With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
This is a backup copy of the original blog
Below are the backup copies of this blog for November 2022. To find the December postings click here To access the backups for this blog in earlier years, click here
30 November, 2022
An actor who has had relationships with many attractive women
Stories like the one below could be pretty damaging to many men. Many men have difficulties finding partners, to the point where there are many "incels". One cannot entirely blame incels for the diffuse anger that they sometimes feel. And that anger can be expressed in very destructive ways.
I have been married 4 times and have at the moment a chic chick in my life so I am not at all upset or envious about the story below. But I think there needs to be some way for stories such as that below to be somehow contextualized by stories about the relationship failures celebrities sometimes have. In the meantime, incels should probably steer their reading away from celebrity sites
Miley Cyrus' mother Tish surprised fans by debuting her secret romance with Prison Break actor Dominic Purcell this week, seven months after filing for divorce from husband Billy Ray Cyrus.
And while details of the couple's relationship remain a mystery, Dominic's colourful dating history is well-documented.
From a 90210 star to billionaire James Packer's ex, the burly Aussie star has managed to woo very well-known women around the world.
Dominic, 52, was previously married to Australian film producer Rebecca Williamson between 1998 and 2008. The couple welcomed four children during their decade-long marriage: sons Joseph and Augustus, and daughters Audrey Lily-Rose.
Dominic went on to briefly date Baywatch star Brooke Burns, 44, from April to June 2008.
In 2011, he started began dating 90210 actress AnnaLynne McCord, who was 17 years his junior.
AnnaLynne previously revealed how BDSM played a major role in their on-and-off relationship, describing Dominic as a 'big, strong, angry Aussie' in a 2021 interview with sexual health platform Giddy.
************************************************
The left throws a tantrum as Elon Musk reverses censorship on Twitter
News that Elon Musk brought his 2-year-old son — one of 10 children — into key meetings at Twitter headquarters, after taking over the social media company in the fall, might make it less of a mystery to lefties why his “Priority #1” has been to banish child sexual exploitation material.
Not that you need to be a parent to abhor child pornography, but for some reason, the vile content effectively was given a free pass at Twitter before Musk arrived, so clearly not everyone in the company respected society’s last taboo.
But instead of applauding Twitter’s dedication to child safety and attack on degeneracy, leftist media have been decrying Musk’s attempts to restore free speech protections as if they are a threat to civilization.
They are hopping mad that Musk is demolishing the left-wing censorship regime that saw a sitting president de-platformed, satirical site the Babylon Bee banned and the oldest newspaper in the country locked out of its account for two weeks before the 2020 election.
Censorship hypocrisy
Lamenting the explosion of free speech under Musk, Yoel Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety” who was responsible for censoring The Post, delivered an implied threat to his former employer in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.
Keep the censorship regime in place or Twitter will be thrown off Google and Apple’s app marketplace, he wrote, “making it more difficult for potential billions of users to obtain Twitter services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.”
Roth claims he just wants to prevent “hate speech,” but why was it that everyone banned by Twitter was conservative?
“Correct,” Musk replied to a tweet observing: “We don’t hear much about Democrats and leftists being let back on Twitter [because] they were never kicked off in the first place … Censorship has been deployed as a one-way operation against conservatives.”
Musk already has reinstated former President Donald Trump, the Babylon Bee, Project Veritas, psychologist Jordan Peterson, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and the Libs of TikTok account that merely reposts absurd leftist clips from the video-sharing app TikTok.
In response, you would think Musk had launched the apocalypse.
Dozens of top Twitter advertisers boycotted the platform in protest, reportedly including Merck, Pfizer, Kellogg, Verizon, General Mills, Musk’s Tesla competitor Volkswagen, General Motors and, ironically, Balenciaga.
No sooner had the multinational fashion brand signaled its virtue than Balenciaga had to delete its Twitter account after being bombarded with irate messages over its depraved advertising campaign featuring small children holding teddy bears in bondage gear.
Other not-so-subtle pedophilia messages were embedded in the images, such as a sheaf of papers on a table which, on closer inspection, were court documents about child pornography.
How do you explain that? You launch a $25 million lawsuit against the production company and pretend no Balenciaga executive signed off on the images.
No wonder Balenciaga protested against a child-porn-free Twitter.
Which raises the question a lot of people on Twitter have been asking of Roth, the former head of “Trust and Safety,” after he too quit the company in protest:
Why was child porn permitted on Roth’s watch for years and all but eliminated by Musk in a few days? It’s an important question, but the rest of the media are more interested in amplifying his threats against Twitter.
The Associated Press tweeted a story claiming “online safety experts predict [Musk reinstating conservatives] will spur a rise in harassment, hate speech and misinformation,” yet did not quote a single expert and did not carry a byline.
You would think AP might have been more careful about spreading unfounded nonsense after nearly starting World War III the previous week with a false report that Russian missiles had hit Poland.
The Washington Post’s infamous “technology” reporter Taylor Lorenz penned a piece last week claiming that Musk was “opening the gates of hell … to the alarm of activists and online trust and safety experts.”
At least she quoted some humans, even though they were far-left hysterics and trans activist Alejandra Caraballo, who tweets obsessively as @esqueer to get conservatives kicked off Twitter and demand that the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade should “never know peace again.”
Right on cue, Antifa accounts that previously were free to dox conservatives and organize violent riots, called for arson attacks on Tesla locations in response to being banned from Twitter.
All the anti-Twitter “experts” agreed that the ultimate control of Musk will be for Apple and Google to remove Twitter’s app.
Musk’s response was to declare he will just “make an alternative phone.”
He is no right-winger. A libertarian who says he voted for Joe Biden in the last election, he responded to criticism by tweeting: “As a reminder, I was a significant supporter of the Obama-Biden presidency and (reluctantly) voted for Biden over Trump.
“But freedom of speech is the bedrock of a strong democracy and must take precedence.
“My preference for the 2024 presidency is someone sensible and centrist. I had hoped that would the case for the Biden administration but have been disappointed so far.”
His goal is “a trusted digital town square, where a wide range of views are tolerated, provided people don’t break the law or spam. For example, any incitement to violence will result in account suspension …
“Twitter will be a forum for the peaceful exchange of views.”
In fact, since Musk took over and fired half the workforce, including most of the censorship — er, “moderation” — team, he has published stats indicating there are more users and less hate speech.
‘Mistake’ to delete Don
Musk also said banning Trump was a “grave mistake” since there had been “no violation of the law or terms of service. Deplatforming a sitting President undermined public trust in Twitter for half of America.”
He gets it, but is now bracing for the mother of all attacks, because he is removing the censorship that has been a source of the left’s newfound power in recent years.
“They won’t give up controlling the narrative easily,” he tweeted over the weekend.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/27/the-left-throws-a-tantrum-as-elon-musk-reverses-censorship-on-twitter/
************************************************************
Dems Don’t Care About Inner-City Blacks
Do black lives matter, or don’t they? The answer apparently depends on whom you ask: a Democrat or a Republican.
“In the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections,” writes author and researcher Heather Mac Donald, “conservatives had relentlessly raised the alarm about the post-George Floyd crime surge: homicides had risen 29 percent in 2020 (the largest increase on record), and they have continued rising since then. Democrats and their media allies responded either that crime was a racist fiction or that, because post-Floyd crime levels nationally were still lower than they were in the early 1990s, there was nothing to see here, folks, move on!”
Blacks, though, seemed less inclined to obey this Democrat directive than in years past. In an election cycle whose results were disappointing for Republicans, the GOP nonetheless saw some a demographic bright spot among blacks: As columnist Star Parker notes, “Republican House candidates got 14% of the Black vote, almost twice the 8% of the Black vote that Republicans captured in 2020 and 2018.”
What accounts for this significant shift? A youth movement, as it turns out. Pew Research reports that 28% of black Republicans are ages 18-29, compared to 17% of black Democrats and 10% of white Republicans. And this shift may be driven by a realization among young blacks that their inner-city communities are hit hardest when law and order breaks down as it did during the long, hot, violent summer of 2020. As Mac Donald writes:
Black Americans have borne the brunt of the increased violence since the George Floyd race riots. Their share of homicide victims went from 53 percent in 2019 (blacks are 13 percent of the national population) to 56 percent in 2020. At least an additional 2,164 black lives were lost in 2020 over the 2019 count, compared with an increase of 950 white and Hispanic homicide victims combined in 2020. Such disparities only worsened in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at 20 times the rate of whites in the same age range. In 2021, blacks between the ages of ten and 24 died of gun homicide at nearly 25 times the rate of whites of the same age.
Could it be that blacks — and especially young blacks — are beginning to realize that decades of fealty to the Democrat Party have brought little more to their communities than death and destruction? As our Mark Alexander has made clear, the Democrat Party has inarguably racist roots, and it continues to be a powerful vehicle for black oppression. Nowhere is this more apparent than in our decrepit inner cities, which Democrats have controlled for decades and whose overwhelmingly black populations are nonetheless beholden to.
The Democrats are inclined to dismiss the Republicans’ focus on law-and-order as little more than a racist dog whistle, but facts are stubborn things. Nowhere was the issue of crime more powerfully driven home than in New York, where Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Did it work? We might ask Zeldin’s opponent, Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul, who wound up getting just 53% of the vote in a state where her party outnumbers Republicans by two to one.
Of course, much of the black community’s allegiance to the Democrat Party is borne out of dependence, and a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds it. What Thomas Sowell wrote back in 2016 is no less true today: “A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression. In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.”
Whether by downplaying the seriousness of violent crime, or by failing to address the collapse of the black family, or by continually opposing such reforms as school choice, Democrats are doing black Americans no favors. To them, it seems that black lives matter only for their votes.
**************************************************************
Toxic Masculinity Takes Out Gay Nightclub Assailant
A Saturday night massacre at a bar in Colorado Springs left five dead and at least 25 wounded, but it would’ve been immeasurably more bloody had it not been for a retired U.S. Army officer and the “toxic” masculinity that drove him to action.
Rich Fierro, who served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, rushed and tackled the 22-year-old assailant who opened fire inside a gay nightclub called Club Q, telling reporters that he tried to use the attacker’s own pistol to “finish him.”
“It’s the reflex,” said Fierro to the assembled media outside his home on Monday. “Go! Go to the fire. Stop the action. Stop the activity. Don’t let no one get hurt. I tried to bring everybody back.” As Fox News reports:
Fierro could smell the cordite from the ammunition, saw the flashes and dove, pushing one of his friends down before falling backwards.
Looking up from the floor, Fierro saw the shooter’s body armor and the crowd that had fled to the club’s patio. Moving toward the attacker, Fierro grasped the body armor, yanked the shooter down while yelling at another patron, James, to move the rifle out of reach.
As the shooter was pinned under a barrage of punches from Fierro and kicks to the head from James, he tried to reach for his pistol. Fierro grabbed it and used it as a bludgeon.
Fierro’s wife, Jess, said on the Facebook page of their family business, a local brewery, that her husband had bruised his right side and injured his hands, knees, and ankle. “He was covered in blood,” she wrote.
The disturbed assailant was already known to local law enforcement for an incident in June 2021. At the time, he was arrested for a bomb threat that led to a standoff with law enforcement at his mother’s home. In addition, the killer “identifies” as non-binary and uses “they/them” pronouns according to his lawyers. Beyond the Left’s boilerplate anti-2A rhetoric, there are and should be reasonable grounds for removing firearms. Here, it appears, was one such case.
None of this, however, stopped the shameless opportunists on the Left from immediately blaming Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans. “After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric,” tweeted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/COVID, Atlanta. Tree of life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.”
We have no idea what drove the assailant to commit mayhem and murder — nor does a narcissistic leftist congresswoman from Queens — but we suspect it had a lot more to do with emotional imbalance and individual brokenness than it did Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. Unless there’s a growing community of nonbinary they/them ultra-MAGA types we’re not aware of.
Fierro had been at the club with his daughter Kassy, her boyfriend, and several others to see a drag show and celebrate a birthday. His daughter’s boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was among those fatally shot.
Somehow, we suspect he wasn’t thinking Damn those Republican lawmakers! when he sprang into action, but many of those there that night were spared because he did. “Honestly, I don’t care about myself in that moment,” he said. “I cared about everybody that was around me and I cared especially about my family.”
“As soon as I got done with that guy and the cop came in, I went across the room and started first aid with my friend who was shot in the chest and the legs in the arms.”
As Task and Purpose reports: “Fierro entered the Army as a field artillery officer in 1999, deploying to Iraq from November 2003 to February 2004, January 2006 to December 2006, September 2008 to August 2009, and then to Afghanistan from April 2011 to April 2012 before leaving the service as a major in 2013. During that time he received numerous awards, including the Combat Action Badge and two Bronze Stars, according to his service record.”
The father and husband said he relied on his combat training to respond to the situation. “I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Fierro said. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”
“I told him while I was hitting him, I said, ‘I’m going to f***ing kill you, man, because you tried to kill my friends.’ My family was in there. My little girl was in there,” he said.
Fierro isn’t the first man to act courageously and aggressively to save the lives of others. In fact, he’s emblematic of traditional manhood and masculinity and military training. And for that, the surviving patrons of Club Q — and their friends and families — can be thankful.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/93079-toxic-masculinity-takes-out-gay-nightclub-assailant-2022-11-23
****************************************
29 November, 2022
Inside the mind of an incel
The story below is rather confused about the direction of the causal arrow. Do people who are depressed become incels or do incels become depressed? I am inclined to suspect that many incels are not too different psychologically but become disturbed and dysfunctional as a result of their inability to attract women. If that is so, there is a clear need for counselling and life lessons that would improve their attractivesness to women.
I have put up previously (e.g. here) stories about how many women these days find great fault with most of the men they meet -- and the women remain unattached because of that. "The men are no good" is an often expressed complaint. So it seems clear that many men are doomed to remain lonely. Many really are rejected by women. So men who have no success with women at all could well develop the negative feelings that we see in incels.
A major issue is physical attractiveness. That can be rather nebulous. Different women find different men physically attractive. But one near-certainty is that women like a tall, well-built man. As long as he is also reasonsbly polite, women will go for him. So incels will almost always be deficient in that regard or have seriously unattractive personalities, chief of which is egotism.
But most men are not tall, well-built and socially adept so is there any hope for the many leftovers? There is. I am in my 80th year and consequently am rather decayed in looks but I am still capable of attracting and relating well with quality women -- and I do. And I enjoy my times with women greatly.
So what saves me from being a decrepit incel in my old age? It's not looks. Women will forgive much in a good-looking man but that is no help to me
But if looks can attract and engender forgivesness of imperfections, so can personality. At attractive personality is nearly as helpful as good looks. What constitutes an attractive personality can vary but my particular asset is uncrushable self-confidence. As long as the confidence does not stray into egotism, a confident man is almost an essential for many women. It even makes life easy for an old wreck like me
There is no magic formula for an attractive personality but a man who conveys confidence, politeness and considerateness will be unlucky indeed if he remains an incel
Incels are usually clingy wannabe momma's boys, according to one of the first studies into the hate group.
Involuntary celibates — who advocate violence and rape against women — have been responsible for a growing number of terror attacks in recent years.
They make up a dark and depraved online community of young heterosexual men who blame society in women for their lack of romantic success.
Now researchers from the University of Rome have found similar personality traits that band members together.
Incels score highly for anxiety and paranoia, which may explain why they are distrustful of women and jealous of other men who have successful romances.
They also had higher depression scores, which may also lead to self-hatred, and suicidal and violent tendencies.
The researchers found incel members had a 'fearful attachment style', which includes being clingy or emotionally absent.
Their hatred of women and misogyny stems from a fear of trusting others and getting hurt, which may have arisen due to emotional neglect or abuse as a child, according to the study.
The team hope their findings and the scale can be used by doctors to identify people at risk of becoming incels.
In September, a self-described incel in Southern California was charged for a series of attacks on women using pepper-spray.
Alex Minassian killed 10 people with a van in Toronto in 2018, claiming it was a 'rebellion' which would 'force' women to have sex with men like him.
Elliot Rodgers, who killed six people in a gun and knife attack in California in 2014, posted a video shortly before his attack in which he complained about being a virgin at aged 22 and how he had never kissed a girl.
He also published an 141-page document going through his deep-rooted hatred of women, in which he said he could not understand why women would not want to have sex with him.
Mr Rodgers was never formally diagnosed with a mental illness.
A total of 770 men aged between 18 and 69 were given a set of questionnaires online identifying incel traits, depression and anxiety levels, attachment style and paranoia symptoms.
Incel attacks in the US
May 2020 - Incel gunman shot and wounded three people at a mall in Arizona while livestreaming the attack on Snapchat
February 2020 - A machete attack in a Toronto massage parlor became the first incident of alleged incel violence to be prosecuted as an act of terrorism
November 2018 - A gunman who posed as customer at a Tallahassee yoga studio killed two women and wounded five others.
He said he wanted to 'blow off' a woman's head and expressed other disturbing and misogynistic views four years ago on his YouTube channel.
April 2018 - A man used a van to kill 10 pedestrians in Toronto. He told police he belonged to an online community of sexually frustrated men, some of whom have plotted attacks on people who have sex.
The incel trait scale, developed by Dr Scaptura and Dr Boyle in 2019, includes factors such as confused, sad, fearful, excluded, weak and insecure.
Men who scored highly on the scale were more likely to also display paranoia, anxiety and depression.
Paranoia is an unjustified mistrust of people and can include unwarranted jealously.
In the case of incels, they are mistrustful of women specifically and jealous of other men who are successful in romantic relationships.
Depression and anxiety also contribute to an incel mindset, as both can cause diminished self-esteem and isolation.
Incels believe they are unable to attract women and will often retreat to online forums to discuss their unhappiness and frustration.
The researchers found that men who had a fearful attachment style were also more likely to score highly on incel traits.
On the other hand, those who had a secure attachment style scored lower in the questionnaire of incel traits.
Attachment styles are ways people behave in relationships with others and are based on the bond individuals had with their parents or primary caregiver while growing up.
A secure attachment style is when people feel protected by their parents, leading them to feel comfortable in relationships with others later in their life.
But if a child's primary caregiver is neglecting or unpredictable, the child can become needy as they work harder to get the attention they feel they are lacking.
When they become adults, children with a disorganized attachment have low self-esteem and an intense fear of rejection and abandonment, which is consistent with an incel attitude.
Boys may grow up resentful of women due to a lack of healthy relationships developed in childhood.
A caregiver might have behaved in a frightening way, including abuse towards the child.
Or they may have been inconsistent and unpredictable in their interactions with their offspring — being highly loving at times and then neglectful at others.
Boys can be left feeling unlovable and mistrustful that people will support and accept them.
The researchers concluded that paranoia and depressive-anxious symptoms play a 'pivotal role' in the incel attitude, and suggested that fearful attachment styles can contribute to a misogynic attitude.
Children may grow up resenting women if they feel their primary caregiver did not give them the love they needed, and may also leave them with a negative self-view.
The study was published in the The Journal of Sexual Medicine.
*********************************************************
Gender quotas are never the solution
‘To be judged on the content of our character and not the colour of our skin’ – that was one of the dreams of the great Martin Luther King Jr. We have progressed a great deal since MLK delivered his famous speech, yet in many respects, it seems we’ve made no progress at all – and ironically, the progressive-left is more often than not to blame.
So it was refreshing to observe last month that Australia’s shadow federal Treasurer Angus Taylor ruled-out gender quotas in the Liberal Party. There are some brilliant female MPs and senators in the party, and no doubt, there will be many more in years to come. But mandating quotas is antithetical to liberty and equality – at least the kind MLK envisioned. To progress as a society, we have to treat individuals equally and without any preferential treatment.
Still, some say we need quotas to stabilise and ‘even out’ the numbers in organisations and institutions. Here are three significant reasons why such arguments should be vehemently opposed:
Quotas can lead to resentment and self-doubt, as people question whether they earned their job or were hired simply to tick a box.
Consider this hypothetical example of Alice and Sarah. Alice is highly competent, she is well respected for her intellect, coupled with a powerful work ethic. She is promoted to a more senior role based upon her abilities. On the other hand, Sarah, although a valued employee, is not quite as efficient and effective in the workplace relative to Alice. However, it is decided by their workplace management that to fulfil quotas, Sarah will be elevated to the same seniority as Alice; despite having less experience and less suitability for the role. As one might expect, Alice is infuriated as this appears to her to conflict with the interests of true equality, for she has earned her position while Sarah is being promoted for management to tick a box (and meet their diversity and inclusion KPI’s). Why strive to work hard at all if that’s not what your boss is going to value?
Quotas may have a ‘gaslighting’ effect.
Following on from the first hypothetical example above, quotas may lead to uncertainty regarding whether one has rightfully earned their post. Sarah, while not being explicitly advised that she is being moved up the ranks to fill a quota, is suspicious of her promotion. While delighted on the one hand to take a pay rise; being highly self-aware, she also feels uncomfortable with the situation as she is unsure whether or not her performance has justified the outcome. Sarah overhears co-workers making snarky comments behind her back claiming she was only promoted to fill the new quota targets.
Naturally, self-consciousness and anxiety about her performance take hold. How can she take pride in her work when she’s unsure she’s earned her position? It is not fair to her, it is not fair to her co-workers, and it is not at all in the interest of equality more broadly.
They may lead to a lack of productivity.
A company’s number one priority must be turning a profit. Hiring based on identity is far less productive than hiring the best person for the job, whoever they may be. This is the essence of meritocracy: a system in which people are appointed to their posts based upon merit. In its true form, it looks beyond the race; religion; class; gender etc., of an individual, and focuses merely upon their competency to do a job effectively.
In summary, equality of opportunity is far more vital than equality of outcome. Thankfully, the National Party’s frontbench has demonstrated true egalitarian leadership by prioritising the former. You can have equal representation while retaining meritocracy. In the words of David Littleproud, the Nats’ 50/50 gender split is not because of any quota, it is ‘because of talent’ and ‘an environment whereby women are given the opportunity to stand up and feel encouraged to stand up’. Such an environment is both fair and diverse.
Angus Taylor made the right call. Women are equal with men and deserve to be treated as such. A quota undermines this and is insulting to competent women. Following the inspiration of MLK, let’s look not to gender quotas, but to character, and indeed, to competence.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/gender-quotas-are-never-the-solution/
*********************************************************
Broadway’s Lion King interpreter fired for being white
A white sign-language interpreter booted from Broadway’s Lion King for his skin colour quietly settled his federal discrimination case against the theatre company that fired him, the NY Post has learned.
Keith Wann and the Theatre Development Fund — a non-profit that provides ASL interpreters at Broadway shows — resolved the dispute outside of court just two weeks after Wann filed his lawsuit and The Post published a front-page report.
“The matter between myself and TDF has been resolved and both parties are satisfied with the discussions that ensued,” Wann wrote in a social media post announcing the settlement.
“I look forward to the review of the process that will come from this to hopefully benefit the interpreting profession.”
Wann filed the lawsuit on November 8 after he and another interpreter, Christina Mosleh, were told to back out of the production in April so they could be replaced by black sign-language experts, according to the suit and emails obtained by The Post.
“Keith Wann, though an amazing ASL performer, is not a black person and therefore should not be representing Lion King,” Shelly Guy, the director of ASL for The Lion King, told Lisa Carling, the director of the Theatre Development Fund’s accessibility programs, in an email.
Wann’s decision to take the case up in court was met with online backlash from the deaf community.
“You disgusted me,” Randy Spann, host of the deaf talk show The Real Talk with Randy, said in video response to Wann’s lawsuit. “Enough is enough. Let black people get their opportunities to get a spotlight.”
In a viral TikTok video, deaf performer Raven Sutton blasted Wann for his decision to sue the theatre group. “This is not discrimination,” Sutton signed on the video that amassed over 57,000 views. “Reverse racism is not a thing. Stop taking all the jobs when we have black interpreters that are the better fit. Wipe your own white tears because we are not going to do it for you.”
Many Post readers and others in the deaf community came out in force to support Wann and condemn the outrage he faced.
“I’m baffled by the hate,” Jared Allebest, a deaf civil rights attorney, told The Post. “There are some people justifying why they don’t support him through the lens of racial identity politics.”
In Wann’s statement this week, the interpreter addressed the criticism he faced online and the debates his lawsuit spawned.
“Over the last week I have seen a lot of pain in our community and have also seen some much-needed conversations,” Wann wrote. “It is unfortunate that assumptions were made, and conclusions were drawn without all the facts.”
**********************************************
A Tasmanian tribunal has rejected the right of same-sex attracted people to hold social functions that exclude transgender people
This gets crazier and crazier
Launceston lesbian activist Jessica Hoyle had sought an exemption from Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Act to run female-only “drag-king” shows and other lesbian events.
The exemption was denied by Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Sarah Bolt in July 2021, prompting Miss Hoyle to appeal to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
In a ruling late last week circulated on Monday, the tribunal rejected Miss Hoyle’s appeal, finding the desire for female-only lesbian events was insufficient justification for an exemption.
“While the applicants may not wish to comply with the Act and find aspects of its application to transgender and transsexual women irksome, particularly in the context of the event they would like to hold, that is not a sufficient justification,” ruled tribunal member Kate Cuthbertson.
Ms Cuthbertson SC said arguments by Miss Hoyle claiming “patterns of criminality and nefarious motivations” for transwomen attending female-only events were “not supported by empirical research or compelling evidence”.
Miss Hoyle told The Australian she was disappointed in the decision and would fight on, if necessary all the way to the High Court, believing same-sex attracted females should be able to exclude “people with penises” from social events.
“This decision erases the rights of women and freedom of association for lesbians,” said Miss Hoyle. “It is harmful to everyday, average lesbian women and gay men, who just want to be able to meet one another in a safe environment, and not have members of the opposite sex harass us.
“I’m all for transgenders and transsexuals having their own events, their own spaces, but (they ought) not force themselves on to anybody else’s rights. We are seeing in this country the erasure of women’s rights.”
However, Rose Boccalatte, of Equality Tasmania, welcomed the tribunal ruling. “This decision upholds the integrity of our gold-standard Anti-Discrimination Act and sends the message that trans and gender diverse people are equally protected by that Act,“ Ms Boccalatte said.
“It is very welcome to see the tribunal calling out misinformation about transgender women.”
Miss Hoyle said she was seeking further legal advice but was likely to reapply for an exemption taking into account aspects of the tribunal decision.
****************************************
28 November, 2022
Scientists Don’t Agree on What Causes Obesity, but They Know What Doesn’t
And that was predictable from a Left-leaning group. Leftists regularly shy away from individual responsibility. They tend to blame "society" for personal failings. And the idea that people have no personal control over obesity is bunk. The media are full of stories about people who have changed their behavior and lost a lot of weight as a result. I am myself a lot lighter than I used to be. Though I went down a very hard road to get there
LONDON — A select group of the world’s top researchers studying obesity recently gathered in the gilded rooms of the Royal Society, the science academy of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, where ideas like gravity and evolution were once debated.
Now scientists were arguing about the causes of obesity, which affects more than 40 percent of U.S. adults and costs the health system about $173 billion each year. At the meeting’s closing session, John Speakman, a biologist, offered this conclusion on the subject: “There’s no consensus whatsoever about what the cause of it is.”
That’s not to say the researchers disagreed on everything. The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting.
The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge. And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.
A nutritional biologist presented ?th?e idea that all the carbohydrates and fat in our food today dilute the protein our bodies need, driving us to eat more calories to make up for the discrepancy. An endocrinologist spoke of the scientific model behind the low-carb diet approach, suggesting eating patterns heavy in carbohydrates are uniquely fat promoting, while an evolutionary anthropologist argued many lean hunter-gatherer societies ate a lot of carbohydrates, with a special affinity for honey.
Others suggested the problem is ultraprocessed foods, the prepared and packaged goods that make up more than half of the calories Americans consume. A physiologist shared his randomized control trial showing people eat more calories and gain more weight on ultraprocessed diets compared with whole-food diets of the same nutrient composition. But it’s still unclear why these foods drive people to eat more, he said.
The mystery could be explained by the thousands of toxic substances ultraprocessed foods can carry in the form of fertilizers, insecticides, plastics and additives, argued one biochemist. Her research in cells has shown these chemicals interfere with metabolism.
Still others thought perhaps the problem is less about what we’re eating and more about what we’re not. An ethologist shared her work on the link between food insecurity and obesity in birds. When food becomes scarce, the animals eat fewer calories but gain more weight. Studies in humans have also found a “robust” association between food insecurity and obesity, she said — the so-called hunger obesity paradox.
To add to the complexity, the researchers made it clear that obesity can’t be thought of as one condition. They spoke of rare cases caused by single gene mutations or disorders; more commonly, obesity is believed to arise because of still murky gene-environment interactions. Perhaps they should have been talking about obesities the whole time.
By the end of the conference, the attendees were no closer to a unifying theory for the global rise in obesity — a condition that’s been with humans since at least Hippocrates but started to become widespread only after the debut of MTV. Yet in that short period, scientists, including many in the room, ??have learned a lot.
They’ve identified more than a thousand genes and ??variants that increase a person’s obesity risk. They’ve figured out that body fat is much more than a storage depot for energy and that not everyone with obesity ?goes on to develop its associated complications, which include cancer, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke and premature death. They’ve made remarkable progress mapping out how the brain orchestrates feeding and adapts to different diets, altering food preferences along the way. But ?precisely what changed in recent? history to affect these complex biological systems, the scientists couldn’t concur.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/opinion/obesity-cause.html
********************************************************
Portland store shuts down, posts blistering note on front door slamming rampant crime: ‘city is in peril’
A Portland, Oregon, clothing shop permanently shut down this month after facing a string of break-ins that has left the store financially gutted, according to a note posted to the front of the store.
“Our city is in peril,” a printed note posted on Rains PDX store reads, according to KATU2. “Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business, in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against the criminal behavior that goes unpunished. Do not be fooled into thinking that insurance companies cover losses. We have sustained 15 break-ins … we have not received any financial reimbursement since the 3rd.”
The store’s owner Marcy Landolfo said that after 15 break-ins over the last year and a half, the business can’t survive the financial burdens the crimes have cost the shop.
“The problem is, as small businesses, we cannot sustain those types of losses and stay in business. I won’t even go into the numbers of how much has been out of pocket,” she said.
“The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen,” Landolfo continued to KATU2.
The message posted to the front store noted that the shop is closing down due to the “unrelenting criminal behavior,” “coupled with escalating safety issues for our employees.”
When Rains faced a break-in last month, according to KATU 2, Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office said they were working on a plan to better financially assist business owners who needed to repair their shops.
But Landolfo said that isn’t enough to address crime in the city.
“Paying for glass that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change,” she said.
Rains is the latest store in Portland to close up shop following crime spikes. A Nike location abruptly, and reportedly temporarily, closed up shop earlier this fall after brazen shoplifting incidents.
Thefts have plagued retail chains nationwide in recent years. The National Retail Federation conducted a survey that found organized retail crime increased by 26.5% in 2021, resulting in a multi-billion dollar issue for businesses.
Violent crime in Portland has skyrocketed over the last few years. A recent study found it rose most precipitously in 2020 when the city saw near-nightly protests and riots over the death of George Floyd.
The city saw a 58% increase in homicides in 2020 compared to the year prior, and 2021 notched a 54% increase in homicides compared to the already violent and bloody 2020. The number of homicides in 2021 was a 238% increase from the numbers recorded in 2018.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/27/portland-store-shuts-down-posts-note-on-door-slamming-crime/
**********************************************************
Crazy Bronx Mom
The Bronx mom accused of murdering her two young sons may have killed them because she believed they were possessed, law-enforcement sources said Sunday — as it was revealed she was once on the radar of the city’s child-welfare agency.
Dimone Fleming 22, had been obsessed with demonic possession, and cops are now investigating whether she killed her boys ages 3 and 11 months over it, sources said.
“She made statements about the devil — unusual statements,” a police source told The Post.
Fleming chillingly wrote on her Facebook page Saturday before the slayings, “It’s only one true God and I repent from all wrong doings and negative influence.
“Leaving all things that’s no longer serves me…… Thank you for your mercy,” the woman added.
Sources said Sunday that Fleming was previously probed by the Administration for Children’s Services after her oldest son, 3-year-old DeShawn Fleming, was born. The mom was suspected of improperly caring for the boy, sources said.
It’s unclear what the findings of the probe were and what if any action was ever taken.
Fleming has been arrested but is under psychiatric evaluation and awaiting charges in the grisly slayings of DeShawn and her baby, Octavius Canada, at the family’s apartment in a city homeless shelter, police sources said.
The boys’ bodies were found under a pile of wet clothes in the bathtub, their necks and torsos brutally slashed.
******************************************************
Pastor Was Tired of Complaining About Drag Queen Story Hour, So He Actually Did Something to Combat It
An Arizona pastor has come up with an ingenious way of combating the drag queen story hour rage sweeping the nation: He held his own story hour.
On Wednesday, Dale Partridge of Prescott, Arizona, took to Instagram to share a photo of himself reading to children at a local library. In explaining his reasons for hosting the event, he said he was “tired of complaining” about drag queen story hours.
Partridge stated in his post that he read to the children a book he authored himself called “Jesus and My Gender,” which, according to The Daily Wire, teaches “a positive view of biblical boyhood and girlhood.”
Partridge wrote, “I asked myself this question: Why are drag queens seemingly more devoted to influencing kids in their community than pastors? Why is the LGBTQ+ community more effective at engaging the culture than Christians? These are serious questions we must answer.
“Passive, quiet, and effeminate Christianity is NOT working. We must return to a strong, politically engaged, and Gospel-aggressive Christianity. A Christianity where the men (and women) not only speak up but also stop the evil that is coming after our kids.”
In comments to The Daily Wire, Partridge said, “Fathers and mothers are to raise their children to understand what the Bible says about God, man, Christ, and the church. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Christian men have abdicated this role, leaving children vulnerable to the influence and lies of the culture.”
The pastor is right on the mark here: We Christians and conservatives have a duty to engage in the culture war and teach our children the correct values. If we are not strong enough to preach the gospel, the world will preach its own values to our kids.
One of the most pressing examples of this is the drag queen story hour craze, which indoctrinates children in a view of sexuality that is completely opposed to the teachings of Christ.
Drag queen story hours started out at a few local libraries, but they have since become the latest trend in the culture war and have even been introduced in public schools. This is not limited to secular institutions, either, as some churches have succumbed to the culture and held drag queen events for children.
What kind of message does it send when even the churches, which are supposed to be the custodians of God’s Word, have embraced the spiritual rot that has set into our nation?
Partridge is right: The LGBT movement has been much more effective in recent years in getting its message across, to the point where gay marriage is no longer up for debate. The conservative movement has largely surrendered to the mob, as evidenced by the 12 Republican senators who backed the so-called Respect for Marriage Act last week.
We can no longer afford to be passive. We can complain all we want, but we need to take active measures. The soul of our nation is at stake in this war, and we can no longer be content with the “live and let live” philosophy that allowed the LGBT movement to capture the soul of our nation.
Partridge shows that the best way to combat the spiritual decay in our nation is to offer a genuine alternative to it. The left does not have to have a monopoly on culture; there are still ways that conservatives can effectively fight back.
America is not yet totally lost, but if we want to save its soul, we need to do more than just complain. We need to actively combat the moral and spiritual malaise that we find ourselves in.
****************************************
27 November, 2022
Worshippers left 'in tears' as Cambridge dean claims Jesus was TRANSGENDER after row over Christ's wound having a 'vaginal appearance'
A work of art is no authority on truth. Nobody knows what Christ's wound looked like. But the C of E is not Christian anyway. They are the Devil's mockery of Christianity. The Bible tells us that homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord but the C of E even has homosexual bishops. Their actual religion is Leftism, not redemption. We can expect nothing Holy from them
Church worshippers cried 'heresy' at the Dean of Trinity College as they left a sermon claiming Jesus may have been transgender 'in tears'.
But the view of a transgender Jesus is 'legitimate', according to Dr Michael Banner, the Dean who stepped in to defend the claim made at a Sermon last Sunday that Christ had a 'trans body'.
Dr Michael Banner, the Dean of Trinity College, was backing up junior research fellow Joshua Heath, who displayed Renaissance and Medieval paintings of the crucifixion depicting a side wound that he likened to a vagina in front of the congregation.
The side wound 'takes on a decidedly vaginal appearance', said Heath, whose PhD was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.
'In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,' claimed the researcher.
Heath used the 1400th-century painting Pietà with the Holy Trinity by Jean Malouel, on display in the Louvre, to illustrate his point, according to The Daily Telegraph.
French artist Henri Maccheroni’s 1990 work 'Christs' also appeared during the sermon, as did the Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg.
In a letter to the Dean, one worshipper said: 'I left the service in tears. You offered to speak with me afterwards, but I was too distressed. I am contemptuous of the idea that by cutting a hole in a man, through which he can be penetrated, he can become a woman.
'I am especially contemptuous of such imagery when it is applied to our Lord, from the pulpit, at Evensong. I am contemptuous of the notion that we should be invited to contemplate the martyrdom of a ‘trans Christ’, a new heresy for our age.'
Others said they felt unwelcome in the church, adding that the children attending were visibly uncomfortable.
But Banner wrote a letter defending the sermon, seen by The Telegraph, saying: 'For myself, I think that speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation, says something else about that artistic tradition, or resists its application to contemporary questions around transsexualism.'
He said however that he would not issue an invitation to someone who he thought would deliberately seek to shock or offend the congregation, or who he anticipated would speak against the Christian faith.
*******************************************************
NZ has more in common with Orwell than Magna Carta
By OLIVER HARTWICH
Two new bills take the integration of M?ori custom into the NZ legal system to a new level; one that negates equality before the law.
There was a time, not so long ago, when countries in the common law tradition had comparable legal systems. Yes, there had always been differences between, say, the law of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Still, their basic approaches to legal matters were similar.
New Zealand was also a member of this family of common law jurisdictions. In one respect, that is by not having a written constitution, New Zealand was actually quite like Britain, the historic source of the common law.
But times are changing, and in few places are they changing as rapidly as in New Zealand. Something radically different is emerging in New Zealand’s legal system. It may still be rooted in the common law, but it is increasingly incorporating traditional M?ori concepts.
This is a recent development, albeit one with a long prehistory. For one and a half centuries, New Zealand law and M?ori custom (tikanga) have sat side by side. But their interactions were limited, and the only laws enforceable were those laws passed by Parliament and made by judges. State-made law was dominant over tribal rules.
Over the past few decades, Australia and New Zealand have witnessed the gradual recognition of customary title. In Australia, the landmark case was Mabo. In New Zealand, the establishment of the Waitangi Tribunal was the primary step to consider historic grievances over breach of the 1840 Treaty.
At least in principle, recognition of customary title is reconcilable with the common law. Indeed, the New Zealand Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 was passed as a statutory codification of the common law tests for establishing communal property rights not extinguished by statute or adverse possession.
However, two Bills proposed by the New Zealand Government to replace the Resource Management Act go much further than that. More than any other legislation before, the Natural and Built Environments Bill (NBE) and the Spatial Planning Bill embody what are presented as M?ori legal concepts. Whether these really give enough certainty to justify treatment as legal concepts is now a vital matter for New Zealanders.
Right at the start of the NBE, the Bill states the following goal: “The recognition of, and making provision for, the relationship of iwi and hap? and the exercise of their kawa, tikanga (including kaitiakitanga), and m?tauranga in relation to their ancestral lands, water, sites, w?hi tapu, w?hi t?puna, and other taonga.”
All these words and terms probably need to be translated for an Australian audience. Tikanga, for example, is the body of M?ori custom. Kaitiakitanga is the M?ori concept of looking after the environment. M?tauranga M?ori is the body of M?ori knowledge, which includes both factual knowledge and mythology.
That latter part makes m?tauranga M?ori a fuzzy source of legal principles. Judges familiar with M?ori culture may purport to distil the legal significance of such terms. However, tribal elders and some experts emphasise they differ in meaning for each iwi. Meanwhile, other experts, including the only M?ori judge on the Supreme Court, assert that it is not for the courts to declare tikanga or to change it. It is only for them to ascertain if from its tribal custodians.
The draft NBE legislation purports to define some of the terms, but always with a degree of circularity.
Thus, for example, “kaitiakitanga means the exercise of guardianship by the tangata whenua of an area in accordance with tikanga M?ori in relation to natural and physical resources.” The problem is that there is no readily accessible standard meaning of precision in any of the M?ori terms in that “definition”.
These terms are not just legal or political puffery. They present as core elements of the Bill. Tikanga is mentioned 31 times throughout. M?tauranga M?ori comes up 26 times. Kaitiakitanga can be found in seven places. They all beat “property right”, which only features three times.
The Bill also states that M?ori customary law applies to “all persons exercising powers and performing functions and duties” under the Act. This is besides their role of “giving effect” to the principles of The Treaty of Waitangi.
The role of M?ori concepts within resource management will be pervasive. The same applies to the legal standing of M?ori tribes (iwi), who feature not fewer than 153 times in the Bill.
This Bill takes the integration of purported M?ori custom into the New Zealand legal system to a new level. It prominently enshrines various M?ori concepts as sources of law which may not be properly known even to most New Zealand lawyers, let alone lawyers in other common law jurisdictions.
We may thus see the emergence of a new legal system in New Zealand – and perhaps a new system of government, too. The new system seems unlikely to be compatible with key elements of the rule of law, as generally understood. Its roots may remain in the common law, in its adherence to forms and procedures.
But New Zealand’s new system expressly negates equality before the law. It does so by selectively granting rights on public and private property use. Under the Bill, M?ori will have some exclusive powers to decide on how resources are used to change the environment. Mind you, “environment” is defined widely to cover both cultural and economic matters, not just nature.
New Zealand is heading away from other great common law jurisdictions in the terminology and philosophy it applies. The NBE marks a radical withdrawal from the broader family of the common law.
Perhaps the proponents of this Bill are unaware of this possibility. They may also regard the embedding of indigenous customs into statute as part of the normal evolution of the law. The NBE is not the first piece of legislation to move in this direction.
But maybe the Bill’s supporters would not even be unhappy if a long-term outcome were to be New Zealand leaving the family of common law jurisdictions and defining its unique place in the legal world. That would be an act of decolonisation, a radical break with the past.
Whatever the motives of the legislators, the Bill warrants wider discussion. Yes, it is “just” a Bill about resource management (important as that is). But it is a dramatic step on a path towards a different legal system: one defined by tribal concepts – and by tribes apparently unconstrained by their non-M?ori neighbours.
By its historic origins, going back to Magna Carta, the common law was a system that (sometimes imperfectly) tried putting everyone under the same law. Not even the king was above the law, and when he tried to ignore that principle, it could cost him his head.
What we are witnessing in New Zealand is the emergence of an altogether different system. It has more in common with George Orwell’s Animal Farm where “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Perhaps New Zealanders are happy to be heading there. Who knows? So far, at least, they have not been asked. It might be worth asking them.
*******************************************************
The traditional fairy tales are now too GRIM for children
In case reders have missed the pun: The heading above contains an allusion to the German Gebrüder Grimm, who authored a famous collection of folk tales
Many much-loved traditional fairy tales are inappropriate, outdated and too scary for young children, according to young Brits.
Forty-six per cent of Brits under 30 believe that traditional fairy tales, including Hansel and Gretel and Rumpelstiltskin, are inappropriate.
As many as 90 per cent of young people believe that the tales are old-fashioned, as 89 per cent of people surveyed said they perpetuate gender stereotypes.
Seventy seven per cent believe that the classic stories are sexist.
A quarter of parents said they wouldn't read 'offensive' tales to their young children at bedtime.
Hansel and Gretel, a story in which small children roast a witch to death in her own oven, was voted the most inappropriate, by 46 per cent of people asked.
Little Red Riding Hood was next on the naughty list, with 28 per cent saying the fable of the wolf in the woods was unacceptable.
Generation Z do not like Rumpelstiltskin either, as a quarter of people asked said it was inappropriate.
The Snow Queen, The Three Little Pigs and Beauty And The Beast are also under fire, according to the under-30s asked in a survey of 2,000 Brits.
However, some traditional stories remain popular. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White And The Seven Dwarves were the most popular nostalgic tales.
The Little Mermaid is also a fan favourite. Disney is launching a live-action remake featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel next year.
The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid will be released next year. The story, which remains one of Britain's favourite fairy tales, was made into an animated film (left) in 1989. The remake features Halle Bailey as Ariel
Many of the stories have been developed from the Brothers Grimm, who published folklore in the early 19th century and popularised many of the tales.
Nearly a third of Britons said they were shocked to discover some of the scarier elements in the original versions of the stories.
In Snow White And The Seven Dwarves, the evil Queen wants to eat Snow White's organs.
The nasty stepsisters in Cinderella mutilate themselves in some versions of the story to try and fit their feet into the small shoe that Prince Charming brings them.
Nearly 25 per cent of parents worried about their children being frightened by the fairy tales, and a quarter wouldn't read certain stories to their children before bed if they thought they were outdated or old-fashioned.
Despite their reservations, nearly half of young Brits are still happy to use the traditional tales to teach children about morals. A quarter say they have happy memories of being read the stories as children.
The figures come from a survey commissioned by Twinkly, a lighting brand that has created its own colourful lighting effects inspired by the popular children's stories.
********************************************************
What is 'Stochastic Terrorism' and Why It Worries Free Speech Advocates
There’s a new bogeyman gaining traction in the world of left-wing academic and online discourse around current events, and it goes by the name “stochastic terrorism.”
Loosely defined, it is the notion that demonization or criticism of an individual or group in society on mass media and social media inevitably leads to acts of violence against that individual or group. The word stochastic, from the Greek stokhastikos — meaning to aim at or guess — refers to outcomes that may appear random but are actually probable, just not predictable.
Stochastic terrorism, in the discourse of today’s commentariat, is the end result of unchecked hate speech. Because the left believes hate speech only comes from one direction on the political spectrum — the right — then the purveyors of that speech must be called to account for the real-world violence that results from their opinions or commentary. “Free speech is killing us,” the New York Times declared in 2019.
The phrase first gained widespread usage in certain circles when an assistant secretary in President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, now teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School, used the phrase in reference to a mass shooting in 2019 at a Walmart at El Paso. Ahead of the attack, the white perpetrator had posted a racist, anti-immigrant screed on 8chan. Most of his victims were Latino.
In a piece in the Washington Post, Ms. Kayyem placed blame for the El Paso shooting at the feet of President Trump. Mr. Trump’s rhetorical winks and nods, his language about Hispanics and immigrants, and his failure to shame his fringiest supporters created an atmosphere in which attacks like El Paso, while not predictable, are probable, she claimed.
“Public speech that may incite violence, even without that specific intent, has been given a name: stochastic terrorism, for a pattern that can’t be predicted precisely but can be analyzed statistically,” Mr. Kayyem wrote. “It is the demonization of groups through mass media and other propaganda that can result in a violent act because listeners interpret it as promoting targeted violence — terrorism.”
More recently, the phrase has been trotted out to describe a shooting during a drag show at a gay nightclub at Colorado Springs last weekend, when five people were murdered. Voices on the left had been warning for weeks that something like it was going to happen and had already found a culprit for any violence — conservatives who have been campaigning against the hyper-sexualization of children in schools and the larger society.
In recent months, those conservatives have been railing against drag shows advertised as “family friendly.” Online activists have posted a steady stream of videos depicting children participating in such events, along with diatribes against “gender-affirming” medical care for confused adolescents and videos of public school teachers bragging about the myriad ways they attempt to persuade schoolchildren that gender is fluid and biological sex a fallacy. None of the videos are fake. They are merely broadcast to an audience that otherwise might not have seen them.
Writing in the Advocate, an LGBT magazine, Christopher Wiggins blamed these activists and their counterparts in conservative media for fomenting an atmosphere in which an attack like that at Colorado Springs was inevitable.
“Far-right influencers have set their sights on the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the transgender community and drag queens, to generate a divisive culture war issue in the run-up to the recent midterm election,” Mr. Wiggins wrote. “For months, experts have warned that the attacks targeting the LGBTQ+ community were not only bigoted but also dangerous.”
The attack, Mr. Wiggins continued, is prima facie evidence that the stochastic terrorism described by Ms. Kayyem is alive and well in America. There is, he said, a “direct correlation” between online criticism of radical gender theory and “angry and potentially violent extremists.” That the shooter’s lawyers said Tuesday he is “non-binary” and prefers “they/them” pronouns — the imprimatur of an enlightened progressive as opposed to a knuckle-dragging conservative — is apparently irrelevant.
The ultimate aim of these attempts to rebrand hate speech as terrorism is to silence the voices that the left finds offensive or disagreeable — mission creep for the speech police. Writing in Scientific American earlier this month, author Bryn Nelson of Seattle suggested that the key to combatting stochastic terrorism is “turning off the source of fuel.” Americans must, he said, strengthen and enforce laws against hate speech and incitement to violence.
There are those who believe, however, that the pendulum has already swung too far in favor of suppressing speech. Speaking to the Sun in March, one of America’s most esteemed judges, Laurence Silberman, who passed away on October 2, warned that the current climate surrounding the First Amendment is “worse than McCarthyism.” He called freedom of speech “the most fundamental American value” and repression of it “un-American.”
If the increasingly shrill voices on the left succeed in equating with terrorism criticism of drag queen story hours and medical intervention to prevent adolescents from going through puberty, then Silberman could turn out to have been, if anything, understating the danger to American values.
https://www.nysun.com/article/the-lefts-new-speech-crime-carries-its-own-dangers
****************************************
25 November, 2022
I'm 59 and I NEVER want to have sex again after being widowed twice - holding hands is my love language now
It's common for post-menopausal women to lose interest in sex
A single mother has revealed she never wants to have sex again and claims that holding hands is more romantic to her now that her libido has waned.
Monica Zwolsman, 59, who lives in Sydney, Australia, explained how she noticed a dramatic decrease in her sex drive after having her two sons and said that it was 'what nature intended'.
In a personal essay for Mamma Mia, the mother - who has tragically been widowed twice - questioned whether any women over the age of 55 still experiences sexual desire and insisted she 'doesn't care about being unf***able'.
