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.)
31 December, 2021
The Democratic Party is now the party of welfare — not working people
The Democratic Party used to call itself the party of working people and hail the “dignity of work.” No more. Now Democrats want to guarantee people who choose not to work an income funded by the suckers who show up for employment, care for their families and pay taxes.
Fortunately, these self-supporting Americans just dodged a bullet. The failure of Build Back Better to pass in Congress, thanks to holdout Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), means that the monthly checks or automatic bank deposits to parents with kids — sometimes dubbed Biden Bucks — come to an end this month. (Though progressives haven’t given up on trying to revive them some other way.)
For working people, the monthly payments were merely an advance on their tax refunds. But parents who choose not to work have been getting no-strings money to support their nonworking lifestyles.
Using the pretext of pandemic relief, Democrats who enacted the American Rescue Plan in March changed a feature of the tax code — the child tax credit available to adults who work and pay taxes — into a grant paid unconditionally and monthly to almost all adults with kids, whether they work or not.
Democrats have been pushing to extend the free monthly payments through 2022 as part of the Build Back Better Act, with a plan to make them permanent.
Manchin saw right through what his party intended: a socialist-style universal basic income. Manchin objected to the unconditional monthly cash grants: “There’s no work requirement whatsoever. Don’t you think if we’re going to help the children,” he asked, the parents “should make some effort?”
So what about the Democratic Party that represents working people? President Joe Biden still talks the talk. “My dad used to say, ‘Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It’s about your dignity. It’s about respect. It’s about your place in the community.’”
But Biden’s party is no longer walking that walk. As Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) told the House Ways and Means Committee during a debate over Build Back Better, “the so-called dignity of work — that’s like hearing a fingernail on a chalkboard.” New York magazine’s Eric Levitz calls Manchin’s work-ethic convictions “contemptible.”
Sorry, but most Americans don’t want to support the moochers.
Advocates of the monthly payments hail them as “already a huge success” for lifting millions of children out of poverty. Nonsense. That’s what a working parent does. The national poverty rate fell temporarily, but the payments didn’t solve the problem of parents without the mindset to support their children.
This is déjà vu. Uncle Sam used to send checks to nonworking parents. The 1996 welfare reform enacted by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton changed that, requiring parents to work or train for work in order to receive cash benefits.
It succeeded, reducing the welfare rolls, ameliorating child poverty and helping single mothers become self-sufficient.
Yet today’s Democratic Party spurns that model. Democrats tend to blame unemployment on racism or a rigged economy and argue that people deserve dignity whether they choose to work or not.
Of course, all human beings deserve dignity. But not a seat on the couch in front of the TV, funded by people who toil.
Democratic politicians all over the nation are pushing to provide a monthly basic income to the nonworking poor, courtesy of taxpayers. They’ve formed Mayors for a Guaranteed Income.
Los Angeles is sending out monthly $1,000 checks to 2,000 residents.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is using millions in federal pandemic relief funding to distribute $500-a-month cash stipends to randomly chosen low-income recipients. That ought to enrage anyone who works and pays taxes.
Jobs are plentiful. The National Federation of Independent Business reports that half of small businesses cannot fill positions and a record number say labor quality is their biggest business problem. Small businesses nationwide are posting “Help Wanted” signs in windows.
Every time you pass one of those signs, you can think of Manchin. And thank him for holding the line against turning taxpayers into suckers supporting the freeloaders.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/28/the-democratic-party-is-now-the-party-of-welfare-not-working-people/
*************************************************Riot Games to pay $100M in gender discrimination suit
Tencent Holdings’ Riot Games on Monday said it has agreed to pay $100 million to settle a 2018 gender-based discrimination class-action lawsuit with California state agencies and current and former women employees.
The company said it will pay $80 million to the members of the class-action suit, comprising all current and former full-time women employees and temporary agency contractors in California who worked from November 2014 to the present.
An additional $20 million will be paid towards attorneys’ fees and miscellaneous expenses, Riot Games, the maker of League of Legends, said in a statement.
“In an effort to drive ongoing transparency and accountability, Riot has also committed to having its internal reporting and pay equity processes monitored by a third party jointly approved by Riot and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for three years,” the company said.
A final approval of the settlement by the court is pending, with a hearing expected in the coming months, the statement added.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2018 by now-former employees Melanie McCracken and Jess Negrón, alleging gender discrimination as well as sexual harassment and misconduct at Riot Games, the Washington Post reported on Monday. The suit was followed by two inquiries led by California state agencies, the reported added.
https://nypost.com/2021/12/28/riot-games-to-pay-100m-in-gender-discrimination-suit/
**************************************************Coronavirus response needs to put freedom first, New York’s Zeldin says
New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin bashes President Biden over his handling of the COVID pandemic on ‘The Ingraham Angle.'
U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., appeared on Fox News’ "The Ingraham Angle" on Tuesday night, where he claimed the Democrats’ coronavirus response has been a heavy-handed list of restrictions such as mandates and lockdowns.
The congressman – who’s looking to be elected New York’s governor next year -- claimed the Republicans’ trust in people making their own decisions and exploring such possibilities as natural immunity might be a better path forward as the nation continues to grapple with the deadly outbreak.
U.S. REP. LEE ZELDIN, R-N.Y.: First, you have to value freedom. You have to respect that people are smart enough to make their own decisions, talking with their own doctors.
The left has run out of ideas so they’re talking about mandates, lockdowns, threats, fines, firings, instead of talking about early access to advance treatment and therapeutics -- following science as opposed to having the science follow the politics.
As we’re getting new information out from omicron -- as we saw in South Africa and the same thing playing out here -- the data, the facts, the science, the truth is telling us that the peak time may be narrower, that hospitalizations are lower, the reactions are milder.
Yes, it’s contagious but the reactions might even be more milder [sic] than the mild prediction that people are making.
Let’s also look at the science behind natural immunity. People have gotten COVID and there’s now research that’s out that says that their body has a certain level of immunity to the virus.
It’s being studied by scientists as to whether or not that level of protection may be more than if you get vaccinated.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/coronavirus-response-freedom-new-york-zeldin-ingraham-angle
************************************************France closes mosque after imam incites hatred against Christians, Jews
A mosque in northern France has been shut down after the government determined that the place of worship was "inciting hatred" against Christians and Jews, as well as gay people.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced earlier this month that his administration was in the process of shutting down the mosque. The mosque was accused of hosting a regular speaker that pushed its members toward violent radicalization, according to translations provided by EuroNews.
Darmanin claimed that the mosque's speaker was "presented as an occasional speaker but who, in reality, acts as a regular imam." He reportedly made comments to the congregation that "glorify jihad and the fighters, whom he describes as heroes."
A lawyer for the nongovernmental organization Espoir et Fraternité (French for "Hope and Fraternity"), which operates the mosque, told journalists that the NGO would be filing a countermeasure with the courts within 48 hours.
The organization defended the attendance and preaching of the unnamed imam at the center of the investigation, with their lawyer dismissing "certain remarks made during preaching by one of the mosque's imams – who has since been suspended – who was speaking on a voluntary basis."
Darmanin has been a point man for dozens of investigations into reportedly radical mosques across France.
The minister previously stated that 99 mosques have so far been controlled for advocating dangerous or violent ideology.
"Of these 99 [mosques], 21 have been closed, and 6 are currently in the process of being closed," Darmanin reported earlier in December, according to EuroNews. "We also found that 36 of these mosques had accepted the demands of the Republic – either to leave a particular federation, or to separate from the imam whom we considered dangerous, or to stop foreign funding, or unfortunately to combine these provisions – and so we removed them from the list."
The Daily Mail reported that earlier this year the French government announced it was cracking down on places of worship and groups suspected of pushing radical Islamic propaganda. The interior ministry revealed earlier this month that they had investigated 100 mosques and Muslim prayer halls in recent months out of more than 2,600 across France due to fears of "separatist" ideology being spread across the country.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/france-closes-mosque-imam-hatred
****************************************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)
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30 December, 2021
Church of England priest who disrupted consecration of first female bishop loses religious discrimination tribunal after claiming he was forced to retire aged 70 because of his belief that women shouldn't be ordained
At least someone in that church is faithful to the Bible. The Bible says:
"Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church". (1 Corinthians 14: 33 NIV)
That scripture makes it particularly plain that a woman cannot be a bishop. The word "bishop" is dervived from the Greek word "episkopos" (?????????) in the original of the Greek New Testament. And episkopos literally means an overseer or supervisor. And that is precisely forbidden in the text above
A Church of England priest who protested at the consecration of the first female bishop has lost a claim of religious discrimination at a tribunal after he claimed he was forced to retire because he believes women shouldn't be ordained.
Reverend Paul Williamson, 72, claimed he was forced to retire aged 70 - as is common practice in the Church of England - because of his unpopular view.
His notorious campaign against women being ordained dates back 25 years when in 1997 he tried to sue the dean and chapter of St Paul's Cathedral for appointing a female minor canon.
In 2015 the priest publicly interrupted the ordination of Libby Lane - England's first female bishop - at York Minster to object to it, shouting that it was 'not in the bible' and that it was an 'absolute impediment'.
Now, Rev Williamson has lost his second employment tribunal after he was forced to retire from his post as priest of St George's Church, Hanworth, London.
Rev Williamson, 72, first lost an age discrimination case in 2019 after he was retired at 70. All priests retire at 70 under Church of England rules unless there are exceptional circumstances.
The Reverend Libby Lane became the Bishop of Stockport in a service conducted by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu at York Minster.
The historic event was briefly interrupted by the appearance of ultra-conservative priest Rev Paul Williamson shouting 'Not in the Bible' as she was presented to the congregation.
A Church of England spokesman described him as a 'serial protester' who had been expected to attend. He said: 'He's got the right to protest but the contrast was between a lone voice protesting and a sea of voices affirming.'
Mrs Lane, an Oxford-educated mother of two, was appointed as a bishop last month, in a historic move which ends five centuries of all-male leadership in the church.
That announcement came just weeks after the General Synod formally adopted legislation allowing women to take the role, following years of furious debate on the issue.
Rev Williamson was first ordained as a deacon in 1972 and as a priest the following year. He served as priest St George's in Hanworth since 1992.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene Again Pushes for ‘National Divorce’ of Red and Blue States
Creating an assembly of red state governors and giving it a power of veto over Federal legislation would certainly be doable
Twitter was ablaze late on Wednesday, after one of Congress’ most controversial members made a harrowing suggestion.
Greene, who has been a very vocal supporter of the MAGA Movement and of former President Donald Trump, posited the possibility of a “national divorce” again this week, after having first discussed the idea back in October.
And, what’s more, Greene believes that transplants from “blue states” should perhaps have their voting rights restricted if they move to “red states”.
If red states and blue states were to “divorce” each other, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called it possible that people who move from a Democratic state to a Republican state would be barred from voting for a temporary “cooling off” period.
California’s seen an influx in people moving out of the state and many have opted to go to Texas and Florida, where residents can get more bang for their buck. However, some, including Greene, have complained that those who are leaving California are bringing their political beliefs with them and potentially shifting the political landscape.
On Wednesday, the Georgia congresswoman posted on Twitter that “brainwashed people” who move from California and New York need a “cooling-off period.” Her comment was in response to a Twitter user who wrote he supports discriminating against Democratic transplants, including restricting their ability to vote for a period of time. He also wrote that they should have to “pay a tax for their sins.”
Greene’s suggestion was all a part of this “national divorce” narrative.
Twitter users did not appear to take to the idea kindly, lambasting Greene with comparisons to the Confederacy and the secession that played prelude to the Civil War.
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Elizabeth Warren's one-trick inflation pony
by Jeff Jacoby
PRICES IN the United States are rising faster than they have in decades. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this month that inflation was up 6.8 percent over the past year, the steepest annual increase in consumer prices since 1982.
There is no mystery about why inflation is exploding: Prices spike when too many dollars are chasing too few goods. The federal government has massively increased spending over the past two years in the name of economic stimulus and COVID-19 relief: too many dollars. At the same time, the pandemic's upheaval has led to a global labor shortage and snarled supply chains, preventing commodities of every description from being produced or from reaching vendors: too few goods.
The result is straight out of Economics 101: Everything is more expensive.
But Senator Elizabeth Warren has a different theory. She insists prices are being pushed up not by anything as impersonal as supply and demand, but by greedy business executives.
"Prices at the pump have gone up," she told an MSNBC interviewer last month. "Why? Because giant oil companies like Chevon and ExxonMobil enjoy doubling their profits. This isn't about inflation. This is about price gouging."
Warren had the same explanation for why turkey has become so expensive: "plain old corporate greed." She demanded a Justice Department investigation, accusing poultry companies on Nov. 23 of "abusing their market power" by "giving CEOs raises & earning huge profits."
The next day she widened her indictment from the poultry department to every department.
"Wondering why your Thanksgiving groceries cost more this year?" Warren tweeted. "It's because greedy corporations are charging Americans extra just to keep their stock prices high."
It's more costly to rent a car these days. That too, says Warren, is caused by capitalist greed.
In a letter to the CEO of Hertz, Warren blasted the company for being "happy to reward executives, company insiders, and big shareholders" with stock buybacks, "while stiffing consumers with record-high rental car costs."
Wherever prices are rising, Warren fingers the same culprit: rapacious corporations. Like Henry Ford, who would sell customers a Model T car in any color they wanted as long as it was black, the senator from Massachusetts will gladly explain why any product has become more expensive, as long as the explanation involves greedy businesses out to make more money.
It is true, of course, that corporations continually look for ways to increase their profits. That's how they survive. The reason businesses exist in the first place is to supply goods or services to customers and make money doing so. If companies can't turn a profit, they eventually go out of business and no longer sell those goods or services.
But if corporate greed is Warren's one-size-fits-all explanation for why prices go up, how does she explain why they go down?
Consider gasoline. In the spring of 2020, the average price of gasoline plunged to less than $1.90 a gallon. Why didn't Chevron and ExxonMobil do then what Warren claims they are doing now — gouge customers to boost profits? The answer is that prices aren't driven by all-powerful capitalists capable of "doubling their profits" at will. Last spring, the pandemic and its attendant worldwide lockdowns caused a drastic cut in demand, which led in turn to a sharp fall in prices — so sharp, in fact, that the oil industry suffered an unprecedented crash. In 2020, the five largest oil companies (ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Total) lost a combined $76 billion. Then, when the economy recovered and the demand for oil grew faster than the inventories available to meet it, prices soared.
Inflation in the US is at its highest level since 1981. Does Sen. Warren believe that, after decades of stable prices, corporate America was suddenly gripped by insatiable greed?
In the world according to Warren, every unwelcome spike in prices is the result of a conspiracy to put the screws to consumers, while every dramatic price reduction is an irrelevancy. In the real world, market forces, not corporate villainy, explain why prices fluctuate. And "market forces" go far beyond decisions made by a handful business leaders in C-suites. They comprise choices made by tens of thousands of producers and vendors, as well as millions of consumers.
Inflation isn't on the march because, after decades of stable prices, corporate America was suddenly seized by a wave of greed. It's a ridiculous theory, but it's the one Warren is sticking to. So she plays the corporate-greed card over and over, like a relative repeating the same dreary party trick at every family gathering. Meanwhile prices keep rising, and voters are less and less amused.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25913/elizabeth-warren-one-trick-inflation-pony
************************************************After Spokane Food Program Officials Turn Away Unvaccinated for Christmas Meals – Patriots Step In and Feed Everyone
Unchristian Catholics
A week before Christmas, in Spokane, WA, the Christmas Bureau food assistance program turned away needy people who could not show proof of Covid-19 vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test no more than 72 hours old.
The Christmas Bureau is an annual holiday assistance program coordinated by Catholic Charities Eastern Washington, Volunteers of America, and the Spokesman-Review. The program is made possible by generous monetary funds and volunteer hours donated by community members and organizations.
In response to the Christmas Bureau’s actions, a group of Christian patriots launched a “No Vaccine Canteen” to feed everyone — regardless of their medical history.
Dan Bell, who helped organize a food drive and feed the homeless, said he was surprised to see that a Catholic church was involved in turning away the hungry.
“As a Christian, if you’re following the teachings of Jesus, you feed the hungry, right? You feed all hungry. So, we wanted to make sure nobody went without a good hot meal on Christmas,” Bell said in an interview with the North Idaho Exposed YouTube channel.
Bell and other volunteers held a food drive, served chili on Wednesday evening, and partnered with an organization called Blessings Under the Bridge to serve breakfast burritos on Christmas morning.
Now, Bell hopes that they can keep going and continue to provide meals two days a week — no matter anyone’s vaccination status.
“Hunger doesn’t have a vaccination status,” Bell said of the food discrimination. He said that, so far, they have raised about $3,500 to put towards their efforts
Bell added, “anyone who is going to pick and choose which hungry get to eat, when there’s food for everyone, I’d ask them to look in the mirror long and hard at themselves.”
A great example of true Christian charity, unlike the Catholic organization more resembling those who passed by the injured Samaritan
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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)
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29 December 2021
Judge orders New York Times to return documents to Project Veritas and take down story based on privileged communication between reporters and their lawyers
A New York judge upheld his order for The New York Times to return documents they obtained about communications between the conservative activist group Project Veritas and the group's lawyers.
In his Friday ruling, Justice Charles Wood ordered The Times to immediately give back all physical copies of their Project Veritas documents and destroy any electronic copies the newspaper has, as they were protected by attorney-client privilege.
Wood also argued that The Time's story regarding the documents were of no 'general interest and of value and concern to the public.'
A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of The Times, said the news outlet would seek a stay of the ruling and would appeal it on First Amendment grounds.
'This ruling should raise alarms not just for advocates of press freedoms but for anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know,' Sulzberger said in a statement. 'In defiance of law settled in the Pentagon Papers case, this judge has barred The Times from publishing information about a prominent and influential organization that was obtained legally in the ordinary course of reporting.'
The judge's order came as part of a defamation lawsuit filed against The Times by Project Veritas leader James O'Keef.
The group came under federal scrutiny in relation to the alleged theft of the diary of President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley, which the group considered publishing but never did. The group admitted to being in possession of the diary at some point but claim to have since handed it over to authorities.
Portions of the diary were published by National File, a right-wing website, which said they were provided by a frustrated employee of a media outlet that passed on them. Project Veritas denies any connection to the publication of the diary.
It has objected to a November 11 New York Times article that drew from memos from a Project Veritas lawyer, and purported to reveal how the group worked 'gray area between investigative journalism and political spying' using its lawyers to 'gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices can go before running afoul of federal laws.'
O'Keefe and the group have been heavily criticized for allegedly using deceptive tactics to expose what it describes as liberal media bias.
Elizabeth Locke, a lawyer for Project Veritas, said: 'Today's ruling affirms that The New York Times's behavior was irregular and outside the boundaries of law.
'The court's thoughtful and well-researched opinion is a victory for the First Amendment for all journalists and affirms the sanctity of the attorney-client relationship,' Locke added.
O'Keefe and Project Veritas have alleged that The Time's story is meant as nothing more than a smear campaign against the group. Following Friday's ruling, O'Keefe said, 'The Times is so blinded by its hatred of Project Veritas that everything it does results in a self-inflicted wound.'
The group had been suing over a September 2020 The Times article describing a video it released that alleged voter fraud connected to the campaign of U.S. congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat.
The New York Times reported that the allegations made in the video were made: 'through unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence.'
Theodore Boutrous Jr., a lawyer who represents media outlets, told The Times the ruling was 'way off base and dangerous. It's an egregious, unprecedented intrusion on news gathering and the news gathering process,' Mr. Boutrous said. 'The special danger is it allows a party suing a news organization for defamation to then get a gag order against the news organization banning any additional reporting. It's the ultimate chilling effect.'
Dean Baquet, The New York Times' executive editor, previously said Wood's November 18 order to stop newspaper set a 'dangerous precedent,' while the newspaper has said courts might find prior restraints acceptable only 'rarely,' such as to protect national security.
The New York Times had not faced any prior restraint since 1971, when the Nixon administration unsuccessfully sought to block the publication of the Pentagon Papers detailing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
An attorney for O'Keefe aso accused the Department of Justice of tipping off The New York Times about recent raids on current and former employees, while suggesting federal prosecutors may have also leaked the group's legal communications.
The FBI conducted raids at O'Keefe's New York home and those of others connected to Project Veritas this month, seizing two of O'Keefe's cell phones, among other items.
Days later The New York Times published a report based on memos from the group's lawyer, revealing his legal advice on the group's use of false identities and undercover filming, tactics that are eschewed by most modern journalists.
Later that day, a federal judge ordered the DOJ to stop extracting data from the phones, granting a request from O'Keefe's legal team made the day before for an independent party to be appointed to oversee the review of the confiscated devices.
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What Does the Separation of Church and State Mean?
The SCOTUS hearing the FBI's religious spy case begs the question
On November 8, 2021, the Supreme Court heard arguments for a case that has serious ramifications for religious and civil liberties in the United States. FBI v. Fazaga will determine to what extent, under section 1806(f) of FISA, a US District court can review contested surveillance that is protected under state secrets privilege.
In an effort to sift out potential terror threats, the FBI began investigating Muslims in 2006 under Operation Flex. In one particular instance of this operation, the FBI paid an informant to attend the Islamic Center of Irvine and surrounding mosques in Southern California. The informant collected surveillance in the vast majority of his interactions with the Muslims in these communities. The FBI didn’t even have cause to single out any of these mosques, nor was the information tasked with following anyone suspected of criminal wrongdoing.
Unable to find any evidence of illegal activity after well over a year, the informant began to speak of “jihad and armed conflict”. Not wanting any part of what the informant was selling, uneasy community members soon reported him, ironically, to the FBI and filed a restraining order against the informant. After the informant went public, Fazaga and his fellow plaintiffs filed a suit claiming unlawful searches and religious discrimination.
State secrets privilege was invoked over surveillance gathered on Fazaga and his fellow plaintiffs. State secrets is an evidentiary rule that allows the withholding of evidence from legal proceedings, based on the government’s claim that revealing the evidence would be a risk to national security.
A large portion of Fazaga’s case against the FBI hinges upon the evidence deemed a state secret. Unable to weigh the evidence, the US District Court that first heard the case threw out most of Fazaga’s claims for that reason. On appeal, the 9th Circuit Court reversed the decision.
What’s at the heart of this case is the relationship between section 1806(f) of FISA and the state secrets privilege. 1806(f) says that if the Attorney General files an affidavit claiming certain evidence would threaten national security if disclosed, then the US district court can review the orders and applications for the electronic surveillance in camera (in a private session without the public) and ex parte (without an improper party being present) to see if the surveillance was legally conducted.
The FBI claims that 1806(f) of FISA has no clear language on whether it supersedes state secrets privilege.
Should the Supreme Court rule in favor of the FBI, evidence considered state secrets privilege could be immune to 1806(f) of FISA. This type of evidence would usually be dismissed, and lawsuits contingent upon such evidence would likely be thrown out entirely. US District judges would have their hands tied by this Supreme Court case.
State secrets privilege could provide far more cover for the US government to spy on its citizens in the event of a ruling favorable to the FBI.
United States v. Reynolds, the first Supreme Court case to officially recognize state secrets privilege, said that the state secrets doctrine should not be “lightly invoked.” However, its invocation has increased in recent decades. With no official system of checks, the courts have given federal agents an immunity hall pass.
Depending on the outcome, this case could open the flood gates to more government spying. It is no coincidence that a lawsuit posing a serious challenge to the state secrets doctrine has to do with religious discrimination.
In the wake of 9/11, Muslim Americans have been high on the list of religious groups of concern to the US government and it has resulted in many instances of discrimination. Glenn Greenwald has previously covered how the FBI has concocted similar schemes in the past. Since 9/11, roughly the FBI has paid 15,000 informants $3.3 billion to spy on Muslims. Yet this case should concern everyone, particularly any religious person.
Though it has been Muslim Americans at the forefront of this issue, there is no reason to think that Christian, Jewish, or Hindu Americans (or any other religious group) are exempt from government spying either. It’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility where the government would be interested in spying on these groups.
This fact is illuminated by recent examples during the pandemic. Many states barred or forcibly altered religious gatherings during the pandemic, and often granted much more lax restrictions on other non-religious social gatherings. In some cases, police have even shown up to shut down church gatherings. The outcome of this Supreme Court case could allow the government more cover to carry out such surveillance, leaving the victims of unlawful surveillance with little to no chance at restitution.
This is a clear violation of the separation of church and state, and an attack on the rights of Americans to practice their beliefs without being spied on. This is a great affront to one of our founding principles—religious freedom.
What’s more, is that this case can also chip away at our right to a fair trial if the government can entrap individuals and suppress the evidence in a court of law. FBI v. Fazaga could establish a legitimate check on the state secrets privilege and it almost seems like common sense. One could easily see it work out where a judge could review evidence under state secret privilege and maintain an oath to secrecy. This way national secrecy isn’t under threat AND an element of fairness and justice is maintained in lawsuits.
But, like most instances of state secrets privilege is invoked, we are at the mercy of the government to decide.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2021/12/14/separation-church-state/
************************************************Marjorie Taylor Greene tears into Republicans for tweet celebrating Kwanza and calls it a 'fake religion created by a psychopath'
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene hit out against College Republicans for a tweet wishing a Happy Kwanzaa, calling it a 'fake religion created by a psychopath.'
'Wishing you a happy and prosperous Kwanza,' the national group for conservative college students wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
'Stop. It's a fake religion created by a psychopath,' Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote back on Twitter. 'You aren't bringing in new voters, you are turning them away. People are tired of pandering and BS.'
Kwanzaa is a secular festival of African American culture celebrated each year from Dec. 26-Jan. 1.
Founded in 1966 by activist and Black Power movement figure Maulana Karenga, it is based on African festival traditions as a way to 'give blacks an alternative to the existing holiday of Christmas and give blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society,' according to Karenga.
It is said to celebrate the seven principles of Kwanzaa- unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.
Karenga was placed on the FBI's watch list under its COINTELPRO program, which had been tasked with surveilling and disrupting revolutionary political groups. Karenga was later arrested and thrown in prison for assaulting two female members of his black nationalist organization, a charge which he denied and said was manufactured to derail him as a political figure.
Even former President Trump, who Greene closely allies herself with, issued a statement celebrating the beginning of the festival during his first year in office.
'Today marks the first day of Kwanzaa, a weeklong celebration of African American heritage and culture. Together, let us celebrate during this joyous time the richness of the past and look with hope toward a brighter future,' Trump said.
'As families and friends join to light the Kinara, Melania and I extend our warmest wishes for a joyful holiday season and a prosperous year to come,' he said.
College Republicans did not respond to Greene's attack, instead retweeting past Kwanzaa messages from other prominent Republican accounts, including the Republican National Committee, the Texas GOP, the Manhattan GOP, Ohio GOP, Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., and Trump's White House.
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Another Democrat switches to GOP
A Texas Democrat switched his affiliation to the Republican Party over the party’s left-leaning embrace of defunding the police policies and “chaos” on the southern border.
State Rep. Ryan Guillen announced in a Monday press conference that he would seek reelection to his south Texas seat as a Republican, saying the Democratic Party’s far-left values are no longer in line with his own.
Specifically, Guillen cited his now-former party’s backing of defunding the police and the compounding crisis at the southern border under President Biden.
“Friends, something is happening in South Texas, and many of us are waking up to the fact that the values of those in Washington, D.C., are not our values, not the values of most Texans,” Guillen said.
“The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live here in South Texas,” he continued.
The former Democrat had won his seat by nearly 17 points in the 2020 election and has served in the Texas House for almost two decades. Guillen’s switch is a win for Republicans as the party pushes to gain traction along the historically blue border.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan joined Guillen at his announcement in Floresville.
“John Lujan’s upset victory earlier this month in a district with a majority Hispanic population already proved that Texans are fed up with the failures of Democratic leadership and Ryan Guillen’s party switch makes that fact all the more clear,” Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) president Dee Duncan said in a Monday statement.
“Today’s Democrat leaders are so focused on appeasing their fringe-left base by putting teachers’ unions ahead of parents, pushing socialist tax and spending schemes, and fighting for open border policies, that even elected officials in their own party cannot support their radical agenda anymore,” Duncan continued.
Duncan said the Republicans “welcome” Guillen to the party “with open arms and look forward to working with him” as he works with his new GOP colleagues “to deliver solutions for the people of his district.”
https://uafreport.com/mark/breaking-rockstar-democrat-switches-to-republican-party-2/
****************************************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)
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28 December 2021
What’s fueling America’s political rage?
Kevin Drum has an article in "Mother Jones" trying to explain the furious political polarization that has evolved in America today. It is too long to reproduce so I will comment on it only.
One expects simplistic thought from Leftists and Drum gives us a prime example of that. He makes a case that is well-argued and worth reading but his conclusion is in the end risible: He blames it all on Fox News!
He is undoubtedly right in identifying the importance of Fox News but to blame a vast demographic change on on one media outlet is risible.
A demographic change needs a demographic explanation. And if I can risk being ass simplistic as Drum, my explanation is: Hispanics.
America's two major minorities are very responsive to the brainless arguments of Leftists and one of those minorities has steadily become much larger than it was. The size of the Hispanic population has reached a tipping point where it has a big effect on election outcomes.
And because Hispanics have until very recently been thoroughly "rusted on" to the Democratic party, that has enabled the Left to take less care to farm other population segments. To put it blunltly, the white vote matters less to the American Left these days.
Some whites will always vote Left can takes a fair slice of the white vote for granted. If their policies are unpalatable to other whites, the Left don't need to care about that. They have always got the minority votes to prop them up.
So in the circumstances, the Left can be what Leftists all want to be: Radical. Communism is their ideal and they want to get as close to that as they can. In the Soviet era they excused Soviet brutality by saying that the Soviets were just "reformers in a hurry" and to this day they excuse the Cuban regime.
So it is the Left who have changed, to the horror of many reasonable people who don't want their country to be turned on its ear. The Left have by their policies and actions generated in many normal people a great dislike of themselves and that has made them return the compliment. It infuriates them that the wonderful reforms that they have finally accomplished are not universally acclaimed.
A San Diego State University dean recently called conservative ideas a 'stench'. Since when has that been civilized discourse? How is that respect for others? There is no mistaking the furious hate that pervades the current American Left. They have abandoned restraints that once kept them civilized and reasonably moderate. People like that have got to be very hard to talk to
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BBC only just behind Hamas in respected Jewish organisation the Wiesenthal Center's antisemitic 'list of shame'
The BBC has been branded anti-semitic by one of the world’s most respected Jewish organisations.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center –named after the famed Nazi-hunter – has placed the BBC at No 3 on its annual ‘Global Antisemitism Top Ten’ list.
Last night, Rabbi Marvin Hier, head of the centre, told The Mail On Sunday: ‘People might be surprised to see the BBC on our list but the decision to place the BBC at No 3 came after months of intense debate and discussion.
‘We believe the BBC has been guilty of several incidences of anti-semitism during the past year.
‘People might assume we would put neo-Nazi groups on our list but the BBC is there because when a globally recognised organisation allows antisemitism to creep into its reporting, it makes it all the more insidious and dangerous.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center ¿named after the famed Nazi-hunter ¿ has placed the BBC at No 3 on its annual ¿Global Antisemitism Top Ten¿ list +2
The Simon Wiesenthal Center –named after the famed Nazi-hunter – has placed the BBC at No 3 on its annual ‘Global Antisemitism Top Ten’ list
‘People around the world trust the BBC and rely on it for truthful reporting of world events.’
The Rabbi singled out the Corporation’s reporting of an attack on a busload of Jewish teenagers by a group of men who chanted anti-Israel slogans.
The incident took place in London’s Oxford Street last month as the teens celebrated the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
‘The BBC falsely reported that a victim on the bus used an anti-Muslim slur. But what was heard on tape was a distressed Jewish man speaking in Hebrew appealing for help,’ Rabbi Hier said.
The Mail on Sunday understands the BBC has investigated the reporting and maintains the alleged slur was included to ensure the fullest account of the incident.
The BBC issued a statement earlier this month saying the story was a ‘factual report’ that ‘overwhelmingly focused on the individuals the police want to identify; those who directed abuse at the bus’.
The Wiesenthal Center report, which will be released on Tuesday, lists Iran – whose leaders deny the Holocaust and have pledged to ‘annihilate Israel’ – at No 1 on the list and the Palestinian terror group Hamas at No 2.
The report condemned former BBC reporter Tala Halawa who posted a series of tweets including ‘Hitler was right’ and ‘Zionists can’t get enough of our blood’ in 2014. Ms Halawa no longer works for the BBC.
It also criticised the Corporation for ‘often’ referring to Israelis as ‘settlers’ and cited a video tweeted by senior BBC producer Alaa Daraghme captioned: ‘An Israeli settler ramming a Palestinian man near the Lions’ Gate.’
Rabbi Hier said: ‘In fact, the car drove on to the pavement after an attempt by Palestinians to lynch the Jewish driver who lost control of the vehicle.’
A BBC source said the original tweet had been posted when there was ‘some confusion’ over the incident. Mr Daraghme later published another tweet clarifying what had happened.
The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center’s top ten also includes ‘social media giants’ (for allowing hate to spread online) and the Unilever corporation, which owns Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream. Ben & Jerry’s board boycotted East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
A BBC spokesman said last night: ‘Antisemitism is abhorrent. The BBC strives to serve the Jewish community, and all communities across our country, fairly with accurate and impartial reporting.’
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Switzerland to allow people to legally change gender through self-identification from 2022
The Swiss will be able to change gender legally by self-declaration at a civil registry office from Saturday.
The country will be among a handful in Europe to grant legal weight to gender self-identification. Ireland, Belgium, Portugal and Norway are the only other nations on the continent to allow someone to legally change gender without hormone therapy, medical diagnosis or further evaluation or bureaucracy.
Anyone aged 16 and above not under legal guardianship will be able to do so. Younger people and those under adult protection will require guardian consent.
Current rules are dependent on region. Some require a certificate from a medical professional confirming transgender identity.
Others require a person to undergo hormone treatment and some ask for proof that the person’s new name has already been in use for several years.
Greater Manchester's Gender Based Violence Campaign #IsThisOK
While some other European nations, including Denmark, France and Greece, have removed the requirement of medical procedures – such as sex reassignment surgery – they require further steps or conditions.
In June, the Spanish government approved the draft of a bill that would allow anyone over the age of 14 to change gender legally without a medical diagnosis or hormone therapy.
In the UK, a report from the cross-party Women and Equalities Committee, says transgender people should be allowed to declare their own gender without “unfair and overly medicalised” scrutiny.
They argued that transgender people should no longer be required to have a gender dysphoria diagnosis from doctors to be legally recognised.
Proposals had been developed under Theresa May’s government to allow people to self-identify by signing a statutory declaration and without having to provide evidence of a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria but the plan was scrapped.
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis set $8 million in his 2022–23 budget to transport illegal immigrants out of The Sunshine State
He proposed the spending in the Freedom First Budget (pdf) to protect against harms resulting from illegal immigration. The spending may include the transportation of unauthorized aliens located within Florida to other states or the District of Columbia.
“In yesterday’s budget, I put in $8 million for us to be able to transport people illegally [in the United States] out of the state of Florida,” he said during a press conference on Friday.
The Republican governor listed Delaware, President Joe Biden’s hometown state, and Martha’s Vineyard, where former President Barack Obama owns a mansion, as potential destinations to relocate the illegal immigrants.
“If you sent [illegal immigrants] to Delaware or Martha’s Vineyard or some of these places, that border would be secure the next day,” he said.
The White House and The Obama Foundation didn’t respond immediately to requests for comments from The Epoch Times.
DeSantis also encouraged more counties to participate in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) 287(g) program, under which individuals who have been arrested on criminal charges and are being booked into the county jails are asked about their immigration status.
Other proposed measures to reduce the harms of illegal immigrants include listing convicted illegal aliens on a public website.
DeSantis threatened to send illegal immigrants to Delaware back in November. He said his office is looking at legal avenues after his administration alleged that about 70 flights of illegal aliens were sent to Jacksonville, Florida, after being picked up by agents along the U.S.–Mexico border.
“We’re going to get together and figure out what we can do in the immediate term to protect folks in Florida,” DeSantis told reporters, noting that his options are limited because the federal government controls the immigration policies and actions.
But “if they’re not doing that,” DeSantis added, “then clearly the state should be able to come in and provide protection, and so that’s what we’re going to be looking to do.”
“If they’re going to come here, we’ll provide buses,” DeSantis said, before proclaiming, “I will send them to Delaware.”
