Emmanuel Macron, the French president, accused him of "erasing" French identity.
The giant flag was raised in place of a French flag on New Year's Eve to mark France's turn at the rotating presidency of the EU Council, which it will hold for the next six months.
The arch, a monument to war dead, and other landmarks including the Eiffel Tower and the Pantheon are also being illuminated with blue lights.
But Mr Macron's Right-wing rivals for the presidential election, which is four months away, seized on the removal of the tricolor and called it an affront to France's heritage and veterans.
"Preside over Europe yes, erase French identity no!" tweeted Valerie Pecresse, the conservative candidate, who according to polls could be the main challenger to Mr Macron in the forthcoming vote. She urged him to restore the French flag, saying: "We owe it to our soldiers who spilled their blood for it."
Flag’s removal ‘was in line with planned schedule’
Marine Le Pen, the far-Right candidate who had vowed to file a complaint with the State Council, France's highest court for administrative matters, also denounced the move.
Eric Zemmour, a far-Right media pundit who is also running against Mr Macron, called it "an insult".
On Sunday, Ms Le Pen called the overnight removal of the EU flag "a great patriotic victory" and claimed on Twitter that a "massive mobilisation" had forced Mr Macron to backpedal.
But an official in the French presidency said the flag's removal before dawn was "in line with the planned schedule", insisting that, unlike the blue lights for monuments, it was only supposed to be at the Arc for two days.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
3 January, 2022
AOC staffer is under fire for calling Israel a 'racist European ethnostate' built on 'stolen land'
Unsurprising. The Left have long been the chief source of antisemitism -- at least since Karl Marx. And Muslims are even worse. Note the Hadith about stones and trees (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177), for instance. Al Tamimi is an Arab name, as is Hussain
A member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's staff has reportedly condemned Israel as a 'racist European ethnostate' on social media.
It will reignite the row over attitudes to Israel by some elements of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and its so-called squad, who had frequently highlighted how millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories are denied rights extended to Jewish citizens of Israel.
And it comes as AOC is under fire after photographs emerged of the congresswoman from New York drinking a cocktail, without wearing a mask, in Florida.
The latest controversy was triggered by Hussain Altamimi, who joined Ocasio-Cortez’s office in November as a legislative assistant, according to Fox News.
Last week he targeted Israel with an Instagram story.
'Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!' he wrote on Christmas Eve, according to a screenshot obtained by Fox News Digital. A
He added the comments to a post from the 'Let's Talk Palestine' account, which made reference to a 'racial hierarchy' in Israel.
'This reveals the principle underpinning Israeli apartheid: It’s not about where you’re born,' the shared post reads. 'It’s about whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish. Your ethnicity determines your rights [and] level in the racial hierarchy.'
Critics of Israel point to the way Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem - almost three million people - do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections, despite living under Israeli rule. Nor do the two million people living in Gaza.
However, some social media users were quick to condemn Altamimi and his definition of Israel as a racist state.
'That's wrong for many reasons, and it erases Mizrahi Jews like me,'wrote Sia Kordestani on Twitter. 'A majority of Jewish Israelis are descendants of 850,000 Jews violently expelled from Arab countries.'
*********************************************
Abigail Shrier on the transgender craze
Bari Weiss
A few weeks ago, my friend Abigail Shrier—who you surely remember from this essay or this investigation—was invited to give a speech at Princeton. Abigail is the author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” a bestselling book that, for obvious reasons, is also a lightning rod.
This being a college campus in 2021, you can imagine what happened next. The event was moved off campus. It was limited to 35 people. And the police were called in because of threats.
The speech (excerpt):
I want you to think for a moment about a young woman here at Princeton. She’s a magnificent athlete named Ellie Marquardt, an all-American swimmer who set an Ivy League record in the 500-yard freestyle event as a freshman. Just before Thanksgiving, Ellie was defeated in the 500-free, the event she held the record in, by almost 14 seconds by a 22 year old biological male at Penn who was competing on the men’s team as recently as November of 2019. That male athlete now holds multiple U.S. records in women’s swimming, erasing the hard work of so many of our best female athletes, and making a mockery of the rights women fought for generations to achieve.
Ellie Marquart swam her heart out for Princeton. When will Princeton fight for her? Where are the student protests to say—enough is enough. When a biological male who has enjoyed the full benefits of male puberty—larger cardiovascular system, 40% more upper body muscle mass, more fast-twitch muscle fiber, more oxygenated blood—decides after three seasons on the men’s team to compete as a woman and smashes the records of the top female swimmers in this country, that is not valor. That’s vandalism.
Where is the outrage? Imagine, for a second, what it must be like to be a female swimmer at Princeton, knowing you must pretend that this is fair—that the NCAA competition is anything other than a joke. Imagine being told to bite your tongue as men lecture you that you just need to swim harder. “Be grateful for your silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the message. Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.
Now, imagine, instead, the women’s swimmers had all walked out. Imagine they had stood together and said: We will meet any competitor head on. But we will not grant this travesty the honor of our participation. We did not spend our childhoods setting our alarm clocks for 4 a.m. every morning, training for hours before and after school, to lend our good names to this fixed fight.
I know why students keep their heads down. They are hoping for that Goldman or New York Times internship, which they don’t want to put in jeopardy. Well, any institution that takes our brightest, most capable young people—Princeton graduates!—and tells you can only work here if you think like we tell you to and keep your mouth shut, that isn’t really Goldman Sachs and it isn’t the paper of record. It’s the husk of a once-great institution, and it’s not worth grasping for. Talk to alums at these institutions: they sound like those living under Communist regimes. That’s the America that awaits you if you will not speak up.
You who are studying at one of the greatest academic institutions in the country only to be told that after graduation, you must think as we tell you and recite from this script—why were you born? What’s the point of being alive? Computers are vastly better at number crunching. They’ll soon be better at all kinds of more complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle. What a computer cannot do is refuse to lend credibility to a rigged competition—to refuse to strengthen its coercion—making it that much harder for the next female athlete to speak up. What the computer cannot know is the glorious exertion of the human will when it refuses to truckle in the face of lies and instead publicly speaks the truth.
I didn’t write Irreversible Damage to be provocative. In a freer world, nothing in my book would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do. I also believe if I hadn’t written it, thousands more girls would be caught up in an identity movement that was not organic to them but would nonetheless lead them to profound self-harm. But I didn’t write it specifically to stop them. I wrote it simply because it was true.
When I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, I started by stating that I am proud to live in an America where gay and transgender Americans live with less stigma and fear than at any point in American history. That is the glory of freedom as well—the chance for adults to live authentic lives and guide their own destinies. And allowing mature adults to make those sorts of choices for themselves is absolutely a requirement of a free society. Yes, you can reject the false, dogmatic insistences of Gender Ideology and still wish to see transgender Americans prosper and flourish and fulfill their dreams in America. I do.
I wrote the book because the story of one mom and her teen daughter compelled me, and so did that of the dozens of other parents who then spoke to me—mothers and fathers who sobbed as they described how their daughters had become caught up in a craze that seemed completely inauthentic to the child, but which they were powerless to arrest.
I wrote the book not because I believed the fancy institutions I’d attended would celebrate me, or even acknowledge me, after I had done so. I wrote it because I knew that the point of all the educational opportunities I received that my equally qualified grandmothers never had, the purpose of all the sacrifices my parents had made for my education—for all the time my teachers and professors had taken with me—couldn’t be to plod through life on a forced march. The point of all the hours my parents and teachers and mentors had devoted to me, was surely not to become the world’s best-oiled automaton. The point of all of that privilege—and yes, I think that was a kind of privilege—was to be able to write and think as others lacked the will to do.
Spotify employees tried to hold that company hostage because they carried my podcast episode with Joe Rogan. Amazon employees threatened to quit if they continued to carry my book. GoFundMe shut down a grassroots fundraiser by parents who reached into their own pockets, to advertise my book. And the ACLU threw its entire, century-old mission in the garbage, all because of one book with which it disagreed. Joining these petulant mobs is not a show of strength, and it is not freedom. It’s closer to servitude.
Take back the right to speak your mind—thoughtfully, courteously, with a goal in mind beyond giving offense. The list of unmentionable truths expands so rapidly, without reason other than the attempt to suffocate a free people so that they forget the exhilaration of a lungful of air.
If you are someone who believes you have pronouns or would like to supply them, by all means, that is your prerogative. Whenever anyone asks me to use their preferred pronouns, and I can do so without confusing my audience or muddying an argument, I do so and I think this is an important courtesy. But—when asked, I will not state my pronouns and if you don’t believe in Gender Ideology, you shouldn’t either. When you state your pronouns, you participate in the catechism of Gender Ideology—the belief that there are ineffable genders, unknowable to all but the subject. That no one can possibly know I am a woman unless I’ve supplied these. I do not believe this. I regard this as nonsense. When asked for my pronouns, I say: “I am a woman.” Take back your freedom. Reclaim it now.
Psychiatrists and pediatricians tell me they are afraid to resist an adolescent’s demand that she be given puberty blockers because they’re afraid—if they point out the risks or the hastiness of the decision—they will lose their licenses. Parents tell me they are afraid to push back on the activist teachers and social workers at their kids’ school for fear of being called some flavor of phobe. Whatever freedom is, it isn’t that. And all of the wonderful education you have earned here will have been wasted if you find yourself one day observing some lie predominating in your own field and the best you can do is sit on the phone with me anonymously lamenting the state of things. You will soon be graduates of Princeton. Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom.
It isn’t in those moments when you do just what’s expected that your will is tested. It isn’t in those moments when you recite the script that you exceed what any computer can achieve. Those moments when you managed to make yourself a faceless member of a pre-approved chorus will slide away as though you were never part of them.
I’m 43, which I realize makes me very old to many of you. But not so long from now, you’ll wake up and be 43 yourselves. And when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to me that the decisions of which I am most proud—the ones that strike like an unexpected kiss—are not the times when I obeyed the algorithm. They’re the times when I defied it and felt, for a moment, the magic and power of being alive. When I felt, even for an instant, the exquisite joy of not being anyone’s subject. When I had the unmistakable sense that I’ve existed for a purpose, that I stood the chance of leaving the world better than I found it. You don’t get any of that through lock-step career achievement and you certainly don’t get that by being the Left’s star pupil.
You feel that frisson when you choose a person to commit yourself to knowing full well that any marriage may fail; when you bring children into a world where there are no guarantees of their safety or success. When you summon the courage to fashion a life, something that will remain after you are gone. When you speak the truth publicly—with care and lucidity. And when you say to the world: you cannot buy me with flattery. Purchase my colleagues or classmates at bulk rate. I am not for sale.
Thank you.