When researching the issue for her piece online, Monica says she came across countless medical websites telling her that there was 'something wrong' with her body.
Monica says almost every website recommended taking hormones or having therapy as a means to restore her libido.
The mother-of-two wrote: 'The intimation is that all natural, healthy women want sex, no matter what their age, so I am in some way lacking – either mentally, physically or hormonally.
'I am not stressed. I am happy. I have lots of time. I am in perfect health. But I just don’t want to be that damn intimate with anyone.'
The mother then went on to explain how she's loved 'deeply' in her life - but as she's gotten older, she now prioritises 'hand holding and hugs' over having sex.
In the 1990s, Monica's first husband Ken was tragically shot dead in a South African war zone two weeks before the country's democratic elections.
Then in 2003, the mother - who had only just given birth to son Benjamin - lost her second husband Stephen to a heart attack at the age of 39.
Shortly afterwards, Monica's first child passed away and she went on to marry for a third time.
Now a single mother with two grown-up sons, Monica says that her idea of a romantic night in consists of sitting on the sofa and watching TV or reading a book as opposed to having passionate sex.
After doing a callout on social media, the mother was reassured to know that her peers hold the same view.
She continued: 'I miss hugging someone and burrowing into their armpit, skin-to-skin contact and spooning in bed. Most of all, I would like to have someone of my very own who is always there as an anchor.
'But if it means I have to trade the privacy of my genitals to get this, then I am out, because I don’t want the rest that badly. I have a dog for companionship and unconditional love. I have sons, sisters and brothers for family.'
********************************************************
Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Is Reinstated by Top State Court
Georgia’s Supreme Court temporarily reinstated the state’s near-total abortion ban on Wednesday, after granting an emergency petition to stay a lower court order blocking the law.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Nov. 15 that the law that banned almost all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy was void because it was unconstitutional when it was adopted in 2019. The state filed its notice of appeal the next day.
The high court’s stay is temporary, pending a decision on the merits. The one-page order makes almost all abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy illegal in Georgia.
The court also denied the abortion providers’ request for 24 hours notice before reinstating the ban, the plaintiffs said in a statement.
“Today, patients in waiting rooms are being turned away and forced to seek health care elsewhere or else carry pregnancies to term against their will,” the plaintiffs said.
“Reinstating this extreme abortion ban will cause immense harm, especially to Black Georgians and people with the fewest resources — who are least likely to be able to travel out of state for care and most likely to suffer severe medical consequences from forced pregnancy and childbirth,” Julia Kaye, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project said.
Alice Wang, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights said the “legal ping pong is causing chaos for medical providers trying to do their jobs and for patients who are now left frantically searching for the abortion services they need.”
McBurney had reasoned that the law was illegal under Roe v. Wade at the time of its enactment, and the US Supreme Court’s overruling of that precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, didn’t make the provision legal under Georgia law.
All of the Justices concurred, except Justice Nels S.D. Peterson, who was disqualified, and Justice Andrew A. Pinson who didn’t participate.
Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP, Caplan Cobb LLC, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc., American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Georgia Inc., Center for Reproductive Rights, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America represent the plaintiffs.
Planned Parenthood receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable organization founded by Bloomberg Law owner Michael Bloomberg.
The case is Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective v. Georgia, Ga., No. S23M0358, 11/23/22.
*********************************************
Catholic University of America Opposes Radical ‘Respect for Marriage Act’
In our increasingly secular age in which growing numbers of especially young people claim no belief in God, or are indifferent to him, to whom will they give thanks?(Photo: Getty Images)
The Catholic University of America said Tuesday that it is aligned with top United States Catholic clergy in opposing the so-called Respect for Marriage Act.
“The Catholic University of America is committed to upholding the teachings of the Catholic Church, which includes the belief that marriage is between one man and one woman,” the university said in a Tuesday statement to The Daily Signal.
“Regarding this specific legislation,” the university continued, “the University stands alongside the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and their statements from July 2022 and most recently, Nov. 17.”
In the Nov. 17 statement, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty, highlighted that senators who promote the Respect for Marriage Act claim their amended bill respects religious liberty.
“But the provisions of the Act that relate to religious liberty are insufficient,” he warned.
“The bill is a bad deal for the many courageous Americans of faith and no faith who continue to believe and uphold the truth about marriage in the public square today,” he said. “The Act does not strike a balance that appropriately respects our nation’s commitment to the fundamental right of religious liberty.”
“Senators supporting the Act must reverse course and consider the consequences of passing an unnecessary law that fails to provide affirmative protections for the many Americans who hold this view of marriage as both true and foundational to the common good,” the cardinal concluded.
The university’s opposition to the legislation comes as conservatives sound the alarm that it is not too late to block or amend the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. In a letter The Daily Signal published Saturday, Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee urged his 12 Republican colleagues who voted for the legislation to “have the courage to protect” religious freedom.
The Respect for Marriage Act, or HR 8404, “provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages,” repealing provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman.
The legislation, which was passed by the House in July, also “repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” allows “the Department of Justice to bring a civil action,” and “establishes a private right of action for violations.”
Twelve Republican lawmakers voted for advancing the Respect for Marriage Act: Sens. Roy Blunt of Missouri, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Shelley Capito of West Virginia, Susan Collins of Maine, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana.
Many of these lawmakers claim that the much-discussed legislation protects religious liberty. But opponents of the bill warn that it “puts a giant target on people of faith.”
Lee has repeatedly raised concerns about the contents of the Respect for Marriage Act, urging Democrats and Republicans to come to an agreement on his amendment creating a strict policy that the federal government can’t discriminate on either viewpoint of marriage, whether same sex or traditional.
“I offered to support the bill if the sponsors would include my amendment to prohibit the government from removing tax-exempt status based on religious beliefs about same-sex marriage (for or against),” Lee said Wednesday. “The sponsors adamantly refused even to consider that. Why?”
Other major conservative and religious organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Religious Freedom Institute have condemned the Respect for Marriage Act. Religious leaders previously warned The Daily Signal that it would hack away at the religious freedom of faith-based groups.
“Catholic institutions will have a tough time living our faith under this legislation,” Stephen Minnis, president of the Catholic Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, told The Daily Signal last week.
“In fact,” he said, “giving religious institutions a tough time seems to be the point of the legislation. But the U.S. Constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, not just expression of religion. Benedictine College is committed to those rights, following the U.S. bishops, who joined an amici brief to defend our position this summer.”
***************************************************
An American Tradition: Chronic Anti-Poverty Waste Via the Federal-to-Local Distribution Pipeline
For six years, beginning in 2014, the accounting firm for the Southeast Alabama Community Action Partnership warned administrators that the organization was doing a poor job of managing the millions of dollars in taxpayer money it received annually for its poverty-reduction work, including home energy assistance and foster grandparenting.
In 2018, a longtime employee filed a federal complaint alleging that the group spent public money profligately on extravagant travel and for other unauthorized purposes, and that it retaliated against employees who questioned its financial practices.
Although the case was dismissed upon agreement by both parties, the U.S. Department of Justice fined the Alabama nonprofit $30,000 last year for fiscal failures, including keeping federal money “even after being told by its outside accountant that it needed to return those funds to the United States.”
The fine was largely borne by U.S. taxpayers – the Southeast Alabama Community Action Partnership in 2021 received $5.5 million in federal grant funding, representing 97% of its support and revenue for the year.
The Alabama agency is part of a national network of over 1,000 local "community action agencies," or CAAs, distributing some $14 billion a year for so-called poverty-reduction programs, according to the Community Action Partnership, a national group that provides spending guidance and training to the local agencies.
That spending, part of a tangle of 89 programs spanning 14 federal departments and agencies, is a relatively small part of the federal outlay for low-income individuals and families, now totaling $1.16 trillion annually. Yet CAAs are significant as the main engines of such high-profile programs as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Head Start education efforts. And they offer a case study in how such spending can be virtually impossible to unwind, even if riddled with problems, critics say.
Despite a steady flow of federal audits and other reviews finding egregious waste in poverty relief over the past five decades, the Biden administration has doubled down on such programs since taking office last year. Food stamps, housing assistance, tax credits, and energy subsidies have been broadened in President Biden’s vast welfare expansion.
As RealClearInvestigations recently reported, the budget for the administration’s home weatherization programs nearly tripled to $1 billion a year under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, despite a long history of fraud and mismanagement among the CAAs that disburse the funds. Enforcement and policing of these programs has not been widely enhanced.
“The federal government just tosses money at the states and it’s up to them to figure it out,” said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has studied poverty and welfare programs since the ’90s. “No one pays attention or follows up on it, because it’s not state money and the federal government sends it and says, ‘Do whatever you want.’ There’s no data, so these bureaucracies spend this money autonomously.”
Yet despite a 92% increase in spending on low-income individuals and families since 2008, poverty rates in the U.S. have remained well above 10% of the population since the early ’60s, according to U.S. Census data. The lowest it has been since 1959 was 10.5% in 2019, and it has since escalated to 12.8%. The poverty threshold for a single adult under 65 in 2021, the most recent metric available, was $14,097.
Problem areas include the Child Care and Development Fund, which provides child-care assistance to low-income families. It made $1.1 billion in overpayments between 2016 and 2021, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Over the years, thievery among CAAs has made headlines, such as the finance director of the state CAA association in Louisiana who embezzled over $50,000, or the leader of a Maine community action group caught embezzling $1.3 million.
In 2015, three people were sentenced for bribery connected to the Gulf Coast Community Action Agency. Their scheme stole hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for a Head Start preschool for disadvantaged children.
In 2012, the former chief executive officer of the York County, Maine, Community Action Corporation pled guilty to embezzling some $900,000 in federal grant money.
In 2002, a former official with the Community Action Agency of New Haven (Connecticut) pled guilty to stealing over $1 million in federal and state funds intended for poverty programs such as Meals on Wheels and subsidizing heating bills and heating assistance.
Even organizations designed to promote best practices at community action agencies are prone to chicanery. In 2013, the finance director of the Louisiana Association of Community Action Partners pled guilty to embezzling over $50,000.
Errors or mismanagement across the welfare spectrum are often described with bureaucratic blandness by government overseers: “Administrative or process errors made by state or local agency resulted in overpayments.”
The problems have flourished because there are evidently few consequences for failure at any level.
“Unless there is something that ensures that the money being spent locally and spent effectively or they don’t get more, then the problem is going to go forward,” said Thomas Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a DC-based policy group. “I’ve seen members of Congress saying that this program didn’t work so we’ll create a new one. If they had spent the money well or tracked it better in the first place, maybe more communities would have been helped.”
The waste is compounded by poorly prepared local management, he added. CAAs are led by local community leaders and activists, some with experience in grant handling, some not. The agency boards are required to include elected officials, representatives of the low-income community and members from local charities, civic groups, and businesses. As such, the board, supposedly a layer of oversight, is often better versed in the virtues of helping the poor but less so in the intricacies of finance.
“There’s poor planning in sending the money in the first place, then there are people receiving it with no experience in creating or funding projects,” Schatz said.
Mismanagement is so endemic to the programs that Care Providers, a boutique business insurance company, offers insurance “exclusively designed for Community Action Agencies.” Its list of crimes the organizations need to insure against includes “fraud, dishonesty, and theft by employees [which] are major problems confronting businesses of all sizes, including non-profit organizations,” the insurer writes. Care Providers “protects CAAs from loss of money, securities, or inventory resulting from crime. Common crime and fidelity insurance claims include employee dishonesty, embezzlement, forgery, robbery, safe burglary, computer fraud, wire transfer fraud, counterfeiting, and other criminal acts.”
****************************************
24 November, 2022
BART seeks another $2.3b in federal funds for ca train
I like the BART but this is a phenomenal amount to pay for another small bit of it. I expect that a lot of the money will pour into associated personal pockets
They’re baaack! The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority is now asking for another $2.3 billion from the federal government to see high-speed trains running from San Francisco to San Jose as part of the already years-delayed, over budget Bay Area Rapid Transit project, according to The Mercury News.
The total cost of this section of California’s high-speed rail project has exploded to $9.3 billion, 35 percent higher than the last estimate of $6.9 billion and almost twice what it was estimated to cost in 2014, the Mercury News reported. And it’s unclear whether that $9.3 billion figure will go up again.
Santa Clara County residents have paid for some of the project by voting for tax hikes in 2000 and 2008, paying almost $3.2 billion from sales taxes and bridge tolls.
The Federal Transit Administration already committed $2.3 billion to the project but Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority officials want to shift the overrun burden to federal taxpayers, asking the federal agency to double its commitment to $4.6 billion by moving the project to a federal program called New Starts.
This would bring the project in by 2034, four years later than current projection of 2030.
Santa Clara officials say that they don’t know the actual cost or timeline of the project. A better estimate will come during a top-to-bottom “rebaselining” effort that could end in a lower or higher estimate, VTA General Manager Carolyn Gonot said in The Mercury News.
The Federal Transit Administration completed a risk review more than a year ago, when the estimate was $9.1 billion. But the Mercury News reported in July that the FTA “continues to be concerned that the project estimate is under-representing the total cost due in part to contingency, inflation, and an optimistic base schedule and risk profile.”
**********************************************
San Francisco's white election director is FIRED to promote 'racial equity' after serving the city for 20 years
Leftist racism has come roaring back after the Hitler debacle
San Francisco's election director, who has been in the position since 2002, will have his contract terminated in a move that 'wasn't about performance' but about 'racial equity'.
John Arntz, who is white, will be fired from his position next year, San Francisco's Elections Commission decided in a 4 to 2 decision last week.
The decision to get rid of Arntz was driven 'in large part by the city's plan for racial equity' - as the city strives towards making workplaces more diverse.
However, it was Arntz himself, as Department Director, who helped to establish such plans which have now ultimately cost him his job.
According to the Department of Elections' website, its Racial Equity Action Plan was 'developed through a collaboration' with Arntz.
City officials decided not to offer him a fifth five-year contract despite widespread praise from colleagues regarding his tenure as election director.
'It's hard to achieve diversity targets if senior roles never open up,' Cynthia Dai, a member of the commission, told the Washington Free Beacon.
'This has nothing to do with his performance,' said Dai, who voted against his renewal.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed came to Arntz's defense, telling Mission Local: 'John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity, professionalism and has stayed completely independent.
'He's remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of City politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote.
'Rather than working on key issues to recover and rebuild our City, this is a good example of unfair politicization of a key part of our government that is working well for the voters of this city.'
Arntz's contract will expire in May next year but he could still choose to reapply for the job. This will be the first time since 2002 that the Elections Commission chose not to renew the position in favor of conducting a search for new candidates.
As election director Arntz has been in charge of running the elections for the county and the city for 20 years. This move came just eight days after the November 8 midterm election.
City Attorney David Chiu said he was 'mystified' by the commission's decision, saying 'some folks have forgotten the history of this department.'
'Before Director Arntz, we had five directors in as many years, ballot boxes floating in the bay and an intense lack of confidence in city elections,' he told Mission Local.
Arntz was told in an email from the Commission's president Chris Jerdonek: 'Our decision wasn't about your performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City's racial equity plan and give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership position.'
In 2021, the Elections Commission wrote to the mayor that its elections were well run, saying: 'San Francisco runs one of the best elections in the country and we believe this transparent process has allowed us to continue to improve our elections.'
A year prior in 2020 it wrote Arntz a commendation for his 'incredible leadership'.
Division Manager Mayank Patel wrote an email to the department without Arntz's knowledge, Mission Local reported. It included a letter signed by 11 other division managers detailing why they supported his renewal.
'Under the leadership of Director Arntz, our Department successfully conducted over thirty public elections and rebuilt the public's confidence in the city's elections processes from the ground up,' wrote Patel.
Another official, District 2 supervisor Catherine Stefani, said on Twitter that the decision was 'a dereliction of the Commission's duty.'
If Arntz is still the most qualified candidate after a competitive search, Dai said he will have his contract renewed.
A rift has emerged in San Francisco between elected officials and unelected bureaucracies where progressive identity politics have advanced faster, according the Free Beacon.
It suggests that the city's 'racial equity plan' - which the Elections Commission cited to support their decision regarding Arntz - was created by the same elected officials that are now criticizing the decision not to renew him.
Board appointee Jerdonek, City Attorney appointee Dai, District Attorney's office appointee Robin Stone and Public Defender's office appointee Renita LiVolsi voted to not renew Arntz's contract.
Mayoral appointee Nancy Crowley and treasurer appointee Lucy Bernholz voted for him to stay.
******************************************************
'You're burning the wrong witch': LGBTQ writer apologizes to JK Rowling after spending three months researching the Harry Potter author but finding NO evidence she is transphobic
An LGBTQ activist has commended JK Rowling for her 'bravery' and told her followers that people are 'burning the wrong witch' after she was unable to find any evidence that the Harry Potter author is transphobic.
EJ Rosetta, a writer and columnist for HuffPost, who has been vocal herself over trans issues, said in a series of Tweets that JK Rowling 'is not an 'intolerable transphobe'', but stood up for women's rights when she could have sat back.
JK Rowling said she has long faced death and rape threats for her views on transgender issues, where she has called out the erosion of biological sex and the harm it can cause to women. Critical LGBTQ activists have dubbed the author a TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, and have repeatedly denounced her for her opinions.
The author's comments and tweets led Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson to distance themselves from the world's creator.
But LGBTQ writer EJ Rosetta is adamant that activists are 'burning the wrong witch'.
In the tread, EJ Rosetta wrote: 'Right, I'm done. 3 months ago, I was tasked with writing an article detailing '20 Transphobic JK Rowling Quotes We're Done With' After 12 weeks of reading her books, tweets, full essay & finding the context of these 'quotes', I've not found a single truly transphobic message.'
The columnist and writer for HuffPost concluded that JK Rowling is not 'an 'intolerable transphobe'' but a 'woman who could have sat back & been beloved forever' but chose to speak out on women's rights.
EJ Rosetta said, often, 'one groups rights are being sacrificed for the other, with the most vulnerable women often paying the price.' The HuffPost writer pointed towards the example of domestic violence shelters and praised JK Rowling for 'paying attention'.
The Harry Potter author was also commended for her 'bravery' for speaking out on the issue.
'3 months of dedicated research,' wrote EJ Rosetta, '& I cannot find a single truly transphobic JK Rowling quote that stands up against the scrutiny of journalistic integrity. The abuse JK has endured is beyond forgiveness. Every death threat, r*pe threat & torrent of abuse, she has born w/ grace.'
Rosetta concluded: 'You're burning the wrong witch. I stand with @jk_rowling.'
JK Rowling originally came under fire in June 2020 after retweeting an opinion article where she took issue with the term 'people who menstruate' instead of the publication saying 'women'.
The author Tweeted: 'People who menstruate.' I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?'
She was also rebuked by LGBTQ activists in 2020 when she wrote: 'Erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn't hate to speak the truth.'
She added: 'I respect every trans person's right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I'd march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it's hateful to say so.'
Since then, JK Rowling said she has faced death and rape threats for her outspoken views. Just last year, activists posted a photo of themselves outside the author's home holding a pro-trans sign. The author's address was clearly visible in the image.
Rowling accused the activists of trying to intimidate her and added that she has now received so many death threats that she could 'paper the house with them'.
Downing Street even got involved and criticized the targeting of JK Rowling by trans activists. Then Prime Minister Boris Johnson's official spokesman said in November 2021: 'I don't think any individual should be targeted in that way.
'We believe that everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect and that people are able to share their views as long as it is done in that fashion.'
EJ Rosetta said she herself identified as a 'recovered TERF'. The term is used to describe feminists who others believe trans rights are excluded from women's rights.
Since then, the HuffPost writer has said that trans rights need to be respected and called for equality. She also raised awareness for the high suicide rate of trans youth.
JK Rowling's comments led Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe to speak out following her Tweets in 2020 in a statement published through the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention charity for the LGBTQ community.
The actor said: 'I realize that certain press outlets will probably want to paint this as in-fighting between J.K. Rowling and myself, but that is really not what this is about, nor is it what's important right now. While Jo is unquestionably responsible for the course my life has taken, as someone who has been honored to work with and continues to contribute to The Trevor Project for the last decade, and just as a human being, I feel compelled to say something at this moment.'
The actor concluded: 'Transgender women are women. Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people and goes against all advice given by professional health care associations who have far more expertise on this subject matter than either Jo or I.'
Emma Watson also responded to JK Rowling's comments in June 2020. The Hermione Granger actress wrote: 'Trans people are who they say they are and deserve to live their lives without being constantly questioned or told they aren’t who they say they are.
'I want my trans followers to know that I and so many other people around the world see you, respect you and love you for who you are.'
***************************************************
This is the Walmart manager, 31, who shot six co-workers dead in 'planned' break-room massacre - as Virginia cops find 'death list' of names next to his body
Andre Bing, 31, has been named by Walmart as the shooter in Tuesday night's attack in Chesapeake
Bing opened fire in the breakroom on Tuesday at 10.12pm as the night team gathered for their shift
He shot 10 people in total before killing himself; two of his victims were found dead in the breakroom with him
One of his victims was found dead at the store entrance and three others died in the hospital
Another four people who were shot remain in the hospital today and it's unclear if they will survive
*********************************************
Terrifying moment three Florida teens wake up to find Hispanic stranger lurking at the foot of their bed
Raul Mora-Yanez, 25, was caught lurking in the cabin of three teenage girls who were at a father-daughter retreat at the Circle F dude ranch in Lake Wales
Mora-Yanez was unknown to the girls, but turned out to be a camp employee
He said he was drinking when he entered the cabin and thought it was empty
One of the girls recorded the incident unfold i'n case they were killed,' and can be heard in the video screeching as Mora-Yanez moved around
The dads of the girls were also called but didn't make it to the cabin in time until Mora-Yanez had fled in his alien hoodie
He was arrested but released days later on a $25,000 bond. He will appear back in court on December 13
****************************************
23 November, 2022
Underneath most scientific findings may lie a hidden 'universe of uncertainty'
I often complained about this during my research career. Too often what the authors of an academic journal concluded would not be justified by their detailed research results. They would simply conclude what thery wanted to conclude, facts regardess. I stil read research reports at times -- mostly medical journals these days -- and the conclusions are still often junk
A hidden "universe of uncertainty" may underlie most scientific findings, especially in the social sciences, a new study suggests.
When scientists used the same data set to answer a specific hypothesis — that immigration reduces support for social policy — dozens of researchers produced completely different results, according to a new study, published Oct. 28 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The finding suggests it may be very hard to be confident in findings in some of these fields, since even small changes in initial choices could yield dramatically different results.
In the new study, Nate Breznau, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bremen in Germany, and colleagues asked 161 researchers in roughly six dozen research teams to test a common hypothesis: that immigration reduces support for government social policy. This question has been asked hundreds of times in the social science literature, and the results have been all over the map, Breznau told Live Science.
As a baseline, they gave the research teams data from six questions related to government policy from the International Social Survey Programme, a broad data set that tracks policy differences across 44 countries.
Then, they asked the teams to use logic and prior knowledge to develop models to explain the relationship between immigration and support for government social services.
For example, one group might predict that an increased flow of immigrants to a country raises competition for scarce resources, which, in turn, decreases support for social services. The research teams then had to decide what types of data to use to answer that question (for instance, the net influx of immigrants to a country, the gross domestic product, or the average or median income in different regions), as well as what types of statistical analyses they would use.
The research groups' findings mirrored the literature overall: 13.5% said it wasn't possible to draw a conclusion, 60.7% said the hypothesis should be rejected and 28.5% said the hypothesis was correct.
Breznau’s team then used their own statistical analysis to try to understand why different groups came up with such different conclusions.
They found that neither bias nor inexperience could explain the variance. Rather, hundreds of different, seemingly minor decisions may have shifted the conclusions one way or another. Even more surprising, no set of variables seemed to tip the outcomes one way or another, possibly because there simply wasn't enough data to compare the different models. (There was one limitation of the study: The authors' analysis itself is a statistical model and thus is subject to uncertainty as well.)
It's not clear to what extent this universe of uncertainty plagues other sciences; it may be that astrophysics, for example, is simpler to model than human interactions on a grand scale, Breznau said.
For instance, there are 86 billion neurons in the human brain and 8 billion people on the planet, and those people are all interacting in complex social networks.
"It might be the case that there are fundamental laws that would govern human social and behavioral organization, but we definitely don't have the tools to identify them," Breznau told Live Science.
One takeaway from the study is that researchers should spend time honing their hypothesis before jumping to data collection and analysis, Breznau said, and the new study's hypothesis is a perfect example.
"Does immigration undermine support for social policy? It's a very typical social science hypothesis, but it's probably too vague to really just get a concrete answer to," he said.
A more specific or targeted question could potentially yield better results, Breznau said.
https://www.livescience.com/uncertainty-in-scientific-studies
********************************************************
The crypto meltdown
In June, the collapse of Terra Luna shook the foundations of the cryptocurrency sector. The contagion that followed drove a handful of other major firms, including Celsius, Voyager, and Three Arrows Capital out of business. But assumptions that the worst had come to pass, and that the wheat had separated from the chaff, were premature. The bankruptcy filing of FTX has even more fundamentally damaged perceptions of the asset class, and sent valuations tumbling to lows not seen in several years.
Comparisons with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and Enron Corporation were inevitable, but underestimate the proportional magnitude of the disaster. While Lehman was emblematic of the impact of subprime investments on the financial sector, and Enron of off-balance-sheet financing among newfangled energy companies, the FTX fiasco calls into question the entire crypto complex. In fact, the FTX situation more closely resembles the crisis at MF Global some years ago, which involved a proprietary trading division dipping into customer accounts to meet funding requirements. Alameda Research, allegedly a crypto-trading firm, appears to have not traded, but rather made venture capital investments, allegedly transferring and using FTX customer funds for various corporate purposes.
FTX (and Alameda) founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) saw a rise describable only as meteoric. The firm, started in 2019, was recently valued at over $30 billion. SBF was a 30-year-old billionaire, quickly compared with Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and JP Morgan. For a time, FTX was inescapable: The logo was affixed to the shirts of Major League Baseball umpire uniforms and plastered on the Miami Heat arena. Tom Brady, Gisele Bunchen, Steph Curry, and other celebrities had advertising and marketing deals with the firm. And with the kind of irony that only financial markets provide, a Super Bowl commercial (cost: $30 million) in January 2022 featured actor Larry David responding to the assertion that FTX is “safe and easy” with “I don’t think so.” Life does indeed imitate art, at times. The firm is now bankrupt, assets are lost and missing, and SBF seems, as of this writing, to be in hiding.
The FTX implosion, on top of other debacles and hacks this year, has led some to question whether there’s “anything about crypto that is as it seems.” Indeed, SBF’s humble, geek-chic image (unruly hair, unpretentious attire, driving an unremarkable vehicle) presents a picture of guilelessness.The emergence of a simple (if highly analytical) figure using cryptocurrency trading to selflessly tackle changing the world was no doubt irresistible to an increasingly left-leaning financial establishment. A fawning article at Sequoia Capital was quickly deleted as revelations regarding FTX emerged, but has been retrieved via web archive. Printed, it runs to over 30 adulating pages.
At odds with that narrative are a private jet, a sprawling penthouse in the Bahamas, and millions upon millions of dollars spent on purchasing influence in Washington, DC. Various sources have reported that SBF’s political contributions have been to both sides of the aisle, which is certifiably correct: he gave just under $36 million to progressive candidates and $105,000 to conservatives.
Throughout 2022, SBF’s lobbying efforts focused on politicians supporting the crypto regulatory framework of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). That makes sense, as SBF had drawn up and promoted a regulatory plan which, unsurprisingly, favored FTX’ business model. But the heavy lobbying, which led to SBF being the second-largest donor in the 2022 midterms, may have had more pressing origins. As the Wall Street Journal reported on November 9th, FTX had been under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (the alternate regulator to the CFTC) and the United States Department of Justice, since the summer.
The rules he promulgated would’ve, by one account, given FTX and its subsidiaries “a monopoly.” It would also have done serious damage to the massive array of decentralized finance (DeFi) and other such firms built over the last few years. What is unique in this instance is the immediate response by those which the proposal would’ve hamstrung. SBF’s regulatory proposal was so shamelessly self-dealing that it precipitated the entire unraveling of his empire – financial, technological, and political. Tory Newmyer of the Washington Post chronicled the tipping point:
Many crypto die-hards viewed [SBF’s] overtures to Washington as a betrayal of crypto’s founding mission. That set the stage for his most formidable adversary–Changpeng Zhao [CZ], chief executive of Binance, a rival crypto exchange–to crush him with stunning and decisive swiftness. On Sunday [November 6th] Zhao announced that he was selling off his investment in FTX: $580 million of a crypto token FTX has been using to prop up its debts. ‘We are not against anyone,’ Zhao wrote on Twitter. ‘But we won’t support people who lobby against other industry players behind their backs.’
CZ’s liquidation triggered a wider, more frantic exodus, and in turn, the discovery that withdrawal requests could not be met. An explicit attempt by an industry leader to erect insurmountable barriers to competition by commandeering legal and regulatory resources is far from unprecedented. But it certainly speaks to a sophistication that belies the ‘innocent visionary nerd’ role so actively marketed (see also Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Adam Naumann of WeWork, and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.).
A nearly identical version of this sleight of hand has been going on in the rapidly expanding influence of the purveyors of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) philosophies. There is, as well, a direct connection between SBF and ESG: the FTX Foundation. Acting as the major conduit of his “effective altruism” donations, the list of supported causes offers few surprises. It launched in February 2022 (roughly the same time as SBF’s Beltway pavement-pounding began) and planned to support selected causes to the tune of $100 million per year, up to $1 billion over the next decade. Climate change, animal welfare, future pandemic prevention (and other causes) were SBF’s primary focus.
It is impossible to square “effective altruism” with the surreptitious use of customer funds to cover costs and losses associated with personal, high-risk trading and investing activities. One use of customer funds was, evidently, a personal $7.3 million bet that Donald Trump would lose an election in 2024. For a businessman, long before saving the whales or shrinking carbon footprints, there is no “altruism” more fundamental than treating customer deposits with probity.
https://blog.independent.org/2022/11/18/ftx-sbf-esg/
*************************************************
Woke Healthcare Coming Down the Pike
As Joe Biden put it in a speech after the midterms, he has concluded that the people must like his policies since the red tsunami never appeared. So he’s doubling down on what he was already doing.
Just how will he do that after losing the House and potentially continuing to have a tie in the Senate? Through executive orders and through the overinflated power of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Biden proved from the get-go that he is not going to be shy about using executive orders, even if he doesn’t ultimately have the power to dictate some of those orders.
Through the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ObamaCare, HHS is able to use the Section 1557 rule to force physicians and hospitals to perform abortions. HHS issued an advisory using the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) as justification for trying to re-nationalize abortion instead of letting it be legislated by the states post-Dobbs. According to National Review: “This notice advised hospitals and physicians that EMTALA required them to ‘stabilize’ ‘people in labor’ by performing emergency abortions. It pointedly stated that ‘when a state law prohibits abortion … that state law is preempted.’ It also declared that EMTALA’s anti-retaliation provision would protect physicians from discipline by their Catholic-hospital employers if they performed abortions in defiance of the Catholic Church’s Ethical and Religious Directives.”
In other words, HHS is attempting to circumvent SCOTUS and state law while infringing on the religious liberties of hospitals and physicians. It is truly despicable.
HHS is also using Section 1557 to advance gender transitions, more euphemistically known as “gender-affirming care.” Section 1557 can force medical establishments to provide a ballooning list of medical interventions for the gender-confused. It also will force insurance to pay for these medically unnecessary and harmful procedures. Not just for “transgender” individuals, either, but also for nonbinary-identifying individuals, eunuchs, and potentially someone identifying as disabled and hurting their healthy body to do it (transableism).
The radical gender ideology that is slipping ever further down the slope of madness is dictating our children’s education, dictating female safety, and now dictating our healthcare. This pathology is dragging our culture down into the abyss and destroying our younger generations. President Biden and HHS are happy to help this ideology along. What does that say about their leadership?
HHS and the president’s EOs also have major institutional backing. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health are all going to back up whatever this administration pushes. They are in lockstep.
Other institutions aiding and abetting this horrendous agenda are universities and medical schools teaching students that their highest prerogative is to fight back against systemic oppression in healthcare. The Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm” is seen as antiquated. These schools are also making sure their graduates are thoroughly indoctrinated in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in order to set the stage for the excusing of racially discriminatory healthcare.
This ideological takeover of healthcare is furthering our cultural decline, making a mockery of our government’s checks and balances, making a joke of the academic integrity of our universities, and creating a healthcare environment that stifles the religious and moral concerns of physicians and patients.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/93056-woke-healthcare-coming-down-the-pike-2022-11-22
*******************************************************
Australia: Gay marriage has given our society little to celebrate
This week marked the fifth anniversary of Australia supporting same-sex marriage in a postal vote. Now we are being reassured by same-sex marriage advocates that “society has not fallen apart”.
Think again. If the punitive coercion suffered by people who did not support gay marriage during the period preceding the vote didn’t convince you that this was not just about marriage, but about the gradual imposition of a radical agenda on the whole of society, then look what has happened since.
If the dissolution of society as we know it was an exaggeration, a furious expression of frustrated Christians angry at seeing the social verities of the past falling away, people might start looking at their local school and see what sorts of things are being taught to their children. The notion that our sexual identity is fluid and not fixed is now accepted in most government schools, and challenging that view is impossible.
It has already been raised as a problem if a religious anti-discrimination bill is ever passed, and activists are now fixated on making it harder to challenge the trans agenda even in private and systemic Catholic schools. In Canada, despite assurances and a preamble to the law, Catholic schools are having a very difficult time teaching Catholic precepts on marriage and sexuality, and in the US many individuals and groups are being punished for what amounts to thought crime, prompting a conservative backlash.
The real problem with the Marriage Equality fight was the fight itself. It was never a civilised discussion in a civilised environment. It was bare-knuckle and nasty from the Yes side, from daubing vile slogans on church walls to ridiculing and denouncing people on social media. I know, I went through it. And it goes on.
It has spread beyond marriage, to the trans agenda. I recently wrote a column about a woman who started an app for women and girls called Giggle. This woman was threatened with a human rights action over the very nature of the people for whom her app was intended, women, by a transsexual person who thought they should not be discriminated against because they identified as a woman. These are the two great mantras of the new society” “Discrimination” and “Identity”. It will only get worse.
Go back to the case of Israel Folau. Freedom of expression was not available to Folau who as a believing Mormon did not support same-sex marriage. Not only did he lose his job as Australia’s star rugby player but other players who supported him and did not support SSM were told not to say anything. Meanwhile, those who supported the Yes vote were allowed to speak out. Rugby Australia undermined their freedom of expression about conscientiously held views, becoming, in effect, the arbiters of their conscience.
An even graver case was Archbishop Julian Porteous who, as a preliminary salvo to the same-sex marriage vote, was dragged before the Human Rights board in Tasmania for disseminating a booklet outlining Catholic teaching on marriage to Catholic students. The complainant was not protesting about the church’s ban on remarriage after divorce or any of the teachings about marriage and fertility tied to the vows which married Catholics must make. No, this was an opener in the battle for same-sex marriage. The agenda of the Equality movement was not about equality at all: it was about trying to muzzle the view that the family, based on a generative relationship, is the bedrock of society which has been common to all societies of all religious persuasions since time immemorial.
Meanwhile, the trans agenda has inserted itself into the centre of right think. Who says society as we know it hasn’t declined?
Consequently, the number of cases of well-meaning ordinary people being denounced on social media, or to the human rights apparatuses and even pushed out of positions for stating quite ordinary views on marriage, the family and sexual identity is increasing, and freedom of expression – and particularly of religious expression – is being undermined.
Andrew Thorburn is an ordinary man who happened to be at a church nine years before when his minister expressed moral views not in line with the Equality mantra. Thorburn is chair of the City on a Hill church, which Essendon football club pronounced has views in “direct contradiction to our values as a club”. So, a football club, assuming a prior moral authority to the church, forced his resignation as the club’s CEO.
Not surprisingly, it was this case that has awakened the general public to the danger that now awaits anyone. Not only could someone dig up a sermon a pastor gave nine years before and still hold you to account, but how long before, Torquemada-like, you are taken to the inquisitors of the board of the company for which you work, or the school where you teach, or any governing body?
It is well known that in most echelons of the public service various topics of conversation, especially those dealing with sex and family issues, are off the table. The endorsement of Thorburn’s removal by the AFL and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews highlights the frightening seriousness of this. It has made a mockery of the idea that we have equality of expression, and the real fault line is freedom of religion.
****************************************
22 November, 2022
The Evolutionary Reason Why There Is So Much Infidelity in Society
A reasonable theory below. Is it however needlessly complex? Would it not be sufficient to say that infidelity arises because the characteristics we like are usually found in more than one person? if some set of characteristics is so attractive to us that we marry the person having them, would not a similar set of characteristics in another person also be strongly attractive to us? -- JR
We all seem to want monogamy but infidelity is rampant — here is why we can’t escape our unwanted friend, along with an idea for how we can
It’s a fair bet every one of us wants a partner who is faithful to us, even those who want open relationships still want a faithful partner — cheating still happens in open relationships. However, it’s believed that upwards of 80 to 90 percent of people will commit at least one act of infidelity over their lifetime.
Considering how much infidelity there is, the question we are left with is why the hell don’t we all just give up on one-on-one relationships and instead be like bonobos, where everyone sleeps with anyone they want?
The answer is, children. Children sit at the heart of everything, and children are believed to be the main reason why one-on-one relationships have become the norm in human society. Many even postulate that pair bonding between men and women is the greatest human innovation of all time simply because monogamy works better when it comes to raising children.
Children are likely the reason we evolved monogamy
Nobody knows for certain why the males and females of our ancestors several million years or so back started pair bonding, there are many theories out there, and nobody has a clue which if any is closer to the truth. But the theory that most resonated with me actually came from a friend of mine who is obsessed with anthropology.
He theorises that the females of the time realised that having a loyal male that they could rely upon increased the chances of a child surviving into adulthood. He postulates that they came to this realisation perhaps because males lower down the pecking order started showing them loyalty in an effort to increase their chances of mating, and this gradually from the bottom up led to males and females eventually evolving to form full-blown pair bonding as we know it.
Whether this is how it happened we will likely never know, in the end, how it happened is irrelevant, what matters is that the benefits of pair bonding when it comes to creating a safe and stable environment for raising children are inescapable. A man and a woman who are loyal to each other and work together will trump any other setup, especially if those men and women are part of a group of paired-up men and women.
For example, if you have a tribe of male-female pairs, not only do you have a cooperative team of men and women working together to create a safe environment for children, you also have a stable grouping because the men and women will not be competing with each other over who to mate with — because each man and woman will be paired up.
In a way it’s the ultimate win-win, not only is a man and woman working together a brilliant setup for raising a child, by men and women giving loyalty to each other, and all accepting men and women who are paired up as off-limits, it creates greater unity and stability which further enhances the child raising setup.
As such, pair bonding and monogamy bring immense benefits to human advancement and survival chances — there is a reason we are the only advanced race, and it is because one day men and women agreed to start giving each other loyalty and working together in the fight to keep children alive.
Considering this though, it would beg the question of, if pair bonding and monogamy are so beneficial to human advancement and survival, why the hell do so many find it impossible to remain faithful?
The sexual reproduction based downsides to monogamy
Human evolution and as such survival are reliant on three primary factors, one, stable and resource-rich environments for raising children in, two, the strongest passing on their genetics to the most people, and three, large amounts of genetic diversity. Each of these elements is just as important as the other.
Here is the thing though, to ensure the strongest pass on their genetics, people have to compete, and competing typically eventually leads to fighting. If both men and women end up fighting amongst their respective selves to prove their genetics the strongest, the men and women who would be left over would be so few in numbers that the human race would swiftly die out.
This is why females of any species seldom compete against each other by fighting violently to prove that they are the strongest, the fact they have the children makes them too important, but at the same time, it is why males frquently do. Somebody has to fight between themselves to prove they have the best genetics, because one male can impregnate many females, that makes males substantially more expendable than females.
The reality of this can be seen across the animal kingdom, in our past, and in the modern day, and I’m not talking just the dating scene. For example, I’ve heard it argued many times that war is a prime example of male competition over females ending up in violence, and I’m starting to buy into this theory. Whether it be Genghis Khan, the Vikings, even the Russians in World War II, even the Russians in Ukraine today, the idea of kill all the men and rape all the women stubbornly remains, and it very well could be that a root cause may be linked to the instinctual human desire to prove which males are the strongest.
Regardless of the reason, because of the endless competition, the majority of the animal kingdom is not very stable when it comes to keeping offspring alive. Humans on the other hand, despite the frequent outbreaks of war, have become more stable and monogamy through pair bonding is one of the main reasons why, if not the main reason.
This would beg the question of why, if monogamy is such a powerful tool for creating stability, we struggle to practice it to the point society is always ripe with infidelity. The answer of course is absolute monogamy hinders the main essence of sexual reproduction, which is the strongest pass on their genetics to the most.
There is no escaping it. The essence of sexual reproduction is those with the best genetics pass it on to the most, monogamy creates a spanner in the fight to ensure this happens. Infidelity provides the solution.
To explain, in perfect monogamy everybody would only ever have a child with one other person. That creates a lot of genetic diversity but not in a very good way — at least not for a species that desires and needs to continually rapidly evolve. To rapidly evolve, you need the best genetics passed on in the largest amount at all times, which requires competition and promiscuity.
But in a world where the best genetics are always being passed on in the highest number, there is a lot of instability. This is because in such a world males and females will be constantly competing amongst themselves to prove that they have the best genetics, and the male side is likely to more often than not end up in violence — which is what happens. This creates instability, which is the enemy of progress.
Step forth the solution, where if you add monogamy to infidelity, you get the best of both worlds. You get the stability that comes with monogamy, or at least the illusion of it, and you get a world where the strongest still pass on their genetics to the most people, they just do it through a mixture of relationship breakups and infidelity. It’s a total win except of course it sucks.
Is there a solution?
I do believe there is a solution to the infidelity problem, and it is a five-pronged solution:
Number One
We need to start teaching proper social skills at school, including how to communicate while in a relationship. If we did this, it would give people a better chance of finding and connecting with the right person sooner rather than later, which would lower the risk of infidelity.
Also, by teaching people how to communicate so that men and women can again actually start talking to each other again and understanding each other, it would stop many of the cycles that lead people to cheat.
Number two
We need to start countering all the rubbish that men and women are being sold about each other. Extreme feminist rubbish, extreme incel rubbish, all of it, everything that fills the heads of men and women with rubbish that they then unwittingly inflict upon their partners.
Number three
We need to become tolerant of blended families. I’m a firm believer that blended families are the future. For example, they would solve the need to find a life partner before having children, instead, you would just need to find someone you felt happy to have a child with.
No easy task, but easier than finding Mr or Mrs right. Also, if we are more tolerant of blended families, it would stop people being afraid of having children due to the fear of potentially ruining future relationship prospects. Finally, as instinctually we want genetic diversity, blended families create that. So, it’s a win on every level.
Number four
We need to start legitimising sex workers. This one is perhaps controversial (even though it shouldn’t be), but I firmly believe that normalising people allowing their partners to see sex workers, or even sending their partners to sex workers whether for massages or for full sexual experiences, would greatly help reduce infidelity.
Sex is after all primaeval, and as far as I see it, sex work is simply a form of massage, and people are happy for their partners to go to a spa for a massage, so why not a sex worker? I firmly believe if people came to this mindset, it would greatly lower infidelity because it would help solve many sex-based relationship problems, especially in regard to arguments over type of sex, and frequency of sex.
Number five
We need to accept that we are human, and as humans, we are driven by instinctual factors that many of us do not understand and likely will never understand. But the more we try to understand, the better chance we have of creating a world that embraces who we are, rather than suppresses it.
This matters because the reality is, and this is just in my opinion, the main reason many of us end up cheating is that we try to suppress who we are in an effort to be who we are not and will never truly be. So, if we let people be human, and allowed people to truly understand what it means to be human, it would likely greatly reduce infidelity.
Final words
Monogamy creates the illusion that every man and woman will only have a child with each other, that illusion creates stability i.e. it stops men and women from constantly competing amongst themselves over the right to mate with each other.
Infidelity, which can lead to paternity fraud, where men would impregnate other people’s wives and wives would be impregnated by other men, creates genetic diversity of the best kind by allowing the strongest men to still impregnate lots of women — and for the strongest women to still be impregnated by lots of different men. Relationship breakups allow for blended families.
As crazy as it seems, this gives us the best of all worlds. It ticks the box for the strongest passing on their genetics to the most, it ticks the box for genetic diversity by ensuring as many as possible get to pass on their genetics, and it ticks the box for creating stability and the best environment for raising children.
If we want to finally get rid of infidelity, or at least greatly reduce it, we have to create a new way to tick those boxes. Better communication, blended families, the acceptance of sex workers as legitimate workers, and the acceptance that we are human, in my view is the path to doing this. The other option is simply to accept that infidelity is here to stay. I know what option I would choose, but each to their own.
***************************************************
Why is Eventbrite censoring feminists?
Julie Bindel
I could not have been more delighted when the group Women’s Place UK (WPUK) asked me to chair an online event to mark the publication of the book Defending Women’s Spaces, written by my friend and feminist comrade Karen Ingala Smith. Let me tell you a little about Karen. For the past 30 years she has been providing services to women and girls who have experienced all forms of male violence, including sexual assault, domestic abuse, and prostitution.
There is nothing hateful, dangerous or violent about promoting female only spaces
Karen has clung on for dear life to keep the Nia Project, of which she is CEO, female only. The Nia Project is one of only two such charities in the country that put the safety of women over the hurt feelings of trans activists. They openly apply the exceptions permitted under the Equality Act to provide women-only refuge and other single-sex support.
She is also the founder of Counting Dead Women, from which the UK Femicide Census grew. Since January 2012 Karen has done her very best to document the death of women and girls at the hands of men. These women are the victims of unbridled male violence, and the femicide census has been incredibly influential in convincing a broad range of people that these deaths can and must be prevented.
There is more I could tell you about Karen’s work, but hopefully I’ve convinced you already that she has a lifetime of commitment to the safety and liberation of women and girls.
Not according to the US ticketing giant, Eventbrite which this week deleted the link to the event, and began issuing refunds, claiming the book launch event could promote ‘hateful views’.
Defending Women’s Spaces is a book about the threat to feminism posed by gender ideology. But according to Eventbrite’s trust and safety team, the event is in danger of violating its policy on ‘Hateful, Dangerous, or Violent Content’. Eventbrite have been contacted for comment.
There is nothing hateful, dangerous or violent about promoting female only spaces. What is hateful are the things that men do to women and girls that create the need for single sex services.
When women flee for their lives in the middle of the night to escape fatal domestic violence, they need a women-only domestic violence refuge.
The teenage girl who has been raped at a party and fears that she will be blamed, not the perpetrator, needs a safe environment to speak to those that understand what she is going through.
Women pimped into prostitution, desperate to escape, often can’t face being anywhere near men as a consequence of the trauma they have endured at the hands of punters. They desperately need to be kept safe from harm.
In short, women only services exist because of the prevalence of male violence. Right now, there is almost an amnesty on rapists, with the current conviction rate standing at around 1 per cent of the fraction that are reported to police.
Even in prison, vulnerable incarcerated women have been forced to endure being locked up with convicted rapists who say they are transgender. Women I have interviewed have told me that they were scared to report sexual harassment and assault to prison officers in case they were punished for ‘transphobia’.
Sarah Summers, a survivor of rape, has been forced to sue Brighton’s Rape Crisis Centre Survivors’ Network for discrimination because it refused to provide a women-only support group.
And a trans identified child sex offender managed to dupe staff at a Leeds Women’s Aid refuge where he resided for 71 days, amongst the most vulnerable women and their children.
These examples are a tiny minority of those I could give that shows how crucial women-only spaces are, and what an enormous threat trans ideology is to the safety of women and girls.
This is why I am so proud to be involved in launching Karen’s book. We need her expertise and her wisdom in order to resist the colonisation of single sex facilities by violent and abusive men.
I am angry that what should’ve been a joyous and celebratory time for Karen has turned into a nightmare. Publishing your first book should be a proud moment. Instead, Karen has been accused of hateful conduct for writing about the crucial work of keeping women safe.
When did so many institutions and individuals begin to put the hurt feelings of men above the safety and well-being of women? The answer is ‘forever’, which is why we have feminism. But today it is being done in the name of trans rights and supported by so called progressives.
Eventbrite have earned significant amounts of money from WPUK over the years, as they have from events of mine and other feminists. They also platform events which promote transgender ideology, and I’m sure if we trawl through other events they have hosted in the past we will find plenty for all of us to be offended by.
Gender ideology is a misogynistic men’s rights movement. To class a feminist event as ‘hateful’ when it is the launch of a book about how to prevent male violence says it all. Women are being prevented from prioritising our needs, to speak of our concerns, or to have anywhere to go that keeps violent men at bay. But we will not cave.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/why-is-eventbrite-censoring-feminists/
*********************************************************
Beyond Meat Is Struggling, and the Plant-Based Meat Industry Worries
For a while, it seemed Beyond Meat was taking over the world.
Its faux burgers and sausages were landing on dinner plates in homes throughout the United States and on the menu boards of chains like Subway, Carl’s Jr. and Starbucks. When the company went public in 2019, its shares skyrocketed as investors bet that the meatless movement was finally having its moment. During the pandemic, Beyond Meat’s grocery store sales surged as curious consumers tried its vegan options.
But these days, Beyond Meat has lost some of its sizzle.
Its stock has slumped nearly 83% in the past year. Sales, which the company had expected to rise as much as 33% this year, are now likely to show only minor growth. McDonald’s concluded a pilot of the McPlant burger — made with a Beyond Meat patty — this year with no plans to put it on the menu permanently.
In late October, the company said it was laying off 200 people, or 19% of its workforce. And four top executives have departed in recent months, including the chief financial officer, the chief supply chain officer and the chief operating officer, whom Beyond Meat had suspended after his arrest on allegations that he bit another man’s nose in a parking garage altercation.