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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)
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27 December, 2021
Brexit: One year on, the economic impact is starting to show
The Muslim BBC writer below sets out that some British businesses have had problems in recent years. He attributes that to the adjustments required by Brexit. He admits that the effects of the pandemic and the economically destructive government responses to it are "overwhelming" but goes on as if they did not exist
And in a familiar Leftist way, he totally ignores the question of where the balance lies. No doubt there have been problems resulting from Brexit but what about the benefits? He makes no attempt to tell us
Such a one-eyed article is not worth much so I reproduce below only the opening part of it
The business owners I spoke to have pretty much the same reflection on different aspects of the reality of one year of trading outside the Single Market and Customs Union. It's clearly been challenging: "Frustrating. Scary. Huge drop in sales. Rendered uncompetitive in Europe."
When I put to them what ministers have suggested privately - that some sections of British business need to be as prepared as the best-prepared bigger businesses, it got a little testy.
"I found it astounding that they are telling us to get used to it," said Adrian Hanrahan, of Robinson's chemicals, who is dealing with a new set of UK regulations entirely duplicating EU requirements.
A gift box distributor, Karen Lowen, says it's cheaper for her to supply the US and Australia than Europe.
Meanwhile, a manufacturer of cutting edge green radiators says the expansion of his factory in Birmingham will now take place in Poland. One participant's voice cracks as he tells me they are fighting to survive after a century-and-a-half in business.
A year on from the signing of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement - the real economic start of Brexit - we can start to see some of the changes in how Britain trades.
Despite the overwhelming influence of the lockdowns, and post-pandemic bounce back on all aspects of the economy, it is possible in the data and in the direct experience of hundreds of businesses, to see the impact of Brexit.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59761292
*****************************************They Tried To Sue Her For Not Working Same Sex Weddings, Then She Fought Back…
A lawsuit filed by an Elmira wedding photographer who refused to photograph same-sex marriages has been tossed out of court by a New York judge. But it doesn’t end there as the photographer plans to fight back.
A Christian photographer and blogger Emilee Carpenter based in the Southern Tier, sued the state in April, alleging that the state’s human rights law violated her First Amendment rights to free speech, free association, and free religious expression. She also said the law violated the establishment clause and her right to due process.
Carpenter said in a statement:
“The laws “substantially burden [her] sincerely held religious beliefs by requiring [her] to either operate [her] expressive business in a way that violates [s] [her] religious beliefs or to close [her] business.”
Carpenter said she would “not accept any projects… celebrating “anything immoral” or “dishonorable to God,” According to court documents.
This week, U.S. District Court Judge Frank P. Geraci Jr. dismissed Carpenter’s claims, noting that historically underserved, disfavored, or disadvantaged individuals are entitled to the same access to the public marketplace as afforded to everyone else. Additionally, Judge Geraci made clear in his decision that all businesses claiming to serve the public must serve all of the public, including members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Furthermore, the case does not specifically require the photographer to take pictures at same-sex wedding ceremonies, but instead dismissed the case for lacking a specific claim that could be granted relief.
However, an Arizona-based, Christian, nonprofit advocacy group, “The Alliance for Defending Freedom,” the organization representing Carpenter in the case, disagreed with the ruling.
ADF said in a statement:
“Even explaining on her company’s website which photographs and blogs she can create in good conscience based on her religious beliefs.”
The ADF noted:
“Penalties for violating the laws noted in the ruling could include a fine of up to $100,000, revocation of a business license, and up to one year in jail”
After receiving seven requests since March to create content celebrating same-sex weddings in New York, frustrated Carpenter decided to start the case, as it go beyond her belief.
Carpenter said when the lawsuit was announced in April:
“The state shouldn’t be able to silence or punish me for living out my convictions,” She said.
“I serve clients from all backgrounds, but the government is attempting to tell me what to do, what to say, and what to create based on its beliefs, not mine. Free speech protects everyone. Photographers and other artists should be able to choose the stories they tell,” she added.
Carpenter plans to appeal the decision
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The British Labour Party will never scent victory if it keeps up its toxic class war on hunting
By Baroness Mallalieu, a Labour peer
I use the present tense because despite the huge and disproportionate effort required to get the Hunting Act passed into law in 2004, many in my party remain obsessed with the pursuit of hunting at a huge cost to Labour’s standing in the countryside. The party went into the last election with a commitment to legislate on hunting again, as well as restricting game shooting. This week, Labour demanded an outlawing of trail hunting on public land.
When Labour won the 1997 and 2001 general elections, it boasted more than 100 rural MPs. It now holds just 17 of the 199 seats in England and Wales designated as rural. It is one thing being beaten in traditional Tory shires, quite another to see working class rural constituencies such as Penistone and Stocksbridge, Bishop Auckland and Sedgefield fall to the Conservatives, as they did in 2019.
Labour’s rural problem was starkly illustrated in the Cumbrian constituency of Workington, where Sue Hayman, then shadow Defra secretary, was defeated in a seat that Labour had won in every general election since the constituency was created in 1918. All of those constituencies have hunts and, while the South Durham and Cumberland Farmers might not boast the aristocratic pedigree of more famous packs, they have a loyal local following.
Why would any political party seek to woo an electorate where it has no competition?
This matters for Labour because there is no route to Downing Street that does not involve recapturing rural seats. This matters for rural communities, too, because at the moment they are being taken for granted by the Tories.
Never in my lifetime has the countryside been such a one-party state. Why would any political party seek to woo an electorate where it has no competition and wins almost unchallenged? Yet, as the recent North Shropshire by-election showed, the countryside is not blue by nature. It is quite willing to vote for any party which shares its priorities and aspirations.
To win in the countryside, Labour needs to engage with the rural electorate and focus on what matters to them, and not simply manipulate rural issues in the belief that it will appeal further to its increasingly urban base. Labour will not be taken seriously in the countryside until its priorities match those of people in rural constituencies.
Last month, when the Government’s Animal Welfare Bill was in the House of Commons, the Labour front bench moved a series of amendments which would have removed the exemption which allows packs of dogs, like other working dogs, to be off the lead when livestock are present, and would have required all “hunting dogs” to be licensed. This sort of petty politics is a million miles from addressing real animal welfare priorities, let alone reflecting the needs and concerns of the countryside.
Yet if Labour can get beyond the playground politics of “hunting, shooting and fishing” there is a huge opportunity for the party. There are fundamental issues including rural crime, access to public services, affordable housing, broadband and rural poverty, which desperately need addressing and which match exactly the priorities of the Labour Party. It needs to pursue policies relevant to the countryside and work with stakeholders who represent their interests.
If nothing changes, this continuing obsession will keep Labour out of office. It is impossible not to conclude that it would be of great advantage to both the party and the countryside if hunting were to be removed from the political agenda. Imagine if as much energy had been expended on issues that could really make a difference for rural communities.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2021/12/26/labour-will-never-scent-victory-keeps-hounding-hunt/
*********************************************Israel unveils $300m plan to double settlers in occupied Golan
Israel on Sunday announced a multi-million dollar plan to double the number of Jewish settlers in the Golan Heights, in a move to entrench their control of the territory more than 50 years after they captured it from Syria.
Israel’s sovereignty of the Golan Heights - which it formally annexed in 1981, 14 years after its seizure in 1967 - has never been recognised by the international community.
In 2019 former US President Donald Trump became the first and only country to recognise Israel’s claim to the territory. Syria blasted it as a “flagrant violation” of their sovereignty.
“This is our moment. This is the moment of the Golan Heights,” Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett said at a special cabinet meeting in the area. "After long and static years in terms of the scope of settlement, our goal today is to double settlement in the Golan Heights."
The $317m (£237m) plan will significantly tip the demographic balance of the annexed land, which currently stands at around 25,000 Israeli settlers and 23,000 Druze families - a religious minority in the region - who remained after it was captured.
Mr Bennett on Sunday said that this recognition from Mr Trump, as well as President Biden’s indication that there would be no Middle East policy change, was an “important” factor in the decision to invest in the area.
Under the plans two new neighbourhoods will be created, as well as development programmes for construction, tourism, transportation and medical facilities. In 2019 a new town named “Trump Heights” was inaugurated.
"It goes without saying that the Golan Heights is Israeli," Mr Bennett said on Sunday.
The Right-wing prime minister maintained that entrenching Israeli control of the Golan Heights is necessary to protect itself from Iran and Syria.
“Just imagine what it would be like to battle Iran's attempt to use Syria as a military base, from which to attack Israel, if the Golan Heights were in Syrian hands,” Israeli deputy prime minister Gideon Sa’ar was reported as saying in the Jerusalem Post.
The plan - which was unanimously passed by the cabinet - aims to double the settler population by 2025.
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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)
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26 December, 2021
Why won’t governments fix housing affordability?
Because they CAN'T. No government has ever found a way. And the reason is simple. Housing is a commodity like everything else that is bought and sold. And anything that is bought and sold is governed by the law of supply and demand. If the demand outstrips supply, the price will rise. So it follows that there is only one way to get the price of housing down. You have to increase the supply of it
But governments put up lots of obstacles to block an increase in supply, -- principally land use restrictions. And local governments are big on both lande use restricions and building restrictions. So local governments have to be stamped on to increase the supply of housing. And that is politically dynamite any time it is attempted. Existing homeowners like the restrictions. They keep "riff raff" out of their neighbourhoods
Rapidly rising property prices have led to increasing concerns around affordability, but support for government intervention may actually decline as affordability worsens, a new paper suggests.
Authors of the study argue that homeowners seek to protect their property price gain from being taxed away or undermined by growing housing supply, resulting in less support for government intervention in housing market inequality.
While based on European data, local experts and economists say it points to the challenge of rolling out reforms to improve housing affordability when more people, and voters, are homeowners than not.
Grattan Institute household finances program director Brendan Coates said the politics of improving housing affordability was fraught because most voters already owned a house or investment and mistrust any change that might dent property prices.
“The interest of homeowners tends to outweigh the interest of renters. There’s that classic adage from John Howard who [as prime minister] said that no one is complaining in the streets about their house value going up,” Mr Coates said.
The political consequences of housing (un)affordability, published in The Journal of European Social Policy earlier this month, used data drawn from European and British social surveys and an analysis of British elections to explore the relationship between housing affordability – house prices relative to incomes – and the demand for redistributive and housing policy.
Authors Ben Ansell, a professor at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford, and Asli Cansunar, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, found consistent evidence that declining affordability, driven by increasing house prices, decreases support for interventionist housing policy, especially among homeowners across Europe, and increased votes for the conservative party in the UK.
The beneficiaries of unaffordability, who they noted were those who own property, will prefer to keep policies and parties in place that keep prices high and rising, they concluded. However, while citizens on aggregate become less supportive of intervention, this masked a growing polarisation in preferences between renters and owners in less affordable regions.
Mr Coates said the research design was plausible in the European context, and that poor affordability would likely impact the preferences of political constituents. However, it was not clear if the politics would play out the same way in Australia, noting that at the last election, when Labor was promising changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, the electorates that swung to Labor tended to be those of higher income earners, while lower income electorates swung toward the Coalition.
However, Mr Coates also noted it was inner city working-class suburbs that had won big in the “housing lottery” as prices climbed over the years, as they were the group with the largest share of their wealth in housing, while the wealth of higher income earners was typically more diversified.
Mr Coates added there was a clear trend in Australia, though, of wealthier areas being more resistant to increased housing supply, but this was driven by multiple factors and not just potential concern of downward pressure on property prices.
“The real question in the Australian context, where there are clearly more house owners than renters making housing policy transformation really hard, is whether there is enough interest from baby boomers … sufficiently worried about whether their kids can ever buy, that leans them more to reform.
“Or whether the solution [they reach] is to double down … by giving [their children] more access to the bank of mum and dad [to get into the market].”
Mr Coates said both tax reform and increased supply would be key to improving housing affordability in Australia, and worried about staunch proponents of either approach downplaying the other at the current inquiry into housing affordability and supply in Australia, when both were clearly needed.
Independent economist Saul Eslake said supply side reforms were only part of the solution and the federal government needed to back away from policies that inflate housing demand, and had been pursued by both sides of government, such as first-home buyer grants, negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.
It was a tragedy that Labor had walked away from proposed changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax, he noted, with the opportunity for such reform now possibly gone for a generation.
A greater focus on building more social housing was also needed, with both parties allowing the proportion of such housing to decline egregiously over the decades.
Appearing before the affordability inquiry last month, he asked members of the committee whose interests they were most concerned about: the 11 million Australians who already own at least one property, and the more than two million who own more than one, or the minority, albeit a growing minority, who have been unable to buy. He noted their answer would determine what they recommended to Parliament, with their report expected early in 2022.
Mr Eslake said while politicians shed “crocodile tears” for young Australians struggling to get onto the property ladder, there was a huge gulf between what they say and do. However, Mr Eslake, who also referenced Howard’s comments, acknowledged most homeowners did not want to see government action that would stop the value of their property going up.
“There is a very large constituency that is resolutely opposed to anything that would dampen the rate of house price inflation, yet that is surely at the heart of what you have to do if you’re going to solve the affordability issue.”
Mr Eslake said it was unclear if Australians had become any more opposed to redistribution policy as affordability declined, but noted that while Australia had quite a progressive income tax transfer system, wealth was taxed very lightly compared to other countries.
Any polarisation in preferences between renters and owners was less obvious locally, Mr Eslake added, saying he was often surprised that there was not more anger from young Australians about the way in which the market has been rigged against them by their parents’ generation. But even if they were to adapt their voting behaviour, he said, who would they vote for, with no big reforms on the table from either party.
The last federal election showed the concern homeowners had for housing reform.
Economist Jim Stanford, director of The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, said that in the context of declining housing affordability it made sense for homeowners to be more cautious about their future and reforms, as they could feel more insecure in their situation, but was sceptical of the paper’s suggestion that they had benefited from unaffordability, noting few could sell off property without needing to buy elsewhere.
Many would also worry about their children and see that their kids did not “have a hope in hell” of buying a decent property, if poor affordability continued.
“I don’t think they are better off, even middle-class homeowners would be better off with a policy that thought of a housing as a more basic service. I don’t accept that they have made money off this boom [and just want] to continue to,” he said.
However, the last federal election had shown the concern homeowners had for housing reform, Dr Stanford said, noting that rightly or wrongly, those who saw themselves as housing investors could be influenced by scare campaigns against policies that made a lot of sense, like Labor’s proposed change to negative gearing.
“The government tried to portray it as a tax on homeowners, which is nonsense, but given how the election unfolded everyone is going to be curious about what they propose in this election, that experience sort of ratified the point … with this article.”
Dr Stanford said a big part of the solution would be building up Australia’s supply of non-market housing, which governments had basically walked away from over the last generation, with the time right for an ambitious plan to build more social and affordable housing.
Housing Minister Michael Sukkar and shadow minister for housing and homelessness, Jason Clare, were contacted for comment.
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UK Supreme Court backs Government's decision not to allow gender-neutral passports with an 'X' option instead of just male and female categories
The Supreme Court has backed the Government's decision to not allow gender-neutral passports.
Earlier this year, justices heard an appeal from campaigner Christie Elan-Cane who believes the Government's current passport policy is degrading and illogical.
Elan-Cane, who has campaigned for more than 25 years to achieve legal and social recognition for non-gendered identity, brought a case to the UK's highest court in the latest round of a legal fight for 'X' passports.
Elan-Cane argues that the UK's passport application process, which requires individuals to indicate whether they are male or female, breaches human rights laws.
The Supreme Court challenge, which was contested by the Home Secretary, centred on the current policy administered by Her Majesty's Passport Office (HMPO) - part of the Home Office.
Last year, the Court of Appeal ruled it was 'beyond argument' that Elan-Cane's right to respect for private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights was engaged, but that the current policy did not amount to an unlawful breach.
In a judgment today, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeal.
Giving the ruling, Lord Reed said: 'The form is concerned with the applicants' gender as a biographical detail which can be used to confirm their identity by checking it against the birth, adoption or gender recognition certificates provided and other official records.
'It is therefore the gender recognised for legal purposes and recorded in those documents which is relevant.'
The President of the Supreme Court found that Elan-Cane's interest in being issued with an 'X' passport was 'outweighed' by other considerations, including 'maintaining a coherent approach across government' as to what genders are recognised.
Lord Reed continued: 'There is no legislation in the United Kingdom which recognises a non-gendered category of individuals.
'On the contrary, legislation across the statute book assumes that all individuals can be categorised as belonging to one of two sexes or genders, terms which have been used interchangeably.'
At a hearing in July, justices were told by that the current gendered policy has a significant impact on the lives of those affected.
Kate Gallafent QC, for Elan-Cane, said that non-gendered people, such as Elan-Cane, and non-binary people have to make a false declaration to get a passport, which 'strikes at the foundation of the standards of honesty and integrity to be expected of such official processes'.
Elan-Cane underwent a double mastectomy and then an NHS-funded hysterectomy in the 1980s and 1990s.
Ms Gallafent told the justices it was illogical for part of the state to recognise and facilitate Elan-Cane's identity while other parts did not.
She also argued there was a 'fundamental incoherence' in how the sex on a passport is changed for binary transgender people compared with other legal documents.
The court also heard that the Home Office accepts that a person's gender identity can be male, female, both or neither.
Sir James Eadie QC, for the Home Office, argued there was a need for an 'administratively coherent system for the recognition of gender'.
In written arguments, he said: 'It is obviously problematic, and highly undesirable, for one branch of Government, i.e. HMPO, to recognise non-binary identification when no other Government department does so.
'It may lead to the same person being treated as having a different sex/gender by HMPO for the purposes of issuing a passport on the one hand, and by other Government departments for all other Governmental functions on the other.'
Sir James said that amending the passport policy would be likely to require eligibility criteria for an 'X' passport to be raised.
'If there are no such criteria, and access to an 'X' passport is a matter of free choice unconnected to gender identity, the justification for such a change is significantly less forceful,' he said.
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Why You Should Come Out of the Closet With Your Conservative Values
Dennis Prager
I received a phone call on my radio show from a man who said, “Dennis, I’m a gay conservative actor in Hollywood, and it is far easier to come out of the closet as gay than as a conservative.”
That call was in the 1980s.
While the current cancel culture —the firing, humiliation, disparagement, and smearing— of conservatives is exponentially worse today than 30 years ago, it is not new.
As a result, the great majority of Americans who are conservative—that is, about half the country—hide their true beliefs. They fear saying anything that differs with the Left. This would include such reprehensible sentiments as:
* With all its flaws, America is the finest country ever made.
Men do not give birth.
* There are only two sexes.
* A person’s color is the least important thing about them.
* The greatest problem in black life is not whites but a lack of fathers.
* A man who becomes a woman and then competes in women’s sports is cheating.
* Posting to social media a video by a renowned epidemiologist, virologist, or medical doctor who asserts that ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine with zinc, when used early enough, almost always prevents hospitalization for COVID-19.
The list is far longer than this. But if you think even this list overstates the problem, put any of these statements on any mainstream social media platform and see what happens. See if any relatives drop you from Facebook or even from their lives. See what your employer says or does. See what Twitter or Facebook does to your account.
There are valid reasons to fear publicly differing with the Left.
So, then, what arguments can be offered on behalf of coming out of the closet?
The first is this: For every person you alienate, you will likely bring at least one new, wonderful person into your life.
Putting aside issues of courage, of standing for what is right, of saving America from those working to destroy it, there is a great selfish reason to come out of the closet: kindred spirits, i.e., good people, will discover you.
In 2020, I received an email from a young woman in her second year at Harvard who told me that my book that explains the Left and America, “Still the Best Hope,” had changed her from liberal to conservative. Needless to say, I was intrigued to learn more about her and, as it happened, she lives—as I do—in Los Angeles. So, I invited her to sit in on my radio show.
While speaking to her during commercial breaks, I was impressed enough to ask if she would be willing to describe her political and moral metamorphosis on the radio. I warned her that appearing on “The Dennis Prager Show” and talking about her conservative views would likely lead to some lost friends, angry, if not alienated, relatives, and attacks back at Harvard. I made that case persuasively enough to give her pause and ask, “May I call my mother?”
She stepped out to make the call. When she returned to the studio, she announced, “I’m coming on.”
About half a year later, she made another appearance on my show, and I asked her what happened after her initial appearance.
“I went through two weeks of hell,” she responded.
As predicted, she lost friends she had had since elementary school, some relatives limited their contact with her, and some students back at Harvard regarded her as an indecipherable sellout.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“Then I entered heaven,” she responded.
She offered two big reasons.
One was that she began to sleep better than she had in years. The other was the number of kindred spirits, all quality people, who reached out to her, some of whom became friends.
Regarding reason one —sleeping better— staying in the closet exacts a serious mental price on a person. One should not think only coming out of the closet exacts a price.
As for the second reason, virtually no price paid for coming out of the closet is comparable to the rewards of doing so. There is little as happiness-inducing as having kindred spirits in your life.
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San Francisco APPROVES new measure that will see notorious Tenderloin District flooded with cops to tackle homeless drug crisis despite protests from city's woke Supervisor and DA
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an emergency order Friday to tackle the opioid epidemic in the city's crime-ridden Tenderloin neighborhood, despite multiple woke city leaders attacking the crackdown because it would flood the area with cops.
Mayor London Breed's order was passed by a vote held shortly after midnight Friday, with eight voting in favor of the plan and two voting against it, following a marathon 10 hours of debate and public comment.
The public health emergency declaration also authorizes the Department of Emergency Management to set up a new temporary center where people can access expanded drug treatment and counseling. Anyone caught abusing drugs who refuses help faces being arrested and locked up, sparking howls of protest from some of the violent city's progressive leaders.
Several supervisors raised objections, although only Board President Shamann Walton and Dean Preston voted no. They decried the lack of details and dearth of available treatment beds, and said that over-policing would victimize African Americans and the homeless.
'I know that this is an incredibly painful, traumatic and emotional conversation,' said Matt Haney, the supervisor who represents the neighborhood, before the vote. He said he hopes the city will bring all of its 'innovation, unyielding compassion and relentless determination' to confront the crisis.
San Francisco Supervisor Hillary Ronen and the city's infamous woke DA Chesa Boudin were among those moaning about Breed's new plan before it was passed.
'I believe that we should all be marshaling every resource we have in this city to address that crisis,' said Supervisor Hillary Ronen.
'But because of the way that this has been described in the media, I don't have faith that we're talking about the same thing.'
Meanwhile, Boudin - facing a recall over an embarrassing spike in crimes in the city blamed on his soft-touch on crime - has also condemned Breed's plan.
He said: 'We can't arrest and prosecute our way out of problems that are afflicting the Tenderloin,' Boudin said during a press conference on Monday.
'Arresting people who are addicted to drugs, jailing people who have mental health struggles, putting folks who are vending hot dogs or other food on the streets in cages will not solve these problems, and they are certainly not the only tools available.'
Breed's public health emergency declaration allows the Department of Emergency Management to re-allocate city staff and bypass contracting and permitting regulations to set up a new temporary center where people can access expanded drug treatment and counseling.
But advocates for the homeless and substance users are urging a no vote because Mayor London Breed has also pledged to flood the district with police officers to halt crime.
Public health officials encourage treatment for drug addicts, not punishment, but Breed has said that people consuming drugs in public may wind up in jail unless they accept services. Many locals have said that while they are sympathetic to the plight of addicts, many of whom are also homeless, they're fed up with the crime associated with the drug problem, as well as the filth and needles that now litter the famously-liberal city's streets.
The Tenderloin includes museums, the main public library and government offices, including City Hall. But it's also teeming with people who are homeless or marginally housed, a high concentration of drug dealers and people consuming drugs in broad view.
Breed said last week that it was time to be 'less tolerant of all the bull***t that has destroyed our city.' She said it's not fair that residents can't use their parks or leave home.
'When someone is openly using drugs on the street, we're going to give them the option of going to the services and treatment we're providing.' 'But if they refuse, we're not going to allow them to continue using on the street,' she said on social media this week. 'The families in the neighborhood deserve better.'
Breed has committed to opening a supervised drug consumption site as well as a drug sobering center, and said the Department of Emergency Management will lead the response much like it coordinated efforts to address the pandemic.
The department will, in part, streamline emergency medical calls, disrupt drug dealing and use, and make sure streets stay clean.
Deaths attributable to overdoses have increased more than 200 percent in San Francisco since 2018, and last year, more than 700 people died from drug overdoses in the city, more than the number who died from COVID-19, according to the proclamation.
Nearly 600 people have died of a drug overdose this year, through November, with nearly half of the deaths occurring in the Tenderloin and in the neighboring South of Market district, says the proclamation. These areas make up 7 percent of San Francisco's population.
Politically liberal cities across the US are grappling with crime in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, when their elected leaders pledged ways to reduce friction between police and vulnerable communities of color, particularly African Americans such as Floyd.
San Francisco and the Bay Area in particular has been hit hard by a spate of what officials are calling organized smash-and-grab burglaries and car break-ins. Between May 2020 and May 2021, there was a 753 percent increase in the car break-ins in the city's Central District, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Walgreens closed a location at 790 Van Ness Avenue in October 2020 after losing up to $1,000 in stolen merchandise numerous days in a row, according to the San Francisco Chronicle
Officers have already made a string of arrests in relation to the late-November attacks, which police previously posited were related.
Three arrests have been made in connection with the coordinated attack on a Nordstrom Inc. store in the wealthy Bay Area suburb of Walnut Creek, California, on November 20.
An estimated 90 people overran the posh boutique and made off with more than $100,000 of merchandise before escaping in 25 separate cars that had their license plates removed or covered, prosecutors said.
The city's reputation has taken a hit amid embarrassing videos of shoplifting mobs targeting drug stores and high-end department stores, including Neiman Marcus. Earlier this week, Walgreens announced it was closing five of its stores in the city because of rampant shoplifting.
The city's woke DA Chesa Boudin has been accused of being too soft on crime, and faces a recall effort from locals who say say the ultra-rich area has become too dangerous to live in.
'The criminals are committing these acts in broad daylight in this city,' Breed told KGO-TV of the smash and grab Audi gang back in October.
They want her to use the money on adding more treatment beds, shelters, job training and other social services.
'What we currently see in the Tenderloin didn't happen overnight and stems from years of massive disinvestment and displacement,' said Jeannette Zanipatin, California director at the Drug Policy Alliance.
If approved, the emergency order would last 90 days unless Breed seeks renewal.
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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)
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25 December, 2021
Do children's books encourage gender stereotypes? Titles with a male protagonist tend to focus on professions and tools, while those led by a female centre on affection and communication, study claims
Sounds like they mirror normal life. But normality must be CHANGED according to the Left. It's highly likely that the male/female differences we see are largely genetically set but tilting at winmills is the Leftist way
More than 240 books written for children five years old and younger were analysed by a team from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
They found that books with a male main character were more often about professions, whereas those with a female protagonist were about affection.
'Some of the stereotypes that have been studied in a social psychology literature are present in these books, like girls being good at reading and boys being good at math,' said Molly Lewis, lead author on the study.
The authors believe that gendered books read to children in early education 'could play an integral role in solidifying gendered perceptions in young children.'
Researchers analysed 3,000 books published in the last 60 years, including the Harry Potter series. Although more books now feature female protagonists than in the 1960s, males remain 'overrepresented'. It's possible publishing houses are more drawn to stories featuring male protagonists, they claim.
The team found that books with a strong male or female protagonist were more likely to have gendered language specifically targeted to their main character.
Female-associated words focused on affection, school-related words and communication verbs, like 'explained' and 'listened.'
Meanwhile, male-associated words focused more on professions, transportation and tools, with less of a focus on emotional needs.
'The audiences of these books [are] different,' said Lewis. 'Girls more often read stereotypically girl books, and boys more often read stereotypically boy books.'
Girls are more likely to have books read to them that include female protagonists than boys. Because of these preferences, children are more likely to learn about the gender biases of their own gender than of other genders.
To come to this conclusion a total of 247 books aimed at under fives from the from the Wisconsin Children's Book Corpus, were studied by the researchers.
Books aimed at girls were more likely to have gendered language, than those aimed at boys, according to the researchers.
This could be down to 'male' being historically seen as the default gender. Female-coded words and phrases are more outside of the norm and more notable.
They then compared their findings to adult fiction, finding that children's books displayed more gender stereotypes than fiction books read by adults.
They focused on how often women were associated with terms like good, family, language and arts, while men were associated with bad, careers and math.
Compared to the adult books, which was fairly gender neutral when it came to associations between gender, language, arts and math, children's books were far more likely to associate women with language and arts and men with maths.
Many families with young children now own a tablet and some use them for bedtime stories or as an educational tool to help youngsters learn.
But a new study suggests that it may be time to ditch the devices for such use, after finding that children actually engage more with stories if they're read from a real book.
Researchers in the US compared the use of tablets with traditional children's books in a study involving 72 parents with young children aged 24 to 36 months.
They found that parents talked more to their children when reading them a real book, while children also responded more to this conversation than if a tablet was used.
'Our data are only part of the story - so to speak,' said Mark Seidenberg, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and contributing author.
'They are based on the words in children's books and say nothing about other characteristics that matter: the story, the emotions they evoke, the ways the books expand children's knowledge of the world.'
The authors don't want to ruin people's memory of 'Curious George' or 'Amelia Bedelia', or any other popular children's book.
'Knowing that stereotypes do creep into many books and that children develop beliefs about gender at a young age, we probably want to consider books with this in mind,' explained Seidenberg.
They didn't look at how children perceive the messages about gender int he books, or examine how the books influence the way readers perceive gender.
The study also did not evaluate other sources of gender stereotypes to which children are exposed.
'There is often kind of a cycle of learning about gender stereotypes, with children learning stereotypes at a young age then perpetuating them as they get older,' said Lewis.
'These books may be a vehicle for communicating information about gender. We may need to pay some attention to what those messages may be and whether they're messages you want to even bring to children.'
The findings have been published in the journal Psychological Science.
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The left has contempt for evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics, and Orthodox Jews for good reason: They represent everything the left loathes
Anyone who thinks about the current civil war in America comes to realize that it is, in large measure, a war between the religious and the anti-religious.
The left has contempt for evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics, and Orthodox Jews for good reason: They represent everything the left loathes; and while there are, of course, secular conservatives who fight the left, the largest and most effective opposition comes from conservative Christians and Jews.
The differences begin in childhood. Most religious kids—especially those who attend traditional Christian and Jewish schools—are raised with different values than most secular kids.
Here are some examples:
No. 1: Religious upbringing: Fight yourself. Secular upbringing: Fight society.
I studied in yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish school, where half the day I studied Bible and other religious subjects in Hebrew, and half the day I studied secular subjects in English) from kindergarten to 12th grade. I learned early on that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager’s life was Dennis Prager. In nearly all secular schools and in liberal religious schools, kids learn that the biggest problem in their lives is American society—in fact, everything other than themselves.
Which do you think produces a more self-critical, more self-controlled, and overall better human being?
Which do you think produces an angrier and less happy human being?
No. 2: Religious Upbringing: Learn wisdom. Secular Upbringing: No body of wisdom conveyed.
I have no doubt that most kids raised with the Bible and other Jewish or Christian works have more wisdom than almost any secular professor or other secular intellectual. Yes, there are secular individuals who have wisdom (the Judeo-Christian body of wisdom sometimes continues to have influence for a generation or two), but I cannot think of a single secular institution with wisdom.
That is why the institutions with the least wisdom and that believe and teach the most nonsense are universities—they are, after all, the most secular institutions in our society.
No. 3: Religious Upbringing: People are not basically good. Secular Upbringing: People are basically good.
“Wisdom begins,” both Psalms and Proverbs teach, “with fear of God.” In other words, no God, no wisdom. But there is another way of asserting how and where wisdom begins. Wisdom begins with acknowledging how flawed human nature is. Or, to put it as succinctly as possible, you cannot be wise if you think people are basically good. You can be a sweet, kind, and well-intentioned person if you believe people are basically good, but you cannot be wise. Indeed, you are more likely to be a naive fool.
The belief that people are basically good, a belief that neither Judaism nor Christianity has ever held, is a major obstacle to making a good society. For one thing, parents who believe this will not discipline their children as much as they need to. They will assume, as three generations of American parents now have, that all a child needs is love.
And for another, people who believe human nature is good are much less inclined to punish criminals because they will blame murder, theft, rape and other evils on economic circumstances, parents, and society—on anything but the criminal’s failure to control his flawed nature.
No. 4: Religious Upbringing: Holy days. Secular Upbringing: No holy days.
Religious children celebrate holy days—the Sabbath each week and other holy days in their respective religious calendars. Regular times devoted to the Transcendent have a major impact on the development of a child.
The secular child has secular holidays, but they mean little to most American young people. July Fourth is a day off with a barbecue. Meaningless Halloween has come to have more significance than meaningful Christmas. Presidents’ Day means nothing. And Thanksgiving is increasingly declared Indigenous Peoples’ Genocide Day.
No. 5: Religious Upbringing: Friends plus community. Secular Upbringing: Friends, but no community.
Loneliness is a greater pandemic in the modern world than COVID-19, so much so that the U.K. now has a Minister of Loneliness to try to combat the problem.
This is, in large measure, another consequence of secularism. Religious Jewish and Christian (including Mormon) kids grow up with an abundance of friends and a whole religious community thanks to religious school and thanks to their synagogue or church.
What is the communal secular equivalent of the church, synagogue, and religious school? Other than sports (which, in any event, is available to only the handful of young people who play on a team), there isn’t any.
No. 6: Religious Upbringing: The obligation to honor parents. Secular Upbringing: No such obligation.
Religious Jewish and Christian children are taught the Ten Commandments, one of which is “Honor your father and mother.” It goes without saying that many secular children honor their parents, but they do so only if they want to. Religious children are told to honor parents whether they feel like it or not—which is important because very few children always feel like honoring their mother and father.
There is another pandemic in America—that of adult children who have decided never to talk to one or both of their parents. I would wager a serious sum of money that few of those adult children are religious Jews or Christians.
There’s a lot more that distinguishes religious and secular upbringings. But one stands out: Religious kids are generally happier.
Is one upbringing better than the other? You decide.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/14/differences-between-a-secular-and-a-religious-upbringing/
********************************************Why Would Hispanics Drop the Left?
A recent Wall Street Journal poll reported that if the 2022 midterms were held currently, some 37 percent of Hispanic/Latino voters would likely support the Republican candidate. An equal number polled support for the Democrats.
Perhaps key is the 22 percent who remain “undecided” and thereby illustrate that the traditionally Democratic Hispanic vote is now up for grabs.
Remember that just a year ago about 60 percent of Hispanics voted against Donald Trump and Republican candidates in general. And by about the same margin, according to exit polls, they voted not to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom—about the same ratio as the white vote. Still, a 60-40 percent pro-Newsom margin among mostly Democratic Hispanics was striking for its erosion from a once lockstep Democratic constituency.
Most interestingly, Wall Street Journal polls also showed that in a potential (but probably unlikely) 2024 match-up between Biden and Trump, Hispanic voters would split about evenly (44 percent Biden, 43 percent Trump). Are Hispanics then following the trajectory of middle-class whites who have left the Democratic Party in droves and helped redefine the Republican Party as a more populist, working-class movement?
Because new immigration has all but stopped among conservative Cubans, and there are still relatively few numbers of wizened Venezuelan arrivals, these shifts suggest radical changes in second- and third-generation Hispanic voters.
More importantly, should the border ever become de facto closed, as it nearly was by early 2020, the ideological shift rightward would likely accelerate. There would be fewer new arrivals professing fealty to the Democratic Party for ending immigration enforcement while expanding entitlements. We would likely see instead greater assimilation and integration of ascendant and ever more conservative second- and third-generation Hispanics.
Biden Discontent?
So, if the Wall Street Journal polls are somewhat accurate—and other polls have suggested the same trends—what has happened and why now? After all, open-border Republican grandees for a generation have been mistakenly predicting that Hispanics would soon vote conservatively, if only their party would push “comprehensive immigration reform” that many felt to be a euphemism for blanket amnesties and open borders.
Obviously, the last 11 months of Democratic rule have been seen as disastrous by all voters, Hispanics included. None of the Biden initiatives on crime, inflation, energy, the border, foreign policy, or race relations are either working or popular. The public, regardless of race, likely feels that most of these crises are not, as alleged by the Left, attributable to the long-gone Donald Trump or COVID-19, but to Joe Biden and the hard Left who seem to have control over him.
The southern border was once secure. The wall was progressing—until Biden stopped it and allowed a scheduled 2 million to enter in a time of pandemic. He did not require of illegal aliens either viral testing or vaccinations. U.S. soldiers and federal workers, in contrast, are not accorded such exemptions.
Afghanistan was stable in January 2021—until a few months later Biden deliberately pulled out without warning, leaving to the Taliban a $1 billion embassy; a huge, $300 million renovated air base; and over $80 million in advanced weaponry.
Inflation was low—until Biden announced a series of initiatives that, if passed, will likely mean printing $5 trillion in new money at a time of pent-up demand, supply chain interruptions, looming higher taxes and more regulations, and counterproductive subsidies to pay the idle not to reenter the workforce. Voters can sense that the current unbearable rise in prices is neither transitory nor static—but the foretaste of a far worse stagflation to come.