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/abigail-shrier-on-freedom-in-an-age
*************************************************UK: A new year, a new chance for the Government to rediscover conservatism
The Government makes noises about being on the side of the consumer/taxpayer, but the direction of travel has been the other way
The Government must make a resolution: do not repeat the mistakes of 2021 in 2022. The year just gone saw some remarkable scientific achievements in the fight against Covid, but momentum was lost, real reform put off and the wrong conclusions drawn. Nannyism has won.
Swollen by regulations and spending, the British state now imposes the highest tax burden in 70 years, and many decisions, unless reversed, will severely restrict our freedoms in the future – and thus recovery.
We begin the new year, said Sajid Javid, with rising cases but, thankfully, a brighter picture in intensive care, allowing us to enjoy some of the lightest restrictions in Europe. Future measures will be an “absolute last resort”, he promised. Yet the dance continues: the Government stops short of an actual lockdown while imposing piecemeal measures that prevent or discourage life from returning to normal.
Today we report that contingency measures are under consideration that would send home entire year groups from school if deemed necessary: an attempt to spare exam years from the worst is welcome, but these plans would still be another disastrous blow to a generation whose education has been put on hold even though they are at a much lower risk from the disease. Masks are also to be made mandatory in classrooms. This is not the last resort, nor “normal”, nor a desirable example of learning to live with a virus.
Then there is the cost of living crisis, which a group of backbenchers sensibly suggests should be alleviated with tax relief. Indeed, it’s a chance, finally, to cash in on Brexit by scrapping VAT on heating bills.
Elements of the crunch are beyond any country’s control, including rising wholesale energy prices, but, as with the pandemic, the UK Government is making policy choices that hurt their own supporters. The dash to carbon net zero, for instance, leaves us dependent on unreliable energy sources while passing the costs of transition onto consumers. Likewise, National Insurance is due to go up, alongside council tax, corporate rates and tax on dividends, and – unavoidably – the energy price cap.
The Government makes noises about being on the side of the consumer/taxpayer, but the direction of travel has been the other way. With Labour joining the call to reduce VAT on heating, we find ourselves retreading the 1990s, when New Labour attempted to outflank the Tories on economics following a disastrous decision by John Major’s government to raise taxes.
Conservatives lose office when they lose touch with their instincts. The decision to avoid a full lockdown over Christmas was closer to Mr Johnson’s famously liberal inclination, yet in this case he had to be encouraged by backbenchers, the resignation of Lord Frost and a confrontation with Cabinet. Thus far it seems to have been the right call, and should revive the ambition of the post-EU “sunlit uplands”.
Let this be the year in which the Mr Johnson starts to get done what he was elected to do: fulfil Brexit, deregulate, lower taxes, expand free trade and raise the standard of living in left-behind Britain with popular capitalism, not ill-conceived grands projets and public sector spending. The pandemic has proved that the NHS and social care sectors are unfit – time to reform them, particularly to create a thriving market in social care.
There are signs of a year of strong economic growth, so long as inflation is tempered – we have had real success in signing trade deals, the country is brimming with talent, and the early brilliance of the vaccine programme shows what can be done when we put our minds to it. There is much cause for confidence; but official doom-and-gloom threatens to undermine it.
The trick is to unleash potential, not stick it in a straitjacket – and allow Britons to get on with rebuilding their lives.
**********************************************
Most prophecies are false prophecies
In Adventures in the Screen Trade, his 1983 memoir about life in Hollywood, the late William Goldman summarized the movie industry in three words: "Nobody knows anything." A two-time winner of the Academy Award for best screenplay, Goldman wrote some of the big screen's biggest hits, including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the President's Men." If anybody was an expert on successful movies, he was. But experts, he wrote, are as clueless as everyone else about the future.
"NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING," Goldman repeated, putting the words in all caps. Why, he asked, did every single studio in Hollywood except Paramount turn down the chance to make "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Why did Universal decide it wasn't interested in "Star Wars"? Why did Columbia, after spending a small fortune to develop "E.T.", eventually drop the project?
Goldman's answer: "Because nobody, nobody — not now, not ever — knows the least goddam thing about what is or isn't going to work at the box office."
What is true of Hollywood is true of just about every field: When experts say something is going to happen, the odds are generally even that it won't. As the odometer turns to 2022 and self-assured savants and insiders begin another 12 months of confidently forecasting what the future will bring, remember: Nobody knows anything.
Each December, Politico assembles an assortment of political predictions from the year gone by that prove the truth of Goldman's axiom. Among the most glaring of those misfires in 2021 was former White House press secretary Dana Perino's prognostication that Republicans would win both US Senate seats in the Georgia runoff election; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tom Ricks's prophecy that "by Labor Day, Biden's approval ratings will average low 60s"; and commentator Hugh Hewitt's serene assurance on the morning of Jan. 6 that "everything's going to be fine" when it comes to the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Things turned out rather differently: Republicans lost both seats in Georgia. Biden's approval in September was down to the low 40s (where it remains). And Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol to stop Biden from being certified as president-elect, was anything but "fine."
One reason for the sharp downturn in Biden's approval: the victory won by the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was something Biden had confidently predicted would not happen.
"The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army," he said in July. "They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.... The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." Within five weeks, helicopters were airlifting Americans from the US embassy in Kabul as the Taliban seized control of the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic likewise generated plenty of expert opinions that fell wide of the mark.
"Schools can become superspreaders and in September, it will happen," warned former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, insisting that "dramatic action" was necessary to keep the virus out of classrooms, especially in New York City. Many in the media looked to Cuomo as a leader in fighting the pandemic — in 2020, he received an Emmy for his "masterful" briefings — but he was completely wrong. Of nearly 708,000 COVID tests conducted in New York City schools in the fall semester, a mere 5,340 came back positive — a minuscule positivity rate of just three-fourths of 1 percent. (Cuomo was later stripped of his Emmy, though not because his pandemic predictions.)
It wasn't only in America that COVID crystal balls proved faulty. Health officials in the United Kingdom forecast a dreadful autumn, and anticipated 7,000 or more hospital admissions daily by October. It never happened. As the year ended, hospitalization rates remained far below the sages' doomsday scenarios.
On the economy, too, expert projections proved to be duds.
Vox's so-called Future Perfect team of seers predicted last January that, notwithstanding the "vaccine-driven recovery," the US unemployment rate would stay above 5 percent through November 2021. In, fact unemployment dropped below 5 percent by September. By December it was down to 4.2 percent.
This was also the year that many economic analysts and financial journalists pooh-poohed any suggestion that inflation was poised to explode. "No, you don't have to worry about inflation," MarketWatch's Brett Arends assured his readers in January. "Call me in six months if there's still inflation," said Saagar Enjeti on "Rising," the popular YouTube news program he co-hosts with Krystal Ball. "History Says Don't Panic About Inflation," Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted in a November column, one of many he wrote on that theme in 2021.
Oops. Inflation has become a huge concern. Prices are rising in the United States at the fastest rate since the early 1980s, and 45 percent of US households say they are feeling the financial strain. How did so many supposed experts miss — or misread — the evidence of what was coming?
The premise of that question is flawed. To be an expert is to possess considerable knowledge in a particular field, but it is not to possess any greater insight into what is to come. As political scientist and psychologist Philip Tetlock documented in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment, specialists are no more reliable than non-specialists when it comes to making predictions — even in their own areas. "Expertise and experience," wrote Louis Menand in The New Yorker, summarizing the findings of many studies, "do not make someone a better reader of the evidence."
Experts know a great deal, and to listen courteously when they speak is only prudent. But it is not prudent to imagine that they see farther into the future than most people. The talking heads you watch on TV, the sports or money gurus you hear on your podcast, the opinionated columnists you read in the paper — take their words with a healthy dose of skepticism. And don't forget Goldman's Axiom:
"Nobody knows anything."
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25919/nobody-knows-anything
***************************************************Ghislaine Maxwell will not reveal details of others involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking network in exchange for a lenient sentence, her brother says
The British socialite’s decision not to co-operate with US investigators after her conviction last week will offer comfort to alleged co-conspirators, including four women who worked for the couple. High-profile men who have been linked to the abuse of under-age girls, including Prince Andrew, will also be relieved to discover that Maxwell, 60, does not intend to talk. The prince denies any wrongdoing.
Ian Maxwell, 65, said his sister maintained her innocence and had no plans to cut a deal. “Prosecution confirmed no plea bargain offers were made or received” before the trial, he said. “I expect that position to be maintained.”
His sister faces up to 65 years in jail after a jury in New York convicted her of recruiting and trafficking girls as young as 14 for abuse by Epstein, her former boyfriend. Prosecutors described Maxwell as a “sophisticated predator” who groomed and manipulated girls in “one of the worst crimes imaginable”.
She had spent more than 500 days on remand in virtual solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan detention centre before her trial started. Maxwell could be there for another six months before a sentencing hearing.
Her brother said that Maxwell was “understandably subdued” by her conviction but “strong in spirit”. Epstein, 66, hanged himself in 2019 while awaiting trial for child sex offences. Ian Maxwell said his sister “is not now, nor has ever been, a suicide risk. She knows there are many people, including her family of course, who love and support her and who believe in her innocence.
“She will be appealing her conviction. She is a fighter and a survivor.”
Any appeal could focus on the judge’s decisions to deny anonymity to witnesses that Maxwell wanted to call in her defence and to allow the jury to hear the testimony of two accusers, including a Briton called “Kate”, who were over the age of consent in the jurisdictions where they say they were abused.
Maxwell has also complained that her “torturous” remand conditions “weakened” her physical and mental health, making it impossible for her to defend herself properly.
She still faces a trial on two charges of perjury relating to evidence she gave in a civil lawsuit in 2016 brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has accused the Duke of York of rape. But her family believe that is unlikely to go ahead if she receives “a stiff sentence” for last week’s conviction.
US investigators are under pressure from victims to pursue other associates of Epstein or Maxwell allegedly involved in the abuse. They include four women in America – Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova – who worked as assistants to the couple. They were named as “potential co-conspirators” in a plea deal by Epstein in Florida in 2008 that protected them from charges.
Federal prosecutors have indicated that they are not bound by the agreement.
Ross, a Polish-born former model who allegedly removed computers from Epstein’s Florida home before a police raid in 2005, was originally lined up to give evidence against Maxwell. However, she was never called to testify. All four women have denied wrongdoing.
Kellen, once described as Maxwell’s “lieutenant”, has claimed that she was a victim. She has changed her name to “Sarah Kensington”.
Once Maxwell has been sentenced, she will be moved to another jail which is likely to be closer to her relatives. They include her US-based twin sisters Isabel and Christine, and Scott Borgerson, a tech entrepreneur whom Maxwell secretly married in 2016.
Borgerson, 46, did not attend Maxwell’s trial.
Prince Andrew is not the only powerful man whose name cropped up in evidence at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.