What investors and others are debating now is whether Beyond Meat’s struggles are specific to the company or a harbinger of deeper issues in the plant-based meat industry.
“At the category level, we’re seeing volumes for plant-based meats down 22 consecutive months now,” said John Baumgartner, a consumer food analyst at the financial institution Mizuho Americas.
A few years ago, investors expected the category to explode with growth year after year, Baumgartner said. Now, he said, those expectations are being reconsidered.
“We’re positive on the future for plant-based meat, but this is a 20- to 25-year story,” he said. “It’s not going to happen in 3 to 5 to 10 years.”
Some say the slowdown in sales is a product of food inflation, as consumers trade pricier plant-based meat for less-expensive animal meat. But others wonder if the companies have simply reached the maximum number of consumers willing to try or repeatedly purchase faux burgers and sausages.
Analysts at Deloitte, who conducted a survey of consumers this year, questioned whether the 53% who were not buying plant-based meats could be turned into customers.
“The category had been growing at double-digit for a long time and was expected to continue, but what we saw this year is that the number of consumers who were buying it did not increase,” said Justin Cook, the U.S. consumer products research leader at Deloitte.
While inflation played a role, so did a decline in the perception that plant-based meats are healthier than animal proteins. (The companies focus on the environmental benefits.) But the Deloitte analysts said another problem might be resistance to a product that some segment of customers see as “woke” and linked to politically left-leaning ideas.
In August, when the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain stated on its Facebook page that it had begun offering the meatless “Impossible Sausage,” the post was flooded with thousands of comments from irate customers. “Go woke, go broke,” one wrote. “You just lost a ton of your base. You obviously don’t know your patrons.”
The data around the category are mixed. Over the past year, volume sales of refrigerated plant-based meats slid 11.6%, with packages of faux ground meat and patties taking a particular beating, according to IRI, a market research firm. But volume sales of frozen plant-based meats, which are typically less expensive than the refrigerated products, fell only slightly. Volume sales of faux chicken nuggets and patties rose sharply.
Moreover, while some plant-based meat manufacturers are struggling, others are seeing rising sales.
In October, Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS said it was closing Planterra Foods, its plant-based meat operation, after just two years. And volume sales for vegetarian-meat maker Morningstar Farms, which Kellogg has said it plans to spin off or potentially sell, dropped sharply in nearly every category this year, according to the IRI data. On a call with Wall Street analysts in August, Kellogg’s chief executive, Steven Cahillane, attributed the drop to supply-chain issues with a co-manufacturer of the products.
But privately held Impossible Foods said demand for its products grew tremendously last year.
“We’re not experiencing anything like what Beyond Meat has reported or some of the other brands in the space,” Keely Sulprizio, a spokesperson for Impossible Foods, said in an email. “Quite the opposite: We’re seeing hypergrowth, with over 60% year-over-year dollar sales growth in retail alone.”
The IRI data show that while volume sales of Impossible ground meat and faux burger patties were down slightly, volumes of other categories, including frozen faux meat and chicken, soared.
“We launched in frozen more recently with a larger family size, and it’s been very popular with both retailers and consumers,” Sulprizio said.
In a call with Wall Street analysts in early November, Ethan Brown, founder and chief executive of Beyond Meat, said an increasing number of plant-based meat players were battling for a smaller group of consumers as shoppers traded down to less-expensive animal proteins. As a result, “a shakeout does appear to be underway, and we expect more brands to either retreat or consolidate,” Brown said. Beyond Meat declined to comment for this article beyond the call with analysts.
While the company hoped to restore growth to its refrigerated products, which have some of the highest profit margins, Brown noted that it was expanding distribution for many of its frozen products.
“Frozen plant-based chicken is the largest single subcategory in all of plant-based meats and continues to grow at a double-digit pace,” he said.
Brown also noted that McDonald’s continued to offer the McPlant burger in other markets, including Britain and Ireland, and that Beyond Meat was testing new products with other chains, including KFC and Taco Bell.
Panda Express, for instance, said in September that it would offer Beyond the Original Orange Chicken on its menu nationally for a limited time after an initial offering in New York City and Southern California sold out in less than two weeks last year.
It “showed us just how great the demand is for an innovative plant-based dish at Panda,” Evelyn Wah, vice president of brand innovation for Panda Express, said in an email. She added, “We’ve been pleased with the positive sentiment we’ve received from our guests.”
Baumgartner said that when his firm had asked consumers in a survey why they weren’t buying plant-based meats, they said they didn’t like the taste. While the competitive companies have continued to improve existing products while quickly rolling out new ones, he said, he is concerned that some products are coming to market too quickly.
“You’re not selling iPhone version 1.0 and maybe it’s not the best and greatest, but the consumer can upgrade to version 2.0, which has better graphics and keypad,” Baumgartner said. “If you roll something out in the food industry that’s not quite where it needs to be in terms of quality and taste and the consumer tries it and has a bad experience, he’s not coming back.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/business/beyond-meat-industry.html
****************************************************
Disney's boss is looking for a new gig... because he put progressive activist quackery before turning a buck
You can be businessmen or activists; but you can't be both. Unceremoniously ousted Disney CEO Bob Chapek just learned that lesson the hard way.
Chapek, tapped to run Disney less than 3 years ago, is being replaced by his own predecessor. The legendary Bob Iger is back to right the ship.
Now, I'm no business reporter, but it doesn't take a financial genius to see that Chapek's strategy wasn't adding up.
The stock is down 40% this year. Disney's streaming service, Disney+, ironically keeps adding subscribers and losing money – to the tune of $1.5 billion a quarter. And the company is freezing hiring, cutting spending, and likely laying people off.
So, what was Chapek doing while the House of Mouse crumbled?
He was backing into fights with Republican governors and alienating his customers.
Chapek got the most public attention during his very short tenure for his very public feud with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over a parental right's law, deemed the 'Don't Say Gay' bill by unhinged critics.
In reality, the law banned the classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools for kindergarten through third grade. Sounds reasonable, right?
Well, initially, Chapek thought so too -- until he decided to play activist.
Chapek went from trying to avoid the left-wing outrage over the law to fully and completely embracing it.
He told shareholders at an annual meeting that the company had advocated against the bill in secret. Then he pledged to work to repeal the law and stoked the narrative that it threatened the lives of LGBTQ+ people.
DeSantis responded, saying Disney had 'crossed the line.' He vowed to fight back, 'when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids.' And the Florida legislature stripped Disney of its 'independent special district,' which essentially amounts to a massive tax break.
How ironic that seven months later, DeSantis has just been re-elected by the largest margin for any Florida governor in almost 40 years and Chapek is looking for a new job. It turns out Bob should have stuck to the dollar and cents and left the politics to the politicians.
Of course, Chapek's far from the first executive to fall victim to the woke delusion. They seem to think that if they appease the woke mob and win over the activist class, the shareholders will overlook their inadequacies. But business leaders are picked to turn a profit, not play favorites.
And as America's economy is teetering, the stock market plunging and interest rates rising, investors want to know that their money is – well – making them more money.
Funny how a recession sharpens the mind. Chapek tried to win a popularity contest when he should have been boosting the bottom line.
We've seen this misunderstanding cripple business leaders across the board.
Jeff Zucker, the former president of CNN, was fired after instituting an 'anti-Trump' mandate at his news network. While that short-sighted strategy worked while Trump was in office it predictably flopped when Biden became president.
Today, 'the most trusted name in news' is in the midst of an identity crisis after getting rid of left-wing blowhards, like Brian Stelter and Jeffrey Toobin, and wasting an absolutely insane $300 million dollars on its streaming service just to shut it down within weeks of launching.
It also didn't help that Zucker's hand-picked prime time news anchor, Chris Cuomo, was exposed for colluding with his disgraced brother, ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, to help him navigate a sex abuse scandal and a bungled COVID pandemic response.
Audiences want news networks to deliver the news and not propaganda – who knew?
At least Fox News is in a league of its own appealing to a right-of-center audience. CNN was just preaching to the choir – a very, very small choir.
Apparently, someone also told MSNBC, who recently fired another one of the most divisive names in all of cable news, host Tiffany Cross. We'll see if NBC News still has patience for the leadership there.
And finally, there's Twitter. The social media platform wallowed in financial mediocrity since it launched in 2006. It never managed to realize its potential and create any reasonable return for investors. Instead, the folks running Twitter seemed content to be a left-wing megaphone and a censor of conservative opinions.
Now Elon Musk is in the charge, firing staff and creating havoc with little concern for the judgement of the left-wing elite. Whether or not he can pull it off remains to be seen. But at least he knows what matters.
Real business leaders innovate, unleash creativity, and find a way to make it all work.
You can spout off all of the activist quackery you like – but if you don't deliver a profit at the end of the day, you're out.
That's how America works baby! And it's worked well so far.
Chapek's 'Don't Say Gay' crusade was never a profile in courage – more like cowardice. He didn't want this fight, he was pushed into it by a few vocal, woke employees and a biased media rooting them on.
I'm sure he won over a lot of fans at dinner parties. But that doesn't cut it. Virtue signaling is not a business strategy.
****************************************
21 November, 2022
The real story behind the worker shortage
A massive sinkhole is opening up under America’s economy in the form of Americans who have no interest in getting a job, Mike Rowe is warning.
Rowe was interviewed Thursday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and said that for years, the country has been experiencing a “slow sort of unraveling of what we loosely call work ethic.” And now, he said, there is a worker shortage unlike any other.
“We’re in a place where 7 million able-bodied men are not only not working … they are affirmatively not looking for a job,” he said, according to Fox News. “That’s never happened in peacetime — ever.”
Rowe touched on anOp-Edin The Wall Street Journal by economist Nicholas Eberstadt that talks about the “flight from work.”
“Economists like Nick Eberstadt take a dim view of it. They’re worried, and they’re trying to inject that into the conversation at a time when we’re still looking at the unemployment number as the true harbinger of what’s really going on,” Rowe said.
Eberstadt believes the unemployment rate is no longer relevant because it is based on the number of people looking for work who cannot find a job.
“We’re looking at the wrong thing. We’re looking at not what it means to have a bunch of people unemployed, but what does it mean to have a bunch of opportunity that nobody gives a damn about?” Rowe said.
Rowe said he asked Eberstadt what young Americans are doing if they do not work. “On average, over 2,000 hours a year on screens,” Rowe said was the answer.
He summed up the problem by saying, “You know, 4 million fewer people are in the workforce today than before the lockdowns and 4 million more jobs have opened up. It’s almost a perfect mirror image and the reflection is kind of hideous.”
In his Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Eberstadt said there is a “troubling paradox about the state of work in America.”
“We now face an unprecedented peacetime labor shortage, with employers practically begging for workers, while vast numbers of grown men and women sit on the sidelines of the economy,” he wrote.
“Never has work been so readily available in modern America; never have so many been uninterested in taking it.”
Eberstadt said the cash flowing from Washington during the pandemic served as a catalyst for the current crisis.
“In 2020-21, Washington pulled out all the monetary and fiscal stops to avoid an economic collapse. Those extraordinary interventions may have forestalled world-wide depression. But they also created disincentives for work as never before,” he wrote.
Noting that eschewing jobs is prevalent among Americans 55 and older, Eberstadt said his research also shows “a grim portrait of unworking prime-age men: checked out from civil society; largely disengaged from family care and housework; sitting before screens as if that were a full-time job.”
In a podcast released in September, Eberstadt said the issue is not a lack of resources. “What we are lacking is the internal gyroscopes to give our life meaning with the time that we have,” he said.
“We’ve had this simultaneous explosion of wealth and explosion of misery in our society that can’t be explained unless we take a look at morals, values and personal ethos.”
Eberstadt said solving the problem requires acknowledging mistakes made along the way.
“What we should recognize is that, for unintended reasons, government has been more of a problem than a help with what we’d call the men-without-work problem. During the post-pandemic era, unintended consequences of the emergency rescue programs had the result of incentivizing millions of people to leave the labor force,” he said.
***************************************************
Emerging Evidence of Puberty Blockers' Perils
As the number of adolescents who identify as transgender grows, drugs known as puberty blockers have become the first line of intervention for the youngest ones seeking medical treatment.
Their use is typically framed as a safe — and reversible — way to buy time to weigh a medical transition and avoid the anguish of growing into a body that feels wrong. Transgender adolescents suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and other mental health issues. Studies show that the drugs have eased some patients’ gender dysphoria — a distress over the mismatch of their birth sex and gender identity.
ImageEmma, now 14, has identified as a girl since toddlerhood and feels that she’s on the right path.
Emma, now 14, has identified as a girl since toddlerhood and feels that she’s on the right path.Credit...Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York Times
“Anxiety drains away,” said Dr. Norman Spack, who pioneered the use of puberty blockers for trans youth in the United States and is one of many physicians who believe the drugs can be lifesaving. “You can see these kids being so relieved.”
But as an increasing number of adolescents identify as transgender — in the United States, an estimated 300,000 ages 13 to 17 and an untold number who are younger — concerns are growing among some medical professionals about the consequences of the drugs, a New York Times examination found. The questions are fueling government reviews in Europe, prompting a push for more research and leading some prominent specialists to reconsider at what age to prescribe them and for how long. A small number of doctors won’t recommend them at all.
Dutch doctors first offered puberty blockers to transgender adolescents three decades ago, typically following up with hormone treatment to help patients transition. Since then, the practice has spread to other countries, with varying protocols, little documentation of outcomes and no government approval of the drugs for that use, including by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
But there is emerging evidence of potential harm from using blockers, according to reviews of scientific papers and interviews with more than 50 doctors and academic experts around the world.
As growing numbers of adolescents who identify as transgender are prescribed drugs to block puberty, the treatment is becoming a source of confusion and controversy.
The drugs suppress estrogen and testosterone, hormones that help develop the reproductive system but also affect the bones, the brain and other parts of the body.
During puberty, bone mass typically surges, determining a lifetime of bone health. When adolescents are using blockers, bone density growth flatlines, on average, according to an analysis commissioned by The Times of observational studies examining the effects.
Many doctors treating trans patients believe they will recover that loss when they go off blockers. But two studies from the analysis that tracked trans patients’ bone strength while using blockers and through the first years of sex hormone treatment found that many do not fully rebound and lag behind their peers.
That could lead to heightened risk of debilitating fractures earlier than would be expected from normal aging — in their 50s instead of 60s — and more immediate harm for patients who start treatment with already weak bones, experts say.
“There’s going to be a price,” said Dr. Sundeep Khosla, who leads a bone research lab at the Mayo Clinic. “And the price is probably going to be some deficit in skeletal mass.”
Many physicians in the United States and elsewhere are prescribing blockers to patients at the first stage of puberty — as early as age 8 — and allowing them to progress to sex hormones as soon as 12 or 13. Starting treatment at young ages, they believe, helps patients become better aligned physically with their gender identity and helps protect their bones.
But that could force life-altering choices, other doctors warn, before patients know who they really are. Puberty can help clarify gender, the doctors say — for some adolescents reinforcing their sex at birth, and for others confirming that they are transgender.
“The most difficult question is whether puberty blockers do indeed provide valuable time for children and young people to consider their options, or whether they effectively ‘lock in’ children and young people to a treatment pathway,” wrote Dr. Hilary Cass, a pediatrician leading an independent review in England of medical treatments of adolescents presenting as transgender.
On her recommendation, England’s National Health Service last month proposed restricting use of the drugs for trans youths to research settings. Sweden and Finland have also placed limits on the treatment, concerned not just with the risk of blockers, but the steep rise in young patients, the psychiatric issues that many exhibit, and the extent to which their mental health should be assessed before treatment.
In the United States, though, there is no universal policy, and the public discussion is polarized.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/health/puberty-blockers-transgender.html
**********************************************************
Target Takes Extreme Measures in Desperate Bid to Stop Shoplifting
The crime of retail theft has become a major problem for stores across America, and it is driving big chains to take drastic action to stem losses reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Retail giant Target reported in a conference call this week that its profits have taken a major hit due to shoplifting, a crime referred to as “shrink” in the retail industry, WNYW-TV in New York reported Thursday.
The company called “inventory shortage or shrink” a “growing problem” resulting in expected lost profits of more than $600 million this year alone.
“At Target, year-to-date, incremental shortage has already reduced our gross margin by more than $400 million vs. last year and we expect it will reduce our gross margin by more than $600 million for the full year,” Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke said, according to WNYW. “This is an industry-wide problem that is often driven by criminal networks.”
Company officials added that while the theft was spinning out of control in certain localities, they are now seeing it extending outside those areas.
“This is primarily driven by organized crime,” Target COO John Mulligan said.
The growing retail theft problem has led the company to begin locking up a number of small items that are easily stolen from the shelves, including cosmetics, toothpaste and razors.
The theft has become such an issue that Target has launched its own “forensic sciences” division to help identify at-risk products and devise solutions to stem the tide of theft.
The team uses video analysis, computer technology and even latent fingerprint forensics to help solve organized retail crimes.
Target is not alone.
Walgreens was hit so hard by retail theft that it announced the closure of five stores in downtown San Francisco last year.
“Organized retail crime continues to be a challenge facing retailers across San Francisco, and we are not immune to that,” Walgreens spokesman Phil Caruso said, according to SFGate.
It is so bad in San Francisco that even security guards hired to protect the retail outlets have been reduced to powerless observers as large groups of thieves swarm stores stealing products by the armful.
The drugstore chain Rite Aid said last month that retail theft had become so bad in New York City that it was considering redesigning all stores to put nearly every item behind locked displays, WNYW reported.
An employee of the company was killed last year when trying to intervene to stop thieves at a Los Angeles store.
Citing New York City as the main source of the loss, Rite Aid CEO Heyward Donigan said the chain had lost $5 million in just the last three months thanks to “shrink.”
Company officials hinted that city prosecutors were falling down on the job by refusing to prosecute retail theft.
“The environment that we operate in, particularly in New York City, is not conducive to reducing shrink just based upon everything you read and see on social media and the news in the city,” Chief Retail Officer Andre Persaud said. “We’re looking at literally putting everything behind showcases to ensure the product is there for customers who want to buy it.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is one of the reasons retail theft in New York has gone so wildly out of control.
Early this year, for instance, Bragg announced that his office was set to begin downgrading charges for many felonies and would seek prison sentences for only a handful of crimes.
As a candidate, he was supported by leftist billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
“Mr. Soros also pledged $1 million to the super PAC Color of Change, aimed at helping another district attorney candidate, Alvin Bragg. A spokeswoman for the super PAC said that nearly $500,000 had been spent on Mr. Bragg’s behalf as of Friday,” The New York Times reported last year.
Many other retailers — including Best Buy and the Home Depot — have reported a growth in retail theft and shoplifting.
While these big corporations might be able to withstand the loss from “shrink,” organized theft from small stores is a business-killing problem and is devastating for local mom-and-pop stores.
With the influence of the soft-on-crime Soros, coupled with years of attacks on police, America has become swamped with crime of all kinds. It is long past time that we reverse this anarchy.
***********************************************************
12 Republican Senators Just Sided with Democrats to Advance Gay Marriage Bill
How times have changed! Even the Mormons agreed with it! The constitution does not mention marriage so SCOTUS cannot intervene.
At most, I think that homosexual marriage could be approved only if the marriage certificate plainly stated that the marriage was a same-sex one
With 12 Republican senators joining Democrats, a bill to protect same-sex marriages cleared a major procedural barrier Wednesday by a 62-37 vote.
The bill requires that marriages that are valid under the laws of any one state be recognized as such by every other state, according to The Washington Post.
The bill repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which declared marriage to be between one man and one woman and allowed states to reject marriages that other states ruled valid. The law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2015 in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, but had remained on the books.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was among the Republicans opposing the bill, according to ABC.
The bill had support from several church and religious groups, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Post reported.
“The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints related to marriage between a man and a woman is well known and will remain unchanged,” it said in a statement.
“We are grateful for the continuing efforts of those who work to ensure the Respect for Marriage Act includes appropriate religious freedom protections while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters. We believe this approach is the way forward,” the statement said.
When the initial version of the bill passed the House over the summer, 47 House Republicans joined Democrats to pass it, according to The New York Times.
The Senate must still give the amended bill passage. The bill then goes back to the House for its approval of the changes made in the Senate. It will then go to President Biden, who has indicated he will sign it.
The law was developed after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in the opinion in which the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling was overturned that the 2015 ruling allowing gay marriage should also be examined.
Some have argued the bill is not necessary.
“I don’t know why we’re doing that bill; there’s no threat to its status in America,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said, according to the Times. “I know plenty of gay people in Florida that are pissed off about gas prices.”
Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said the bill was an attempt to scare Americans “that somehow that decision by the Supreme Court is in jeopardy,” the Times reported. “I don’t believe it is.”
One Senate revision to the bill included an amendment ensuring that churches, universities and other nonprofit religious organizations would not be punished for refusing to recognize same-sex marriages and that churches could not be compelled to marry same-sex couples.
As noted by ABC, the law covers interracial marriages as well as those of same-sex couples.
****************************************
20 November, 2022
Is Monogamy Realistic in This Day and Age?
Personal comments below from Dr. Paula Paz Matute, a Honduran living in Germany. She raises a hugely important question but can give only opinions as an answer.
I am inclined to think that opinions are all we can aspire to in the matter. "Each to his own", as the saying goes. It does appear that some people are happily monogamous but many are clearly not. No all-inclusive generalizations are possible.
A common solution to the conundrum is one that is very often practiced: Serial monogamy. That means having a series of relationships but remaining "faithful" during each relationship.
I am in that category. I have been married 4 times so it is clear that marriage is my ideal state. And I can and do remain "faithful" during a relationship. My longest marriage was for 10 years and my longest unmarried relationship was 14 years.
Yet in the end the women walk out on me. Though sometimes they do not walk far but remain friends. But after each walkout I have ended up having lots of involvements with lots of fine women. I have enjoyed it all greatly. I can recommend serial monogamy.
I would still like to be married but as I am now in my 80th year, I think I have missed that boat. A considerable compensation is that my present girlfriend is both pretty and smart.
A few months ago, I was having lunch with my colleagues , and the subject came up of how nowadays — at least in Germany — many couples are “opening up the relationship” in which they have been monogamous for years. I was amazed when one of my colleagues said in the most natural way that;
monogamy does not exist, that although nobody accepts it, men and women are primarily unfaithful in a relationship.
My traditional romantic Latin heart found this sad. And it is not that I have not seen infidelities in my close circles or that I am so naive to think that it does not happen. In that sense I could say that I consider myself pragmatic.
A relationship is wrong, we are no longer happy, we feel attracted to other people it is time to communicate it to our partner -maybe not the attraction to other people- but to reflect on ourselves and analyze what is happening with us and our relationship.
The first time I confronted my prejudices on this topic was when a friend commented in our reading circle that she and her boyfriend of nine years had decided to open their relationship.
I had the wrong and overgeneralized idea of people who chose to have an open relationship.
So I thought an open relationship was linked to instability. “It is just another excuse for men to sleep with as many women as they want. It is just another meaningless trend that did not value being romantic”.
But this person standing in front of me, telling me that she and her boyfriend had made such a decision was completely the opposite of the image that my prejudices on this subject had built up.
She is a romantic, hardcore feminist and human rights advocate who loves staying at home and cooking. ( I am not saying that this is the ideal persona or better than anyone else) I just want to emphasize how important it is not to judge others people’s ways of living.
So my prejudice at that moment broke into a thousand pieces, and thanks to this experience I internalized the idea that
monogamy should not be the only option in a relationship.
But don’t get me wrong, at this moment, my Latin and romantic heart could not deal with an open relationship.
I can say, it could not emotionally work for myself.
To think that my husband is kissing another woman, touching another woman, or just flirting with another woman would eat me up with jealousy, and I can not even see it as as an option in our relationship now.
But, of course, no one is saved, and he could be with another person ,without my knowledge at some point in life.
But the terms of the relationship must be established.
So, being with someone else would be, at the moment, for me, a betrayal because the rules of the relationship are broken.
We see these almost every day on the internet. Adam Levine sent “flirty” messages to a lot of models. Justin Bieber always betrayed -my idol- Selena Gomez (I’m a big fan of her, I love her music, and I think she’s the best), Alex Rodriguez and Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, and Angelina, we get the idea The list is endless.
So is it then time for us to accept that monogamous relationships are the problem? Could it be that monogamy is not natural for humans?
Could it be that instead of being like penguins that are monogamous animals, we are more like queen bees and rabbits that can have as many partners as they want at the same time?
Some might ask; What about increasing the probability of a sexually transmitted disease by having multiple partners? But I think a lot of people who open their relationship, as in the case of my friend, is not because they want to have more sex or sleep with different men. For her, it was instead the flirtation, the curiosity of the initial stage.
According to what she told us, she was deeply in love with her boyfriend; they had a great relationship, they were both very sure of what they felt for each other, and that allowed them to try new things with all the confidence in the relationship.
As we know, many cultures do not practice monogamy, and everyone is so calm and happy, or at least that is what it seems.
Could it be then that we are approaching an epoch in time when we have to rethink the concept of monogamy?
Could it be then that it is already obsolete? Could it then be time to be open to changes in human relationships? Or is it just a fashionable concept that many want to follow without internalizing its consequences?
Maybe it is time to sit down and evaluate our prejudices in this regard.
Then, should people who are consider as “unfaithful” better be in a polygamous relationship? Would these “unfaithful” people also agree that their partner can do the same?
At the end everything depends on the terms or agreements we have in our relationship. If a person feels comfortable and is happy in polygamy, then excellent. Inner peace and how we are Happy is not the same for everyone.
On the other hand, for some people, the mere thought of their partner being intimate with another person seems the most terrible thing and the greatest betrayal. These emotions are also valid.
Monogamy or open relationships, the most important, should be mutual agreement and what we need and want in a relationship.
https://medium.com/illumination/is-monogamy-realistic-in-this-day-and-age-8f34fad6a738
**************************************************************
A new food fanaticism
On a recent Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne, I opened the inflight magazine and after flicking past interminable articles about sustainability, I landed on the restaurant section in the hope that it might be free of the virtue signalling at which our national airline excels. My eye was drawn to a new Torres Strait Islander restaurant called Big Esso which opened in Melbourne’s Federation Square a couple of months ago and my interest was piqued.
Big Esso’s chef-owner says that her mission is to ‘make indigenous ingredients and cuisine more accessible’ and so has put together a menu which features such dishes as ‘Kangaroo tail and pepperberry bourguignon, island fried scone’, ‘Kebi Ebur-wattleseed crumbed spatchcock, Congo pomme purée, quail brown sauce, yam crisps’ and ‘Charred emu, kutjera (desert raisin), pepperberry, molasses, cassava crisps.’
So far so good. It all sounds quite delicious. But on closer inspection, I have realised that I will never be able to sample the complex flavours of wattleseed crumbed spatchcock paired with Congo pomme purée. This is because Big Esso informs prospective diners that ‘We are working towards a sustainable and socially driven supply chain. Where possible, we source from First Nations, queer-led, women-led, and environmentally conscious producers who align with our ethos.’
I have a great many questions for the management, none of which are adequately addressed on the website. For instance, how will I know if my emu was sourced, packaged and shipped off to Melbourne by a queer producer or a First Nations producer? Will the quality of the pepperberries indicate whether they were sourced by members of the LGBTQ+ community or just plain old heterosexual men? Does the producer’s sexual orientation or skin colour improve or diminish the quality of what is on my plate? If the berries were sourced by a queer Indigenous woman, does this make them taste better than if they were sourced by a queer Indigenous man?
Welcome to the Foucauldian world of ‘food justice’ or ‘postcolonial food politics’ which has been simmering away in Western humanities departments and is now being served up in our restaurants. The central thesis is that Western food production is just another oppressive system which needs to be deconstructed in order to put an end to social inequality, discrimination, racism and sexism. Agriculture is considered patriarchal, white supremacist and heteronormative and colonial food production serves the interest of the dominant hierarchy. It suggests that there is an ethical responsibility to deconstruct and challenge how food is sourced and produced, and the way to do this is to prioritise other systems.
Unsurprisingly, Australian academics have embraced ‘postcolonial food politics’ with gusto. In his book Unsettling Food Politics. Agriculture, Dispossession and Sovereignty in Australia, Christopher Mayes, Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the Alfred Deakin Institute posits that ‘the industrialised global food system erodes democracy, perpetuates injustices, undermines population health and is environmentally unsustainable.’ Mayes believes that colonial agricultural practices have caused historic injustices and that ‘contemporary agricultural practices reflect racism and the dispossession of indigenous peoples.’
It is of course, entirely in keeping with the restaurant’s ethos that it also makes sure to ‘acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are based in Naarm (Melbourne); the Wurundjeri and neighbouring Boonwurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation, and we pay our respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.’ Finally, it declares in no uncertain terms that ‘Sovereignty was never ceded.’
If that is the case, I would like to know how much of the proceeds of this business, including the shop which sells stubby holders and tee-shirts, is going to the descendants of the Wurundjeri and neighbouring Boonwurrung people from whom they believe that the land has been stolen.
And while Big Esso means ‘the biggest thank you’ in Torres Strait Islander slang, it seems to me that any customers who cannot trace their lineage back to the Traditional Owners are also being told that they are not really welcome. Sorry Big Esso, but unfortunately, it’s the Biggest No Thank You from me.
The hyper-politicising of everything in our lives is becoming intolerable. We are no longer permitted to go out with friends and family to enjoy good food without being told that we are racist oppressors occupying stolen land. Nor, it seems, are we allowed to appreciate good music without being harangued about reinforcing forms of inequality, the gender pay gap, systemic injustice, and social inequality.
A UK-based organisation called ‘Donne, Women in Music’ which is ‘dedicated to achieving gender equality in the music industry’ recently published its latest research report which analysed the repertoire of over a hundred orchestras from 31 countries, including the Adelaide, Melbourne, Queensland and Sydney Symphony Orchestras. Its purpose was to look at equality and diversity in concert programming in 2021-2022.
The report’s main finding was that less than 0.1 per cent of the classical music pieces performed by 111 orchestras were written by non-binary composers. Shocking! Of the 20,400 compositions examined, 92.3 per cent were composed by men but only 7.7 per cent of the works were written by women. 87.7 per cent were composed by white men and 76.4 per cent of those men were dead. So, there you have it. By going to a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth, you are oppressing women and other minorities.
What kind of person worries about if their food has been sourced by queer-led producers, or makes distinctions about composers based on race and gender? The same kind of person who makes divisive group identity the only thing that matters, and who has rejected the notion of a shared humanity. It’s the person who has lost the idea of what it is to participate in something that transcends human nature, and who is trying to drag the rest of us down with them.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/suss-tainable-cuisine
*******************************************************
Old Latin Mass Finds New American Audience, Despite Pope’s Disapproval
Eric Agustin’s eight children used to call the first day of the week “Party Sunday.” The family would wake up, attend a short morning Mass at a Catholic parish near their house, then head home for lunch and an afternoon of relaxing and watching football.
But this summer, the family made a “big switch,” one of his teenage sons said on a recent Sunday afternoon outside St. Joseph Shrine, the family’s new parish. At St. Joseph, the liturgy is ornate, precisely choreographed and conducted entirely in Latin. The family drives an hour round trip to attend a service that starts at 11 a.m. and can last almost two hours.
The traditional Latin Mass, an ancient form of Catholic worship that Pope Francis has tried to discourage, is instead experiencing a revival in the United States. It appeals to an overlapping mix of aesthetic traditionalists, young families, new converts and critics of Francis. And its resurgence, boosted by the pandemic years, is part of a rising right-wing strain within American Christianity as a whole.
The Mass has sparked a sprawling proxy battle in the American church over not just songs and prayers but also the future of Catholicism and its role in culture and politics.
Latin Mass adherents tend to be socially conservative and tradition-minded. Some, like the Agustin family, are attracted to the Mass’s beauty, symbolism and what they describe as a more reverent form of worship.
Others have also been drawn to the old form through a brand of new hard-right rhetoric and community they have found in some Catholic communities online. They see the pope’s attempt to curb the old Latin Mass as an example of the perils of a world becoming unmoored from Western religious values.
The traditional Latin Mass, also referred to as the “extraordinary form,” was celebrated for centuries until the transformations of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which were intended in part to make the rite more accessible. After the Council, Mass could be celebrated in any language, contemporary music entered many parishes and priests turned to face people in the pews.
But the traditional Latin Mass, with all its formality and mystery, never fully disappeared. Though it represents a fraction of Masses performed at the 17,000 Catholic parishes in the United States, it is thriving.
The United States now appears to have at least 600 venues offering the traditional Mass, the most by far of any country. More than 400 venues offer it every Sunday, according to one online directory.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/15/us/latin-mass-revival.html
*******************************************************
Who Authorized the DHS to Police Online Speech?
One thing not mentioned in the Homeland Security Act is free speech. The word “speech” does not appear on even one of the law’s 187 pages.
Nevertheless, newly-published documents published by The Intercept show the extent to which the DHS is now actively involved in using the power of the US government to shape online discourse and police speech by pressuring private platforms behind closed doors.
“In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government,” The Intercept wrote of one message. “Dehmlow, according to notes of the discussion attended by senior executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase, stressed that ‘we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable.’”
According to a copy of the DHS’s capstone report outlining top priorities in the coming years, the department intends to hold media accountable by targeting “inaccurate information” on a range of controversial topics such as “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”
That DHS was seeking to police speech and shape online discourse was not in itself a revelation. In April 2022, the Biden administration announced the creation of a Disinformation Governance Board, but the initiative was paused after just three weeks over widespread public outcry after the board was dubbed “the Ministry of Truth” by critics.
What the Intercept’s story reveals is the overt pressure the government was exerting on private companies to censor speech. For example, the Intercept described a “formalized process” government officials used to flag content on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook to throttle or remove problematic content.
The story also shows how the revolving door between government and the corporate world created enthusiasm for DHS initiatives.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official said to DHS official Jen Easterly in a February text message, according to the Intercept.
DHS’s ‘Evolving Mission’
Though the most overt government attempts to shape and censor online discourse began under the Biden administration, the road to DHS’s “Ministry of Truth” project began under the Trump administration.
In November 2018, following a series of high-profile cyber attacks, Trump signed into law legislation known as the CISA Act, which created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a standalone federal agency dedicated to fighting cyberterrorism.
Like the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the word “speech” doesn’t appear anywhere in the legislation. Nor do the words “misinformation” or “disinformation.” However, one line in the sprawling law (Section 318) contains these four words: “Social media working group.” It is presumably this line that led CISA to boast of its “evolved mission” to, in the words of the Intercept, “monitor social media discussions while ‘routing disinformation concerns’ to private sector platforms.”
In 2018, to respond to election disinformation, DHS created the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force and began flagging voting-related “disinformation” that appeared on social media platforms—even though the words “election” and “vote” appear nowhere in the CISA Act. By the following year, DHS was employing fifteen full- and part-time staff tasked with “disinformation analysis,” and in 2020 the department’s disinformation focus had expanded to include Covid-19.
In 2021, CISA created a “Misinformation, Disinformation and Malinformation” team—replacing the Countering Foreign Influence Task force—and disinformation agents were now focused on domestic transgressions as well foreign.
A law that had been passed to protect critical infrastructure in the US from cyber attacks was now being used to censor Americans on social media.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/11/15/dhs-police-online-speech/
****************************************
18 November, 2022
More on prehistoric European civilization
As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. And that applies to the development of civilization in S.E. Europe (mostly in the territory of modern Serbia). I wrote yesterday about the elaborate civilization known to archaeologists as Vinca. The degree of modernity in the Vinca culture can be rather startling and the time of its emergence is even more startling. It emerged BEFORE the civilizations of Egypt and Sumeria.
But Vinca did not arise out of nothing. As is usually the case, it evolved from something earlier. And it is an earlier culture I want to mention here: Lepenski Vir. It was obviously much more primitive than Vinca but its remains do entitle it to be called a civilization.
And it is VERY early, much earlier even than Vinca -- starting as early as 9500 BC. So once again we are entitled to say that civilization was a European invention, not an invention from the Middle East. The Middle East is where WRITING that we can decipher originated but the other features of civilization can be found first in "Old Europe"
As a scholarly study of European genetics concluded: "Our study shows that southeastern Europe consistently served as a genetic contact zone between different populations. This role likely contributed to the extraordinary series of cultural innovations that characterize the region"
A fish god sculpture from Lepenski Vir: Half human, half fish. Fishing was a major food source for the inhabitants. Their settlement was on the Danube in a spot good for fishing
There are various theories of where the populations concerned came from but there is little doubt that they were an admixture resulting from several population movements. The admixture was however powerful. Just as the Celts, the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans fused to produce the very influentil current population of Britain, so the admixture in South Eastern Europe developed into something much more significant than the various genetic streams from which it originated. They started out as farmers but went on to something much more than that.
We know that when one group moves into an already-populated place, the old population is not normally wiped out. At it worst, all the men may be wiped out but the women will be retained to produce children, a highly desired "commodity" where lifespans are short.
And the most recent move into S.E. Europe was of the Slavs, a very successful population that now controls most of Eastern Europe. So one wonders whether the genetics of "Old Europe" have survived the Slavic hegemony. It seems possible but how much has survived? The study of S.E. Europe mentioned above gives a figure of 5% but that is S.E. Europe-wide. In the heartland of Old Europe" -- Serbia -- the percentage could be higher. Serbs do have claims to be descendants of the world's oldest civilization.
Wikipedia has a very extensive and thorough article on Lepinski Vir so I reproduce just its opening paragraphs:
Lepenski Vir located in Serbia, is an important archaeological site of the Mesolithic Iron Gates culture of the Balkans. The latest radiocarbon and AMS data suggests that the chronology of Lepenski Vir spans between 9500/7200–6000 BC. There is some disagreement about when the settlement and culture of Lepenski Vir began, but the latest data indicates that it was between 9500–7200 BC. The late Lepenski Vir (6300–6000 BC) architectural phase saw the development of unique trapezoidal buildings and monumental sculpture. The Lepenski Vir site consists of one large settlement with around ten satellite villages. Numerous piscine sculptures and peculiar architectural remains have been found at the site.
Archaeologist Dragoslav Srejovi?, who first explored the site, said that such large sculptures so early in human history, and the original architectural solutions, define Lepenski Vir as a specific and very early phase in the development of European prehistoric culture. The site was notable for its outstanding level of preservation and the overall exceptional quality of its artifacts. Because the settlement was permanent and planned, with an organized societal life, architect Hristivoje Pavlovi? labeled Lepenski Vir as "the first city in Europe".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
************************************************
The sin of masculinity
Daisy Cousens
The importance of the presumption of innocence was highlighted last week. Virginia Giuffre, who alleged she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to multiple men when she was a minor, has dropped a defamation proceeding against high-profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz. After initially identifying Dershowitz as one of many men Epstein forced her to have sex with, Giuffre has now admitted she ‘may have made a mistake’.
‘I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations,’ her statement read.
‘I now recognise I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.’
While Alan Dershowitz has acknowledged Virginia Giuffre was young and in a traumatic, vulnerable position at the time, her 2014 accusation trashed his reputation, perhaps irreparably. No room was made for the possibility that Dershowitz was, in fact, telling the truth when he denied having sex with Giuffre.
This disregard for the presumption of innocence greatly accelerated in the wake of the #metoo movement. Too often over the past five years we have seen feminist ideologues clutch at cases like Alan Dershowitz’s in an attempt to demonstrate that affluent, university-educated, Western women are actually living in an oppressive patriarchy, in which men are never held accountable for their bad behaviour. But in an interesting cultural double standard, it’s often the other way around.
Men are publicly browbeaten by feminists into collectively atoning for the bad behaviour of every man who has ever done anything wrong, ever… This includes comparatively minor indiscretions, such as (to use feminists’ own terminology) creating ‘hostile working environments’ for women. However, there is no public campaign to have women atone for the toxic elements of their own behaviour; such as the workplace bullying of women by (shock horror) other women.
Rather than being admonished for their ‘queen bee’ syndrome, women’s bad behaviour towards women at work is often blamed on (you guessed it) men. After all, if men didn’t create such a hostile working environment, women wouldn’t feel like they’re competing with each other for limited spaces at the top, right?
Regardless of their circumstances, men are treated as oppressors-in-waiting. This denigration begins, in some cases, when they’re little boys; the most obvious example being Victoria’s ‘Respectful Relationships’ program. This program is taught from the early grades, and allegedly seeks to prevent domestic abuse. However, it merely posits the vague notion of ‘gender inequality’ as the root cause of family and domestic violence (FDV).
Such an approach is inaccurate, and ideologically motivated, as among other things, it ignores the fact a reasonable chunk of FDV victims are not women. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), 42 per cent of victims of FDV-related homicide in 2021 were male. It also contradicts a 2019 study from the Australian Institute of Criminology, which found the great predictors for domestic violence are alcohol abuse and low socioeconomic status. The AIC study also found a tiny minority of men were responsible for a hugely disproportionate amount of domestic abuse.
Regardless of these inconvenient truths, schoolboys in Victoria are still being forced to apologise for their gender in the classroom, in some cases quite literally. An assembly at Brauer College on ‘rape culture’ last year, in which boys were forced to stand up and apologise to girls for the ‘behaviours of their gender’, is a case in point.
This double standard in the discussion of FDV is not solely caused by the toxic feminist-victim cultural narrative. Society just cares less about men than it does about women. Take, for example, the relentless reminders that a large majority of victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) related homicide are women. According to the latest National Homicide Monitoring Program from the AIC, 80 per cent of IPV homicide victims in 2019-2020 were women.
This ghastly fact is wielded by everyone from feminist chieftains to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese; as a way of promoting the ten days of domestic violence leave his government has written into law, he tweeted on November 2, ‘Right now, one woman dies every 10 days at the hands of an intimate partner.’
However, for all this anti-violence talk, we never hear it mentioned that in 2020, 67 per cent of the nation’s total victims of homicide and related offences were men, according to the ABS. This increased to 70 per cent in 2021. As such, while feminists insist that IPV-related homicide is a ‘gendered’ problem for women, they turn a blind eye to the fact that by their own logic, homicide at large is a gendered problem that disproportionately affects men.
This is not a new phenomenon. According to the ABS, men have been the primary victims of homicide and related offences in Australia since at least the 1990s. They are also the primary victims of armed and unarmed robbery. And while much is made by political and cultural leaders of the fact that according to the most recent Personal Safety Survey, women are more likely to be violently attacked in their homes, and by somebody they know, they do not display the same frantic concern for men, who are much more likely than women to be attacked in public by a stranger. An issue that should also be considered gendered, if feminist logic were applied.
In my experience, when these cultural double standards are pointed out, feminist activists justify men’s suffering by highlighting that in most violent incidents against men, the perpetrator is also a man. Former Labor MP Terri Butler epitomised this mentality on an episode of the ABC’s QandA in 2019.
‘Women are more likely to be the victims of violence at home, men are more likely to be the victims of violence in public, but the common factor is it’s men committing the violence by and large … so these rigid ideas of masculinity hurt everyone,’ she stated.
The implication here is, (as I see it): ‘If men would just collectively atone for the sin of toxic masculinity, then maybe they wouldn’t be violently attacked!’
Apparently, in yet another glaring cultural double standard, victim blaming is okay – if the victim is a man.
Such double standards extend to many layers of men’s experiences. For example, according to the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS), men are more likely than women to drink at risky levels (one in four men versus one in ten women). They also use illicit drugs like cannabis, methamphetamine, and cocaine at higher rates than women.
Despite the fact men are more likely than women to consume harmful substances, there is no campaign to label substance abuse a gendered issue. If it were women sniffing coke and smoking joints at disproportionately high rates (pardon the pun), we’d never hear the end of it from feminists.
Another glaring cultural double standard is public discussion of homelessness. According to the most recent 2016 census data, 58 per cent of Australia’s homeless population are men. This number is consistent with census data from previous years. However, public commentary mentioning homelessness and gender focuses on the recent phenomenon that women over 55 are the fastest growing group of homeless people. Not the fact that men are, and have been for some time, the majority of the homeless.
Then, of course, there are the everyday double standards; like the seemingly endless public initiatives to advance the welfare of women and girls, with meagre attention given to initiatives to support men and boys. For example, International Women’s Day and International Day of the Girl are recognised by the United Nations, and officially celebrated internationally.
However, International Men’s Day, which is coming up this weekend on November 19, receives a comparatively minuscule amount of public recognition. To add insult to injury, not only does the UN not recognise International Men’s Day, it officially recognises November 19 as World Toilet Day.
Consider also the relentless push to get more women into male-dominated industries like STEM, with a mind to somehow improving these industries with added estrogen. However, there is no public effort to push more men into female-dominated industries like teaching. This is a shame; given boys have been holding up TikTok celebrity and faux-masculine caricature Andrew Tate as an example of positive manhood, a few more male role models in the classroom would likely do boys a world of good.
The cherry on top of these double standards is that thanks to affirmative action, discrimination in the workplace against men on the basis of gender is culturally accepted, promoted, and celebrated, rather than rejected and reviled.
Despite the feminist claptrap, it’s clear society at large does not intrinsically care about men’s wellbeing. Fortunately, there are certain organisations that do, and I am fortunate enough to be a board member of one such organisation; Men’s Legal Service. Men’s Legal Service was established in 2016 upon observing the limited assistance available to men going through family law events.
Considering many men lack the financial resources to navigate the family law system, and as a result can lose contact with their children, the service MLS provides is invaluable in redressing this double standard. As a not-for-profit law firm, the focus of MLS is to ensure fathers remain part of their children’s lives after separation and divorce; another invaluable initiative, given how the role of fathers has been culturally devalued over the past few decades.
There will always be ideologues who point to the comparatively small number of very powerful men as apparent evidence that all men are inherently privileged. However, the experiences of a tiny percentage of a group does not reflect the experience of the group as a whole. Before our political and cultural leaders rush into casting society’s perceived villains, they would do well to consider all the facts, not just some.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/the-sin-of-masculinity/
*******************************************************
Red wave was no trickle – it was real
Why is mention of electoral fraud verboten? Indeed, the US Department of Homeland Security includes electoral fraud claims (but only by Republicans) as one of those items social media should remove as ‘misinformation’.
In addition, the mainstream media almost invariably describes Donald Trump as ‘falsely’ claiming that the 2020 election was rigged.
This is despite the fact that examples of fraud were included in newscasts during the 2020 election, and pleadings in the Supreme Court case Texas v. Pennsylvania demonstrating how changes in state electoral laws, increasing the potential for fraud, were clearly unconstitutional.
The fact is that in the mid-term elections, the door was still left open to fraud in certain key states.
Australians should not feign superiority. Our electoral system is more open to fraud than most comparable countries.
In 1983, the Hawke government legislated to make it ‘easier to vote’. So instead of voting in a nearby subdivisional polling station, I found I could vote in about 40 places, all without ID or any controls. Even when controls became easily available through the internet, they were never installed. Then in the middle of the 2010 election, the High Court moved against John Howard’s blocking of the usual tsunami of fraudulent, unverifiable enrolments in the week after the calling of an election. Declaring it unconstitutional, the Court waited until near Christmas to publish their unconvincing reasons and reveal their decision was taken by the narrowest majority. Meanwhile, GetUp! boasted it had 100,000 additional names inserted onto the rolls.
Writing here last week when early voting in the US was still underway, I argued that while a Republican victory in the House seemed more than likely, the Senate result was not clear because Republicans had to defend many more seats this round.
Others predicted a red wave but most now dismissively talk of a ‘trickle’.
There is no doubt. There was a red wave. Even with its proportion of the vote reduced by fraud in some states, including the potential for vast numbers of Biden’s illegal immigrants to vote, the Republicans still led the Democrats, 52.8 per cent to 46.6 per cent.
While this produced a narrow majority of nine seats, compare that with the 2010 election when Republicans led with less, 51.3 per cent to 47.2 per cent at time of writing.
Yet this ‘Tea Party Wave’ produced a large majority, one of 63 seats.
Why? I suspect the small mid-term majority is due to increased Democrat gerrymandering. This was encouraged by the Supreme Court suddenly deciding in 2019 that the issue is not justiciable, i.e., something the Court should not rule on.
American electorates are not exactly ‘rotten boroughs’, but enjoy nothing like the fairer boundaries normal in Australia.
Not only was the Republican percentage of the vote lower in 2022 because of electoral fraud, Democrats are using gerrymandering to dilute it.
As to electoral fraud, the continuous shrieking condemnation of Donald Trump by the mainstream media for daring to suggest the 2020 election was rigged has been so successful, few Republicans dare mention this.
Given that the methods of rigging used in 2020 are still in place in many states or have even been increased, this must be a significant part of the reason the predicted red wave was realised but not reflected in the results.
There were of course other factors which impacted adversely on the real Republican vote.
One was the Supreme Court’s legally correct decision that abortion is a state matter and never a constitutional right.
For some educated, relatively wealthy white women, belief in abortion is now akin to a religion and influences their vote. Yet few of them have any need to have recourse to abortion. This occurs disproportionately among poor, black and unmarried women. This leads to the killing of a large and disproportionate number of healthy, black babies.
The other factor was the high turnout among the young who are even more inclined to vote Democrat than previous generations, no doubt the result of the Marxist capture of education. This was balanced to an extent by the increasing support for Republicans among Asian, Hispanic and, from a small base, black voters.
Where the red wave was reflected in votes counted was in Florida where Ron DeSantis won 59.4 per cent of the vote. This was not only because he has proved to be an excellent governor, but also because he wisely closed the door to fraud in ‘mail-in’ voting and ballot harvesting, while cleansing the roll of the dead and requiring voter ID.
Rather than pointing to systemic fraud and gerrymandering as reasons for the failure of the red wave being reflected in seats won, the usual suspects, and not only Democrats, the never-Trumpers, RINOs, the mainstream and social media, but also panicking Republican grandees, joined together in blaming Donald Trump.
They have foolishly made him the ubiquitous and principal enemy of the people, just as Emmanuel Goldstein was in the Oceania of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The mainstream media might as well host a daily two-minute Trump hate session at 11am similar to Goldstein’s.