Gas prices were cheap—until Biden warned gas and oil producers that their days were numbered, and their regulatory and tax costs would soar. In less than a year, he canceled new oil leases on federal lands. He shut down pipelines and put the entire ANWAR field off limits—while those around him bragged that gas and oil would be superfluous within a decade.
Worse still, the administration seems unconcerned with the energy price spikes. Indeed, the Left’s green elite like higher prices for fossil fuels, in order to discourage their use among the middle classes. Even so, Biden found a way to humiliate himself by begging autocratic Russians and Saudis to pump more of the fuel his administration seems to hate.
So Hispanic voters, like most of their fellow Americans, are angry as they pay more for the stuff of life—food, cars, housing, and fuel.
As a smug candidate, Joe Biden personalized COVID-19 as the sole responsibility of whoever is the current president in power. It was cheap and easy to do in the last election: the vaccinations were shortly to be released, and already billed as spelling the “end” of the virus. The Delta variant was unknown. Caseloads and deaths were beginning to dip.
Then Biden was hoisted on his own petard, as more now have died on Biden’s watch—despite his inheritance of mass inoculations—than on Trump’s. Biden aides scramble either to blame the long-gone Trump for the 2021 death tolls or to claim a president has little control of an epidemic. His tired mantra of more masks means little. But his trademark lockdowns meant a great deal of pain for those on middle-class budgets, with kids suddenly back at a newly single-income home, in need of parental supervision from 9-5.
Finally, no one likes rescheduling an entire shopping and driving lifestyle to accommodate criminals who loot, carjack, steal, and assault in the major cities and suburbs with seeming impunity, driven by leftwing ideology.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13925&omhide=true
**********************************************Spain will ban smoking on ALL beaches and fine anyone caught lighting up £1,700
About time. There should be no liberty for addicts to pollute other peoples' enjoyment of nature
Spain is set to ban smoking on all of its beaches, allowing councils to fine offenders up to 2,000 euros (£1,700).
The national law aims to combat pollution caused by cigarette butts which are a major environmental issue on the country's 3,000 miles of coastline.
Cigarette butts are one of most harmful pollutants, containing a non-biodegradable plastic polymer that releases toxic compounds.
Several Spanish regions, including Barcelona and the Canary islands, have already introduced similar smoking bans on beaches.
The measure comes months after a petition was signed by more than 283,000 people and delivered to the government requesting a change to the law.
The new law was introduced by a green party as an amendment to a less drastic government initiative to recommend coastal area promote smoking-free beaches.
Some beaches introduced smoking bans last summer in a bit to limit the spread of the coronavirus, to promote health and cut pollution.
Other regions in Europe have also moved to ban smoking on beaches, including some areas of southern France and Sardinia.
However, Spain's nationwide ban is the first of its kind in Europe.
The law was passed months after a petition with more 283,000 signatures was delivered to the government calling for action against beach pollution.
Fernandez Megina, a member of the No Fumadores (No Smoking) campaign group, said the petition showed the government could not wait to act any longer.
The law received 182 votes in parliament, with 70 voting against it and 88 abstaining.
It was backed by The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, the left wing party Podemos and the centrist Citizens party. The ultra-nationalist party Vox voted against it, while the conservative People's Party abstained.
Analysis done by the European Environment Agency in 2018 found cigarette butts and the filters inside them to be among the most commonly found items on Europe's beaches.
The harm done by cigarette butts has been widely reported, with scientists warning that nicotine, metals and benzene contained within them may seep out.
This can contaminate soil and aquatic habitats, with filters also being a serious risk to marine life, as they can be swallowed by animals.
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has made environment issues central to his government's policy, and has set a target for Spain to be carbon neutral by 2050.
News of the law came as the Omicron variant look set to further dent Spain's tourism industry, which has already been hit hard by the global pandemic.
The number of nights booked by tourists in Spanish hotels surged five-fold in November from the same month a year earlier, but was still 20 percent lower than in November 2019, data released on Thursday showed.
The number of nights booked rose to 14.8 million in November, up from 2.8 million in the same month in 2020, the National Statistics Department said on Thursday.
About 40 percent of the hotel rooms were booked by Spanish residents, and most of the foreigners went to the Canary Islands. The winter is a strong season for the Canaries, where Northern European like to travel to enjoy the warm weather.
The data is encouraging for the tourism-dependent Spanish economy, which has seen a strong recovery of the industry in the past months, although the Omicron variant may have a negative impact.
The government expects the number of foreign tourists coming to the country in the fourth quarter would reach two-thirds of its 2019 level, before the pandemic struck.
Currently, only tourists who are fully vaccinated can enter Spain from the UK. Those who are not vaccinated and travelling for tourism purposes may not enter Spain, and only those who are unvaccinated and travelling for 'essential' purposes may enter.
Spain is also set to make it compulsory to wear a face mask outdoors again as part of a package aimed at containing the fast spreading Omicron coronavirus variant, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters on Wednesday.
With nearly 80 percent of its population vaccinated and a booster programme gathering pace, Spain was largely spared the rampant wave of infections that led several northern European countries to toughen restrictions in the autumn.
But the recent arrival of Omicron has sent numbers rocketing, with a record of around 60,000 new infections on Wednesday, though hospital admissions and intensive-care cases remain fairly low compared to previous COVID-19 waves.
Some experts and opposition parties have criticised Sanchez for not reimposing restrictions on movement to due the spread of Omicron, as other European countries such as Portugal or the Netherlands have done, but he rejected this.
'This is not March 2020 or Christmas 2020,' said Sanchez, citing the high vaccination rate of the Spanish population in contrast with those earlier stages of the pandemic when vaccines were not available.
Indoor mask-wearing was already mandatory in Spain and many Spaniards choose to cover their faces outdoors too, although the legal obligation to do so was dropped in June.
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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)
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24 December, 2021
TV presenter from humble background takes on Labour party aristocrat
What the Labour Grandee said in defence of antisemitic leader Corbyn:
"Rachel Riley tweets that Corbyn deserves to be violently attacked because he is a Nazi. This woman is as dangerous as she is stupid. Nobody should engage with her. Ever.”
She was ordered to pay Riley £10,000 damages for defamation.
Congratulations and thanks are due to Ms Riley and her lawyer Mark Lewis. The TV presenter and Strictly celebrity could have had a much easier life if she had concentrated on her show business career instead of standing up for herself and the Jewish community so strongly over the last few years.
She bravely took on the anti-Jewish racists and refused to back down despite the abuse and threats she faced. She demonstrated much more bravery and principle in tackling racism in the Labour Party than many of the party’s most senior members, many of whom now in positions of leadership. Perhaps if they had fought more strongly, she and others would not have needed to. Frankly, they should be ashamed that a TV celebrity showed more political courage in tackling a problem in their party than they did.
It is extraordinary how Jewish women like Ms Riley, the actress Tracey-Ann Oberman or Members of Parliament like Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge, Ruth Smeeth or Louise Ellman bore the brunt of the harassment and abuse meted out by the hard left during this terrible period. And let’s not forget how the BBC’s Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg needed a bodyguard just for doing her job at the Labour conference, protection not required by any of her male colleagues.
Second, Ms Murray was not some insignificant Labour member with an over-active Twitter habit, but part of the hard left leadership, working in Corbyn’s office and as a senior official at the party’s head office.
Her family connections can’t have harmed her meteoric rise to these positions. Her father Andrew Murray is one of the most senior figures on the far left of British politics, chairing the so-called Stop the War Campaign which argues against Western governments, acting as Chief of Staff to Len McCluskey at Unite which bankrolled the party under Corbyn and even working as one of his closest aides as well. Her mother, Professor Susan Michie, famously sold a Picasso worth £50 million she and her siblings had inherited.
Ms Murray and her family are not just Labour aristocracy but come from the actual aristocracy too. Despite being a lifelong communist, her father is the son of stockbroker Peter Drummond-Murray, a descendant of the Earl of Perth who held the title Slains Pursuivant of Arms. His grandfather on his mother's side was Baron Rankeillour, the Governor of Madras and a Tory MP. Professor Michie’s family are just as grand. Her grandfather was the Eton-educated Baron Aberconway.
None of that prevented the hard-left Corbyn-supporting campaign Momentum from greeting the court’s verdict with the words: “The establishment always closes ranks. Solidarity with Laura Murray, a kind & principled socialist.” According to Momentum’s class-warriors, the establishment figure is not Ms Murray but the self-made Ms Riley whose talents and hard work have taken her from an ordinary background in Southend.
And isn’t it ironic that left-wing activists called on Ms Riley to donate her damages to a soup kitchen but don’t demand their comrades to donate the proceeds from the sale of the Picasso as well? The whole sorry story shows us so much of what happened to the Labour Party under the hard left: nepotism, entitlement, anti-Jewish racism and hypocrisy.
Well done to Ms Riley for having the courage to shine a spotlight on it all and exposing the toxic, morally vacuous far-left for exactly what they are.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg cleared by parliamentary watchdog over £6 million loans
Kathryn Stone, who investigates MPs on behalf of Parliament, ruled that no regulations had been broken because Mr Rees-Mogg wholly owns the company that lent him the money, so was not at risk of being influenced in his political work.
Mr Rees-Mogg said he used the money for “temporary cash flow measures” to fund property purchases and renovations.
Although he did not declare the loans, he argued that since the money was for personal use, it fell out of the scope of the commissioner's regulation.
MPs are required to declare any “relevant” business interests, although the exact nature of a relevant interest is not clearly defined.
Mr Rees-Mogg’s letter to the commissioner said the company, Saliston, “cannot influence me by any payments because no action of mine could persuade the company to give me a higher or lower reward than that of full ownership, which is fully declared”.
On Wednesday, Mr Rees-Mogg celebrated the ruling in his favour.
Quoting Othello, he tweeted: “Who steals my purse steals trash … But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.”
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Vaccination and God
Most of the time, people criticise the Church of England generally and the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular for not talking enough about Jesus. “Too much politics,” his critics say. “Not enough religion”. Well, they should be happy now because the Archbishop has brought Jesus right into the middle of the hottest political subject of the day by intimating that Jesus would have got vaccinated.
So, as well as offering our hearts to the infant Christ as the Christmas carol says, we should, it seems, be offering our upper arms at the nearest vaccination centre. The Archbishop, asked in the interview whether vaccination was a moral issue, agreed. “It’s not about me and my rights to choose. It’s about how I love my neighbour.”
He’s not the only church leader to have sounded off on this subject. Pope Francis got there first. In a video message in October he declared that getting a Covid jab that is “authorised by the respective authorities” is an “act of love”. Helping others do so is also an act of love: “love for oneself, love for our families and friends and love for all peoples. Love is also social and political. Getting vaccinated is a simple yet profound way to care for one another, especially the most vulnerable.” And just to drive the point home, he and pope emeritus Benedict had the cameras into the Vatican to record themselves getting vaccinated.
Naturally, some critics will see this as churchmen going beyond their brief. But this is, I think, unfair. It’s precisely the job of the Archbishop to bring God into these issues, rather than keeping him for those rarified occasions when people go to Church. It seems fair enough to take Christ’s command to love one’s neighbour as oneself and apply it to specifics. Putting the matter as a moral issue may cause some people to think again and have the jab – though their altruism won’t preserve them from its occasional side effects.
Of course the Archbishop is doing his job in saying all this. I just wish he would be a little more nuanced, a little more forbearing in suggesting that the unvaccinated (except for medical reasons), whom he says he “can’t understand”, are un-Christian nutters. Certainly many anti-vaxxers are unhinged, but others have sincere, grown up doubts. When I wrote in The Telegraph that I was intending to have my teenage daughter vaccinated, a friend who is a distinguished Oxford professor wrote to me to ask me to think again because “really nothing is known about the long term effects of these absolutely new and experimental preparations”. A couple of weeks ago, I found that a doctor friend was unvaccinated on the same grounds; what’s more, she knew hospital professors who weren’t vaccinated either, but had found nifty ways of securing documentation to suggest they were.
Now, none of this is to gainsay the advice of Sage that getting vaccinated means you are less likely to become ill from Covid. Neither does it address the miserable reality that a disproportionate number of the people taking up beds in acute wards are unvaccinated or under-vaccinated – thereby proving the Archbishop’s point exactly. I myself am triple-jabbed, and when the fourth vaccine comes along, I shall be first in the queue. But I do think we should be wary of demonising the unvaccinated, however much Sage thinks they’re doing the devil’s work.
For there is a Them and Us divide between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed, aggravated by the fact that a disproportionate number of the unvaxxed are from ethnic minorities, one reason why the Covid rate in London is so high. At the Notting Hill Farmers’ Market the other day, I came across a couple explaining to their neighbour that they had had their booster shots. “It’s because we’re white and upper class,” boomed the man. His wife winced. “Can’t you say it a bit louder,” she said. “They might not have heard you at the other side of the market.” Louder: “I’ve been vaxxed because I’m white and…”. “Shut up, Harry,” his wife said. In that particular exchange, I have a feeling that Jesus would not necessarily have been on the side of jabbed, sanctimonious Harry.
I’d be interested to know whether the Archbishop’s remarks will cut much ice with either the sophisticated vaccine sceptics or internet-credulous individuals who are just suspicious of the Government and Big Pharma. Let’s see. But while the Archbishop of Canterbury is right to say that our focus should be not just on what’s good for us, but for our neighbour, we should be charitable in how we make our arguments. When the angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, they announced “peace on earth to men of goodwill”. And goodwill is in short supply on the vexed vaccine issue.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/22/dont-play-god-card-anti-vaxxers-justin-welby/
**********************************************Christmas Should Be Canceled, According to WHO
With confusion about the omicron variant continuing to dominate the headlines this week, there are plenty of varying opinions as to what should be done about Christmas.
For some, the mounting evidence for the omicron variant being “mild” is enough to see them continue on with their Christmas traditions, unburdened by concern. Others, however, are beginning to sound the alarm over its swift spread, and have now issued wildly dramatic instructions as to how to proceed with the holidays.
W.H.O. director-general and Ethiopian biologist Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists in Geneva the “fastest way” to “get back to normal” is for people to cancel or delay Christmas events, the Daily Mail reports.
Dr Ghebreyesu continued to say, “an event cancelled is better than a life cancelled. It’s better to cancel now and celebrate later than to celebrate now and grieve later.”
The W.H.O. has not previously issued a global decree to cancel any other religious holidays such as the Muslim’s Eid or the Hindu’s Diwali as a result of coronavirus.
The news comes on the heels of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s suggestion to turn away any friends or family who have not been vaccinated against the virus.
The W.H.O.’s warning appeared to be largely based on the swift spread of omicron, as opposed to the previous delta variant, which was far more deadly but less contagious.
https://flagandcross.com/christmas-should-be-canceled-according-to/
*************************************************Former Australian PM issues a chilling warning about the rise of big government
Former prime minister Tony Abbott is worried Australians may never be able to enjoy life again as the pandemic makes bureaucrats addicted to power.
He made his call just hours before both NSW and Victoria introduced a series of new Covid restrictions as Omicron case numbers soar - with one state bureaucrat even warning residents to avoid 'fun' activities.
Speaking generally, Mr Abbott said governments could get so addicted to power that life Australia would no longer be as worthwhile.
'Any government that tries to protect everyone in all circumstance is a government which will end up wrapping people up in such cotton wool that none of us will have a real life,' he told Alan Jones: Direct To The People show on Facebook.
'We've always got to be careful about becoming addicted to a crisis.'
From Christmas Eve, New South Wales is reintroducing compulsory indoor mask rules for offices and public indoor settings, after new cases of the Omicron variant on Thursday surged by a new daily pandemic record of 5,715.
Both reintroduced rules, scrapped on December 15, will be scheduled to continue until January 27 next year, the day after Australia Day.
Dr Kerry Chant, the state's Chief Health Officer, is also discouraging people from having fun this summer.
'We are discouraging activities we know are associated with increased transmission... singing, dancing,' she said, before adding a light-hearted aside, 'things often associated with fun.'
'At this time of year we have to tell it as it is in terms of what carries risk, especially indoors.'
Mr Abbott, a former federal health minister, said too many commentators believed it was the role of government to abolish risk. 'We cannot live our live in constant fear of death,' he said. 'At some point, we have to say, "Look, this crisis is now as well managed as it is ever going to be".
'We have to put it behind us and get on with life rather than at the official level, at the governmental level, remaining in that sense of the continuous crisis because let's face it, all of us are prone to the temptations of power and as long as the crisis lasts, officialdom is exulted.'
In Victoria, face masks will from Thursday be compulsory in all public indoor spaces, including cafes, restaurants and pubs.
Holidaymakers wanting to travel to Queensland this Christmas are required to line up for hours at a Covid clinic to get a PCR test.
Across Australia, 90.9 per cent of the population aged 16 and over is fully vaccinated with the Department of Health data also showing 93.5 per cent at least double dosed in NSW.
The Omicron strain, while more infectious, isn't putting more people into hospital or causing a surge in the death rate, prompting former deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth to slam the hysteria about surging case numbers.
Mr Abbott is also concerned about Covid paranoid stopping Australians getting tested for cancer or getting check-ups for heart disease.
'It's pretty clear that a lot of treatments that should have been available to people have been delayed because of the focus on this particular virus as a result of the pandemic,' he said.
Between January and October this year, 11,636 people died from ischaemic heart disease, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week showed. By comparison, 1,744 deaths were linked to Covid.
Of those who died from Covid, 71.2 per cent of them had pre-existing chronic conditions certified on the death certificate.
The cost of lockdowns is set to be paid by future generations with Treasury's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook showing gross government debt hitting $1.189trillion by 2024-25, making up 48.6 per cent of Australia's gross domestic product.
Mr Abbott, whose government didn't deliver a budget surplus, said the economic cost would linger. 'We will be living with the economic consequences of Covid for a very long time,' he said.
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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)
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23 December, 2021
More Than 10,000 Studies Debunk Outdated Biological 'Explanation' For Male Success
This would have to be one of the most idiotic studies ever conceived. They argue from animal intelligence to human intelligence. But is precisely intelligence where humans are very different from other animals
What they are fighting is the leptokurtic distribution of measured IQ in women. Both very bright and very dumb women are rare. They want to say that this much-repeated finding is somehow wrong and does not reflect biological potential.
Their method is to show that other species do not show such differences in females so therefore there is really no such difference in humans.
Believe it if you want to
From world politics to top-ranking businesses, to the upper rungs of academia and even Nobel laureates, men outnumber women by a significant margin.
One claim to such disparity has been attributed to biology. The idea there's some kind of 'superdiversity' among male brains has been repeatedly cited in the scientific literature in recent decades; but according to a newly published meta-analysis, this argument for male success is entirely unsupported by evidence.
"Based on our data, if we assume that humans are like other animals, there is equal chance of having a similar number of high-achieving women as there are high-achieving men in this world," says biologist and lead author Lauren Harrison from the Australian National University (ANU).
"Based on this logic, there is also just as great a chance of having a similar number of men and women that are low achievers."
Most research on diversity within various species tends to focus on differences between the sexes. It's not hard to find numerous and extreme examples of dimorphism; even within our own species, contrasts in sex chromosomes are responsible for exaggerating a litany of anatomical characteristics, such as beards or boobs.
Since the late 19th century, with the writings of the famous English sexologist Havelock Ellis, the assumption that larger male brains equal greater potential for cognitive prowess has been used to explain why men 'deserve' positions of influence and command.
Much has since been written on whether statistical differences across the sex divide translate into anything truly significant (short answer - they don't), but few studies have looked into whether anatomical diversity within one sex provides for a greater spectrum of behavior.
Generalizing the assertion towards non-human animals, in this new meta-analysis the team investigated whether equivalents of our own personality traits across 220 species varied to any great extent within either of the sexes.
In spite of a thorough search of some 10,000 studies, the team couldn't find any compelling evidence demonstrating greater richness of variability within the personality traits of males or females of any of the species included.
That's not to say there were no differences across species as a whole. Some select characteristics, such as immunity or certain morphological traits, were also found to vary considerably within sexes in particular species.
But if we're to use nature as a proxy for our own expanse of variation within male brains as suggested in the past, we can only conclude the rich landscape of female brains provides just as much opportunity for genius (and nonsense) as the male's.
"If males are more variable than females, it would mean there are more men than women with either very low or very high IQs," says one of the authors, evolutionary biologist Michael Jennions from ANU.
"But our research in over 200 animal species shows variation in male and female behavior is very similar. Therefore, there is no reason to invoke this argument based on biology to explain why more men than women are Nobel laureates, for example, which we associate with high IQ."
A lack of evidence in favor of behavioral variation among men doesn't rule out other biological explanations for the shatter-proof glass ceiling that permeates so much of modern society.
It does, however, limit arguments for that ceiling being a result of our biological wiring, and thus being something that we can't – or shouldn't – do anything about.
Dismantling notions that male merit is cemented in biology might even help to break down the social structures that are actually responsible for gender biases.
"Instead of using biology to explain why there are more male CEOs or professors, we have to ask what role culture and upbringing play in pushing men and women down different pathways," says Harrison.
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Tucker Carlson: The Democratic Party is failing
The Democratic Party is made up of entitled White Liberals who rely on minoritieas to keep them in power. But what if one of those minorities is drifting away from them?
Has there ever been a news environment like this one? Every day feels like some weird new PSYOP from the government, as translated through the media companies designed to convince you of something that's just obviously false. Masks will keep you safe. Ukraine is essential to our national security. Rachel Levine is an admiral. Pete Buttigieg is a genius. And so on day after day. It's enough to make you feel like you're going crazy after a while. Am I the only person who sees that all this is total B.S.? You start to ask yourself that.
So to clear the mental palates night was to restore sanity, we're going to return to what we actually know, which is to say to the facts. Here is the most important fact in American politics right now: The Democratic Party just hit a brick wall. Democrats cannot continue to run the United States of America.
Why? Here's why. A new Marist poll, we told you about it last night, shows that only 33% of Latino voters support Joe Biden. Politically, that is fatal. Ask anyone who does politics for a living: Can a Democrat, can an elected president with 33% of the Hispanic vote, or, for that matter, with 43%, or for that matter, with 53%? No is the answer. No chance. It's impossible. That's the headline.
This is a huge change from what most people thought just three days ago. Certainly what Democrats thought. Democrats sincerely believe they were the party of oppressed racial minorities, a group that they alone could protect from White racism. That was the whole point of the party. And weirdly, Republican leaders seemed to kind of accept it as true. But actually, it turns out it wasn't true at all.
In fact, the Democratic Party is not the party of oppressed racial minorities, it's the opposite, it's the party of entitled White liberals and pretty much only entitled White liberals. Democratic donors live in Aspen and Martha's Vineyard in Bel Air. Democratic voters live in Brooklyn and Chevy Chase. In Newton, Massachusetts, in Boulder, Colorado. And increasingly, those are the only places they live.
Biden losing the country because he's a man of no hope: Dan Patrick Video
You know that lady who screeches at you in the airport about pulling your mask over your nose? That's the modern Democratic Party. No normal person likes that lady. She's awful. So effectively, as an electoral matter, that party is done. We're not going to have any more democratic presidents for a while. Sorry.
This is a big deal. You'd think it would be getting wide coverage in the media today, but no, it's not. Can't have that time for a new PSYOP. Time to crank up the fear machine. Now they're telling you you're going to die of a cold. They're calling it omicron. It's a terrifying new variant of COVID, which you remember is a name they picked to conceal the fact that the entire pandemic was likely created in a lab by the Chinese government with the help of American tax dollars.
But shut up. Stop talking. That's racist. And now omicron is here, so there's no time to think. Your job is to be afraid. And unfortunately, many people are afraid they haven't had time because they're so afraid to check the numbers and discover that as an epidemiological matter, this is all completely insane. Far more Americans have died this month from choking on entrees than have died from omicron. That is factually true. The CDC can confirm it for you
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-democrat-party-ruin-christmas
**********************************************When the truth is "disinformation"
Shades of Orwell
There is a new scourge befouling the media landscape, one that our self-appointed mandarins have declared themselves eager to combat: misinformation.
The Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder recently released a report that blamed misinformation for a range of social problems: “Information disorder is a crisis that exacerbates all other crises… . Information disorder makes any health crisis more deadly. It slows down our response time on climate change. It undermines democracy. It creates a culture in which racist, ethnic, and gender attacks are seen as solutions, not problems. Today, mis- and disinformation have become a force multiplier for exacerbating our worst problems as a society. Hundreds of millions of people pay the price, every single day, for a world disordered by lies.”
With $65 million in backing from investors such as George Soros and Reid Hoffman, the newly organized Project for Good Information also vows to fight fake news wherever it roams. As Recode reported, the group’s marketing materials claim, “Traditional media is failing.
Disinformation is flourishing. It’s time for a new kind of media.” The project is run by Democratic operative Tara Hoffman, whose company ACRONYM created the app that spectacularly bungled the Iowa Democratic caucus vote in 2020.
And as Ben Smith reported in the New York Times, the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University has been hosting a series of meetings with major media executives to “help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation.” Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for his platform’s role in spreading misinformation.
The origin of this new wave of portentous declarations and hand-wringing can be found in the Trump years. In an insightful piece in Harper’s, Joseph Bernstein labels this effort Big Disinfo. It’s “a new field of knowledge production that emerged during the Trump years at the juncture of media, academia, and policy research,” he writes. “A kind of EPA for content, it seeks to expose the spread of various sorts of ‘toxicity’ on social-media platforms, the downstream effects of this spread, and the platforms’ clumsy, dishonest, and half-hearted attempts to halt it.” As Bernstein argues, “As an environmental cleanup project, it presumes a harm model of content consumption. Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard.”
Big Disinfo has gained in popularity in mainstream media outlets in part because it claims to solve the problem of bad information while placing blame for it on anyone other than mainstream media. In fact, those diagnosing our illness and prescribing the cure are themselves purveyors of the “infodemic” they claim is upon us.
The Aspen Institute’s Commission, for example, includes several people who have actively engaged in misinformation efforts. As the Washington Free Beacon reported, one of the Commission’s advisers, Yoel Roth, was the Twitter executive who blocked his site’s users from sharing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 election. Adviser Renee DiResta is something of a misinformation wunderkind as well: She was an adviser to American Engagement Technologies, which, the Beacon reports, is a “tech company that created fake online personas to stifle the Republican vote in the 2017 special Senate election in Alabama.”
The commission’s co-chair, Katie Couric, is also familiar with manipulating facts to yield favorable outcomes. She admitted in her recently published memoir that she had removed and edited statements made by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about athletes protesting the playing of the National Anthem. Ginsburg’s criticism of the practice might have angered her fellow liberals, Couric feared. Commissioner Rashad Robinson, head of the activist group Color of Change, also helped spread misinformation by promoting the hate-crime hoax of actor Jussie Smollett even after it was clear Smollett (currently on trial for criminal charges related to the staging of the attack) was lying. And then there is commission member Prince Harry, an expat British ex-royal with few qualifications but a lifetime of evidence of his own questionable judgment (such as dressing up as a Nazi and, more recently, whinging to Oprah about the family that funds his lavish lifestyle). Earlier this year, Harry declared the First Amendment “bonkers.”
The Aspen Commission’s report says that there is no such thing as an “arbiter of truth,” and yet our media gatekeepers have claimed that mantle for themselves—with decidedly mixed results—for some time.
Consider the fact that Russiagate, a years-long effort to prove that Donald Trump was being blackmailed and controlled, proved untrue yet was given constant media attention, while the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents, which proved true, was actively suppressed with the explicit purpose of protecting Joe Biden’s chances of becoming president. We live in a surreal information moment when the lie was given ample airtime and featured prominently in print, while the truth was smothered and labeled disinformation.
And yet our self-appointed misinformation warriors have proven unwilling to engage in self-reflection. Harvard’s Shorenstein Center used the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop computer as the basis for one of its case studies during its recent misinformation sessions. The lesson that the Center’s leaders drew, however, was not the one anyone who values the truth should follow. According to the Times, the Shorenstein Center claimed that the Hunter Biden story offered “an instructive case study on the power of social media and news organizations to mitigate media manipulation campaigns.”
In other words, the suppression of information deemed by “experts” to be misinformation was precisely the kind of Good Information objective we should be pursuing. The research director of the center, Joan Donovan, told the Times that the Hunter Biden case study was “designed to cause conversation—it’s not supposed to leave you resolved as a reader.”
But what is there to resolve about the fact that the Fourth Estate eagerly embraced the role of Chief Information Censor on behalf of a Democratic candidate for president?
Misinformation and disinformation are nothing new. Propaganda, political dirty tricks, and deliberate lies have been with us a while—and have often been a point of pride for their practitioners. It was not that long ago that Ben Rhodes, then a top aide to President Obama, boasted about creating an “echo chamber” in the media to spread falsehoods about the details of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
It is true that misinformation has taken on greater significance thanks to the scale and speed of the social-media platforms that spread it. But the new sanctimony about misinformation should be leavened with some healthy skepticism about the movement’s major actors. As Bernstein noted, in some sense “the disinformation project is simply an unofficial partnership between Big Tech, corporate media, elite universities, and cash-rich foundations.” The crusade against misinformation is an approximate mirror image of Donald Trump’s war against “fake news.”
Control of information is control of one of the most valuable commodities in the developed world: people’s attention. And people want their confirmation biases affirmed. But scholars and commissioners studying misinformation also suffer from confirmation bias. Contra the proposals made by panels and commissions on misinformation, the most radical thing we could do right now isn’t to give more power to elites or the federal government to control information. Their record of late—Russiagate, Hunter Biden, the Covington kids, the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis, Border Patrol officers with whips, the Kyle Rittenhouse trial—has not been stellar.
It would be far better for the health of the “information ecosystem” that these supposed experts are always invoking if reporters focused on shoring up what were once unassailable tenets of journalism—balance, iron-clad sourcing, and critical independence from and skepticism about the powerful. Instead, they are power’s handmaidens.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/christine-rosen/media-misinformation-problem/
*****************************************************British Campaigners have called on police to delete 120,000 'hate incidents' from people's records
Campaigners have called for 120,000 'hate incidents' to be deleted from people's records after a court found that College of Policing guidance which saw tweets about transgender issues recorded as a 'hate incident' had a 'chilling effect' on freedom of expression.
Yesterday former policeman Harry Miller accused the College of Policing of operating as 'Stasi by stealth' after he won a landmark Court of Appeal challenge against police guidance on 'hate incidents'.
Mr Miller, who describes himself as 'gender critical', launched the legal bid after an anonymous complaint was made about dozens of allegedly 'transphobic' posts on his Twitter account concerning changes to gender recognition laws.
The 56-year-old was visited by police at work and threatened with prosecution if he did not stop discussing the issue, and was told that the matter had been recorded as a 'non-crime hate incident'.
'Non-crime hate incidents' were introduced in 2014 following recommendations by the independent Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. They are 'any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice', according to College of Policing guidance. Reports of 'non-crime hate incidents' can show up in criminal record checks for six years, yet there are no grounds to appeal against them.
Mr Miller's lawyers had argued that the College's guidance – which serves as national policy for police forces – was 'completely irrational'.
Following a two-year legal battle, senior judges ruled yesterday that the guidance breached the former policeman's rights to freedom of expression. They also advised the College to review its guidance to add in more safeguards for free speech.
Campaigners have now called on police forces – or failing that, the Government – to delete thousands of 'hate incidents' from people's records.
Speaking to MailOnline, pro-Brexit pundit Darren Grimes claimed 'Orwellian ''non-crimes'' are used 'to stifle speech and debate'.
And Toby Young, director-general of the Free Speech Union, today suggested that anybody who has lost their job because they had a 'hate incident' recorded against their name could now sue the police following yesterday's ruling.
Mr Grimes said: 'Thousands of us have had these wretched things attached to our names, wasting precious police time and resources. Let's get our coppers back on our streets and off of our damn tweets. I'm not sure further litigation is necessary, the judgment is there in black and white. It's time for the Government to get the police back to focusing on the people's priorities.'
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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)
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22 December, 2021
Confirmation that some people are born bad
Genetic influences that explain aggressive behaviour in teens match up with similar influences much later in life
"Continuity of Genetic Risk for Aggressive Behavior Across the Life-Course"
Camiel M. van der Laan et al.
Abstract
We test whether genetic influences that explain individual differences in aggression in early life also explain individual differences across the life-course. In two cohorts from The Netherlands ( N = 13,471) and Australia ( N = 5628), polygenic scores (PGSs) were computed based on a genome-wide meta-analysis of childhood/adolescence aggression. In a novel analytic approach, we ran a mixed effects model for each age (Netherlands: 12–70 years, Australia: 16–73 years), with observations at the focus age weighted as 1, and decaying weights for ages further away. We call this approach a ‘rolling weights’ model. In The Netherlands, the estimated effect of the PGS was relatively similar from age 12 to age 41, and decreased from age 41–70. In Australia, there was a peak in the effect of the PGS around age 40 years. These results are a first indication from a molecular genetics perspective that genetic influences on aggressive behavior that are expressed in childhood continue to play a role later in life.
Behavior Genetics 51(11) DOI: 10.1007/s10519-021-10076-6
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The UN Just Put up an Extraordinary Statue in New York That Resembles a ‘Beast’ Described in the Book of Revelation
One of the strangest statues that I have ever seen in my entire life has just been set up right outside UN Headquarters in New York City.
When I first heard about this, I could hardly believe that the global elite would be so brazen, and so I checked into this very carefully. Unfortunately, this is not just a bad rumor. This absolutely gigantic statue is called “The Guardian of International Peace and Security”, and it looks like something out of a science fiction movie.
It does not resemble any known creature on this planet. Instead, it appears to very closely resemble a “beast” that is described in the Book of Revelation
If you do a search on Google News for this statue, you won’t find a single story from the mainstream media. Hopefully that will change soon, because people need to know about this. Before I go any further, let me share with you what the United Nations is saying about this new statue…
A guardian for international peace and security sits on the Visitor’s Plaza outside #UN Headquarters. The guardian is a fusion of jaguar and eagle and donated by the Government of Oaxaca, Mexico @MexOnu. It is created by artists Jacobo and Maria Angeles.
So it is supposed to be a “fusion” of a jaguar and an eagle. And just by coincidence, it has been painted in LGBT colors. Okay… Of course when Christians see this monstrosity, they are immediately going to think of the “beast” that is described in Revelation chapter 13:2
"And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority".
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Christian Ministries Ask Supreme Court to Block OSHA Vaccine Mandate
Several Christian ministries said they would file a petition with the Supreme Court in a bid to block President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the mandate, enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), in early November but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the court’s stay on Dec. 17. OSHA said over the weekend that businesses now have until Jan. 10 to start making plans to enforce the rule.
Now, the Supreme Court will hear several consolidated lawsuits against the rule, which targets businesses with 100 or more employees and requires them to either have their workers get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing while wearing masks on-site.
“The Sixth Circuit panel’s decision to end the stay is outrageous and endangers the freedom of all Americans,” Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement announcing the filing. First Liberty is representing the three Christian ministries, including American Family Association, Answers in Genesis, and the Daystar Television Network.
Their legal challenge was filed with the nation’s high court on Saturday.
“Few are aware that, in addition to the President’s OSHA mandate being clearly lawless, its takeover of American companies also includes all religious organizations of over 100 employees,” Shackelford added. “Our clients simply cannot comply with a government mandate that forces them to violate the conscience rights of their employees. The Supreme Court must act, or there will be a Constitutional crisis.”
Any mandate that coerces “organizations to compel their employees to be vaccinated against their will is one that would require it to violate their employees’ sacred rights of belief and conscience,” Shackelford continued.
Last week, the Supreme Court refused to block a New York mandate that requires COVID-19 vaccines for all health care workers. But Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch wrote they would have supported temporarily halting its enforcement.
“Sometimes dissenting religious beliefs can seem strange and bewildering. In times of crisis, this puzzlement can evolve into fear and anger,” Gorsuch wrote in his dissent, published last week.
“One can only hope today’s ruling will not be the final chapter in this grim story,” Gorsuch continued. “Cases like this one may serve as cautionary tales for those who follow.”
And in October, the Supreme Court also declined to take up a similar vaccine mandate for healthcare workers in Maine.
In that case, Gorsuch similarly wrote that “healthcare workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the last 18 months are now being fired and their practices shuttered,” adding that they have been terminated “for adhering to their constitutionally protected religious beliefs.”
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Australian Jew-haters ask Sydney Festival to refuse Israeli sponsorship
Israel’s embassy in Canberra is reported to have given $20,000 to the Festival allowing it to present a performance highlighting work of Israeli Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.