One victim, known as “Jane”, revealed that she was taken by Jeffrey Epstein to meet Donald Trump, 75, at the future president’s Florida resort when she was 14, although she did not suggest that anything inappropriate took place. Bill Clinton, 75, was named as a passenger on Epstein’s private jet, known as the Lolita Express. He too denies any wrongdoing.
Jean-Luc Brunel, 76, the French former model scout, appeared in a photograph taken on board the plane, which was presented as evidence. Maxwell appeared to be flashing her cleavage at him, while Epstein sat near by laughing.
After the British socialite’s conviction, victims’ lawyers have called on investigators to question a number of male VIPs who benefited from Epstein’s largesse while he was involved in the abuse of girls on an industrial scale.
Bill Gates, 66, visited Epstein’s New York mansion at least three times after the financier had been jailed for procuring a child prostitute in 2008. Gates also denies wrongdoing.
Most of these powerful men are unlikely to face any criminal action. Huge embarrassment and reputational damage is more likely to be their comeuppance – as was the case with Jes Staley, 65, who resigned in November as the head of Barclays amid reports that he exchanged 1,200 emails with Epstein.
Only Brunel has been arrested and charged with a crime – the rape of minors – in his native France. He denies the charges.
Andrew continues to fight a separate civil lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, who has accused him of sexual abuse when she was 17. The duke denies the claim and cannot be extradited or jailed because it is not a criminal case.
Giuffre has also accused Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz, 83, of abusing her. However, the Harvard professor claims she recently withdrew a civil action citing legal grounds.
*********************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
2 January, 2022
Clarifying the meaning of "Right-wing"
It does not always imply racial hostility
My son and I recently had a discussion about being "Right-wing". We agreed that I am. But in what sense?
I mentioned that Syngman Rhee was in his day notably called "so far Right he was almost out of sight". He was a South Korean politician who served as the first President of South Korea from 1948 to 1960. But there were no racial issues in his term in office so how was he Rightist?
Rhee
Although they themselves -- from Karl Marx on -- are often antisemitic, Leftists today use the terms "Rightist", Right-wing", racist", white supremacist" for anyone they disagree with who has any group-denominated views. To the Left you can be a racist even if you express no views about any race. Opponents of vaccination mandates are, for instance, sometimes called racists even by mainstream voices of Leftism. See for instance here
So if Rightist implies racism, I am very clearly a Tory rather than a Rightist, as the term "Rightist" is commonly understood. By Tory I mean traditional conservatism as seen in the British Conservative party prior to WWII and as seen in the more traditional stream in the current U.S. Republican party. In line with that, I think the individual is much more important than any group that he/she belongs to. But, insofar as generalizations have some value, I think highly of both the Chinese and the Jews. And I have a very low opinion of Muslims and blacks.
That latter opinion will produce immediate howls of rage from Leftists, but, in their usual way, that is bereft of context. Am I a racist if I approve of some minorities and disapprove of other minorities? The Left in their simplistic way do not even consider that matter. To them it is just another opportunity for abuse and attack. They act as if all thoughts about race are fundamentally evil. Though if you speak well of one of their favoured minorities that is fine, of course
I would say that I am only a racist insofar as I think that group identity can sometimes make a difference. I don't think that the astronomical rate of violent crime among blacks is coincidence, for instance. It does NOT mean that I approve of bad treatment of someone solely on the basis of their race. I actually agree with the statement in the United Nations charter that says each case should be judged on its individual merits. The conservative whom I have quoted most in my writings is in fact a black man -- Thomas Sowell
And that non-hostile view is a Tory position, not a specifically Rightist one. There are indeed Rightists who wish to persecute all members of some race, usually Jews, but I am not one of them.
So let me allude to some famous Tories and their opinion of Jews. In the 19th century, the British Conservative party (Tories) made a proud Jew their Prime minister -- Benjamin Disraeli.
And the British Prime Minister who declared war on Hitler -- Neville Chamberlain -- had some antisemitic views. So conservatives can have some views about a particular group -- in this case Jews -- without wishing them ill. You can even promote their cause -- as the Conservative Party did in the 19th century and as Neville Chamberlain did in the 20th.
ChamberlainAnd the greatest Tory of all, Winston Churchill, voiced some very negative views of Muslims but pitied them rather than being hostile to them. See here
So my position on racial questions is in fact a Tory or conservative one, not a Rightist one. Leftists will of course be uninterested in that distinction. It does not give them enough opportunity for abuse
The great irony of course is that the old Soviet view of Hitler as a Rightist is now generally accepted. He was indeed to the Right of the Soviets in that he allowed more individual liberty than they did but that is not saying much. The truth of the matter is that Hitler called himself a socialist and had a broad range of socialist policies -- including comprehensive party control of industry. His deeds have lasting relevance but they are relevant to Leftism, not conservatism. He is another example of the generalization that hostile racial obsessions are mostly Leftist, not conservative.
So the grossly inaccurate view of Hitler as "Rightist" has thoroughly muddied the waters. People understand the meaning of the term "Rightist" to mean conservatism plus racial ideas. But the misattribution of Hitler causes people assume that all racial ideas must be hostile, including racial views among conservatives.
As we have seen, however, this is wrong. People with conservative views may see racial differences as significant without being at all hostile to the races they take an interest in. They may even favour and think well of some races.
I see myself as wishing no-one ill on account of their race and as having many conservative views. I in fact usually describe myself as a libertarian conservative.
Another huge irony, however, is that libertarian ideas are often described by the Left as "Right wing", when they are not. They are thoroughly opposed to both traditional conservatism and racial awareness. Conservatives who are sympathetic to libertarian ideas represent, in fact, a major stream in modern-day conservative thought.
The most loved and most influential conservative leader of the 20th century knew what conservatism was about, of course. He said: "If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism..... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom" And if Ronald Reagan did not know what conservatism was all about, who would?
Reagan also conveyed the patriotic, pro-Christian message that Trump later used to such strong effect. I align with both those orientations. I am pleased to be born a 5th generation Australian and even more pleased to be a product of the Anglosphere. And I was a strong Christian fundamentalist in my teens. Subsequent to that, however, I have been a thoughgoing atheist (in the Carnap manner) for the whole of my adult life. Nonetheless I still have the warmest memories of my Christian days and still try to live by Christian principles. And I find that whenever I do the Christian thing I get a reward, often very rapidly. And when I allow the Devil to dominate I stumble. And there is a Devil. Whether you conceive of him as a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, or as a fallen angel or the destructive side of human nature, there is clearly much evil in human life. Freud called it "Thanatos", the death instinct.
And I still go to church on some (rare) occasions
So I do have many traditional conservative views -- also including the view that the justice system often goes too easy on criminals, that homosexual "marriage" is a travesty and that traditional sex roles are largely inborn. I even practice "ladies first" and open car doors for women. And such attitudes in combination with some libertarian views make me seen as extremely Right-wing. I readily accept that ascription as long as it is understood that my thinking about other races is of a conservative or Tory kind -- i.e. not hostile towards any individual solely on account of his/her race.
For a more detailed accountof my views, see here
******************************
Did Ghislaine Maxwell’s love for Jeffrey Epstein drive her to her downfall?
I drew similar conclusions to the writer below recently JR
A fellow journalist warned me as I attended a pre-trial hearing for the US government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, “You will be shocked when you see her.”
I was - but not in the way my colleague had anticipated. I had expected to see someone emaciated and dishevelled, given the reported abuse and horrific treatment she has been subject to inside the jail she’s been held for the past 18 months awaiting trial.
But Ghislaine Maxwell looked better that day – and every day since in that courtroom, than she looked back in the 2000s. Admittedly she was masked and one couldn’t see all her face, but her hair was now shoulder-length and wavy and dyed black. It was a much younger, much less severe look than the pixie cut she sported for 20 years when I would run into her occasionally at parties in Manhattan, where we both lived. She was casually dressed in a turtleneck and pants, and she was also slim; not border-line anorexic as she used to be in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when her then boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein ordered her, according to a source in the room “lose weight.”
We heard plenty of evidence in the ensuing weeks, as to how Epstein shabbily mistreated Maxwell (apart, of course, from wiring her $30 million dollars). He cheated on her. He had the Palm Beach butler Juan Alessi remove photographs of her when he had other women to stay; he had her assistant send flowers to another woman behind her back… and so on. And yet, according to photographs that were displayed, she stayed… and stayed… for over a decade.
It was exactly as I had always heard since I started reporting on Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2002 (and found myself covering her, too). I was told by multiple people: 'she was in love with him but he was not in love with her and she seemed to be in denial about that.”
The ghost of Epstein hung over Maxwell’s trial, complicating the picture that he himself had created. He was there in almost every sentence. He was in almost every photograph. It was his massage table that was produced in the room. His flight logs that were discussed. His homes, his island, his employees.
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him CREDIT: AFP
We never heard from Maxwell herself, and the big unanswered question that all the testimony raised remains: what did she really see in this monster that kept her moth-like to his flame for over a decade, helping him do unspeakable things to children?
Was it simply the money, as prosecutors alleged? $30 million (£23.7m) is a vast amount. And Maxwell had told people that after her father, Robert Maxwell’s death in 1991 she was quite suddenly a “leper.” She described her perfectly comfortable apartment as a “toilet.” So yes, she cared about money. A great deal.
Perhaps there was some deep-rooted psychological damage inflicted by her father, who I found, when reporting for Chasing Ghislaine, my podcast and docuseries, to be a sadistic, cruel man, including to his children.
Ghislaine was said to have been obsessed with her father, spending the months after his death watching old videos of him. And at times she herself was blatant about the connection between him and her boss/ boyfriend.
In the early 1990s, Epstein humiliated her by bouncing in to the office where she was working with another woman. A concerned onlooker gave her a hug and said, “You don’t have to do this.” She replied, yes, she did. “My father told me: you do whatever it takes to keep your man,” she said.
Whatever it took, according to the testimony in the courtroom, included satisfying Epstein’s criminal depravity. It meant participating in orgies, dazzling young girls, charming them, lulling them into a false sense of security around Epstein and normalising the horrific sex acts that then took place.
I was frankly astonished when I heard that Epstein and Maxwell shared a bedroom in Palm Beach, because a source told me how by the late 1990s Maxwell would worry aloud that she could never make weekend plans because she didn’t know which woman Epstein would want to accompany him there.
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him. She was not a girlfriend. She was his “best friend” which, he claimed (falsely), meant more. “She’s the best at what I need,” he said too, and then, out of nowhere, the eeriest line of all: “She doesn’t find girls for me, by the way.”
Of course, it was all lies.
Maxwell most certainly did work for Epstein according to multiple witnesses who testified. She worked very, very hard, they said. She was in charge of all his properties: construction, decoration, staffing.
Interestingly, just like Epstein, she kept this on a need-to-know basis. I once asked her what she did. And she told me, “You could say that I’m a connector of people.” I wasn’t exactly illuminated. In hindsight, I suppose saying, “I’m a property manager for a rich guy I once dated” would have been plebian for a woman who’d been raised as an heiress.