The fact is that as in 2016, when the lead contenders were Donald Trump and the excellent Ted Cruz, the Republicans have a veritable stable of quality choices for worthy future US presidents and thereby leaders of the free world.
The Democrats, now a neo-Marxist rabble, have none.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/red-wave-was-no-trickle-it-was-real/
****************************************************
On Gas Prices, Simple Economics Trumps Biden’s Partisan Agenda
President Joe Biden has an energy problem. He lambasts oil and gas companies as “war profiteers” and has threatened a windfall tax on their “record profits.” It’s true that earnings are up, but we don’t have to embrace the bogeyman of corporate greed as an explanation. Instead, the culprit is basic economics, amplified by the harmful consequences of the president’s regulatory agenda. His proposed windfall tax on oil-company profits will only make the situation worse.
Biden’s approach to energy makes production and distribution more difficult. The U.S. economy is producing millions fewer of barrels of oil per day than it did during the 2017–2020 boom. This decreased U.S. production is not caused by the war in Ukraine. U.S. policy decisions make oil and gas quantities lower and prices higher than they otherwise would be. Domestic production lags because companies can’t risk new investments floundering on the administration’s costly climate policies. As a result, oil prices are 40 percent higher now than they were in January 2021.
Simple economics explains energy companies’ high profits. In the oil industry, total revenues equal the price per barrel of oil times the number of barrels produced and sold. Policy-induced stagnation lowers quantities and raises prices. Here’s the key: Demand for oil isn’t very sensitive to price changes. Economists call this “inelastic demand.” With few good substitutes for fossil fuels, consumers won’t scale back much when prices rise. As a result, the price hikes outweigh the quantity drop-offs. That means more money for oil companies. Profits are downstream from market conditions, which the administration is actively harming. Supply and demand 1, Biden 0.
The president’s proposal of a windfall tax on profits would make a bad situation worse. One of the most important lessons in economics is that the burden of a tax rarely falls on those who are legally required to pay it. Instead, the tax burden is borne by the party that’s the least price sensitive. While fossil fuel consumers are not very price sensitive, domestic fossil fuel suppliers are because they can avoid a windfall profit tax by supplying markets abroad. A windfall profit tax would further decrease domestic supplies and drive prices at the pump even higher. Consumers, not corporations, would foot the bill.
The president has every reason to castigate the corporate-greed bogeyman. He can’t admit that our energy and gas wounds are self-inflicted—or, rather, inflicted by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party on the rest of the country. The party’s climate agenda necessarily drives fossil fuel prices higher. While Americans may like green policy in the abstract, the high fossil fuel prices that come with it are deeply unpopular. Hence the scapegoating: It’s political damage control.
The great economist Thomas Sowell taught us that the first lesson of economics is scarcity. That implies making trade-offs, such as bearing the burden of higher prices to transition away from fossil fuels. Sowell also observed that the first rule of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. That’s exactly what Biden and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are trying to do. Going by recent public opinion polls, voters aren’t buying it.
The economics of the situation are as clear as day. If we want lower prices, we need more production. Rescinding high-handed executive orders and regulations that disincentivize new investment will increase output and, eventually, lower prices. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but political fiat cannot withstand the laws of supply and demand.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14334&omhide=true&trk=rm
****************************************
17 November, 2022
Civilization goes back a LONG way in Europe
I am going to risk being labelled a white supremacist by my interest in pre-history. What I have found is that Europe seems to be where civilization as we know it first evolved. Egypt and Mesopotamia eat your hearts out!
I am talking about what archaeologists call the Vinca culture. It has left thousands of artifacts so it is in no way obscure. From what we have found of their artifacts, we can deduce quite a lot about them.
The big surprise is how old the objects are. They had been assumed to be more recent that the artifacts from Egypt and Mesopotamia but radiocarbon dating has thrown that into a cocked hat. Vinca predates Egypt by at least a thousand years.
The artifact that tells me most is the one below. It is clearly a type of chariot with very clearly defined and quite modern-looking wheels. It is drawn by birds so is symbolic. The chariot of the Gods is a familiar concept in antiquity (e.g. Psalm 68:17) and it looks like it was thought of in our most ancient European past. See below.
Does it mean that the wheel was invented in EUROPE? It seems likely. Below is another article about Vinca. The original includes images of many Vinca artifacts
There was once a mysterious European culture, which left a legacy in the form of valuable artifacts covered with an unknown, never successfully deciphered script. These artifacts have been excavated from sites in south-east Europe.
Ancient Vinca Culture
The culture that flourished from about 6000 BC to 3000 BC, was named Vinca-Tordos Culture of Yugoslavia and western Romania and derived its name from the village of Vinca located on the banks of the Danube river, only 14 km downstream from Belgrade.
A century ago, a great discovery was made at the Danube riverbank. Panta, an old man from Vin?a accidentally found a strange clay figurine: This mysterious figurine was puzzling to him so he took it to the National Museum in Belgrade in order to find the explanation. The figurine was soon recognized as an artifact that dated back to the late Stone Age.
Since then, a number of archaeological excavations have revealed numerous cultural layers of a civilization and its largest Neolithic settlement in Europe, dating back more than 7,000 years BC.
The Vinca legacy includes among others, curious masks and the most informative costumed figurines depicting women in extremely modern clothes like narrow skirts, and sleeveless upper-body panels, complimented with hip belts, aprons, jewelry, shoes, caps, hairstyles, bracelets, necklaces, and medallions.
There have also been unearthed different kinds of tools and weapons and the remains of prehistoric houses with the furniture and many other objects created in the Vinca region or brought from remote areas.
Since the language of the Vinca still remains undeciphered, unearthed artifacts constitute the only source of knowledge about this culture. Vinca's living style reminds us of our own. They lived in houses that had very complex architectural layouts and several rooms.
The houses faced northeast-southwest and were separated by streets. Vinca people had stoves in their houses, preceding the Romans in using these devices. They used special holes only for rubbish, and had the same tradition as we have, to bury people in cemeteries.
The development of copper metallurgy is evident during the latter part of the Vinca culture's evolution.
Among unearthed artifacts, there have been found a large number of figurines made of clay and other artifacts depicting worshipped deities and women in miniskirts, short tops, wearing jewelry.
It is hard to believe that women that lived several millennia ago wore miniskirts, unless, the cult of Mother Goddess was very widespread and reached both the south-east parts of Europe and ancient India.
Similar, made of ceramic clay, figurines of Mother Goddess, were found in excavations in Mohenjo-Daro, located along the Indus River in ancient India (present-day Pakistan).
Was this kind of clothes popular 7,500 years ago?
The Vinca Culture - Europe's biggest prehistoric civilization - point to a metropolis with a great degree of sophistication and a taste for art and fashion.
Numerous figurines related to the Vinca Culture bear 'markings that clearly indicate clothing, bequeathing a wealth of costume detail. The Vinca culture in the Danube River basin, from the end of the sixth through the fifth millennia B.C., left the most informative costumed figurines.
These images bear deep incisions encrusted with white paste or red ocher emulating fringe, hip belts, aprons, narrow skirts, and sleeveless upper-body panels. The Vinca artisans sans also modeled a variety of shoes, caps, hairstyles, bracelets, necklaces, and medallions...
Figurines with clothing and ornaments appear either bare-breasted or fully clad. Several dress combinations recur persistently on bare-breasted images. Some wear only a hip belt or a hip belt supporting either an apron or an entire fringed skirt. Others wear a tight skirt and nothing else...'
An important question is: Is the legacy of the Vinca culture evidence of the ever known earliest manifestation of the Divine Power and well-evolved and widespread Mother Goddess worship cult?
Many terracotta figurines of the Mother Goddess were recovered in excavations at various archaeological sites of Indus Valley. Naturally, orthodox science proposes a classical explanation to this phenomenon and say that the proto Mother, the symbol of female fertility, is depicted on prehistoric figurines.
Mysterious Vinca Culture Is Among The Most Advanced Prehistoric Societies In Europe
On many of the artifacts excavated from sites in south-east Europe, there have been found the Vinca symbols. Here are common symbols used throughout the Vinca period:
They probably represent the earliest form of writing ever found and predating ancient Egyptian and Sumerian writing by thousands of years.
Since the inscriptions are all short and appear on objects found in burial sites, and the language represented is not known, it is highly unlikely they will ever be deciphered.
In some way, Vinca's past is both forgotten and lost.
***********************************************************
An alternative to affirmative action
By Steve QJ, who is black
If I hated myself enough to live with the people advertising this apartment, I’d get a $50 a month discount based solely on the colour of my skin. No forms to fill out. No income declaration. No proof of historical oppression. A paper bag means test, if you will.
In Portland, Oregon, I’d qualify for a lifelong 15% discount at a spa called Luna Wellness. Why? Because “BIPOC people have been denied basic needs [like organic facials and Luna’s signature herbal massages] for far too long.“
At Blue Iris Mystery School, I’m eligible for a hefty 50% off their “Magic Self & Spirit Program,” for no better reason than that the selves and spirits of my ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa.
And while I resent the implication that only white people can afford to pay their rent, while I’m insulted by the suggestion that my ancestry is something to be pitied, while it’s exhausting to be endlessly viewed through a lens of racial oppression, what really annoys me is how crappy these offerings are.
I mean, come on. If you’re going to pity me, at least give me something I can use.
On August 28th, 1963, the same day Martin Luther King shared his iconic dream, nine other civil rights leaders gave speeches focused primarily on ending employment discrimination. In fact, the march where King delivered his famous speech was called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
A year later, in Why We Can’t Wait, King laid out the case for what would eventually be known as affirmative action:
…the nation must not only radically readjust its attitude toward the Negro in the compelling present but must incorporate in its planning some compensatory consideration for the handicaps he has inherited from the past.
It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we do not do something special for him now?
But the cruel irony of the civil rights movement is that as soon as it succeeded, as soon as it became illegal to discriminate against African Americans, it also became illegal to discriminate in favour of African Americans in order to provide that “compensatory consideration.”
And so, for almost as long as it’s existed, affirmative action has been under legal attack.
It’s hard to imagine two people better placed to present the opposing sides of this debate than Supreme Court Justices Sotomayor and Thomas, both of whom were beneficiaries of affirmative action at Yale.
Thomas, who grew up in Georgia during Jim Crow, considers black people to be the “main victims” of race-conscious admissions:
Not only are they subjected to white paternalism, but it stigmatizes black people’s achievements as less than that of white people. […] As much as it stung to be told that I’d done well in the seminary despite my race, it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it.
But Sotomayor, who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx, would never have been able to go to Yale if not for affirmative action:
I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. […] The question is not, how did I get in? It’s, what did I do when I got there? And with pride, I can say I graduated at the top of my class.
Thomas thinks affirmative action encourages the belief that people of colour need preferential treatment to succeed. And he’s right. Sotomayor thinks affirmative action gives candidates who don’t fit Yale’s typical mould the opportunity to succeed. She’s right too.
But here, we see the problem. Sotomayor’s circumstances, not her skin, made her deserving of support. Thomas’ ability and hard work, not his skin, brought him success. The problem with race-based affirmative action is that it treats skin colour and disadvantage as if they’re synonyms. And worse, this works against those who need help the most.
For example, according to Harvard’s figures, 71% of their minority students are socio-economically advantaged. The same is true at most other elite colleges. In other words, while these campuses might look superficially “diverse,” hardly any of their minority students come from underprivileged backgrounds. They’re just privileged kids with darker skin.
And yet, by eliminating practices like Z lists and legacy preferences (that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy white students), and by giving socioeconomic status even half the weight that they currently give athletes, the proportion of first-generation minority students at Harvard would increase from 7% to around 25%.
Under this system, even if you removed “race” as a factor completely, overall minority representation would increase from 28% to 30%. And crucially, that representation would be socioeconomic rather than superficial.
King makes a similar point in his “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged”:
It is a simple matter of justice that America, in dealing creatively with the task of raising the Negro from backwardness, should also be rescuing a large stratum of the forgotten white poor.
A Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, applicable to white and Negro families alike with annual incomes of less than $3,000, could mark the rise of a new era, in which the full resources of the society would be used to attack the tenacious poverty which so paradoxically exists in the midst of plenty.
As King explains, discriminating by skin colour, even to fix past discrimination, misses the point. The goal is to help people, all people, who need help. To foster environments where individuals from genuinely diverse backgrounds interact with each other. To support people who, due to poverty or a lack of access to quality education, find themselves with more talent than opportunity.
Solutions aimed at helping these people will disproportionately benefit people of colour, which is as it should be. Because people of colour have spent hundreds of years being deliberately disadvantaged in these areas.
But these solutions will also benefit poor and underprivileged white people. And this is also as it should be. Because a world that discriminates by need is superior in every way to a world that continues to discriminate by skin colour.
Best of all, it’s perfectly legal to discriminate against trust fund babies.
America was founded on a fault line so deep it almost tore the country apart. “All men are created equal,” cannot live alongside “some men are born slaves.”
And affirmative action, while morally incomparable, struggles with a similar contradiction.
“No person in the United States shall be discriminated against on the ground of race, color, or national origin," cannot live indefinitely alongside diversity quotas and “race-conscious” admissions policies.
Race-based affirmative action makes the same mistake that all race-based thinking makes; it presumes that people whose skin is the same colour are all the same. Or that they all face the same socioeconomic hurdles. That their presence in a group automatically equals “diversity.” This was a reasonable assumption in 1964. But not in 2022.
So to the wellness centres and “mystery schools” and the terminally “woke” roommates of the world, if you want to help people, good for you. But do so based on their need. Not whether their visible membership of a minority earns you virtue-signalling points.
Because these people don’t need preferential treatment. They don’t need tokenism. They don’t need anything more than the opportunity to show what they can do. Don’t pity them, just give them something they can use.
https://steveqj.medium.com/affirmative-actions-race-problem-35fd606c38ff
********************************************************
Faith Leaders Warn So-Called Respect for Marriage Act Will Hack Away at Religious Freedom
Leaders of faith-based institutions warned The Daily Signal on Tuesday that the Democrat-led Respect for Marriage Act, which is expected to be voted on by the Senate Wednesday, would hack away at the religious freedom of faith-based groups.
HR 8404 “provides statutory authority for same-sex and interracial marriages,” repealing provisions that define marriage as between a man and a woman.
The legislation, which was passed by the House in July, also “repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” allows “the Department of Justice to bring a civil action,” and “establishes a private right of action for violations.”
Democratic advocates say the legislation promotes equality, but religious leaders warn that it explicitly targets people of faith.
Stephen Minnis, president of the Catholic Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, warned The Daily Signal that “Catholic institutions will have a tough time living our faith under this legislation.”
“In fact,” he said, “giving religious institutions a tough time seems to be the point of the legislation. But the U.S. Constitution guarantees free exercise of religion, not just expression of religion. Benedictine College is committed to those rights, following the U.S. bishops, who joined an amici brief to defend our position this summer.”
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, the founder of Project Genesis and the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, said in a Tuesday phone interview that the so-called Respect for Marriage Act is the federal government “explicitly declaring the Bible is wrong,” noting that the legislation allows “any private actor to initiate a lawsuit if a religious school wishes to recognize only traditional marriages.”
The act “means exposing our community to a host of bad actors willing to engage in litigation,” Menken said. “The Jewish community is used to periodic efforts to misuse the law to abuse our rights to live according to our religion.”
“Here you have a piece of legislation that exposes every traditional Jewish practitioner of anything to potential litigation,” he warned.
Richard Callahan, a pastor at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in North Carolina, described the legislation as “an assault.”
“It is asking pastors and school administrators and parents to condone what God has condemned,” he told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday phone interview.
The government can “make same-sex marriage legal, but it will never be moral, and we will never be able to defend that, but it’s government reaching in and taking from us the free exercise of religion,” added Callahan, who is also president of the North Carolina branch of the American Association of Christian Schools.
Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, condemned the legislation in a Tuesday statement that accused Democrats of “threatening to empower woke activists inside and outside of government to attack people of faith with this bill that will be used as a cudgel against those who believe in the reality of marriage as between a man and a woman.”
“This bill provides no benefit or protection that same-sex couples don’t already have,” he warned. “All this bill does is target people of faith who don’t support woke ideology.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation)
Severino praised a “robust religious liberty amendment” introduced by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, saying that it would “provide real protection for religious liberty and could address some of this bill’s massive problems.”
“Americans were told that same-sex marriage was about live and let live, yet now liberals are going out of their way to undermine the religious freedom of millions of Americans,” said Severino. “No matter how the Left spins this, this legislation sets a national policy for same-sex marriage that would declare open season on people of faith. Americans deserve to have their First Amendment rights protected, not attacked.”
*********************************************************
UK: Suella Braverman tells police to focus on 'tackling crime, not debating gender on Twitter'
Home Secretary Suella Braverman today told police chiefs to ensure their officers are focused on 'common sense policing' and not 'debating gender on Twitter'.
In a forthright speech to a police chiefs' conference in London, Mrs Braverman took a swipe at 'politically correct distractions' as she urged a 'back to basics approach'.
The Home Secretary promised action to ensure police time was prioritised on dealing with 'threats to people and their property'.
Mrs Braverman - who was swiftly reappointed to her role by new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak last month, despite having been forced to resign six days earlier over security breaches - outlined how she thought officers could ensure they retain public confidence.
'The way to ensure public confidence in the police is to focus on getting the basics right,' she told a joint summit of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, and National Police Chiefs' Council.
'What I call "common sense policing". The kind of policing the law-abiding, patriotic majority of British people deserves and expects.
'No politically correct distractions, just good old-fashioned policing – with a relentless focus on making our streets, homes and transport networks safer.
'Responding to all burglaries, tackling anti-social behaviour and the horrendous trade in illegal drugs, and supporting victims.'
'The Government wants to see reductions in homicide, other serious violence, and neighbourhood crime,' she added.
'I know it's possible. Our best police officers are, simply put, the finest in the world.'
The Home Secretary praised Stephen Watson, the chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, for his 'superb leadership' in improving the performance of the force.
She said: 'How did he do it? He put more bobbies on the beat, pursued every crime, made excellent use of stop and search, and insisted that officers were smartly turned out with polished boots.
'A back to basics approach. For me, that is excellence in policing.'
In a promise of action on 'non-crime hate incidents' to free up police time, Mrs Braverman told delegates: 'Your police officers' time is precious.
'The public want the police to be tackling crime, not debating gender on Twitter.
'I have asked my officials to revisit the issue of non-crime hate incidents as a first step.
'As I want to be sure that we are allowing you to prioritise your time and your energy to deal with threats to people and their property.'
The College for Policing recently updated the guidance on 'non-crime hate incidents' in response to ex-police officer Harry Miller's successful legal challenge over alleged transphobic tweets.
Campaigners have expressed fears that 120,000 non-crime hate incidents being logged on police computers in Britain had impacted on people applying for jobs such as teachers or carers.
*******************************************************
Western Australia: democratic freedoms for religious schools under attack
On August 16, Western Australia’s Attorney General John Quigley tabled in Parliament the Law Reform Commission’s report into the Review of the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 (Project 111). As stated on the website of the Western Australian government, the Commission, which authored the report and where I served for five years (2012-17), made 163 recommendations including anti-discrimination protections to those that identify as ‘trans, gender-diverse, or non-binary without the need for recognition from the Gender Reassignment Board’, as well as strengthening legal protections for ‘LGTQIA+ staff and students in religious schools’.
The understanding in this recommendation to portray religious schools as somehow different from other social institutions is unfortunate. When recruiting staff or appointing officeholders, a political party could be expected to display discrimination resembling that practised by religious bodies. It is reasonable, for example, that a politician from the Labor Party might discriminate against individuals with conservative views when recruiting staff for her office team. Likewise, environmental advocacy bodies such as Greenpeace or the Australian Conservation Foundation might reasonably be expected to discriminate against Climate Change sceptics when appointing scientists to their Scientific Advisory Committees.
Why then is it considered necessary, in some quarters, to curtail the ability of religious organisations to follow positive discrimination practices when seeking to develop their organisations according to their core values? This is why the general exception guaranteed under the present legislation in WA should continue to apply to all employment positions of religious schools, and include all attributes of employees except for race, age, and a person’s responsibilities as a career. Of course, some religious schools may only need protections for some employment positions, but the State should still provide these schools with the same right to make these decisions and protections that are often provided to other organisations whereby membership is strictly based on other relevant attributes such as gender, sexuality, political opinions, or race. As law professor Patrick Parkinson writes from a Christian perspective:
‘The issue of Christian issues is not the right to ‘discrimination’. That puts the issue in negative and pejorative terms. The core claim is a right of positive selection. Christian schools and organisations only ask to be treated equally with other employers that may have legitimate reasons for wanting to appoint only those with certain characteristic relevant to the identity of the organisation. It is quite understandable that gay bars might prefer to appoint only gay staff, that Thai restaurants might prefer to have Thai employees, and that government ministers would want to staff their officers with people sympathetic to the values of their political party. Recognition of minority group rights on an equal footing is another version of equality. A right of positive selection is rather different from discrimination. It is easy to see the problem if a restaurant advertised for staff of any nationality, so long as they were not Thai. That would be discriminatory. However, it is quite different if a Thai restaurant advertise for Thai staff. Selection based in part on the characteristic which is relevant to the employment is not discriminatory.’
This, of course, is very much about protecting freedom of association, which plays an important role in promoting democratic pluralism by supporting an authentic environment of social diversity. To show due respect for this important right of every true democratic society, the government in Western Australia must avoid interfering in the internal matters of religious schools and allow their adherents to retain the capacity to determine these issues for themselves. As noted by law professors Rex Ahdar and Ian Leigh in their insightful book Religious Freedom in the Liberal State (Oxford University Press, 2013):
‘Freedom to associate with others of like mind necessarily involves freedom to exclude people who do not share the beliefs in question. In a liberal society, those so excluded are free to join other religious groups (or to form their own group) and so this should not be seen as harmful. On the contrary: if the State were to prevent exclusivity through its non-discrimination laws, this would amount to denial of a basic aspect of religious liberty. Paradoxically, perhaps, exclusive societies add to the diversity of society.’
In this sense, it would be deeply regrettable if these LRCWA recommendations were accepted by the WA government and incorporated in the relevant legislation. These recommendations reveal an illiberal mindset which is uncomfortable with the existence of religious diversity within Western Australia, and favours a dominant public system in which young Australians are educated according to a particular, state-sanctioned perspective. After all, the establishment of religious schools is an effective way that people of faith can freely educate their children (and other members of the community) of the merits of their religion.
Rather than fostering diversity in the educational sector, the recommendations made by WA Law Reform Commission will produce an educational system where people of faith are forced to have their children educated in light of the secularising hegemony of the State. Of course, this would be inconsistent with Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which declares, ‘The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.’ And also Article 19 which states that the right to freedom of expression ‘shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart ideas of all kinds’.
William Wagner, who is an emeritus professor of US constitutional law and retired US federal judge, explains that the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children ‘rests upon deeply rooted common law foundations’. This right, according to him, aims to ensure that parents maintain the primary role in educating their children, whilst being able to delegate part of that role to other bodies of their personal choice. Accordingly, a significant way in which governments can protect this right is by providing religious diversity by providing religious schools with sufficient freedom, so that they can employ persons compatible with the school’s worldview.
Demonstrating a genuine respect to equality in our culturally diverse community necessitates a protection for the choices of people of faith, and affirming their expressions of religiosity. Of course, a key way that the WA government could achieve this important goal is through allowing religious people to create supportive educational institutions, and permitting them to manage group membership so that they remain committed to the values and principles of their founders. As noted by law professor Ian Benson:
‘Religion is an equality right itself and religious people are entitled to non-discriminatory treatment in terms of their religion as well, so placing equality and non-discrimination over against religion or placing some forms of non-discrimination (say, sexual orientation) as things more important than the religious person’s freedom against non-discrimination is an error – though an all too common one.’
Of course, educational institutions that are committed to the preservation of their religious identities may eventually decide to employ persons with poor mission fit due to operational necessity, or because some diversity in the staff body may not have a significant adverse impact on the religious environment of the school. However, these decisions do not constitute evidence that mission fit is not important for teaching and non-teaching employment positions at these schools. On the contrary, a person’s mission fit is often quite crucial for a religious school as it allows the school to promote its own religious identity as an authentic religious institution. The Rev Dr Mark Durie, an academic who writes on relations between human rights and religious freedom, explains as follows:
‘For a secular person, teaching mathematics has nothing to do with religion. However, for a religious person – and indeed for a religious organisation – all actions can be considered to be worship. What distinguishes many religious organisations is that they see their whole actively as a corporate act of worship, done in devotion and service to God, in accordance with the doctrines and principles of their faith. One reason they want to employ people of faith is that they want the whole organisation to corporately serve God through its activities. The secular judges regard faith as an essentially personal and individual affair, and cannot understand this perspective because their religious worldview cannot comprehend it.’
This goes without saying that religious schools also play an important role in protecting the rights of minorities. They assist minority groups with the enjoyment of their religious culture, acting as positive measures of protection, and for allowing the participation of these minorities in decisions that affect their own communities. This is why the general exception guaranteed under the presently legislation should continue. Of course, some religious schools may only need these protections for some employment positions, but the WA government still must provide these schools with the same democratic freedoms to make decisions and protections that are often provided to secular organisations whereby membership is often strictly based on other relevant attributes such as political opinions.
Above all, it is essential for these religious schools that they can freely choose people of likewise persuasions during the appointment of non-teaching officeholders and recruitment of teachers. And since no government should have a right to disrespect not only religious freedom but also freedom association and the right to equality, the WA government should reject, and not endorse as it has done, these recommendations of the WA Law Reform Commission about strengthening protections for LGTQIA+ staff and students in religious schools.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/wa-democratic-freedoms-for-religious-schools-under-attack/
****************************************
16 November, 2022
I date three men at once to combat ghosting — here’s why
Interesting that a young woman has arrived at a situation that I share. I am 50 years older than her but I too have not been able to find one lady who can give me all I need. I have 3 fine women calling on me regularly. It has always been a big ask for one person to fulfil all of another person's needs so this is a reflection of that. Reproductive needs will however break up the woman's arrangements in time. Being in my 80th year however, I have no such needs
Over the summer, Serena Kerrigan was blindsided when a man dumped her by text in the early stages of dating. Hurt and upset, the 28-year-old decided it was time to approach dating differently. She’d casually see three men at the same time to stop herself from “hyperfixating” on a single guy and save herself from heartache when she got passed over or ghosted.
“I was so attached to the idea of [the guy I was dating] because I was only dating him versus dating multiple people,” Kerrigan, a producer and entrepreneur, explained to The Post.
“I feel like I used to fall in love” immediately, added the content creator behind the dating card game Let’s F–king Date.
Kerrigan — who defines “dating” as spending one-on-one time with someone — said that seeing multiple people as opposed to just one person has changed her attitude about herself.
“Operating in abundance,” she said, is “the best thing that I did for my confidence.”
She clarified that she doesn’t see all three men every week and instead “oscillates” between them to make plans. But while she might be seeing less of each guy, she said it allows her to focus on what she values, which is “quality time and great conversation.”
Taking her thoughts to TikTok, Kerrigan was overwhelmed by how many people agreed with her — and had tried the same thing. Many of the users commenting on her post from earlier this month, which has more than 448,000 views so far, noted the strategy helped them take better control of their dating life.
Rather than feel like they’d been “chosen” by a man to date them, the “rule of threes” instead allowed them to “choose” the kind of person they really wanted to be with.
Kiara, 25, who had commented on the video, told The Post that the strategy is now her “preferred method of dating.”
“I used to have a tendency of getting attached quickly — even when I knew we weren’t that compatible or there were red flags present,” said the Toronto-based production assistant for a jewelry designer, who declined to share her last name for privacy reasons.
Kiara is currently seeing three people and has been practicing the rule of threes for around five years. She said it has changed her outlook and helped protect her from heartbreak.
“I feel no pressure or stress when it comes to them,” she said. “If we stop seeing each other I wouldn’t get sad — just dust off my shoulders and move on.”
Los Angeles-based dating coach and therapist Jaime Bronstein praised the the notion of casually dating more than one person at a time.
“I think it’s very smart not to put all your eggs in one basket,” the 45-year-old told The Post.
“I I think it’s healthy — until or unless you have ‘the conversation,’ ” she added, referring to the relationship talk about being exclusive.
Dating multiple people removes some of the “nervous” energy that sometimes comes with focusing on just one person, Bronstein said, as well as eliminates the possibility that you may be building someone up in your head.
“The truth is, there is abundance in life, and we do have multiple options,” she advised. “It’s not healthy to focus just on one person.”
https://nypost.com/2022/11/14/i-date-three-men-at-once-to-combat-ghosting-heres-why/
***************************************************
Young people who detransition describe death threats, doxxing, intimidation, and being accused of 'genocide' from the 'cult-like' transgender community
Young people who used drugs or surgery to change their gender but later regretted their procedures and sought to reverse them are warning of worsening abuse from the transgender community they've walked away from.
De-transitioners, as they are known, speak of online vitriol, doxxing, harassment and death threats after they made the tough decisions to exit what they describe as inward-looking and even 'cult-like' trans groups.
Tensions between trans activists and de-transitioners spiked this month at a meeting of Florida's medical board, where sex change interventions for children were restricted. Insults were hurled, bomb threats were posted online.
Trans rights activists shouted over their opponents at the hearings, called out 'bigot' and 'shame on all of you', and vowed to dox board members, by publishing their private phone numbers and other details online.
The stakes are high. Trans activists face discrimination, many see themselves in a life-or-death civil rights struggle. By turning against that lifestyle and decrying puberty blockers for young people, de-transitioners undermine their cause.
Trans people eschew de-transitioners for 'invalidating their narrative,' Cat Cattinson, a de-transitioner from northern California, told DailyMail.com.
'I've seen the level of hate really escalate to the point that any time a new de-transitioner shares their story online, they get dogpiled by thousands of trans activists, bullied, ridiculed, and of course death threats,' said Cattinson.
'For every de-transitioner with a public platform, the new trend has been to call us liars and grifters and just try to invalidate everything we say.'
Cattinson, 30, a singer and musician, grew up as female but identified as male from the age of 13. She took testosterone, went by the name of Tony, and made plans for breast-removal surgery.
But the drugs started having negative effects on her heart, and deepened her cherished singing voice. She decided in 2020 to stop the injections and begin her de-transition back to being a woman.
She was among a group of de-transitioners that addressed hearings of Florida's medical board, which on November 4 voted to forbid the state's doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and hormones, or perform surgeries, until transgender patients are 18.
Republican politicians in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas and Oklahoma have taken steps to restrict such treatments for children, but the decision in Florida was the first time limits were imposed by a US medical board, albeit one aligned to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
A spokesman for the board said they had to draft extra law enforcers and hired a private security firm for the controversial hearings, as various social media users threatened to 'mail pipe bombs' to the 14-member panel.
Many doctors, mental health specialists and medical groups argue that treatments for transgender youth are safe and beneficial, and some say they are necessary to prevent teen suicides, though rigorous long-term research is lacking.
Definitive data are hard to come by. According to Pew Research Center, some 5.1 percent of adults younger than 30 are trans or nonbinary. Somewhere between 8 and 13 percent of them revert to their gender at birth, according to various estimates.
A Reddit group called 'detrans' has 41,500 members who share their experiences about dodgy doctors, stigma and other issues, including ever more 'hateful, angry' online posts in transgender forums.
Cattinson says the growing number of outspoken detransitioners has changed the conversation.
*************************************************
This election was no loss for Trump
If conservatives interpreted Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 the way Trump supporters are being told to interpret the 2022 midterms, there would be no conservative movement today. Of course, the 1964 election was an actual defeat, while this year’s elections were an advance for the new Republican right, which succeeded in its first task — gaining power in the GOP — and has strengthened its hand in Congress. The right has picked up a Senate seat with Ohio’s J.D. Vance, and Republicans look likely to control the House of Representatives come January. The GOP won the majority of votes cast in House races, nearly 52 percent overall.
The official narrative of the election is meant to drive the right to suicide. Democrats, NeverTrump ex-Republicans, and critics of the populist right who remain in the GOP have all blamed Trump voters for the party’s failure to take the Senate and claim a commanding margin in the House. Donald Trump himself was not on the ballot, but he made endorsements, and voters who followed those endorsements chose weak candidates, the story goes.
The anti-right narrative is a remarkable thing: when a candidate Trump supported lost, like Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, it was Trump’s fault; when a candidate Trump opposed lost, like Joe O’Dea in Colorado, it was Trump’s fault. When a candidate Trump supported won, such as J.D. Vance in Ohio, pundits discounted the victory; when a candidate Trump opposed won, such as Brian Kemp in Georgia, the same pundits found it enormously significant. Ron DeSantis’s nearly 20-point margin of victory in Florida, a big win for the right, was mostly hyped as a defeat for Trump, even though Florida is Trump’s home base.
In light of all the other commentary, it should be clear to voters of the right what liberals are trying to do: they prefer DeSantis to Trump, and by presenting the midterms as a defeat for the populist right, they hope to persuade DeSantis to shift away from the right if he runs for president in 2024.
But before DeSantis, or any other Republican, accepts that narrative, he should ask himself what the 2022 results really say about the momentum of different ideological blocs within the GOP and in the country as a whole. The first thing to notice is that incumbents won last Tuesday no matter what their ideological tilt — not a single sitting senator or governor lost. Moderate Republican incumbents like Ohio’s Mike DeWine won; liberal Democrat incumbents like Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and New York governor Kathy Hochul won; libertarian-leaning Trump-friendly Republican incumbents like senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul won; and DeSantis himself, the right-wing incumbent governor of Florida, won.
The flip side tells the same story: challengers of all stripes, right-wing, moderate, or liberal, almost always failed. If the 2022 election was meant to signal a rise in anti-Trump sentiment, the original NeverTrump candidate, Evan McMullin, shouldn’t have lost to Mike Lee in a double-digit blowout. Utah, after all, is the least friendly red state in the country for Trump’s brand of politics, and McMullin, who ran an independent campaign for president in 2016, ran against Lee this year on a platform entirely focused on tying the senator to the former president. He still lost by nearly 14 points.
Compare that dismal performance by a NeverTrump champion to the narrower loss by a Trump Republican like Blake Masters to an incumbent Democrat senator. As a former astronaut, Mark Kelly has the kind of résumé most politicians would kill for, and as senator he has had no particular scandals to his name. He is the kind of politician who could be expected to cruise to re-election any year, particularly in a cycle friendly to incumbents. But Masters, a 36-year-old first-time candidate, came about five points short of knocking out Kelly. Anyone who looked at this race without any knowledge of the “official” narrative would conclude that this political neophyte was a phenom, a first-time loser but a long-term winner, with the brightest of futures. A candidate like that would tell a neutral observer something important about the direction of American politics.
Two of this year’s battleground open-seat Senate races also sent a clear signal that differs from the pundit-class consensus. Where there was no incumbent in these battlegrounds, populism was the victor. And where voters were given a choice between right-wing and left-wing varieties of populism, they chose the right-wing kind. In Ohio, both parties fielded candidates with appeal to working-class voters, the Republican J.D. Vance, known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, and the Democrat Tim Ryan, a politician often named as an exemplar of how Democrats can appeal to blue-collar voters who increasingly trend Republican. Vance won by six points.
In Pennsylvania, a left-wing populist Democrat with experience as the state’s incumbent lieutenant governor, John Fetterman, beat a Trump-endorsed but not-populist Republican, the television celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. Fetterman was certainly weakened by a recent stroke, yet he was exactly the right candidate to cut into Republican attempts to win working-class and less educated voters. And Oz, despite the Trump endorsement, was hardly the right candidate to outbid Fetterman for those votes. A Vance-like candidate in Pennsylvania would have done better than Oz, and although Pennsylvania is less Republican than Ohio, a candidate like Vance could probably have beaten Fetterman.
Going into the midterms, I was as wrong as everyone else about the mood of the electorate. Midterms usually see big gains by the party out of power in the White House, and amid inflation and rising crime, the Democrats seemed to be doomed. I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that Republicans were now the party with entrepreneurial initiative, and the risks they were taking would pay off. In any event, the payoff was much smaller than expected — for now. The country responded to all the uncertainty and misery of recent times not by gambling on change but by sticking with incumbents of both parties and all ideological complexions. The public chose to punt on making decisions this election, leaving Congress closely divided.
That’s not a loss for the right; it’s a postponement. And no rival faction of American politics scored a lasting victory on November 8. Adding John Fetterman to the Senate does nothing to rejuvenate the party of Joe Biden, and the loss of Tim Ryan — who did have promise as a potential national figure — is more significant for the Democrats’ future than Fetterman’s victory. The 44-year-old Ron DeSantis and the 38-year-old J.D. Vance, by contrast, do strengthen the future of the Republican right. Moderate Republicans did well with incumbents, just as everyone else did, but gained no new momentum from the re-election of governors like Mike DeWine. And Evan McMullin’s rout shows that NeverTrump politics has nothing to look forward to even in Mitt Romney’s Utah.
Populism and the right are still advancing in American politics. This proved to be great news for Ron DeSantis last Tuesday, but it is also good news for Donald Trump, who remains the father of right-wing populism. What he began in 2016 continues to grow. It took the GOP by storm in this year’s primaries and has made inroads into Congress even at a time when voters are taking no risks. The present knife’s-edge balance in legislative and presidential elections will give way to decisive results before long. Which side has the energy, drive, confidence, and courage to claim the future — no matter how long it takes?
The fact that the right may be in for a bruising battle between Trump and DeSantis is only proof that there is a prize here worth fighting for, and it’s more than just the 2024 Republican nomination. The lesson of this year’s midterms, however, is not to be impatient. The timetable for change in American politics may not be what anyone expects, but the force of change lies firmly on the right.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/this-election-was-no-loss-for-trump/
*******************************************
Fat guy wins beauty contest
More Leftist destruction. They never have much liked the idea of beauty. It offends against their "all men are equal" dogma. One does however feel sorry for the attractive women who were elbowed out of this contest
Social media influencer and business management student Brian Nguyen won the title of Miss Greater Derry.
Contestants between 17 and 24 compete against other women for the title, with the winner going on to vie for the title of Miss New Hampshire 2023.
In an Instagram post, Brian said she was “honoured” to win the title.
“No words can describe the feeling of having the opportunity to serve my community and represent my community for the very first time at Miss New Hampshire,” she said.
Critics were quick to accuse the competition of going ‘woke’ and taking opportunities away from female contestants after footage of Nguyen’s crowning moment went viral online.
Former Miss Great Britain winner and glamour model Leilani Dowdin said the other contestants’ had their opportunity “stolen from them by a biological male”.
“A biological male and an overweight one at that has just won Miss Greater Derry in New Hampshire. Brian who is not even a female name, caked in makeup, nothing like the pretty natural girls that entered the competition, has not only taken first place, they’ve taken away the chance for a female to have a scholarship and use that prize money for something towards her future,” Dowdin said in a video she shared on Twitter.
“I don’t know if they felt like they would be singled out, or whether they really are woke bunch.”
****************************************
15 November, 2022
Gender quotas have no place in science funding
CLAIRE LEHMANN
Quotas are the latest Leftist policy of destruction. They exclude merit
To fund their medical research in Australia, male scientists may have to start identifying as trans or “non-binary” to get a fair shake.
This is because the nation’s largest body that administers medical research funding – the taxpayer-funded National Health and Medical Research Council – has decided to impose gender quotas on the awarding of funding for research, even though female researchers are already more likely to receive funding.
The NHMRC typically awards about $370m in investigator grants to medical researchers every year. Starting from next year, these grants must be awarded equally to male and female researchers, even if applications are not evenly split. The NHMRC also has announced: “For the first time, non-binary researchers will also be explicitly included in this and other measures to foster gender equity in NHMRC funding, recognising the systemic disadvantage that they experience.”
Of course, nobody wants women to miss out on fair opportunities for research funding. And if high-quality applications can be split perfectly down the middle to ensure a perfect 50-50 ratio between male and female researchers, I don’t think anyone would have a problem with it. If 70 per cent of applications were from female scientists and only 40 per cent of the grants were awarded to them, I think all of us would understand the policy’s rationale.
But that is not the case. According to an editorial recently published in Nature, last year only 20 per cent of the applicants in the most established research group were women. How the NHMRC will achieve a 50 per cent gender ratio out of a 20 per cent female application rate at this level has not been made clear. (At least they’ve included the non-binary category for some wiggle room.)
What is clear is that when women apply for funding, they are just as likely as men to receive it. According to Nature: “From 2019 to 2021, more applications for investigator grants at the earliest career stage came from women – who were awarded 137 grants, compared to 123 for men.”
And according to table five of the NHMRC’s Investigator Grants 2022 Outcomes Fact Sheet, women are already more likely to be funded. This year, although the total number of female applicants was fewer at the top level, when they did apply 41.7 per cent of women won grant funding compared with 23 per cent of men. At the mid-career level, 26.6 per cent of women were successful in getting their research funded while 12.6 per cent of men were. And at the junior level, where more women apply for funding than men, 11.8 per cent of women were funded compared with 8.8 per cent of men. If women are already more likely to receive funding then the disadvantage that the quota is apparently correcting for is ambiguous.
The usual argument is that there are fewer women applying for grant numbers at the top level because they have faced disadvantage throughout their careers and so it is justifiable that some form of affirmative action is required to even the playing field.
As a working mother I am sympathetic to the argument that women face challenges that are unique to their sex. But while it is true that women once faced systemic barriers in the past it is not clear that these barriers still exist.
More women than men earn PhDs, including in science, technology, engineering and maths disciplines, and female doctoral graduates out-earn men. In the early stages of their careers more women than men apply for grants and receive them. The NHMRC’s data shows that last year 181 junior women applied for funding compared with 167 men. If more women earning PhDs, applying for grants and winning grants counts as structural disadvantage, then the patriarchy really does work in mysterious ways.
Two research scientists writing in Quillette, the online magazine of which I am editor, have argued the reason for the discrepancy at the top levels is simply an artefact of a generational shift.
Decades ago there were fewer women earning PhDs and undertaking science careers. This discrepancy shows up today when looking at senior levels of the profession. But this discrepancy is not necessarily evidence of unfair treatment. It could be, but to assert that it is without conducting the appropriate study is unscientific – not what we would expect from a leading scientific body.
Former NHMRC grant recipient and University of Melbourne emeritus professor Anthony Jorm writes in Quillette: “The new policy championed by the current CEO (Anne Kelso) means that gender equity will override quality. Any adjustment of grant outcomes by gender necessarily requires that some women with lower quality applications will be favoured over some men with higher ones.”
We already have dubious research being produced within scientific fields from “feminist glaciology” to “the Racialisation of Epistemology in Physics”. We hardly need incentives for more.
And it is likely the public would prefer that its money were spent on the highest quality medical research – regardless of the gender of the lead researcher. Funding for scientific research is a public good, not a mandate for preferencing one set of researchers over another. The prestige of science rests on its perceived impartiality and meritocracy. While bias can and does exist in any human endeavour, custodians of our institutions have a duty to reduce bias, not exaggerate it.
The high status afforded to science in our society exists because it is seen as being above politics. Enforcing quotas to satisfy political objectives such as gender equity erodes the perception that science is above politics and reduces its status. By awarding funding for any reason other than merit, Australia’s leading body of funding for medical research undermines the principles on which the scientific enterprise rests.
*******************************************************
Court shoots down Biden administration Title IX rule change
AMARILLO, Texas – In a victory for female athletes and health care providers, a federal district court rejected the Biden administration’s reinterpretation of the word “sex” to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” in federal statutes.
In Neese v. Becerra, two Texas-based physicians are challenging the administration’s mandate in Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act that forces health care professionals to perform harmful medical procedures that seek to alter a patient’s biological sex even if the procedure violates the doctor’s medical judgment or religious beliefs. That mandate depends on Title IX, a federal statute that the administration is also attempting to interpret to require women to compete against men on women’s sports teams.
In its ruling Friday, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, determined that “because Title IX does not protect ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity’ status, neither does Section 1557.” Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief in August arguing for the court to protect female athletes by striking down the administration’s rewriting of federal law, which the court did in its ruling.
“Female athletes deserve to compete on a fair and level playing field with other women, and federal law protects equal opportunity for women to excel in sports,” said ADF Legal Counsel Rachel Csutoros. “We’re pleased the court ruled to not only protect female athletes, but also doctors who should never be forced to perform controversial and medically dangerous procedures that violate their conscience and religious beliefs. In its opinion, the court rightly stopped the Biden administration’s gross overreach of its authority and political agenda.”
“Title IX’s protections center on differences between the two biological sexes—not SOGI status,” the court wrote in its opinion. “Title IX expressly allows sex distinctions and sometimes even requires them to promote equal opportunity… Defendants’ theory actively ‘undermine[s] one of [Title IX’s] major achievements, giving young women an equal opportunity to participate in sports.”
The court further wrote, “the Defendants’ reinterpretation of Title IX through the Notification imperils the very opportunities for women Title IX was designed to promote and protect—categorically forcing biological women to compete against biological men.”
ADF attorneys filed the brief on behalf of Maddie Dichiara, who is on a full-tuition scholarship to play soccer at the University of Houston, Chelsea Mitchell, an All-American long jumper who won numerous state championships in sprinting and jumping events, and Madison Kenyon, a track and cross-country athlete at Idaho State University.
The brief explains how U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra “simply takes women’s teams for granted without stopping to consider the pivotal role that biology-based classifications have played in promoting equal opportunities. His interpretation has dire ramifications for female athletes too, threatening to end women’s sports. Yet to give women ‘real opportunities,’ rather than participation trophies, schools must offer women-only teams. Title IX accomplishes this by focusing on biology, and neither the statute’s text nor purpose support the Secretary’s interpretation.”
https://adfmedia.org/case/neese-v-becerra
***********************************************
Four reasons to scrap ‘diversity and inclusion’
Esteemed American psychologist Jonathon Haidt recently made headlines having resigned from his major professional association. He did so out of frustration that ‘everybody presenting research at the group’s conferences [must] explain how their submission advances “equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals”.’
‘The Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)—recently asked me to violate my quasi-fiduciary duty to the truth. I was going to attend the annual conference in Atlanta next February to present some research with colleagues on a new and improved version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. I was surprised to learn about a new rule: In order to present research at the conference, all social psychologists are now required to submit a statement explaining “whether and how this submission advances the equity, inclusion, and anti-racism goals of SPSP”.’
Like Haidt, I too have had a gutful of hearing ‘diversity and inclusion’ (D&I) being propagated the left, right, and centre. At schools. At universities. In the workplace, where the average base salary for D&I managers is $98,000. In politics. In the media. In sports. It is inescapable.
These values may seem fair on the surface, but in reality, D&I initiatives are backwards. Here are four reasons why:
1. They are a waste of time, money, and resources.
Australia already is a diverse and inclusive society. In such an immensely successful multicultural society like ours, the constant push for D&I is pointless. Australia is a great melting pot of different ethnic backgrounds; we are a migrant nation. This is not to deny any historical wrongs, with respect to the treatment of Indigenous Australians and certain immigrant communities. As no person is perfect, so it is with nations. Nevertheless, it is imperative that we take the good with the bad.
It follows that the talent pool in Australia is inherently diverse, hence there is no need to deliberately mandate diversity quotas or schemes. It is in any organisations best interest to hire on a meritocratic basis for the best outcomes (just as ‘the telos of a university is truth’, not D&I), and we are blessed to have the luxury of choosing from a diverse talent pool, without having to obsess over D&I; for it will occur organically.
With respect to the wastage of both money and resources, examples are aplenty, with over 80 per cent of Australian businesses emphasising D&I. Why does BOM require a D&I manager? Perhaps if they allocated more resources toward their core responsibility, we might receive a more accurate weather forecast.
2. They are racist.
The ideology behind D&I initiatives stems from identity politics and Critical Race Theory, which is inherently bigoted and racist as it categorises individuals according to their immutable characteristics, like their skin color, sexual orientation, religion, etc.
‘D&I’ is a neat way to cover up the progressive ideological identity-politics-laden agenda, which is in fact antithetical to a diverse and tolerant society. Left-wing ideologues are solely preoccupied with pushing their agenda, not treating all unique individuals with dignity and respect. The Academic Freedom Alliance warned that ‘academics seeking employment or promotion will almost inescapably feel pressured to say things that accommodate the perceived ideological preferences of an institution’. This is devastating for the pursuit of truth and equally the notion of justice.
As George Orwell warned in Animal Farm, ‘All animals are equal, [but some] are more equal than others.’ In other words, many progressive ideologues (most often the very one’s pushing for D&I) can be as vile, bigoted, hateful, and malicious to those that are not in line with the cause. In an insightful piece entitled Misunderstanding Equality, Bo Winegard illustrates the proclivity for modern leftist editors to ‘reject articles [contradictory toward] progressive political views about race, sex, and gender-identity’. It would now seem that those harbouring the politically correct opinions are those animals that ‘are more equal than others’. As it has been quipped, Orwell’s work now seems to be utilised as a manual for ideologues, rather than a warning for us all on the dangers of communism.
3. They create a problem where none existed before – they make normal people angry.
D&I initiatives inevitably result in adverse reactions from people like Haidt who just want to get on with their lives and not get caught up in this tripe. While many proponents are well-intentioned (and not knowingly driven by ideology), I am convinced that many quiet Australians have had a gutful. There is something excruciatingly patronising about being told how to treat other people with respect. People want to get on with their lives and not be treated like kindergarteners. The rising resentment is palpable. The danger of this trend persisting is the risk that the pendulum swings too far back. The last thing anyone should want is for Australia to become as deeply polarised as America. Nota bene: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
4. Their cheerleaders are hypocrites.
I had a good chuckle when I read this ABC article claiming ‘ageism’ against Fran Kelly. I’d be placed in a financially enviable position had I received $1 during my BA degree for every time I heard a lecturer or tutor describe the historical figures we were studying as ‘old, pale, male, and stale’. I doubt though that the ABC (one of the big media proponents of D&I) would see fault with this particular term. More to the point, the ABC completely lacks diversity of opinion (especially politically), as Gerard Henderson consistently observes, it is ‘a conservative-free zone’. Diversity of opinion is vital in a free society, and especially on our public broadcaster which is funded by all Australians, and therefore should be representative of all views.