The Sydney Herald reports a coalition representing Sydney’s Arab community and others are calling on patrons and performers to boycott next January’s Sydney Festival
In a letter to the Sydney Festival written on behalf of 12 Palestine support groups from across Australia, BDS Australia wrote: “We write to express our deep concern at the 2022 Festival of Sydney’s acceptance of sponsorship from the Israeli government via the Israeli Embassy, Canberra as a Star Partner and as a sponsor of the Sydney Dance Company’s festival event, Decadance.
We ask that you seriously reconsider the Sydney Festival’s association with the State of Israel and stand with the Palestinian people and with international law by refusing to accept any sponsorships from or collaborations with Israel until such time as Palestine is free.”
The letter also pointed out: “The signatories to this letter are members of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Australia which supports the 2005 call by 170 Palestinian civil society organisations for BDS as a peaceful and non-violent means to pressure the State of Israel to end the illegal military occupation and colonisation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem from 1967; to end the crippling blockade of Gaza which has been in operation since 2006; and to allow the internationally recognized Right of Return to Palestinian refugees to the land and homes from which Israel forcibly expelled them in 1948; and to ensure equal rights for all Palestinians living in Israel according to international law and human rights conventions.”
NSW Shadow Arts Minister Walt Secord has written to the Sydney Festival and the Sydney Dance Company: “As Deputy Chair of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel, the NSW Patron of the Labor Israel Action Committee and as NSW Shadow Minister for the Arts, I write to express my deep concern about calls for the Sydney Festival and the Sydney Dance Company to reject Israeli government sponsorship as part of the extremist BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.
I ask you to reject these calls. Such moves have been repeatedly rejected in NSW and Australia as well as at the local government level.
An economic boycott is abhorrent and mendacious and it is counter-productive to fostering a two-State solution for Israel and the Palestinian people.
I acknowledge how difficult the past two years have been for your organisations – and I have been one of the strongest supporters of COVID support to the arts sector – so I am sure that the last thing you wish to do is to be drawn into distant geopolitical issues.
The language used in the letter to your organisations from BDS Australia is beyond repugnant and replete with outright lies and shocking exaggerations.
An examination of the organisations that purport to sign the letter reveals that they represent a minuscule (but vocal) minority. Most Australians would be outraged at this one-sided, myopic targeting of Israel.
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21 December, 2021
The demon asbestos: How a simple house renovation left a celebrated professor with just DAYS to live
I think this is a bum steer. To develop a disease after something that happened 32 years ago is certainly consistent with mesothelioma but the principal symptom of mesothelioma is lung damage and resultant breathing difficulties. It is not reported that she suffered such symptoms. But even if she did, it is not what she is dying from. She has an inoperable cancer on her spine. Linking that to mesothelioma is tendentious. Cancer can have many causes
To declare a personal interest: 35 years ago I bought a large old house that was completely clad in fibro (Fibrous cement sheeting, where the fibre is asbestos). I took every last bit of it off and replaced it with pine chamfer boards. Neither I nor the person who helped me have any symptoms of mesothelioma. We both breathe as freely as we ever did
A loving wife and accomplished professor dying from asbestos-related cancer has pleaded for Australians to 'wake up' to the dangers hidden in the home renovations craze which has taken off during the pandemic.
Gillian North, 61, is in the final days of a harrowing mesothelioma fight and being cared for at home at home at Thirroul south of Sydney by her twin sister Jocelyn and her husband Martin.
They do not expect her to live to see Christmas.
A leading academic who had a career in law, accounting and at Deakin University, Ms North has written an incredible 18 research papers about asbestos dangers and reforms.
Ms North is convinced she developed the fatal disease after being exposed to asbestos while during home renovations in the United Kingdom 32 years ago and in Australia 25 years ago.
While Ms North admits it's not '100 per cent' certain she developed the cancer from home renovations, she said 'nobody can be certain of their exposure'.
'But I know of no other possible cause,' she said. She was diagnosed by her local GP in 2019, at 58, after developing a nagging cough.
After undergoing chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery Ms North got a two-year reprieve until X-rays showed an inoperable tumour against her spine. She has been steadily deteriorating since mid-2021.
Any exposure to asbestos fibres or dust is widely regarded to be the main cause of mesothelioma, a cancer which attacks tissues around major organs.
The disease is regarded one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with 94 per cent of Australian sufferers dying within five years.
While asbestos was banned in 2003, it remains in place in public buildings, including schools, and houses and unit blocks.
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Democratic Mayor started an emergency police intervention on Tuesday aimed at San Francisco’s rising crime and drug problem and called “bullshit” on left-wing policies such as defunding the police.
Breed described San Francisco as a city that prides itself on compassion and rehabilitation but warned that its compassion should not be mistaken for weakness or indifference. “We are not a city where anything goes,” she said.
Breed’s “tough love” program includes an emergency intervention plan for the Tenderloin district, providing emergency police funding, amending surveillance ordinances so law enforcement can prevent and stop crime in real-time and hinder the illegal sales of stolen goods.
Recently, retailers such as Walgreens and Safeway have been forced to close stores in San Francisco due to rampant and brazen theft.
Under Proposition 47, a California ballot initiative passed in 2014, theft of less than $950 in goods is treated as a nonviolent misdemeanor and rarely prosecuted. Retail establishments often instruct employees and security guards not to intervene when they witness a crime, due to fear of lawsuits and personal safety.
There were 3,375 reports of larceny-theft citywide in November, the majority of them were car break-ins. Tourist hotspots have seen 876 reports of smash-and-grabs in November, that number is up from 442 last year.
San Francisco is not alone in the fight against surging crime, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia have seen a drastic surge in violence and crime since the push from Democratic lawmakers to defund the police following the George Floyd protests.
Although Breed is hoping to rein in crime all over San Francisco, the Tenderloin district has “obvious problems” she said.
“Just imagine if you had to walk your kids down the streets of the Tenderloin every single day with people shooting up (on drugs), selling drugs and because the sidewalks were so packed with people, you had to walk out into the streets in incoming traffic on a regular basis,” she said.
“At the end of the day, the safety of the people of San Francisco is the most important thing to me. We are past the point where what we see is even remotely acceptable,” Breed concluded.
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Economic Effects of States’ COVID-19 Policies Could Lead to ‘Two Americas’
Differing local approaches to the Covid-19 pandemic have led to an uneven recovery across the United States, says economist John C. Goodman, president of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy and co-publisher of Health Care News.
“We are in some danger of becoming two Americas,” said Goodman. “One enjoys low unemployment and booming economies. The other has high unemployment and sluggish economic growth. The difference is directly related to public policies.
“Red states, in general, imposed limited lockdowns and were quick to let businesses and schools open back up,” said Goodman. “Blue states, by contrast, imposed harsh lockdowns and other restrictions that were harmful to their economies.”
State Unemployment Gap
States with less restrictive pandemic policies had the lowest unemployment rates, as measured by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in October. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP), an advocacy group, says the 10 states with the lowest unemployment rates also happen to have Republican governors and Republican-majority legislatures. The exception is Vermont, whose general assembly is controlled by Democrats.
Eight of the 10 states with the highest unemployment rates, including the District of Columbia, are predominantly controlled by Democrats. Michigan and Alaska have Republican legislatures.
“Blue states are economic disaster areas,” writes CTUP. “The unemployment gap between red and blue states has persisted now for nearly two years…and [is] getting worse for places like California, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.”
Lockdowns v. Jobs
In April, financial information provider WalletHub ranked states by Covid-19 restrictions using 13 metrics based on data from government and private sources.
The 10 least restrictive states, in order of increasing severity, were Iowa, Florida, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, Alaska, South Carolina, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Montana. Of those, four ranked in the top 10 for lowest unemployment in October: Oklahoma (No. 3), South Dakota (No. 4), and Montana (No. 8).
The 10 states with the most restrictive pandemic policies, from most to less severe, were Vermont, Delaware, Virginia, Washington, New York, California, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. Eight of these states ranked in the lower half of the nation for high unemployment, Vermont, and Virginia excepted.
Policies ‘Lacked a Sound Basis’
Many officials did not consider the economic impact of their edicts, says Brian Blase, president of Paragon Health Institute and former special assistant to the president for economic policy at the White House’s National Economic Council from 2017 to 2019.
“Throughout the pandemic, restrictions imposed by many state and local governments on businesses and schools lacked a sound basis and caused much more harm than benefit,” said Blase. “This harm includes lingering higher rates of unemployment and shuttered businesses.”
Government spending was also a factor, says Blase.
“A main reason that blue states have higher health care costs than red states is that they are much more likely to have profligate Medicaid programs,” said Blase.
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2021/12/economic-effects-of-states-covid-19-policies-could-lead-to-two-americas .
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Biden DOJ Walks Away from Billion Dollar Giveaway to Illegal Aliens
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) is dropping its plan for a massive legal settlement with illegal aliens that would have cost U.S. taxpayers up to a billion dollars.
According to a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, the DOJ has ended settlement negotiations to pay monetary damages to families separated in 2018 under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy. The government will instead move to litigate the hundreds of claims filed by families seeking monetary damages for the lasting psychological trauma they say the prolonged separations caused, according to Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s immigrant-rights project and a lead negotiator in the talks.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
“The government and lawyers for the families had been in talks to pay up to $450,000 in damages to each person affected by those Trump administration actions. The lawsuits allege some of the affected children suffered from a range of ailments, including heat exhaustion and malnutrition, and were kept in cold rooms and provided little medical attention.
Amid political outcry from Republican lawmakers, after the settlement talks were reported, the government told outside negotiators the number would need to be lowered. This week, the lawyers say, the Justice Department pulled out of negotiations entirely.
“We are hardly naive that politics sometimes plays a role in Justice Department decisions but it is shameful that it happened when the lives of little children are at stake,” Mr. Gelernt said. “History will not look kindly on the Biden administration’s decision not to stand up for these small children.”
In early November, 11 Republican senators wrote to Mr. Biden urging him to not follow through with the settlement talks. “[R]ewarding illegal immigration with financial payments runs counter to our laws and would only serve to encourage more lawlessness at our border,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and 10 other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote.
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Richard Manning said the fact that the DOJ would even consider using taxpayer money for this was a “slap in the face to every working American and demonstrated the misplaced priorities of the Biden administration. Fortunately, it appears the administration is coming to its senses. But this is only due to the overwhelming outrage expressed by the American people.
https://dailytorch.com/2021/12/biden-doj-walks-away-from-billion-dollar-giveaway-to-illegal-aliens/
****************************************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)
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20 December, 2021
Restore the original immigration policy: an open door
by Jeff Jacoby
Jeff is normally quite a conservative writer generally but he makes a characteristic Leftist mistake below -- thinking in terms of big groups instead of looking inside those groups.
It is true that America benefited for a long time from open immigration. But the immigrants concerned were almost entirely from Europe and the British Isles. And because of their large similarites to the existing population, very good assimilation and adaptation from them was usually complete within one generatoion.
But not all of today's imigrants are like that. Immigrants in general may adapt well to American ways and customs but some subgroups do not, people with African ancestry particularly, but Hispanics and Muslims also to some extent. Excluding all individuals from those populations would hugely benefit the safety and civility of American life
THE FRAMERS of the Constitution gave the federal government no authority to restrict peaceful immigration. For the first century or so of US history, most foreigners wishing to move to the United States were legally free to do so. The Constitution delegates many specific powers to the federal government, but a general right to bar or expel immigrants is conspicuously not among them. During the national debate over the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 — which (among other provisions) allowed President John Adams to unilaterally deport immigrants he deemed dangerous — James Madison and the Virginia General Assembly denounced the laws for investing the president with "a power nowhere delegated to the federal government."
Not until 1882 was there a significant federal law curbing immigration: the unabashedly racist Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively slammed the door on immigration from China. Instead of striking down the law as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court upheld it on the grounds that the right to exclude foreigners for any reason was an "incident of sovereignty belonging to the government of the United States." That decision — by the same court that a few years later endorsed racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson — erased a core human right that the authors of the Constitution had never intended to curtail: freedom of immigration.
Plessy was eventually repudiated. But the assumption that the government has plenary power over immigration hardened into conventional wisdom. Today, the courts defer to virtually any restriction on immigration, including those based on national origin, political viewpoint, or religion; those based on family connections; and those based on numerical quotas.
To restore the freedom to immigrate intended by the Founders, a brief amendment should be added to the Constitution:
Neither the United States, nor any State, shall restrict immigration from nations with which the United States is not in a state of war, unless such restrictions are narrowly tailored to the advancement of a compelling government interest.
Under such an amendment, explains Ilya Somin, a professor of law at George Mason University and the author of Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom, federal immigration restrictions would be presumed unconstitutional, much like laws that discriminate by race or silence political speech. That presumption could be overcome when necessary to keep out foreigners posing a genuine threat to public safety, public health, or national security, each of which is a "compelling government interest." By and large, however, peaceful individuals from any country would be free to move to the United States without impediment — just as individuals from one state may move freely to any other state.
To anti-immigration hardliners, such a change would be unthinkable. "A nation without borders is not a nation," former president Donald Trump declared dramatically to justify construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico. It's a common claim among those who want foreign migrants kept out, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
A return to the "open door" policy of America's first 100 years would not mean that the nation's borders no longer had meaning, nor would it be tantamount to a surrender of US sovereignty. Washington would continue to have full authority to repel foreign armies from those borders, and to enforce its laws and collect taxes within them. As an analogy, consider supermarkets, public libraries, or churches: They are generally open to all comers, yet no one disputes that they have full authority over their own premises. Anyone may enter a supermarket, so long as they do so during business hours and through the front door. That doesn't give thieves a right to enter the supermarket in the dead of night, or by breaking in through the loading dock. Similarly, even with a freedom-to-immigrate amendment, newcomers would still be obliged to enter the country through lawful ports of entry and to comply with all border and immigration regulations.
Who would gain from such an amendment? The entire nation. Immigration is the great growth hormone of American history. More immigrants mean more economic development, more innovation, more cultural richness. Contrary to nativist shibboleths, immigrants are more law-abiding than US-born residents, they rapidly assimilate and acquire English proficiency, and they are highly patriotic.
"America is open to receive not only the opulent & respectable Stranger," wrote George Washington in 1783, "but the oppressed & persecuted of all Nations & Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights & privileges." That was the right policy when the United States was small and weak. It remains the right policy for a nation that has grown into history's most influential superpower. An immigration freedom amendment would restore the vision of the Founders by permanently opening the door to virtually all would-be Americans, whoever and wherever they are.
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/25888/restore-the-original-immigration-policy-an-open
*******************************************Roe v. Wade blocked a democratic solution for our abortion debate – It needs to go
The Supreme Court’s pending verdict on Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks could upend Roe v. Wade — heating up the abortion wars across the country.
But why do we never hear about abortion protests — for or against — in other countries? Where are the mass marches in India or Brazil or Morocco? They happen, once in a while, but it’s nothing like the constant frenzy the issue provokes in the United States.
Some history. Abortion wasn’t legal anywhere until North Korea legalized it in 1950, soon followed by the Soviet Union, Cuba and other communist nations. The first Western countries to allow it were the Netherlands and the United States in 1973 (though several US states had legalized it in the previous decade, including California and New York).
Today, abortion is widely available worldwide. In fact, only five countries out of 199 bar abortions in all circumstances: Abkhazia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Vatican City.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Only four nations have full abortion-on-demand, regardless of circumstances: Canada, North Korea, South Korea and the United States.
Virtually every other country allows abortions, but with gestation limits. Liberal Denmark, that other early-’70s abortion pioneer, is 12 weeks. France, 14 weeks; Sweden, 18. The world average is about 13 weeks.
The global consensus seems to be: The later a pregnancy is terminated, the bigger the tragedy. Of course, there’s no celestial arbiter that can say this is true, at least not one we can speak to. It’s just how most nations feel about the issue and have crafted their laws through democratic consensus. The message to women: Our societies will allow it, but do it early in your term.
These countries represent every conceivable religion and political system, yet arrived at remarkably similar positions. The majority are democratic, so they got there through democratic consensus.
America did not, and that’s the problem. We got where we are through judicial fiat: Roe v. Wade.
That Roe was a horrible decision, constitutionally speaking, is understood by all serious judicial observers. Justice Harry Blackmun made up a constitutional right to privacy out of whole cloth — in this case, the 14th Amendment — because he needed some thin reed on which to achieve a desired policy outcome. (Roe superficially allowed abortion only in the first two trimesters, about 23 weeks, but loopholes allowed some up all the way up to birth.)
In reality, the Constitution is silent on the issue, which means our 50 states should be able to decide the issue for themselves.
Sure, many were quite happy with the outcome. But legalizing abortion via judicial fiat, rather than the ballot box, had consequences. Once abortion became the province of the courts, it could no longer be addressed via democratic negotiation. It became an all-or-nothing proposition: You had to be for unlimited abortion-on-demand, or against any abortion, anytime.
Each side viewed even the slightest concession as a slippery slope. Nuance and compromise became impossible. Many people became one-issue voters.
Roe, more than almost anything else, caused today’s highly polarized culture. Every new Supreme Court nomination brings high-stakes dramas — though it was never like that before Roe.
Most Americans likely have a view on abortion closer to the Swedes and the French. The problem is, the court took away their power to decide for themselves.
Roe should be overturned not because abortion is evil, but because it’s bad law. But what happens then? The hysterical left suggests a nightmare, with no woman able to terminate a pregnancy. That won’t happen. Even pre-Roe, 20 states permitted abortions (under varying circumstances). That was 50 years ago, in a far more culturally conservative era.
Most states would quickly pass legal-abortion legislation. (New York and others already have.) Around half would continue with the current no-limits policy; nearly all the rest would have gestation limits.
I doubt any would opt for a complete ban. Mississippi, one of our most conservative states, went with a 15-week limit, actually longer than most countries (though it might go earlier if Roe was truly gone). And what if you’re a woman, and your state’s laws don’t work for you? Well, it’s far from convenient, but you can always drive a few hours to the next state.
Ultimately, things would calm down. My evidence? The rest of the world.
The problem is, many don’t want this. A lot of money is raised on the back of the abortion wars. The issue may well dominate the 2022 midterms. This is unfortunate, because there are so many other things we need to be talking about.
But the bottom line remains: Roe wasn’t just a horrible decision, constitutionally, it was a significant progenitor of today’s culture wars. Time for it to go.
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Texas Governor Confirms Border Wall Construction Has Officially Started
Texas has officially started building its own state-funded border wall, confirmed Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday.
“Texas has officially started building its own border wall,” he wrote Friday, while asserting that President Joe Biden’s immigration policies allow for an “open border” since he took office in January.
Biden, the Republican governor added, also “refuses to enforce laws passed by Congress to secure the border and enforce immigration laws” and that “Texas is stepping up to do the federal government’s job.”
A reporter with Fox News captured images of the first Texas-commissioned border wall panels going up in Starr County, Texas, located in the Rio Grande Valley.
Earlier this year, amid near-record numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Abbott announced that he would try to secure funding for the state to construct its own border barrier after Biden signed an executive order that scrapped federal construction of the wall.
Texas’s wall construction, which would not obtain federal funding, has been favored by Abbott as a means of cracking down on illegal immigration and drug trafficking. In June, the governor started a private donation campaign that has raised about $54 million.
According to records, Wyoming-based billionaire Timothy Mellon, the grandson of banking tycoon and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, donated $53.1 million of those dollars to the private wall fund.
About 450 miles of the larger border barrier was constructed under President Donald Trump, who had championed the construction of the wall during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“Three billion dollars of Texas taxpayer money has been devoted to this cause of Texas securing the border, and so we have a lot of money available to us to continue to build the wall,” Abbott told Fox News in an interview on Friday.
Abbott then asserted that the Texas wall will “cost less than it did for the Trump administration” because the “state of Texas owns [land] on the border itself” and will not have to acquire the land—as the federal government had to do under the Trump administration.
“There are property owners of massive acreage on the border who are fed up with Biden’s open border policies,” he continued, “and they are donating their land to Texas for us to be able to use that land for free to build a wall on their property.”
One of the first orders Biden signed was to pause wall construction and called for a review of projects and funds. In a statement released on Jan. 20 just after Biden’s inauguration, the president claimed the wall construction “is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”
Since then, Biden’s order—as well as other immigration-related orders—has fueled Republican criticism of the president’s immigration policies, denouncing it as part of an “open borders” agenda.
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Healthcare Gone Racist
This isn’t America anymore. This is the leftist “woke” version of America created by Democrats and their liberal policies. As such, radically racist policies are permitted, as long as it’s in the name of retaliation against the white folks.
For example, two Boston doctors called for medical resources to be allocated on the basis or race.
Favoring black patients over whites would be in addition to the much anticipated federal reparations. And get this, the doctors who came up with this idea both teach at Harvard Medical School. Thus, an ivy league education produced two heaping globs of ignorance and wrapped them in a set of scrubs.
As the Boston Review shared:
Dr. Bram Wispelwey, and Dr. Michelle Morse, both of whom teach at Harvard Medical School, wrote that their mission was to “comprehensively confront structural racism.” To go about this, they plan to enlist the tools of critical race theory (CRT). They slam what they call “colorblind policies,” or the concept of equality for individuals of all races and ethnicities under the law, saying that it is not achieving their desired ends with enough speed.
Federal reparations, they write, are only the beginning of addressing structural racism, which they define in a medical context as: “Ability to pay,” “inequities in uninsurance and insurance type,” “employment status,” “institutional racism,” “persistent housing inequality and racial segregation,” “redlining, blockbusting, and contract buying,” and “wealth inequality.”
For their part, and to create “antiracist institutional change,” which they say “is essential to supplement federal reparations,” they have created a pilot program that will undertake “institutional action.” The basis for this institutional action is the concept of “‘applicative justice’—’applying justice to those who don’t now receive it.'” This, they say, is “as opposed to more idealistic conceptions of justice…”
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But the ignorance doesn’t stop there. Covid, apparently, inspired race-based medical treatments in Vermont.
https://theblacksphere.net/2021/12/healthcare-officially-declared-racist/
****************************************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)
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19 December, 2021
No bacon and eggs for poor Californians
Even after the widespread bans on cage eggs, eggs are still mighty cheap for the nutrition and satisfction that they provide. But it's not so with bacon.
Californians will still be able to buy bacon after Jan, 1 but it will cost significantly more. Maybe enough to take it off the breakfast tables of the poor. Good for Kelloggs I guess
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Seaboard Foods, the nation's second-biggest pig producer, said on Friday it will limit sales of certain pork products in California due to a measure requiring farmers to provide more space for animals raised for food sold in the state.
The measure, approved by voters in November 2018, is slated to take effect Jan. 1.
Supporters say it will make food production more humane by setting minimum space requirements for calves raised for veal, breeding pigs and egg-laying hens. It also forbids the sale of raw veal, pork or eggs from animals enclosed in too little space.
Opponents in the U.S. meat industry argue that enforcement will hurt producers and consumers by increasing food costs, and violate the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause by requiring out-of-state producers to comply or face the sales ban.
California represents about 15% of the U.S. pork market, according to the trade group the National Pork Producers Council. The meat industry estimates it would cost pork producers billions of dollars to convert barns to meet Proposition 12 standards, the council said.
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What I’ve Learned Rescuing My Daughter From Her Transgender Fantasy
My daughter’s story is no longer novel. Stories like it are occurring in your state, your town, and perhaps even on your street. Gender dysphoria—the incongruence between the mind and the body—moves stealthily and quickly to invade girls and boys alike.
But this isn’t a cautionary tale. It’s a warning.
My daughter was an ultrafeminine girl since birth. She insisted that her room be painted pink, and she refused to wear anything but dresses until third grade. She avoided her older brother’s toys and sports, choosing tea sets and Shopkins, a series of tiny, collectible toys.
Her favorite activity was to slip into my closet and don my few sparkly clothes and shiniest of heels. She rejected sports in favor of art and sewing.
That all abruptly changed when she turned 12. As her body matured into young womanhood, she stopped begging for a bikini and avoided any clothing that accentuated her figure. She hid her breasts under men’s extra-large sweatshirts.
I remembered doing similar things as my body changed, so I didn’t worry at first.
Then, my daughter immersed herself into anime art and cosplaying, the hobby of dressing like fantastical characters. I supported her creative side.
I didn’t know that anime and cosplaying can overwhelm a young mind. I didn’t know that anime and cosplaying involved gender-bending themes and that the community crosses into pedophilic and sexual themes.
I also didn’t know that the older cosplay community groomed the younger cohorts.
During that same time period, my daughter went through Teen Talk—a Manitoba, Canada-based program that says it provides “youth with accurate, [nonjudgmental] information” on “sexuality, reproductive health, body image, substance use awareness, mental health, issues of diversity, and anti-violence issues”—at her public school.
She came home with a whole new language. She and all her girlfriends discussed their labels—polyamorous, lesbian, pansexual. None of the five girls chose “basic,” their term for a straight girl.
Now, I was worried.
She distanced herself from her old friends and spent more time online. I checked her phone, but I was not astute enough to know that she had set up “appropriate” fake social media accounts for my viewing.
An older girl showed romantic interest in her. I barred that girl from our home. I learned later that she had molested my daughter.
When my daughter was in the eighth grade, as a Christmas gift, I took her to SacAnime, an anime convention in Sacramento, California. There, she met a girl three years her senior, but light years more mature. That girl mesmerized my daughter with her edginess or magnanimous personality.
The older girl went by “they.” After their meeting, my daughter got a boy’s haircut, stopped shaving, and asked for boys’ underwear. My daughter parroted everything about the older teen.
She started making gross TikTok videos, her language became vulgar, and she redecorated her room to look like a cave. She self-pierced her nose with one of those bull rings. She broke every family rule. She was morphing into an emo-Goth-vampirelike creature. She was unrecognizable. Her personality descended into anger and rudeness.
The summer before ninth grade, she announced that she was transgender. Post-announcement, she began to threaten suicide. She sunk into deep depression.
I managed to get all of her passwords to all of her social media accounts. What I saw was jaw-dropping.
Almost everyone that she was conversing with was a stranger, except for the SacAnime friend, who sent her a self-made masturbation video. The discussions on the Discord platform online involved fetishistic sexual conversations. Kids were sending each other erotica, including involving incest and pedophilia.
Older girls were instructing younger girls how to sell nude photos of themselves to men for money.
Girls bragged about their different mental illnesses. They talked about which drugs do what. They talked about how they are really boys, not girls. They discussed “top surgery” (that is, having their breasts removed) and “packers” that create a bulge in one’s pants to imply the presence of a penis.
My daughter’s electronic devices were filled with TikTok videos and YouTubers talking about how great they feel now that they had “transitioned.”
There were messages in which strangers told her to kick my head in because I was a “transphobe” for refusing to call her a male name.
I went nuclear. I took the phone and stripped it of all social media—YouTube, Instagram, Discord, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter. I even blocked her ability to get to the internet. I deleted all of her contacts and changed her phone number.
I sat next to her while she “attended” school online via Zoom. I deleted YouTube from the smart TVs and locked up the remotes. I took every anime book from her room. I threw away all of her costumes. I banned any friend who was even the slightest bit unsavory.
I involved the police about the porn. I printed out the law and informed her that if anyone sent her porn, I would not hesitate to prosecute.
She hated me like an addict hates the person preventing her drug fix. I held my ground, despite the constant verbal abuse.
After going through seven mental health professionals, I found an out-of-state psychiatrist who was willing to examine the causality for my daughter’s sudden trans identity.
I immersed myself in reading everything on the issue, talking to other parents and other professionals. I worked unceasingly to re-create the bond she and I used to share.
After a year and half of utter hell, my daughter is finally returning to her authentic self—a beautiful, artsy, kind and loving daughter.
I am not sure what the actual ingredients for the magic potion were for alleviating gender dysphoria in my daughter. The formula will vary, but what I did was, after a very brief misstep of using a male name, our family and all of the adults in my child’s life only used her birth name and corresponding pronouns.
We did not permit social transition, although we could not control the school setting. Unbelievably, our local Catholic high school refused to follow our edict.
As I mentioned previously, we pulled the plug on all social media and her access to anyone other than those persons we vetted. I forced my daughter to listen to specific podcasts on the subject while driving her to school. I printed out stories about female detransitioners (women who had medicalized, but then regretted their actions and returned to living as a woman) and left them throughout the house.
I left all of my research out in plain view, including “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier, “Gender Dysphoria: A Therapeutic Model for Working With Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults” by Susan Evans, and other books.
I followed the advice of Parents for Ethical Care’s podcasts and the book “Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult” by Maria Keffler.
I worked hard to take back the close relationship my daughter and I had once had. I bit my tongue until it bled. I took her anger and only responded with love or walked away when I knew I would respond poorly.
I caught her in vulnerable moments and hugged her or climbed into her bed. I stopped looking at her as though she were the victim of a scheme or a monster.
I let her know that I would never stop fighting for her. I let her see my posters from the protests I attended. I peppered her with questions that demonstrated the illogic of the gender ideology. I happened to have funny gender-critical memes on my computer when she walked into my office. Most importantly, I held my ground. I refused to accept her delusion with compassion.
I know that I have to continue to be tenacious as the gender ideology has crept into every facet of life. But for now, I can breathe a sigh of relief.
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Yes, Virginia, Google News Is Biased
This Christmas season, Google can give us all an inestimable gift by curing the leftist bias in its “Google News” service.
Everyone knows Google’s search products are biased. In this column I offer some objective evidence that shows it.
Because of the nature of my job, I check Google News every morning except Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath). I did so on Christmas Day, 2020. Remember that President Donald Trump was still in office, the presidential election was over but the results remained controversial, and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot had not yet happened.
When opening my Google News tab, I expected to find headlines about how the adherents of the world’s largest religion, Christianity, were celebrating their most popular holiday. Google News produced nothing about that. The only headlines in the initial display box (pdf) were, in the following order:
“The Republican heroes and villains of Trump’s attempt to steal the election.” This headline was from The Guardian, Britain’s leading socialist organ.
“House Dems urge Trump to sign COVID relief bill.” The source was the liberal Los Angeles Times
“Americans suffer at Christmas while Trump golfs and sows chaos.” The source was the partisan liberal outlet, CNN.
“Trump gives America chaos for Christmas”—from Jeff Bezos’s liberal Washington Post.
“Op-Ed: It’s never too late to become a Democrat”—more from the Los Angeles Times.
The bias was striking. So also was the insertion of favored editorials in what’s supposed to be a news aggregator. Even more striking was how out of place this divisive stuff was on Christmas Day.
Matters have not improved at Google News over the past year, as shown by my usual morning Google News check on Dec. 15, 2021.
Dec. 15 is officially Bill of Rights Day, and this year President Joe Biden, like his predecessors, duly proclaimed it as such. But you wouldn’t know it from the Google News front page. There was nothing about Bill of Rights Day. Instead, Google News listed items from sources hardly consonant with American constitutional history.
The first item came from the socialist Guardian. This was true to form. Google News features Guardian stories constantly. But in my years of using the service, I have never seen any Google News front page content from Britain’s more conservative counterpart, the highly regarded Telegraph—not ever.
The Dec. 15 front page listed several items from liberal broadcast media, such as ABC and CNN. (CNN, essentially an unofficial mouthpiece for the National Democratic Party, may be Google News’s most favored source.) By contrast, there were no results from the conservative broadcasters Newsmax or One America News Network. As far as I’ve seen in my years of using Google News, there never have been.
Among wire services, my Dec. 15 inquiry produced stories from Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press—liberal outfits all—but nothing from any conservative counterpart, such as CNSNews. I have never seen CNSNews on any Google News front page.
Among more traditional media, my Dec. 15 inquiry produced items from the liberal Washington Post, as it does virtually every day. But there was nothing from the Post’s conservative rival, the Washington Times. And there never is. Nor have I ever seen an item from the conservative Washington Free Beacon, and rarely, if at all, from the Washington Examiner.
The New York Times made its appearance on Dec. 15, as it does every day. But The Epoch Times did not, and almost never does. The only center-right source I see regularly on the Google News front page is Fox.
The stridently left-wing Daily Beast was absent on Dec. 15. That’s unusual, because the Daily Beast is one of Google News’s favorite outlets. Why it should be so favored is inexplicable for any conceivable reason other than bias. Conservative counterparts to the Beast, such as RedState, Breitbart, and Townhall, rarely, if ever, appear on the Google News front page.
If you’re specifically looking for conservative media, Google makes it difficult for you. Google News has a search line, which I frequently use. My results on Dec. 15 were typical. I entered “Washington …”, expecting to see links to Washington Times, Examiner, or Free Beacon. Nope. This is all that showed up:
Washington Football Team
Washington Post
Washington—Location
Washington—Topic
Washington Huskies football
Washington Capitals
Washington Wizards
I had to enter “Washington fr” to get the Free Beacon. I had to enter “Washington E” to get the Examiner. In other words, you have to know the precise names of those sources and go through special efforts to obtain anything from them.
Entering “Daily” in the search line was even more frustrating. It brought up the British Daily Mail (right), the Daily Beast (strongly left), the Daily News (strongly left), and the Daily Kos (hard left). It didn’t produce the Daily Wire.
So I entered “Daily W.” The Daily Wire was the sixth item down. I clicked on it—and still didn’t get the Daily Wire! Instead, Google News produced only unrelated articles and articles by other outlets, some of which mentioned the Daily Wire.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/yes-virginia-google-news-is-biased_4160045.html
*************************************************Leftist Version of Religion ALLOWS Hatred of Whites
Hatred of whites is openly allowed in the Leftist version of “woke” America. Amazing how Leftists merely move their racism around to suit their political agenda.
In the latest version of Leftist racist “wokeism”, we get a glimpse into the cult of Leftism. Hatred of whites expressed under the guise of religion.
“A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal,” can be purchased at “woke” Target, as well as on Amazon. Interestingly, the book gained the number-one bestseller distinction in the category “meditation” and features “Prayer of a Weary Black Woman,” by Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a theology professor at Mercer University.
Walker-Barnes offers this prayer in the book:
“Dear God, Please help me to hate White people. Or at least to want to hate them… I want to stop caring about their misguided, racist souls, to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist.”
Good to know that the Leftist version of God teaches hatred, particularly of white people.
Can you imagine Target or Amazon selling a book that condoned hatred of blacks?
An interesting thing to note about the racist prayer is that the author doesn’t hate white people who buy into their “institutional” racism. Thus “woke” white people avoid the wrath of the particular prayer. However, the prayer then describes the “unwoke” white person, or what she calls the “wolves in sheep’s clothing” who “don’t see color”. These whites appear friendly to blacks. However, their ignorance of their racism makes them dangerous. In fact, these whites are deemed more dangerous than the obviously racist neo-Nazi, white supremacist whites.
She writes:
“Lord, if it be your will, harden my heart. Stop me from striving to see the best in people. Stop me from being hopeful that White people can do and be better. Let me imagine them instead as white-hooded robes standing in front of burning crosses. Let me see them as hopelessly unrepentant, reprobate bigots who have blasphemed the Holy Spirit and who need to be handed over to the evil one.”
“Grant me a Get Out of Judgment Free Card if I make White people the exception to your commandment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”
Leftist America teaches hate. And woke corporations like Amazon and Target condone it.
https://theblacksphere.net/2021/12/leftist-version-of-religion-allows-hatred-of-whites/
****************************************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)
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17 December 2021
Why I Love Great Britain
A very recent talk by Jordan Peterson. Wonderful to hear him in good voice again. I have been pretty Anglophilic at times but Peterson easily outdoes me in that.
My surprise is that he still finds in Britain its historic virtues. British legislation in recent years has seemed very authoritarian to me, with Leftist ideas leaking even into the Conservative party.
What Peterson reports however is that his contacts with eminent Britons revealed among them a civility and tolerance that I had assumed were no more. Despite the crazy legislation, the old and truly Great Britain lives on among the British people.
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UK to unveil Human Rights Act reform proposals
The government is launching what it says will be "common sense" reforms to the Human Rights Act that will "restore confidence" in the legal system.
The proposals commit to staying within the European Convention on Human Rights, despite pressure from some Conservatives to leave the treaty.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab says the plans will prevent a right to family life being abused by foreign criminals.
Critics warn the final measures could be muddled and unnecessary.
What is the Human Rights Act?
The Human Rights Act was introduced more than 20 years ago and it sets out in law a set of minimum standards of how everyone should be treated by public bodies.
It includes basic rights to a fair trial, life and freedom from ill treatment - and protections against discrimination or unfair interference in private and family life.
The act's wording comes from the European Convention of Human Rights - a treaty agreed by almost every nation in Europe after World War Two.
The convention is enforced by a court in Strasbourg, France, which includes judges from the UK and all other nations. It's nothing to do with the European Union.
Since the Human Rights Act came into force, most claims of unfair treatment are dealt with by British judges, rather than going to Strasbourg.
The HRA has been under repeated attack from critics on the right of politics who say that it puts European law ahead of British law.