I discovered in my reporting earlier this year that the only time she introduced Epstein to her brothers Kevin and Ian in late 1991, it was as “my boss.” For what it’s worth, her brothers didn’t like Epstein – and they didn’t meet him again.
Her sister Christine, however, reportedly had some inkling, around the early 1990s or so, of how miserable Epstein was making Ghislaine romantically, according to Christine’s nanny, Sydney Proctor.
Proctor emailed me in 2020 that she remembered a visit Ghislaine paid to her sister in California in the early 1990s: “Ghislaine and Christine were not close at all. Therefore, when Ghislaine showed up to the Oakland Hills home of her sister to lick her wounds after the break up, it was rather unexpected. She was in our house maybe 28 hours? She was much thinner than she had been in August of 1991, almost amorphous, no discernible female curves like boobs or hips left. She wore black leggings, an oversized grey cashmere sweater and black boots. She spent the majority of her visit staring at a jigsaw puzzle she started on our dining room table.”
Proctor continued: “When Ghislaine departed, Christine said that she had been there because she was feeling sorry for herself after her break up with that ‘arse,’ Jeffrey. Christine was livid on behalf of her sister because, to add insult to injury Jeffrey ‘made’ Ghislaine find his ‘girlfriends’.”
Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein?
Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein? CREDIT: PA Media
And yet, Proctor, wrote to me, it was after this that Maxwell went to work for Epstein as his “decorator.”
These past few weeks, we’ve seen picture after picture of the two of them sticking together through the years, arms flung around each other. Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein? It speaks to an inner insecurity that is ghastly. For a woman who had everything, the reality was, she also had nothing, because apparently she had no inner belief in herself.
The most startling and almost upsetting moment for me during the trial was when a document was shown on a screen purporting to be something the user “gmax” (which was her email handle) wrote on a computer in October 2002 about her relationship with Epstein.
It said: “Jeffrey and Ghislaine have been together, a couple for the last 11 years. They are, contrary to what many people think, rarely apart – I almost always see them together.
“Ghislaine is highly intelligent, and great company with a ready smile and an infectious laugh who always puts one at one’s ease, and always makes one feel welcome.
“Jeffrey and Ghislaine share many mutual interests and they have a lot of fun together. They both have keen searching and inquisitive minds. She grew up amongst scientists and in an academic and business environment.
“Jeffrey and Ghislaine complement each other really well and I cannot imagine one without the other. On top of being great partners, they are also the best of friends.”
It was written during the exact time period I was reporting on Epstein for Vanity Fair - when he was busy telling me how unimportant Maxwell was to him. She was his “friend,” he said, putting a distance between them.
I wonder now if she, or one of her staff, was making talking points for me. It seems highly likely. Based on everything I’ve reported, the pitifulness is that those statements are complete fantasy, given the date. They were certainly not, in Epstein’s mind, a couple, at that point - nor were they “never apart.”
Whatever the intended purpose of the words, one presumes Maxwell never imagined they’d be turned against her in court.
But then again, one also presumes she never imagined that acting on her father’s maxim - “You do whatever it takes to keep your man” - would see her going to prison for the rest of her life.
*****************************************
The new segregation
It began with fear... then coercion and now we live with "soft" apartheid. Everything looks the same but nothing is really what it used to be.
Over the weekend, I attended another freedom rally in my city. The crowd was a large one and there were many young families present. While I was queuing for some food later, I had an extended exchange with a father in his 70s and his adult daughter about the state of things related to Covid. It was a long wait and there was time to go down a few rabbit holes.I was impressed yet again by how well-informed this new fledgling community is. Again I questioned the effectiveness of these gestures of resistance afterwards but I, in part, like to think I'm doing something to draw the line somewhere. Do I have the courage of my convictions to make the effort? At the very least, I can't be party to the official narrative nor should I resign myself with an attitude of despair and passivity.
The next day at church, someone mentioned that they had gone to the same rally and then later on made their way to restaurants nearby for a bite, two of which refused them entry because they didn't have the "right" documentation.
Now that living under segregation has finally sunk in, I've only just begun to see with my own eyes how insidious it is. It isn't just the messaging and the deception. What's really hit home is how the powers-that-be deploy your community (or the people you thought were your community) to apply peer pressure to achieve conformity. First it's the conversations to make you feel your place as "the outsider". Then comes the gaslighting ("conspiracy theories", "misinformation", "we should just follow the experts"). Finally the threat of being ripped apart from one's nearest, dearest and immediate community can be enough to pressure someone into acting against their conscience. The entire process has undoubtedly subtle and incremental. It's come right out of the totalitarian playbook and it's evil.
Whenever I think of how they've managed to split the Christian community over this, I am ashamed. We haven't learnt anything from history.
I observed something similar while watching Terrence Malik's A Hidden Life (a 3 hour long biopic of Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian Catholic farmer who became a conscientious objector during WW2). His entire village turned against him first before he ended up in Tegel Prison experiencing routine beatings by his Nazi captors. There's a startling scene in which the audience is positioned in Jagerstatter's point of view as he's receiving blows from the prison guards and witnessing first-hand the inhuman brutality being meted out. One recoils in horror as if one is the target of the attacks.
Until recently I've generally believed in the efficacy of vaccines. I'm more highly vaccinated than most I imagine because I've made trips to remote areas in third world countries. These days, I'm much more sceptical about vaccines in general just because it's been shoved down our proverbial throats with impunity. As a result I've gone to places and read things I didn't used to. Robert F. Kennedy Jr's book, The Real Anthony Fauci started that ball rolling and since then I've seen information in various places casting doubt on the glorious history of vaccines as a medical miracle.
Incompetence is no longer a sufficient explanation for what's going. It hasn't for a long time. When the levers of power are actively suppressing useful information and narrowly promoting a single therapeutic without concern for real human lives, this can't be chalked up to stupidity or mere mishandling. There has to be something far more sinister at work.
What Governor Abbott Just Did Will Kill Vaccine Mandates Dead!
The old adage, “don’t mess with Texas” still stands true today with what Governor Abbott just did.
The freedom-loving governor just loves to tweak the power-hungry left with his staunch protection of Texans’ rights protected by the constitution. Over the last several months, Abbott has stood in the way of the federal government and their draconian COVID mandates that have been attempting to usurp state rights.
Abbott has NOT been afraid to go toe-to-toe with Joe Biden’s administration and has become a hero among American’s all over our nation.
Just yesterday, Abbott went another step further with protecting the rights of Texans by issuing an executive order stating that no entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccination by any individual, including an employee or consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.
Governor Abbott also sent a message to the Chief Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate adding this issue as an item to the Third Special Session agenda. The executive order will be rescinded upon the passage of such legislation.
The great purge rolls on
By Bettina Arndt, writing from Australia:
“Like Fresh Meat: Detailing Rampant Sex Harassment in Australia’s Parliament.” This was the lurid headline in the New York Times this week, describing a report into harassment and bullying in Australia’s parliament. “A sweeping report lays out a cloistered, alcohol-fueled environment where powerful men violated boundaries unchecked,” claimed the Times.
Typical biased NYT reporting. And just plain wrong. Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’ cooked-up survey revealed 61 per cent of the bullying was actually done by women. And there wasn’t that much difference between male and female sexual harassment rates - 42% of victims were women vs 32% men. The vast majority of people (75%) who were sent the survey didn’t bother to respond. Only half of the self-selected people who participated reported experiencing any bullying or harassment, and 1% claimed actual or attempted sexual assault.
As always, there’s blatant fudging of the data. The survey used the broadest possible definition of sexual harassment which included staring, leering and loitering, sexually suggestive jokes/comments and repeated invitations to go on a date. The supposed toxic parliamentary environment covered incidents occurring when people travelled for work or attended after-work drinks – far from the parliamentary workplace. Pretty disappointing to only have a third of people claim harassment after casting such a wide net, eh?
The sexual assault questions include events the participants had “witnessed or heard about” rather than personally experienced. The report quoted an example of a woman claiming an MP “grabbed me and stuck his tongue down my throat.” Unpleasant, unwanted behaviour, indeed. But classic of the new expanded definition of sexual assault being used to create the rape crisis narrative - a long way from Brittany Higgins’ lurid tale of being ravished on the Minister’s couch, which led to Kate Jenkins’ latest boondoggle.
This whole pantomime stemmed from a desperate attempt by Scott Morrison to throw the dogs a bone, after being savaged by the feminist mob stirred up by the Higgins’ story. The media is dutifully promoting Jenkins’ demand that all her 28 recommendations must be accepted in full. We’re talking here about some very big asks, like a new Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission to police sexual misconduct rules. Sound familiar? Oh yes, we’re talking about yet another kangaroo court, with authority to impose sanctions on people deemed to have broken their rules.
And then there’s the new quotas to achieve gender targets amongst parliamentarians, part of a “ten-year strategy to advance gender equality, diversity and inclusion”. The justification for this leap into broader social engineering? The report simply claims lack of diversity contributes to a “boys’ club culture and bullying, sexual harassment and assault.” They mouth the usual feminist mantra and it is taken as gospel.
Now the game continues, with the government considering the recommendations – a process they will try to string out until the forthcoming election. The usual suspects in the media already bleating that nothing is being done and the Opposition will use the lack of action to beat up the government. People everywhere know this is all a lot of hogwash, a desperate attempt from a struggling government to keep the feminist mob at bay.
It reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s famous story of the audience at the Soviet Communist Party conference not daring to be the first person to cease clapping after the speech honouring Stalin. On and on they clapped, fearing that the first to stop would be sent off to the Gulag – which is exactly what happened.
There are sinister echoes in Australia today to the world Solzhenitsyn describes where people don’t dare challenge the ludicrous dogma being promoted by the Party. Endless denunciations and show trials are used to warn of the risks of not siding with the pack. Groupspeak becomes the only safe option.
Look at this headline, used for a news.com.au article this week, reporting on a survey about attitudes towards gender equality in the workplace: “Survey reveals insane thing half of Aussie men believe”.
The “insane thing” that 50% of Australian men believe, is that “reverse discrimination is occurring in the workplace, with women being boosted up the career ladder simply because of their gender.” How’s that for unbiased reporting? All the major media covering the story went to strenuous lengths to belittle men’s experience. They know they must keep clapping.
In The Australian this week, Janet Albrechtsen exposed another stunning example of our forced compliance to false dogma. She wrote about a report from Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency, a thriving feminist propaganda unit receiving nearly $6M annual government funding. The Agency has made a submission to a review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 which Albrechtsen suggests provides enough evidence of “misleading and deceptive conduct” to justify the government putting the whole thing out to pasture.