Instead of wasting our time with D&I Initiatives, couldn’t we all just take it as a rule that we need to be kind to each other? It is incumbent upon us all to treat one another with respect, irrespective of our differences.
From what I understand, there is a famous book that mentions this Bloke who was keen to spread the message ‘love one another, as I have loved you’. Seems reasonable!
Good on Haidt for taking a stand against the uniformity and exclusivity (not real D&I) of the progressive-left. He sets a strong example for us all
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/four-reasons-to-scrap-diversity-and-inclusion/
***************************************************
Suing Google for Censorship Isn’t Enough
The RNC is suing Google for its bulk-labeling of millions of RNC campaign email communications to its supporters and donors as “spam.”
The lawsuit also alleges that Google has been targeting its emails that “communicat[e] political messaging and important Get-Out-The-Vote information.”
When private companies dominate or virtually monopolize communications used by the public, are they prohibited from engaging in...selective censorship?
After enduring years of targeted censorship, the Republican National Committee is suing Google for its bulk-labeling of millions of RNC campaign email communications to its supporters and donors as “spam” during “pivotal points in election cycles.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, where Google has its corporate headquarters, is seeking an injunction ordering Google to stop its “en masse,” “egregious filtering,” and asking for “actual, statutory, and exemplary damages” and attorneys’ fees.
Political campaigns and political parties have become increasingly reliant on email services, such as Gmail. While the midterm elections will soon be over, the 2024 presidential election cycle will start shortly thereafter, and the decision in this case could have a serious impact on both the conduct and the outcome of the next presidential election.
The RNC is alleging that Google is discriminating against Republicans by using its Spam Filter Algorithm to reduce the visibility of the RNC’s emails, including labeling as “spam” RNC emails to individuals who have specifically requested to be on the RNC’s email communications list.
Specifically, Google has targeted the fundraising efforts of the RNC, resulting in the loss of an estimated more than $2 billion in donations since 2019, according to the complaint.
But the lawsuit also alleges that Google has been targeting its emails that “communicat[e] political messaging and important Get-Out-The-Vote information.”
Emails are a “crucial conduit” for the RNC to engage “in its core mission of conducting political activity,” something that is undoubtedly true for all political parties and party organizations, not just the RNC.
Earlier this year, North Carolina State University published a study that found emails from Republican candidates for office were marked as spam at a rate 820% higher than the emails of their Democratic opponents, significantly disadvantaging Republican candidates.
As argued by the RNC, this study credibly proves that Google’s Spam Filter Algorithm is deliberately censoring Republicans.
Instead of ending the censorship of Republican candidates, Google has “fallen silent,” according to the complaint, and it has quit responding to RNC efforts to work out a remedy, instead urging the RNC to join its “Verified Sender Program,” which would impose even more stringent rules on RNC emails that wouldn’t resolve the censorship.
And the RNC claims that the discrimination by Google in filtering its emails increased dramatically in February of this year as the 2022 election cycle got underway.
The lawsuit provides an interesting historical context for the alleged violations that emphasizes that while the internet and email communications are modern technological developments, the principle at stake and the issue involved with a private company having “market-dominant” control over important communications is not a new one.
The complaint points out that in the mid-1800s, the equivalent of today’s email communications were telegrams and the newly developed telegraph system. Just like Google today, one company, Western Union, “had a dominant market share across the country.”
The complaint alleges that Google controls 53% of the email traffic in the country.
Citing NetChoice LLC v. Paxton, a case this year out of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the complaint says that legislators grew concerned over “the possibility that the private entities that controlled this amazing new technology” of almost instant communications through the telegraph system “would use that power to manipulate the flow of information to the public when doing so served their economic or political self-interest.”
Western Union “repeatedly discriminated” against certain telegram senders based on their political views and affiliations, and influenced the “reporting of political elections in an effort to promote the election of candidates” favored by the directors of the company.
Many states enacted laws outlawing such discrimination in telegraph services, including California, which is apparently one of the reasons this lawsuit was filed in that state. The RNC is claiming that Google is a “common carrier” within the definition of that state’s law that requires communication companies to “deliver messages without preference in time, price, or otherwise.”
The complaint further alleges that Google is violating a California civil rights law that guarantees “full and equal” treatment by all business establishments. Exclusionary policies based on “political affiliation” are unlawful discrimination.
The RNC is also asserting violations under California’s unfair business practices statute, as well as tort claims for both negligent and intentional “interference with prospective economic relations.”
In addition to these state law claims, the RNC is alleging that Google’s discriminatory actions violate the federal Telecommunications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 202. The RNC acknowledges that the Federal Communications Commission does not currently classify Google as a “common carrier” within the definition of that law and that several court decisions have upheld the FCC’s decision as reasonable. But the RNC says it is preserving “the issue for further review or intervening Supreme Court authority.”
This is an important case, because it raises a crucial issue that the courts, Congress, and state legislatures ought to address. When private companies dominate or virtually monopolize communications used by the public—the same way Western Union did throughout the 19th century—are they prohibited from engaging in discrimination and in selective censorship and filtering in accordance with the political views, opinions, and interests of the directors of those companies? Or should they be treated like other private entities over whom the government has no regulatory authority?
Google has abused its email and internet-browsing dominance to control speech online. Regardless of the outcome of this case, the tech giant ought to be far more transparent with the American people over how it moderates and censors content. The country would never accept a telecommunications firm blocking phone calls, or the Postal Service redirecting political mail. The law should provide the same respect and protection for private email communications.
The resolution of this case will help determine the future of digital communications. But we shouldn’t have to rely on the courts to deliver Big Tech accountability. Lawmakers should prioritize legislation that requires greater transparency and prevents Big Tech from monopolizing—and controlling—this critical infrastructure.
****************************************
14 November, 2022
Old Europe
This must be the ultimate in political incorrectness: Radiocarbon dating shows that civilization first evolved in Europe, not Mesopotamia
There are lost civilisations, and then there are forgotten civilisations. From the 6th to the 3rd millennium BC, the so-called “Vinca culture” stretched for hundreds of miles along the river Danube, in what is now Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, with traces all around the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor, and even Western Europe.
Few, if any, have heard of this culture, though they have seen some of their artefacts. They are the infamous statues found in Sumer, where authors such as Zecharia Sitchin have labelled them as “extra-terrestrial”, seeing that the shapes of these beings can hardly be classified as typically human. So why was it that few have seen (or were aware of) their true origin? The person largely responsible for the isolation of the Vinca culture was the great authority on late prehistoric Europe, Vere Gordon Childe (1892-1957). He was a synthesiser of various archaeological discoveries and tried to create an all-encompassing framework, creating such terms as “Neolithic Revolution” and “Urban Revolution”. In his synthesis, he perceived the Vinca culture as an outlying cultural entity influenced by more “civilised” forces. His dogmatic stance and clout meant that the Vinca culture received only scant attention. Originally, interest in the signs found on pottery had created interest in some academic circles, but that now faded following Childe’s “papal bull”.
Interest was rekindled in the 1960s (following the death of Childe), largely due to a new discovery made in 1961 by Dr. N. Vlassa, while excavating the Transylvanian site of Tartaria, part of Vinca culture. Amongst various artefacts recovered were three clay tablets, which he had analysed with the then newly introduced radiocarbon dating methodology. The artefacts came back as ca. 4000 BC and were used by the new methodology’s detractors to argue that radio carbon-dating was obviously erroneous. How could it be “that” old? Traditionally, the Sumerian site of Uruk had been dated to 3500-3200 BC. Vlassa’s discovery was initially (before the carbon dating results) further confirmation that the “Vinca Culture” had strong parallels with Sumer. Everyone agreed that the Sumerians had influenced Vinca Culture (and the site of Tartaria), which had therefore been assigned a date of 2900-2600 BC (by the traditional, comparative methodology, which relied on archaeologists’ logic, rather than hard scientific evidence). Sinclair Hood suggested that Sumerian prospectors had been drawn by the gold-bearing deposits in the Transylvanian region, resulting in these off-shoot cultures.
Some of the Tartaria tablets above. Carbon 14 dating has revealed that they were created at least 6,500 years ago, so their symbols predate Sumerian cuniform, which was previously the oldest writing known. Such symbols have been found on pottery, figurines, spindles and other clay artifacts.
But if the carbon dating results were correct, then Tartaria was 4000 BC, which meant that the Vinca Culture was older than Sumer, or Sumer was at least a millennium older than what archaeologists had so far assumed. Either way, archaeology would be in a complete state of disarray and either some or all archaeologists would be wrong. Voila, the reason as to why radio carbon dating was attacked, rather than merely revising erroneous timelines and opinions. There is no debate about it: the artefacts from the Vinca culture and Sumer are very much alike. And it is just not some pottery and artefacts: they share a script that seems highly identical too. In fact, the little interest that had been shown in the Vinca culture before the 1960s all revolved around their script. Vlassa’s discovery only seemed to confirm this conclusion, as he too immediately stated that the writing had to be influenced by the Near East. Everyone, including Sinclair Hood and Adam Falkenstein, agreed that the two scripts were related and Hood also saw a link with Crete. Finally, the Hungarian scholar Janos Makkay stated that the “Mesopotamian origin [of the Tartaria pictographs] is beyond doubt.” It seemed done and dusted.
But when the Vinca Culture suddenly predated Sumer, this thesis could no longer be maintained (as it would break the archaeological framework, largely put in place by Childe and his peers), and thus, today, the status is that both scripts developed independently. Of course, we should wonder whether this is just another attempt to save reputations and whether in the following decades, the stance will finally be reversed, which would mean that the Vinca Culture is actually at the origin of the Sumerian civilisation… a suggestion we will return to shortly. But what is the Vinca Culture? In 1908, the largest prehistoric and most comprehensively excavated Neolithic settlement in Europe was discovered in the village of Vinca, just 14 km downstream from the Serbian capital Belgrade, on the shores of the Danube. The discovery was made by a team led by Miloje M. Vasic, the first schooled archaeologist in Serbia.
Vinca was excavated between 1918 and 1934 and was revealed as a civilisation in its own right: a forgotten civilisation, which Marija Gimbutas would later call “Old Europe”. Indeed, as early as the 6th millennium BC, three millennia before Dynastic Egypt, the Vinca culture was already a genuine civilisation. Yes, it was a civilisation: a typical town consisted of houses with complex architectural layouts and several rooms, built of wood that was covered in mud. The houses sat along streets, thus making Vinca the first urban settlement in Europe, but equally being older than the cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt. And the town of Vinca itself was just one of several metropolises, with others at Divostin, Potporanj, Selevac, Plocnik and Predionica. Maria Gimbutas concluded that “in the 5th and early 4th millennia BC, just before its demise in east-central Europe, Old Europeans had towns with a considerable concentration of population, temples several stories high, a sacred script, spacious houses of four or five rooms, professional ceramicists, weavers, copper and gold metallurgists, and other artisans producing a range of sophisticated goods. A flourishing network of trade routes existed that circulated items such as obsidian, shells, marble, copper, and salt over hundreds of kilometres.”
A Vinca jug, showing a clear mastery of ceramics
Everything about “Old Europe” is indeed older than anything else in Europe or the Near East.
In Sumer, the development of writing has been pinned down as a result from economical factors that required “record keeping”. For the Vinca Culture, the origin of the signs is accepted as having been derived from religious rather than material concerns. In short, the longest groups of signs are thus considered to be a kind of magical formulae. The Vinca Culture was also millennia ahead of the status quo on mining. At the time, mining was thought not to predate 4000 BC, though in recent years, examples of as far back as 70,000 years ago have been discovered. The copper mine at Rudna Glava, 140 km east of Belgrade, is at least 7000 years old and had vertical shafts going as deep as twenty metres and at the time of its discovery was again extremely controversial.
Further insights into “Old Europe” came about in November 2007, when it was announced that excavations at an ancient settlement in southern Serbia had revealed the presence of a furnace, used for melting metal. The furnace had tools in it: a copper chisel and a two-headed hammer and axe. Most importantly, several of the metal objects that were made here, were recovered from the site.
The excavation also uncovered a series of statues. Archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic observed that “according to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today’s girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms.”
Female goddess with a short skirt and a v-neck top. False eyelashes too?
A man in military uniform?
The unnamed tribe who lived between 5400 and 4700 BC in the 120-hectare site at what is now Plocnik knew about trade, handcrafts, art and metallurgy. The excavation also provided further insights into Old Europe: for example, near the settlement, a thermal well might be evidence of Europe’s oldest spa. Houses had stoves and there were special holes for trash, while the dead were buried in a tidy necropolis. People slept on woollen mats and fur, made clothes of wool, flax and leather, and kept animals. The community was also especially fond of children: artefacts that were recovered included toys such as animals and rattles of clay, and small, clumsily crafted pots apparently made by children at playtime.
It is but two examples that underline that Old Europe was a civilisation millennia ahead of its neighbours. And Old Europe is a forgotten culture, as Richard Rudgeley has argued: “Old Europe was the precursor of many later cultural developments and […] the ancestral civilisation, rather than being lost beneath the waves through some cataclysmic geological event, was lost beneath the waves of invading tribes from the east.” Indeed, Rudgeley argued that when confronted with the “sudden arrival” of civilisation in Sumer or elsewhere, we should not look towards extra-terrestrial civilisation, nor Atlantis, but instead to “Old Europe”, a civilisation which the world seems intent on disregarding… and we can only wonder why.
“Civilisation” in Sumer was defined as the cultivation of crops and domestication of animals, with humans living a largely sedentary life, mostly in village or towns, with a type of central authority. With that definition of civilisation, it is clear that it did not begin in Sumer, but in Old Europe. Old Europe was a Neolithic civilisation, living of agriculture and the breeding of domestic animals. The most frequent domestic animals were cattle, although smaller goats, sheep and pigs were also bred. They also cultivated the most fertile prehistoric grain species. There was even a merchant economy: a surplus of products led to the development of trade with neighbouring regions, which supplied salt, obsidian or ornamental shells.
In fact, they were not actually a “Neolithic civilisation” – they were even further ahead of the times: in the region of Eastern Serbia, at Bele Vode and (the already discussed) Rudna Glava, in crevices and natural caves, the settlers of Vinca came in contact with copper ore which they began fashioning with fire, initially only for ornamental objects (beads and bracelets). They were more “Bronze Age” than “Stone Age”… this at a time when the rest of Europe and the Near East was not even a “Stone Age civilisation”. One scholar, the already cited Marija Gimbutas, has highlighted the importance of Old Europe. So much so, that many consider her to have gone too far. She interpreted Old Europe as a civilisation of the Goddess, a concept which has taken on a life of its own in the modern New Age industry, extending far beyond anything Gimbutas herself could ever have imagined. Bernard Wailes stated how Gimbutas was “immensely knowledgeable but not very good in critical analysis… She amasses all the data and then leaps to conclusions without any intervening argument… Most of us tend to say, oh my God, here goes Marija again”. But everyone agrees that her groundwork is solid, and it is from that which we build.
Gimbutas dated the civilisation of Old Europe from 6500 to 3500-3200 BC. It was at that time that the area was overrun by invading Indo-Europeans. The local population could do two things: remain and be ruled by new masters, or migrate, in search of new lands. It appears that the people of Old Europe did both: some went in search of a haven to the south, on the shores of the Aegean Sea, and beyond. Harald Haarmann has identified them as being responsible for the rise of the so-called Cycladic culture, as well as Crete, where the new settlers arrived around 3200 BC.
For Gimbutas, the difference between Old Europe and Indo-Europe was more than just one people invading another. It was the difference between a goddess-centred and matriarchal and the Bronze Age Indo-European patriarchal cultural elements. According to her interpretations, Old Europe was peaceful, they honoured homosexuals and they espoused economic equality. The Indo-Europeans were warmongering males. And it’s that conclusion with which many have great difficulty, for nothing is ever as distinct as that. Today, artefacts of the Vinca culture grace the display cabinets of several museums, for they are magnificent ceramics – of an artistic and technological level which would not be equalled by other cultures for several millennia. It is believed that their writing originated out of sacred writing. Like Crete, they were a peaceful nation; Crete’s palaces had no defensive qualities.
The recovered artefacts of the Vinca culture equally show they had a profound spiritual life. The cult objects include figurines, sacrificial dishes, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic dishes. When we note that their number (over 1000 examples at Vinca alone) exceeds the total number of figurines discovered in the region of the Greek Aegean, we can only wonder why Old Europe is not better known today.
Life was represented on these objects as embodying the cycle of birth and death of Nature, along with the desire of man to get Nature’s sympathy or to mollify it in the interest of survival. Shrines were discovered in Transylvania with complex architectural designs, indicating the involvedness of the rituals which were conducted in them. It may not have been a matriarchal, Goddess worshipping civilisation, but it was definitely a complex and established religious framework. Though nothing suggests it was a Goddess cult.
The same mistake has been made in Malta, where for generations certain statues were interpreted as “Mother Goddess” statues, whereas alternative thinkers as Joseph Ellul pointed out that there was nothing specifically feminine about these statues; that they showed a deity, but that it could equally be male or female. Recently, Ellul’s point of view has become shared by other experts on Malta, such as Dr. Caroline Malone, who argued that the theory that the Maltese temples were erected as part of a goddess-worshipping culture is no longer valid. In her opinion, Maltese prehistoric society was a relatively stable, agricultural community, living on an intense and densely populated island, which celebrated cyclical cycles of life, rites of passage, transitions between different stages of life, from separation to reintegration, fertility, ancestors, all of this within a cosmological context… and very much like Old Europe. Around 3200 BC, the culture of Old Europe migrated, to the Aegean Sea and to Crete. Today, they are considered to be the origin of the Minoan civilisation, though it is a dimension that few Minoan scholars have included in their writing, instead largely opting to see Crete as yet another “stand alone” civilisation. Gimbutas stated that: “the civilisation that flourished in Old Europe between 6500 and 3500 BC and in Crete until 1450 BC enjoyed a long period of uninterrupted peaceful living.” Motifs such as the snake, intertwined with the bird goddess motif, the bee and the butterfly, with the distinctive motif of the double axe, are found both in Old Europe and Crete. But the best evidence is in the writing of Old Europe and the Linear A script of Crete, which are to all intents and purposes identical.
But it is equally clear that contacts between Sumer and Old Europe existed at the time of the Ubaid culture, in Eridu – the site which inspired Sitchin so greatly in his formulation of the Annunaki theory and his identification of these statues as “Nephilim”. The Ubaid culture is ca. 4500 BC and though we should perhaps not go as far as concluding that Sumer was a child of Old Europe, the two cultures obviously knew each other. Indeed, in recent years, Old European artefacts were even discovered in Southeastern France, suggesting that the civilisation of Old Europe travelled not merely to the East, but also to the West. Perhaps we should even consider them to be at the origin of the megalithic civilisation? But no-one, it seems, has dared to topple that stone yet.
https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/oldeurope/
***************************************************
Yes, sometimes women are sexist too
One thing has bothered me of late. As part of my role with Future Women, I work with employers to support women’s leadership and men’s active role in gender equality. Too often, I have heard the same refrain repeated: “Our problem is not with sexism. The issue is not how men in our team treat women; the issue is how women in our team treat one another.”
The feminist in me finds this challenging. I want to explain that this is a tired old stereotype, an outdated trope of catfights, mean girls and queen bees. It’s an invention of male leaders who benefit from portraying women as conniving, selfish individualists who only feel secure when the spotlight is on them, and them alone.
The problem is that I actually know many women who’ve felt cut down by colleagues who are supposedly members of the sisterhood. Academic studies and surveys back up the negative experience many women claim to have had working for a woman boss. One, in the journal Gender in Management in 2009, found that while women didn’t believe gender to be a predictor of good management, they still preferred not to work for another woman.
If you believe, as I do, that women are no more or less inherently cruel to women than people of other genders, what is going on? Research suggests there are five intersecting factors at play. First, women tend to have higher social expectations about how women managers or colleagues will behave. Poor treatment by your boss feels all the more undermining when it comes from someone who you presumed was an ally. The hurt is more keenly felt. Women expect women to behave better, so feel more disappointed if they don’t.
Second, principles of scarcity are at play. While great progress has been made, women remain few and far between in rooms where decisions are made and culture is shaped. A young, ambitious woman entering a graduate role might look upwards to the C-suite of her employer and see a room of nine decision makers. Only two are women. She says to herself, unconsciously: “I’m getting one of those women spots,” not, “I’d like a seat at that table, and each seat should be equally available to me.” The shortage of women in senior positions renders other young, ambitious women as competitors.
The shortage of women in senior positions renders other young, ambitious women as competitors.
Third, research shows that when women realise their gender is an impediment to career progression, they may try to differentiate themselves from others of the same gender. That is, if being a woman holds you back at work, then you’ll try to prove you’re not “like the rest of them” but that you’re different and worthy of different treatment. The same research suggests that other disadvantaged groups in workplaces experience the same challenge. This makes it all the more difficult for women of colour, or women with disabilities, to succeed.
Fourth, when women advocate for other women, it is taken less seriously than when men advocate for other men. Nobody assumes a male manager who hires another bloke to work on his team is motivated by achieving gender balance. Whereas women who hire other women may be perceived as showing favouritism or trying to push a diversity agenda. (Aside: there is nothing wrong with pushing a diversity agenda. More of us should be.)
Finally, women are not saints. Awful human beings of all genders exist in this world. That women sometimes have to work with other women they dislike is par for the course.
**********************************************
Disrespecting Scottish history
It’s not just America that is in the process of rewriting its history and casting itself as patriarchal and oppressive – a similar process is taking place in Scotland. Giants of the Enlightenment such as David Hume are being reimagined as the architects of slavery and the fathers of modern racism.
Scotland’s first black professor, Sir Geoff Palmer, exemplified the new way of thinking in an astonishing talk I heard him give recently at Dundee University. He spoke about the horror of George Floyd’s murder and told the audience that when he watches the footage of the strangulation: ‘All I can see is David Hume.’
The attempt to topple the Scottish Enlightenment began in September 2020 when a group of students demanded that Edinburgh University’s David Hume Tower be renamed. Hume’s crime was to have described black Africans as inferior to white people in a footnote in his 1748 essay Of National Characters. He wrote: ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes [sic] to be naturally inferior to the whites.’ Despite arguments that this was a misunderstanding or at least a misrepresentation of Hume’s work, the university sided with the student activists and Hume Tower is now 40 George Square.
Two months later, Sir Geoff was appointed as Edinburgh Council’s chair of the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonialism Legacy Review Group and following the findings of this group, a national Museum for Slavery is being considered. Changes to the school curriculum are also being proposed to help focus on slavery, and a plaque has been mounted on the statue of Henry Dundas in Edinburgh claiming that he was responsible for holding back the abolition of slavery.
Several historians have questioned the legitimacy of the claims about Dundas, noting that the history of the late 18th century was far more complex than is being suggested and that holding him responsible for the continued slave trade goes against current academic understanding. However, rather than engaging with these historians and exploring the facts, as an academic should, Sir Geoff Palmer has taken the easier option of labelling them ‘an academic racist gang’.
This isn’t the only bit of suspect thinking from Sir Geoff. In the course of that speech in Dundee University he claimed that there is still an assumption that black people are inferior to whites and that this is a direct consequence of the works of Hume and Immanuel Kant. Unless we teach about slavery properly, Sir Geoff claimed: ‘We are never ever going to get rid of racism because racism is derived from slavery, so people have to know the reason they have these feelings.’
Do the people of Scotland really have ‘these feelings’? Are there many Scots who believe that black people are inferior to whites? If so, I’ve never met them.
Sir Geoff has some peculiar ideas. One of his stated reasons for imagining Scotland to be racist is the ratio of black to white people living there. ‘People have put forward the perception that Scotland is less racist than England or elsewhere,’ he said in an interview with the Herald. ‘I say to them: “Look around. Look at where you work. Do you have a fair representation of the diversity of society? Look where you live.” Because if you don’t have a fair representation, then you better think again.’ It’s hard to make sense of this thought, but Sir Geoff appears to think that unless a vast number of black men and women suddenly choose to relocate to Scotland, it will remain racist.
But then, Sir Geoff is not always consistent. He has said ‘I don’t believe in taking down statues’, and that he simply wants streets, statues and buildings linked to slavery to be marked with signs explaining the past. Yet the renaming of the David Hume Tower was essential, he says, because ‘as long as they say nothing, people are going to continue to believe that negroes are inferior’.
Sir Tom Devine, Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, pulls no punches when it comes to Sir Geoff’s claims. Sir Geoff has ‘zero scholarly credibility’ to speak about Hume, he tells me. ‘The ridiculous and absurd suggestion that a single footnote from the huge published output of Hume, the world’s preeminent philosopher of the time, encouraged slavery is patent nonsense.’ Sir Geoff himself, it should be noted, is not an academic historian, nor a historian, nor a philosopher. His expertise is in cereal science. Sir Tom, on the other hand, has edited a collection of essays about Scotland’s historic involvement in the slave plantations: Recovering Scotland’s Slavery Past.
As with similar projects in America, there is an attempt in Scotland to discredit even those Scottish Enlightenment figures who opposed slavery. No white man can be given credit. But in the process of amplifying white guilt, many of the vital gains of the Enlightenment – gains that Hume embodied – are actually in danger of being lost. The Enlightenment, despite its contradictions and limitations, helped to transform and modernise the world and gave us the tools with which to celebrate and fight for human equality. It developed an academic and intellectual legacy that helped to challenge narrow, parochial and moralistic outlooks in society. Debate, scepticism, an examination of the facts and a questioning attitude to life were encouraged. In today’s arguments about Scottish colonialism and slavery, these enlightened attributes are being lost, which in the end will do the most harm to the very people that Sir Geoff claims to champion.
Discussing the renaming of the Hume Tower, Edinburgh’s Professor Jonathan Hearn says: ‘I was left with the overwhelming feeling that the question of the building’s name has nothing to do with Hume, and that Hume was only standing in as a symbol of something else – a rather vague conceivable notion of the oppressiveness of western Enlightenment thought.’ Perhaps due to the backlash, the university’s principal, Professor Peter Mathieson, has now apologised for the confusion, and suggested the Tower’s name could be changed back. This, at least, would be one small victory.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/age-of-unreason/
***************************************************
No More ADL: When it comes to Jews, the organization now does more harm than good
I have often deplored the anti-Christian orientation of the ADL under foxy Foxman and it seems that it is just as hateful under its present management
Which of these two individuals do you find more problematic?
Kyrie Irving, a kooky basketball player who believes that the Earth is flat, that JFK was shot by bankers, that the COVID vaccines were secretly a plot to connect all Black people to a supercomputer, and that Jews worship Satan and launched the slave trade?
Or Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, who accepted $500,000 from Irving last week without even meeting or even talking to the all-star—and who was then forced to give back the donation when Irving blatantly refused to apologize?
Let’s think about it for a minute. One of these guys is a weirdo with dumb opinions he may or may not actually believe. The other is running a soulless racket which just made it clear that you can say whatever you want about the Jews and buy your indulgences at a discount price.
Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely believe that Irving’s endorsement of a Black nationalist documentary based on an obscure Jew-hating book, to say nothing of Kanye West’s meltdown, will most likely contribute to a surge in antisemitism in America, particularly in the Black community. But we Jews don’t control Kyrie Irving; in theory, we do control the ADL, and we shouldn’t want our chief defense group to behave in a way that advances antisemitic conspiracy theories about shadowy Jews trafficking in money and influence for fun and profit.
All of this leads to one sorry conclusion: It’s time to say goodbye to the ADL. It can’t be killed, so we need to just walk away from this formerly venerable organization, and weaken it before it swerves so far off the road that it takes us with it.
If you think the above is hyperbole, or if you haven’t been paying much attention to the ADL lately and still imagine it as a paragon of the good fight against antisemitism, here’s a sizzle reel of Greenblatt’s years in office. Since leaving the Obama White House and taking over the organization in 2015, Greenblatt has turned the ADL into a partisan attack machine, fueled by corporate cash and increasingly oblivious to any real suffering of any real Jews.
Need some proof? Here we go.
In 2017, the ADL issued a guide to America’s worst antisemites, a 36 (double Chai!) person rogues’ gallery. Louis Farrakhan, the Black supremacist beloved by celebrities, wasn’t on it. Nor was the Oberlin professor who argued that 9/11 was a Jewish conspiracy. Nor Linda Sarsour of the Women’s March, who argued you can’t be both a Zionist and a feminist, because the former makes you somehow less than human, and who equated Zionism with neo-Nazism. Instead, the ADL picked a posse of minor right-wing nutjobs and no one else. Unironically, it called its guide “Naming the Hate.”
In 2018, the organization came under scrutiny for flubbing its reporting on antisemitic attacks—the group’s bread-and-butter and a major source of its centurylong trust and prestige—perhaps to further the false impression that Jews were under attack by hordes of white supremacists heartened by the rise and rhetoric of Donald Trump.
In 2020, Greenblatt signed on to a campaign calling on Facebook to censor pro-Trump ads. His partner in this assault on free and political speech? Incredibly, it was Al Sharpton—who has still not publicly apologized for his role in inciting the Crown Heights pogroms in 1991. This politically motivated commitment to curbing free speech continues: Last week, shortly after Twitter was purchased by Elon Musk (the left’s favorite bogeyman du jour), Greenblatt issued a call to companies to suspend all advertising on the social network. The list goes on.
This rank partisanship is understandable: Impactful leaders make political calculations, and even if they err too enthusiastically on one side or another they may be forgiven for playing hardball to promote their organization’s end. But the organization’s end itself has changed under Greenblatt in ways that make the old ADL unrecognizable. Before Greenblatt’s arrival, for example, the ADL defined racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another, [and] that a person’s social and moral traits are predetermined by his or her inborn biological characteristics.”
That perfectly sound definition was too much for Greenblatt’s ADL, and so, in 2020, the organization changed its tune to define racism as “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people”—a definition they needed to change yet again in the wake of Whoopi Goldberg’s 2022 comment that the Holocaust wasn’t “about race.”
Scroll on to the ADL’s homepage these days and you’ll be treated to a love letter to critical race theory, defined merely as a noble tool that “helps us understand how and why racial injustice continues to persist in the U.S.” Parents who object to CRT being taught in their children’s schools, another page cannily suggests, are borderline domestic terrorists or, at the very least, in the sway of white extremist groups.
Besides, sayeth the ADL, have no fear: “there is no evidence that critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools.” You know, besides the Critical Race Theory Coalition Summit hosted by the Portland Public School District. Or the Loudon County Public School District’s partnership with a group called The Equity Collaborative to train teachers in CRT. Or the California Department of Education endorsing a CRT-based ethnic studies curriculum despite more than 100,000 objections.
And what of the Jews? In the wake of some complaining that the group founded in 1913 to protect one of America’s most threatened minorities from prejudice and violence seems much less focused on Jews these days, a senior ADL staffer in charge of Jewish outreach tweeted: “One of these days we need to talk about how the Jewish community’s reactions to antisemitism coming from Black people is inherently tied to (implicitly racist) fears of Black violence.”
The possibility that “the Jewish community’s reactions to antisemitism coming from Black people” might be tied to attacks like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or many more like them, was obviously out of bounds. Which was actually of a piece with the ADL’s new recommendation for how Jews globally should react when violence is done to us: “Jews,” tweeted the same senior staffer, “*have* to be ok with Palestinians *explaining* why some turn to terrorism.” In case you’re scratching your head here, let me simplify: The ADL believes that whenever Jews get violently stabbed, shot, blown up, or beaten, our first reaction must be to search our souls for what we must’ve done to deserve it.
Sure, Greenblatt and the gang occasionally murmur some correct condemnation of some real hater, but no one in their right mind can inspect his tenure and deny that he has hollowed out the ADL of any and all connection to its original mandate, instead using its clout to turn it into an effective and stealthy progressive, partisan operation. And this actually puts real Jews in danger, because anyone can now claim that talk of antisemitism on the rise is merely political propaganda. Bad vibes, as the kids say........
Here, then, is my solution to the problem that is Jonathan Greenblatt’s ADL: Let’s accept that the ADL is no longer a Jewish organization and ask for a divorce. Greenblatt can keep everything: His anti-racism, AstroTurf organization and all the corporate money trees he shakes on its behalf. We amcha Jews walk away with nothing—nothing, that is, but our dignity and our safety, both improved by no longer being pawns in a profit game that is endangering us more by the day.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/no-more-adl-liel-liebovitz-kyrie-irving
****************************************
13 November, 2022
Gingrich: GOP Got Nearly 6 Million More Votes but Lost Many Races, ‘What’s Going On?’
I had an extended discussion about this this morning with my very conservative son. He says that abortion was the one issue the donks had going for them so that has to be THE issue behind the vote. Anti-abortion attitudes are probably not very important to many who hold such attitudes but PRO-abortion attitudes are probably very influential and will remain so
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has been in politics for decades, and never has an election bewildered him as much as the 2022 midterms.
“I’ve never been as wrong as I was this year,” Gingrich, an Epoch Times contributor, said on Nov. 10. “It makes me challenge every model I’m aware of, and realize that I have to really stop and spend a good bit of time thinking and trying to put it all together.”
People from both sides of the aisle were projecting substantial losses for the Democratic Party amid rising discontent over inflation, the economy, and crime. But that expected red wave didn’t happen. ??
The Senate is currently a tossup. And with 211 House seats won against the Democrats’ 192, the GOP is still poised to take charge of the lower chamber when Congress convenes in the new year, but with less leverage than initially hoped.
Gingrich, having previously expressed confidence that his party would score sweeping gains in both chambers, is, like many others, at a loss trying to explain what went awry.
He pointed to a vote tracking sheet by the Cook Political Report, a bipartisan newsletter that analyzes elections, which shows a roughly 50.7 million Republican turnout for the House—outnumbering Democratic votes by nearly 6 million.
Gingrich noted this gap could shrink to 5 million when ballots in deep blue California are fully processed. “But it’s still 5 million more votes,” he said.
“And not gaining very many seats makes you really wonder what’s going on,” he added. “I want to know, where did those votes come from?”
It’s a puzzle that the former speaker hasn’t been able to solve.
Questions and Inconsistencies
Part of what made a difference in this race was how the incumbent lawmakers have fared. In both the 2020 and 1994 House elections, no Republican incumbents lost seats to their Democratic challengers, while 13 and 34 Democratic incumbents, respectively, were ousted. Had the same scenario played out this time, “we’d be six or seven seats stronger than we are now,” he said.
So far, Republicans have flipped 16 seats while Democrats have flipped six— Michigan’s 3rd District, New Mexico’s 2nd District, Ohio’s 1st District, North Carolina’s 13th District, Texas’ 34th District, and Illinois’ 13th District—of which three GOP incumbents lost their seats.
In exit polls by the National Election Pool, about three-quarters of voters rated the economy as weak, and about the same number of people were not satisfied with the way things were going in the country.
On Election Day, Facebook’s parent company Meta said it will cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its workforce by 13 percent, which Gingrich noted as a further sign of economic anxiety.
“But their votes didn’t reflect that,” said Gingrich.
The former speaker said he struggled to reconcile multiple such inconsistencies he observed in this election, particularly in the two races that decided the New York governor and Philadelphia senator, which were won by Democrats Gov. Kathy Hochul and John Fetterman respectively.
“How can you have 70 percent of the people in Philadelphia would say that crime is their number one issue, but they voted for Fetterman even though he had voted to release murderers and put them back on the street?” he said.
“Of the New York City voters, about 70 percent voted for the governor even though she had done nothing to stop crime in New York,” he added. Hochul won the race with a 5.8 percent edge against Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), with 96 percent of the votes counted as of Nov. 11.
“It makes me wonder, you know, what’s going on? How are people thinking?” he said, questioning why people’s attitudes didn’t align with the voting patterns.
“I don’t fully understand how the American people are sort of rationalizing in their head these different conflicting things, and I think it’s going to require some real thought on our part to figure out what to do next.”
*******************************************
De-transitioned teen, 18, who had a double mastectomy aged 15 SUES doctors who operated on her
A de-transitioned teenager who had a double mastectomy aged 15 has revealed she is suing the surgeons who operated on her.
Chloe Cole said she launched legal action against the doctors to hold them 'accountable' for removing her breasts and pumping her full of puberty blockers.
The 18-year-old also told how she was 'devastated' by the operation and fears she will now never be able to bear children.
She transitioned to a male aged 13 after telling her parents she was 'distressed' with her gender and consulting medical professionals.
Cole, from Central Valley in California, had the life-changing surgery when she was just 15, before regretting it and de-transitioning a year later.
Now she said she was suing the doctors who performed on her and slammed them for letting a child make such a important decision.
She told Fox News' Tucker Carlson: 'They were concerned, and they wanted what was best for me.
But they weren't really sure what to do with me, so they sought professional help and from then on, I was basically referred [to] in my gender identity without any questioning from any medical professionals, and they pushed transitioning as the way to treat gender dysphoria.'
She told how she was devastated about losing her breasts and was concerned she would never be able to have children.
Cole said: 'As an adult, I will never be able to breast-feed whatever children I will have.
'I don't even know if, because I was put on puberty blockers and testosterone at only 13 years old, I don't know if I'll be able to conceive a child naturally.
'I made an adult decision as a child.' She said suing the doctors was an attempt to stop the practice from being done on other children.
She continued: 'I want to hold the adults that put me in harm's way accountable because what happened to me is horrible.
'But it also didn't only happen to me, that's the worst part. It's happening to children all over the U.S., all over the West, and it's spreading all over the world.
'I want to be able to create a precedent for other people who have been in my situation to find justice themselves.'
Her attorney Harmeet Dhillon said they have brought a medical malpractice suit against the doctors and she was being represented by Center for American Liberty.
She said: 'Our website at libertycenter.org has the letter, a very detailed letter that details all of the medical symptoms that Chloe has and the medical malpractice.'
She added: 'And frankly, the mutilation that was perpetrated by these medical professionals. We intend to shut down these barbaric and unnatural practices.'
Cole started suffering from gender dysphoria aged nine and spoke to a pediatrician about it when she was 12.
She claims she was then coerced into a gender transition operation and between the ages 13 and 17 took puberty blockers, hormones and had a double mastectomy.
Her lawsuit claims doctors told her her gender dysphoria would never go away and said she was at high risk of suicide unless she transitioned.
She claims they asked her parents: 'Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?'
Last month Cole branded Joe Biden's stance on 'gender-affirming' medical treatment 'dangerous.'
**********************************************************
Pro-Life Father Arrested by Biden DOJ Reacts to Press Sec Claiming Democrats Aren’t Locking Up Pro-Lifers
A pro-life father arrested by armed FBI in front of his children reacted to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s claim that Democrats aren’t locking up pro-life activists.
Paul Vaughn of Tennessee previously told The Daily Signal that the FBI showed up with “guns pointed at the door, banging on the house, yelling and screaming, ‘Open up. FBI.’” They arrested him and charged him with “conspiracy against rights secured by the FACE Act, and committing FACE Act violations.”
If convicted, the father of 11 children could spend 11 years in prison and face a fine of up to $250,000.
But on Monday, Jean-Pierre emphatically and repeatedly told reporters that “it’s a lie” that Democrats are “locking up pro-life activists,” as former President Donald Trump reportedly claimed at a Thursday rally.
“Clearly that’s not true,” she said. “I’m not going to say much more than that. It’s just not true. It’s false. It’s a lie. It’s not true.”
“Clearly, Jean-Pierre doesn’t know how to define truth and lies,” Vaughn told The Daily Signal, adding that her remarks are “not surprising” since she “doesn’t know the difference between a man and a woman, between a peaceful protest and an insurrection, and between inflation and deflation.”
“I suppose since they are not persecuting me I don’t have to show up for court on Jan. 10 to defend myself,” Vaughn added.
“In the meantime,” he said, “it is a shame the House [Judiciary] Committee wasted 1,000 pages documenting all the evidence of these facts, only to find out ‘it is simply not true.’ Perhaps, Jean Pierre could be more specific. Which piece of the 1,000-page report is not true?”
Video provided to The Daily Signal in early October by Vaughn, taken by his wife, shows FBI agents outside the family’s home. Vaughn’s wife follows them, videotaping their conversation.
“I wanna know why you were banging on my door with a gun,” she says. “Are you not going to tell me anything?” “No, we are not,” one agent replies, while another adds, “I tried.” “No, you didn’t!” she shouts back. “You did not try.”
Vaughn’s arrest came as the the Justice Department announced it had charged 11 more pro-life activists with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act for blocking the entrance of an abortion clinic in 2021.
The 11 activists, including Vaughn, were charged with FACE Act violations stemming from their 2021 “blockade” of an abortion clinic in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. That blockade was reportedly peaceful.
News of Vaughn’s arrest came amid national outcry over the dramatic arrest of Mark Houck, a Catholic father and pro-life activist who was reportedly dramatically arrested by armed FBI agents in front of his family for allegedly pushing a pro-abortion activist who allegedly harassed his son.
At least 86 Catholic churches and 74 pregnancy resource centers and other pro-life organizations have been attacked since the May leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, according to a Catholic Vote tracker.
Many of these buildings have been vandalized with threats such as, “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you,” making the attacks incidents of suspected pro-abortion violence.
A list of recent cases on the Justice Department website indicates that the DOJ has not prosecuted a single attack on a pro-life organization or church under the FACE Act.
That list includes seven enforcements of the FACE Act in 2022 alone against pro-life activists: The DOJ has charged 26 individuals with FACE Act violations since the beginning of the year.
The Justice Department has refused to explain this discrepancy to The Daily Signal.
*****************************************************
Exit Polls Reveal Which Key Group Propelled Democrats During 2022 Midterms
Sixty-eight percent of unmarried women voted for Democrats in House midterm elections compared to 31 percent who favored Republicans, according to exit polls.
About 52 percent of unmarried men favored Republicans as compared with 45 percent who favored Democrats, exit polls published by CNN show.
For married men, 59 percent supported Republicans compared to the 39 percent who supported a Democrat. And 56 percent of married women supported a GOP candidate, compared with 42 percent who supported Democrats.
In all, 59 percent of unmarried voters supported Democrats as compared with the 39 percent who supported Republicans, the data shows. About 58 percent of married voters backed Republicans, compared to 41 percent for Democrats.
The national exit poll was conducted by Edison Research in conjunction with broadcasters across the United States. Those who were surveyed included 18,571 respondents who voted for U.S. House candidates, with 8,688 being men and 9,797 being women.
An editorial penned by Washington Examiner columnist Colin Carroll suggested that the breakdown of the traditional family unit unilaterally benefits Democrat candidates.
“The good news for the Democrats is that the number of unmarried women is growing every year. From the earliest census up through 1950, roughly 80 percent of households were led by a married couple,” he noted. By 2000, that percentage had fallen to 52 percent, and by 2010, for the first time in the nation’s history, most households did not include a married couple. Marriage has only continued to decline since then.”
****************************************
11 November, 2022
Florida bracing for new influx of residents fleeing blue states after Dems’ election success
The Sunshine State is preparing for a different sort of blue wave.
Continuing years of scorching population growth, Florida is bracing for a fresh batch of disgruntled citizens fed up with spiraling crime and high taxes to move in from Democratic strongholds.
Figures obtained by The Post show that through August, a record 41,885 New Yorkers already swapped their licenses for the Florida version, a commonly used indicator of demographic trends. That figure was 21,277 for California, 16,970 for Pennsylvania and 16,846 for Illinois.
Sunshine State observers said after Tuesday saw Democratic leaders re-elected or voted in — coupled with Gov. Ron DeSantis’s landslide entrenchment — they expect the exodus to Florida will continue.
“People are leaving these states for a lot of different reasons,” said Laura Gambino of Global Real Estate Advisors in Palm Beach.
“Crime, quality of life, taxes. I think with the elections going the way they did, the trend is going to continue.
“It’s good for us, for the state and its economy. It’s not so good for states that were already losing people.
New York City parent activist Jean Hahn said that her Whatsapp group of several hundred moms and dads was ablaze Wednesday morning after Gov. Kathy Hochul defeated challenger Lee Zeldin.
“A lot of people are saying that they’re hopeless at this point,” she said. “They’re already looking at listings, ways they can get out. There is just a lot of frustration.”
One member of the group, a mother of three from Brighton Beach in New York City, told The Post that she plans to exit the state whenever a move become feasible.
“For a lot of parents, the line in the sand is a vaccine mandate to attend school,” she said. “If that happens, there will be an exodus.”
Another participant, an Upper East Side parent of two, said the city is becoming “unlivable” for families — and that Hochul’s election set off frenzied searches on property website Zillow among her circle of friends.
“The crime, the mandates, the general insanity,” she said. “I think people are just looking at their lives and thinking there has to be a better place to raise their children.”
Illinois native Robert Cowhey, who left the state for Florida a decade ago said his son, who lives in Chicago, was plotting his departure Wednesday morning after Gov. J.B. Pritzker re-election.
“I talked to my son and my cousin today,” he said. “They want out. Crime is a major issue. They don’t like Pritzker, they don’t like Lori Lightfoot, they don’t like any of it. I think people are just going to continue to leave.”
Florida Atlantic University Prof. Ken Johnson, who specializes in migration trends, said he expects outside interest in the state to persist due its recent economic development and diversification.
“From what I hear on the ground, people come to Florida because it’s prospering,” he said. “It used to be the sunshine. Now it’s the sunshine and the economy.”
Billionaire hedge fund boss Ken Griffin moved his firm from Chicago to Palm Beach this year after sounding the alarm on spiraling crime in the Windy City.
In a talk with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez Monday night, Griffin described moving the finance mammoth’s operations to a Palm Beach hotel ballroom in the early days of the pandemic, according to the Real Deal.
He said 200 people worked to outfit the space around the clock, and that the effort reminded him of “when this country strove for greatness.”
“In Chicago, it takes five years to build a bike overpass,” Griffin said.
*****************************************************
The Status Quo Wins: The midterm elections were a victory for status quo centrists in both parties
The red wave may have turned out to be a red ripple but, despite inflated expectations, it’s not the Republicans who look to have been hardest hit by the midterm election results but the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Assuming that the House is captured by the Republicans, with or without the Senate, it is clear that the progressive policy agenda, the progressive theory of American partisan politics, and the progressive theory of the American constitution are now quite dead.
Let’s start with the progressive policy agenda. The economic agenda of the Democratic Party today is the “low carbon care economy.” This is a synthesis of the Green New Deal, a crash program to kill the oil and gas industries and replace them with heavily subsidized renewable energy sources, and the American Families Plan, a massive expansion of taxpayer subsidies for institutional child care, universal preschool and elder care. The jobs of the future, in this vision, are divided between a small number of gigs assembling windmills and solar panels which will replace coal, oil, and natural gas in America’s energy mix, and a much greater number of positions in federally subsidized day care centers and retirement homes.
To dramatize the low carbon care economy, the Biden White House last year issued a series of cartoon panels, “The Life of Linda,” modeled on a similar Obama administration cartoon, “The Life of Julia.” Biden’s Linda is an apparently unwed mother who works in manufacturing and has a son named Leo, who grows up to work in green energy: “Thanks to his community college training, Leo lands a good-paying, union job as a wind turbine technician.” The cartoon series explains how both Linda, the single mother, and Leo, the fatherless child, will flourish within an expanded system of cradle-to-grave welfare and education subsidies. As the fantasy world of the cartoon suggests, the progressive agenda sought to appeal to different groups of key Democratic Party supporters who do not share many economic interests. To work, the progressive vision had to unite the Democratic Party’s green donor class with overwhelmingly Democrat-supporting service sector unions like the teachers unions and SEIU as well as the “anti-patriarchal” feminists for whom husbands and fathers are unnecessary and oppressive.
Following Biden’s election in 2020, progressives hoped to use their guaranteed two-year trifecta of control over the White House, House, and Senate to ram through the massive subsidies for renewable energy and vast expansions of caregiving and education jobs at the core of their policy agenda. They planned to do this by means of the parliamentary maneuver known as “reconciliation,” which allows a bare majority in both houses to circumvent the Senate filibuster’s de facto supermajority requirement. The opposition of two Senate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, derailed that would-be juggernaut.
The low carbon care economy is now as dead as a doornail, even if the Republicans end up controlling only one house of Congress. In the unlikely event that the Democrats win another trifecta in the next few electoral cycles, it will be difficult if not impossible, given the impacts of rising energy costs, for Congress to oppose greater extraction and use of oil, natural gas, and even coal in the U.S. Moreover, if there is a turn toward austerity to reduce inflation or the debt built up during the COVID pandemic, the money will not be there for the enormous increase in spending on day care, elder care, preschool and community college that makes up the other half of the progressive agenda. The low carbon care economy blew up on takeoff.
The boring truth is that the pendulum in American politics swings back and forth. Parties that get tired of losing sooner or later change their appeals to win over some members of the other party, making elections more competitive again.
Just as dead as the energy-and-care agenda of the progressive Democrats is their theory of American partisan politics. The Democratic left, backed by their echo chamber in the media and the universities, attributed the 2016 election of Donald Trump to racism on the part of resentful, lower-class white “deplorables,” and the supposed epidemic of “disinformation” coming from Russia and malicious saboteurs online. The party’s progressive wing took comfort in their conviction that, as immigration made Hispanics a larger share of the electorate, a “coalition of the ascendant” made up of college-educated whites and “people of color” would soon establish one-party Democratic rule at all levels of government.
Oops. Between the 2018 and 2022 midterms, the Democratic advantage over Republicans among Black women dropped 7 percentage points, while that among Black men dropped 11 points. For Hispanic voters, who were supposed to secure the Democrats their permanent majority, the advantage declined by 14 percentage points among women and 21 percentage points among men.
Racial depolarization was accompanied by educational polarization. Between the 2018 midterm and the 2022 midterm, the Republican advantage among non-college-educated white voters climbed from a 24-point margin to a 34-point margin, and Republicans even gained slightly among college-educated whites. According to CNN, from 2018 to 2022 “voters of color,” both non-college and college-educated, while mostly voting for Democrats, shifted in significant numbers from the Democrats to the Republicans.