What does the government want to do?
On Tuesday the government will publish its long-awaited review of the act and a consultation on its future.
Under the three-month consultation, the government proposes changing the law to introduce specific circumstances in which a foreign national offender could not claim a right to family life in the UK to challenge their deportation.
Ministers want to introduce a new legal test which would allow judges to block what the government says are "spurious" cases making it to court.
Mr Raab, who is also deputy prime minister, said the plans would also ensure that the UK Supreme Court would have the final say on UK rights by making clear in legislation that they should take their cue from British laws and experience, rather than rulings in Strasbourg.
It's not clear how that differs from the current situation where British courts can choose to ignore the views of the European Court of Human Rights if they have good legal reason to do so.
The plans do not include proposals that would change the law concerning the potential return to other countires of migrants arriving in dinghies.
Mr Raab said: "Our plans for a bill of rights will strengthen typically British rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury, while preventing abuses of the system and adding a healthy dose of common sense."
The Law Society, which represents solicitors in England and Wales, urged the government to make sure that any reforms of the HRA were backed by evidence, not driven by political rhetoric.
Its president, I. Stephanie Boyce, said: "The powers government purports to introduce for the most part already exist. British judges deliver British justice based on British laws.
"UK courts do not, as government suggests, blindly follow case law from the European Court of Human Rights."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-59646684
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South Dakota’s Noem Praised for Bill Banning Biological Males From Women’s Sports After Conservative Firestorm
https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1470870861871734785/HeEDGTS0?format=jpg&name=900x900
Conservatives who criticized South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for failing to certify a bill banning biological males from women’s sports are now praising the Republican for her draft “Fairness in Women’s Sports” legislation.The governor released draft text legislation Tuesday that would codify her executive orders mandating that only biological female athletes can participate on sports teams designated for girls or women.
The legislation defines “biological sex” as “the sex listed on the student’s official birth certificate issued at or near the time of the athlete’s birth.”
“This legislation does not have the problematic provisions that were included in last year’s House Bill 1217,” Noem said in a Tuesday statement. “Those flawed provisions would have led to litigation for our state, as well as for the families of young South Dakota athletes—male and female alike.”
The South Dakota governor ignited a conservative firestorm last spring when she failed to certify a bill banning biological males from playing women’s sports. In the face of heavy criticism from conservatives, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the governor insisted that H.B. 1217 would subject South Dakota to lawsuits the state could not win.
The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported in March that Noem was wavering in her support for H.B. 1217 due to pressure from special-interest groups in South Dakota, though she previously had said she was “excited” to sign the legislation.
Critics accused the governor of “political theater” and caving to pressure at the time, accusations that Noem and her team vehemently denied.
American Principles Project President Terry Schilling and the group’s director of policy and government affairs, Jon Schweppe, were two of Noem’s most vocal critics in March. But on Tuesday, both Schilling and Schweppe praised Noem’s new legislation.
“We’re pleased that Gov. Noem is finally taking action in South Dakota to adequately protect female athletes,” Schilling said. “Our initial impression of her proposed legislation is that it is a strong measure to defend the integrity of women’s sports from K-12 to college. We encourage state lawmakers to support it and officially make South Dakota the 10th state to enshrine protections for women’s sports into law.”
The American Principles Project president said that it is “unfortunate” that Noem took nine months to “arrive at this point.”
“The reality is that these protections should have been implemented back in March,” he said. “Instead, Noem vetoed the first bill to arrive at her desk, after promising initially to support it, and signed a series of toothless executive orders afterward.”
“Although it’s good to see her correcting her mistake, she missed a golden opportunity to show leadership on this issue. We hope she will learn from this experience and choose to stand up to woke business interests and leftist institutions the next time a similar fight arises. She still has much work to do to gain back conservatives’ trust.”
The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles quoted Catholic St. John Vianney in response to Noem’s announcement, tweeting, “The saints did not all start well, but they all ended well.”
Jay W. Richards, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, told The Daily Signal that Noem’s bill is an improvement over the “current situation in many states.”
“But the South Dakota bill defines biological sex as the sex given on the birth certificate at or near birth,” he said. “Until recently, this wouldn’t have been much of a practical problem.”
Richards warned that Noem’s legislation might open the door to two potential problems.
“First, sex is a biological, not merely a legal, category,” he explained. “We trust that medical providers usually designate the correct sex of a child at birth—except in very rare circumstances. But sex does not equal ‘assigned at birth.’ Sex involves chromosomes, organs, and gametes.”
“Second, there is a movement to stop designating the sex of children on birth certificates,” he noted. “If it becomes law, what would South Dakota direct under such circumstances? The state had an opportunity to define sex biologically, but, by my lights, waffled a bit.”
Noem emphasized in a Tuesday statement that the legislation “is about fairness.”
“Every young woman deserves an equal playing field where she can achieve success, but common sense tells us that males have an unfair physical advantage over females in athletic competition,” she said. “It is for those reasons that only girls should be competing in girls sports.”
“Women have fought long and hard for equal athletic opportunities, and South Dakota will defend them, but we have to do it in a smart way,” she added.
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Australian businesses are desperate for staff - but instead of going back to mass immigration, we should END the dole and get lazy Aussies off their backsides, writes MARK LATHAM
Sometimes in politics you can only shake your head in amazement as to how public policy is made.
For nearly 30 years our governments have been spending billions of dollars supposedly to make young Australians 'job ready' through vocational training.
Now, in the post-Covid economic recovery, we are being told there are 50,000 fruit picking jobs, 30,000 hospitality vacancies and 15,000 trades and construction jobs in NSW that can only be filled by foreign workers.
Pacific Islanders have been brought in for the farm harvest - while the other positions will be filled by going back to big immigration numbers of 200,000 per annum.
Meanwhile, some parts of western Sydney and country NSW have youth unemployment rates of 30 and 40 percent.
How hard is it to ensure Australians get first crack at the jobs?
The immigration program should be designed, first and foremost, for the benefit of people who live here now, not new arrivals.
Australia has a one-off opportunity to reduce unemployment to zero and slash the cost of the dole for taxpayers.
Yet the Federal and State Governments are blowing it through their obsession with 'Big Immigration' and going soft on welfare abuse.
There are so many job vacancies at the moment, anyone who says they can't find work is not really looking for it.
The only possible barrier for some is a vaccination requirement, but in many NSW workplaces this ended today (December 15) with the abolition of vaccine passports.
Bringing workers from overseas puts pressure on housing prices and adds to urban congestion. It floods the labour market and holds down wages.
The logical alternative is to end the dole.
We can't have permanent youth unemployment in Australia, a generation who think that work is optional and taxpayers will carry them forever.
Ending the dole would be a culture shock to these job snobs, a wake up call about the necessity of work.
It would end the labour shortages quick smart, save the government vast amounts of money and avoid an over-reliance on overseas workers.
If young people in particular got off their backsides they would find work tomorrow on farms and in cafes, restaurants and pubs.
What's wrong with these Liberals – Morrison, Treasurer Frydenberg and Premier Perrottet – that they only see the soft option as viable? Why have they lost the ability and backbone to make tough but effective decisions for Australia?
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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)
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16 December 2021
Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking trial has given the world a glimpse of her strange, luxe life with Jeffrey Epstein
I am pretty sure I know what went on here. It was actually a great love affair. Ghislaine is a genuinely attractive woman with a good brain as well. So Epstein fell for her and they formed a very good and lasting relationship. After a while, however she realized that his wandering ways would come between them.
So she did what she needed to do to keep her close relationship with him. She helped to give him what he most wanted: sexual variety. So she remained a huge part of his life emotionally and otherwise, which was what she wanted. She not only held on to her man but strengtheded her relationship with him. They became closer than ever.
She would not be the first woman to tolerate or even facilitate her man having sexual adventures. I know a bit about that myself. I too have known "tolerant" women, rather remarkably so at times.
So did she do wrong? Is it wrong to introduce women to a man who would likely be attracted to them? Hardly. But did she facilitate rape? That would be wrong but it seems more accurate to say that she facilitated prostitution. But prostitution is not illegal in most jurisdictions these days so that is not really an offence either. The "madam" of a brothel is not normally prosecuted
So the dramatic ending of her great love is a real tragedy. She deserves compassion not infamy
Did an Oxford-educated heiress enable a wealthy paedophile to systematically target and sexually abuse vulnerable young girls and women, or is Ghislaine Maxwell being made a scapegoat?
After a three-day adjournment, jurors will return to the courthouse in lower Manhattan tomorrow, as the defence gets its chance to address the question at the heart of the former socialite's sex trafficking trial.
Dozens of witnesses are expected to be called in an attempt to prevent the 59-year-old daughter of publishing magnate Robert Maxwell from spending the rest of her life behind bars.
The defence's job is to counter the narrative presented by the prosecution that, behind closed doors, the high-society heiress was a "dangerous predator" who "served up" young girls to try to satiate the sexual perversions of Jeffrey Epstein.
Ms Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to six counts of enticing minors and sex trafficking over a 10-year period from 1994 to 2004.
In the trial's opening testimony, jurors were given a glimpse into a life of almost unimaginable luxury, in which Ms Maxwell and Epstein jetted between his Palm Beach home, a sprawling ranch in New Mexico, a private Caribbean island and a Manhattan mansion.
Guests on those flights ranged from a series of female passengers, the court heard, to the likes of former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, actor Kevin Spacey and Prince Andrew.
None of Epstein's high-profile former associates, whose names have been dropped several times in court, are accused of any wrongdoing in connection with the case.
Larry Visoski — a long-time pilot for the secretive financier — told the court he was never aware of underage girls on board his jet and never saw any sexual activity at all.
The court was told that employees — such as Mr Visoski, whose job it was to facilitate Epstein and Ms Maxwell's lavish lifestyle — were amply rewarded.
Mr Visoski also told the court Epstein had funded his daughters' education and gifted him land to build a home.
While wealthy clients often expect discretion from staff, prosecutors said Ms Maxwell created a "culture of silence" among employees.
A manual for household staff at Epstein's Palm Beach mansion commanded them to "see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer a question directed at you".
Staff were also directed to "NEVER disclose Mr Epstein or Ms Maxwell's activities or whereabouts to anyone."
At the time of the alleged crimes, Ms Maxwell was managing Epstein's properties. In Mr Visoski's words she was "Number 2" in the financier's hierarchy.
Four alleged victims have taken the stand to allege Ms Maxwell's duties also saw her recruit and groom young girls and women for sexual abuse.
The locations vary — from New Mexico to New York, Florida and London — but the women's accounts are of a strikingly similar pattern of procurement and abuse.
The alleged modus operandi saw Ms Maxwell befriend women and girls, normalise sexual contact and then encourage them to give Epstein massages which soon turned to abuse.
Ms Maxwell, it's alleged, sometimes participated in the abuse, touching the victims' buttocks and breasts.
The girls, often from troubled backgrounds, would regularly receive hundreds of dollars in cash afterwards.
One alleged victim, known only as Carolyn, told the court she had more than 100 sexual encounters with Epstein at his Florida mansion, beginning when she was aged 14.
But, she told the court, that when she reached the age of 18, she realised she was no longer as attractive to the financier.
"He asked me if I had any younger friends, and I said no," she said. "That's when I realised I was too old."
Some clues have been offered as to the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the defendant. But it, like Ms Maxwell herself, remains largely unknown.
Photographs tendered in evidence suggest that Epstein and Ms Maxwell were in an intimate relationship over a number of years.
They include holiday snaps where they are seen kissing, a never previously published image of a slightly dishevelled Ms Maxwell giving Epstein a foot massage on his private plane, his foot planted firmly in her cleavage.
One photograph of the couple shows them looking relaxed and happy at a cabin on what appears to be the Queen's Balmoral Estate in Scotland.
Then there's the curious document, created in 2002 on the hard drive of a computer registered in Ms Maxwell's name, which states: "Jeffrey and Ghislaine have been together, a couple, for the last 11 years".
"Ghislaine is highly intelligent and great company with a ready smile and an infectious laugh," the document states.
The alleged victims have been pressed about payouts running into the millions of dollars they received from a compensation fund set up with Epstein's estate.
"These are women who were manipulated by their desire for a jackpot of money," defence lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said in opening arguments.
Money has been hinted at as a possible motivating factor for Ms Maxwell, with the court shown bank statements indicating she received upwards of $42 million from Epstein's accounts between 1999 and 2007.
Beyond suggestions of a financial motive, the prosecution has not delved into the psychology of Ms Maxwell's alleged criminality, but argues the socialite was "essential" to Epstein's alleged abuse.
The question of why a woman would allegedly enable and participate in the abuse of other women and girls is ultimately not for the court to decide.
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Supply Chain Hell Ignites Economic Boom Along U.S.-Mexico Border
Wedged up against the southern edge of the Rio Grande, the sprawling desert city of Juarez has seen its share of economic booms over the years. But perhaps none quite like the one that’s taken hold today.
There are excavators and bulldozers seemingly everywhere, pushing dirt into tall piles and leaving everything — and everyone — covered in a coat of wind-blown dust. The space they are carving out of the desert floor will house a long list of new factories that were ordered up by anxious CEOs across the world when the pandemic roiled their global supply routes.
Ambu A/S, a Danish medical device maker, is erecting a facility on the outskirts of the city. Several miles away, Keeson Technology Corp., a Chinese furniture maker, is building a second plant here just months after opening its first. Boyd Corp., a California-based conglomerate, recently inaugurated one factory and plans to build three more. And MGA Entertainment, a California-based toymaker, began cranking out Little Tikes Cozy Coupes from its plant last month even before construction crews had cleared out debris piles or paved the parking lot.
What’s the rush at MGA?
The company has 750 containers of toys stuck in supply chain hell at ports around Los Angeles. Produced in China, those items were supposed to be on U.S. store shelves this holiday season. That won’t happen, says Isaac Larian, MGA’s chief executive officer. But the Juarez plant is now shipping two truckloads of toys into the U.S. each day and that number will soon grow to 10. What’s more, Larian plans to break ground on a second factory in Mexico next year and will begin shifting some of MGA’s Chinese production to these plants.
“We have big ambitions and big plans for Mexico,” he says.
This, in the lingo of corporate executives, is near-shoring, one of the biggest economic transformations sparked by the pandemic: Shrink the length of the supply chain to keep production closer to its final destination and reduce the risk of some snag messing things up along the way. A shorter chain is a stronger chain, the thinking now goes, and there’s a growing sense that this new approach will remain in vogue in C-suites long after Covid fades.
For the multinationals that do business in the red-hot U.S. economy, near-shoring often means northern Mexico, where labor costs are cheap, land is plentiful and the border is just a short ride away. El Paso, Texas, is less than 10 miles to the north of most of the new plants in Juarez.
Other border cities — Tijuana, along the west coast, and Reynosa, Matamoros and Piedras Negras, far to the east — are undergoing similar industrial booms, providing a much-needed lift to a Mexican economy that has been slow to recover from last year’s collapse.
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America First! DeSantis Says 'We Can’t have People from Foreign Countries Displacing Needs of Americans'
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reiterated that America and Americans come first, before any foreign country or illegal immigrants.
On Friday, he appeared on FNC's Tucker Carlson and explained how he plans to take on the companies and NGOs that are aiding the illegal immigrants flooding into Florida.
DeSantis began, “For one, any of these contractors that are facilitating Biden’s illegal policies by bringing people into Florida, oftentimes flying in at two o’clock in the morning with no notice to the State, anyone who is doing that forfeits the ability to have contracts with State and local government in the State of Florida, and they are going to be responsible for providing restitution to the State of Florida for every single person that they bring because when they dump somebody, a lot of costs end up being borne by the State in the future, whether that’s education, healthcare, whether that’s the criminal justice system."
"Unfortunately, we had somebody brought from Biden that murdered somebody in Jacksonville just a few weeks ago, and so we’re very concerned about doing that, and we want to basically say, this is not the right decision to be making to be facilitating, which is basically an illegal human smuggling operation," he continued. "We are also saying to some of the institutions in Florida like non-profits, we’re not going to be giving license to folks who are actively helping Biden do this."
DeSantis added, "And so, we want people focusing on our own citizens. A lot of people do a lot of great work. We’ve got a lot of people in our state that need help, and we can’t just have people who are from foreign countries displacing the needs of our own people.”
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Bigoted alternative medicine group
A Byron Bay woman is taking legal action after she was allegedly sacked for getting the COVID jab.
Lainie Chait was working as a client care consultant for the Newcastle-based Church of Ubuntu (COU).
The group promotes and sells alternative health remedies including hemp products.
Ms Chait said she lost her job in October, when it became known she was vaccinated.
"For the past 25 years I've been going 'I don't want, I don't need the Western approach', but in this particular scenario I did," she said.
Ms Chait said she supported freedom of choice in healthcare and was shocked to learn she was being dismissed for making a personal decision to be vaccinated.
"It seems extremely hypocritical and I think there are a lot of people in the wellness industry that are hypocrites," she said. "Because really, you're in the industry to help people, not judge them.
"A lot of the customers that come to them are vaccinated, so why are you still serving customers that are vaccinated and not employing people that are vaccinated? "That part I don't get, and that's the hypocrisy that pisses me off the most."
The ABC has seen a letter sent to Ms Chait when she was dismissed.
It laid out the reasons behind the decision, describing Ms Chait as a highly valued subcontractor with the Ubuntu Wellness Clinic Newcastle, who was also recognised as a full member of the Church of Ubuntu.
It cited frustration with the NSW Government's "enforced medical apartheid" and "a highly disproportionate response to the Sars Cov 2 virus".
"As a consequence of this ... the Church Of Ubuntu has taken a position that no committee members or full members can be accepted if they consciously chose to, and then complete injections, with any of the current or future planned injections purported to protect from the COVID-19/Sars Cov 2 virus.
"It is the position of the COU that to receive the COVID-19/Sars Cov 2 injection consciously and deliberately with intent is in contradiction with our Constitution and contrary to our position on what is required of us by our Lord God and Creator.
"As a consequence Lainie can no longer be a full member of the COU. She can however in keeping with the Ubuntu Philosophy still remain as an associate member if she chooses.
Mark Swivel, from Barefoot Law, said the decision went completely against the current trend of vaccine mandates. He said the case might hinge on whether his client was classified as an employee or a contractor.
"The upshot of it is that we're in the Fair Work Commission," Mr Swivel said. "The dispute about whether someone is an employee or a contractor is a really common one that the Fair Work Commission deals with, so that's a perfectly normal part of it.
"Then the question of whether the dismissal was fair, well I think it's a fairly open and shut case.
"We were supposed to have a conciliation recently but the organisation did not appear, so we're now looking for a new date.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-16/byron-bay-church-of-ubuntu-worker-covid-vaccination/100703588
****************************************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)
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15 December, 2021
Bloomberg's Terrible Advice to Those Struggling Amid Rising Inflation
It's bad advice for normal times but good advice during high inflation. Under Biden, however, inflation is likely to continue so it would indeed be wise to bring purchases forward where you can. A months worth of groceries looks certain to cost you more in a month's time than it does now. So buy canned goods now and stock up your freezer all you can!
First, Democrats insisted inflation wasn't happening, then that it was just transitory. But after there was no more denying the economic woes facing America, the White House sought a new plan: work with media outlets to help reshape the messaging. Many propaganda outlets were all too keen to obey. At CNN, we saw headlines like "Why inflation can actually be good for everyday Americans and bad for rich people." MSNBC and others joined in, too: "Why the inflation we're seeing now is a good thing."
Bloomberg has taken a slightly different approach, however. Rather than trying to gaslight the American people, they're being mocked for the terrible advice they just gave amid inflation.
Looking to Argentina as an example, Bloomberg suggested Americans spend their paychecks immediately.
"In a high-inflation economy, money that sits in the bank is losing value. Each day, those $100 on deposit buy a little bit less. As a result, many Argentines spend their paychecks as soon as they receive them, carting away weeks' worth of groceries in a single shopping trip, even if some of it -- excess meat, chicken, fish -- will sit in the freezer for months," the authors wrote.
"And don't hesitate to borrow money to finance some of those big purchases. If you can get a loan at a rate below inflation -- something that's possible for many Americans today -- go for it. Inflation will make it easier to repay the loan in coming months and years," they added.
Needless to say, the advice went over like a lead balloon on social media.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/12/13/bloomberg-advice-on-inflation-n2600490
**********************************************Producer Price Index Growing At Fastest Rate In History Under Biden Administration
The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, skyrocketed 9.6% year-over-year as of November, increasing at the fastest rate ever measured, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Tuesday.
BLS reported that the PPI, which measures inflation before it hits consumers, was up 0.8% in November. As of October, the measure was up just 8.6% on a year-over-year basis and just 0.6% in that month alone, meaning wholesale prices went up more and to a worse yearly figure in November than they did in October.
Economists projected a year-over-year increase of the core PPI, which does not include food and energy prices, to be 7.2% year-over-year and a 0.4% increase from October. The demand for goods was the biggest driver for the increase in producer prices, soaring 1.2% in November, marginally down from October’s 1.3% figure. Final demand services inflation increased 0.7% in November, much faster than October’s 0.2%.
“While we continue to expect producer prices to reach an apex in Q4, persistent supply headwinds will keep input and transportation costs sticky and only allow for a gradual moderation in price pressure,” Mahir Rasheed, U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said.
In the meantime, the Consumer Price Index rose 0.9% in November, bringing the key inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 6.8%, the highest figure in nearly four decades.
“A year ago economists predicted a two percent inflation rate, but in less than 12 months of one-party rule in Washington, consumers are instead facing the highest inflation rate in 40 years,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said.
“This did not happen by accident — President Biden’s anti-worker, anti-American energy agenda have consumers paying more virtually every time they go check out,” He added.
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Minneapolis delivery driver DESTROYS elderly couple's groceries over pro-police sign in their front yard and leaves message branding them 'racist' and saying 'f*** the police'
A 36-year-old driver from Coon Rapids, Minnesota, who only went by Tara on the app, reportedly ran over $50 worth of groceries in an angry fit over a sign the couple had in their driveway.
A bottle of soda, what appears to be coffee creamer, a bag of bananas and other items can be seen in the photo which police posted to Facebook on Monday.
Tara has since been relieved of her position at Instacart, but it wasn't immediately clear if Tara was the driver's real name or what type of charges the suspect is facing.
The sign read 'Thank you Blaine PD' and donned a Blue Lives Matter flag - a symbol of police support - in the shape of a heart.
Instead of the groceries from Cub Foods that the couple had ordered on December 6, Tara left a derogatory message scribbled on a 'random receipt' on the couple's front porch.
'Instacart doesn't pay employees. Sry [sic] find another slave. F*** the police,' the hateful message read, which also had the words 'racist' and 'pigs' written on it in black marker.
A relative, Amber Gray, wrote on a GoFundMe: 'My heart breaks for my loves ones,' and detailed how the act left them feeling 'vulnerable'.
Instacart released a statement saying it was 'appalled by the unacceptable actions of this shopper, who has been removed from the Instacart platform as a result.'
'We'll continue to provide support to the impacted customers and will also work directly with local law enforcement on any investigations into this matter,' it added.
According to a listing on Indeed, the average annual salary for a personal shopper with Instacart in Minneapolis is $47,000, which is based on aggregated data. Delivery drivers in the city reportedly make $65,000 per year.
In a press release posted to the Blaine Police Department's Facebook page on Monday, the elderly couple reported on December 6 that when they received the notification from the Instacart app that the driver was at their house, they went outside to pick up their groceries 'due to the amount of snow in their driveway'.
'When the couple opened the front door, the delivery driver yelled back at them to check inside of their Christmas wreath,' which is where they found the receipt inscribed with the bitter note.
'They also reported the driver was driving back and forth in the driveway.... After the delivery driver left they found that their groceries had been run over in the driveway,' the press release stated.
The elderly couple reportedly told Instacart what happened and received a full refund for their order.
A grocery fund set up by the couple's loved ones on GoFundMe three days after the incident has already accumulated nearly $8,500 - far exceeding the $500 goal.
'Tara probably doesn't know how carefully those $50 in groceries were budgeted for. Or how devastating the recent medical diagnosis has been. Or how scared and vulnerable her vile act of hatred made them feel,' Amber Gray, one of the fundraiser organizers, wrote.
The police department added in the press release: 'The delivery driver has been identified and the investigation continues with charges likely in the near future.'
Blaine Police Chief Brian Podany told Fox 9: 'We're law enforcement. We get not everybody likes us, we understand that. But don't take that out on innocent people out there, especially people who are trying to contribute to this person's livelihood.'
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Idaho church replaces stained glass window depicting Robert E Lee, George Washington and Abe Lincoln with image of America's first black female Methodist bishop
They are an heretical church anyway. A female bishop is not Christian. Christ chose male disciples only and the apostle Paul said women should be silent in the congregation
An Idaho church has replaced a stained glass window of Robert E Lee, George Washington and Abe Lincoln with the country's first black Methodist bishop wearing an LGBTQ scarf.
The late bishop Leontine Kelly, who passed away at age 92 in 2012, had lived in Richmond, Virginia with her family where monuments of former Confederate leaders, such as Lee, had lined Monument Avenue.
The statue of Lee, a former Civil War general and slave owner, was later removed by the city on September 8.
The call to remove the statue had been recommended by Governor Ralph Northam in June 2020 as Lee was believed to have represented a time of racial injustice.
The stained glass window at the Cathedral of the Rockies First Methodist Church in Boise, Idaho, which featured Lee was taken down in August 2020.
The window, erected in 1960, featured Lee standing with Washington and Lincoln who were 'selected to show historic and contemporary leaders of our nation,' according to the Idaho Statesman.
Kelly now stands in place of these three men, while donning an LGBTQ scarf, and standing proud with her hands folded.
She had been elected as the first black Methodist bishop in a 1984 ceremony.
The portrayal of the former bishop was inspired by a photo taken of Kelly where she calmly stood in the midst of a 1985 protest against nuclear armaments.
The new $25,591 window was put in place on Tuesday after the space had sat empty for about a year-and-a-half.
'We voted to remove it, not knowing whom we would put in the window, but we would figure out something to represent,' senior pastor Duane Anders told the Statesman. 'So for a year and a half the windows have been clear. In a sense, we let some light in.'
Anders also said that Kelly had been chosen among 50 possible candidates to be featured in the space. 'As we started working through the names, one just kept rising to the top, because of our connection to the person and their connection to Boise,' he said. 'And that’s Bishop Leontine Kelly.'
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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)
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14 December, 2021
Miss India is white
You can't beat it. That preference for white skin is always emerging somewhere
In the Miss Universe contest, Bollywood star Harnaaz Sandhu beats out black Miss USA Elle Smith
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10303173/Harnaaz-Sandhu-India-named-70th-Miss-Universe.html
*********************************************China won’t attack Taiwan
If mainland China tries to take Taiwan again, as it tried and failed more than 70 years ago, it would likely fail again—just as the United States and the Soviet Union failed in their invasions of Afghanistan, just as the Arab armies failed in their invasions of Israel, just as other apparently overwhelming militaries failed against much smaller, but more determined, nations.
But China is unlikely to try an invasion, not only because Taiwan with its 300 combat jets, 1,200 tanks, and 2 million regular and reserve troops is exceedingly well armed, but also because Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has many internal enemies, may be too weak to dare and because China is too vulnerable to a military attack.
Knowing that an invasion of heavily armed, highly determined Taiwan would not be quick and could trigger his ouster should it fail, Xi has been resorting to psychological warfare. In doing so, he is following the precepts of Sun Tzu, the legendary general who wrote “The Art of War,” the bible on warfare considered the most profound military treatise by Asians for the last 2,500 years. “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle,” Sun wrote, adding that “All warfare is based on deception.”
In line with those maxims, Xi and his PR machine have repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan. In 2017, the press reported a secret People’s Liberation Army (PLA) plan to attack Taiwan by 2020. In subsequent years, Xi ratcheted up the pressure. And in July of this year, Du Wenlong, a military expert at China’s Military Culture Society, described Taiwan’s position as hopeless, saying China’s military forces could reach Taiwan so rapidly that American troops would have “no chance to intervene in a Taiwan Strait conflict.” To dash any hope that Japan would come to Taiwan’s aid, Du declared that “We [China] will use nuclear bombs first. We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time.”
The psychological warfare may work, according to a study earlier this year funded by an Australian Department of Defense grant. It concluded that China could successfully destabilize Taiwan through withering military threats and economic pressure—everything from cutting off Taiwan’s air routes into China to cyberwarfare and assassinations.
But those predicting Taiwan’s demise—whether as a result of a shooting war or a Sun Tzu-style psychological war—forget that the Taiwanese have also read Sun’s military treatise, including the maxim that states: “The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.”
The opportunity that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) unintentionally handed the Taiwanese is the Three Gorges Dam, a weapon many times more potent than the atomic bombs that landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest and estimated at $88 billion, the CCP’s most expensive vanity project by far, is more than a monument to communist grandiosity. Just two missiles would be required to take out the 1.5-mile wide, 60-story high dam, according to military strategists, creating a tsunami that would befall some 100 million living downstream. Apart from washing away the residents of the city of Wuhan and possibly even reaching Shanghai further east, 90 percent of the PLA airborne division would be wiped out, according to Wang Weiluo, a hydrologist specializing on the Three Gorges Dam.
If Taiwan needed more opportunities, it could train its sights on China’s 51 nuclear plants, most of which are vulnerable to either sabotage or a military attack, and all of which are located near major population centers. A Chernobyl-style meltdown at a major nuclear reactor in China would destabilize the country as much as the tactics that the Australian study hypothesized for Taiwan.
China is well aware of Taiwan’s capabilities, and its own vulnerabilities. Xi would have everything to lose by attempting an invasion of Taiwan, which is why he’s unlikely to try.
https://journal.probeinternational.org/2021/11/02/china-wont-attack-taiwan/
*****************************************British army will keep iconic bearskin hats worn by Queen's Guard after MoD rejected fake version proposed by animal rights group Peta
They are synonymous with the pomp and splendour of events such as the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and the Trooping the Colour ceremony.
Made from the pelts of culled Canadian black bear, the material is warm and water resistant, retaining its distinctive shape no matter the weather.
Army top brass have been happy to adopt modern synthetics in other cases.
Fake leopardskin is now worn by drummers in marching bands, while the smaller busby hats worn by the King's Troop are no longer made from beaver fur.
Bearskins were adopted in the 18th century because the brimmed hats worn by grenadiers obstructed their view when they were hurling grenades.
In 1768, it was ordered that grenadiers in the Foot Guards wear caps of black bearskin, with the motto Nec Aspera Terrent (Not even difficulties deter us) on a silver King's Crest on the front.
At the battle of Waterloo in 1815, the First Regiment of Foot Guards defeated the grenadiers of Napoleon's Guard.
They were rewarded with the title of Grenadier Regiment, with every soldier allowed to wear a bearskin.
The hats are made with the skin of black bears taken each year from Canada's Black Bear Cull.
The Army takes 100 skins, thought to be a small fraction of the thousands of bears that are killed to keep numbers under control.
SNP MP Martyn Day asked the Defence Secretary last week what the department had made of the faux fur versions.
He said: 'What assessment [has] his Department has made of the quality of the new faux bear fur that has been manufactured as an alternative to real bear fur to make the Queen's Guard's caps; and if he will make a statement.'
Answering on behalf of Ben Wallace, Minister of State for Defence Procuremen Jeremy Quin said: 'Our analysis of recent tests conducted on a fake fur fabric commissioned by PETA, showed it met one of the five requirements to be considered as a viable alternative for ceremonial caps.
'Whilst it met the basic standard for water absorption, it showed unacceptable rates of water shedding and performed poorly on the visual assessment.
'As the man-made fur sadly didn't meet the standards required for a ceremonial cap which is worn throughout the year and in all weathers, the Ministry of Defence has no plans to take this man-made fabric forward.'
Trials of fake fur in 2014 led to guardsmen's headgear becoming 'waterlogged'.
The ceremonial headdress can only be worn by foot soldiers in certain regiments, including the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Scots Guards, the Irish Guards and the Welsh Guards.
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Fear not: a bit of inflation is no bad thing
This is a sophisticated presentation. Basically, inflation destroys people's savings, which is a very bad thing, but the writer below points out that other things tend to counteract that. Wages rise and stockmarket values rise.
But she is too optimistic. The principal protection that savers have is rising interest rates on their savings. And if interest rates rose in such a way as to give both a return on capital and an inflation counterbalance, that would be fine.
But with recent negigible interest rates being offered on savings, it is clear that interest rates often do neither of those things. So in practice inflation is a serious robber, hitting mostly small savers, The big fish have their money in the stockmarket, either directly or via index funds
Superannuation offers an "out" for the small saver but many superannuation funds are very poor performers, sometimes even giving negative returns
Jessica Irvine comments from Australia:
Concerns about inflation look set to dominate the global economic outlook in 2022.
But despite pandemic related shortages pushing up prices for some things like furniture, cars and fuel, the global inflation bogey man is more imagined than real, at this stage.
Financial markets, of course, love nothing more than a general fret-fest about rising prices. What investors are really scared about, however, is not that prices will rise, per se, but that they’ll rise either faster or slower than they’ve factored into their models for valuing shares.
For example, Americans found out on Friday they are facing the highest rate of consumer price inflation since 1982. Prices rose 6.8 per cent over the year to November, driven by higher fuel, food and housing prices. But sharemarkets rallied on the news, as it was in line with their expectations.
Workers, too, commonly fear inflation. Frustration with the rising “cost of living” is a perennial election issue. But again, if they stopped to think about it, it’s not actually inflation that workers fear, but that their wages might not rise fast enough to keep them ahead of the rising cost of living.
Of course, if inflation was such a terrible thing in and of itself, you’d expect governments would try to eradicate it altogether – to keep prices absolutely stable. But they don’t.
In fact, making sure that economies generate a bit of inflation is the explicit goal of central banks around the world. Our Reserve Bank, for example, has an explicit target to keep consumer prices rising at between 2 and 3 per cent on average, over time.
If inflation runs too high, you can be sure they’ll jack up interest rates to cool activity and prices. But if inflation dips too low – as it has in recent times - they’ll also intervene to cut lending rates to ensure people borrow and spend more to push up prices again. Importantly, they’ll also look through any temporary swings in prices and be guided by underlying trends.
I remember once asking a central banker why they didn’t just aim to keep prices stable. Why is inflation necessary at all?
The answer was essentially that a little bit of inflation is better than the alternative: of deflation. Deflation – a phenomenon where prices fall over time - is unambiguously bad.
When people think prices will be cheaper tomorrow, they will delay making purchases, leading to a widespread “consumer strike” which is bad for the economy.
Far better, then, to err on the side of running things too hot, than too cold.
A little bit of inflation also helps to lubricate the wheels of capitalism in various ways.
Let me explain.
If prices are not rising, it can be very noticeable when a company decides to lift prices for the goods or services they provide. If they face supply disruptions which increase their costs, however, companies may need to lift prices to maintain profitability. The alternative, if they can’t increase prices, could be to lay off workers or otherwise cut their wages bill.
So, an environment OF rising prices can help to provide the cover needed for companies to pass on higher costs to survive.
A bit of inflation can also help companies straining to reduce their wages bill by simply lifting worker wages by less than rising prices – i.e. deliver a real pay cut. That’s not great for workers, but nor is losing their job instead.
For borrowers, inflation can also be beneficial.
As we’re about to find out on Thursday in the mid-year budget update, the Australian government has accumulated significant debts during COVID.
It’s ok. We’ve done it before. And we’ll no doubt do it again. The answer to high levels of debt, historically, has been to simply let an expanding economy and rising inflation “inflate” away the real value of the debt incurred. That is, we should pursue policy settings which help the economy and prices to grow so fast, that the debt is worth less, in relative terms, tomorrow than it is today.
Mortgage holders also benefit if rising inflation pushes wages higher, reducing the size of their debt relative to their income.
Before COVID, of course, it had become clear workers lacked the degree of bargaining power they once had to push for higher wages, whether due to declining rates of unionisation, the rise of labour-replacing technologies or more competition from cheaper offshore workers.
But during COVID, I have observed a noticeable shift in thinking from our central bank to be even more determined to ensure workers get the pay rises they are due before interest rates are returned to more normal levels.
‘Remarkable’ recovery not enough to bring budget back to health
As governor Phil Lowe said on Tuesday, future interest rate rises “will require the labour market to be tight enough to generate wages growth that is materially higher than it is currently”. Furthermore: “This is likely to take some time.” Get it?
Our Reserve Bank won’t be lifting official interest rates until it is confident workers are enjoying the sorts of pay rises that would also assist in meeting higher mortgage repayments.
And as we return to life pre-pandemic, that might still be some time away. You can relax about inflation for now.