Naturally the Agency’s submission was all about the need to close “the gender pay gap,” which as usual is blamed on men, oppression and discrimination. As Albrechtsen points out, “more honest analysis of the gender pay gap would point to the economic consequence of the aggregate of all the differences that exist between men and women – their physiology, different skills and interests, different choices made about education and jobs, how hard and how long they choose to work and under what conditions.” As Christina Hoff Sommers put it – “Want to close wage gap? Step one: Change your major from feminist dance therapy to electrical engineering.”
Albrechtsen explains that the only way you can close the gender pay gap is by paying women more than men even though some women have less experience, skills and commitment to the workplace. “That means demanding privilege, not equality for women,” says Albrechtsen. Good to see this lone conservative voice has stopped clapping but the applause from the media for this feminist fabrication rolls on.
The final week of this bumpy year in parliament included a very telling moment where Greens senator Lidia Thorpe was forced to apologise for saying to a female liberal Senator “at least I keep my legs shut.” This was during a Senate debate on disability – apparently Thorpe was suggesting that would have ensured her colleague avoided having a disabled child.
Can you imagine if a man was to make such a remark? But Thorpe’s intersectionality credentials are impeccable, as one of the first Aboriginal women in parliament and a domestic violence survivor. So, her violation of parliamentary boundaries will have no serious consequences.
Then came the show trial. Education Minister Alan Tudge has been stood down from his Cabinet post whilst the latest allegations from his former staffer Rachelle Miller are investigated. Miller is a married mother who acknowledged last November that four years ago she’d had a consensual affair with her boss - after ABC’s Four Corners blew the whistle on their relationship.
Cheered on by the feminist leftists keen to impose maximum damage on the government just prior to the Christmas break, she’s gone public with a new story claiming this was an abusive relationship. Miller says she’d been drinking with Tudge, ended up totally pissed, naked in bed with him, unable to even remember if she’d had sex with him. She claims to have been woken by a phonecall from a breakfast television producer but when she took the call, Tudge yelled at her and kicked her out of his bed.
That a married woman would choose to go public with such a story defies belief. “Has she no shame?” a friend blurted out, a thought which echoes across the nation even as the compliant media runs with her sob story that she suffered a “power imbalance”. No one dares point out to the poor pet that’s what happens when you bonk your boss.
Just as Stalin ultimately came unstuck as his policies proved disastrous, scepticism about the imposed feminist narrative is surely growing every day. We can only hope sanity returns soon.
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
1 January, 2022
Left Doesn’t Just Want to Censor You on Social Media. It Also Wants to Close Your Bank Accounts
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that people who spread “misinformation” “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she revealed the left’s chilling plan for censoring content that goes against the left’s narrative.
It is becoming increasingly clear that political leaders on the left and Big Tech are joining arms to not just deplatform dissident voices from social media, but to bar them from the digital space entirely, including from having the ability to make and receive payments online.
In the latest example, Chase Bank reportedly planned to close the credit card account of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Sept. 18, stating that “continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company.” While as of Aug. 31, a Chase spokesperson said that they had “made an error and apologized for any inconvenience caused,” the initial gesture can’t be ignored.
This comes just a couple months after Wells Fargo made the “business decision” to close 2020 Republican Delaware Senate candidate Lauren Witzke’s account. Two of the more prominent digital payment services, PayPal and Stripe, have also become active cancel culture participants.
PayPal has admitted to closing accounts flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019, now, PayPal has announced a partnership with the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League to focus on “further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements.”
In their joint statement, neither PayPal nor the Anti-Defamation League explicitly define what they mean by extremist and hate movements, but it would be naïve to think that mainstream conservatives will escape the crosshairs of this new partnership.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol disturbance, Stripe stopped payment processing services for the Trump campaign’s website and online fundraising efforts, as well as for individuals who had been present at the protest-turned-riot.
Conservative organizations and individuals have been censored by these digital payment and financial service companies not because of what they say on these platforms, but because of who they are. These woke institutions are replacing financial credit with social credit.
In a tweet from July, author and business owner J.D. Vance states, “The next stage of deplatforming will be denying people access to the financial system. Second Amendment will mean little if Visa won’t let you buy ammunition.”
Vance is making an important point: If a person has the “wrong viewpoint,” the left will be coming for “your speech, your wallet, your ability to be a citizen in a digital environment.”
It hasn’t only been conservatives that have been censored, shadow banned, and suspended from online platforms. Certain content by any user that opposes or questions the left has been stifled, regardless of political or ideological view. Facebook and Twitter have especially taken part in this cancel culture behavior, most notably by kicking off former President Donald Trump.
The direction in which these tech companies are headed necessitates alternative digital payment services that will not deplatform users for their political views. Fortunately, conservative commentator Dan Bongino has stepped up to address this issue in the digital payment space.
Bongino recently announced the creation of AlignPay, a new platform that pledges to process the digital payments of organizations, regardless of their political beliefs. The launch of AlignPay highlights an important point: One of the most effective ways for conservatives to counter censorship is to develop, support, and promote alternative platforms, thereby providing users with greater choice.
Bongino openly admits that the creation of his newest anti-cancel culture payment process platform is in direct opposition to Stripe and PayPal after their cancelation of organizations and individuals. It is initiatives like Bongino’s that will address gaps in the technology marketplace for those who are not satisfied with their current options—choices that cancel users not only for what they say on the platform, but for what they say and believe off the platform.
AlignPay’s website states that the platform is “built for freedom,” and will be free from “cancel culture,” as it specializes in processing debit, credit, and other forms of mobile transactions. It also aims to provide its services at lower costs than competitors.
AlignPay also will prioritize user security and privacy by fully encrypting all transactions and not selling or monetizing users’ personal data. The platform’s services will be available to political campaigns, nonprofits, e-commerce sites, businesses, activist groups on both the left and right, and any organization, as long as they are not engaged in unlawful or criminal activity.
Other conservatives have also taken initiative to counter Big Tech censorship by developing alternative platforms. Locals was created by conservative commentator Dave Rubin to allow content creators to run their own subscription-based pages and communities.
RightForge was developed in part as a response to the deplatforming of Parler by Amazon Web Services, Apple, and Google to provide a range of IT services free from censorship and interference, including cloud and website hosting, website and application development, among others.
The digital platform GETTR is another recently created free speech alternative that was launched on Independence Day by former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller.
These are just a few examples of companies that have responded to tech censorship, which ultimately poses a threat to the health of our democracy. As the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville once noted:
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us.
To help restore balance between tech companies, their users, and the body politic, it is crucial that innovations and free market alternatives, such as Bongino’s AlignPay, are amplified and that innovations such as this continue to be created.
************************************************
America the Faithful
On Aug. 23, 1984, at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas, then-President Ronald Reagan said (pdf), “Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience. … Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
For decades, secularists have been eagerly waiting for the day when America no longer acknowledges God and becomes a country that has lost its founding ideals and collective soul. They trot out polls showing diminishing church attendance, growing disinterest from youth, and increased rejection of moral absolutes as evidence that America is turning its back on God.
Yes, you can see the manifestations of a culture that no longer takes God seriously all around us—the decline of the family, the taking of innocent human life, and continued attacks on religious freedom. But, despite these celebrations of these tragic manifestations by certain members of our society, a substantial number of Americans still put their trust in God, strive to live in accordance with the teachings of Scripture, and participate in faith communities.
John DiIulio, in a recent article in The Claremont Review of Books, writes that in their book, “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” authors David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman, and John Green assert that the faith of Americans is not withering. Instead, it’s the gap between those who believe and those who don’t believe that’s expanding.
They report that while 28 percent of Americans claim they’re “secularists,” only a third of that number are openly hostile to religious faith. But that third has gained control of many of America’s institutions—such as our universities and media organizations—and thus have an outsized influence over our nation’s culture and politics.
But, regardless of their determination to demonize, silence, and eventually stamp out faith, these secularists will discover what the communists learned when Pope John Paul II visited Poland in 1979. Those people, whose spirits the Soviet atheists thought they had crushed, started to chant “We want God” repeatedly—and that longing shook the Kremlin to its core.
Unfortunately, the secularist elite in America haven’t learned from the lesson that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” In their relentless drive to strip our nation of its spiritual foundations, they’re doing the church a favor: they’re helping to separate the wheat from the chaff (those who say they’re religious but really aren’t) while strengthening the faith of those who believe God plays a significant role in every aspect of their life.
Statistics document this. A recent Pew Research poll found that the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians has fallen to 63 percent compared to 78 percent in 2007, while the number of Americans who say they have no religion has risen by 13 percentage points in roughly the same period. However, a Pew survey earlier this year found that almost one-third of Americans said their faith had grown stronger over the past year and a half (coinciding with COVID-19)—the largest share of any developed country.
So, it’s true religious faith that is expanding. Those committed to faith realize that their faith comes with a price they’re willing to pay to stand for God and for freedom, while those who were content with a “in name only” faith are the ones falling away. I would assert that is a good thing for America.
In a September 1982 speech, then-President Reagan said, “We can’t expect God to protect us in a crisis and just leave Him over there on a shelf in our day-to-day living. I wonder if sometimes He isn’t waiting for us to wake up.”
As a country, we don’t need more people who put God on a shelf and only turn to Him in a crisis. We need people who turn to Him daily for guidance, comfort, and strength.
That’s why I’m encouraged that more Americans are realizing that they can’t just leave God on a shelf in their day-to-day living. While secularists point to the so-called “numbers” and claim that our faith is waning, they’re missing that the truly faithful, like the people in Poland, “want God.” And, if that’s the case, it will be those who are truly committed to the faith who will restore our nation’s virtue, conscience, and collective soul—and will remain one nation under God.
The Trump Economic Record Looks Better Every Day
When running against Donald Trump for president, Joe Biden often made the now-ironic charge that any president who has allowed so many deaths from COVID-19 should never be in the White House. Today, there are more deaths from COVID under Biden than under Trump—and that is even with the vaccine.
But it isn’t just on health issues that Trump’s presidency is looking so much better and competent in hindsight.
Everywhere I go these days, people come up to me and say something like this: “I didn’t like some of the things Trump said or the way he acted, but I have to admit I like what he did for the economy.”
No one has vindicated Trump’s “Make America Great Again” policies more persuasively than Biden. High gas prices, the highest inflation rate in four decades, a plan to double the national debt in 12 years, and falling paychecks for workers are waking Americans up to the real broad-based prosperity under Trump.
Trump’s strategy was to reduce taxes, slash regulation, massively increase domestic energy production, and overhaul trade deals to get tough with China.
No one in the progressive movement thought it could possibly work. The Washington Post famously claimed before the 2016 election that “Trump could destroy the world economy.” Did that turn out to be true?
Here are just the facts, ma’am. Over his first three years in office before COVID hit, the unemployment rate fell below 4 percent, which was near the lowest in half a century. The inflation rate fell to 1 percent, which was even below the target level set from the Federal Reserve. This kept the interest rates on mortgages and many other loans down to the lowest level in modern times.