As I have argued elsewhere, “educational polarization” is really a marker of class polarization, inasmuch as the children of college-educated parents in the U.S. are much more likely to graduate from college, making a college degree a semi-hereditary title of nobility. Underlying racial depolarization and educational polarization is the trend, seen among Western democracies in general, for “the left” to be identified with affluent, educated whites and for “left” parties to lose not only working-class whites but many minority group members to the increasingly downscale and populist parties of the right. In 2022, that trend continued in the U.S.
Last but not least is the politics of the American constitution. Anticipating a Republican tsunami that would sweep them out of both houses of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024, many progressive pundits and academics hysterically argued that the 2022 election might be the last small-d democratic election in American history. Before the midterms, the presidential historian Michael Beschloss warned that if Republicans won control of the government, “our children will be arrested and conceivably killed” by a MAGA regime which, to use President Biden’s phrase, was “semi-fascist.” Less apocalyptic Democrats like the pollster David Shor warned that without greater appeal by Democrats to the working class, “the modal outcome for 2024 is Donald Trump winning a ‘filibuster-proof trifecta’ with a minority of the vote.”
In spite of the alleged biases of the Senate and the Electoral College, in 2020 the Democrats won the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. When this year’s midterm votes are all counted, the Democrats may end up controlling the White House and the Senate while losing the House, the body in which Democrats should do best under the theory that the Constitution is rigged against the Democratic Party.
America’s progressives suffer from bipolar mood swings. Now, thanks to racial polarization, they predict the inevitable triumph of the Democratic Party with the help of “voters of color,” while the Republicans survive only as a permanent minority party filled with resentful whites. At the same time, according to other progressives, it is the Democrats who may forever be frozen out of the federal government, thanks to an unfair Constitution designed by slave owners that permanently advantages white supremacist Republicans who want to arrest and kill Michael Beschloss’ children.
The boring truth is that the pendulum in American politics swings back and forth. Parties that get tired of losing sooner or later change their appeals to win over some members of the other party, making elections more competitive again.
For the time being, the U.S. remains a 50-50 nation, with the political branches of the federal government going back and forth between the two national parties. The kind of generational hegemony enjoyed by the McKinley Republicans after 1896 and the Roosevelt Democrats after 1932 is unlikely to return. That is bad news for progressive Democrats, who dream of the kind of sweeping structural transformation of the U.S., led by the federal government, that can only occur through a supermajority. It is bad news as well for those on the libertarian right or New Right with ambitious schemes for public policy reform. It is not necessarily bad news for status quo Republicans or for incrementalist centrist Democrats, two factions that can flourish in conditions of divided government and narrow majorities.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/progressive-agenda-clobbered-michael-lind
***************************************************
Report is slammed for referring to women as 'birthing people'
A US government funded prison report has come under fire after replacing the term 'women' with 'birthing people' and 'birthing parent'.
Experts told DailyMail.com it was another sign of 'progressive jargon' creeping into important medical literature and health advice.
The study looked at how pregnant women in female prisons are treated and was partly-funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
But an abstract of the research published on the NIH website curiously does not use the words 'women', 'woman' or 'female'.
Instead, gender-neutral terms like 'people who give birth', 'birthing parent', 'people who want to provide milk', 'birthing people' and 'incarcerated people'.
The term 'chest-feeding' is also used once in the paper.
Stella O'Malley, executive director of the advocacy group Genspect, told DailyMail.com: 'Over-the-top and elaborate efforts to be inclusive for certain groups often end up excluding other groups.
'The [National Institutes of Health] should revert to simple and clear language if they want to help the most people possible.
'People who don't speak English fluently will not be able to understand this report, and this is in itself exclusionary.'
It comes after DailyMail.com revealed 'women' had been scrubbed from official flu advice.
The report is titled 'Lactation Support for People Who Are Incarcerated: A Systematic Review', published in Breastfeeding Medicine.
It was a meta-analysis of 20 existing studies on the topic, and was carried out by experts at the University of North Carolina (UNC).
The report was led by Dr Kathryn Wouk, an adjunct professor of maternal and child health at the UNC Gillings School of Public Health.
*******************************************************
The Third Lysenkoism
The unprecedented pace of social change in recent decades just has not received the attention it is due in respect of its political impact. These changes, in tandem with the Internet, have pretty much chopped western society into two sociologically separate halves.
Now let’s take a deep breath; define Lysenkoism just one more time; and restate our thesis:
Lysenkoism is the imposition by the authoritarian left of junk science that suits their political agenda. This extends to the suppression of dissenting voices.
Now, our thesis:
Although Lysenkoism has changed profoundly across ‘the Bolshevik century,’ it hasn’t gone away, and anyone who really wants to understand contemporary left politics would be well advised to study it in detail.
So, ‘Use my preferred pronouns or be punished’ – does this sound like ‘imposition’?
‘Men can become pregnant’ – does this sound like junk science that suits ideological ends?
Could you call cancel culture ‘a suppression of dissenting voices’?
How about this:
just as the vanguard parties of the proletariat were centralised and focused on class (and indoctrinating the young), so the Internet is functioning as a sort of ‘party’ that is decentralised and focused on identity (and indoctrinating the young)?
https://www.thinkspot.com/discourse/DpudBz/post/userdurfn4u5o4/the-third-lysenkoism/WatpZpX
****************************************
10 November, 2022
Traditional Women are Often Chicken Frying Snakes in Disguise
The article below by an ethnic lady is most unusual. What she describes probably happens within her own society of origin and maybe it happens in our society too -- among the less educated, perhaps
"Gold-diggers" are a known female phenomenon in a our society. I have met a few. So what the author describes is partly familiar. Using a pretence of extreme femininity as part of that is a somewhat novel idea, though
She will use her Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Good Sex to Manipulate the Dizzy Man of her Choosing
Dating is hard enough, but you should at least know who you’re dating, and who they really are. Traditional gender roles have truly confused a lot of people. They have left them believing that duties are who someone is inside, and duty really means nothing. There are men, and in my observation young men being the majority, that often believe a woman performing “traditional wifely duties” (cooking, cleaning, consistent sex, silence, forgiveness, etc.) is a “good woman”. That isn’t necessarily the case. What is this woman like? What is her true character. A fascination with traditional gender roles often leads young men, and anyone else engaging in love and relationships, astray.
Does it really matter that the person you’re dating is a liar? No, really, have you noticed that she lies her ass off, or were you too busy eating her homecooked meals? Did you possibly pass over a sweet honest girl who occasionally burns the macaroni and cheese just to date a snake that keeps a clean house and hot pot of grits and cheese on the stove? Did you ignore a kind girl with a heart of gold for a “loyal” woman who smiles in your face but quietly fucks your friends when you are out of town? I know men who have done it. They allowed the shallow to overshadow the deep, the real, the truth.
Character often falls way low on the list when sexism and male entitlement are a man’s primary lens for viewing women, and the more sexist, misogynistic, and entitled the man, the less likely he is to notice the character of the woman he’s courting. He wants to feel powerful, “masculine”, in control, dominant, special, like a King of sorts. A woman who understands this, a woman who has been taught this from youth, a woman who may very well be of piss-poor character, will exploit this. She will file “traditional wife skills” under “feminine wiles” and use those feminine wiles to facilitate a passive-aggressive “capture” of a blind man who actually believes he is in control.
She will use her garlic mashed potatoes and gravy to distract him from the lies she tells, the business of his she shares with friends and associates who never even asked. She will give him all the sex he can and cannot handle, though she doesn’t even enjoy it (but pretends to), and may be secretly sleeping with someone else on the side … just to ensure he continues to bring his paycheck home. That is the sort of “opportunity” that “traditional gender roles” often provide the sinister. Sometimes, poor character finds a great place to hide in “traditional gender roles”. This is why misogyny, sexism, and sometimes, even religion, can be dangerous.
People are people. They are full, complex, and complete. They are evolving, and unique. They have character and layers. We are not just “archetypes”. No one is simply, “an archetype”, and it is understanding this truth that allows us to move forward in relationships with not one, but both eyes wide open. Who is this person? What are their likes? What do they love? What is their definition of friendship? When you find the right person, a good person, male, female or non-binary, you are lucky, blessed, favored.
A good person can learn to cook, provide, clean, protect, have more sex, listen, have fun, or whatever will make their partner happy. They are honest, pure, and excited to be in a loving relationship. They aren’t some creepy Stepford imitating biblical standards of gender perfection for kudos, pats on the back, or to hide all of the betrayals they are levying at their significant other. They are trustworthy, trusting, kind, thoughtful, considerate, loving, healthy, and well-meaning before anything else.
Use your own mind to choose your partner, because choosing a partner based on gender roles, tradition, and what “they” say may actually pave your way to a long-term relationship with a virtual stranger … who makes great pot roast.
****************************************************
Court Orders Release of True the Vote Leaders From Jail
Two leaders of the election integrity group True the Vote were released from jail after an appeals court overruled a judge’s order that they be detained for contempt of court.
Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips were ordered released by a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit late on Nov. 6.
“IT IS ORDERED that Petitioners’ opposed motion for release from detention is GRANTED pending further order of this court,” the panel said in the order, which was obtained by The Epoch Times.
The panel consisted of Circuit Judges Catharina Haynes, a George W. Bush appointee; Kurt Engelhardt, a Donald Trump appointee; and Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee.
Engelbrecht and Phillips were released on Nov. 7.
Engelbrecht and Phillips were sent to jail on Oct. 31 by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, a Reagan appointee, who found them in contempt of court for not revealing the identities of people who allegedly accessed information from Konnech, a Michigan-based election management software company whose founder was recently arrested for allegedly stealing poll worker data and hosting the information on servers in China.
The order for confinement was to be in place until the defendants “fully comply” with an order that they reveal certain information, including the identities, Hoyt said.
Engelbrecht and Phillips say they passed on information that was legally obtained from Konnech to the FBI. One of their attorneys identified one of the individuals in question, Mike Hasson, during an October hearing. But they have declined to share the name of the second person. Both the individuals are FBI informants, Phillips asserted during one hearing.
“Those who thought that imprisoning Gregg and I would weaken our resolve have gravely miscalculated. It is stronger than ever,” Engelbrecht said in a statement. “The right to free and fair elections without interference is more important than our own discomforts and even this detention, now reversed by a higher court.
“We are profoundly grateful for that. We will continue to protect and defend those who do the vital work of election integrity, and we will make sure that their findings become a matter of public record.”
The contempt order came after Konnech sued True the Vote and its founders for defamation.
Hoyt entered a temporary restraining order against the defendants, ordering them to return all property and data to Konnech and identify people who were involved in accessing the company’s computers.
In their filing for release, Engelbrecht and Phillips said that Hoyt’s confinement order “represents a clear abuse of discretion and a manifest miscarriage of justice.”
“Petitioners pray that this Court enter an Order releasing them from the district court’s draconian order of detention for refusing to identify a federal confidential informant in open court whose identity in any event has no bearing on the merits of this defamation case hinging on competing accounts of alleged historical events,” they added.
The pair also said that they never possessed or controlled the information in question. Phillips said Engelbrecht doesn’t know the name that he is withholding and that, if the name were revealed, the person’s life would “be jeopardized by border drug and smuggling cartels.”
In its opposition to the petition, Konnech said that the True the Vote founders were trying to “strip the District Court of its contempt power” and that they “have no one but themselves to blame for their confinement” after defying Hoyt’s order.
Lawyers for the firm said, “Petitioners’ imprisonment is not an emergency especially in this case where the Petitioners are contemnors and recalcitrant witnesses who hold the keys to the jailhouse, and can free themselves immediately upon purging their contempt.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/court-orders-true-the-vote-leaders-released-from-jail_4846717.html
***************************************************
Feminist Naomi Wolf is a vaccine skeptic
She is urging women to vote against those who promoted the vaccines. Excerpt only below
When I spoke to a crowd of thousands at the Defeat the Mandates rally in LA, I warned the mandate-driving leaders and the Pharma executives: “You hurt our kids,” and that they had no idea what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the rage of thousands of mothers. I got a visceral roar of affirmation from the women in the crowd, even louder than the noise from the men. The video, interestingly, is hard to find now online.
Mine was not a partisan statement, and I have no idea the party affiliation of the women who reacted with that brutal lioness-roar of affirmation.
We were all, at that moment, a de facto Party of Moms.
Furious mothers have never before been a political force, but by God, they are now.
If you are a mom, or stepmom, vote like a mom or stepmom on Tuesday.
Who was most hurt by forced mRNA injections?
Women.
Dr Robert Chandler, of the WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Volunteers, found that the lipid nanoparticles remain in the ovaries. He also found that women sustained 72 per cent of the adverse events, compared to men, and that 16 per cent of these adverse events were “reproductive disorders” (Pfizer’s own phrase) versus the less than one per cent of reproductive disorders sustained by men.
The mRNA vaccines, that were forced on women (the majority of the US population) by a male President, destroyed American women’s fertility at a scale we are only now beginning to grasp; one that is monumental.
When I tried to warn US women (accurately) that mRNA injections were damaging women’s menstrual cycles, I was deplatformed and smeared. Carol Crawford of the CDC (no doubt a “feminist”), Dr Rochelle Walensky of the CDC (“feminist”) and Andy Slavitt of the “feminist” White House, colluded with Twitter and Facebook to smear and deplatform me as well as others, all trying to raise alarms regarding the mRNA vaccine’s threats to women’s and human health.
(Sheryl Sandberg, then COO of Facebook, wrote a book about women’s empowerment, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead. I had supported her in a column of mine at Project Syndicate, when her book faced criticism. Her organization, LeanIn.org, promotes women’s empowerment “circles.” Later, at her request, I went to visit her on the Facebook campus.
Our sisterhood moment did not last long.
Throughout 2021 and into 2022, I was in repeated, direct contact with Sandberg by email seeking without results to get back onto my Facebook fan page, with its 150,000 followers, to report damage of mRNA vaccines to women’s reproductive health, and other information I was uncovering regarding women’s and babies’ health issues. Little did I know, when she kept sidestepping my requests to regain my platform, that for all of those months, her company was meeting regularly with the White House and CDC to keep folks like me, and indeed me specifically, out.
By running a company that colluded with the White House and CDC to censor information about menstrual and reproductive harms to women, and about mortal danger to fetuses and babies, Sandberg was unfortunately “leaning in” to an American and global genocide. But hey, she still owns 1.5 million shares of the company, worth $290 million, so women’s and babies’ health be damned.
Sheryl Sandberg. Big Dem supporter. Famous “feminist.”)
By the Biden administration silencing critics—with the latest America First Legal FOIA release, we see that this silencing goes up to the level of DHS—they and their tech company allies ensured that millions of American women would suffer debilitatingly life-changing menses, and that American women too would sustain the level of miscarriages and neonatal deaths that we are seeing worldwide.
So a bitter irony is now inherent in our historical moment, in our choice on Tuesday.
The Left is always claiming that the Right wants to “Get into my uterus,” so, RNC, “Stay out of my uterus.”
And the DNC is continually maintaining, in these final days before Tuesday, that Democrats alone are the champions of your uterus.
The DNC bases its appeal to women, of course, on protecting women’s right to abortion.
But we must now face the fact that the DNC gives not two f—ks , as the evidence emerging now proves, for your right to have a healthy, living baby.
It is very, very bad to grab women by the pussy without their consent.
But it is also very, very bad to destroy women’s ovaries and uteruses, and to poison their breast milk, without their consent, and to force them to submit to taking into their bodies as a “medicine,” a substance that can kill their babies in utero or soon after birth.
By ignoring this damage done on its watch to women and babies, the Left loses its historical claim to be the defender of women’s bodies and of their choices about their bodies.
Who actually, most recently, hurt and invaded your uterus with malice aforethought? It is the people currently in power.
Lipid nanoparticles traverse every membrane in the human body, including the uterus and in pregnant women, the placenta.
Dr James Thorp, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, found that the lipid nanoparticles of the mRNA vaccine traverse the placenta and create a netting of calcifications that weaken it.
Babies of mRNA-vaccinated women are being delivered early, as the placentas of many vaccinated women do not have the integrity to bring a baby safely to term. Dr Thorp reports that many babies of vaccinated moms are being born with chromosomal abnormalities or physical malformations.
That is a women’s issue.
President Biden and Dr Rochelle Walensky and Andy Slavitt and Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Governor Kathy Hochul (the latter both “feminists”) were fine running this risk with your body, your ovaries, your breast milk, your uterus, your fetus, your baby.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14333&omhide=true&trk=rm
************************************************
BOYS as young as 12 might be asked if they are PREGNANT in latest woke language storm to engulf British health service
Boys as young as 12 face being asked if they are pregnant in the latest woke language storm to engulf the NHS.
A poster on the walls of a hospital in Scotland also refers to biological women and girls as 'people with internal reproductive organs'.
Experts said the messaging was 'dreadful' and failed the basic principles of clear health communication and biology.
The poster at NHS Tayside says anyone aged between 12 and 55 should be asked if they are pregnant 'irrespective of gender' before undergoing examinations where they are exposed to radiation.
A picture of the poster, uploaded to Twitter, reads: 'Irrespective of your gender you may be asked to complete a form about pregnancy before some examinations.
The poster makes no mention of women, girls or females of any kind in regard to the risk of undergoing a scan while pregnant.
Instead, it classifies these patients as 'people who have internal reproductive organs'.
'Only people who have internal reproductive organs have the ability to become pregnant,' it reads. 'We check this with each individual, and conduct a pregnancy check accordingly.'
NHS Tayside said the poster followed best practise guidelines but was being trialled at only a few sites before being rolled out across the organisation.
Stella O'Malley, psychotherapist and founder of campaign group Genspect, said the poster was unfit for purpose.
'Over-the-top and elaborate efforts to be inclusive for certain groups often end up excluding other groups,' she said.
'The NHS should revert to simple and clear language if they want to help the most people possible.
'This purpose of this poster is to keep patients safe from harm by warning pregnant females that there are dangers in exposing themselves to certain treatments.
'But this poster is not fit for purpose because it is pretty incomprehensible.
'People who do not speak fluent English will find it difficult to understand this poster. I wonder who decided that their needs were deemed less important?'
Ms O'Malley also said she was worried about the impact of these question on boys undergoing serious medical treatment.
'We're often at our lowest ebb when we're sick,' she said. 'Young boys undergoing cancer treatment don't need to be asked if they are pregnant.'
Ms O'Malley also accused the poster's authors of wrongly implying men can get pregnant as part of their desire to use gender-neutral language. 'It is also factually inaccurate because males have internal reproductive organs e.g. vas deferens, prostate and urethra,' she said.
As parts of the male reproductive system, like the prostate, are internal organs they technically meet the criteria of those who can become pregnant according to the poster.
Professor Jenny Gamble, an expert in midwifery from Coventry University, said the posted was a 'dreadful example of health communication about such an important issue'.
'Using the term, "internal reproductive organs" is so unclear,' she said.
'A basic principle of any health communication activity should be to enable people to understand their health and access the right services; this example fails this basic principle,' she said.
She added many people will struggle to unpick what the poster is referring to.
'Many well-educated women do not know the basics of their own biology and would struggle to know what were the "internal reproductive organs",' she said.
'Many people - both sexes - would struggle with categorizing male reproductive organs as internal or external. Many people do not know the definition of an "organ".'
Professor Gamble said the transgender and non-binary people NHS Tayside were trying to appease with its poster would not miss out by making the information clear to women.
'Women have specific sex-specific health needs. Avoiding ionising radiation when pregnant is one of them,' she said.
'Females that have a gender identity as trans-men or non-binary know they are female and will not be missed by referring to women.'
The wording of the NHS Tayside poster also goes against that used in Scotland's NHS and Government backed national health information service, called NHS Inform.
NHS Inform's advice reads: 'X-rays aren't usually recommended for pregnant women unless it's an emergency.' The same wording is replicated on the NHS Inform website warning for CT scans.
An NHS Tayside spokesperson defended the use of the poster saying it followed best practise guidelines.
'This poster was produced in line with the Society of Radiographers "Inclusive pregnancy status guidelines for ionising radiation",' they said.
They also added the poster was being trialled at a few sites before being rolled out more widely, and that feedback was being sought. .
'Our imaging team is trialling the poster and guidelines at three hospitals in Angus and gathering feedback from patients and other groups before it is rolled out further across other sites,' they said.
****************************************
9 November, 2022
Media, Democrats question intelligence of Americans who are voting Republican: 'Aren't very bright'
My girlfriend often tells me I am being illogical when I disagree with her so I think the same sort of thing is going on here. Democrat devotees think that disagreeing with them indicates lower intelligence.
In case anyone is interested in the facts, the usual finding is that Leftists do have a very slight advantage over conservatives in average IQ. But which way does the causal arrow point?
It's likely that more intelligent people are more attuned to what is currently "correct" and so are better able to follow the mob in their beliefs. Conservatives, by contrast, may be more independent minded and hence less likely to follow the intellectual fashions. Being intelligent may simply help make you a better conformist in today's Left-dominated society
Liberal media figures and Democratic politicians are questioning the intelligence of Americans who are voting Republican, befuddled by the idea that some could put economic issues over concerns about the state of U.S. democracy.
While voting rights and threats to democracy are key voting issues, especially among Democratic voters, polling has repeatedly shown that issues such as the economy, inflation, crime, and abortion often outperform the former. However, this has not stopped media figures and Democrats from blasting their warnings about Republican lawmakers across the airwaves.
Over the weekend, left-wing documentary filmmaker Michael Moore gave his final push to vote Democrat ahead of the midterms, but in doing so, claimed that 80 to 90 million Americans "aren’t very bright."
"No offense to any of you watching that aren’t bright, but that’s—you’re watching MSNBC, so I’m making an assumption that you know what’s going on," he said.
He also expressed confusion at the idea of women "giving up their rights" because of their alarm over the price of gas or the price of food.
On November 3, "The View’ co-host Sunny Hostin was widely condemned for comparing White suburban women voting Republican to cockroaches voting for insecticide. Some critics even called for the host’s firing.
"What’s also surprising to me is the abortion issue. I read a poll just yesterday that White Republican suburban women are now going to vote Republican," Hostin said, appearing to refer to surveys showing White women backing Republicans in 2022. "It’s almost like roaches voting for Raid [roach spray], right?"
The condescending attitude towards voters leaning Republican in the midterm elections continued on ABC, with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel appearing to mock voters whose troubles have pushed them to vote red.
"The midterm elections are on Tuesday, and we have a tough decision ahead. On the one hand our democracy is being threatened by extremists who want power over at all costs even if it means burning us to the ground. On the other hand, gas is four dollars a gallon now, so," Kimmel sardonically quipped.
Similar conversations could also be found on social media, with liberal journalists appearing to mock Americans concerned about inflation and the price of gasoline.
"I don’t get the obsession with ‘high’ gas prices," Reuters reporter Patricia Zengerie tweeted, alongside a picture of gas at a Shell station being sold at $3.49 a gallon.
Another Twitter conversation saw BBC reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh promote an article she wrote detailing a coalition of Republican candidates who falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen. The tweet also claimed that the group’s founders had connections to the far-right QAnonconspiracy theory.
"But cereal is kinda pricey, so I dunno," The Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols replied to the post.
The contemptuous tone of media personalities toward Republican voters also revealed itself on MSNBC during two separate installments of "The ReidOut."
During an interview with Hillary Clinton, host Joy Reid asked if she was concerned that voters are not "putting the pieces together," regarding how Republican control of the House could embolden fringe theories and an election denier mentality.
"I don’t think people are really able to grasp that—but more importantly I’m not sure they really understand the threats to their way of life," Clinton replied.
A week earlier, MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd joined Reid’s show, where he likened Americans voting Republican to German citizens helping to bolster the rise of Nazi Germany.
Reid prompted Dowd by stating that people who sit back and think that a Republican-led Congress won’t be that bad might be as dangerous as the "radicals" vying for public office.
"It certainly sounds very familiar to what happened in Germany—which is a bunch of citizens, Adolf Hitler gets a third of the vote," Dowd said. "Nobody thought it could happen there. They kind of went along because they said he was going to solve the economy and fix inflation, those sorts of things. And then lo and behold a few years later they lost their democracy, and they’re all like ‘how’d that happen here?’"
A New York Times/Sienna poll released in mid-October showed that a whopping 71% of the 792 registered voters questioned say "American democracy is currently under threat."
Among those who fear for democracy, 84% of them, or roughly 60% of all registered voters, view "mainstream media" as some sort of threat. A majority, 59%, call the media a "major threat to democracy" while an additional 25% call it a "minor threat to democracy."
President Biden urged Democrats last Wednesday to show up at the polls during next week's midterm elections or "allow the dark forces that thirst for power" to chip away at American democracy.
One day later, Biden gave a final address ahead of the midterms, pleading with Americans to vote against Republicans, and accusing the party of suppressing access to vote, denying elections, and encouraging political violence.
*********************************************
Leftugees: Democrats escape blue states
Remember the chorus of Hollywood bien-pensants who publicly avowed that they would leave the country if Trump won the election in 2016? To the surprise of virtually no one, none of the stars abandoned their mansions and fled to the ‘beacons of freedom’ like Canada.
But now, curiously, with their man Joe Biden in power, and their party controlling both the House and the Senate, many of the almost exclusively Democratic partisan Hollywood elites are fleeing the most progressive of blue states, California.
The latest to announce such a move is actor Rob Schneider, who publicised his relocation to Arizona this month, saying that he doesn’t want the Democratic Party to run his life. Hot on his heels is Mark Wahlberg, who is abandoning his $90m LA mansion, is moving to Nevada to give his family a ‘better life’.
Perhaps Wahlberg, who has young children, is talking about the bizarre schooling offered in his state? Halloween has come and gone with angry parents lambasting the Encinitas Union School District school board in San Diego for advertising a ‘family friendly’ drag show as part of a children’s Halloween party. This was sponsored by a San Francisco gender reassignment surgery center. Hypersexualized elements, for reasons I dare not contemplate, have been something that the ultra-progressives are keen to cram into young children’s education.
This exodus is not only of individuals. Netflix and NBC Universal have moved to New Mexico. Other major corporations like Apple, Chevron, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oracle, Tesla, and American Airlines have abandoned California, many of which moving their headquarters to Texas, Arizona, and Florida.
This is not surprising. California has some of the highest tax rates in the US, including the highest state sales tax, highest gasoline tax, highest personal income tax, and highest corporate income tax in Western US. It also has the most draconian lockdown measures, soaring crime rates, and possibly the most hypocritical governor in Gavin Newsom. As a result, California has been experiencing negative population growth for the first time in its history.
This phenomenon is by no means limited to California. Other blue states with the most progressive policies are seeing ‘leftugees’ who have moved to red states, despite the best efforts of the Census Bureau.
Entire counties are also trying to escape the clutches of progressive policies. Two counties in east Oregon are preparing to vote in November on possibly seceding the state and joining Republican-run Idaho.
Even Tulsi Gabbard, who, only two years ago, was running to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency, quit the party. On the surface, she is the perfect progressive politician – an ethnic and religious minority, a woman, a veteran, and a charismatic person. But she committed the one irremissible sin – she dared to think for herself.
And, as Gabbard has realised, here is the crux – the Democratic Party is completely recalcitrant. Its chief and only interest seems to be clinging to power. In this pursuit, it has committed all manner of hypocrisies. And this criticism is not confined to the US left, but leftist parties across the Western world, who have imbibed a similar tactic of ignoring reality in their pig-headed pursuit of radical, dangerous, and provably unworkable ideas, not to enrich the lives of those they govern, but to ensure that they will stay in power. While doing so, they are inclined to use all manners of authoritarian tactics to avoid confrontations with criticisms and responsibility.
What is desperately needed is for more people to judge those in the political sphere by their actions rather than by their reputations. And when more people do this, they will realise the true nature of progressivism, which is aptly described by the words of the US abolitionist Frederick Douglass: ‘Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other – devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/11/leftugees-democrats-escape-blue-states/
***********************************************
Meloni Derangement Syndrome
She's brilliant
Before her election as Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni faced accusations day in and day out that she was a ‘fascist’ because some members of her Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party once belonged to the old Movimento Sociale Italiano, which was formed after the second world war by previous adherents of dictator Benito Mussolini. As Greg Sheridan and this correspondent have pointed out, such accusations were totally baseless. Thus, the initial diagnosis of Meloni Derangement Syndrome.
Just as was (and still is) the case with Trump Derangement Syndrome (and, in this country, Abbott Derangement Syndrome), its symptoms range from pettiness to irrationality and hatred.
The Left, of course, could not bring itself to celebrate Meloni’s election as Italy’s first female Prime Minister. Meloni is not their kind of woman. Instead, we see Italian women marching in the streets with their ‘No Meloni Day’ demonstrations, just like the ‘Not My President’ nonsense in America after Trump’s election. They prefer the Patroness of Woke also known as Jacinda of the Shaky Isles (sorry, Aotearoa). As we know, Jacinda, on a huge carbon-emitting trip to Antarctica, had to be rescued by the Italian Air Force when her ageing RNZAF plane broke down and couldn’t leave. Gee, those so-called ‘fascists’ are nasty.
The Italian daily il Giornale has been reporting – with a mix of sarcasm and reality checks – on the effects of Meloni Derangement Syndrome. In a recent report it noted that Italian women of the left stiamo rosicando, ma è molto difficile (it’s hard, we’re fuming!) after Meloni’s election. They were particularly upset that Meloni has declared that she will be referred to with the masculine definite article, as in ‘il Presidente del Consiglio’, rather than the feminine ‘la Presidente’, or worse ‘la Prima Ministra’. This polemic arises since women ministers (of the left) had previously decided to virtue signal and call themselves ‘la Ministra’ rather than ‘il Ministro’. Former Speaker of the Italian lower house (the Chamber of Deputies), Laura Boldrini, has been seething with rage, accusing Meloni of, among other things, ‘betraying feminism’. However, as Meloni said in riposte:
‘Leggo che il principale tema di discussione di oggi sarebbe su circolari burocratiche interne, più o meno sbagliate, attorno al grande tema di come definire la prima donna Presidente del Consiglio. Fate pure. Io mi sto occupando di bollette, tasse, lavoro, certezza della pena, manovra di bilancio. Per come la vedo io, potete chiamarmi come credete, anche Giorgia.’
‘I read that the main topic of discussion today would be on internal bureaucratic memos, more or less wrong, on the hugely important topic of how the first female Presidente del Consiglio should be referred to. Go right ahead. My focus is on energy bills, taxes, jobs, law and order, and the budget. As I see it, you can call me what you like, even Giorgia.’
Ouch!
As il Giornale also pointed out, Meloni has the guardian of the Italian language since the Renaissance, l’Accademia dell Crusca, on her side. The Accademia noted that a preference for the masculine or feminine gender in such circumstances rests entirely with the individual. If one prefers the more traditional masculine gender, that person has every right to do so. What is more, grammatically, in such circumstances the definite article actually refers to the office itself, not the person, and so has a neutral function.
Common sense analysis on this issue is coming from everyday Italians, as reported in il Giornale. ‘Who cares about a definite article? As long as she gets the job done!’
A further manifestation of Meloni Derangement Syndrome centres on frothing at the mouth over the newly announced crackdown on illegal raves, which attract thousands from all over Europe and go on for days. Such events, as one can imagine, are havens for drunkenness, drug use, and criminality – hence the crackdown. The recent rave party at Modena saw ubiquitous drug dealing and attacks on the police for days on end. The crackdown has seen Meloni Derangement Syndrome sufferers scream that Meloni wants to ban protests and that this proposed law was a ‘freedom-killing monster’. This claim comes from, among others, Giuseppe Conte, Prime Minister during the 2020 Covid lockdowns, when protests were banned and people could not go 200 metres from their homes.
Meloni dealt with this bile, as she always does, with the cold hard facts:
‘Ho sentito dire di tutto, che vogliamo vietare le manifestazioni. Non c’è nulla di più distante dalla mia storia, sono cose che non stanno nè in cielo nè in terra. L’obiettivo del governo è impedire che il rave si faccia illegamente, bisogna rispettare chi lavora regolarmente: Lo Stato che fa finta di non vedere chi se ne infischia delle regole è finito. La storia di chi non vuole rispettare le norme dello Stato è finite. Qualsiasi cosa tu voglia fare, tu devi rispettare le leggi.’
‘I’ve heard everything, That we want to ban protests. Nothing could be further from my plan. This is complete nonsense. The government’s aim is to stop illegal raves. Those who go about their jobs lawfully must be respected. The days of the State turning a blind eye to those who don’t give a damn about the law are over. The days of people having no respect for the laws of this country are over. Whatever you want to do, you have to abide by the law.’
Meloni added that if anyone had any sensible proposals to amend the law to make it work better, they could bring them before the Parliament, since that is what it is there for. So much for being a fascist and a reactionary!
Notwithstanding the increasing shrieking that sufferers of Meloni Derangement Syndrome exhibit, Meloni’s poll standing keeps getting better. According to the latest data, Meloni has a 66 per cent approval rating, and her party’s poll position has actually improved since the election.
Meloni Derangement Syndrome may not be such a bad thing after all.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/11/meloni-derangement-syndrome
**************************************************
We are paying a hefty price for the free lunches of the recent past
Rotting money
In 2008, the plunging of central bank rates to nearly zero was super-weird. (EU rates eventually going negative, meaning you paid banks to keep your money, was even weirder.) Flatlined interest rates were a response to an emergency. Yet when emergency measures continue long enough, they start to seem totally normal, in this case inducing the bizarre expectation that borrowing money will be basically free, for ever.
Sorry, virtually free borrowing is intrinsically dysfunctional. It (surprise!) encourages more borrowing, so that central banks essentially solved a debt crisis with more debt. Combined with rampant money-printing, zero interest rates were a short-term expedient that made the big picture still worse. The longer zero and even negative interest rates persisted, the more deeply public and private parties sank into a debt trap – in hock for so much money that now even tiny rises in the cost of servicing that debt are disastrous for homeowners and governments both.
After all, with inflation raging towards or into double digits, why do you think central bank rates in the US (3.1 per cent) and the UK (2.25 per cent) are still so pathetic? Jerome Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey are up against the wall, damned if they raise rates and damned if they don’t. But these gentlemen helped create the quandary in which they’re mired. Negligible interest rates, which reward debtors and rob savers, thus transferring enormous wealth from the prudent to the profligate, should never have been sustained for an entire generation.
The Fed rate’s vertiginous plunge to .09 per cent by December 2008 was a panic move. The desperation appeared to bear fruit. At least the international financial system did not implode, though we came closer to fiscal apocalypse than most of us care to contemplate. Briefly doing something ‘unprecedented’ (it’s telling how tired we’ve all become of that word) to steady the ship was fair enough. Yet panic mode carried on for so long that it slid to business as usual.
You needn’t be a professional economist to solve this calculus equation. Over time, as money continues to be free and central banks keep magicking up trillions from thin air, money becomes disconnected from value – real products and services. This process soon approaches a limit. The limit is currency collapse. Steadily high inflation, few of you need to be told, is slow-motion currency collapse. (With a piddling average 2 per cent inflation rate, the pound has lost 99.6 per cent of its value since 1751 – but nearly all of that loss occurred since 1970.)
Right now, money throughout the world is rotting. We only have a ‘strong dollar’ because, given slightly-higher-than-farcical US interest rates, investors in greenbacks can slow the rot a tad. With American inflation stubbornly over 8 per cent, the dollar is still rotting, even if you can stick it in a whopping 3.5 per cent interest certificate of deposit – something like storing your meat in a beer cooler, but not in a proper fridge.
Yes, dire unanticipated events can sometimes force authorities to announce that all bets are off, the old rules don’t apply, and necessity trumps principle. But accession to states of emergency risks their installation in perpetuity. Strong men often declare martial law during a crisis, but the crisis never officially ends, and martial law morphs conveniently into a bog-standard police state.
We’re seeing the same process play out with Covid. The US has robotically renewed its ‘public health emergency’ every three months since January 2020, most recently just over a week ago – despite Biden’s declaration last month that the pandemic is over. Although (astonishingly) the UK’s 2020 Coronavirus Act was finally allowed to expire in September, No. 10 can always fall back on the 1984 Public Health Act, which justified all our beloved ‘nonpharmaceutical interventions’.
The WHO aims to codify these same diabolical ‘interventions’ and get member states to sign up to a universal protocol for disease control that’s legally binding. The EU Commission released a document in September that extends the bloc’s commitment to the use of lockdowns and inane vaccine passports (Covid vaccines have no effect on transmission), while recommending that masks (also ineffective in preventing transmission), preferably of the most uncomfortable, suffocating sort, be brought back as a first line of defence this very winter. As coronavirus anxiety wanes, newly self-important public health officials remind me of Gerry Adams’s notorious whisper about the IRA: We haven’t gone away, you know.
Besides, a state of emergency isn’t merely the supposedly temporary imposition of draconian laws, but a state of mind – one to which we’ve grown altogether too accustomed. Note how seamlessly the hysteria over Covid has segued to hysteria over climate change. This never-ending sensation of peril grants government the implicit right to do anything to save the world.
As we’ve seen demonstrated vividly since March 2020, laws that protect civil liberties are fragile and readily overridden. Rescinding the laws of economics is proving more difficult. Lo, the fusty classicists were right all along. 1) Give people the opportunity to borrow vast amounts of money for practically nothing, and lots of folks will take you up on your kindly offer – not least have-cake-and-eat-it politicians who want to spread manna on their constituents’ waters without taxing them to death first. 2) Concocting enormous sums from the ether, even via fancy legerdemain called ‘quantitative easing’, inevitably debases a currency down the line.
It’s well established, too, that inflation, once entrenched, has a life of its own. Escalating prices and wages have already gathered sufficient momentum that tardy rate rises, which can take years to make an impact, may produce the worst of all worlds: ruinous, undeterred inflation; cripplingly high servicing costs for sovereign debt; and widespread personal and small-business bankruptcies. Whoops! Sounds like another emergency to me.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/when-money-rots/
****************************************
8 November, 2022
Republican National Committee Targets Google Censorship in Lawsuit
After enduring years of targeted censorship, the Republican National Committee is suing Google for its bulk-labeling of millions of RNC campaign email communications to its supporters and donors as “spam” during “pivotal points in election cycles.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, where Google has its corporate headquarters, is seeking an injunction ordering Google to stop its “en masse,” “egregious filtering,” and asking for “actual, statutory, and exemplary damages” and attorneys’ fees.
Political campaigns and political parties have become increasingly reliant on email services, such as Gmail. While the midterm elections will soon be over, the 2024 presidential election cycle will start shortly thereafter, and the decision in this case could have a serious impact on both the conduct and the outcome of the next presidential election.
The RNC is alleging that Google is discriminating against Republicans by using its Spam Filter Algorithm to reduce the visibility of the RNC’s emails, including labeling as “spam” RNC emails to individuals who have specifically requested to be on the RNC’s email communications list.
Specifically, Google has targeted the fundraising efforts of the RNC, resulting in the loss of an estimated more than $2 billion in donations since 2019, according to the complaint.
But the lawsuit also alleges that Google has been targeting its emails that “communicat[e] political messaging and important Get-Out-The-Vote information.”
Emails are a “crucial conduit” for the RNC to engage “in its core mission of conducting political activity,” something that is undoubtedly true for all political parties and party organizations, not just the RNC.
Earlier this year, North Carolina State University published a study that found emails from Republican candidates for office were marked as spam at a rate 820% higher than the emails of their Democratic opponents, significantly disadvantaging Republican candidates.
As argued by the RNC, this study credibly proves that Google’s Spam Filter Algorithm is deliberately censoring Republicans.
Instead of ending the censorship of Republican candidates, Google has “fallen silent,” according to the complaint, and it has quit responding to RNC efforts to work out a remedy, instead urging the RNC to join its “Verified Sender Program,” which would impose even more stringent rules on RNC emails that wouldn’t resolve the censorship.
And the RNC claims that the discrimination by Google in filtering its emails increased dramatically in February of this year as the 2022 election cycle got underway.
The lawsuit provides an interesting historical context for the alleged violations that emphasizes that while the internet and email communications are modern technological developments, the principle at stake and the issue involved with a private company having “market-dominant” control over important communications is not a new one.
The complaint points out that in the mid-1800s, the equivalent of today’s email communications were telegrams and the newly developed telegraph system. Just like Google today, one company, Western Union, “had a dominant market share across the country.”
The complaint alleges that Google controls 53% of the email traffic in the country.
Citing NetChoice LLC v. Paxton, a case this year out of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the complaint says that legislators grew concerned over “the possibility that the private entities that controlled this amazing new technology” of almost instant communications through the telegraph system “would use that power to manipulate the flow of information to the public when doing so served their economic or political self-interest.”
Western Union “repeatedly discriminated” against certain telegram senders based on their political views and affiliations, and influenced the “reporting of political elections in an effort to promote the election of candidates” favored by the directors of the company.
Many states enacted laws outlawing such discrimination in telegraph services, including California, which is apparently one of the reasons this lawsuit was filed in that state. The RNC is claiming that Google is a “common carrier” within the definition of that state’s law that requires communication companies to “deliver messages without preference in time, price, or otherwise.”
The complaint further alleges that Google is violating a California civil rights law that guarantees “full and equal” treatment by all business establishments. Exclusionary policies based on “political affiliation” are unlawful discrimination.
The RNC is also asserting violations under California’s unfair business practices statute, as well as tort claims for both negligent and intentional “interference with prospective economic relations.”
In addition to these state law claims, the RNC is alleging that Google’s discriminatory actions violate the federal Telecommunications Act, 47 U.S.C. § 202. The RNC acknowledges that the Federal Communications Commission does not currently classify Google as a “common carrier” within the definition of that law and that several court decisions have upheld the FCC’s decision as reasonable. But the RNC says it is preserving “the issue for further review or intervening Supreme Court authority.”
This is an important case, because it raises a crucial issue that the courts, Congress, and state legislatures ought to address. When private companies dominate or virtually monopolize communications used by the public—the same way Western Union did throughout the 19th century—are they prohibited from engaging in discrimination and in selective censorship and filtering in accordance with the political views, opinions, and interests of the directors of those companies? Or should they be treated like other private entities over whom the government has no regulatory authority?
Google has abused its email and internet-browsing dominance to control speech online. Regardless of the outcome of this case, the tech giant ought to be far more transparent with the American people over how it moderates and censors content. The country would never accept a telecommunications firm blocking phone calls, or the Postal Service redirecting political mail. The law should provide the same respect and protection for private email communications.
The resolution of this case will help determine the future of digital communications. But we shouldn’t have to rely on the courts to deliver Big Tech accountability. Lawmakers should prioritize legislation that requires greater transparency and prevents Big Tech from monopolizing—and controlling—this critical infrastructure.
************************************************************
FBI Whistleblower Report: Bureau Is ‘Rotted at Its Core’
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a report Friday detailing whistleblowers' complaints of partisan weaponization of the FBI. Pictured: U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Oct. 24 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Republican staff at the House Judiciary Committee released a report Friday detailing the claims of “a multitude of whistleblowers” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who alleged that the FBI is abusing its law enforcement authority to prosecute political opponents, artificially inflate the amount of “hate” in the country, and removing from its ranks staff who refuse to parrot the leftist agenda.
“Under the malevolent leadership of [Attorney General] Merrick Garland,” the report charges, “the FBI and Justice Department has been a willing participant of the Biden Administration’s weaponization of law enforcement.”
“President [Joe] Biden has shown no problem in labeling his political opponents as racists, fascists, and domestic terrorists,” the report states. “The FBI under Director [Christopher] Wray has been willing to exert its law enforcement tools in a manner guided by political calculations. Whistleblowers allege that the FBI is manipulating data about domestic violent extremism to support the Biden Administration’s political agenda.”
The report cites whistleblowers and other reports, claiming that “the FBI prioritizes investigations and uses differing tactics based on political considerations—using aggressive tactics against political opponents of the Biden Administration while going softer on, or outright ignoring, allegations against the Administration’s political allies.”
According to the report, whistleblowers have described the FBI’s Washington, D.C., leadership as “rotted at its core,” with a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” and full of “rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse.”
In response to a request for comment, the FBI sent this statement:
The FBI has testified to Congress and responded to letters from legislators on numerous occasions to provide an accurate accounting of how we do our work. The men and women of the FBI devote themselves to protecting the American people from terrorism, violent crime, cyber threats and other dangers. Put quite simply: we follow the facts without regard for politics. While outside opinions and criticism often come with the job, we will continue to follow the facts wherever they lead, do things by the book, and speak through our work.
The Republican report claims the FBI is “artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism” by pressuring agents to report irrelevant incidents as violent extremism and by categorizing Jan. 6th-related investigations as separate cases, not as related to one single incident.
Republican staff claim the FBI is abusing its counterterrorism authority to investigate parents who spoke out at school board meetings. According to the report, whistleblowers explained that, after the National School Boards Association urged Biden to investigate concerned parents, the FBI opened investigations into one mother who told a school board “we are coming for you” and one dad because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns.”
The report blames the FBI for protecting Hunter Biden, despite multiple reports about his lucrative foreign business dealings while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president. The report cites Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who admitted that Facebook took “meaningful” steps to censor articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop following an FBI warning. This example highlights the FBI’s collaboration with Facebook and other social media platforms, which the report describes as the bureau’s “helping Big Tech to censor Americans’ political speech.”
The FBI also allowed attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and other facilities to go on unabated while prosecuting pro-life protesters, the report adds.
The report also faults the FBI for using its authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on American citizens, including those associated with Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. While these incidents have been exhaustively reported, the report adds that “there is little indication the FBI has changed—or is willing to change—course.”
Whistleblowers also claimed that the FBI is culling staff who “dissent from its woke, leftist agenda,” according to the report. The bureau is seeking to “purge” FBI employees holding conservative views, they said. The report even claims the FBI took retaliatory action against at least one whistleblower who spoke out.
Several whistleblowers claimed that the FBI is taking steps toward firing employees who engaged in protected First Amendment activity on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the report. The bureau has suspended the security clearances of these staff and questioned their “Allegiance to the United States.”
“Multiple whistleblowers have disclosed how the FBI leadership is conducting a ‘purge’ of FBI employees holding conservative views,” the report states.
Finally, the Republican report faults the FBI’s “political meddling” for “dragging the criminal side [of the bureau] down,” pulling resources away from more relevant enforcement duties. One whistleblower said he was “told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.” The Republican staff call this “misprioritization” both a “dereliction of duty” and “a grave disservice to the victims of crimes that do not advance the FBI’s political agenda.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, shared a page from the report, encouraging FBI staff to come forward and saying that they have a “right to speak with Congress.”
********************************************
State governments step up on abortion issue
Having returned the issue of abortion “to the people and their elected representatives” in June with a watershed opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court paved the way for a flurry of state-level activity regulating abortion.
Since the high court issued its Dobbs opinion, 13 states have fully outlawed abortion, and multiple legal challenges are pending against other states that seek to outlaw or restrict abortion to some degree.
Overall, post-Dobbs restrictions on the procedure have led to an estimated 6% decrease in the number of abortions across the nation. That number represents more than 10,000 unborn human beings whose lives have been saved.
With midterm elections concluding Tuesday, citizens have a chance to flex their recently restored constitutional muscles on the issue of abortion.
Eager state officials have proposed all manner of restrictions on, or protection for, the procedure. Increasingly, state legislative bodies have offered up proposed amendments to their state constitutions on which voters may weigh in. These proposed amendments put to voters the question of whether their own state constitutions should recognize a right to abortion.
In California, for example, voters have a chance to vote on Proposition 1, called the Constitutional Right to Reproductive Freedom. The California Constitution guarantees a “right to privacy,” but doesn’t define what that right includes. And even though the California Supreme Court has found that this right to privacy includes the right to abortion, the proposed constitutional amendment would formalize such a “right” more explicitly.
California’s Prop 1 reads:
The state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom in their most intimate decisions, which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives. This section is intended to further the constitutional right to privacy guaranteed by Section 1, and the constitutional right to not be denied equal protection guaranteed by Section 7. Nothing herein narrows or limits the right to privacy or equal protection.
In Kentucky, midterm voters are considering a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would do precisely the opposite. It states: “Are you in favor of amending the Constitution of Kentucky by creating a new Section of the Constitution to be numbered Section 26A to state as follows: To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion?”
Voters’ approval of the constitutional amendment would ensure that Kentucky’s existing laws on abortion—namely the Human Life Protection Act, the Heartbeat Law, and other pro-life measures—are largely insulated from legal challenges under state law.
Approval of Kentucky’s amendment also would prevent citizens’ tax dollars from being used to fund abortions. It simultaneously would tie the hands of activist judges who otherwise might have used the existing terms of the Kentucky Constitution to “creatively” confer a right to abortion, regardless of any pro-life legislation passed by the Kentucky Legislature.
But what have Kentucky courts used as guiding principles when interpreting the commonwealth’s constitution?
The U.S. Supreme Court was bound by the terms of the U.S. Constitution in conjunction with the nation’s history and tradition on regulating abortion when faced with the question of whether to overturn Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision legalizing abortion on demand. In the same way, the Kentucky Supreme Court in the past also has looked to the text of the commonwealth’s governing document and history on the issue.
As early as 1879—long before Roe was even a glimmer in Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s eye—the Kentucky Court of Appeals determined there was no constitutional right to abortion in the Kentucky Constitution. In that case, Mitchell v. Commonwealth, the court found that the commonwealth’s constitution never had recognized a right to abortion, and that the Kentucky General Assembly could pass laws to protect a child at any point of gestation.
Not long after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, and despite the high court’s creation of a “constitutional” right to abortion, the Kentucky General Assembly stuck to its guns in protecting unborn life. In 1982, its legislative findings included:
[I]t is in the interest of the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky that every precaution be taken to insure the protection of every viable unborn child being aborted … and if … relevant judicial decisions are reversed or modified, the declared policy of this Commonwealth to recognize and to protect the lives of all human beings regardless of their degree of biological development shall be fully restored.