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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)
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13 December 2021
Narrow abortion ruling by SCOTUS
In a ruling on Friday, the court held that a lawsuit by Texas abortion providers could go forward – but only on narrow grounds. Only those state officials responsible for licensing medical providers may be sued, the court ordered – no one else involved in the state’s practical maintenance of SB8 is liable. The ruling said, for instance, that the providers could not sue court clerks, those bureaucrats tasked with actually docketing the lawsuits that would enforce SB8.
For providers, it seems that the best possible outcome for the suit now is that they may be able to secure an injunction preventing medical providers from being delicensed. These perplexing limits placed by the court on which parties can be sued to challenge SB8 ensures that though the suit against the law will be at least partly allowed to go forward, it will be largely toothless.
In the meantime, SB8 will remain law. Women in Texas are effectively banned from securing a legal abortion in the state, even though the still-standing Roe v Wade decision says that they have a right to one. It’s likely that SB8 will remain in effect at least for the duration of Roe’s lifetime – meaning that Texas women will not be able to obtain legal abortions after six weeks for the foreseeable future. Many of the initial media responses to the court’s opinion emphasized that since the suit was allowed to go forward, on technical grounds, the ruling was a narrow win for the abortion providers. But in reality Friday was a massive win for the Texas government, and for anti-choice forces nationwide.
The fact of the matter is that the court is already set to overturn Roe and allow states to ban abortion outright. That much was clear to anyone who listened to last week’s oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, a case surrounding the constitutionality of a 15-week ban in Mississippi
That ruling is scheduled to come down in late May or early June. When it does, a slim majority of states are expected to ban abortion, either immediately or very soon thereafter. That means that soon SB8 – and the copycat bills that it has inspired in states like Florida and Arkansas – won’t be necessary for the anti-choice lobby to achieve their aims. Instead of concocting an elaborate enforcement process in which vigilantes enforce their abortion bans, the states will be able to enforce their bans themselves.
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The bearded 6ft reporter who was told he CAN use the female changing rooms in Selfridges, Matalan, Uniqlo and Agent Provocateur after telling staff he identifies as a woman
High street retailers are allowing men to use their female changing rooms – so long as they say they identify as women.
An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that shops, including luxury retailers, will welcome men into traditional female spaces if they do so.
A 6ft-tall male reporter with a beard, who said he identified as woman, was given permission to use fitting rooms in the female sections of stores including Selfridges, Matalan, Uniqlo and even the lingerie brand Agent Provocateur’s concession in Harrods.
In each instance, the reporter, who was wearing a Covid face mask, made his excuses and left without crossing the threshold.
It comes as women’s rights campaigners embarked on a mass leafleting campaign on high streets across the country to highlight how ‘women and girls are losing their rights to single-sex spaces’. Heather Binning, of the Women’s Rights Network, who is organising the campaign, said this newspaper’s findings were ‘truly disturbing’ and showed that ‘common sense has gone out of the window’.
‘While we believe everyone can identify however they wish, shops should not be letting men who say they are women go into female changing rooms,’ she said.
‘It might be well-meaning and shops do not want to be accused of discriminating against anyone but it is utterly wrong that the wishes of a tiny minority are being allowed to trump the safety and dignity of women and young girls who are getting undressed.’
The investigation came after this newspaper’s Charlotte Griffiths wrote last week about how she was shocked to find two men in women’s changing rooms at Zara as she undressed.
She was later told by a manager that the issue was ‘sensitive’ but ‘as a general rule, if people are carrying women’s clothes to try on, they can use the changing rooms on the women’s floor’.
Her experience prompted a deluge of responses, with many condemning the store for not protecting single-sex spaces for women. Others suggested it was transphobic to question other people’s gender and that they should use the fitting room they felt most comfortable in.
To test how widespread the issue was, the MoS asked the top 25 high street stores if they had a policy for changing rooms.
Several, including Primark and Urban Outfitters, only operate unisex booths, whereby men and women will change in cubicles next to each other.
Meanwhile, Next, H&M, John Lewis and M&S said customers were free to choose a fitting room that suits their chosen identity.
For those shops that did not reply to our questions, a male reporter conducted a ‘mystery shopper’ investigation. In each case, the reporter asked if he could use a changing room in the store’s ladies section since he identified as a woman.
The default was always ‘yes’ – in line with the guidance from the sector’s trade body, the British Retail Consortium – although some assistants did check with superiors.
In the Harrods concession of Agent Provocateur, a staff member said she was ‘fairly sure’ it was OK but had to consult a colleague. While the reporter waited, another member of staff on the shop floor addressed him as ‘sir’ and asked how she could help.
Upon returning, the first staff member said: ‘We are happy to do it but we would recommend normally that you go to one of our boutiques instead, they’re just a bit more used to it and there’s a lot more privacy because our fitting rooms are just quite open here.’
A female staff member at the women’s fitting rooms in Nike Town on London’s Oxford Street was hesitant at first but then said: ‘They normally don’t allow men because women can feel disturbed if they come out wearing just a bra.’
The group Fair Play For Women actively campaigns against the loss of female-only spaces, such as toilets and changing rooms.
They have said service providers have relied on ‘simplistic and incomplete trans-inclusion guidance’ and ‘elevating the needs of one protected group over another’.
Dr Nicola Williams of Fair Play For Women added: ‘This is the whole problem with allowing people to self-identify their sex. It means you don’t have to look transgender or actually be transgender to be allowed in to what should be a women’s only space.
‘It means there is no way for shop assistants to distinguish between a 6ft guy with a beard and someone who is transgender.’
Miranda Yardley, 54, who was born a man but now describes herself as a post-op transsexual, said: ‘The surrendering of women’s changing rooms to anyone who claims to be a woman really is nothing other than the natural consequence of saying that anybody can be a woman.’
It appears that most shops were following guidance from the British Retail Consortium.
Tamara Hill, its employment adviser, said: ‘Retailers strive to be inclusive and encourage their customers to choose whichever fitting rooms they feel most comfortable using.’
However, Debbie Hayton, a teacher and transgender rights campaigner, said: ‘The shop workers are left in an impossible position. Shops have a duty to produce a clear policy that they consult on and everybody understands.’
The MoS repeatedly tried to contact Stonewall, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights charity, but they failed to respond.
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IRS data proves Trump tax cuts benefited middle, working-class Americans most
Congressional Democrats have argued that one of the best ways to pay for their legislation is to raise taxes on wealthy households, which, according to many on the left, have benefited disproportionately and unfairly from the 2017 tax reform law passed by Republicans and signed by former President Trump. The latest data, however, proves that this claim is pure mythology.
Income data published by the IRS clearly show that on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans’ tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent, as so many Democrats have argued.
A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.
Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.
By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent.
That means most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more.
What’s more, IRS data shows earners in higher income brackets contributed a bigger slice of the total income tax revenue pie following the passage of the tax reform law than they had in the previous year.
In fact, every income bracket with filers earning $200,000 or more increased its tax burden in 2018 compared to 2017, and every income bracket with a top limit lower than $200,000 paid a smaller proportion of the total personal tax revenue collected.
That means that Republicans’ tax reform law resulted in the tax code becoming slightly more progressive — the exact opposite of what Democrats have claimed over the past four years.
The IRS data further shows that the tax reform law — which included a variety of business tax cuts, including a large reduction in the corporate income tax rate — spurred economic mobility.
Every income bracket with a top level lower than $25,000 experienced a reduction in its number of filers, and every income bracket above $25,000 increased in size, with the biggest gains occurring in the brackets with a floor of at least $100,000.
The fact is, Republicans’ 2017 tax reform law did exactly what was promised: It lowered taxes for all income groups, provided the greatest benefits for middle-income households, and spurred economic growth that helped reduce poverty and improve prosperity.
It would be a grave mistake for Democrats to eliminate key parts of this important legislation.
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Tucker Carlson Interviews Australian Senator Forced Into COVID Camp Despite Multiple Negative Tests
The tyrannical measures adopted by the Australian government to combat the coronavirus have turned the country into a police state at lightning speed.
On Thursday, South Australian Sen. Alex Antic joined Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to explain how, despite multiple negative COVID-19 test results, he was sent to a coronavirus quarantine detention camp.
According to ABC News, a new law went into effect in South Australia on Nov. 23. Unvaccinated travelers are only allowed back into the state with an “exemption” and they must quarantine for two weeks.
Since Antic refuses to divulge his vaccine status, it’s likely authorities believe he is unvaccinated.
Antic told Carlson, “I have been concerned about some of the powers that have been gifted to the unelected bureaucracy in this country for a long period of time. I’ve spoken about them quite forcefully.”
Antic was working in Canberra, New South Wales, when he was informed that upon his return to South Australia, he was to report to a “medi-hotel” — a hotel that has been converted into a detainment facility — in Adelaide.
“That was completely out-of-step with other people’s experiences, completely out-of-step with what had been done in my previous trips to Canberra and back,” Antic said.
“Here’s the kicker,” Antic said: Ten minutes after he was told he would be going to the quarantine facility, he received a call from a journalist who knew all of the details. Hmmm.
This symbiotic relationship between the government and the media is reminiscent of the U.S. government’s connection with the legacy media. Remember how a CNN camera crew happened to arrive at Roger Stone’s home just before the FBI raided it?
“When I arrived at the airport, there was a camera crew and a photographer and a journalist all there to capture it,” Antic told Carlson. “I’ve never been more concerned about the things going on in this country.”
Antic has also learned that he will be receiving a $4,000 bill from the Australian government to cover the costs associated with his stay at the “hotel.”
“This is the lesson for the United States. Parliaments all over the country in Australia have gifted unrivaled powers to their bureaucrats. And they did so on the basis that we were told it was two weeks to flatten the curve. They never did so on the basis that there were going to be two years to keep people locked down and mandate vaccinations,” he said.
“The bureaucrats everywhere across the world — but certainly in Australia it’s true — they never like to get out of the warm bed of power and coercive control.”
Antic is speaking the truth. The pandemic has brought out the worst instincts in public officials around the globe, elected and unelected alike.
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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)
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12 December, 2021
Trial by media
We are in a season of trials and non-judicial judgments of unusual interest. Once again I feel a duty to try to raise the bullet-riddled and half-lowered standard of due process.
I’m looking forward to reading the excellent Miranda Devine’s book about the endless imbroglio of Hunter Biden’s legal shortcomings. I have never doubted that Joe Biden was well aware of his son’s activities and that they ramified far beyond the original controversial associations in Ukraine and China.
Seeing the video of then VP Biden boasting that he had had a prosecutor fired in Ukraine by threatening to withhold congressionally approved assistance to that country was doubly galling. And it was a particular and unspeakable outrage to have to endure the malicious farce of the impeachment of President Trump over his telephone call to the president of Ukraine.
As the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, he was perfectly within his rights to ask to know the facts in respect of the former vice president’s son’s commercial activities in that country. He didn’t try to direct the outcome of his inquiry; he merely asked for the facts.
It was especially infuriating when some of the same titans of the intelligence community who had been peddling the monstrous falsehood that Trump was “a Russian intelligence asset,” got together late in the election campaign to sign a published statement that allegations about Hunter Biden’s laptop and related activities were “Russian disinformation.” Hope springs eternal that the Molasses-paced Durham investigation will expose James Clapper and John Brennan and other former intelligence agency leaders as the unworthy men that they are.
As readers would be aware, I found the thought of a Biden presidency horrifying; I have never in 50 years thought he was remotely competent to be president, and I never forgave him or Teddy Kennedy for their near-crucifixion of a great public servant and outstanding candidate for the Supreme Court, Robert Bork.
With all that conceded, I must say that I have not seen any evidence that the antics of the Bidens in China, Ukraine, or elsewhere caused any alteration of official policy in favor of the regimes that were paying the Biden family. It was from all credible accounts potentially corrupt and an outright sale of possible official influence on the U.S. government, a deplorable and even degrading activity, but not surprising from Joe Biden, and more importantly, not necessarily illegal.
The Chinese and the Ukrainians can give money to Hunter Biden if they want to, and he can make any claims he wants about his general ability to be a conduit to an influential person in Washington. A crime may have been committed, but I don’t see that there’s any evidence of it as a bribe to the Bidens that triggered any action in consideration for the payments.
On the laptop issue there seems to be no doubt that Hunter Biden has lied in public about it, but I’m not aware of any reason to infer that he lied under oath to a grand jury or to investigative government officials, which evidently would be illegal.
Utterly incompetent though he has been, questionable though the results of the last presidential election were, of declining cognitive powers though he is, (and at his peak they were rarely impressive), Joe Biden is the president and he deserves that element of respect that attaches at all times to that great office.
His entitlement to that respect is not diminished by the shameful and orchestrated manner in which America’s morally bankrupt national political media withheld that respect from his predecessor.
I told my late friend Bill Buckley that I thought he had failed in the normal requirements of civil respect for the presidency of the United States when his cover headline at the National Review when President Clinton left office was “Goodbye to the Big Creep,” referring to a comment of Monica Lewinsky. No U.S. president should be referred to publicly with that level of disrespect in his own country.
Similarly, though it is considerably more amusing, the inspiration for “Go Brandon,” a very coarse reflection on Mr. Biden, chanted at times by scores of thousands of people, is an unjustified indignity to the office.
There is an enormous variety of methods available to register one’s disapproval of a president but encouraging huge sporting crowds to chant the F-word before president’s name is an unacceptable vulgarization of public discourse and an obscene effrontery to the headship of the American people and government.
It is interesting to see the media reaction to the simultaneous trials of Ghislaine Maxwell, Jussie Smollett, and Elizabeth Holmes. Since most of the media is in the grip of both the reflexive and impassioned left, the suspicion has been raised in conservative Republican circles that the Maxwell trial is being scantily covered because Democrats fear that Bill Clinton and many other prominent Democrats could be implicated in the allegedly indecent treatment of under-age women by the late Jeffrey Epstein, in which Ms. Maxwell has been accused of participating.
Republican suspicions are also aroused by the fact that one of her prosecutors is Maurene Comey, daughter of former FBI director James Comey, whom Hillary Clinton blamed for “shivving” her in the 2016 election campaign, and whom President Trump fired over Comey’s promotion of the Trump-Russian collusion fraud. The theory is that Ms. Comey might negotiate a soft plea bargain to protect prominent Democrats.
The left-wing media are also downplaying the Smollett trial, presumably because of the interference of prominent Democrats to have the initial charges against Smollett quashed and the credulous treatment by the Democratic establishment and media of Smollett’s initial claim to have been attacked at 2 o’clock in a cold Chicago winter morning by two masked African-Americans purporting to be Trump supporters.
At least the Holmes case is not partisan or ideological but is interesting because she had such a spectacular rise and fall and is conducting a very innovative defense based on the theory that she sincerely believed all that she claimed for the medical testing product which she and her former business and romantic partner devised.
They are all unusually interesting cases, where, as usual, the media have ignored the Sixth Amendment guaranty of an impartial jury by poisoning the public jury pool with relentless insinuations that all the defendants are guilty.
CNN’s firing of Christopher Cuomo is also noteworthy; I have always found him and his brother, the former New York governor, unutterably obnoxious public figures.
But I do not see anything morally wrong or as professionally more objectionable than the general quality of CNN political reporting in Christopher Cuomo trying to help his brother when he was under assault as governor. There may be more sinister aspects to this question than what I have seen, but on its face a man should not be fired for loyalty to a close relative.
And for CNN, which broadcasts fanatical partisan misinformation and fatuous political correctness and Trump-hate, to dismiss one of its commentators on such grounds, is sheer hypocrisy, standard fare from CNN.
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New Poll Reveals Democrats Far More Likely to Hate Opposing Party
The liberal left pleads for the sympathetic, compassionate treatment of all, especially those misunderstood criminals. They boast of a kinder, more inclusive ideology. Democrats insist that those with different opinions are being rigid and unyielding.
However, a new poll tells a far different story. Seems registered Democrats, especially those from younger generations, are exceedingly less tolerant of differing political beliefs than either Republicans or independents.
Many of these self-proclaimed supporters of inclusiveness won’t even be friends with someone who holds a mildly different political stance. The self-righteous progressives will decline a date with almost anyone espousing to a conservative viewpoint.
They’re even cautiously wary of the more moderate members within their own party. When it comes to supporting their local communities, many liberal Democrats refuse to do business with any Republican-owned businesses.
The percentage of the college-age Democrats who say they would never date a Republican is over 70 percent. While the numbers fall slightly for holding friendships or frequenting conservative businesses, it’s still nothing even remotely resembling “inclusive”.
This seems to be a typical trend among liberal Democrats. They’re fine, as long as everyone parrots what they believe. Everyone should be included, as long as everyone agrees with all their self-entitled ideologues.
Barely five percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t be friends with a Democrat. The reverse number for liberals is nearly eight times higher. While nearly a third of the polled Republicans seemed rather reluctant to date a Democrat, that number was double in reverse.
So, it seems the self-proclaimed party of inclusiveness is anything but. They’re the exact opposite of what they say they believe. This poll speaks volumes. On one hand, it shows that Democrats have problems practicing what they preach. It also clearly proves they’re hypocrites
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There Are 2 Clear Motivations for the Leftist Elites’ Attacks on Working-Class Americans
Beyond the casual and now familiar classism are two easy-to-understand motivations: the need to continuously punish supporters of former President Donald Trump for their voting habits and a desire to lash out at those who have steadfastly resisted the commencement of our new progressive era.
The former is simply a continuation of the attitude manifested from the very first minute of the Trump administration. As I write in my newly released book about the Trump era,
“[For Trump opponents], “Trump the President” was unacceptable. He was counterfeit. He could not last. He lacked discipline, intellect, and preparation. His preferred method of communication was Twitter. After all, who (other than he) would conduct government by…Tweet? Who (other than he) would so disrespect the long-tenured establishments of both parties? Who (other than he) would daily circumvent the self-appointed gods of our cultural and political values?”
For progressives, daily anti-Trump vitriol was and remains so easy.
The animosity generated by the great surprise of Nov. 8, 2016, (and the following four years of conservative government) never runs out of fuel. Here, Trump is the gift that keeps on giving, even as his presence on the national stage continues to diminish.
But it is the strikingly difficult start to the Biden era that further illuminates “the attitude.”
A series of real-world policy failures (COVID positivity rates and deaths, supply chain slowdowns, a chaotic southern border, inflation, Afghanistan) and election setbacks (Virginia and almost New Jersey) have the grifting intelligentsia both minimizing the failures (inflation is an “upper class” issue, per White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain; “on average” Americans can afford to pay more, per MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle; God forbid the “tragedy of the treadmill delayed,” per White House press secretary Jen Psaki), and, of course, further doubling down on race.
With respect to the latter, recall how progressives howled that alleged white supremacists — including a growing proxy group of African-American white supremacists — allegedly gaslighted race to elect (you guessed it) a suspected white supremacist as the new governor of Virginia. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Admittedly, an inexplicable explosion of white supremacy — in northern Virginia of all places — will appear ludicrous to the average person who saw the Virginia results as a simple repudiation of those who seek to separate parents from their children’s education. But race remains the only “go-to” claim when progressive experiments fail — as they always do.
All of this has me thinking that “the attitude” may not play out so well over the long term. One can only hope…
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Anti-vaccine speech by prominent Australian conservative politician
She should be free to decide what to put into her own body. J.S. Mill argued that ownership of one's own body is the most basic liberty
Federal One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has told a crowd of “pro-choice” business owners she has no intention of getting vaccinated against Covid-19, saying she is “not putting that s*** in my body”.
Senator Hanson was a guest speaker at a “businesses for choice” event in Ipswich on Thursday night. The group behind the forum describes itself as wanting to “support like-minded patriotic and conservative representatives, irrespective of party affiliation”.
In her remarks, Ms Hanson said she would not listen to bureaucrats, the United Nations or the World Health Organisation “pushing their own agenda” to “take away my freedom”.
However she insisted she was “not an anti-vaxxer”.
The vast majority of Australians have chosen to get vaccinated against Covid, with Ms Hanson’s own state Queensland passing its 80 per cent double-vaxxed threshold this week. At the national level, 93 per cent of Australians over the age of 16 have received at least one dose and 89 per cent are fully vaccinated.
“I’ll tell you honestly: I haven’t had the jab, I don’t intend to have the jab, I’m not putting that s*** in my body,” Ms Hanson said in footage obtained by Channel 9.
The crowd responded with applause.
“I’ve taken that stance and that is my choice,” she continued. “I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I am very careful what I put into my body. I felt that I’ve kept pretty good health all my life, and I intend to keep it that way.
“I don’t intend to listen to bureaucrats or politicians, or UN or WHO pushing their own agenda and take away my freedoms, my rights, my choices when that’s why I’m fighting this issue and so should you.”
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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)
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10 December, 2021
A proposed Bill to ban hunting with dogs in Northern Ireland was defeated on Monday in the Stormont Assembly
A proposed Bill to ban hunting with dogs in Northern Ireland was defeated on Monday in the Stormont Assembly.
The region remains the only part of the UK where hunting wild mammals with dogs is still permitted.
Thirty-eight MLAs voted for the bill on Monday, while 45 voted against.
Sinn Féin opposition to the bill came under scrutiny on Tuesday. In a statement, Sinn Féin agriculture spokesperson Declan McAleer said that his party “opposes the unnecessary infliction of cruelty to animals”.
“Our party position – north and south – is that regulation, not a ban, is the best approach.
“However Sinn Féin believes the Private Members Bill was unworkable, flawed and rushed and in the time we have left in this mandate amending it sufficiently was not possible.
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Actor Jussie Smollett found guilty of staging fake hate crime
Actor Jussie Smollett, the one-time star of the TV drama Empire, was found guilty on Friday (AEDT) of staging a hate crime against himself in what prosecutors said was a bid to gain sympathy and bolster his career.
Prosecutors said Smollett, who is black and openly gay, lied to police when he told them that he was accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.
Smollett said the men threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former President Donald Trump.
Police arrested Smollett a month after the alleged assault, saying that he paid two brothers $3500 to stage the attack in an effort to raise his show-business profile. He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.
The two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, testified that Smollett paid them to participate in a phony attack and instructed them how to attack him. During the trial, the actor took the stand and disputed their accounts.
Prosecutor defends dropping charges against Jussie Smollett
An emergency room doctor who treated Smollett on the night of the attack told the jury that the actor suffered real injuries.
Smollett’s acting career declined after the incident. He lost his role as a singer-songwriter in the final season of Empire, a Fox television hip-hop drama that ended a five-year run in 2020.
His case took an unexpected turn in spring 2019 when the Cook County state’s attorney’s office dropped a 16-count indictment against him in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $US10,000 bond without admitting wrongdoing.
The dismissal drew criticism from then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city’s police superintendent, who called the reversal a miscarriage of justice.
In June 2019, a special prosecutor was assigned to examine the case.
After a five-month investigation, the special prosecutor recommended charging Smollett, again and a grand jury returned a six-count felony disorderly conduct indictment.
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Reps. Greene and Gohmert Finally Met the January 6 Political Prisoners: What They Saw Isn't Pretty
Reps. Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, and Gosar tried, unsuccessfully, to visit the January 6 political prisoners twice earlier this year. They were turned back for no stated reasons. They sent a congressional letter and forced a confrontation with the D.C. mayor’s office and the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) staff just so they could inspect a jail that “they have the right, prerogative, and duty as of Members of Congress to inquire and inspect.”
Greene and Gohmert (and their respective staffs) finally got to tour the D.C. jail where the J6 inmates are held, though the jail staff DID try to end the tour of the jail before the reps got to meet the political prisoners.
“What is there to hide?” Gohmert pressed. “The complaint has been that they’ve been treated differently than the other detainees. I thought tonight we were going to find out.”
At that point, the tour had already lasted two hours and Greene and Gohmert hadn’t yet met a single J6 inmate. After an 11-minute discussion, the tour went forward.
Greene and Gohmert met with roughly 40 J6 inmates, in what Greene described as a noticeably older part of the prison, which appeared to have not been updated recently, unlike the rest of the prison.
The political prisoners cheered as they met Gohmert and Greene. Some cried and all were visibly shaken (they were the only inmates on the tour to cry). They lined up to shake hands with Greene and Gohmert and began chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Takeaways from Greene’s report include:
Inmates claim they aren’t allowed to see their lawyers or family members
They aren’t allowed to get a haircut unless they are vaccinated. Some use Nair hair remover on their heads. Some keep their hair long.
Some of the J6 political prisoners claimed their cells were infested with rats and bedbugs when they first arrived.
They claimed the U.S. Marshals Service came through several days before the Green-Gohmert visit to paint and scrub dirt and mold from the showers. There were still visible signs of dirt and mold in the shower section.
One inmate told Greene his toilet doesn’t work. He has to wait until he is let out of his cell to use a restroom.
The inmates aren’t allowed to attend religious services so they hold their own.
Several inmates need medical attention. One has a broken finger. A seventy-one-year-old inmate, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, who hasn’t seen a doctor, watched as his lower forearm has turned purple and his thumb turned black. The other inmates suggested that if anyone can be released, it should be Lonnie.
As the meeting was wrapping up, Greene said the following to the detainees,
I was upset about the riot on January 6. I don’t call it an insurrection—it wasn’t—but I was upset. But I’m here because I really, truly am worried that you all are being treated
poorly and it’s a human rights abuse and it’s an abuse of your civil rights and you should be presumed innocent before proven guilty. And I believe in a good justice system and that you should be treated fairly, just like the rest of the people here that I saw tonight who are really being treated very well.
I think that should be extended to every single person regardless of politics or skin color or what you’re being charged with. We’ve heard terrible things and I want you to know that Congressman Gohmert and I have basically refused to back down on this issue.
The America we know is not a racist country. We want people to be receiving fairness in the justice system.
Greene’s report is disturbing and damning. It highlights the brutal and unconstitutional treatment of J6 prisoners at the hands of Biden’s legal system. J6 inmates have been beaten. The prisoners complain of chemicals and pubic hair in their food.
The conclusion to her report starts with the following,
The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a twotrack justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.
Other inmates have access to flat-screen TVs, (largely anti-American) reading materials, and medical care.
The report goes on to skewer the D.C. jail, those who allow the unfair treatment of the J6 political prisoners, and everyone who has tried to keep the reps out. It goes on to mention how other inmates are given access to the Koran and CRT literature.
Greene and Gohmert promised to keep fighting for the J6 inmates. As Green and Gohmert were leaving, the prisoners chanted “U-S-A!” and “Let’s Go, Brandon!”
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How ‘Science’ Went Woke
“Believe in science.” You’ve probably seen that common—and silly—trope on left-wing political lawn signs. But what does it mean?
Science is a method, a tool, but those lawn signs seem to be calling for something else. The statement instead most likely signifies that one believes in the politically compromised science of institutions promoting ideological outcomes.
It means believing in the American Medical Association, which now wants to drop the notation of sex from birth certificates without any medical justification.
It means trusting in health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when they call “racism” a public health threat, worthy of suspending COVID-19 precautions for the sake of pro-social justice and Black Lives Matter protests, but for nothing else.
What we are seeing in America and throughout the West is a corruption of institutions in the name of ideology, in which merit is coming under assault in pursuit of political conformity.
A series of studies demonstrate how our institutions have become warped and made to serve this narrow interest at the expense of any pretense of meritocracy.
This transformation is fully underway.
The so-called STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—certainly aren’t immune from politics. Scientists, like everyone else, have views of their own that can influence their work.
However, what’s becoming clear is that as America’s most powerful institutions seek to reinforce their woke dogmas, they are insisting that ideology itself come before expertise in any field. Science and scientists must bend to the demands of ideology, much as they do under revolutionary, totalitarian regimes.
If you want to work or operate in most elite institutions, you increasingly need to declare a woke statement of faith. And of course, the most prestigious positions will be awarded to the most faithful.
1 in 5 Academic Jobs Require ‘DEI’
A recent study by the American Enterprise Institute found that nearly one-fifth of academic jobs now require so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements. It found this by looking for words like “diversity” and “diverse” in schools’ public job postings. That didn’t just appear in humanities departments, where one would perhaps expect more political bias. No, they occurred just as commonly in STEM job listings.
Here are some examples of what the job listings asked for:
How do you think about diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI], including factors that influence underrepresentation of particular groups in academia, and the experiences of individuals from particular groups within academia?
Have you been involved in activities to advance or promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment or institution? We note that activities could be large and organized or they could be specific and very personal. Please tell us the role that you played, what you did, what happened, and what you learned from the experience.
Coming into a new institution will involve changes and being busy! Please let us know how you plan to integrate DEI into your role as a faculty member, including new or existing initiatives you would like to be involved with.
Don’t think you can escape the revolution in nonpolitical pursuits, and don’t think you can remain nonpolitical. You must shout your conversion and demonstrate your commitment to the revolution—or else.
The study used an example to show just how intense this strict ideological screening has become at some elite schools. It used the example of applications for a life sciences post at Berkeley:
The scale of the resulting purge would make Stalin blush. Of 893 nominally qualified candidates, 679 were eliminated solely due to insufficiently woke diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. In other words, Berkeley used a political litmus test to eliminate over three-quarters of the applicant pool.
So much for inclusion.
On top of that, the diversity statements were even more commonly demanded at elite universities than at non-elite schools. One of the study’s authors, the Educational Freedom Institute’s James D. Paul, commented in an interview with The Washington Free Beacon that it shows how ideology is now taking “precedence over merit.”
To be a member of the new ruling elite, one doesn’t really have to be elite. This isn’t Thomas Jefferson’s “natural” aristocracy of the most able and educated, who rise to the top in a free society.
No, under the new rules, it’s more important to be in good ideological standing, to have the same beliefs, tastes, interests, and attitudes as everyone else in that upper class.
What’s notable is that the AEI study’s authors admitted they might have even underestimated the extent of ideological screening as they narrowed their search terminology to the words “diverse” and “diversity.” That’s because the wide swath of various other initiatives that fall under the same ideological umbrella weren’t necessarily caught up in the search.
It’s like the issue involving how much critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools. It’s not actually labeled “critical race theory 101 for kindergartners.” Instead, it relies on the terminology and ideas associated with the ideology, with concepts such as “anti-racism” and “white privilege” being among the many tip-offs.
In addition, the study only covered public postings. It’s quite possible that many more jobs require statements of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the application process.
One might ask, why are institutions all becoming like this? Why are they in such lockstep in demanding rigid ideological enforcement?
Government Speeds Up Revolution
There are many answers to that question. One of those is brought to light by another study, this one by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, which showed that at least some of this transformation is being openly encouraged by the federal government.
The study found that one-third of National Science Foundation grants use the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their abstracts. It represents a sharp uptick from just three decades ago, when higher education was already quite left-wing, compared with the rest of the country.
Interestingly, Jeremiah Poff at the Washington Examiner noted that the largest increase in ideologically loaded grants occurred in human resources and in math and physical sciences.
The human resources officers and administrators are, of course, the enforcers. They are the most effective way to get institutions to conform to and promote an ideology.
This affects public and private institutions alike. Yale, for instance, now has more administrators than undergraduate students. And those administrators are often focused on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are the most responsible for stamping out diversity of opinion.
Ironically, in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, they are eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/05/how-science-went-woke/
**************************************************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)
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9 December, 2021
Angry white men?
Larry?? Elder:
After Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty, CNN writer John Blake, wrote an article titled There's nothing more frightening in America today than an angry White man. But what John Blake doesn't want to admit is that white men are not the leading this country in crime and homicide. In this episode, Larry Elder provides factual evidence on crime in America and how John Blake's claim is so far from the truth.
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UK: Misogyny should not be made a hate crime, official review finds
An official review has stopped short of calling for misogyny to be made a hate crime, despite mounting calls for change following the murder of Sarah Everard.
The Law Commission said sex or gender should not be made a “protected characteristic” that can be used to record incidents and increase sentences alongside race, religion and other factors.
Following a review commissioned by the government in 2018, the independent body said the move would be “ineffective at protecting women and girls and in some cases, counterproductive”.
A report published on Tuesday found the change could create “hierarchies of victims” and make rape and domestic abuse prosecutions more difficult.
The position is at odds with senior police officers who publicly backed making misogyny a hate crime last month, amid calls to tackle “epidemic” levels of violence against women and girls.
The national police lead for hate crime, Mark Hamilton, said he personally supported adding sex or gender to the current list of protected characteristics.
In November, he told a conference in London it would not cause officers to be “inundated with bureaucracy” and added: “I think it’s a good way of understanding offender behaviour and preventing things escalating from the more minor offences up to sexually-motivated crime and murder.”
At least 11 police forces in the UK are already recording misogyny as a hate crime, based on their own definitions, with Nottinghamshire Police becoming the first in 2016.
The Law Commission instead recommended of extending the offence of stirring up hatred to sex and gender, saying it would help tackle the growing threat of “incel” ideology.
But the report admitted that the offence, currently only covering hatred in respect of race, religion and sexual orientation, is rarely prosecuted and results in under 10 prosecutions a year on average.
The Law Commission called for the government to look at creating a specific offence to tackle public sexual harassment, which it said would “be more effective than adding sex or gender to hate crime laws”.
A group of women’s rights and hate crime organisations, including the Fawcett Society and Citizens UK, said the review had offered no alternatives to “help address widespread concerns about the lack of action by the criminal justice system”.
“The report from the Law Commission will leave many women disappointed and frustrated,” added the statement, which was also signed by Labour MP Stella Creasy and former Nottinghamshire chief constable Sue Fish.
“The Commission’s review is too narrow and doesn’t recognise the value of including misogyny to enable recording of incidents which are currently invisible. By not joining together hate crime legislation it especially ignores the experiences of women from minority communities who experience hatred based on multiple factors yet all too are let down by the criminal justice system because they do not fit their tick boxes.”
The groups said they would “continue to fight” for misogyny to become a hate crime, and push for it to be recorded by all police forces.
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New Zealand BANS smoking: Radical new laws will stop young people from EVER buying cigarettes as nation goes 'smoke-free'
New Zealand is banning young people from ever being allowed to buy cigarettes in a rolling program to make the entire country smoke-free by 2025.
No-one under the age of 14 will ever be allowed to buy cigarettes in their lifetime in a desperate bid to eradicate smoking from the country.
Each year an additional age group will be added to the ban list until it's illegal for the entire nation under NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Adern's radical plan.
'We want to make sure young people never start smoking so we will make it an offence to sell or supply smoked tobacco products to new cohorts of youth,' associate health minister Ayesha Verrall said on Thursday.
'People aged 14 when the law comes into effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco. 'We are also reducing the appeal, addictiveness and availability of smoked tobacco products.
The minimum age to buy cigarettes in New Zealand remains 18 for the moment.
The government is also restricting the number of shops allowed to sell cigarettes. Just 500 nationwide will be issued with a licence, similar to bottle shop's licence to sell alcohol.
The nicotine strength in cigarettes is also being reduced in a bid to tackle their addictiveness.
Cigarettes prices have gone up 10 per cent every year between 2011 and 2020 but that alone was not stopping smokers.
Eventually - with existing smokers dying - health officials hope to see the entire country smoke-free.
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Media manipulation on behalf of Biden
In a shocking report, CNN’s media correspondent Oliver Darcy revealed that three Biden administration officials - National Economic Council Deputy Directors David Kamin and Bharat Ramamurti, and Ports Envoy John Porcari – have been ‘briefing major newsrooms over the past week’ in an effort to persuade them to be more positive about the President.
Journalists, including TV news anchors, reporters and producers, were apparently told that contrary to their recent negative coverage, America’s in fantastic shape thanks to a booming economy.
Darcy said the conversations were ‘productive’ which I think can be safely translated to mean the journalists have now seen the light and agreed to rethink their negativity. We’ll see in the coming months.
But the mere fact these conversations have occurred at all is outrageous.
The lobbying followed an op-ed written by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank headlined: 'The media treats Biden as badly as — or worse than — Trump. Here's proof.'
Milbank said he had grown so concerned by what he perceived to be unfair bias against Biden that he commissioned Forge.ai, a data analytics unit of the information company FiscalNote, to look at 65 news websites of all political persuasions – many to the hard left, and right - and do a 'sentiment analysis' of 200,000 articles by searching for adjectives.
Milbank said the results established the media was indeed now treating Biden worse than it had Donald Trump and branded them a ‘tremendous indictment of the whole industry.'
He urged US journalists 'to do soul searching and see what we are delivering to people' and concluded: 'My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.’
Unsurprisingly, Milbank’s piece received immediate public approval from Biden’s White House chief of staff Ron Klain who re-tweeted it with the words: ‘Submitted for your consideration’ as if it should win an award.
That enthusiastic endorsement alone should have made Milbank shudder.
What journalist worth a grain of salt wants their own Government to campaign for them to win awards for sucking-up?
But undeterred, Milbank hit the airwaves to double down on his theory and in doing so, revealed the big flaw in his argument.
Appearing on CNN, he admitted that the media had in fact been more favorable to Biden than Trump before August.