Poverty rates fell to their lowest levels ever recorded. This was true for women, children, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Median household income rose to nearly $68,000, and the $5,000 gain in three years was more than over the second term of George W. Bush and the eight years of Barack Obama.
Here was another remarkable feat: Under Trump, the United States became energy-independent. The month that Trump left office, one year ago, America was importing zero oil from Saudi Arabia, largely because U.S. oil and gas production had surged. Now we have a president who has to beg the Saudis and Iranians to produce more oil. How humiliating.
The bumper stickers are starting to appear everywhere: “Miss Trump Yet?” Not many Americans miss some of his antics. But every day that inflation surges, the border remains in chaos, COVID runs amok, and government spending and debt surges to new multitrillion-dollar highs, Trumponomics sounds like a better idea.
**************************************************
Chinese couple are sentenced to death after father killed his two toddlers by throwing them off a 15th-floor balcony because new girlfriend did not want to raise another woman's children
Sometimes Chinese justice is appropriate
A father and his girlfriend have been sentenced to death in China after he threw his two children from his apartment building because his new girlfriend did not want another woman's kids.
The two young children fell from the tower block in the municipality of Chongqing, China, on November 2 last year.
Zhang Bo's daughter Zhang Ruixue, 2, died instantly, while his son Zhang Yangrui, 1, died shortly after from his injuries.
The 27-year-old had met Ye Chengchen, who he wanted to marry, but she refused to accept him while he already had children and so did her parents.
His girlfriend pressured him into getting rid of them, even cutting her wrists on the day in question to show her frustration at not being able to start a new family with him.
The man then threw both children out of the window before running downstairs to appear grief-stricken at what had just happened.
He was filmed banging his head on the wall and crying uncontrollably, which prosecutors said was all a sham.
He claimed at the time that he was asleep when the children fell out of the window and said he was woken up by people shouting downstairs after discovering the bodies on a grass lawn.
Zhang's ex-wife, named Chen Meilin, told local media that his new girlfriend Chengchen 'didn't want Zhang to have children of his own blood' to another woman.
Zhang started a relationship with Chengchen while he was still married, and he divorced Meilin later. Custody of the children was shared, so the daughter would remain with her mother and the son would remain with his father until he was six-years-old.
However, he asked to look after his daughter on the day that he killed both of them after seeing his girlfriend cut her wrists during a live video chat.
The dead children's mother Chen said: 'At that time, Zhang was on a video phone call with Ye. She slit her wrists and then Zhang got scared. The phone was dropped, he picked up the two children, and threw them from the balcony.'
According to local media, the father admitted he and Ye had plotted to kill the children so that they could start a new family without any children from his former marriage.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
For the notes appearing at the side of the original blog see HERE
Pictures put up on a blog sometimes do not last long. They stay up only as long as the original host keeps them up. I therefore keep archives of all the pictures that I use. The recent archives are online and are in two parts:
Archive of side pictures here
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used on the blog in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and reflects the date on which the picture was posted. See here
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
Email me (John Ray) here.
Did Ghislaine Maxwell’s love for Jeffrey Epstein drive her to her downfall?
I drew similar conclusions to the writer below recently JR
A fellow journalist warned me as I attended a pre-trial hearing for the US government’s case against Ghislaine Maxwell, “You will be shocked when you see her.”
I was - but not in the way my colleague had anticipated. I had expected to see someone emaciated and dishevelled, given the reported abuse and horrific treatment she has been subject to inside the jail she’s been held for the past 18 months awaiting trial.
But Ghislaine Maxwell looked better that day – and every day since in that courtroom, than she looked back in the 2000s. Admittedly she was masked and one couldn’t see all her face, but her hair was now shoulder-length and wavy and dyed black. It was a much younger, much less severe look than the pixie cut she sported for 20 years when I would run into her occasionally at parties in Manhattan, where we both lived. She was casually dressed in a turtleneck and pants, and she was also slim; not border-line anorexic as she used to be in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when her then boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein ordered her, according to a source in the room “lose weight.”
We heard plenty of evidence in the ensuing weeks, as to how Epstein shabbily mistreated Maxwell (apart, of course, from wiring her $30 million dollars). He cheated on her. He had the Palm Beach butler Juan Alessi remove photographs of her when he had other women to stay; he had her assistant send flowers to another woman behind her back… and so on. And yet, according to photographs that were displayed, she stayed… and stayed… for over a decade.
It was exactly as I had always heard since I started reporting on Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2002 (and found myself covering her, too). I was told by multiple people: 'she was in love with him but he was not in love with her and she seemed to be in denial about that.”
The ghost of Epstein hung over Maxwell’s trial, complicating the picture that he himself had created. He was there in almost every sentence. He was in almost every photograph. It was his massage table that was produced in the room. His flight logs that were discussed. His homes, his island, his employees.
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him CREDIT: AFP
We never heard from Maxwell herself, and the big unanswered question that all the testimony raised remains: what did she really see in this monster that kept her moth-like to his flame for over a decade, helping him do unspeakable things to children?
Was it simply the money, as prosecutors alleged? $30 million (£23.7m) is a vast amount. And Maxwell had told people that after her father, Robert Maxwell’s death in 1991 she was quite suddenly a “leper.” She described her perfectly comfortable apartment as a “toilet.” So yes, she cared about money. A great deal.
Perhaps there was some deep-rooted psychological damage inflicted by her father, who I found, when reporting for Chasing Ghislaine, my podcast and docuseries, to be a sadistic, cruel man, including to his children.
Ghislaine was said to have been obsessed with her father, spending the months after his death watching old videos of him. And at times she herself was blatant about the connection between him and her boss/ boyfriend.
In the early 1990s, Epstein humiliated her by bouncing in to the office where she was working with another woman. A concerned onlooker gave her a hug and said, “You don’t have to do this.” She replied, yes, she did. “My father told me: you do whatever it takes to keep your man,” she said.
Whatever it took, according to the testimony in the courtroom, included satisfying Epstein’s criminal depravity. It meant participating in orgies, dazzling young girls, charming them, lulling them into a false sense of security around Epstein and normalising the horrific sex acts that then took place.
I was frankly astonished when I heard that Epstein and Maxwell shared a bedroom in Palm Beach, because a source told me how by the late 1990s Maxwell would worry aloud that she could never make weekend plans because she didn’t know which woman Epstein would want to accompany him there.
In my conversations with Epstein in 2002, he went out of his way to obfuscate what Maxwell meant to him. She was not a girlfriend. She was his “best friend” which, he claimed (falsely), meant more. “She’s the best at what I need,” he said too, and then, out of nowhere, the eeriest line of all: “She doesn’t find girls for me, by the way.”
Of course, it was all lies.
Maxwell most certainly did work for Epstein according to multiple witnesses who testified. She worked very, very hard, they said. She was in charge of all his properties: construction, decoration, staffing.
Interestingly, just like Epstein, she kept this on a need-to-know basis. I once asked her what she did. And she told me, “You could say that I’m a connector of people.” I wasn’t exactly illuminated. In hindsight, I suppose saying, “I’m a property manager for a rich guy I once dated” would have been plebian for a woman who’d been raised as an heiress.
I discovered in my reporting earlier this year that the only time she introduced Epstein to her brothers Kevin and Ian in late 1991, it was as “my boss.” For what it’s worth, her brothers didn’t like Epstein – and they didn’t meet him again.
Her sister Christine, however, reportedly had some inkling, around the early 1990s or so, of how miserable Epstein was making Ghislaine romantically, according to Christine’s nanny, Sydney Proctor.
Proctor emailed me in 2020 that she remembered a visit Ghislaine paid to her sister in California in the early 1990s: “Ghislaine and Christine were not close at all. Therefore, when Ghislaine showed up to the Oakland Hills home of her sister to lick her wounds after the break up, it was rather unexpected. She was in our house maybe 28 hours? She was much thinner than she had been in August of 1991, almost amorphous, no discernible female curves like boobs or hips left. She wore black leggings, an oversized grey cashmere sweater and black boots. She spent the majority of her visit staring at a jigsaw puzzle she started on our dining room table.”
Proctor continued: “When Ghislaine departed, Christine said that she had been there because she was feeling sorry for herself after her break up with that ‘arse,’ Jeffrey. Christine was livid on behalf of her sister because, to add insult to injury Jeffrey ‘made’ Ghislaine find his ‘girlfriends’.”
Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein?
Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein? CREDIT: PA Media
And yet, Proctor, wrote to me, it was after this that Maxwell went to work for Epstein as his “decorator.”
These past few weeks, we’ve seen picture after picture of the two of them sticking together through the years, arms flung around each other. Why, given her enormous rolodex and intellect, didn’t she just go out and get a job? Why stick with Epstein? It speaks to an inner insecurity that is ghastly. For a woman who had everything, the reality was, she also had nothing, because apparently she had no inner belief in herself.
The most startling and almost upsetting moment for me during the trial was when a document was shown on a screen purporting to be something the user “gmax” (which was her email handle) wrote on a computer in October 2002 about her relationship with Epstein.
It said: “Jeffrey and Ghislaine have been together, a couple for the last 11 years. They are, contrary to what many people think, rarely apart – I almost always see them together.
“Ghislaine is highly intelligent, and great company with a ready smile and an infectious laugh who always puts one at one’s ease, and always makes one feel welcome.
“Jeffrey and Ghislaine share many mutual interests and they have a lot of fun together. They both have keen searching and inquisitive minds. She grew up amongst scientists and in an academic and business environment.
“Jeffrey and Ghislaine complement each other really well and I cannot imagine one without the other. On top of being great partners, they are also the best of friends.”
It was written during the exact time period I was reporting on Epstein for Vanity Fair - when he was busy telling me how unimportant Maxwell was to him. She was his “friend,” he said, putting a distance between them.
I wonder now if she, or one of her staff, was making talking points for me. It seems highly likely. Based on everything I’ve reported, the pitifulness is that those statements are complete fantasy, given the date. They were certainly not, in Epstein’s mind, a couple, at that point - nor were they “never apart.”
Whatever the intended purpose of the words, one presumes Maxwell never imagined they’d be turned against her in court.
But then again, one also presumes she never imagined that acting on her father’s maxim - “You do whatever it takes to keep your man” - would see her going to prison for the rest of her life.
*****************************************
The new segregation
It began with fear... then coercion and now we live with "soft" apartheid. Everything looks the same but nothing is really what it used to be.
Over the weekend, I attended another freedom rally in my city. The crowd was a large one and there were many young families present. While I was queuing for some food later, I had an extended exchange with a father in his 70s and his adult daughter about the state of things related to Covid. It was a long wait and there was time to go down a few rabbit holes.I was impressed yet again by how well-informed this new fledgling community is. Again I questioned the effectiveness of these gestures of resistance afterwards but I, in part, like to think I'm doing something to draw the line somewhere. Do I have the courage of my convictions to make the effort? At the very least, I can't be party to the official narrative nor should I resign myself with an attitude of despair and passivity.