Later, in 2018, the Kentucky Supreme Court in Commonwealth v. Claycomb reiterated principles of constitutional construction when determining that a law called the Medical Review Panel Act was unconstitutional under Section 14 of the Kentucky Constitution. In writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Minton wrote:
The basic rule … is to interpret a constitutional provision according to what was said and not what might have been said; according to what was included and not what might have been included. Neither legislatures nor courts have the right to add to or take from the simple words and meaning of the Constitution … in interpreting Constitutions the words employed therein should be given the meaning and significance that they possessed at the time they were employed.
Most recently, in a 2019 case, Westerfield v. Ward, the Kentucky Supreme Court was faced with interpreting a proposed amendment to the commonwealth’s constitution that was slated for publication on the upcoming election ballot.
In determining that the proposed amendment was not constitutional in light of other provisions of the commonwealth’s constitution, Minton wrote: “When interpreting constitutional provisions, we look first and foremost to the express language of the provision, ‘and words must be given their plain and usual meaning.’”
Together, the effect of these principles of interpretation is clear: The express language of the commonwealth’s constitution confers no right to abortion. And Kentucky judges cannot read one into that constitution, no matter the abortion policy outcome they want.
Kentucky’s proposed constitutional amendment is an effort to avoid the commonwealth’s own version of Roe v. Wade. And, as the U.S. Supreme Court determined in Dobbs, to keep the power in the hands of the “people’s representatives” on a matter of significant importance.
**************************************************************
A public-private partnership formed by elite institutions and the federal government quietly eats away at the First Amendment
On Sept. 30, conservative outlet Just the News published allegations that an agency within the Department of Homeland Security helped create a shadowy public-private partnership called the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to censor and suppress right-of-center voices and media in the run-up to the 2020 election with the help of Big Tech.
The headline was alarming: “Outsourced censorship: Feds used private entity to target millions of social posts in 2020.” The targets of censorship, according to the article, were some of the biggest names on the right—Charlie Kirk, Sean Hannity, Gateway Pundit, Fox News, and the New York Post—whose social media posts on platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook were labeled, soft blocked, or removed. On his show, Hannity reacted to the news by alleging that the EIP created an “enemies list.” The story also charged that the government and the partnership colluded to evade First Amendment protections, and noted that each EIP partner was handsomely rewarded with millions in federal dollars after the 2020 election. Finally, the story warned, the partnership wasn’t finished—it has continued its work during the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections.
The EIP responded a week later. In a long statement, the partnership pushed back on the story and the resulting media coverage, essentially claiming that it was all heat and no light. According to the EIP, it was simply flagging election-related disinformation online, and passing it on to social media companies in order to protect the legitimacy and integrity of the 2020 vote. If conservative accounts were disproportionately targeted, according to the partnership, it was because “the vast majority of false rumors and disinformation about the 2020 election spread primarily through far-right influencers catering to Trump-voting audiences, reflecting the asymmetrical nature of the phenomenon.” The partnership also said that the social media platforms alone were responsible for determining what actions to take after the EIP shared its findings. Finally, the partnership wasn’t operating secretively, the statement said. It blogged, tweeted, and held daily webinars in the run-up to the election, and afterward wrote peer-reviewed papers and a massive 290-page after-action report.
It is difficult to assess the full details of what exactly went on, especially regarding the EIP’s underlying motives. But we do know this: You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to be concerned about the First Amendment implications of the EIP’s work, even as described by the EIP itself—especially with tomorrow’s elections on the line.
There is a serious argument that a partnership like the EIP violates at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment. The idea behind the partnership, according to the EIP’s after-action report, came from four students at the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) who were interning at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). They observed that there was no agency in the federal government tasked with identifying, monitoring, and correcting election-related disinformation online. As the report itself acknowledged, a U.S. government response to domestic “election disinformation” was problematic, because it “would likely be excluded from law enforcement action under the First Amendment.” The EIP wasn’t wrong.
Government itself has only strictly limited power to restrict false information—for example, when it satisfies the specific, narrow standards for fraud, defamation, or perjury. These constitutional guardrails are wise precisely because such vague concepts as “disinformation” give officials too much enforcement discretion, which they predictably use to target critical, dissenting, and minority voices. Denying government the power to implement such an inherently manipulable concept as “disinformation” honors the cardinal First Amendment principle of “viewpoint neutrality,” which ensures that the general power to discern what’s true and false belongs to the American people.
In an apparent attempt to avoid this constitutional problem, the EIP was created “in consultation with CISA” on July 26, 2020—100 days out from the Nov. 3 national election. The groups within the EIP seemed almost designed to make conservative heads explode. Two research groups housed at liberal universities? Check. A New York-based social media analytics firm? Check. A digital research lab connected to a Washington, D.C.-based establishment think tank? Check.
The EIP then set up a ticketing system whereby private stakeholders, like the NAACP or the Democratic National Committee, could submit “tickets,” or reports, flagging possible examples of disinformation. While most tickets came from private stakeholders and EIP analysts, at least one government agency submitted tickets. According to the partnership, CISA did not submit any tickets, but 5% of tickets came from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center.
When the EIP decided a ticket qualified as disinformation and sent it to the social media platforms, the companies took notice. According to the EIP after-action report, the social media giants responded at least 75% of the time to the tickets in which they were tagged. Thirty-five percent of the URLs the partnership shared with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube “were either labeled, removed, or soft blocked,” reported the EIP. The tech platforms disproportionately targeted large accounts supporting then-President Donald Trump, which, according to the partnership, were claiming the election was or would be stolen. These “repeat spreaders” included the actor James Woods, Gateway Pundit, Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, Mark Levin, and Breitbart News, among others.
The government’s role in forming EIP and implementing its ticketing system, as well as social media companies’ high level of responsiveness to EIP’s tickets, suggest that the government may be sharing its power with ostensibly private actors to such an extent that the latter are effectively functioning as government agents. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has sensibly recognized that when certain actions are undertaken by private sector actors that are “entangled” with the government, such actions are subject to the same constitutional limits that apply to the government. Likewise, the court has held that when government pressures private actors to engage in censorship, that too violates the First Amendment. The involvement of the DHS and State Department in the project does make one wonder how much pressure the social media companies felt to address the tickets that EIP sent to them.
As of now, it seems the federal government is at least approaching that constitutional entanglement line. Recent reporting from The Intercept places the EIP within a larger, troubling context. Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein detail how the DHS, originally created in the aftermath of 9/11 to focus on terrorist threats emanating from abroad, has been expanding and altering its mission to address what it considers domestic threats, including a broad concept of information that it deems potentially dangerous; moreover, in seeking to suppress such information, DHS has often collaborated with powerful tech companies without sufficient oversight from Congress. The agency’s ill-fated proposal for a Disinformation Governance Board in April was only the most well-known and widely ridiculed instance of bureaucratic proliferation and mission creep that has accelerated under both the Trump and Biden administrations.
In their zeal to play gatekeeper, a group of elite institutions, partnering with government agencies, is picking and choosing what Americans see online. Whatever you want to call that, it isn’t democracy.
First Amendment and broader culture-of-free-speech concerns aren’t the only problem presented by the EIP, however. Consider the issue of bias. In December 2021, seven members of the EIP published an article in the Journal of Quantitative Description. The article focused on the social media accounts cited above, which the authors argue acted as superspreaders of election disinformation, helping sow doubt about the integrity and legitimacy of the 2020 election. The authors admit that the monitoring process for identifying and flagging pieces of disinformation likely “reflect biases of individual analysts.” These analysts, as Stanford Internet Observatory’s Renée DiResta explains in a CISA video, were “trained student researchers” from Stanford.
That’s a salutary admission, but one sentence later the authors wave it away. “Though the organizers did not record the political orientations of the Tier 1 analysts,” the EIP authors write, “our experience working with them suggests that diverse political orientations were present and that the overall group skewed towards the center left.” For many who are skeptical about the EIP already, this might only induce resigned laughter, since they likely perceive Stanford students as being far to the left of the average American. Imagine if the federal government helped form a similar partnership that employed students from Liberty University to flag disinformation online. The reaction would be largely the same, only coming from the opposite side.
According to the partnership, its primary goal is to defend American democracy, particularly the integrity and legitimacy of our electoral system. These are laudable, worthwhile goals, but the way the EIP went about pursuing them demonstrates a paternalistic lack of faith in the intelligence of ordinary Americans. In their zeal to play gatekeeper, a group of elite institutions, partnering with government agencies, is picking and choosing what Americans see online. Whatever you want to call that, it isn’t democracy.
As the Supreme Court said, an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth” is antithetical not only to individual liberty, but also to the entire idea of self-government. Accordingly, the court has stressed, our system is designed to discover truth “out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.” It’s difficult for that process to play out unencumbered when the government itself has a policy of telling proxies whose tongues to cut out.
Transparency, arguably absolute transparency, is necessary to counter the free speech dangers that the EIP poses by policing inherently slippery concepts like“misinformation” and “disinformation.” The partnership does seem to understand the value of showing its cards. In its statement, the EIP stated that it “has always operated openly and transparently” and that any “insinuation that information about our operations or findings were secret up to this point is disproven by the two years of free, public content we have created.”
It would be more accurate to say that the EIP operated while hidden in plain sight. An obscure partnership between little-known research centers and ABC government agencies may be technically transparent, but that matters little if the vast majority of the population has no idea the arrangement exists. A large portion of the blame goes to the popular and resource-rich media outlets that weren’t interested in covering such developments for readers and viewers until a comparatively small conservative website did it for them.
Since the EIP was formed to exchange information between its partners in real time, it presumably could create a web tool to allow interested citizens and organizations to also watch it work in real time and provide some sort of due process for accounts flagged for disinformation. And if the partnership’s existence continues beyond the midterms, especially in the runup to the 2024 election, it should prioritize recruiting analysts who represent the ideological and political diversity of the American electorate and provide that data to the public.
With the potential for abuse so grave, blog posts, Twitter threads, and downloadable after-action reports won’t cut it. Radical transparency is the least voters should expect of such a partnership at least partially funded by taxpayer money and involving elements of the national security bureaucracy. Such a commitment would go a long way toward demonstrating to the public that the EIP has nothing to hide—and is glad to have the American people watch it like a hawk.
****************************************
7 November, 2022
Rental property hard to find in Britain? Blame the government attacks on landlords
In 1998, Mrs Thatcher de-regulated private landlording to good effect, with "assured shorthold tenancies". It led to a big rise in private provision of rental accomodation. But her work has steadily been undone in various ways by more recent British governments
Governments worldwide get enthused from time to time about steps they might take to "help" tenants. Sadly, what they often come up with (restrictions of various sorts) makes life more difficult for landlords, which is pretty brainless. If you chase landlords away, you make it harder for tenants to find a place to stay. And what remains will inevitably cost more. You can't lower prices (rents) by reducing the supply. Only a Leftist would think you can
Anita Parkinson has been a landlord since 2009. The 62-year-old used to own six properties but she started selling them off three years ago. She is now waiting for her remaining tenants to move out so she can get rid of her last two.
Ms Parkinson, who asked for her last name to be changed, said the “final straw” was a proposed change that would require all newly rented properties to have a minimum Energy Performance Certificate rating of C by 2025. She said upgrading her properties to meet the standard would cost between £14,000 and £17,000.
“It got to the point where there was so much legislation that it was just becoming untenable,” she said. “I’m absolutely done.”
Ms Parkinson is part of a growing wave of landlords selling off rental properties, hit by increased regulation, soaring mortgage rates and spiralling upfront energy efficiency costs. Some 16pc of all property sellers this year were landlords, according to estate agents Hamptons. In London, the figure was 19pc. These are the highest levels since 2018.
Even those heading for the exit face punitive charges. Landlords will lose thousands of pounds in sale profits under proposals. Thousands who cashed out reaped the benefits house price growth, but the Government is now poised to take a bigger slice of their profits.
The number of rental properties on the market is at its lowest level in three years, according to research firm TwentyCi, indicating landlords are divesting – with a knock-on impact on renters. The total number of rented homes fell by 258,000 between 2016-17 and 2020-21, equal to 5pc, Hamptons found.
Ms Parkinson initially became a landlord to supplement her income, but said she is no longer making any money because of the Government’s crackdown on buy-to-let. She started selling her properties after requirements were brought in for new electrical checks. She had to spend nearly £6,000 upgrading the wiring on one of her properties, which wiped out her profits.
“I have a small pension but this was my income,” she said. “In the last two years, unfortunately, there has been nothing because every single penny that’s gone in has come back out in costs.”
Ms Parkinson, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, is also terrified of plans to ban no-fault evictions which would make it difficult for her to remove troublesome tenants. She said she is fed up with the demonisation of good, responsible landlords like herself, whom she describes as “social pariahs”.
“I just feel as if the Government’s out to destroy me,” she said. “I feel incredibly upset.”
For other landlords, it is rising interest rates that are proving to be the final straw.
Karen Smith, 36, from Esher in Surrey, bought a second property with her husband during the pandemic and started letting out their first home. They had secured a fixed mortgage rate of 1.75pc, which has ended recently. They have now moved on to a variable rate.
“It’s going up and up and up,” she said. Ms Smith, who asked for her last name to be changed, said her payments have been increasing by £100 a month because of soaring interest rates. Her tenants are moving out in December and she is anxious to find a buyer before they leave. She cannot afford to keep paying the mortgage if the flat is empty.
“I can’t be in a loss situation; it’s really stressful,” she said.
Another reason she decided to sell was because she feared that new tenants would end up in arrears. Ms Smith, who works in PR, said she has been lucky but has heard “horror stories” of tenants owing thousands because they cannot pay.
“Because of the rights that tenants have, it’s very difficult to take action,” she said. “I’m not a property portfolio person – I have a job, I just happen to have a property that I rent out. I simply would not be able to afford two mortgages just because somebody can’t pay their rent.
“I know that means that a rental property is being taken off the market in a housing crisis, but it’s not fair that everyone is expecting landlords to have deep enough pockets to pay mortgages endlessly.”
David Fell, of Hamptons, said landlords selling up is likely to mean higher rent payments as the same number of tenants chase fewer properties.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/money/other/i-m-absolutely-done-with-being-a-landlord/ar-AA13JrUJ
**********************************************************
‘I Had to Become Feminine’: Businesswoman, 42 and Single, Breaks Down, Ditches Feminism to Find Husband
An accomplished career woman with a headhunting firm in Washington, she was like a superstar in some people’s books. There’s “a glamor” to women working outside the home, she says. Yet weirdly the feminist values Stingley once venerated—for garnering success, a genuine sense of accomplishment—suddenly rang hollow.
Something was missing.
Then 42—not a man in sight—Stingley panicked, had a breakdown, and decided she wanted marriage. “You go home to an empty apartment,” she told The Epoch Times. “I used to have breakdowns when something would break in my home, I would get so resentful. A man should be fixing this!” But the type she was praying for was scarce in the “hyper careerist environment” of D.C. Her breakdown was an exit sign.
A total transformation of her careerist views followed, delivering her from the “feminist wilderness” she was mired in. It took humility and digging deep, but she rebuilt herself and all she thought she knew of womanhood. It was worth it, she says. Certain things are ingrained; the sooner you embrace them the better. The year was 2002 when her embracing began.
A Race for a Husband
Stingley’s off-ramp led to Texas, where she moved in with her sister and brother-in-law in Irving. A resignment trailed her: that she would pick from a pool of “broken people,” but that never happened. Maybe things weren’t so dire after all. “My sister and her husband were scheming about finding me a husband, and normally that would have humiliated me,” she said. “But I’m like, ‘Scheme away!’”
Stingley was very ready—or so she thought.
Within two months, in August, her sister and brother-in-law, avid runners, hooked Stingley up with a runner fella at Fort Worth’s annual Runners’ Club Labor Day Race. Richard, an aerospace engineer, wasn’t broken; they hit it off, and in December they were hitched, though their happily ever after wouldn’t happen overnight.
That old job of Stingley’s —like some perverse testosterone treatment— had made her masculine, she says. That dynamism, so intoxicating in the corporate world, now affronted both her husband and a harmonious marriage.
“I was loud, I was boisterous. I gave off, I call it, ‘repellent,’ ‘male repellent,’” she said. “I was so controlling. … I think the culture encourages men to be controlled and to be submissive, which I did not want. So, I was determined not to do that. But that took years.
“I had to become more feminine.”
Her chronically scrutinizing Richard didn’t jive well —despite his own feminist leanings. There was room for just one tiger on this mountain, yet she caught herself in time: The feminist teaches to keep men “wrapped around your finger;” she rejected that. Honestly, women are “repelled by male weakness,” she admitted. “But they can’t stop destroying their own nest.”
Turning her gaze inward, she fixed herself first. As she changed, he changed. And peace followed.
Stingley cultivated femininity purposefully. She stopped “despising girly things” like making dinners, but humbly embraced nurturing home ambience. “Put on the dress, put on the earrings, shave your armpits, do your hair, and love it,” she said, adding: “Be chaste.”
Media Dismantling Marriage?
If “being chaste” seems out of touch today, Stingley, a devout Christian, knows why. TV and the media, besides spewing feminism, tear women down by glamorizing promiscuity. Unmarried women’s acting like wives—“doing laundry, having sex, making meals”—defeats what men were created for, Stingley says, which is “to honor you, to sacrifice for you.”
Elevating one’s self lifts others around you —including men, bringing them “up to what they were supposed to be,” she added. “The men you want to marry, they will love that. And it gets that ring on your finger in record time.”
How the media portrays relations seems slanted, most conspicuously, toward dismantling marriage. Those shown having affairs are “tremendously happy,” Stingley observed. The homosexual component couples? “Very happy.” The married couple? “Hating each other.”
Men, too, are harmed by the scourge of feminism. When women become like men, men say sayonara.
“They just leave society, they just don’t marry, they play video games,” Stingley said. “When they feel ostracized from society, by women, put down—it’s open season on men—they check out and there’s no one to marry. But women can recapture it … they’ll easily come alive again.”
For eons, women have embraced having both babies and husbands, she adds. Traditional mothers were the backbone of nations. Men sacrificed. “We’ve lost sight of that,” said Stingley. “We are so independent, we dare not be dependent on another human being. And I think it hurts. It’s an attitude that is risk-free.”
Turning Women Into Wives
This August marks 20 years from when they first met. Stingley, now 63, rates their marriage a 10 out of 10, a far cry from the rocky “1 or 2” when they started.
Throughout the years, she’s connected with likeminded, marriage-seeking women via website Feminist Fallacy, Girls’ Night Out support group, and the Christian singles’ outreach she founded for her lonely friends in D.C. She’s helped women contend with the pervasive, but easily dispersed, notion: “It’s easier to get struck by lightning, than for a woman over 40 to get married.”
Today, Stingley continues to cultivate the traditional, feminine traits she so espouses.
What words has she for young belles still budding in their 20s, their whole lives ahead, full of potential?
“I do not want them to go through what I went through, what my friends have gone through,” Stingley said. “Marriage is risky. … But don’t tell me it’s not worth it. You can get fired from a job, that’s a risk. But what is more devastating? What is more worth the risk?”
In short: sidestep the abyss, and the feminist lies she fell for. Do embrace tradition, which has preserved societies for eons. Get an education? Yes, it’s important, Stingley says. A career? Sure, working a little before marriage can lead to greater appreciation for what it offers.
Family is the “essence of life,” she added. “You won’t have to panic when Christmas comes along and you have nowhere to go. … Just do it. Don’t just marry anybody, but you have options. And don’t be afraid to be traditional.”
**************************************************
Donald Trump rails against Democrats at US midterms rally, hinting again at a 2024 presidential run
Donald Trump has hinted at another presidential run, decried "twisted race and gender" teachings in schools, and said his Democratic rivals were "either stupid or they hate our country", during a midterm elections campaign rally in the US.
"If you want to stop the destruction of our country and save the American dream then this Tuesday you must vote Republican in a giant way," Mr Trump said at a rally in Latrobe, south-east of Pittsburgh.
As he spoke to the crowd three days ahead of midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, Mr Trump, who sources say is preparing to launch a third run for the White House after the midterms, continued to claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud.
Opinion polls show a significant number of Republican voters accept the claim, as do many candidates for Congress, governor and state offices overseeing election administration.
"We are going to take back that beautiful house," Mr Trump said of the 2024 presidential race.
The evening rally in Latrobe was part of a late blitz that will also take Mr Trump to Florida and Ohio. He's hoping a strong GOP showing will generate momentum for the 2024 run that he's expected to launch in the days or weeks after polls close.
Mr Trump decried what he called "a bloody crime wave" and warned that educators were indoctrinating children with "twisted race and gender" teachings.
Of his Democratic opponents, Mr Trump said: "They're either stupid or they hate our country."
He also warned of the possibility of election fraud in the coming midterm elections.
"Our country's never been as bad as it now," Mr Trump said. "We have a country in decline."
***********************************************
Federal court rules in favor of Louisville photographer who opposes same-sex weddings
A federal district court has ruled in favor of a Louisville photographer who filed a lawsuit against the city in 2019, alleging its Fairness Ordinance violated her constitutional rights as a Christian because it could force her to take on same-sex wedding assignments.
In a 44-page ruling Tuesday from U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Beaton, the court granted a request by Chelsey Nelson, owner of Chelsey Nelson Photography, for an injunction against the city's ordinance, saying the city could not use the law to compel her to photograph same-sex weddings or "otherwise express messages inconsistent with Nelson's beliefs," and could not prohibit her from advertising on her website that she only photographs opposite-sex ceremonies.
Her lawsuit had claimed through the Fairness Ordinance, the city was forcing her to promote and participate in ceremonies that she opposed for religious reasons. And the judge agreed, saying in the ruling that while she had never been asked to photograph a same-sex wedding, "state law protects her photography and associated blogging from the burdens the City seeks to impose."
In 2020, U.S. District Judge Justin Walker had previously blocked the city from enforcing the ordinance against Nelson and preventing her from advertising her services on her website as exclusively for opposite-sex couples.
Opinion from Nelson:Louisville photographer: As a Christian, I shouldn't be forced to work same-sex weddings
In the latest ruling, Beaton said the Fairness Ordinance does not "survive" strict scrutiny and could not restrict First Amendment rights. Nelson's refusal to photograph same-sex couple weddings is born out of a true religious belief, his order said, and the ruling said financial and legal burdens Nelson faces for following her beliefs and violating the Fairness Ordinance "are quite substantial."
In 1999, Louisville passed the Fairness Ordinance, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, public accommodations and employment.
Nelson was represented in her lawsuit by The Alliance Defending Freedom, which said in a statement following the ruling that she is "a photographer who serves clients regardless of their backgrounds," though in the lawsuit and additional statements Nelson had argued she would not work same-sex weddings because of her "passion for marriage" and her insistence to work "ceremonies in a way that reflects my views of marriage."
Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Bryan Neihart said in the statement Wednesday that he was happy with the court's decision.
“We’re pleased the court agreed that the city violated Chelsey’s First Amendment rights. The court’s decision sends a clear and necessary message to every Kentuckian — and American — that each of us is free to speak and work according to our deeply held beliefs," Neihart said.
Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, meanwhile, said in a statement he disagreed with the court's ruling and that city officials "will likely be appealing this decision."
"We are a city of compassion and we appreciate the many ways our LGBTQ+ family contributes to our diverse community," Fischer said. "Louisville Metro Government will continue to enforce to the fullest extent possible its ordinance prohibiting anti-discriminatory practices and will fight against discrimination in any form."
****************************************
6 November, 2022
Democrats Turn 2022 Into ‘1984’
We are closer than ever to the dystopia Orwell foresaw
It is tempting to ascribe President Biden’s incessant lies to cognitive decline and the ethos of his lifelong profession.
Politicians dissemble without shame – which, ironically, is why they constantly invoke their own honor and allegiance to the truth. Still, Biden’s latest string of whoppers – that gas prices were sky high and the economy was in the tank when he took office, that he convinced the Congress to pass student loan relief, that he’s a deficit hawk who has secured the border, that his son, Beau, died in Iraq – are so obviously false that it’s hard to believe even a politician in his right mind would make such claims.
That he is the president of the United States, leader of the free world, makes this behavior especially troubling. And yet, those relatively small deceptions, so easily fact-checked and debunked, are the least of our problems because they do not simply reveal the partisan instincts of one softening mind. They also reflect the freedom Democrats and their leftist allies now feel to redefine reality itself by advancing their own array of Big Lies which are dividing and inflaming our country.
The most recent example is their framing of the vicious attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. The best available evidence suggests that Paul Pelosi’s assailant, David DePape, is a mentally ill drug abuser who, his employer told the San Jose Mercury News, suffered delusions and held conversations with a magical fairy. Nevertheless, Biden and his political allies immediately blamed Republicans. These allies apparently include the mainstream media. Two days after the assault, the Associated Press reported that the fact DePape brought zip ties to Pelosi’s San Francisco home was “ the latest parallel to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.”
By this strained logic, so too was the fact he was wearing socks.
Instead of demanding that the authorities release security and body-cam footage that could illuminate the events of that night, almost all major news outlets cast DePape – an avowed nudist whose residence, Michael Shellenberger reports, sports “a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and an LGBT rainbow flag, emblazoned with a marijuana symbol, hanging from a tree” – as a dedicated soldier in the GOP’s war on democracy. The New York Times reports that DePape seems to have embraced some far-right conspiracy theories, but an honest account would suggest that his mind was so addled that it is impossible to ascribe any coherent political motivation to his actions.
The left’s rush to tie DePape around the neck of their political opponents is part of their larger effort to portray Republicans as an authoritarian group of white supremacists bent on taking the vote away from African Americans while taking up arms against their fellow citizens.
That there is zero evidence for such ugly smears makes no difference. The left believes this propaganda is useful to their pursuit of power and so they hammer it relentlessly. They did the same thing during Trump’s presidency, pushing the fact-free claim that Donald Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.
That they are now trying to make Republican “election denial” the key issue of the 2022 midterms tells you how confident they feel in their ability to spew unfiltered partisan spin through the compliant media. Hillary Clinton, for one, feels so protected that she is engaging in preemptory election denial, releasing a video that declares Republicans “already have a plan” to steal the 2024 presidential election.
And why not? In recent years the left has received little pushback from the legacy media as it has worked to normalize sweeping ideas that seek to redefine reality itself. Through their embrace of transgender ideology, they claim that DNA and the X and Y chromones are meaningless abstractions and that human beings are merely “assigned” a gender at birth.
After pretending that Critical Race Theory was an arcane academic theory taught only in upper-level law school courses, they insisted that we should teach children that racism is embedded in the DNA of Americans and explains every disparity between African Americans and their fellow citizens.
Voices that have risen in opposition have been widely condemned as racist and homophobic while the federal government has suggested they could be subject to arrest. The message: Shut up and submit, or else.
These broad assaults on free speech can make Biden’s misinformation about gas prices and the deficit seem like small beer. But all are part of a perilous pattern in which the left is not simply spinning lies but insisting that it can define reality however it pleases.
George Orwell sounded the alarm about such efforts long ago, one we should urgently heed today as Democrats seek to turn 2022 into “1984.”
*************************************************************
Their Hate Runneth Over And It’s In Play For The Current Elections
The advent of Trump caused a great outpouring of Leftist hate towards him from even leading Leftists
When the Speaker of the US House of Representatives is filmed expressing childish hate-filled venom, it tells us all we need to know. This is exactly what is underlying the entire mess we find ourselves in today. Mindless hatred for our nation and the majority of the people in it is the modus operandi of Washington DC. It directs and controls everything.
A video of Nancy Pelosi taken inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been released by CNN. It shows the Speaker of the House quite clearly saying that she “hopes he (Trump) will” come inside so she can “punch him out”. She says she “will go to jail” for it, but that the personal satisfaction from having been able to perform that infantile act will have been “worth it”.
If your third grader had said what the Speaker did, you’d have scolded him for being childish. Welcome to DC in 2022. Spoiled brats, with massive dark funding along with our billions of taxpayer dollars, are in charge. And they are dangerous because their perverted and violent ways are real, and all aimed at us. Their goal is to take down America.
Forget the ridiculous, laughable imagery of the little bag of alcohol soaked bones trying to swing at a man with the commanding stature of Donald Trump. Yes, it was one of the lapdog media who released the film. CNN. Wish I could make that into something hopeful, but I very much doubt it. Maybe they just wanted a good laugh at her expense.
What Pelosi’s infantile outburst shows very clearly is the Junta’s pure hatred for us, directed at a man who did so much to improve our lives. They hated Donald Trump before he was elected the first time, because they already knew that he would stand in the way of their plans to destroy the American Constitutional Republic.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. They will do everything in their power to prevent his return. Even an arrest with completely false charges may come soon, to attempt to prevent him from running again. That is what usually happens following a coup; the former leader is jailed. While I’ve waited daily for this shoe to drop, I pray that this will not happen here in America. Yet, the 2020 coup has followed the course of what happens in most banana republics when the legitimate government is overthrown. After the coup, then the Purge (Jan. 6 arrests), so who can really know what insanity is to follow?
Pelosi’s rant is just another bit of transparency of the Left. She makes it abundantly clear that they feel a vile and intense hatred toward us. Every one of their actions to date has shown that they are trying to bring the American Republic to its end.
From the ‘Resident, Biden’s first EO shutting off our oil supplies, to his murderous ineptitude in Afghanistan, to the destruction of our food chain, to the depletion of our strategic oil reserves, to the use of the Scamdemic for control, to the billions of our hard-earned dollars thrown at the Fascist regime in Ukraine, we know that the destruction of the Constitutional Republic is the goal. New acts against us are being rolled out so fast that it is impossible to keep a list of them up to date.
None of this is about green energy, which has been proven over and over to be a farcical scam. Even Bill Gates admits it. The clip below is one of several that have captured him saying so. (NB: this clip is from a national group of constitutional conservatives, who happen to be homosexuals. They have been attacked along with every other patriotic Americans. So, it is very clear to see that the Cabal does not support any ideology except for the destruction of our country. They use people of all persuasions who will play along; the qualifying factor is hatred, not sexual orientation or anything else. There are a lot of liberal screamers who are in for a big shock when they discover this.)
For those they cannot kill, the Globalists intend a life of eating bugs and living in concrete cells in the new “green cities” with electricity, food and supplies available at the whim of the controllers. We know this for fact. It has been promised out loud, by the puppet masters behind the scene who are in charge of our doddering Head of State and his minions like Pelosi, Schumer and the lot.
“You will have nothing and like it,” states Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. A lot of us still cannot give this kind of a statement credence.
This inability to accept the insanity is normal for human beings who were raised with morals and values but it is actually a very real part of the problem.
As I wrote in “Incredulous”*, a large part of America cannot come to terms with what they are seeing and hearing, so they back away. They hide in their own little world so they won’t have to be exposed to this stuff and worse. No one wants to see tatooed gender dysphoric men dressed in tutus and waving their genitals, doing obscene dances in front of children. It is more than most can stand, yet these and other horrors are on the fast track to becoming our reality, however, whether or not sane Americans are willing to believe it.
“But,” pipe up the complacent millions, who have sat back and watched (aka, allowed) this all to happen, “we’re gonna’ have a Red Wave, and throw ’em out!!” Somehow, reading and hearing this makes everyone feel better. But, I am here to warn you that – without your help – the “red wave” will not be strong enough to break down the vast blue seawall of fraud and dark money.
Nothing is going to happen automatically despite the vast numbers of people who want this current leadership gone.
Once, election time was when the tide was turned. Changes were made to leadership, but no longer.
True, about 70+ percent of Americans of all races, ethnic backgrounds and party labels are realizing that they are NOT better off today than they were two years ago. Reagan’s question for the ages comes up again.
I’m not going to bother with the inflation numbers and predictions of interest rates, the crashing of the markets and the like. They will have worsened by the time this is published. But, this is NOT ENOUGH to cause a change in our federal governance. This is not a normal election year.
The ESG (Environmental Social Governance) experiment being surgically inserted in our largest corporations will cause them to pressure their employees to become “woke” and vote that way. ESG and its bloodline of Chinese Social Credit Scoring will push many votes to the Left, insane or not.
***********************************************
2022: Voters indicate that the Democratic Party favors the interests of the wealthy and highly educated and that's a losing formula
The core problem facing Democrats, in my view, is that they have become a party of the wealthy and the highly educated. This is not my opinion, nor is it based on any analysis of what particular Democrats say or what policies they support. This view is based entirely on how people actually vote. And those votes indicate that the wealthy and highly educated prefer Democrats and everyone else prefers Republicans.
The figure below, from Bloomberg Government, shows the distribution of current House seats based on the median income in each congressional district. Wealthy districts with median household incomes of greater than $86,000 per year are represented overwhelmingly by Democrats — 56 to 11. In less wealthy congressional districts, those with less than $58,000 in median income, the ratio favors Republicans 85 to 62.
We see something similar in terms of educational attainment. The figure below shows that Democrats hold an incredible 31 of 33 seats among congressional districts where a majority of the population has a bachelor’s degree. In those districts where less than 30% of residents hold bachelor’s degrees, Republicans hold 121 of 198 seats.
There’s one other aspect of the data in the two figures above that I want you to take note of — it is absolutely central — and that is the total number of districts in each category. There are 67 congressional districts where median incomes is greater than $86,000, but 147 where it is less than $58,000. Similarly, there are 33 districts that have a majority of residents with bachelor’s degree but 198 where that number is less than 30%. There are a lot more congressional districts in the United States with less wealthy and less educated people, than more.
The fact that Democrats have increasingly become a party of the wealthy and highly educated is not a new observation. For instance, at the New York Times, Nate Cohn sought last year to explain the reasons behind the trend, and yesterday Thomas Edsall also gave it a go. More broadly, economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues are among scholars who have noted that a growing left-right split across levels of educational attainment can found in many nations in recent decades. And in a series of perceptive commentaries, political Ruy Teixeira has explored the origins and consequences of the Democrats embrace of the values and positions of the highly educated.
The basic problem here for Democrats is simple electoral math. There are a lot more voters who do not have college degrees than do, and while that may change in the future, that is not the political world of today.
Let’s take a look at some additional data to further understand the underlying dynamics.
The pie chart below shows the overall proportion of U.S. citizens with and without a college degree. There are about 89 million with a degree and about 160 million, almost twice as many, without. Americans without a college degree will continue to be in the majority for many years to come.
Of course, not everyone votes. The pie chart below shows who voted in the 2020 U.S. election. These data show that even as those with a college degree vote in higher proportions than those without, the ratio is still large, with almost 30 million more voters with no college degree versus those with a degree.
Let’s next look at how people voted in 2020, by educational attainment. The figure below, using data from the Pew Research Center, shows that in 2020 a majority of people with bachelor’s degree voted for Joe Biden, but less than 50% of those without a bachelor’s degree did not. In fact there is a pronounced relationship between educational attainment and the Biden vote share. These data are not unique and a wide range of analyses show a pronounced difference in support for Democrats by level of educational attainment.
The math here is not complicated. Democrats get a larger share of the smaller slice of the pie (those with a bachelor’s degree) and a smaller share of the larger slice (those without). You don’t have to be a campaign consultant to understand that electoral success is going to be difficult under these conditions. While presidential elections involve complexities of the electoral college and a bit more complicated math, elections for the House are in contrast more directly democratic and the simple numbers tell much of the story.
If as expected Democrats lose the House (and perhaps also the Senate) a big reason will be the differential competitiveness of the party as a function of educational attainment. Earning votes is the basic currency of democratic governance. Priority one for the Democrats should be to understand why it is that their policies, platforms and performance do not win among the less well educated and less wealthy. Democrats must do better. Perhaps losing the House will clarify thinking.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/why-democrats-will-lose-the-house
***********************************************************
Why suburban women are flocking to the GOP: As simple as A,B,C
Something’s happening in the suburbs. On the one hand, polls indicate that white suburban women are shifting — hard — toward the Republican Party. On the other, lots more parents are homeschooling their kids, post-pandemic. These phenomena are not unrelated.
Suburban women are shifting Republican — by 27 points, a Wall Street Journal poll found, with 74% saying the country’s headed the wrong direction — because the Democrats have let them down.
When people complain about taxes, the usual response is something along the lines of “what, you don’t want police and schools?”
Of course, as my father-in-law once said, when they raise taxes they tell you it’s for teachers and police, but when they get the money it goes to buy a fancy leather chair for some guy you never heard of in an office downtown.
But if you’re going to justify the whole of government by invoking police and schools, maybe it would be a good idea to . . . actually provide police and schools. And Democrats across the nation went out of their way not to deliver either.
To hear Democratic candidates, and the party’s media cheerleaders, talk now, nobody ever supported defunding the police. But, of course, Democrats across the board did just that, and GOP candidates, and honest media, have been replaying the video.
In a spasm of post-George Floyd mass hysteria, the political system, and in particular the governments of Democratic-run cities, made drastic cutbacks in police protection, installed revolving-door, no-bail arraignment systems and encouraged the proliferation of homeless encampments and open-air drug markets in many areas.
Unsurprisingly, the result was surging crime. Around America, downtown businesses have closed, and people — especially women — have felt unsafe in their own neighborhoods. Crime is now a major issue with the electorate, and even among black voters, the alleged beneficiaries of police defunding, only 17% support defunding the police, per a recent Grio/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.
Allowed to run things their way, Democrats have ruined many of America’s cities, from New York to Chicago to Baltimore to Los Angeles and San Francisco, among many others. And the crime has spilled out into the suburbs.
Nor is it like taxes went down when police were defunded; the money just got diverted into the pockets of various Democratic interest groups.
Schools didn’t do any better. Education policy (and even at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) during the COVID pandemic was essentially run by the teachers unions. This year, Senate Republicans outlined the improper and extensive influence teachers unions, particularly the American Federation of Teachers, wielded over the government’s COVID policies on schools. Union officials actually wrote key portions of Team Biden’s school-opening guidance.
Teachers liked working remotely, and teachers unions fought hard to keep them home as long as possible. Teachers had a nice time, but students suffered, to a degree that’s still sinking in.
Even in 2020, The Atlantic reported that parents in New York, worried about crime and bad schools, were taking over the education of their kids. Since then, as schools did a worse and worse job, more and more parents decided to educate their own kids.
Many kept it up post-pandemic. As the Associated Press reported: “In 18 states that shared data through the current school year, the number of homeschooling students increased by 63% in the 2020-2021 school year, then fell by only 17%” the next year.
(It’s not just white suburban women. Black families, too, as The New Yorker recently reported, are increasingly homeschooling their kids.)
For suburban women, the past couple of years have been an unpleasant, in-your-face lesson in the incompetence of Democratic Party governance, and the (huge) extent to which Democrats care more about their interest groups, like teachers unions and racial activists, than about the people they are supposed to be working for.
In 2021, voters in normally blue Virginia elected Republican Glenn Youngkin over Democrat Terry McAuliffe in response to similar concerns. McAuliffe ran on race, reparations and lockdowns; Youngkin on a sensible family-centered approach.
Youngkin’s victory provided a model for the GOP; Democrats might have learned from McAuliffe’s defeat, but mostly doubled down, with the addition of hysteria about abortion and Jan. 6, issues that have far more resonance with the political class than most voters. Hence the movement of white suburban women.
The GOP is also increasingly getting traction with other groups Democrats previously owned, like black and Latino voters. Maybe Democrats just aren’t very good at what they do. Maybe next week’s elections will bring enough pain to spark a change. Maybe.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/04/why-suburban-women-are-flocking-to-the-gop-as-simple-as-abc/
****************************************
4 November, 2022
Musk's Twitter Skewers a Biden Lie
Elon Musk's Twitter has context-checked a since-deleted White House tweet boasting of increased Social Security benefits for seniors amid concerns over the spread of misinformation and fake news on the platform.
On Tuesday, the official White House Twitter account tweeted: "Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President [Joe] Biden's leadership." The tweet did not mention that the payments were increasing automatically due to the U.S. inflation rate reaching its highest level in decades.
A Twitter feature called Birdwatch, which was introduced before Musk bought the platform and allows users to add "helpful" context to "potentially misleading" tweets, was activated after the White House issued the tweet. A note about the increased inflation appeared under the tweet, which was deleted by the White House a short time later.
Musk responded to libertarian activist Spike Cohen's tweet detailing the sequence of events by tweeting, "The system is working," while sharing a "rolling on the floor laughing" emoji.
The new owner of Twitter responded to a different tweet on the incident by praising the "awesome" Birdwatch feature, while adding that the platform's "goal is to make Twitter the most accurate source of information on Earth, without regard to political affiliation."
***********************************************************
Big changes continuing at CNN
CNN President Chris Licht signaled layoffs are imminent, telling the embattled network’s staffers that the pace of its ongoing internal shakeup “will accelerate” by the end of the year.
Licht, who has led an effort to reshape CNN as a centrist news outlet, said in a memo to employees Wednesday that the network’s aim was “to have most of these decisions made by the end of the year so we can start 2023 feeling settled and prepared for the future.”
The CNN boss cited a need to prepare the company for a global economic downturn as recession fears mount across the world.
“There is widespread concern over the global economic outlook, and we must factor that risk into our long-term planning,” Licht wrote in a memo obtained by The Hollywood Reporter. “All this together will mean noticeable change to this organization. That, by definition, is unsettling. These changes will not be easy because they will affect people, budgets, and projects.”
Licht added that he would “send updates as I have them” to CNN staffers. He also indicated plans to host town hall meetings with employees in November and December.
The executive did not provide an indication of how many CNN employees are likely to be laid off during the restructuring effort.
“When we emerge on the other side, CNN will be a stronger, more nimble organization, ready to weather whatever the global economy throws at us and to grow into the future,” Licht added.
Licht’s memo emerged on the same day that CNBC reported the executive was planning to slash “parts of CNN that have become bloated over time.” Sources said that CNN parent WarnerBros. Discovery plans to cut more than 1,000 employees by the end of the year.
Licht told CNBC in a recent interview that he wants to shift CNN away from outrage-driven programming.
“The brand is the most trusted brand in the world when it comes to journalism, right up there with the BBC,” Licht told CNBC. “I think what happened a little bit here in the past was it’s easy to take the quick sugar high of ratings and outrage. So, I’m trying to do no harm to a great brand.”
CNN has already made major changes since Licht took the helm earlier this year, including shuttering its doomed CNN+ streaming service just one month after its launch, firing longtime network personality Brian Stelter and canceling his show “Reliable Sources.”
*****************************************************
Leftist tribalism
Tribalism is practised in contemporary democratic societies too. The distinguishing features of tribes are less physical and more manufactured. One-way progressives do this is by defining the out-group as those who don’t entirely accept their view on something, thus creating false dichotomies. A foot in both or neither camp is impossible.
Some examples include that if you’re not pro-vaccination, then you’re an anti-vaxxer; if you question Net Zero, then you’re anti-science; if you don’t declare your pronouns, then you’re transphobic; and that if you don’t acknowledge systemic racism, then you’re a racist.
Most Australians are sensible, and thus think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. But ‘the middle’ is a foreign concept to a tribe. Tribes demand absolute loyalty.
And the fact that progressives dominate the ruling class means that instead of dismissing these binary categories as harmful, they cowardly validate them, thereby increasing political division.
Anomalously, tribalism has caused Indigenous Australian culture, history, and people to be revered. This isn’t a bad thing in principle, but how it’s executed matters.
Undoubtedly, there is a big gap in opportunities and outcomes between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australians. But there are also many in both groups who share the same daily struggles, be it from homelessness or domestic violence.
Over the long term, differences between groups dissolve by finding common ground and acting with good faith. Things like the Indigenous Voice and (the now ubiquitous) Welcome to Country, however, hamper this process. This is because they serve as a reminder that Indigenous people are different from everybody else, and for this reminder, that difference would’ve eventually become meaningless.
Put simply, the more you treat people differently based on race, positive or not, the longer race matters.
Tribalist policies won’t assist in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Rather, the best ideas rest in common-sense liberal ideas, such as equality of opportunity instead of outcome, preferring substance over form, and treating people based on their needs, not their skin colour.
If progressives want to live up to their name, then they must start thinking more like libertarians and less like colonisers.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/10/are-progressives-the-new-colonisers/
**********************************************************
Like FDR’s New Deal, Biden’s Tax-and-Spend Policies Have Been an Economic Wrecking Ball
The economic gaslighting coming out of Washington is astounding, even by D.C. standards.
Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe recently praised the Biden administration for its handling of the economy, ignoring failures on inflation, boondoggle spending, and energy taxes.
McAuliffe even compared fellow Democrat President Joe Biden’s failed American Rescue Plan to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.
The unprecedented interventions of the New Deal included wage and price controls, so-called jobs programs, and a tripling of taxes to fund bloated government budgets. Far from ending the Great Depression, the New Deal prolonged it and created several bouts of inflation in the 1930s.
McAuliffe’s comparison of Biden to FDR is right, however, though for the wrong reason.
Both presidents initiated massive interventions in the economy, and neither improved economic outcomes. Far from an accomplishment, handling the economy like FDR is a sign of failure.
The numbers prove Biden’s policies have made people’s lives and livelihoods worse.
Massive federal deficits, funded by the Federal Reserve, have caused skyrocketing inflation under Biden, who took office when inflation was only 1.4% and real wages were rising. In just 18 months, Biden managed to push inflation to over 9% and prices were rising nearly as fast in a single month as they did in the entire year before Biden took office.
The prices that businesses pay have risen even faster than prices for consumers. This wholesale inflation hit 13 new record highs under Biden and has been stuck in double digits for more than a third of Biden’s presidency.
Inflation has not gotten better under Biden, but far worse. It has not been this bad in more than 40 years.
The idea that Biden’s agenda somehow saved a stalled economy is also fallacious. Biden inherited an economy growing at a $1.5 trillion annualized rate. In only a year, the administration’s policies have caused the economy to shrink, contracting in the first six months of this year.
The slowdown has not been limited to economic growth, either.
The labor market was in a robust recovery when Biden took office, but shortly thereafter, the American Rescue Plan was rammed through Congress. Job growth slowed dramatically in the wake of that excess spending, with average monthly job gains being cut in half.
The recovery under President Donald Trump added more jobs in less time than under Biden.
The nationwide impacts of Biden’s economic agenda have clearly been negative, but the individual impacts have been devastating for the average American. The average worker has seen prices rise so much faster than wages that it has been the equivalent of a 5.5% pay cut since Biden took office. That may not sound like much, but it adds up to more than $3,000 a year in lost income.
To add insult to injury, interest rates are rising fast, and that increases borrowing costs on everything from credit cards to mortgages. On average, higher rates today compared with when Biden became president are costing an average of $1,200 per year. For a typical family with both parents working and both earning the average income, they are effectively $7,200 poorer than 21 months ago.
Many people are even worse off than the average. Consider the mortgage on a median-priced home: That mortgage has gotten 80% more expensive since Biden took office, costing an additional $10,000 a year and an additional $300,000 over the course of the loan. It’s no wonder that homeownership affordability has plummeted more than 35% under Biden.
Even those with savings instead of debt have gotten crushed under the weight of Biden’s policies. The average 401(k) has lost $34,000 this year, or about 25%. Those nearing retirement are faced with the stark reality that they likely cannot retire anytime soon.
Far from saving the economy, the Biden administration’s policies have demonstrably slowed the recovery and then pushed it in reverse.
The economy was returning to pre-pandemic levels at an accelerating pace before Biden’s American Rescue Plan was passed, but then it slowed considerably.
The Biden administration was not handed an economic mess, but it created one. It did not save the economy, but sent it into a stall. It has not made people’s lives better, but made them demonstrably worse. The numbers prove it.
****************************************
3 November, 2022
What I Bet You Don’t Know about Poverty, Inequality and the Role of Government
Here are five surprising facts:
* The U.S. welfare state has almost eliminated poverty in this country.
* Over the last 75 years, income inequality has actually gone down, not up.
* Since the end of World War II, income has steadily risen for every income group—with the greatest increase among the bottom fifth of the income ladder.
* Over half of the population gains very little from working under the U.S. fiscal system—as taxable income replaces untaxed transfer benefits.
* The U.S. has the most progressive fiscal system among all developed countries.
For an impeccably researched book that backs up these findings with overwhelming evidence, consult The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm (the former U.S. senator), Robert Ekelund, and John Early (hereinafter, GEE).
Let’s take a closer look.
Poverty. Ronald Reagan notably said, “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.” If you follow Census Bureau statistics—at least the ones prominently reported in newspapers—you would be inclined to agree with him.
Here’s the problem. In its standard measure of income, the Census Bureau includes only 8 of more than 100 federal transfer programs. Among the benefits it excludes are refundable tax credits, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid.
Over the past 50 years, the value of taxpayer-funded transfer payments to the poorest 20 percent of American households has risen from an average of $9,677 to $45,389 in real terms. Counting these transfer payments dollar-for-dollar as income, GEE estimate the true poverty rate in the United States is 2.5 percent.
This 2.5 percent, by the way, includes people with mental illness, drug addictions and other problems that are unlikely to be solved by more food stamps or other entitlement spending.
How did GEE discover these facts? They didn’t go out and conduct an alternative census. Instead, they rely on data the Census Bureau has been collecting for many years. They simply present them in a more reasonable way.
Inequality. Are the rich getting richer while the well-being of everyone else is stagnating? You might be inclined to think so if you only read Census Bureau press releases. But in measuring inequality, the Bureau leaves out two-thirds of all government transfer payments enjoyed by those at the bottom of the income ladder and also ignores taxes collected from those at the top.
This means the Census Bureau ignores 40 percent of all income that is gained in transfer payments and lost in taxes.
Whereas the Census Bureau tells us the income difference between the top 20 percent of households and the bottom 20 percent is 16.7 to 1, if you throw in transfers and taxes, the difference is only 4 to 1. Whereas the Census Bureau tells us that inequality (as technically measured by a Gini coefficient) has been rising over time, GEE find that it has actually fallen by 3 percent since 1947.
Income growth. The U.S. government uses five different price indexes for various purposes. Unfortunately, the ones used to measure such items as hourly earnings and household income are the least accurate and as much as a decade out of date.