Hmmm.
I wonder what it could have been that suddenly turned the media so negative against the President?
Oh wait, I remember.
August was when the cowardly leader of the free world threw millions of Afghanistan women to the Taliban wolves with his shocking sudden withdrawal of US troops, betraying American allies and costing many lives.
Then he authorized a disastrous botched drone strike on a terror suspect in Kabul that killed an innocent family of 10 including women and children.
In September, fresh mayhem erupted on the Southern border due to catastrophic mixed messaging from the Biden administration and Americans watched in horror as US border patrol horsemen charged into Haitian migrants. The President shamefully blamed his guards for the chaos, not himself for causing it.
In October, Biden tried to criminalize American parents who protested against their kids being taught woke agenda subjects like Critical Race Theory by encouraging the National Schools Board Association to disgracefully brand them ‘domestic terrorists.’
Later that month, America ground to a virtual shuddering halt with a vast flotilla of cargo ships stuck off the Californian coast, and a chronic shortage of food-delivery drivers causing empty shelves to appear right across the country.
This was a direct consequence of Biden’s reckless desire to behave like an all-year-round Santa Claus with his massive Covid-19 stimulus spending spree that sparked the inflation that provoked this crisis.
Prices surged, especially at the fuel pump, wages stagnated, and vast swathes of the American workforce quit their jobs because their President made it more economically beneficial for people to stay at home than go to work.
Yet far from the media giving Biden a tougher time than Trump over all this, as Milbank suggests, most of them went out of their way to defend him.
In an astonishingly tone-deaf op-ed piece in the Washington Post (they seem to specialize in them!) columnist Micheline Maynard said everyone should STFU with their whining about food running out, arguing that 'spoilt' and 'nightmare' Americans have grown greedy with expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products – expectations that have now been 'crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor.'
This absurd response was similar to the pathetic free pass that much of the US media has given Biden after all his recent debacles.
And it highlights the problem with Milbank’s theory: it’s all complete hogwash.
You can make A.I. data studies ‘prove’ any theory you like when you base it on selective websites, many of which are at the extremities of news media, and trawl for damning ‘adjectives.’
And acclaimed pollster Nate Silver mocked the survey as ‘complete crap’, pointing out that many of the stories cited either had nothing directly to do with either man or were wrongly categorized because the adjective algorithm is totally misleading.
But I didn’t need him to tell me that.
I’ve been around the journalism block for nearly four decades now and I’ve never seen any US President get a worse or more sustained negative hammering from the media than Donald Trump.
From the day he won back in 2016, to the day he left office four years later, he was subjected to a relentless barrage of toxic one-sided poison from many news organizations that laughably tried to pretend they were impartial.
The way the likes of CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times spent two years screaming 24/7 about ‘Russian Collusion’ – when, as Special Counsel Mueller found, no such collusion had happened - exposed their hyper-partisan bias and their obsession with trying to bring Trump down.
The idea that Joe Biden has been exposed to anything like that level of savage negativity is for the birds.
The truth is that the mainstream media has bent over backwards to help him – by blatantly suppressing damaging stories in the run-up to the election, like his troubled son Hunter’s laptop escapades, and since he won, by virtually ignoring Biden Senior’s increasingly obvious and disconcerting cognitive issues.
So for him to now moan about an unsupportive media and order his goons to ‘have a word’ with the offending journalists, is as ridiculous as it’s disgraceful.
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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)
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8 December, 2021
NYC's Museum of Natural History hides 'racist' Theodore Roosevelt statue under tarp and scaffolding
It is true that TR held views about black inferiority but that was just the norm in his day
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has covered the controversial statue of President Theodore Roosevelt ahead of its long-term loan to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota.
The statue, which stood on the front steps of the museum for eight decades, has been hidden under a tarp and scaffolding. It was covered up just two weeks after the removal was announced, with the process to shift the 80 year-old monument set to take several months, according to museum staff.
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.
Objections to the statue grew more forceful in recent years, especially after the murder of George Floyd that sparked a racial reckoning and a wave of protests across the US.
While opposition to the statue has reached an all-time high, others are upset by the statue's removal.
Stefano Forte, whose running for New York Senate, tweeted: 'So sad to go by the Museum of Natural History today and see the statue of Teddy Roosevelt all covered up.'
'We need icons like Teddy to inspire the next generation of trust-busters and populists. Tearing this statue down and erasing his image is a damn shame.
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‘Woke’ Is a Bad Word for a Real Threat to American Democracy
In authoritarian regimes, vengeance and coercion stand in place of justice and reason. I’ve seen it before.
By Garry Kasparov (Former Soviet refusenik)
The search is on for new words for old ideas. “Cancel culture” and “woke” have become overused and abused, part of a struggle to define one’s political opponents in the harshest possible way, to dismiss ideas as not only wrong or harmful, but intolerable.
As a nonnative English speaker, I am content to avoid rhetorical fashion and use older phrases. Call it the mob mentality, groupthink, or punitive neo-Puritan orthodoxy. It is the abuse of power—mostly social, not yet governmental—to silence debate and paralyze the spread of any ideas that challenge the prevailing ideological dogma. It is the coordinated, coercive attempt to win a debate by ending debate—to punish, not to educate.
The leading practitioners of these tactics have two contradictory responses to criticism. First, they say it isn’t happening, that it doesn’t exist, that drawing attention to it is a rhetorical whine to silence critics of the establishment and shield the privileged from accountability. Second, they blame the victims, calling them bad people with bad ideas who should be banished to make room for more diverse voices. Claiming you are fighting fire with fire can be used to justify any excess; the only way to fight back is to take freedom away from someone else.
The politics of personal destruction have run amok online and off. Full disclosure: I’ve been friends with Peter Thiel for years. I disagree with him on many things, especially lately, but the attacks on him have been disturbing. In his recent book “The Contrarian,” journalist Max Chafkin assigns an ideology to Mr. Thiel, then suggests it is “fascistic” and even tries to blame this concocted “Thielism” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. There is little doubt that the book would never have come to be had Mr. Thiel not supported Donald Trump in 2016. Suddenly, a secretive libertarian tech investor with a complex history and identity—immigrant, gay, Stanford Law grad, coastal elite—became simply evil, and Mr. Chafkin was quickly paid to fill hundreds of pages to support that preordained conclusion.
Criticism of politically active billionaires and tech giants is essential. But as the left did with the Koch brothers and the right has done with George Soros, demonizing people for wealth and political activity can spin out of control. Muckraking books, screaming mobs—in person, not only online—and rumors about your personal life shouldn’t be the price of political involvement in a democracy.
Tearing down the powerful may be satisfying, if briefly, but remember who inevitably suffers most when justice is abandoned in favor of vengeance and destruction. Black Lives Matter, a necessary idea and important human-rights movement, has been hijacked by leaders who seek only power—and who are willing to sacrifice their supposed beneficiaries to achieve it. Who will be harmed most when the police are defunded, the public education system wrecked? Not the elites. The Russian Revolution dispatched some wealthy landowners, but its natural outcome was a new form of slavery under totalitarian Communism—all in the name of equality and freedom, of course.
Putting ideology and politics ahead of reason is as dangerous as putting them ahead of justice. Mr. Trump and his administration used the possibility that Covid-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory to bash China and deflect attention from his administration’s catastrophic pandemic response. A corresponding rise in hate crimes against Asians helped turn a crucial line of inquiry into a politicized bludgeon.
The left’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was instructive. Anyone who mentioned the lab-leak theory was assailed as pro-Trump. Social-media companies removed posts mentioning it. By January 2021, it was obvious that shutting down debate was the true antiscience position. Invaluable months were lost, time the Chinese Communist Party used to destroy data and spread disinformation about the virus’s origins. We may never know the truth, but we do know there was a coverup.
Increasing numbers of Americans believe their freedom is under attack, and I agree. Antidemocratic forces are on the rise. Election results are treated as suspect. Threats of violence are becoming routine.
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Physicist who says her 'naturally loud' style is part of her German heritage and she was a victim of racist criticism was wrongly sacked for shouting, tribunal rules
A senior academic who claimed criticism of her 'naturally loud' voice was racist because she inherited it from her German parents has won a harassment case after university bosses grew sick of her 'shouting' and sacked her.
Physicist Dr Annette Plaut - described as a 'Marmite character' - was unfairly fired after 30 years at Exeter University, an employment tribunal found.
The lecturer admitted she was 'inherently loud', 'naturally argumentative' in conversation, spoke with vigorous hand gestures, and was so passionate about physics she would get overexcited.
But while many students and colleagues liked the University of Exeter academic's teaching style, some co-workers found her 'overbearing' and 'highly uncomfortable' to deal with, the hearing was told.
The physicist was suspended and sacked following a disciplinary hearing in December 2019, after bosses said she was also shouting at PhD students and causing them stress and anxiety.
However, at a tribunal in Exeter, Dr Plaut, who has German parents, claimed her eastern European Jewish heritage and upbringing means she has 'inherent characteristics of loudness', and a conversational style that is argumentative with 'interruption and much hand movement'.
She insisted 'there was nothing she could do about it' when she became excited and her body language became demonstrative.
Finding the university guilty of harassment, victimisation and unfair dismissal over the sacking, Employment Judge Paul Housego criticised the way an academic of such long standing could have been treated.
Senior management 'decided Dr Plaut would not be tolerated further', subjected her to a disciplinary investigation over accusations she 'shouted' at a PhD student and then used it as a 'pretext' to fire her, the panel concluded.
The experimental physics lecturer - an expert on graphene who was the first female in her department - is now in line to receive compensation after successfully suing the university for victimisation, harassment, and unfair dismissal.
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Heritage’s Kara Frederick Testifies Before Congress on Holding Big Tech Accountable
Kara Frederick, a research fellow for technology policy at The Heritage Foundation and a former Facebook employee, recently testified before the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology on how to how Big Tech accountable.
Frederick raised the alarm on the left’s proposed reforms, welcomed by Big Tech, that aim to further suppress viewpoints they don’t like.
“Big Tech companies are not afraid of the American people or meaningful checks on their abuse of power. And it shows. We should be wary of proposals and calls to further suppress content based on politically expedient definitions of ‘misinformation.’ The Wuhan lab leak theory and the Hunter Biden laptop come to mind. Let the whistleblower documents speak for themselves,” said Frederick.
Here are some of Frederick’s recommendations to confront Big Tech’s flagrant abuse of power ?
“Holding Big Tech accountable should result in less censorship, not more. The First Amendment should also be the standard from which all Section 230 reforms flow.
“Section 230 reform is not a silver bullet. We have to look outside DC for answers. States, civil society, and tech founders all have a role to play. Despite what the new Twitter CEO may think, American lawmakers have a duty to protect and defend the rights given to us by God and enshrined in our Constitution by the Founders – rights that specific tech companies, in conjunction with the government, are actively and deliberately eroding.”
“We cannot let tech totalitarians shape a digital world where one set of thinkers are second-class citizens.”
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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)
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7 December, 2021
’Ticking time bomb of inequality’ to put owning a home beyond the reach of Australians born today
Rubbish! This galah has rightly noted the big increase in house prices but is oblivious that home unit prices have not followed suit. Home unit prices have increased much less. And the way apartment towers keep popping up there should soon be downward pressure on unit prices. Home unit prices should remain affordable even when house prices do not. Home unit living can be perfectly congenial
Australian kids born in major capitals today face a “ticking time bomb of inequality” that could force them to rent for life as homeownership becomes an inherited luxury.
That’s the prediction from a leading futurist, who has warned the government may need to level the playing field as the bank of mum and dad drives entrenched wealth between Australians and their homeownership dreams.
It comes as newborn babies can take their first steps on the property ladder before they can walk, with fractional property investment now open to minors via BrickX.
Global futurist at the Thinque think tank Anders Sorman-Nilsson said while Australia’s cultural affinity with homeownership was driving markets like Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane today, it would price out more and more residents in the coming decades.
“You may (in the future) only be able to afford your own home in Sydney and Melbourne if your mum and dad are taking out some of the equity in their own home to help,” Mr Sorman-Nilsson said.
“This could be a ticking time bomb of inequality. So there will have to be something done to ensure that this Australian dream will remain.”
Affordability issues already mean large parts of Sydney are out of reach for many buyers.
He noted some countries had implemented wealth and inheritance taxes to stem the impact of intergenerational gifts such as the hundreds of thousands of dollars some parents offered to help their kids into a home.
Price growth might be alleviated as greater “digital democracy” made knowledge-based jobs more accessible in regional areas, but it was still likely many kids born today will never own a home.
“You will see new European-style housing arrangements, with people who rent for life or rentvest – buying an investment property, but renting where they want to live,” he said.
Proptrack (realestate.com.au’s research division) economic research director Cameron Kusher said price growth over the past 30 years was unlikely to repeat in the coming decades as it had been buoyed by falling interest rates, which were more likely to now rise.
But Mr Kusher said even a conservative estimate would put home price growth ahead of inflation, which typically rises as wages do, meaning today’s prices could still be doubled in 30 years time when newborns would be looking to buy.
“Most parents will help via their property increasing in price,” Mr Kusher said. “But unfortunately homeownership has been falling, so not everyone will be able to do that.”
He said parents might consider shares or fractional property purchases to help their kids
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The Third Worldizing of America
In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s—hole of a city.”
The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger.
Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood, he had his own car broken into 15 times, but thought little of it.
Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder: The actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing.
Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.
After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called Third World society. And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans.
Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted.
In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent.
Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality.
One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal, and flee with the merchandise without worry of arrest.
Second, the left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system. So, the architect of the so-called 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the riotous destruction of property during the summer of 2020: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”
Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not.
There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson, and lethal violence during the summer of 2020. Rioters burned courthouses, police precincts, and an iconic church.
And there was also a frightening riot on Jan. 6, when a mob entered Washington, D.C.’s Capitol and damaged federal property. Of those arrested during the violence, many have been held in solitary confinement or under harsh jail conditions. That one-day riot is currently the subject of a congressional investigation.
Some of those arrested are still—10 months later—awaiting trial. The convicted are facing long prison sentences.
In contrast, some 14,000 were arrested in the longer and more violent rioting of 2020. Most were released without bail. The majority had their charges dropped. Very few are still being held awaiting capital charges.
A common denominator to recent controversies at the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and the Pentagon is that all these agencies under dubious pretexts have investigated American citizens with little or no justification—after demonizing their targets as “treasonous,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists,” or “racists.”
In the Third World, basic services like power, fuel, transportation, and water are characteristically unreliable. In other words, much like a frequent California brownout.
I’ve been on five flights in my life where it was announced there was not enough fuel to continue to the scheduled destination. The plane was required either to turn around or land somewhere on the way. One such aborted flight took off from Cairo, another from southern Mexico. The other three were this spring and summer inside the United States.
One of the most memorable scenes that I remember of Ankara, Old Cairo, or Algiers of the early 1970s were legions of beggars and the impoverished sleeping on sidewalks.
But such impoverishment pales in comparison to the encampments of present-day Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Francisco. Tens of thousands live on sidewalks and in open view use them to defecate, urinate, inject drugs, and dispose of refuse.
In the old Third World, extreme wealth and poverty existed in close proximity. It was common to see peasants on horse-drawn wagons a few miles from coastal villas. But there is now far more contiguous wealth and poverty in Silicon Valley. In Redwood City and East Palo Alto, multiple families cram into tiny bungalows and garages, often a few blocks from tony Atherton.
On the main streets outside of Stanford University and the Google campus, the helot classes sleep in decrepit trailers and buses parked on the streets.
Neistat was right in identifying a pandemic of crime in Los Angeles as Third Worldization.
But so was Rogen, though unknowingly so. The actor played the predictable role of the smug, indifferent Third World rich who master ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/02/the-third-worldizing-of-america/ ?
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Academic warns 'lack of consent' in Shakespeare scenes from Henry V, Richard III and A Midsummer Night's Dream could have 'triggering' effect for audiences
Actors playing characters from some of William Shakespeare's most popular plays should be taught about sexual ethics, an academic has warned.
Hailey Bachrach, from the University of Roehampton, said scenes where male characters fail to ask females for consent could be 'potentially triggering' to modern actors and modern audiences.
It has been argued that neither Henry V or Richard III receive an actual 'yes' from Princess Katherine and Lady Anne respectively, while Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream is drugged and therefore unable to consent to sex with Bottom.
Launching the Shakespeare and Consent project, Ms Bachrach said Shakespeare's 'glossing over' of these issues could be problematic, especially as female characters are often smaller roles and therefore played by younger actors.
The aim of Ms Bachrach's three-year project is to run workshops with performers to help highlight the issues around consent, rather than simply ignore it.
She told the Telegraph: 'If Shakespeare is being more regressive and less careful about consent than other writers, that is very interesting to know. It can make Shakespeare problematic.
'No matter what Shakespeare intended, it is experienced by modern actors and modern audiences. It could potentially be triggering.
'It's important to bring attention to these moments, rather than just gloss over them. It's about not being coerced by the script, and finding an interpretation you're comfortable with.
'This is very much a labour issue. Because female parts are often smaller in Shakespeare, they are often played by younger actors, so these performers are doubly disempowered.'
Ms Bachrach said other writers, including Thomas Middleton and John Ford, used issues surrounding consent and rape as key plots, whereas Shakespeare chose not to dwell on sexual or marital consent.
Discussing scenes she viewed as 'problematic', Ms Bachrach said Richard III 'woos' Lady Anne without getting 'an actual yes', while the final scene of Henry V includes an encounter between the English king and Princess Katherine in which she says 'everything but an actual "yes".'
She also pointed out that Isabella, the nun in Measure for Measure, is not given an opportunity to respond to an offer for marriage before the play ends.
While in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titania is 'appalled' when she realises she had sex with Bottom while under the influence of mind-altering fairy drugs.
Attempted rape and rape also feature in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Titus Andronicus.
Speaking of Shakespeare's plays, Ms Bachrach added: 'Women basically never actually got to consent to sex or marriage, it just happened, despite the fact that often they'd repeatedly said no.'
Her project has been backed by the Leverhulme Trust and will see Ms Bachrach work alongside performers from the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Globe.
The playwright continues to occupy a position unique in world literature as someone whose reputation transcends that of all other popular writers.
He is credited with producing 39 plays, 154 sonnets and three long poems.
His plays, the most famous of which include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet and Othello, have been translated into every major language.
They are performed thousands of times a year by actors all across the world and are studied by millions of students across the UK and elsewhere.
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'It's a betrayal of children to ban experts from asking tough questions before they can change gender'
Transwoman DEBBIE HAYTON gives her view on a new Government bill which she fears will have damaging, unintended consequences
Ten years ago, I was sitting in a therapist's chair, crushed by anxiety, self-harming, desperate. The pain, which had been like a chronic grumble in my psyche since adolescence, had suddenly become acute.
I was then a 43-year-old man called David. I was happily married to my wife Stephanie; a father to three teenage children, with a PhD in atomic physics and a job as a secondary school teacher.
But my desire to transition from male to female was so urgent it was destroying my mental health. To this day I cannot only remember my own distress, I can actually summon it. It was a palpable feeling.
During one of my weekly sessions with my psychotherapist, she placed a chair in an open doorway: 'Through that doorway,' she said, 'is transition.'
She told me she was not going to move the chair until we had explored every alternative to transitioning.
Today, two thoughts occur.
First, had I not been through that therapy — forcing me painfully to analyse my feelings — today I would be consumed with guilt.
I might not feel I had adequately explored the options. I might be asking myself: 'Why did I transition?
'Why did I put the people I love most through so much angst?'
Thankfully, the memory of that chair sitting in the doorway also reminds me of why I sloughed off my old identity and, a year after I began therapy, became Debbie.
My other thought is more of a concern, a pressing one: proposed Government legislation could make it illegal for therapists, doctors, even parents, to question children — and adults like me — about why they want to change their gender.
On the surface, the Bill has the laudable intention of outlawing abhorrent practices sometimes used in the past in an attempt to 'cure' people of being LGBT.
So you might expect me to be delighted, but I am not.
I am deeply troubled about the consequences of rushing through sketchily thought-through legislation that might do more harm than good.
Conversion therapy that involves physical or sexual violence is already illegal — as, of course, such inhumane practices should be. But the aim is to fill legal gaps that might allow other types of such therapy to continue.
Of course, no one wants anyone to endure 'counselling' that bullies or brainwashes them into being 'straight'. Some gay and lesbian couples, given conversion therapy for religious reasons, have spoken out strongly about the trauma they experienced.
However, what concerns me, alongside many experts, is that normal exploratory therapy could be outlawed, too.
This is the sort I went through and the type that safeguards, in particular, vulnerable children and adolescents who might otherwise rush into transitioning, with its profound and potentially damaging effects to their health.
The implications are also chilling for therapists already worried about working with those with gender dysphoria — the belief that someone's emotional and psychological identity is at variance with their birth sex — for fear of being accused of transphobia.
Their very real concern is that basic therapeutic analysis — pausing for thought and reflection, and considering contributory factors such as other mental health conditions — will no longer be permitted.
The legislation is currently out for public consultation, but if the public want to respond they need to be quick. The Government is allowing just six weeks' consultation on the Conversion Therapy (Prohibition) Bill. It is being rushed through Parliament at twice the usual speed, surely with the result of inhibiting scrutiny.
Given the complexity of the issue and the toxic environment in which it occurs, why — in the middle of a pandemic — is it so important for the Government?
I can only assume that Stonewall — the powerful LGBTQ+ organisation that is championing the Bill — is exerting its influence. And it's not only the British Government where they have sway.
According to Stonewall, national governments and parliaments in Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, Norway, Denmark, Finland and France are all actively considering conversion therapy ban legislation, or launching consultations.
I was middle-aged when I transitioned. At that stage I had swallowed wholesale the notion that I had been born into the wrong body; that I had always been a woman and needed to bring my body into alignment.
I already had the great good fortune to be a husband and father. I'd had a vasectomy and my family was already complete. You could say I was having my cake and eating it when I became Debbie.
Nine years later, I'm still married to Stephanie and we've been together 28 years, though we now sleep in separate beds.
My name changed and so did my wardrobe, while hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery have altered my body permanently. But now I know that while I may have 'changed my gender', I did not change sex, nor was I ever female to start with.
I am as male as any other man; my three children are all the evidence I need. But this is not a fashionable view — and when I wore a T-shirt proclaiming 'Transwomen are Men. Get Over It', I caused outrage, and was accused of transphobia.
Of course, I know others vehemently disagree with me — but it's a debate we need to have.
This proposed Bill would enshrine the woolly notion of 'gender identity' into law, yet no one can satisfactorily explain what it means or prove it actually exists. We cannot even seem to agree on basic definitions.
Gender identity is, in my view, a lazy label; an invention that has taken on a life of its own. And yet we are now being told that no therapist is permitted to challenge a person's 'gender identity'. And the true victims here will be children.
When they're six or seven they may well believe in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy — and some are as young as this when they start questioning their 'gender identity'.
While there appears to be provision for legitimate therapies in the new Bill, crucially the wording refers to 'providing legitimate support for those who may be questioning if they are LGBT'.
But this would not cover children who assert that they are trans, without the maturity to question if this is truly so. No wonder it doesn't offer the reassurance therapists tell me they need.
This insistence that we must not 'question gender' is, I believe, profoundly misguided because the consequences of transitioning as an adolescent are immense.
In fact, there has been a worrying increase in the number of 'de-transitioners' who, as children, were unwavering about their desire but who now have significant regrets over the irreversible damage that has been caused to them. In the future, children may well ask why they were not given appropriate therapy or advice when they made such life-changing decisions.
Transitioning is not the same as questioning your sexuality. It comes with medical intervention, with serious consequences for growing bodies, some of which cannot be reversed.
Although last year the NHS paused referrals of children for puberty blockers, after a court case in which a young woman argued that a clinic should have challenged her more over her teenage choice to transition to male, in September the Court of Appeal ruled that under-16s can give informed consent to receive the treatments if their doctor deems they are competent to do so.
There are also organisations in the UK campaigning for the use of puberty blockers and recommending children and teenagers go to clinics abroad that will prescribe them.
The next step then is cross-sex hormones — oestrogen for boys; testosterone for girls. The long-term impact on fertility and general health is unknown.
So banning any therapy which falls short of affirmation may have the unintended consequence of creating more suffering — especially when studies show that the vast majority of children with gender dysphoria are eventually reconciled with their biological sex.
Gender dysphoria can lead to poor mental health — that was certainly my experience — and we should ensure the same range of treatment and therapy is available for it as for any other issue affecting mental health.
There has been an explosion in the number of young people seeking to transition. At the heart of this is, I believe, a perverse sort of idea that it is 'brave' to be transgender.
I know how desolating it is to struggle with gender dysphoria. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, it was shameful simply to be gay. Being trans was beyond the pale. So, of course, I am thankful society no longer vilifies trans people.
But we have moved too far in the opposite direction. As a secondary school teacher, I am sharply aware of the change in mores. We have gone from stigmatising being LGBTQ+ to celebrating it, as if it confers status — and I do not think that is healthy.
After all, which child wants to be a boring old heterosexual when there are now so many more interesting groups to 'identify' into?
In our sackcloth-and-ashes society, we constantly beat ourselves up for the sins of our past. To be straight, white, and educated makes us oppressors. The LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual) alphabet soup is one route out of the oppressor class.
Children are just children. They should not be forced to assume 'identities'. We have let down an entire generation by feeding them lies, telling them that boys don't have to become men; that girls need not grow into women. You might just as well tell them that they don't have to grow up at all.
Strange as it may seem, I am profoundly grateful that I did not have the opportunity to transition medically as a teenager.
Had it been available to me, I know that the need to do so would have been as insatiable as it was in my 40s. My fertility would have been quashed before it began, and I would never have had the children I adore.
So let's consider the ramifications before we allow the Government to wave through a Bill that could have disturbing consequences for years to come — most especially on the young and vulnerable, the very group it seeks to protect
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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)
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6 December, 2021
Stephen Colbert Says We 'Don’t Live in a Democracy' Because Roe v. Wade Might Be Overturned
Colbert's chatter about numbers is all irrelevant. There never was anything democratic about Roe v. Wade. It was never voted on. It was the verdict of a court and a court could overturn it
The Supreme Court has yet to make a ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade, and liberals are in a tizzy over the thought. Late-night host Stephen Colbert said if the Supreme Court does overturn the pro-abortion case, it proves the United States is not a democracy.
"Will this institution survive the stench?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during oral arguments.
The reason, Colbert said, is due to the fact most of the court's justices had been confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate, who haven't represented a majority of Americans since 1996.
Colbert pointed to a CBS/Washington Post poll that showed 60 percent of Americans do not want Roe to be overturned.
"That’s more than two to one. So if it is this unpopular, why is everyone saying it’s gonna happen? Well, I don’t want to get too technical, but — what’s the word — we don’t live in a democracy. Five of the nine justices were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote; the last three confirmed by a Republican Senate who now represent 41 million fewer Americans than the Democrats," Colbert said. "In fact, Republican senators haven’t represented a majority of the U.S. population since 1996. A lot has changed since 1996. Back then, the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor went to Kevin Spacey—and the Best Director was Mel Gibson."
The misconception of the role of the Senate has been pervasive since Senators were elected by the popular vote and not state legislatures after 1913. That is why the House of Representatives was established to represent the general population.
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A Brief Guide to Leftist Destruction
Dennis Prager
To understand the modern world, perhaps the most important rule one needs to know is this: Everything the Left touches it ruins.
This first became clear to me years ago during my radio show. I was talking about the Left's war on the Boy Scouts (for not accepting announced gay people). It was becoming clear that this would ultimately lead to the decline of the Boy Scouts, which led me to ask: "Will the left replace the Boy Scouts with a left-wing Boy Scouts?"
Then I answered my own question: Of course not. Because the Left only destroys; it doesn't build anything (other than government).
In support of that observation, here is a list of many of the things the Left ruins and often destroys.
No. 1: Art.
The Left long ago conquered the art world. Consequently, since the 20th century, most modern art has been ugly, meaningless and nihilistic -- the opposite of what Western art had always been.
No. 2: Music.
What the Left did to the eyes in art, it did to the ears in music. As a part-time conductor, I can say with some knowledge that since the invention of atonal music (an oxymoron if there ever was one), most contemporary classical music is also ugly, meaningless and uninspiring. The people who like such music are almost all music critics and, of course, music professors. Most lovers of classical music never listen to the stuff.
No. 3: Journalism.
Journalists were once highly respected. Unless a piece was listed as "opinion," people generally believed they were getting, to the best of a journalist's ability, as truthful a report as possible -- "just the facts." Today, on virtually any controversial issue, they are getting opinion, not truth. The purpose of nearly every major newspaper and other "news" outlet is the same purpose Pravda had in the Soviet Union: to transmit the party line.
No. 4: Colleges and universities.
The Left has destroyed universities as places of learning devoted to seeking truth and therefore welcoming, even cultivating, diverse opinions. Virtually every left-wing idea was born at a university.
No. 5: High schools and elementary schools.
Most schools in America -- private as much as public -- teach children that America is systemically racist and that they are not born male or female, but at a later age will choose whether to be one or the other -- or neither. And increasingly, American educational institutions deny objective truth exists, even in mathematics.
No. 6: Happiness.
You can meet happy and unhappy liberals and happy and unhappy conservatives, but you are unlikely to ever meet a happy leftist. The only question is whether the unhappy gravitate to leftism or whether leftism makes people unhappy. Both are probably true.
No. 7: The family.
People on the Left increasingly choose not to get married and not to have children -- in other words, not to make families. And their welfare policies serve to disincentivize the creation of families.
No. 8: Women.
The rates of depression among young people, especially young women, are higher than ever recorded in American history. One reason is that for half a century, women have been told, as one famous feminist saw put it, "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." But the fact is that the vast majority of (heterosexual) women need a man to be fulfilled, just as the vast majority of (heterosexual) men need a woman to be fulfilled.
No. 9: Childhood.
One reason young people on the Left don't want children is that the Left doesn't particularly like children. The teachers unions' adamant refusal to open schools for over a year has opened many Americans' eyes to this fact. So has the war on children's innocence - like prematurely talking to them about sex and having schools introduce them to drag queens from the age of five.
No. 10: Black life.
Like the Democratic Party historically, the left is racist. And it is so in precisely the way the word was always used -- the Left believes in black inferiority. That is why leftists advocate lowering standards for blacks. That is why they advocate policies that always result in more blacks dying at the hands of other blacks. That is why they believe the state must take care of blacks more than any other group. That is why left-wing policies, from the Great Society to today, have destroyed so much of black life, especially its family life -- and they don't care.
No. 11: Black-white relations.
According to polls and according to just about every American who remembers life from about a decade ago, black-white relations were far superior then and both groups were optimistic about relations other continuing to improve. The Left shattered that with its anti-white, "America is systemically racist" propaganda shouted from almost every major media and relentlessly pushed in almost every school and big business. The Left knows that when blacks and whites feel good about one another, the Left loses its appeal and loses elections.
No. 12: The military.
As the military gets more and more woke-- recall the testimony of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifying before Congress about the need to teach the military about white racism -- soldier morale declines. Add to this the utterly gratuitous and cruel mandate that every member of the military get vaccinated or be discharged and you understand why military morale is in steep decline.
No. 13: Late-night television.
Americans who remember the titans of late-night comedy -- Johnny Carson and Jay Leno -- remember how their sole aim was to bring some smiles and laughter to Americans before they went to sleep. Few people had any inkling of the political views of either host. That is now history. The Left has destroyed late-night comedy. It now consists of little more than angry rants against conservatives.
No. 14: Superman.
Superman was an iconic American hero. Thanks to the Left, he is no more. About a decade ago, Superman stood in front of the United Nations to announce he was renouncing his American citizenship to become a "citizen of the world." And the Left has now changed his motto from "Truth, Justice, and the American way" to "Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow."
No. 15: Free speech.
Never before has freedom of speech been threatened as it is today. As has been true since the communist revolution in Russia, everywhere the Left has gained power -- from Russia in 1917 to the university and social media today -- it has suppressed free speech. There is no exception.
No. 16: Sports.
Until last year, sports was a great American unifier. It was one place Americans could go and, leaving politics behind, Left and Right, Democrat and Republican could root for the same team. No longer. The Left has ruined it by radically politicizing baseball, football and basketball.
The great American tragedy is just about every liberal knows the above is true, but nearly every one of them will still vote for the Left.
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The Left’s Intolerance on Full Display
The year 2021 has been an unfolding disaster, aided and abetted by the bumbling Biden Administration. Actually, there were major clues as to how quickly and comprehensively things would go south.
For having the temerity and legal right to challenge the election of Joe Biden on the senate floor, on behalf of major concerns of his constituents, Senator Josh Hawley’s book with Simon & Schuster was canceled. Hawley’s book had been slated for publication in the spring.
Simon & Schuster declared said: “After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place… in Washington DC, Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel publication of Senator Josh Hawley’s forthcoming Book, The Tyranny of Big Tech.” As if Hawley had anything to do with the protest. And the only thing that turned deadly was the killing of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol police. No Capitol protestor brandished a gun.
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“We did not come to this decision lightly,” Simon & Schuster continued. “As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: At the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.” Truly: what a crock.
Senator Hawley responded, “Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition.” He then said, “See you in court.”
Major factoid: in 2000, 2004, 2016 Senate Democrats protested the presidential election results. Oh, well, it must been okay if they did it.
Squelching Views
The Left’s attempt to squelch views by anyone deemed to be a Republican or conservative then picked up steam. Randall Lane, the chief content officer of Forbes Media and editor of Forbes Magazine, which most people don’t realize was sold by the Forbes Family years ago, called for destroying the careers of anyone who worked for Trump, particularly his press secretaries including Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Kayleigh McEnany.
“Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie,” the almighty Lane wrote. “We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.”
Can you imagine the unmitigated gall of a major business magazine editor, once considered “a capitalist tool,” seeking to diminish the livelihood, reputation, and indeed quality of life of those who served in the administration of our 45th president? Happily, the little twit was forced to back down.
So Much More
If only the blatant social, civic, and financial attempts at ostracism we’re confined to American publishers. During the Winter and Spring, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps the least intelligent person ever elected twice to congress, repeatedly called for the re-education, reprogramming, or indoctrination of anyone who voted for Trump. She was joined by legions of others calling for the same. To put this in perspective, 75 to 80 million people, in her view, require some kind of intervention for the deep and desperate crime of having voted Republican.
If you had logged on to any alternative news site – not the mainstream press – including Politicrossing, Townhall, Rantingly, The Liberty Daily, Whatfinger News, Red State, and so on, on any day in early 2021, you’d see articles of those on the Left calling for drastic measures to silence those on the right.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, supposedly a ‘moderate,’ openly called for removing both Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz Manchin via the 14th Amendment, over their objections to Electoral College votes. Where was Sen. Manchin in 2016 when Nancy Pelosi did exactly the same thing?
Perpetual Litmus Tests
On the heels of the Left’s attempt to squelch the freedom of speech and livelihood of those on the Right came perhaps the most egregious development of the new year. National Guard troops assembled in Washington, D.C. to ‘insure’ domestic tranquility during the transfer of power on January 20th and were looked upon by the Left in a new light. They wanted to know who voted for Trump, versus who voted for Biden, and to send the Trump voters to the far ends of the country, away from Biden.
This ideological litmus test was much more than the start of a slippery slope, it virtually guaranteed that the nation would fracture in record time.
Suppose that hereafter, within the professions, you must declare whether or not you voted for Trump. No more buying real estate using a broker who leans right. Don’t even consider getting insurance from an agent who voted for Trump. What about your doctor? Can he or she be trusted if a GOP member? Do you want to retain an attorney who voted for Republicans?
As absurd as this seems, major voices on the Left preferred this path. NBA basketball players complained to the press that they didn’t want to play for a team whose owner is a Republican.
Looming Disaster
Alas, more reasoned voices did not prevail, and did point out the absurdity of asking people for their “official papers,” much like was done throughout Europe in the lead up to and during World War II.
Today, 11 months later, at the rate that the Left is asserting itself in highly un-American ways, acting like the East German Stasi, and usurping the U.S. Constitution, there’s no real reason to hold out hope.
https://flagandcross.com/the-lefts-intolerance-on-full-display/
************************************************Australia’s Omicron travel ban is ‘discrimination’, South African diplomat says
The ban does sound like closing the door after the horse has bolted. What does it achieve?
South Africa’s high commissioner to Australia, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said the ban needed to be overturned due to large numbers of Omicron cases being detected in other continents and not just in parts of Africa.
“We believe it is discrimination, because the only difference is these countries [on the travel ban list] are on the African continent,” he told ABC Radio on Monday. “The ban is unfair, there is no evidence the ban works, the World Health Organization confirms that.”