The next day at church, someone mentioned that they had gone to the same rally and then later on made their way to restaurants nearby for a bite, two of which refused them entry because they didn't have the "right" documentation.
Now that living under segregation has finally sunk in, I've only just begun to see with my own eyes how insidious it is. It isn't just the messaging and the deception. What's really hit home is how the powers-that-be deploy your community (or the people you thought were your community) to apply peer pressure to achieve conformity. First it's the conversations to make you feel your place as "the outsider". Then comes the gaslighting ("conspiracy theories", "misinformation", "we should just follow the experts"). Finally the threat of being ripped apart from one's nearest, dearest and immediate community can be enough to pressure someone into acting against their conscience. The entire process has undoubtedly subtle and incremental. It's come right out of the totalitarian playbook and it's evil.
Whenever I think of how they've managed to split the Christian community over this, I am ashamed. We haven't learnt anything from history.
I observed something similar while watching Terrence Malik's A Hidden Life (a 3 hour long biopic of Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian Catholic farmer who became a conscientious objector during WW2). His entire village turned against him first before he ended up in Tegel Prison experiencing routine beatings by his Nazi captors. There's a startling scene in which the audience is positioned in Jagerstatter's point of view as he's receiving blows from the prison guards and witnessing first-hand the inhuman brutality being meted out. One recoils in horror as if one is the target of the attacks.
Until recently I've generally believed in the efficacy of vaccines. I'm more highly vaccinated than most I imagine because I've made trips to remote areas in third world countries. These days, I'm much more sceptical about vaccines in general just because it's been shoved down our proverbial throats with impunity. As a result I've gone to places and read things I didn't used to. Robert F. Kennedy Jr's book, The Real Anthony Fauci started that ball rolling and since then I've seen information in various places casting doubt on the glorious history of vaccines as a medical miracle.
Incompetence is no longer a sufficient explanation for what's going. It hasn't for a long time. When the levers of power are actively suppressing useful information and narrowly promoting a single therapeutic without concern for real human lives, this can't be chalked up to stupidity or mere mishandling. There has to be something far more sinister at work.
https://thinkspot.com/discourse/VnuLlw/post/urban_lily/life-under-segregation/zntAr2k
************************************************What Governor Abbott Just Did Will Kill Vaccine Mandates Dead!
The old adage, “don’t mess with Texas” still stands true today with what Governor Abbott just did.
The freedom-loving governor just loves to tweak the power-hungry left with his staunch protection of Texans’ rights protected by the constitution. Over the last several months, Abbott has stood in the way of the federal government and their draconian COVID mandates that have been attempting to usurp state rights.
Abbott has NOT been afraid to go toe-to-toe with Joe Biden’s administration and has become a hero among American’s all over our nation.
Just yesterday, Abbott went another step further with protecting the rights of Texans by issuing an executive order stating that no entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccination by any individual, including an employee or consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.
Governor Abbott also sent a message to the Chief Clerk of the House and Secretary of the Senate adding this issue as an item to the Third Special Session agenda. The executive order will be rescinded upon the passage of such legislation.
https://dailyheadlines.net/what-governor-abbott-just-did-will-kill-vaccine-mandates-dead/
**********************************************The great purge rolls on
By Bettina Arndt, writing from Australia:
“Like Fresh Meat: Detailing Rampant Sex Harassment in Australia’s Parliament.” This was the lurid headline in the New York Times this week, describing a report into harassment and bullying in Australia’s parliament. “A sweeping report lays out a cloistered, alcohol-fueled environment where powerful men violated boundaries unchecked,” claimed the Times.
Typical biased NYT reporting. And just plain wrong. Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’ cooked-up survey revealed 61 per cent of the bullying was actually done by women. And there wasn’t that much difference between male and female sexual harassment rates - 42% of victims were women vs 32% men. The vast majority of people (75%) who were sent the survey didn’t bother to respond. Only half of the self-selected people who participated reported experiencing any bullying or harassment, and 1% claimed actual or attempted sexual assault.
As always, there’s blatant fudging of the data. The survey used the broadest possible definition of sexual harassment which included staring, leering and loitering, sexually suggestive jokes/comments and repeated invitations to go on a date. The supposed toxic parliamentary environment covered incidents occurring when people travelled for work or attended after-work drinks – far from the parliamentary workplace. Pretty disappointing to only have a third of people claim harassment after casting such a wide net, eh?
The sexual assault questions include events the participants had “witnessed or heard about” rather than personally experienced. The report quoted an example of a woman claiming an MP “grabbed me and stuck his tongue down my throat.” Unpleasant, unwanted behaviour, indeed. But classic of the new expanded definition of sexual assault being used to create the rape crisis narrative - a long way from Brittany Higgins’ lurid tale of being ravished on the Minister’s couch, which led to Kate Jenkins’ latest boondoggle.
This whole pantomime stemmed from a desperate attempt by Scott Morrison to throw the dogs a bone, after being savaged by the feminist mob stirred up by the Higgins’ story. The media is dutifully promoting Jenkins’ demand that all her 28 recommendations must be accepted in full. We’re talking here about some very big asks, like a new Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission to police sexual misconduct rules. Sound familiar? Oh yes, we’re talking about yet another kangaroo court, with authority to impose sanctions on people deemed to have broken their rules.
And then there’s the new quotas to achieve gender targets amongst parliamentarians, part of a “ten-year strategy to advance gender equality, diversity and inclusion”. The justification for this leap into broader social engineering? The report simply claims lack of diversity contributes to a “boys’ club culture and bullying, sexual harassment and assault.” They mouth the usual feminist mantra and it is taken as gospel.
Now the game continues, with the government considering the recommendations – a process they will try to string out until the forthcoming election. The usual suspects in the media already bleating that nothing is being done and the Opposition will use the lack of action to beat up the government. People everywhere know this is all a lot of hogwash, a desperate attempt from a struggling government to keep the feminist mob at bay.
It reminded me of Solzhenitsyn’s famous story of the audience at the Soviet Communist Party conference not daring to be the first person to cease clapping after the speech honouring Stalin. On and on they clapped, fearing that the first to stop would be sent off to the Gulag – which is exactly what happened.
There are sinister echoes in Australia today to the world Solzhenitsyn describes where people don’t dare challenge the ludicrous dogma being promoted by the Party. Endless denunciations and show trials are used to warn of the risks of not siding with the pack. Groupspeak becomes the only safe option.
Look at this headline, used for a news.com.au article this week, reporting on a survey about attitudes towards gender equality in the workplace: “Survey reveals insane thing half of Aussie men believe”.
The “insane thing” that 50% of Australian men believe, is that “reverse discrimination is occurring in the workplace, with women being boosted up the career ladder simply because of their gender.” How’s that for unbiased reporting? All the major media covering the story went to strenuous lengths to belittle men’s experience. They know they must keep clapping.
In The Australian this week, Janet Albrechtsen exposed another stunning example of our forced compliance to false dogma. She wrote about a report from Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency, a thriving feminist propaganda unit receiving nearly $6M annual government funding. The Agency has made a submission to a review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 which Albrechtsen suggests provides enough evidence of “misleading and deceptive conduct” to justify the government putting the whole thing out to pasture.
Naturally the Agency’s submission was all about the need to close “the gender pay gap,” which as usual is blamed on men, oppression and discrimination. As Albrechtsen points out, “more honest analysis of the gender pay gap would point to the economic consequence of the aggregate of all the differences that exist between men and women – their physiology, different skills and interests, different choices made about education and jobs, how hard and how long they choose to work and under what conditions.” As Christina Hoff Sommers put it – “Want to close wage gap? Step one: Change your major from feminist dance therapy to electrical engineering.”
Albrechtsen explains that the only way you can close the gender pay gap is by paying women more than men even though some women have less experience, skills and commitment to the workplace. “That means demanding privilege, not equality for women,” says Albrechtsen. Good to see this lone conservative voice has stopped clapping but the applause from the media for this feminist fabrication rolls on.
The final week of this bumpy year in parliament included a very telling moment where Greens senator Lidia Thorpe was forced to apologise for saying to a female liberal Senator “at least I keep my legs shut.” This was during a Senate debate on disability – apparently Thorpe was suggesting that would have ensured her colleague avoided having a disabled child.
Can you imagine if a man was to make such a remark? But Thorpe’s intersectionality credentials are impeccable, as one of the first Aboriginal women in parliament and a domestic violence survivor. So, her violation of parliamentary boundaries will have no serious consequences.
Then came the show trial. Education Minister Alan Tudge has been stood down from his Cabinet post whilst the latest allegations from his former staffer Rachelle Miller are investigated. Miller is a married mother who acknowledged last November that four years ago she’d had a consensual affair with her boss - after ABC’s Four Corners blew the whistle on their relationship.
Cheered on by the feminist leftists keen to impose maximum damage on the government just prior to the Christmas break, she’s gone public with a new story claiming this was an abusive relationship. Miller says she’d been drinking with Tudge, ended up totally pissed, naked in bed with him, unable to even remember if she’d had sex with him. She claims to have been woken by a phonecall from a breakfast television producer but when she took the call, Tudge yelled at her and kicked her out of his bed.
That a married woman would choose to go public with such a story defies belief. “Has she no shame?” a friend blurted out, a thought which echoes across the nation even as the compliant media runs with her sob story that she suffered a “power imbalance”. No one dares point out to the poor pet that’s what happens when you bonk your boss.
Just as Stalin ultimately came unstuck as his policies proved disastrous, scepticism about the imposed feminist narrative is surely growing every day. We can only hope sanity returns soon.
https://thinkspot.com/discourse/2RuBVn/post/bettina-arndt/the-great-purge-rolls-on/bvZtjy
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
1 January, 2022
Left Doesn’t Just Want to Censor You on Social Media. It Also Wants to Close Your Bank Accounts
When White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that people who spread “misinformation” “shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others,” she revealed the left’s chilling plan for censoring content that goes against the left’s narrative.
It is becoming increasingly clear that political leaders on the left and Big Tech are joining arms to not just deplatform dissident voices from social media, but to bar them from the digital space entirely, including from having the ability to make and receive payments online.
In the latest example, Chase Bank reportedly planned to close the credit card account of former national security adviser Michael Flynn on Sept. 18, stating that “continuing the relationship creates possible reputational risk to our company.” While as of Aug. 31, a Chase spokesperson said that they had “made an error and apologized for any inconvenience caused,” the initial gesture can’t be ignored.
This comes just a couple months after Wells Fargo made the “business decision” to close 2020 Republican Delaware Senate candidate Lauren Witzke’s account. Two of the more prominent digital payment services, PayPal and Stripe, have also become active cancel culture participants.