The travel ban to nine southern African nations was announced in the wake of the Omicron variant being detected. It also led to a two-week delay to the entry of visa holders without a medical exemption, which is now set to take place from 15 December.
Despite the pause on international arrivals, 250 fully vaccinated students will arrive on Monday in Sydney as part of a New South Wales government pilot program. The arrivals will still need to isolate in student accommodation for three days.
There have been 15 cases of Omicron detected in NSW, while two have been identified in the Australian Capital Territory and one in the Northern Territory.
The finance minister, Simon Birmingham, said while the government had been cautious about the arrival of Omicron, the steps were necessary to assess the situation.
“It seems that plenty of advisers are indicating that vaccines continue to provide strong levels of protection, and it is why people should get vaccinated if they haven’t done so already,” Birmingham told ABC TV.
“We’re now at the point where we’re one of the most highly vaccinated countries in the world.”
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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)
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5 December, 2021
Australian Woman Recounts Harrowing Experience of Being Held in COVID-19 Quarantine Camp
The official description of these jails is here:
https://coronavirus.nt.gov.au/travel/quarantine/mandatory-supervised-quarantine
It appears that everyone entering the NT has to undergo imprisonment in them. A good reason to stay away from the NTHayley Hodgson, a 26-year-old Australian woman, recounted her two-week confinement in a COVID-19 quarantine camp in an interview Thursday.
Hodgson told UnHerd that she was ordered to quarantine at the Centres for National Resilience in Howard Springs, Darwin, after one of her friends tested positive for COVID-19.
“Police officers blocked my driveway,” she said. “I walked out and I said, ‘What’s going on? Are you guys testing me for COVID? What’s happening?’ They said, ‘No, you’re getting taken away. And you have no choice. You’re going to Howard Springs.’”
Hodgson said the officers told her that they had received orders from “higher up” to take her to the facility and that she was not permitted to “self-isolate” at home.
The officers told Hodgson that if she didn’t voluntarily go with them, they’d put her “in the back of the [police] van,” she said.
Once she arrived at the facility, Hodgson was told she would have to stay there for two weeks, according to Unherd. She was reportedly tested three times throughout her confinement, and each time she tested negative for the virus.
While inside the facility, Hodgson said she had very little contact with others and was treated poorly by the staff.
“They don’t come and say anything. They don’t check up; they don’t do anything. You get delivered your meals once a day. And you are just left,” she said.
At one point, staff reportedly offered to sedate Hodgson with Valium to calm her down after she complained about the camp’s conditions. Hodgson said she lost her job during her stay and was never informed of any rights she had or put in contact with a lawyer.
Howard Springs is one of two “mandatory supervised quarantine facilities” in the Northern Territory, according to a government website.
While in quarantine, a person must “stay in the person’s allocated room, including on any veranda space allocated to the room, unless permitted by an [authorized] officer,” according to the website.
There is another report on these camps here:
https://www.westernjournal.com/three-covid-detainees-escape-quarantine-camp-arrested-foot-chase/
*************************************************‘Our Money Has No Value’: Frustration Rises in Turkey at Lira Crisis
This is where Biden is taking the USA
Lines outside bread stores and gas stations; farmers defaulting on loans; impromptu street demonstrations. The signs of economic distress in Turkey are all too clear as the lira continues a dizzying slide.
Sporadic protests have broken out around Turkey and the opposition parties have called for a series of rallies to demand a change of government after the lira crashed sharply last week. The latest week of turmoil follows months of worsening economic conditions for Turkish citizens. The currency has lost more than 45 percent of its value this year, and nearly 20 percent in the last week, continuing its downward trend on Tuesday.
Economists have tied the currency crisis to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s direct interference in monetary policy and his determination to lower interest rates.
The latest crash in the currency came after Mr. Erdogan gave a speech last week outlining his determination to keep rates low as a way of promoting economic growth. He reaffirmed his opposition to raising rates again in comments to reporters aboard his plane as he returned from a visit to Turkmenistan on Monday.
“I have never defended raising interest rates, I don’t now and will not defend it,” he told the reporters. “I will never compromise on this issue.”
There are rumblings of public dissent, unusual for a country where only officially sanctioned demonstrations are permitted and the main television channels and newspapers follow the government line.
Scores of people have been detained for joining street protests. The police detained 70 people in several districts of Istanbul last Wednesday who were protesting the government’s management of the economy, after a record drop in the lira the day before.
The Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions issued a blunt statement on Wednesday. “That’s enough. We want to make ends meet,” it read. “Unemployment, high living costs, price increases, and bills are breaking our backs.”
Shortages are emerging, including in imported medicines and medical equipment, and even at bakeries, Mr. Yesilada, the analyst, said. A loaf of bread still sells at 2.5 liras, or about 20 cents, but bakeries are complaining that their costs are closer to 4 liras a loaf, he said. “Soon they are going to shut down bakeries and then we are going to have bread riots,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/30/world/europe/turkey-erdogan-inflation-lira.html
*********************************************The roots of inflation go far beyond the supply chain
We keep hearing that supply-chain disruptions are causing the “temporary” price inflation that has become the hot topic of conversation. All sorts of public enemies are being blamed for the disruptions, including, according to President Biden, those who are manipulating the markets and price gouging. The politicians, meanwhile, are pressuring the ports to frantically intensify their cargo handling and promising that the newly passed trillion-dollar infrastructure spending will get the supply chain rolling again.
That’s not the real story though. While supply-chain problems are pushing up prices by creating an imbalance between what people produce and what they want to consume, inflation has causes that go far beyond this issue.
Since 2007 the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has created $8 trillion (equal to the GDP of one-and-a-half Japans) out of thin air. Of course, for that increase in the monetary base to cause price inflation, other factors need to be present (and not be present): Namely, people need to spend that money and the production of goods and services must not grow fast enough to neutralize those new dollars.
In recent years, reeling from the 2008 financial crisis and decades of profligacy, people and corporations (and the banks themselves) have opted for prudence. Sure, some of the created money was channeled to assets that saw their prices rise, but what is commonly known as inflation was moderate.
All that was needed for this to change was for the “animal spirits” to come back to life. Now they have — and the result is that prices went up 6.2 percent on an annual basis in October. Although labor shortages have helped push wages up too, people are getting poorer because wages have gone up at a slower pace than prices (no more than 5 percent).
If we add to this the fact that the 10-year Treasury is yielding around 1.5 percent, you can imagine what this inflation means for the millions who have their current or future money in pension funds, the Social Security trust fund, or insurance companies, which invest in that “risk-free” asset to protect the value of their assets.
Supply-chain disruptions indeed exist. But these were not sudden natural catastrophes. They were the result of politicians reacting to the pandemic by drastically tying the hands of producers and of those who move products from one place to another. Even so, the imbalances in many of the areas of the economy would have occurred sooner or later without the pandemic.
In the energy sector, this is all too evident. It’s a sensitive area today since gasoline prices, which have gone up by more than 60 percent, have politicians strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage (and howling against “price gouging”). Non-OPEC countries have seen their oil reserves come down significantly because of underinvestment in traditional sources of energy, and shale oil wells are becoming depleted at a faster rate than new high-grade reserves are coming online. Since for several years much emphasis has been on clean renewable energy, oil companies (including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total) have not been able to invest sufficiently in traditional sources of energy to maintain their reserve levels and production although the demand for energy, principally from emerging countries, has exploded. Oil and gas prices, therefore, would have gone up with or without a pandemic — in the era of inflation we are now entering, all the more so.
Economy adds 210K jobs in November, well short of expectations
Five things to know about the November jobs report
This is but one example of how various areas of the economy present imbalances partly driven by recent political decisions. But underlying everything is the frantic creation of money that is now coming onto a market in which production cannot keep up with demand.
To make matters worse, for all their posturing the politicians have a vested interest in keeping inflation going. The reason is simply the almost $30 trillion debt. Imagine what would happen to the servicing of that debt if the authorities let interest rates go up significantly! They can’t. Diluting the debt requires major inflation. It’s been like that since kings debased gold coins to help pay for wars.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/582395-the-roots-of-inflation-go-far-beyond-the-supply-chain
***********************************************Stowaway Story: Desperate Migrant Nearly Freezes to Death to Reach ‘Racist’ USA
A 26-year-old Guatemalan man stowed away in the wheel well of an airplane in a desperate bid to enter the U.S. Would he do that to get into a country brimming with white supremacists and built on systemic racism?
The American Airlines flight from Guatemala City, Guatemala, touched down in Miami on Saturday, according to WTVJ-TV.
Willard Shepard, a WTVJ investigator and pilot, said that according to flight data, the temperature in the wheel well dropped by about 100 degrees during the flight.
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“So this person was in there a time period probably about two hours, where they were subjected to subzero temperatures,” Shepard said.
In other words, the stowaway is very lucky to be alive. An immigration attorney said he will be detained by the Department of Homeland Security and may face an expedited order of removal.
Since 1947, 129 people have tried to stow away on commercial aircraft, according to WTVJ. Of those 129 desperate souls, approximately 100 of them died. Those are really bad odds.
With leftists constantly depicting the U.S. as an irredeemably racist country, why would anyone come here, especially with a 78 percent chance of dying?
Rep. Ilhan Omar and other members of Congress going so far as to liken the U.S. to terrorists should scare away all immigrants, legal and illegal alike, right?
Who on earth would want to live in this terrible place? No matter how bad the countries are from which immigrants are fleeing, it must be worse here. They’d have to be masochists to subject themselves to such hell.
There were roughly 14.5 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. as of January, according to Breitbart. That’s a lot of masochists.
And they just keep coming. Over 1.5 million illegals have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year.
Nearly one-third of the migrant women surveyed in a 2017 report from Doctors Without Borders said they had been sexually abused during their journey to the U.S. An incredible 68 percent of all migrants reported that they had been victims of violence while making their way here.
If what the leftists say about this country is true, it’s only going to get worse for the poor souls who have managed to cross the border. They are now at the mercy of savage white supremacists.
So why do they keep coming?
Because what the left says about America is a lie, and the whole world knows it.
The radical left hates America. Leftists applaud open borders because they hope to overwhelm the system in the chaos caused by a flood of illegal aliens, some of whom are criminals of the worst kind.
This stowaway risked it all for a chance to pursue the American dream. He doesn’t hate America. He knows he has a better chance here than anywhere on earth.
Illegal aliens are coming here in droves because the Biden administration, for nefarious reasons of its own, is encouraging them to do so.
Many of these desperate people are fleeing socialism and will fight with everything they have for freedom.
I wonder if the radical left has figured that into its plans.
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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)
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3 December, 2021
Biden officially RESTARTS Trump's 'Remain in Mexico' policy that he once called 'inhumane'
Joe Biden was forced on Thursday to resume the Trump-era Remain in Mexico policy as migrants head north for the border and GOP lawmakers introduce legislation to stop the White House from paying out migrant families separated under the previous administration.
The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday it is acting to comply with a court order in reimplementing the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), which requires asylum-seekers who made it to the border by way of Mexico to remain in the country as they await U.S. court proceedings related to their claim.
DHS said that Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas believes the policy 'has endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and failed to address the root causes of irregular migration.'
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki described the program on Thursday as 'Deeply flawed.' 'We're working to implement [it] under the court order,' she added.
Trump praised the move, saying on Fox & Friends Thursday morning: 'They should have never ended it.'
'If Joe Biden would have come in and just gone to the beach, he would have been successful in many ways because all of this stuff - the border was the best it ever was, and getting better, drugs coming in was getting at a level that we've never seen before, meaning in a positive way.'
Senators John Cornyn of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky introduced legislation Thursday to stop Biden from doling out fat $450,000 checks for each illegal immigrant separated under the Trump administration.
Reports emerged last month that the president was considering massive payments to migrants who were part of a family unit and are suing the government after they were separated when being taken into custody while Trump was president.
Since the payments would be per person, according to the report, some illegal migrant families could see payments in the millions if it were carried out.
Biden called the reports 'garbage' when asked about them in November, but later defended the planned payments while still disputed the $450,000 figure.
The Protect American Taxpayer Dollars from Illegal Immigration Act declares 'no Federal funds… may be expended for any legal settlement to any individual who violated section 275(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act if the claims giving rise to such settlement are based on the lawful detention of such individual as part of a family unit after entry at a port of entry or between ports of entry along the southern border of the United States after January 20, 2017.'
This would include any use of money from the Judgment Fund, which pays for court judgments and lawsuit settlements against the federal government.
Tillis wrote in a statement regarding the bill: 'Our southern border is a disaster, and President Biden's failed policies have continued to fuel this ongoing crisis. We are seeing the most illegal immigration this year alone than ever recorded, and now President Biden wants to give illegal immigrants a payout, further rewarding lawlessness and chaos.'
'These $450,000 settlements are an insult to all hardworking Americans who will subsequently be funding these large settlements with their hard-earned tax dollars,' he added.
'I am proud to work with my colleagues to make sure this doesn't happen.'
Biden is being forced to restart the Trump-era Remain in Mexico asylum policy. This forces migrants who come from South and Central American countries to the U.S. border by way of Mexico to remain there while awaiting results of their asylum claims.
The Biden administration reluctantly announced plans Thursday to accept the policy and agreed to Mexico´s conditions for resuming it.
Biden scrapped the Remain in Mexico policy, but a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri forced him to put it back into effect, subject to Mexico's acceptance.
Under Biden's new policy migrants will once again be sent back to Mexico as they await immigration hearings.
The major difference is that they will be offered a COVID vaccination, but they cannot be forced to accept it. Biden's policy is likely to anger progressive members of his party - including the so-called 'Squad' of four outspoken female representatives, but it could play well with more centrist Democrats who have concerns about uncontrolled immigration into the US.
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Gov. Noem Pushes Back on Argument that Pro-Lifers are Anti-Woman, Calls Pro-Abortion Advocates ‘Hypocritical’
This week, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) issued remarks pushing back against the Democratic narrative that pro-life supporters do not care about women or babies. In her remarks, Noem also took aim at telemedicine abortions, claiming that this method has made pro-abortion advocates change their narrative on abortion being a decision between a woman and her doctor.
The remarks, which were reportedly made during an online press briefing with pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List (SBA), came ahead of Supreme Court case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which surrounds the constitutionality of a Mississippi law in that bans abortions at 15 weeks gestation.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments for Dobbs, which has the potential to overturn landmark abortion cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which occured in 1973 and 1992, respectively.
“This is an issue that those who are pro-choice try to dehumanize,” Noem said, according to Fox News.
“They [pro-choice advocates] try to make an argument that we [pro-life supporters] don’t care about women, that we don’t care about these babies,” she added. “That’s just a false narrative that we have to push aggressively back against.”
On the issue of telemedicine abortions, Noem added that this method of abortion is more dangerous for woman, which shows that pro-abortion advocates are “hypocritical” because it allows women to make an “impromptu” and “not well-informed” decision.
“For years and years, we’ve heard liberals talk about this decision on abortion being between a woman and her doctor,” she explained. “Now, they’re changing their complete argument to now this can be a decision between a woman and virtually any stranger over the phone – that she doesn’t even have to prove it’s a doctor…or an informed decision.”
In September, as Landon covered, Noem signed an Executive Order banning telemedicine abortions in the state. The order requires that abortion-inducting drugs, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, be picked up in-person rather than transported via mail. The Order requires that abortion-inducing drugs can only be provided by a physician licensed in South Dakota after an in-person examination.
After signing the Order. Noem appeared in an interview with Fox News where she noted that she is ardently pro-life and appointed someone in her office to work as a pro-life advocate. Additionally, she noted that she has been in touch with lawmakers in Texas to look at how South Dakota could create legislation similar to S.B. 8.
“Everybody knows that I’m pro-life and do not support any kind of abortions,” Noem said in the interview. “But, here what the Biden administration is doing is trying to put forward abortion on demand. And we’re going to stop them and make sure that that’s not available in our state.”
Noem, who has three children and a granddaughter, also reportedly argued that women do not need to choose between career success and having children. She and more than 200 other women signed an amicus brief challenging Casey’s contention that abortion has allowed women to participate equally in “the economic and social life” of the United States.
“It may be possible to claim anecdotally that a particular woman’s abortion seemed to preserve her opportunity to pursue a particular job or degree. But it is impossible to claim that abortion access is specially responsible for the progress that American women have made,” the brief states. “The Casey plurality claimed that the ability of women to participate in the economic and social life of the nation depended on their access to abortion. Yet historical review of the half-century preceding Roe demonstrates a steady expansion of social, economic, and political opportunities for women—all without legal access to abortion.”
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The Left’s Own Words Explain Why We Believe the Worst
Some refrains are so common, grassroots Patriots are tired of hearing them. One of the most common is that we should not be assuming the worst about the Left, especially regarding a lengthy list of abuses of power. One of the persistent questions that also emerges is why we’re willing to believe the worst.
There is a simple response: Have many in the media heard how leftists talk about us? When we rebutted David French’s false claims that some on the Right were lying about left-wing hatred, your Patriot Post team compiled lots of evidence. You can see more just by watching MSNBC on a semi-regular basis.
When you hear how they have talked about those who don’t immediately sign on to their agenda, it’s not such a stretch to think they might act on it. Sadly, the Republican and conservative establishments have done little to address left-wing hate speech — and what comes from it, like bulk-mail ballots, violent attacks on events and during campaigns, and even other measures to “fortify” democracy — all of it done to save America’s soul from Donald Trump.
After seeing all this, among other things, many grassroots Patriots perceive a discomforting pattern and connection. If words have consequences, something the Left asserts from January 6 and Trump’s use of a certain phrase to describe COVID, then there is a logical question to ask in response.
That question is: What, then, is to be said about the many hateful words and false accusations of racism and other evils the Left has dropped over the years, targeting, among others, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, and others?
This isn’t an academic question. The year before The Patriot Post launched in 1996, John Lewis compared Republicans trying to fix a broken welfare system to Nazis. That’s two decades before Trump took the escalator ride to announce his first run for president. But more importantly, it means that this rhetoric has been going on for more than a quarter-century. What can we conclude?
At the very least, the Left is engaged in yet another double standard when it comes to its own conduct across many domains, including recounts/audits. That is being charitable, but there comes a time when common sense must overrule that.
The fact of the matter is that the Left’s words have consequences. One of those consequences is that the Left no longer will get the benefit of the doubt when something questionable takes place, and there is a lot of stuff that is being questioned. We also have the right to make assumptions about how leftists view us — as being unworthy of the full panoply of rights.
How else to explain the effort to shut down conservative media, the expansion of Silicon Valley’s censorship, or the way that the threat of a mob is wielded? Leftists have nobody but themselves to blame for this skepticism, nor can any reasonable person deny that the most convincing evidence is the words from leftists’ own mouths.
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That Time Government Destroyed the Supply Chain
Part of the modern American presidency is theater to show what great effects policies are having. Yesterday was no different, as Biden was flanked by Food Lion president Meg Ham (a delightful name for the head of a grocery chain) and Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who both praised the president for, as the White House headline put it, “His Administration’s Work to Move Goods to Shelves.”
Biden introduced them by saying, “I want to hear your ideas on how the federal government can continue partnering with you all to keep shelves stocked so American consumers can get what they need.”
Translation: Tell me what a great job I’m doing.
The federal government can get out of the way. State governments can get out of the way. The free market will figure out how to get goods on shelves without government “help” because, well, selling stuff is the whole point of the market.
Instead, governments at various levels completely upended the economy last year in response to a virus. Yes, that virus has been deadly — more than 777,000 Americans have died of or with COVID. But the vast majority of people are at far less risk. After all, there have been 48.1 million documented COVID cases in the U.S. How many more were so mild as to not even be confirmed?
Hindsight is 20/20, but the better response in March last year would have been to more selectively protect at-risk individuals while allowing the economy to continue operating as normally as possible. With few exceptions, that is not what government officials did.
Government policy knee-capped a roaring economy. One-size-fits-all lockdowns cost tens of millions of Americans their jobs. Biden disingenuously boasted yesterday that “4.5 million more Americans than last year had the dignity of a job.” That is some serious cherry-picking worthy of a “fact-check” smackdown that the Leftmedia will never bring. The truth is that, compared to February 2020, there are nearly five million fewer Americans with the dignity of a job. According to National Review, “The labor-force participation rate was 61.6 percent in October, down from 63.3 percent in February 2020.” Government did that.
So when CEOs of giant companies show up to glad-hand with the president over all the supposedly fabulous work he’s doing on supply chains, just remember that it was government policies that broke the supply chain in the first place.
Here were are, at the end of November 2021, dealing with the consequences of decisions made in March 2020. The employment picture has completely changed, because people were either laid off or began working from home. Millions still work from home or don’t work at all because they’ve been paid more to not work. Job hopping is a prevalent phenomenon — August and September saw some nine million people quit their jobs, presumably to take something else. Biden’s vaccine mandates are part of that equation. That’s an awful lot of economic upheaval.
Ham said herself that the upheaval extended to “how customers do their grocery shopping and what customers are buying when they do do their grocery shopping.” Not just groceries, but everything. How many fast food restaurants near you don’t allow dine-in because they don’t have enough workers? How many retail stores still have “Help Wanted” signs up? How many small businesses are operating shorter hours because they can’t compete with huge retailers offering big signing bonuses?
We haven’t even hit all those container ships sitting in the Pacific Ocean waiting for union workers to unload them. When they’re unloaded, there are too few truckers to drive those goods where they need to go.
The market needs time now to sort out all the changes brought about by government policies. It will, but it’ll take a lot longer if Biden keeps meddling with more government policies.
Just yesterday, in fact, Biden’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional director Lisa Y. Henderson ordered a new election at a Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon facility, despite workers there overwhelmingly rejecting unionization back in April by a 71-29 margin. Henderson’s rationale was based entirely upon the unbelievably flimsy excuse that local Amazon managers installed a new mailbox before the election. The real reason is that the union wants to keep voting until it wins.
But you can depend on Joe Biden to “fix” the economy
https://patriotpost.us/articles/84549-that-time-government-destroyed-the-supply-chain-2021-11-30
****************************************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)
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2 December, 2021
Leftism as a mental infirmity
Below is an excerpt from a long essay by Claire Wolfe. She is an extreme libertarian but she sounds a bit unhinged to me. She forgets Hanlon’s razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".
She writes a huge amount, which must take up a lot of time. It is perhaps for that reason that she seems to have dog in her life rather than a man. But the excerpt below has some interesting points
The woke demand that we believe in the historically unlikely and the biologically impossible or face demonization and unpersoning. Those awaiting the climate-change apocalypse are utterly undeterred by its repeated failure to arrive and insist more loudly than ever that the rest of us — those not in their crowd — will eat soy, give up our cars, own nothing, and like it.
And — as omicron madness rises from the ashes of the dying COVID panic to sweep the global “public health” establishment — we can expect the True Believers (who in this case have the added incentives of billions of dollars, increased political power, and media fame) to hit us, harder than ever, with the same-old same-old of their broken “expertise,” their failed prophesies, and their useless (and cruel) “solutions.”
Never mind that we know very little about omicron at this point. Never mind that what we do know hints that the new variant follows the standard pattern for mutating viruses: more contagious but milder.
The True Believers of Public Health faced their own Great Disappointment. Millions were beginning either to ignore or strike back at the best panic they’d ginned up in their bureaucratic little lifetimes (a real and nasty disease, but eminently survivable even for 98+ percent of its most vulnerable victims).
So — GLOBAL CATASTROPHE, Part umpty-ump! Whoohoo!
And if previous tools didn’t “slow the spread” or sufficiently cow the peasants, then let’s use the same tools, only more and harder! Lockdowns! Shutdowns! Masks and more masks! Firings! Travel bans! Closed borders! Closed schools! Vaxx passports! Above all, more and more NEW JABS! And for the unbelievers, increasingly stringent punishments to save their souls force compliance.
Heck, even before the excuse of omicron, one country in Europe had already banned the dirty unvaxxed from buying gasoline. (I also thought this was fake news until I checked beyond the original link I received.)
In Greece, where the average monthly pension is 730 Euros, every filthy unvaccinated resident over 60 will be forced to pay a 100 Euro monthly fine. (But never fear, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis assured us he was “tormented,” the poor dear, by his decision to smack the most vulnerable. Also he wants us all to understand “It is not a punishment.” That should make everybody, especially all the newly poor, feel better.)
And as Noah Rothman noted in the second half of one of the links above, despite omicron giving, as yet, no sign that panic is called for, panic swiftly ensued around the globe and on the shores of our very own burgeoning banana republic. Or at least it did in the minds of officials and “experts” for whom panic (in Rothman’s words) is a lifestyle brand.
Boston University School of Public Health Associate Professor Dr. Ellie Murray must have been chortling with glee when she recommended “solutions” for this new variant we know almost nothing about: more jabs, more tests, more mask mandates, more business closures, PLUS paid pandemic furloughs, new eviction moratoriums, forcing airlines to absorb the costs of socially distanced flights, requiring (this is my favorite) ALL winter gatherings to take place outdoors (have fun, you Minnesotans and Canadians!), and being ready to close (again) whatever schools may have managed to open.
That sort of thing worked SO well before, you know.
Of course, whoever’s actually running the Biden administration responded instantly with bans on travel from various African nations. (NOTE to readers: Bans on travel from various nations are racist only when issued by Republican presidents.)
Japan slammed its borders shut entirely (as it is historically wont to do).
And all around the world True Believing governments behaved like True Believing governments. They panicked and hoped we’d all panic right along with them. And they did the same-old same-old, then more of the same.
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"Stop and frisk" is back in NYC
New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams maintained his support of "stop and frisk" in reaction to last week’s Thanksgiving Eve shooting that wounded two police officers.
Adams, who will be the city’s second Black mayor, praised the "professional conduct" of NYPD officers Alejandra Jacobs and Robert Holmes in their handling of suspect Charlie Vasquez in the Bronx last week. Adams said the officers handled the situation correctly when they approached the suspect matching a 911 caller’s description and asked him to show his hands.
In response to the request Vasquez opened fire and shot officer Jacobs in the arm, Jacobs returned fire, and, "the threat was neutralized. One more gun off the street. One more blow against the bad guys," Adams said. "Yet there are some in our city who would say these officers should never have confronted Vasquez, that he never should have been stopped and questioned."
Adams rejected his opponents’ demands to "end stop and frisk forever," maintaining that the tactic "stop, question and frisk" must be reinstated because it can actually help reduce crime "without infringing on personal liberties and human rights."
"In fact, as American courts have affirmed over many years, stop, question and frisk is a perfectly legal, appropriate and constitutional tool, when used smartly, as opposed to indiscriminately against hundreds of thousands of young Black and Brown men, as it was for years in New York City," Adams said. "Not only that, but it is a necessary tool, whereby police approach someone who fits a witness description or otherwise appears to be carrying an illegal weapon."
He continued: "The question was never whether stop, question and frisk should be allowed; it was how it should be done. Those who claimed it should be outlawed entirely reduced a nuanced issue to an either-or argument, and unwisely answered it with a blanket ban."
Adams has called for an end to "fighting from the extremes about public safety" and promised to make solutions his "number one priority" in January. He also discussed arguments about stop, question and frisk, defund the police and bail reform.
"The question should not be whether or not police are allowed to confront suspects; it should be about how we train them," he said. "The question should not be whether we have police; it should be how we use them. The question should not be whether judges should have the ability to protect New Yorkers from violent offenders; it should be how we let them."
At a press conference following the shooting, both NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea and a police union president, Pat Lynch, spoke about the lack of fear among criminals in the streets in spite of efforts to remove illegal guns. Vasquez, who was also wounded in the shooting, was charged Saturday with attempted murder and other weapons offenses.
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US police officer dismissed after shooting alleged shoplifter in wheelchair nine times, killing him
Richards was a white career criminal so he was obviously challenging the cop. He guessed wrong
A US policeman who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter in a wheelchair, hitting him nine times in the back and side, has been fired from the police force.
Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said he was "deeply disturbed" by the shooting
Footage released by the department shows Mr Remington meters behind Mr Richards, asking him to stop.
When Mr Richards continues to move his motorised wheelchair away, Mr Remington opens fire, shooting the suspected shoplifter in the back and the side.
Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said a Walmart employee had called Mr Remington for help.
"According to the employee, he (Mr Remington) caught up with Mr Richards outside as he fled the store and asked to see a receipt for the toolbox," CNN quoted Chief Magnus as saying.
"Instead of providing the receipt, Mr Richards brandished a knife and said, 'Here's your receipt.'"
Chief Magnus told a press conference he was "deeply disturbed" by his officer's actions. "His use of deadly force in this incident is a clear violation of department policy and directly contradicts multiple aspects of our use of force and training. "As a result, the department moved earlier today to terminate Officer Remington."
CNN quoted Mr Remington's attorney Michael Storie as saying the video did not tell the whole story.
Mr Storie said Mr Remington "attempted to de-escalate the situation" but Mr Richards's actions left him "no choice but to use deadly force".
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CNN insists ‘a car’ killed six people at Wisconsin Christmas parade
Despite multiple media outlets being hammered for blaming the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre on a vehicle rather than its black driver – a murder suspect – CNN continued to blame “a car” for the mass killing.
Repeat felon Darrell Brooks killed six people and injured more than 60 when he plowed an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last week. Though Brooks has been arrested and charged with six counts of murder, media outlets covering the massacre have seemingly made a point of avoiding naming the suspect, instead ascribing blame to the vehicle and calling the killing spree a “crash” or an “accident.”
Amid outrage from conservatives, the Washington Post last week deleted a tweet calling the incident a “tragedy caused by a SUV,” but CNN is standing its ground. In a tweet on a memorial event in Waukesha on Sunday, the liberal network said the city was “marking one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade.”
Inside the article, only the final paragraph mentioned Brooks as the “suspected driver.”
The tweet led to an instant outpouring of scorn and ridicule from the right. “Will we ever know the car’s motivation? What did the car post on social media? What kind of background did the car have?” former US diplomat Alberto Migues Fernandez sarcastically quipped.
https://www.rt.com/usa/541581-cnn-car-waukesha-christmas-parade/
**********************************************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)
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1 December, 2021
The REAL reason women earn less at work: Harvard professor says sex discrimination, gender bias or a glass ceiling aren't to blame
The gender pay gap is rooted in the issue of 'greedy jobs', rather than sex discrimination, gender bias or a glass ceiling, a Harvard economics professor has claimed.
Claudia Goldin, who taught Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, outlines her argument in her new book, Career & Family, which draws on research to show that highly-paid 'greedy jobs' in City law, banking and politics force women to choose between their careers and families once they become mothers.
The term 'greedy job' describes 'a certain type of "beck and call" job, which pays over the odds for extensive travel, unpredictable, inflexible hours and demanding client facetime,' The Times explains.
The prestige, selectivity and enormous pay checks make this type of job highly desirable for male and female graduates. However, once children come along, it becomes difficult for two parents to maintain their 'greedy' careers.
'Men and women have fairly equal pay trajectories until babies come along,' the article notes. 'Because women tend to marry men a little older, and so ahead of them on the pay scale, it is logical for the wife to step back.'
Goldin, who focuses on college-educated women, writes 'gender norms that we have inherited get reinforced in a host of ways to allot more of the childcare responsibilities to mothers, and more of the family care to grown daughters'.
It is still more common for women to make this compromise and step back from their 'greedy' careers than men.
Goldin notes gender pay gaps are not as pronounced across all industries. In careers that are less 'greedy', like dermatology, tech and veterinary science, mothers are more likely to progress in line with their male peers and earn a similar amount.
'So the devil is in the detail here,' Goldin told The Times. 'You really have to go occupation by occupation. And that’s the work that I've done, showing that there is a clear relationship between the occupational demands and the gender wage gaps.
'So, surprisingly, the occupations that had the smallest gaps are tech, engineering and others in science.'
Goldin also picks apart the other factors commonly blamed for the pay gap, including sex discrimination, gender bias and a glass ceiling, and notes the arguments are not supported by the data.
'Data now shows that true pay and employment discrimination, while they matter, are relatively small,' Goldin writes... 'So why do earnings differences persist when gender equality at works seems to finally be within our grasp, and at a time when more professions are open to women than ever before?
'Are women actually receiving lower pay for equal work? By and large, not so much anymore. Pay discrimination in terms of unequal earnings for the same work accounts for a small fraction of the total earnings gap. Today the problem is different.
'Some attribute the gender earnings gap to "occupational segregation" - the idea that women and men are self-selecting, or being railroaded into, certain professions that are stereotypically gendered (such as nurse versus doctor, teacher versus professor) and that those chosen professions pay differently.'
However this only accounts for 'at most a third of the difference in earnings between men and women'.
'Thus, we empirically know that the lion’s share of the pay gap comes from something else... We must give the problem a more accurate name: "greedy work".'
However there is a tentative silver lining: the pandemic has curbed the demands 'greedy' employers can put on their employees. This has coincided with an uptick in the number of women employed full-time.
It is too early to tell if the two are linked, but Goldin said she is 'cautiously optimistic about the effects of the pandemic on women’s careers'.
She added: 'It may have a silver lining in bringing down the price of flexibility, but only if we do not create a female enclave that works from home.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10254031/The-REAL-reason-women-earn-work.html
***********************************************Fed Chair Blows Up Biden's Argument Inflation Is 'Transitory'
For months, the Biden administration has been telling the American people that inflation and rapidly increasing prices on everyday items are "transitory" and temporary.
"The President would say we take the commitment, he takes the commitment of lowering costs for the American people very seriously. We, of course, have seen, and from outside experts, including the Federal Reserve, OECD, and others, that their expectation is that these inflation rises will be transitory, that they will come back down next year," Psaki told reporters in October.
But according to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who President Biden just nominated for another term, it's time to retire "transitory" from the conversation. In other words, inflation is here to stay and it's going to get worse.
Inflation was never temporary or transitory, but that didn't stop the Biden administration from claiming it was.
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Fauci claims societal safety trumps your individual rights
One of Fauci’s biggest policy blunders was his insistence on lockdowns. In the interview with Ted Koppel, Fauci said his first problem was when President Donald Trump pushed back against the tyrannical quarantines that eventually worked to devastate communities.
Fauci said, “I didn’t quite understand what the purpose of that was, except to put this misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety.” The good doctor clearly doesn’t ascribe to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution.
The man America trusted for COVID advice turned out to be nothing more than a bullhorn for the Draconian liberal lockdowns. Dozens of states refused to exercise such tyranny over their citizens. The results from COVID were no worse.
In fact, in most instances, these states had far better COVID numbers than the Democrat parts of the country that exercised authoritarian controls. There is also the discussion of how each of these states fared economically and emotionally.
The truth is in the data. Each of the states, which left COVID choices and decisions to the people, like the constitution says they should, has thrived in comparison. There is also the underlying emotional devastation caused by excessive COVID mandates and policies.
Again, the proof is in the statistical data. Thousands of residents from liberal states have flocked to more conservative homes. This is because of the radical policies leveled by liberal politicians. The increase in mental health issues in heavily locked down states is also overwhelming.
However, it’s also because of the curtailment of their freedoms by these power-hungry, liberal tyrants. Anthony Fauci is an unelected bureaucrat who acted as if he was anointed the King of COVID. He was not. He is a tyrant
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Australia: Child murderers and serial killers could be denied parole for decades under new Queensland laws
Child murderers and serial killers serving life sentences could be denied any bid for parole for potentially decades under new laws passed in Queensland.
The laws will give the president of Parole Board Queensland the power to make a "restricted prisoner declaration", blocking certain inmates from obtaining parole for up to 10 years, with no limit on the number of bans made.
State parliament passed the legislation on Tuesday evening despite concerns from the legal community the parole board sat "behind closed doors" and the powers "should only be vested in a court".
Described as the "toughest" parole laws in the nation, the state government said the measures were designed to limit unnecessary trauma for victims' families and the community caused by regular parole applications.
Under the new framework, the president of the board, an independent body, will have the discretion to declare that specific inmates – those sentenced to life for multiple murders or for murdering a child – must not be considered for parole for up to 10 years.
In a statement, Police Minister Mark Ryan said the government had carefully considered the rights of everyone concerned and it made no apology for taking this course of action.
The legislation was tabled in September amid the latest parole application by convicted murderer Barrie John Watts, who killed 12-year-old Sian Kingi in 1987. His bid was ultimately refused in October.
LNP Member for Ninderry, Dan Purdie — a former police officer —tabled in parliament earlier this year a petition with more than 70,000 signatures calling for Watts to be kept behind bars.
"This legislation is the direct legacy of that journey," he said. "The Kingis' pain and suffering will never go away, nor will the Morcombes be spared the trauma of losing their son Daniel at the evil hands of Brett Cowan.
"At least now these two Sunshine Coast families, and indeed families of victims all over Queensland, can be assured that there will be a legislative pathway to keep convicted killers and multiple murderers from ever menacing the community again."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-01/qld-prison-parole-laws-passed-queensland/100662520
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
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http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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