PayPal has admitted to closing accounts flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2019, now, PayPal has announced a partnership with the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League to focus on “further uncovering and disrupting the financial pipelines that support extremist and hate movements.”
In their joint statement, neither PayPal nor the Anti-Defamation League explicitly define what they mean by extremist and hate movements, but it would be naïve to think that mainstream conservatives will escape the crosshairs of this new partnership.
Following the Jan. 6 Capitol disturbance, Stripe stopped payment processing services for the Trump campaign’s website and online fundraising efforts, as well as for individuals who had been present at the protest-turned-riot.
Conservative organizations and individuals have been censored by these digital payment and financial service companies not because of what they say on these platforms, but because of who they are. These woke institutions are replacing financial credit with social credit.
In a tweet from July, author and business owner J.D. Vance states, “The next stage of deplatforming will be denying people access to the financial system. Second Amendment will mean little if Visa won’t let you buy ammunition.”
Vance is making an important point: If a person has the “wrong viewpoint,” the left will be coming for “your speech, your wallet, your ability to be a citizen in a digital environment.”
It hasn’t only been conservatives that have been censored, shadow banned, and suspended from online platforms. Certain content by any user that opposes or questions the left has been stifled, regardless of political or ideological view. Facebook and Twitter have especially taken part in this cancel culture behavior, most notably by kicking off former President Donald Trump.
The direction in which these tech companies are headed necessitates alternative digital payment services that will not deplatform users for their political views. Fortunately, conservative commentator Dan Bongino has stepped up to address this issue in the digital payment space.
Bongino recently announced the creation of AlignPay, a new platform that pledges to process the digital payments of organizations, regardless of their political beliefs. The launch of AlignPay highlights an important point: One of the most effective ways for conservatives to counter censorship is to develop, support, and promote alternative platforms, thereby providing users with greater choice.
Bongino openly admits that the creation of his newest anti-cancel culture payment process platform is in direct opposition to Stripe and PayPal after their cancelation of organizations and individuals. It is initiatives like Bongino’s that will address gaps in the technology marketplace for those who are not satisfied with their current options—choices that cancel users not only for what they say on the platform, but for what they say and believe off the platform.
AlignPay’s website states that the platform is “built for freedom,” and will be free from “cancel culture,” as it specializes in processing debit, credit, and other forms of mobile transactions. It also aims to provide its services at lower costs than competitors.
AlignPay also will prioritize user security and privacy by fully encrypting all transactions and not selling or monetizing users’ personal data. The platform’s services will be available to political campaigns, nonprofits, e-commerce sites, businesses, activist groups on both the left and right, and any organization, as long as they are not engaged in unlawful or criminal activity.
Other conservatives have also taken initiative to counter Big Tech censorship by developing alternative platforms. Locals was created by conservative commentator Dave Rubin to allow content creators to run their own subscription-based pages and communities.
RightForge was developed in part as a response to the deplatforming of Parler by Amazon Web Services, Apple, and Google to provide a range of IT services free from censorship and interference, including cloud and website hosting, website and application development, among others.
The digital platform GETTR is another recently created free speech alternative that was launched on Independence Day by former Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller.
These are just a few examples of companies that have responded to tech censorship, which ultimately poses a threat to the health of our democracy. As the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville once noted:
Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us.
To help restore balance between tech companies, their users, and the body politic, it is crucial that innovations and free market alternatives, such as Bongino’s AlignPay, are amplified and that innovations such as this continue to be created.
************************************************
America the Faithful
On Aug. 23, 1984, at an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas, then-President Ronald Reagan said (pdf), “Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience. … Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we are one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
For decades, secularists have been eagerly waiting for the day when America no longer acknowledges God and becomes a country that has lost its founding ideals and collective soul. They trot out polls showing diminishing church attendance, growing disinterest from youth, and increased rejection of moral absolutes as evidence that America is turning its back on God.
Yes, you can see the manifestations of a culture that no longer takes God seriously all around us—the decline of the family, the taking of innocent human life, and continued attacks on religious freedom. But, despite these celebrations of these tragic manifestations by certain members of our society, a substantial number of Americans still put their trust in God, strive to live in accordance with the teachings of Scripture, and participate in faith communities.
John DiIulio, in a recent article in The Claremont Review of Books, writes that in their book, “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” authors David Campbell, Geoffrey Layman, and John Green assert that the faith of Americans is not withering. Instead, it’s the gap between those who believe and those who don’t believe that’s expanding.
They report that while 28 percent of Americans claim they’re “secularists,” only a third of that number are openly hostile to religious faith. But that third has gained control of many of America’s institutions—such as our universities and media organizations—and thus have an outsized influence over our nation’s culture and politics.
But, regardless of their determination to demonize, silence, and eventually stamp out faith, these secularists will discover what the communists learned when Pope John Paul II visited Poland in 1979. Those people, whose spirits the Soviet atheists thought they had crushed, started to chant “We want God” repeatedly—and that longing shook the Kremlin to its core.
Unfortunately, the secularist elite in America haven’t learned from the lesson that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” In their relentless drive to strip our nation of its spiritual foundations, they’re doing the church a favor: they’re helping to separate the wheat from the chaff (those who say they’re religious but really aren’t) while strengthening the faith of those who believe God plays a significant role in every aspect of their life.
Statistics document this. A recent Pew Research poll found that the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians has fallen to 63 percent compared to 78 percent in 2007, while the number of Americans who say they have no religion has risen by 13 percentage points in roughly the same period. However, a Pew survey earlier this year found that almost one-third of Americans said their faith had grown stronger over the past year and a half (coinciding with COVID-19)—the largest share of any developed country.
So, it’s true religious faith that is expanding. Those committed to faith realize that their faith comes with a price they’re willing to pay to stand for God and for freedom, while those who were content with a “in name only” faith are the ones falling away. I would assert that is a good thing for America.
In a September 1982 speech, then-President Reagan said, “We can’t expect God to protect us in a crisis and just leave Him over there on a shelf in our day-to-day living. I wonder if sometimes He isn’t waiting for us to wake up.”
As a country, we don’t need more people who put God on a shelf and only turn to Him in a crisis. We need people who turn to Him daily for guidance, comfort, and strength.
That’s why I’m encouraged that more Americans are realizing that they can’t just leave God on a shelf in their day-to-day living. While secularists point to the so-called “numbers” and claim that our faith is waning, they’re missing that the truly faithful, like the people in Poland, “want God.” And, if that’s the case, it will be those who are truly committed to the faith who will restore our nation’s virtue, conscience, and collective soul—and will remain one nation under God.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/america-the-faithful_4182073.html
**********************************************The Trump Economic Record Looks Better Every Day
When running against Donald Trump for president, Joe Biden often made the now-ironic charge that any president who has allowed so many deaths from COVID-19 should never be in the White House. Today, there are more deaths from COVID under Biden than under Trump—and that is even with the vaccine.
But it isn’t just on health issues that Trump’s presidency is looking so much better and competent in hindsight.
Everywhere I go these days, people come up to me and say something like this: “I didn’t like some of the things Trump said or the way he acted, but I have to admit I like what he did for the economy.”
No one has vindicated Trump’s “Make America Great Again” policies more persuasively than Biden. High gas prices, the highest inflation rate in four decades, a plan to double the national debt in 12 years, and falling paychecks for workers are waking Americans up to the real broad-based prosperity under Trump.
Trump’s strategy was to reduce taxes, slash regulation, massively increase domestic energy production, and overhaul trade deals to get tough with China.
No one in the progressive movement thought it could possibly work. The Washington Post famously claimed before the 2016 election that “Trump could destroy the world economy.” Did that turn out to be true?
Here are just the facts, ma’am. Over his first three years in office before COVID hit, the unemployment rate fell below 4 percent, which was near the lowest in half a century. The inflation rate fell to 1 percent, which was even below the target level set from the Federal Reserve. This kept the interest rates on mortgages and many other loans down to the lowest level in modern times.
Poverty rates fell to their lowest levels ever recorded. This was true for women, children, blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Median household income rose to nearly $68,000, and the $5,000 gain in three years was more than over the second term of George W. Bush and the eight years of Barack Obama.
Here was another remarkable feat: Under Trump, the United States became energy-independent. The month that Trump left office, one year ago, America was importing zero oil from Saudi Arabia, largely because U.S. oil and gas production had surged. Now we have a president who has to beg the Saudis and Iranians to produce more oil. How humiliating.
The bumper stickers are starting to appear everywhere: “Miss Trump Yet?” Not many Americans miss some of his antics. But every day that inflation surges, the border remains in chaos, COVID runs amok, and government spending and debt surges to new multitrillion-dollar highs, Trumponomics sounds like a better idea.
**************************************************
Chinese couple are sentenced to death after father killed his two toddlers by throwing them off a 15th-floor balcony because new girlfriend did not want to raise another woman's children
Sometimes Chinese justice is appropriate
A father and his girlfriend have been sentenced to death in China after he threw his two children from his apartment building because his new girlfriend did not want another woman's kids.
The two young children fell from the tower block in the municipality of Chongqing, China, on November 2 last year.
Zhang Bo's daughter Zhang Ruixue, 2, died instantly, while his son Zhang Yangrui, 1, died shortly after from his injuries.
The 27-year-old had met Ye Chengchen, who he wanted to marry, but she refused to accept him while he already had children and so did her parents.
His girlfriend pressured him into getting rid of them, even cutting her wrists on the day in question to show her frustration at not being able to start a new family with him.
The man then threw both children out of the window before running downstairs to appear grief-stricken at what had just happened.
He was filmed banging his head on the wall and crying uncontrollably, which prosecutors said was all a sham.
He claimed at the time that he was asleep when the children fell out of the window and said he was woken up by people shouting downstairs after discovering the bodies on a grass lawn.
Zhang's ex-wife, named Chen Meilin, told local media that his new girlfriend Chengchen 'didn't want Zhang to have children of his own blood' to another woman.
Zhang started a relationship with Chengchen while he was still married, and he divorced Meilin later. Custody of the children was shared, so the daughter would remain with her mother and the son would remain with his father until he was six-years-old.
However, he asked to look after his daughter on the day that he killed both of them after seeing his girlfriend cut her wrists during a live video chat.
The dead children's mother Chen said: 'At that time, Zhang was on a video phone call with Ye. She slit her wrists and then Zhang got scared. The phone was dropped, he picked up the two children, and threw them from the balcony.'
According to local media, the father admitted he and Ye had plotted to kill the children so that they could start a new family without any children from his former marriage.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
For the notes appearing at the side of the original blog see HERE
Pictures put up on a blog sometimes do not last long. They stay up only as long as the original host keeps them up. I therefore keep archives of all the pictures that I use. The recent archives are online and are in two parts:
Archive of side pictures here
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used on the blog in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and reflects the date on which the picture was posted. See here
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
Email me (John Ray) here.