GEE show that using the best measure of inflation (and taking account of transfers and taxes), all five income groups have experienced substantial real income growth over the past 75 years—roughly quadrupling, on average. The greatest growth in real income is among the bottom fifth of households (681 percent)—much more than for those in the top fifth (456 percent).
Welfare vs. work. While it may be comforting to know that the actual poverty rate is so low, it has come at a significant cost: Welfare has been substituting for work.
Since the War on Poverty started in 1965, the labor force participation of the bottom one-fifth of households—who now receive more than 90 percent of their income from government—has dropped from 70 percent to 36 percent.
It’s not hard to understand why. GEE adjust for taxes, transfers and the number of people living in each household. Then they divide household into quintiles, based on earned income. The finding: the bottom fifth of households, based on earned income, had an average income of $33,653 per capita. The second and middle fifths, based on earned income, had $29,497 and $32,574, respectively.
Those with the least earned income had more actual income than those in the next two higher quintiles! That is, the average household in the bottom fifth (based on earned income) received 14 percent more income than the average second-fifth household and 3.3 percent more than the average middle-income household.
International comparisons. A common assumption on the left is that the welfare states of Europe are more progressive than the U.S. system. While it is true that a typical European country has more social insurance than we have, those programs are not mainly paid for by taxing the rich. They are paid for by taxing the beneficiaries.
Compared to our country, Europeans (especially northern Europeans) have fewer private goods and more social insurance.
GEE note that the top 10 percent of American households earn about 33 percent of all earned income but pay 45.1 percent of all income and payroll taxes. That progressivity ratio of 1.35 is far higher than in any other country. The ratio is 1.10 in France, 1.07 in Germany, and 1.0 in Sweden.
So, in 2015 the top 10 percent of earners in the U.S. paid 45 percent of all income taxes. That contrasts with 28 percent in France, 31 percent in Germany and 27 percent in Sweden. Conversely, the bottom 90 percent of earners in the U.S. paid just 55 percent of all taxes, compared with 72 percent in France, 69 percent in Germany and 73 percent in Sweden.
Moreover, after the GEE research was completed, a newer study found that the U.S. welfare state is actually larger than the European welfare states. The study concludes that “the U.S. redistributes a greater share of national income to low-income groups than any European country."
In reflecting on the importance of their study, GEE draw our attention to an observation attributed to Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know that ain’t so.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14322&omhide=true&trk=rm
******************************************************
The antidemocratic Left
Voting has long been one of the privileges of American citizenship, but perhaps not for much longer. Left-wing activists are going all-in with their demands to let noncitizens vote, and Washington, D.C., just took up the charge.
The D.C. City Council advanced a bill to let anyone vote in local elections, regardless of citizenship and immigration status, as long as they live in the city for just 30 days.
The measure is so extreme, even the reliably liberal Washington Post editorial board called it “radical.”
If Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022, an estimated 50,000 noncitizen residents—including those here illegally—would be free to cast ballots in local elections.
But that’s not all. As the Post pointed out, there is nothing in the measure “to prevent employees at embassies of governments that are openly hostile to the United States from casting ballots. Or foreign students who are studying abroad in Washington for a semester.” There you have it: Our nation’s capital is ready to hand ballots to people working against our nation’s interests.
Why is the district taking this reckless step? Pure politics.
The Left is looking for ways to shift the country’s politics by fundamentally changing who can vote. Even the Post concedes that “progressives hope that reshaping the electorate will allow them to reshape local politics, prodding [D.C.] further to the left on issues such as rent control and spending on social programs.”
D.C. is hardly the only place where the Left has realized the power that can be gained by changing the electorate. Under the euphemistic tag line of “expanding democracy,” left-wing activists across the country are working to hand the vote to imprisoned felons, children, and noncitizens—all groups they calculate are more likely to be liberal. After all, why let the people choose their government when you can have the government choose its people?
And there are plenty to choose from. Consider that over 5 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States in just the two years since President Joe Biden was elected. Enfranchising them in local races creates a powerful perverse incentivize for politicians to excuse, or even demand, an ongoing humanitarian crisis on the border so long as it feeds a steady stream of transient voters willing to back a far-left agenda.
When the Left is accused of backing open borders for the prospect of new voters, they of course retort that it is illegal for any noncitizen to vote in federal elections. True enough, but races for Congress or the White House are hardly the only ones that matter.
Americans have seen firsthand the great damage that can be done when the woke Left captures school boards and town councils. As the old saying goes, all politics is local.
At least 15 municipalities nationally have enfranchised noncitizens to vote in local races, including major cities like San Francisco and New York. The Big Apple’s law is virtually identical to Washington’s pending measure: Anyone in the city for 30 days can vote, including illegal aliens.
That measure was challenged in court, and earlier this year a New York Supreme Court judge struck it down for violating the state constitution. Had it gone into effect, 800,000 noncitizens would have been handed the vote in New York City.
Unlike those other cities, however, Washington is a federal district answerable directly to Congress. Under the Constitution and the D.C. Home Rule Act, Congress can block bills passed and cleared by the City Council and mayor.
The question is, will it?
Conservative lawmakers in the House have denounced the measure, while Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has already pledged a resolution to overturn it. “Allowing illegal immigrants to vote is an insult to every voter in America,” he said. “Every single Democrat should be on the record about whether they support this insane policy.”
Absolutely. The American people deserve to know where their leaders stand on an issue this important. For two years, Democrats in Congress preached about the need to “save democracy.”
Now, with the nation’s capital city preparing to hand the vote to illegal aliens and foreign operatives, will they stand up for fair and honest elections? Or will they look the other way while progressives erode the foundations of our republic?
As long as Democrats control Congress, expect the latter, even though polling shows that only 9% of Americans think noncitizens should be able to vote.
Perhaps there is a silver lining, though. Washington, D.C., is showing the modern Left’s true colors. The Left believes that democracy belongs to them. The rest of just live in it.
******************************************************
Another colossal Democrat lie
Each December, the Poynter Institute's fact-checking website PolitiFact singles out one political statement as its "Lie of the Year." According to the site's editor, the term is reserved for "the most harmful and egregious falsehood we've seen after a year of fact-checking." In 2021, PolitiFact applied the label to the campaign to whitewash the Jan. 6 Trump-instigated riot at the Capitol. Previous "Lies of Year" included claims that the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre was a hoax (2018), wild exaggerations about the Ebola virus (2014), and Barack Obama's constant assurance that no one's health insurance would be canceled if the Affordable Care Act were passed (2013).
As PolitiFact considers which falsehood to spotlight for 2022, its researchers might want to focus on the election in Georgia, where early voting in the general election got underway on Oct. 17.
Georgia voters have been smashing turnout records. As of Tuesday morning, more than 1.8 million early ballots had been cast. At the same point in the 2018 midterm elections, just 1.3 million people had voted. Black voter turnout has been especially strong. In a press release on Oct. 21, the advocacy group Black Votes Matter exulted: "Black Voters in Georgia have done it again!" Approximately 30 percent of the ballots cast to date have come from Black voters — proof, the release cheered, that "Black voters are deeply engaged in this election cycle."
To anyone who heeded the words of liberals and Democrats from President Biden on down, this must come as a jaw-dropping surprise. Georgia's election is being conducted under new voting rules enacted by the Legislature and signed by Governor Brian Kemp last year — a law that a deafening chorus insisted over and over was designed to restrict voters' ability to vote and to disenfranchise Black citizens. Again and again, Georgia's law was characterized as a racist scheme to reimpose the antidemocratic bigotry of the pre-civil rights South.
Republican lawmakers in Georgia, asserted an essay published by the Brookings Institution, were "taking their cues from the old white supremacy playbook, which teaches: If you can't win fair and square, then suppress the vote." That accusation was repeated endlessly over the airwaves, on editorial pages, and in corporate boardrooms. Even Major League Baseball jumped on the bandwagon, stripping Atlanta of the All-Star Game to demonstrate opposition to the new law.
But the most influential denunciation of Georgia's revised election rules came from the American with the biggest bully pulpit. On numerous occasions in 2021, Biden castigated the new law as a "21st century Jim Crow assault" or "Jim Crow on steroids." In January, he traveled to Georgia and tore into the Republicans who had passed the measure as the equivalent of "Bull Connor" and "Jefferson Davis."
Before an audience in Atlanta, Biden declared that "Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things: voter suppression and election subversion." Georgia's election reforms were "designed to suppress your vote," he declared. "It's not hyperbole; this is a fact."
But it wasn't a fact. It was a falsehood — a falsehood so harmful and egregious that it ought to be a candidate for PolitiFact's highest mark of dishonor.
Notwithstanding the tsunami of invective, those who took the trouble to analyze Georgia's voting changes knew they were intended to boost, not suppress, participation in elections. "This new law will expand voting access in the Peach State," Kemp predicted at the signing ceremony. Sure enough, when Georgians voted in their state's primary in May, the early voting turnout broke every previous record. That didn't silence the "Jim Crow" accusers, who maintained that high turnout in a primary proved little, since Republicans' suppression tactics were crafted with the general election in mind.
Well, Georgia's general election is here and voter enthusiasm is again off the charts. Allegations that voters were thwarted have again proven false. Just days before early balloting commenced, US District Judge Steve Jones issued a sweeping judgment against Stacey Abrams, the Democrats' nominee for governor in Georgia's last two elections. Abrams, who claimed she was robbed of victory in 2018 by nefarious racist Republican machinations, took her charges to federal court. In a lengthy Sept. 30 ruling, Jones — who is Black, a Democrat, and an Obama appointee — found that Abrams's charges were without merit and that there had been no unlawful voter suppression in Georgia.
"Jim Crow 2.0" was a lie. So was "Jim Crow on steroids." Democracy is alive and well in Georgia, as throngs of early voters, white and Black alike, are proving. The state's governor and lawmakers are entitled to an apology. They probably shouldn't hold their breath waiting.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26533/jim-crow-20-was-the-lie-of-the-year
**********************************************
True the Vote’s Engelbrecht and Phillips Jailed For Fighting For Election Integrity
True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips are sitting jail today for defying two of the Uniparty’s most sacred commandments: “Thou shalt not expose Red China for the existential enemy that it is,” and, “Thou shalt not expose the intentional security failures of America’s election process.”
Ms. Engelbrecht and Mr. Phillips didn’t set out to tear down those two Shibboleths of America’s political establishment, but by exposing the fact that Konnech, an election software company, had stored confidential American poll worker data on a server in Red China, they managed to break news that got the company’s CEO arrested and, most astonishingly, themselves thrown in jail.
The Texas Tribune reports the Konnech’s founder and CEO, Eugene Yu, is facing felony charges of grand theft by embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office said Yu and Konnech violated the company’s contract with Los Angeles County by illegally giving contractors in Red China access to data that was supposed to be stored only in the United States. Yu has filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that even if the charges are true, they aren’t criminal. Los Angeles prosecutors have acknowledged receiving an early tip from Phillips.
Konnech, the election management software company whose CEO got busted, filed a federal lawsuit in September alleging that True the Vote’s viral social media campaign targeting Mr. Yu, led to personal threats to him and his family and damaged his company’s business.
Now, here’s where things go off the rails.
As part of this suit Konnech’s attorneys pressed Phillips for additional information about what Phillips claimed was an hourslong Konnech research session in Dallas back in 2021. On the stand, Phillips revealed that another “analyst” was present in the room when True the Vote was allegedly offered evidence he’d uncovered about Konnech, showing the company had stored American poll worker data on a server in China.
Phillips, and later Ms. Engelbrecht, refused to divulge the name of their source claiming he was in danger from “drug cartels” and was a confidential law enforcement informant.
So, just so we get this clear, Konnech isn’t denying they stored the sensitive confidential poll worker data in Communist China, and gave Communist Chinese citizens access to it, they are arguing their actions were not criminal.
So, if the True the Vote information was true, and admitted by Konnech, where’s the defamation?
Well, you’d have to be a lawyer for Konnech or U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt to answer that question.
Judge Hoyt has allowed the suit to proceed and ruled that Engelbrecht and Phillips must reveal their source, which they have refused to do, thereby earning them a contempt of court citation and ticket to the Graybar Hotel from Judge Hoyt.
True the Vote’s attorney Michael Wynne entered more than two dozen pages of evidence onto the record late Friday night, including dozens of text messages between Engelbrecht and individuals True the Vote has claimed are FBI agents. They also included two affidavits from Phillips and Engelbrecht and details of Yu’s arrest in Los Angeles.
Hoyt, a Ronald Reagan nominee, was unmoved by the submission, calling it irrelevant given its failure to identify the confidential source, reported the Texas Tribune.
In a recent “Secure Freedom Minute” our friend Frank Gaffney explained the practical effect of Judge Hoyt capriciously locking up True the Vote’s Catherine Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips is to prevent them from warning of an ominous prospect: Communist China may be able to exploit access given to sensitive electoral data by the indicted CEO of Konnech Inc. to affect our midterms a week from today.
Suppressing such information could make a difference in turnout and outcomes, just as preventing voters from knowing the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop did in the 2020 presidential race. That would make Judge Hoyt’s arbitrary decision tantamount to election interference.
How this will pan-out and how long Engelbrecht and Phillips will remain in jail remains to be seen. In the meantime we are left wondering why an obscure federal judge in Houston is protecting what could be a major vehicle for Chinese Communists to penetrate the security of American elections.
**************************************************
Australia: Childcare sector ramps up calls for higher wages as pre-schools forced to turn kids away
There is an alternative to hitting the taxpayer over this. There are ferocious regulations governing childcare. Reduced regulation would allow more people to enter the field and reduce the numbers required to run a childcare service
More Australian parents could soon be forced to stay at home and not go to work as childcare centres face staff shortages.
Childcare operators fear the situation will get worse next year when the government's new childcare subsidies begin.
Community Early Learning Australia CEO Michele Carnegie said the policy, which she supports, will make more parents want child care and put pressure on an already struggling system.
"If [job] vacancies continue to grow at this rate, we estimate that there will be over 10,000 vacancies by July 2023," she said.
"This [the new childcare subsidies] will see an increase in demand for child care that simply will not be matched by workforce supply."
The government says the subsidies will ease cost of living pressures and help the economy, because cheaper child care will allow an extra 37,000 parents to take on a full-time job.
However Ms Carneige asked how that figure could be reached with the childcare worker shortage.
"The risk is that parents are going to be subjected to really long waiting lists, they're going to be subjected to the vulnerability of not knowing whether or not today's the day when their child is going to be able to access early education and care," she said.
"This is absolutely going to be impacting their ability to fully participate in the workforce."
Goodstart Early Learning, which is Australia's largest provider of early learning and care, has been struggling to recruit staff in recent years.
Its advocacy manager John Cherry said a lack of workers stops parents from being able to hold down full-time jobs.
"Every [staff] vacancy that we have is up to 15 families effected. The flow on economic consequences is profound," he said.
'Leaky bucket'
Narelle Myers is the director of Bermagui Preschool on the far south coast of New South Wales. She said the sector has dramatically changed over the past few years. "I've been there for over 20 years, we have always had long term staff," she said.
"But that all changed in 2020, we were impacted by bushfires, then COVID… also the housing crisis… we have actually had a turnover of about 36 staff in the last two years."
Mr Cherry said his centres were turning away children because they do not have enough workers to care for them.
"This has never happened before in Goodstart's history," he told a parliamentary inquiry earlier this week.
"Over the last two years up to 80 and 100 centres each week are enrolment capped because we can't find enough staff.
"It is mad and crazy for an organisation like ours, desperate to increase our occupancy, that we can't increase our occupancy because we can't find enough staff," he said.
United Workers Union executive director of early education Helen Gibbons said these stories were all too familiar.
"We have a leaky bucket in early education," she said. "We are struggling to attract people to work in the sector, but we're also having people leave daily."
Wages a key problem
Early childhood educators have long citied low pay as a reason for leaving the sector. Ms Gibbons said wages must be addressed to attract and keep more workers. "The elephant in the room is the wages of early educators, they're appallingly low."
Ms Myers said she pays her staff above award rates but still can't compete with other industries.
"We have lost so many staff who have gone to work in the primary school system… a lot of our staff have left to care for clients on the NDIS and they are getting paid over $60 an hour to work with one client," she said. "We can't compete with that."
Ms Gibbons said the government's proposed changes to multi-employer bargaining could be game-changing.
"I think the sector is really embracing the idea of multi-employer bargaining and I've heard a number of providers talk really positively about it," she said.
"The only question mark is, how quickly can we get it done because we want to see educators' wages lift as quickly as possible."
Both Goodstart and Community Early Learning Australia want the government to provide a wage subsidy in the short term.
Ms Carnegie said better pay is needed before the new childcare subsidies are introduced in July to avoid more workforce shortages.
"This will impact on retention of our existing qualified workforce and encourage more people to choose to be part of an incredibly rewarding career in early education," she said.
"An increase in remuneration will need to be funded by government, otherwise the cost will be passed on to parents through increased fees.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-03/child-care-is-cheaper-but-the-workers-arent-there/101608292
****************************************
2 November, 2022
Why the next wave of feminism is conservative
At a recent dinner, an MP told me a story that reveals a great deal about the current state of feminism. One of her constituents had come to her surgery in some distress. She had children at a local primary school, she said, and had been alarmed to discover that the school’s sex education curriculum contained explicit details that she considered wildly inappropriate. She was aware of the prevailing culture in which adolescents – particularly girls – are sexualised at an ever younger age, and she did not want that for her own children.
But parents are increasingly powerless in the face of progressive schools, and not having been to university, this woman felt anxious. She was intimidated by the prospect of speaking with her children’s headteacher. She didn’t understand the progressive jargon teachers used, and was unsettled by their moral certainty. So her plea to her MP was this: help me to protect my children, tell me what to say.
Who would she fare better with, do you think: a parliamentarian of the left, or of the right? The answer, to me, is not obvious. I am the director of The Other Half, a non-partisan feminist thinktank founded with the express intention of representing the interests of women like this constituent, women who feel at a loss as to how to protect their children. And when I say ‘non-partisan’, I really do mean it: my experience of SW1 is that party affiliation tells you almost nothing about a person’s attitude towards issues such as porn, child abuse and violence against women.
Feminism in the second half of the 20th century was strongly associated with the left, since it grew out of the American civil rights movements of the 1960s. But it has not always been so. There have been plenty of periods during which feminism of a much more conservative flavour has dominated. I believe we are entering another one of those periods now.
This rightward shift is a result of two phenomena, both connected to the advent of the internet. First, there has been the politicisation of otherwise non-political women during the Great British Terf War that began in the early 2010s – a war that is now over, by the way, with the ‘Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists’ (who mostly prefer to describe themselves as ‘gender critical’) very clearly victorious.
Witness the downfall this month of Mermaids, a charity whose stated goal is to represent the interests of transgender children and their families and which was, until recently, the jewel in the crown of British trans activism, attracting funding from the National Lottery, and high–profile support from the Sussexes and the BBC.
But in early October it was revealed that one of Mermaids’ trustees had spoken at an event hosted by a paedophile support group, while another member of staff had been caught sharing photos of himself online dressed in a schoolgirl skirt in a sexualised pose. This scandal comes hot on the heels of the discovery that Mermaids staff had offered breast binders to children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. In PMQs on 12 October the then prime minister Liz Truss appeared to lend her support to a police investigation into these activities, and an investigation by the Charity Commission is already under way.
The anonymous women of Mumsnet were not in the least bit surprised by the Mermaids revelations. In fact, they were instrumental in bringing them to light. Sneeringly described by one American media outlet as the ‘ground zero for British transphobia’, the users of Britain’s most popular parenting messaging board have had their suspicions about the charity for some time and have been doing their own detective work behind the scenes, as part of grassroots resistance to the radical ambitions of the trans activist movement. This has been a war fought over the earthiest kind of material reality – toilets, penises and the amputated breasts of unhappy teenage girls. But it’s also been a war fought almost entirely online. The trans movement sprang from the internet, and its opposing movement sprang from the same.
Mumsnetters, as the name suggests, are overwhelmingly mothers, the most natural and instinctive defenders of children. And here is the second tech-enabled factor in the rightward shift of feminism. ‘The trouble with socialism,’ as Oscar Wilde put it, ‘is that it takes up too many evenings.’ So does feminism – at least it did until quite recently. The second wave of the 1970s and 1980s was conceived of and led by a small cadre of young women who spent intensive amounts of time with one another, including sometimes living under the same roof, thinking and writing and working towards their utopian vision. Not coincidentally, they mostly didn’t have children, since being pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen was hardly compatible with a movement that demanded so much time and energy of its activists.
But how about pregnant and barefoot with a smartphone? The early battles of the Great British Terf War were fought by left-wing feminists, many of them affiliated with the trade union movement. But the popularity of platforms like Mumsnet meant that these people were joined by a much larger and formerly much quieter group of women: mothers from a wide range of backgrounds who feel the same fear for their children that the anxious constituent described, and who were newly able to participate in the public debate via the internet.
Given that they have been drawn in from outside of the usual activist circles, and given that having children is known to make people more conservative, we should not be surprised to discover that these new additions to the feminist movement are not necessarily of the left – a fact that has created a good deal of conflict within the gender critical ranks. Because of course it was the left who looked on cheerfully as male sex offenders were housed in women’s prisons, and the left who tried to set about dismantling women’s sports and women’s spaces. This fact is not lost on left-wing gender-critical feminists. But they interpret the past behaviour of their political allies as a moment of madness, remedied through a much-needed return to ‘proper’ leftist politics.
Other feminists view the matter quite differently. Towards the right of the gender-critical movement is the campaigner and mother of three Kellie Jay Keen, also known as Posie Parker, who is both an extraordinarily charismatic campaigner and a divisive figure: ‘a legend’ or ‘a Poundshop Marine Le Pen’, depending on your perspective.
Keen is able to speak to a Middle England that would never previously have identified as feminist in any way (a majority of British women do not define themselves as such), and she attracts what one critic describes as a ‘mass, populist’ energy – a description she would probably take as a compliment. More than anybody else, Keen is emblematic of British feminism’s current direction of travel away from the academic left.
And she is a queen of political display. Public events hosted by Keen and her allies invariably attract the attention of trans activists, and footage of confrontations between the groups are widely shared online, further energising her base. In one such video, we see Keen’s calm response to a male figure in a balaclava who looms over her, furious. Dressed in a viper-green jumpsuit, with platinum hair in her signature Marilyn Monroe set, she wags a scolding finger at the protestor (‘He’s not a woman, he’s a very naughty boy’?) – and then turns beaming to the camera.
Some feminists have taken to calling the black-clad activists ‘the Black Pampers’, which just about sums up the phenomenon. What we’re really seeing here, both online and offline, is teenage boys screaming in the faces of women their mums’ age. Mothers – and the hatred of them – are at the centre of the action.
To say that this new right-leaning feminist movement is maternal is not to say that it is cuddly. Keen is maternal in the way that a bear is maternal – that is, without mercy. Fearless aggression in the face of a threat to one’s young is an adaptive response that we share with all female mammals. It’s a powerful instinct, and now all mothers can join in, even if they’re housebound or with a baby cradled in one arm.
There is a prissy middle-aged character in The Simpsons whose catchphrase is: ‘Won’t somebody please think of the children?’ The character is meant to poke fun at the kind of womanly concerns that show’s writers think over the top and histrionic. But the question is now a very serious one. That female constituent who approached her MP, desperate to know how to protect her kids, was only asking what women across the country are beginning to ask. Any party that thinks itself fit for power will need to have an answer.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/radical-tradition/
**************************************************
Why 60 years of feminism has not made women any happier
In February, we will mark the 60th anniversary of Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique.” But given the state of modern feminism, it’s hard to imagine there will be much celebration.
Friedan’s work, which revealed women’s lack of fulfillment as homemakers, laid out the goals of second-wave feminism. Now that women had achieved the right to vote, own property and get an education (the first wave), Friedan and her cohorts argued that women should pursue higher education and careers as a way of achieving personal satisfaction. Others, like Germaine Greer, wrote that the sexual repression of women prevented them from becoming personally fulfilled. But thanks to the pill and changing mores about sex outside of marriage, women could finally achieve the freedom and happiness that had been available to men for millennia.
So how’s that working out now? The American Family Survey recently asked: “All things considered, has feminism benefited American families?”
Only a little more than half (58.6%) of respondents said yes. What’s interesting, though, is the people who said yes also tend to be among the least happy and fulfilled. In survey after survey, it turns out that people who espouse a secular worldview, people who identify as liberals, and people who never attend religious services report the lowest levels of personal satisfaction, but they also report the highest levels of support for feminist ideals. Indeed, as feminism’s influence has grown over the past half century, women have become less happy.
If feminism promised personal satisfaction, it doesn’t seem to be delivering it.
In order to understand this failure, it’s probably best to look at how feminist leaders wanted to achieve personal fulfillment. Primarily they believed that if men took over more domestic responsibility — housework and child care — women would have more time and energy to achieve what they wanted in the workplace.
But frankly, given the whole patriarchal structure of the nuclear family, many feminists would have been happy to dispense with traditional marriage altogether. If that happened, and women still did want to bear children (something many feminists did not encourage), well, someone was still going to have to support them. And so feminist leaders also demanded more government support for women.
As political commentator Ellie Mae O’Hagan wrote for The Guardian a few years ago, “Only by diminishing the power of the boss class, and giving female workers more access to collectively owned social goods, can we ensure that no woman is forced to choose between sexual and economic exploitation, and poverty.”
But even feminists who don’t wear their socialism on their sleeves believe that women should have more access to government-funded childcare and paid family leave in order to fulfill their dreams. Books like “Overwhelmed” by Brigid Schulte and “Opting Back In” by Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy or most recently “Ambitious Like a Mother” by Lara Bazelon all end with similar admonitions that in order for women to get what they want out of work and life, the US should become more like Sweden or Norway.
And yet, just as men have been contributing more to housework and child care since the early days of feminism, the government has also been doing a lot more to support mothers. It’s true we don’t have universal day care but we do subsidize the income of working class and poor single mothers to a much greater extent than we used to.
So why hasn’t this help contributed to women being happier? Why, if anything, do women seem less happy and more “overwhelmed” than they were in the 1960s?
In 1963, Betty Friedan was writing about “the problem that had no name.” But women’s problems in the 21st century can absolutely be named. More often, they are trying to raise children on their own, which can be exhausting even with financial resources. They are sexually liberated, but that often means they are going from one relationship to another without any sense of financial security or emotional stability. And while many are no doubt fulfilled in their careers, a lot of them actually enjoy raising children, but they can’t spend the bulk of their time doing this, thanks to financial exigencies and society’s expectations.
Friedan noticed in her day that some housewives were being prescribed “happy pills” to get them through the day. But according to the most recent statistics, one in five women between 40 and 59 are taking antidepressants. They are more than twice as likely to be on these drugs than men. Maybe feminism has lost its mystique.
https://nypost.com/2022/10/29/why-60-years-of-feminism-has-not-made-women-any-happier/
**********************************************
Democrats defecting
Would you switch parties to become a Democrat? I doubt it.
Perhaps a more intriguing question is, “Would you trade places with a Democrat?” Again, I doubt it. That’s like asking a black Leftist if he would trade places with an African. While black Leftists decry America, make no mistake about it: they would NEVER trade with a real African.
Such is the hypocrisy of Democrats. These days, all Americans indirectly ask themselves, “Which party would you rather be part of?!”
I know the answer for most Americans, including Democrats. Trust me when I tell you that Democrats don’t want to be Democrats. But they stay Democrats out of necessity. Because Democrats fear leaving their party. Clearly, that takes balls the size of Alaska.
They know that the Democratic Party is a cult. Hotel California is a Shangri-La compared to leaving the Democratic Party. Leaving the Democratic Party is like trying to leave “the firm”.
To leave the Democrats, you either leave in secret, or wait for all the other closeted Republicans to move en masse.
Another reason Democrats don’t leave is because being a Democrat is the easy way out; at least for the soulless. Cushy union jobs or welfare. Either way you get something for nothing. That’s a specialty of Democrats.
Some stay hoping to achieve that hallowed ground of “untouchable”; like Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden. Both of whom should be in prison, yet they received special “white privilege” handling.
Regardless, most Democrats still want out. They are like the gangbangers in the streets of major cities across America. They know their work is evil, but as the gangs say, “blood in, blood out”. So while Democrats will do their dirty work, they look longingly at Conservatives. They hate that we stand on principle and can speak our minds freely.
Democrats are like Jeffrey Dahmer
I watched the mini-series on Jeffrey Dahmer. And I can safely say that Dahmer provides the perfect metaphor for being a Democrat.
For example, Dahmer knew his actions were crazy. Worse, he told the people around him who ignored his crazy. They didn’t want to hear it. So they passed Dahmer along.
Ironically, Dahmer should have been caught many times. But like Democrats, people kept making excuses for him. In one instance, Dahmer sodomized a kid and was caught. When in court, the judge actually gave him a break, saying that he knows that Dahmer needed a second chance.
Dahmer had already killed multiple men by this time. Even Dahmer was floored at what the judge did.
As you consider that story or perhaps saw the episode of the Dahmer show, understand that Democrats are exactly like Dahmer. They can’t believe they are being allowed to get away with their crimes.
Let’s review some of the craziness of Leftism.
Saving babies versus saving death-row criminals. Guess which one Democrats want to save and which they fight to kill.
Conservatives want law and order versus while Democrats usher in a record crime wave in every major city in the country, save none.
Democrats hate to win, especially when it comes to the economy. They just throw “free money” at every problem and pretend inflation isn’t happening. Conservatives seek to solve problems, including inflation, and love to see our economy boom.
Is it any wonder that Democrat had a major defection in Tulsi Gabbard?
During the 2020 election cycle, Tulsi Gabbard was considered a rising star among Democrats. In fact, at one point she even threw her hat into the presidential ring. But as we already know, that was the year of countless Democrat nominees. And with a choice like Gabbard, one has to further see the lunacy of putting Biden in the driver seat.
Now, we have to wonder. Is there a new sun rising in the Republican ranks?
Perhaps…
Breitbart adds:
Democrat defector Tulsi Gabbard has endorsed Republican Tudor Dixon in her race to unseat Democrat Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
In a tweet on Thursday, Tudor Dixon gleefully accepted Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement, announcing that she will be campaigning with her in Michigan next week.
“[Tulsi] has been a voice of reason across party lines. She is courageously speaking her mind and showing us all what it means to be a leading independent thinker. I am honored to have her support and cannot wait to welcome her to Michigan next week!” announced Dixon.
It will be interesting to see if Gabbard’s support will have the Trump effect on Dixon’s campaign. I predict it will be exactly what Dixon needs to pull ahead on election day. Further, it might cement Gabbard’s front-row seat among conservatives.
Though Tulsi Gabbard has long been a favorite among Trump supporters for her unwillingness to toe the Democrat Party line, she upgraded her status to legendary this month when she formally defected from the party she previously called home.
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism,” Gabbard said on an episode of The Tulsi Gabbard Show.
“Who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our constitution. Who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality. Who demonize the police, but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans. Who believes in open borders,” she added.
I’d say that just about sums up the lunacy of the left.
https://theblacksphere.net/2022/10/democrats-leaving-party-in-massive-numbers/
********************************************************
Many NYC Democrats are voting for a Republican governor now
A Democratic candidate for New York state governor cannot be elected without the backing of New York City’s huge number of Democratic voters. But looking around Gotham, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single political sign supporting Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic candidate in next week’s election.
Meanwhile, signs for Republican candidate Lee Zeldin are popping up across the city — even in the Democratic stronghold of Queens.
In fact, when a reporter from The Post knocked on the front doors of the homes where “Zeldin for Governor” signs are displayed, many of the people inside said they consider themselves Democrats — but nonetheless plan to vote Republican on Nov. 8.
“I feel the Democratic Party has left me, I didn’t leave the party,” said Phil Wong, 56, a longtime former Democrat who has planted a Zeldin sign outside the Elmhurst home he shares with his wife, kids and elderly mother. “They left me with all these extreme progressive policies that hurt New York City and hurt Asians.”
Wong, an immigrant from Hong Kong, is the president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and the former chair of the Community Education Council 24 in Elmhurst. He has actively campaigned to preserve NYC’s gifted-and-talented programs and the SHSAT, the admissions test used by the city’s most selective high schools. He said the changing policies at city public schools is what’s spurring him to vote for Zeldin, a Republican congressman from Long Island.
“Now it doesn’t matter how well you do in school because it’s no longer based on merit, it’s based on a lottery,” said Wong.
“So suddenly, kids don’t even want to work hard anymore, because the chance of going into any school with a 95 average will be the same as the kid that’s about to fail. That is not right, that just tells kids that they can just goof off and hang out or hang around and still get into the good schools.”
Wong said he also believes that the spike in serious crime — which, according to NYPD statistics, has increased nearly 36% over last year from January to September — is why he’s seeing more of his neighbors and friends in Queens declaring their support for Zeldin.
“I see more and more moderate Democrats coming out every day and saying they are going to vote for Zeldin,” Wong told The Post. “We had a great city under Giuliani and Bloomberg, but when De Blasio came on, it went downhill. I used to feel safe, my mom felt safe and my kids felt safe. I felt that they could go out, play in the park, go to school on their own and come back. And now I don’t feel that anymore.”
Not far from Wong’s home in Elmhurst lives John Schaffer, a computer engineer, and his wife, Luz, who works in catering. Luz is Hispanic and a longtime Democrat; her husband is a white, registered Democrat who simultaneously considers himself conservative. Despite casting their votes for Democrats in the past, the couple is displaying a Zeldin sign in their Halloween-themed front yard.
“Kathy Hochul, just in the debate alone, you could see that crime was not important to her,” said John, who did not give his age. “What she actually said was, why is it important?”
John said he drives his wife to and from work if she has to go very early or return home late because they both fear rampant subway crime.
“It’s just not safe,” he said. “We’ve seen the videos. For that reason alone I’m voting for Zeldin. But there’s so much more. The Democratic Party has become so corrupt in every way.”
“You can see how the city is going down,” added Luz, who also didn’t give her age. “You see so many homeless, so many dangerous people. Everyone is scared and we wish the city would go back to the way it was before.”
In the nearby Queens neighborhood of Woodside, one-time Democrat Lucy Hensley, 51, who was born in Venezuela, is displaying a Zeldin sign outside the modest, two-story home she shares with her husband, Luis Vielma.
“We came here with nothing,” Hensley said. “We had zero and we now have a nice life without ever having had to depend on the government. But what we’ve been seeing in the US thanks to Democratic policies is a disaster. Being Venezuelan, we understand more than maybe many others what is happening. We saw this happen in Venezuela. We know how they start. We really hope Zeldin wins.”
Most of the Zeldin signs spotted by The Post in Queens can be found in Richmond Hill, facilitated in part by retired veteran prosecutor James Quinn, who lives on 112th Street. Quinn, a Republican, said he put out a lot of Zeldin signs in his front yard and a number of his Democratic neighbors came by to pick up a few for their own lawns.
A registered Republican, James Quinn said a lot of his Democratic neighbors have taken some of his Zeldin for Governor signs to display on their own lawns.
“I get the sense that there’s a lot more people who have always voted Democrat but will vote Republican this year,” Quinn said. “I hear them say that they feel there is really no hope that Democratic politicians are going to reverse any of these crazy policies or do anything to help solve all the problems we’re seeing in the city.”
One of Quinn’s neighbors is a longtime city cop who has always voted Democrat. He did not want to be identified publicly but he said he took a Zeldin sign from Quinn to hang outside his home and he plans to vote Republican from now on.
“All the violence that we’re seeing and all the inflation and corruption is too much for me and my family,” he told The Post. “We no longer identify with the Democrats. They are out of touch with the middle class and the people in the community. They all have agendas, thinking that it’s all about just being like, liberal. They think everybody’s liberal like that but we aren’t. Our values align much more now with what conservatives want.”
https://nypost.com/2022/10/31/why-nyc-democrats-are-backing-republican-lee-zeldin-for-governor/
****************************************
1 November, 2022
Hungary Leads Way in Defense of Conservative Values, Culture
Eastern Europeans had a gutful of extreme Leftism during their domination by the Soviet Communists, so Leftism is a hard sell there now. And its opposite is in proportion popular
Although in many countries around the world, liberal political views are dominant, some nations in Eastern Europe have notably resisted the left-wing ideology. One of the most criticized among the latter is Hungary.
The Hungarian government stands for national sovereignty and conservative values among the world’s nations.
In a Heritage Foundation event on Monday, “Promoting Conservative Values in Modern Europe,” Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga offered a timely perspective on protecting and representing conservative values in modern politics and the future of European conservatism. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
According to Varga, the left-wing trend that dominates the European Union infringes on member nations’ sovereignty.
That argument is reminiscent of Rod Dreher’s book “Live Not by Lies,” which discusses the cultural shifts that have occurred in the West against traditional values and how a “soft totalitarianism” seems to have taken over Western societies.
The characteristic of that soft totalitarianism is the desire to remake the world, to incorporate all areas of life and culture into the scope of woke ideology, to create new forms of language and thought, and even to force people to lie to conform to left-wing dogma and doctrine.
Moreover, the woke view bluntly seeks to destroy cultural memory and tradition. If viewed separately and apart from one another, the various aspects, such as cancel culture or the taking down of statues, seem unrelated.
Nonetheless, if viewed as a whole, one can see that it’s all part of an integrated worldview. The radicals of another age have spread their ideology and ideas into academia, business, and politics. As such, that soft totalitarianism can take over governments and clash with traditional values and conservatives.
In her timely speech, Varga spoke of how when Hungary returned to freedom after the fall of communism, Eastern European nations realized that Western Europe had changed dramatically in terms of culture. She contended that Hungary did not recognize Europe. In contrast to those problems of cultural displacement and birthrates, according to Varga, Hungary decided to take another path in terms of policy and governance, which has led to success.
Varga said that Hungary’s success is based on three things: 1) protecting its sovereignty; 2) the consistent presentation of conservative values; and 3) sovereignty and conservative values are compatible with the democratic state governed by the rule of law.
These principles are threatened not only by the expanding bureaucracy of the European Union with unelected bodies that try to govern all member nations, but also by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, trying to prevent that nation from freely associating with whomever it wishes in international relations and illegally annexing Ukrainian territory.
In fact, all this is very similar to the arguments former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made in her speech at the CNN World Economic Development Conference back in 1992, and they have proven to be correct. In her remarks, Thatcher warned that a single currency, along with the increasing centralization of the European Union, would produce unemployment, mass migration across open frontiers, and the alienation of people from their governments, which would lead to “the growth of extremist parties.”
Time has proven these warnings to be correct. Nonetheless, Hungary remains an example of another path that could be taken to preserve cultural memory and national sovereignty. The electoral success of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban demonstrates that his party’s approach of applying conservative values and using power to defend Hungary’s identity can, in fact, produce not only policy results, but achieve electoral success.
Orban’s party, Fidesz, won with over 50% of the popular vote, which marked the highest vote share by any Hungarian party since the fall of communism in 1989. In other words, the policies followed in Hungary have produced a mandate from the Hungarian people.
In short, conservatives around the world would do well to learn from each other by taking a close look at countries that have strong, lasting, conservative coalitions and governments in power.
Going forward, conservatives should not be afraid of fighting the culture war, nor should they surrender such things as sovereignty, the rule of law, and cultural memory.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/10/28/hungary-leads-way-in-defense-of-conservative-values-culture/
**************************************************
GOP Senator Tom Cotton claims Dems are INTENTIONALLY turning US into weak country through 'critical race theory and transgender ideology' in ploy he calls 'decline by design'
He's sussed them out
An Arkansas Senator has charged members of the Democratic Party with intentionally thrusting the country into crime-ridden chaos, thanks to woke policies designed to undermine citizens' freedoms.
The controversial claims were aired Sunday in an interview with Republican Tom Cotton, a former soldier who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and senator for Arkansas since 2015.
During the sit down, the 45-year-old politician promoted his upcoming book, Only the Strong: Reversing the Left's Plot to Sabotage American Power, set to publish next Tuesday.
His book takes aim at the progressive left and what he declares is their decades-long plot to sabotage American power that stems back more than a century.
The interview saw Cotton further proclaim that while some may think the country's decline is the result of mismanagement, none of the systemic problems are accidental.
Instead, Cotton declares, that decline is 'intentional' - and one carefully laid by Democrats by 'design.'
'I had so many Americans asking me,' Cotton told Fox News' Mark Levin when asked about the country's current crime-ridden and economic state, 'How did we let this happen? How did we lose to a band of medieval savages?'
The senator said the leftist plot was 'designed to undermine the founding fathers and revamp the Constitution, with amendments that preach schools of thought such as critical race theory and pro transgender teachings and prevent people from speaking out against it.
'Like, how did we let left wing radicals rampage in our streets in the summer of 2020, tearing down statues of our heroes like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant?' Cotton begins, referring to the unrest seen in the country after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
'How we got to the point where we're allowing schools to indoctrinate our kids with critical race theory or transgender ideology,' the senator then adds, visibly upset as he describes the ongoing failures of the powerful political party.
Cotton goes on to remark on the recent advent of American soldiers being chastised for serving their county by woke progressives who preach non-violence and peaceful solutions to international conflicts.
Having served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2013 to 2015, the politician equated such treatment to violent public spectacles seen in Maoist China where citizens accused of being 'class enemies' were publicly humiliated and at times tortured, often by people they were close to.
According to Cotton, all of these issues are rooted in the rise of leftism, which can be traced to the presidency of early prominent progressive Woodrow Wilson in 1913 - the first president to 'openly repudiate' our founding principles and criticize the Constitution, the senator said.
Wilson, a leader of the Progressive Movement, infamously touted the Sedition Act of 1918, which sought to limit free speech, as he worked to bring the country into World War I - a conflict Americans had become increasingly wary of.
Such censorship and disregard to the American people and the principles which the nation was founded on can still be seen today, Cotton went on to claim, in an increasing amount of classrooms and government offices across the country.
Wilson was known to detest criticism of his policies and would subsequently seek to tamp down on such expressions - behavior that has persisted today, Cotton claims, and is more and more apparent in politicians from the progressive party.
The result, the senator claims, is America's recent decline, which has become increasingly evident through marked rises in crime and homeless in Dem run cities such as San Francisco and New York.
Cotton went on to claim that none of these systemic problems are accidental, and instead are the fruits of an exhaustive ploy from the Democratic Party to slowly rob Americans of their rights and ability to speak out against such injustices.
'This is intentional. The decline that [civilians] sense in America is decline by design,' Cotton said of the efforts, which have continued over the past century with presidents such as Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden.
'The Democratic Party has long been, at best ambivalent about America, and openly hostile to American power, whether it's our military, our sovereignty,' Cotton went on, further criticizing politicians that have allowed these issues to take root.
The senator remarked on the current, diminished 'safety on our streets,' where open drug use and homeless encampments have become commonplace - as well as the sad state of our economy, which has been hopelessly embroiled by inflation since Biden took office.
But the censorship and slow instillation of anti-American values stems back much earlier, Cotton charges in the televised talk, which will air Sunday night on Levin's primetime program Life, Liberty & Levin - back to Wilson and then incensed by prominent progressives such as John F. Kennedy and Lydon B. Johnson in the 1960s.
'After you repudiate the founding principles of our country, it's a very short step to repudiating America itself, which is what the New Left did in the 1960s and the 1970s during Vietnam,' Cotton remarked.
Now, more than a century after Wilson's Sedition Act, Cotton said the 'culmination of trends' critical of American principles and patriotism came with ex-President Obama, whom he called 'the most ideological' in his anti-Americanism since Wilson, citing the increasing number of freedoms robbed from Americans after his years in office.
Cotton referred to Biden as Obama's 'understudy,' and proclaimed that what Americans are experiencing right now in cities all over the country is a direct result of those freedoms being stripped.
Cotton further elaborates on this plot in ‘Only the Strong,' which he says specifies, in detail,' how the Left in America today continues to try to sabotage American power.'
Before leaving the sit down, Cotton said of those efforts to transform the US into a woke dystopia: 'If you love something, you don't want to fundamentally transform it.'
Only the Strong is set to be released Tuesday. Cotton's current term as Senator ends on January 3, 2027.
*************************************************************
Does Tulsi Gabbard have coattails? Watch Ariz., Mich., Nev. and N.H. in November
By Robert Romano
On polls taken up to Oct. 17, Arizona Republican nominee for Governor Kari Lake was leading her opponent Katie Hobbs by 3 and 4 points respectively in Daily Wire/Trafalgar and Data for Progress polls. And then she got the endorsement of former Democratic U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, fresh off leaving the Democratic Party, on Oct. 18 in a Twitter post.
“For too long, establishment leaders from both parties have sought to enrich themselves, play games, and build up their power while ignoring and even enabling the suffering of millions of hard-working Americans,” Gabbard said in a press release, adding, “Kari Lake is a leader who puts people first, fighting for border security, energy independence, public safety, and other policies that actually make life better and more affordable for the American people.”
The next poll, the Fox 10/InsiderAdvantage poll taken Oct. 24 to Oct. 25, suddenly showed Lake leading Hobbs by 11 points in Arizona, 54 percent to 43 percent.
Does Tulsi Gabbard have coattails?
That might be a good question as the former Democrat hits the campaign trail for Republican gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates in Michigan, Nevada and New Hampshire in the final days of the 2022 elections.
The Fox 10/InsiderAdvantage Arizona poll could be a desert mirage, but Gabbard is worth consideration as a representative of swing voters who always determine the outcome of midterm election cycles, that is, elections two years after the race for the Presidency.
The tendency is for the White House incumbent party to lose seats pretty much everywhere up and down the ballot, losing seats in 90 percent of elections in the House and 70 percent in the Senate, with losses averaging about 35 seats in the House and 3 seats in the Senate.
Those are pretty good odds for Republicans since simply an average year for the GOP should enable them to retake House and Senate majorities from Democrats, simply because they only have a five seat majority in the House and no true majority in the Senate, which is split 50-50.
But what if there was also a sudden exodus of disaffected Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, led by Gabbard but also other major recent Democratic departures including new Twitter owner Elon Musk?
In states like Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New York, it can take an overwhelming advantage on independents but also cross-party voting by at least a few Democrats for Republicans to win majorities. It’s not always easy, but midterm cycles can help the opposition party and so even a deep blue state like New York could possibly come into play — given the correct ingredients.
Fortunately, there’s time to test Gabbard’s impact on these races, if any. Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon in Michigan and senatorial candidate Don Bolduc in New Hampshire have both been behind in their races prior to their recent Gabbard endorsements. If they suddenly start showing leads afterward, perhaps Gabbard effect could be very real, since nobody thought those races were competitive.
The caveat is this should be a really good year for Republicans no matter what, and so it is admittedly harder to show undercurrents in the body politic.
But Gabbard’s role in these underdog races could be very interesting, especially if the Gabbard-endorsed races have wider margins of victory compared to the non-Gabbard races (assuming there are any victories). The better those numbers are, the more interesting 2024 becomes. Stay tuned.
https://dailytorch.com/2022/10/does-tulsi-gabbard-have-coattails/ ?
******************************************************
Why do few Australians have positive views of Aborigines?
Noel Pearson says that few do and he is undoubtedly right. Helen Trinca below reinforces that point and tries to explain it. Her explnation is however a work of desperation. She mimics American blacks in saying it is all due to the past -- to the bad treatment of their ancestors. She appears unaware that NOBODY has had ancestors as badly treated as the Jews -- 4,000 years of persecution! -- and yet present-day Jews flourish mightily. Blaming the past is rubbish. It is the present that counts.
Psychological research has repeatedly shown that impressions we have of others are highly malleable. We are strongly influenced by what we have most recently seen. It even has a name: "The recency effect". Our views rapidly move towards what we ourseves have recently experienced. Expectations and stereotypes rapidly give way to actual experience. Some of the academic research findings to that effect is summarized here and here
So whatever view we have of Aborigines will be strongly founded in our experience of them. And we DO have some experiences of them, even in the cities. And if I can summarize that experiences briefly: We see them mainly as drunks and beggars and layabouts. We do not like WHITE drunks and beggars and layabouts so there is no likelihood that we would like that in blacks.
So why are so many blacks like that? No mystery. They are the victims of their separate development (Yes. I know of another usage of that phrase). For 60,000 years, they have evolved in geographical isolation as superb hunter gatherers and have some quite eeries abilities in consequence of that. But they have NOT evolved the abilities that allow them to fit in easily with the differently evolved people of the Eurasian continent. They are like fish out of water in a modern Western society. Many thousands of years of fierce competition among the many people of Eurasia has enforced an adaptive evolution in them that very few Aborigines can easily co-exist with. They don't "fit in".
Just a final and relatively minor point: Trinca mentions the hard time that football fans gave Aboriginal player Adam Goodes and blames it on racial prejudice. She omits much in that. See here and here
Noel Pearson opened a new front in the story of Indigenous Australia when he used his first ABC Radio National Boyer Lecture to talk about the unpopularity of First Nations people.
It was a shocking statement that came early in Pearson’s impressive opener to the four-lecture series delivered first on television on October 27 and repeated on radio on Sunday, and it’s worth quoting at length
“We are a much unloved people,” Pearson said. “We are perhaps the ethnic group Australians feel least connected to. We are not popular and we are not personally known to many Australians. Few have met us and a small minority count us as friends. And despite never having met any of us and knowing very little about us other than what is in the media and what WEH Stanner, whose 1968 Boyer Lectures loom large over my lectures, called ‘folklore’ about us, Australians hold and express strong views about us, the great proportion of which is negative and unfriendly.
“It has ever been thus. Worse in the past but still true today. If success in the forthcoming referendum is predicated on our popularity as a people, then it is doubtful we will succeed. It does not and will not take much to mobilise antipathy against Aboriginal people and to conjure the worst imaginings about us and the recognition we seek. For those who wish to oppose our recognition it will be like shooting fish in a barrel. An inane thing to do – but easy. A heartless thing to do – but easy.”
Many non-Indigenous Australians would have felt a stab of recognition on hearing those words but, worse still, despair for the future. Pearson was calling it as it is, not in anger but with a profoundly sad pragmatism that reminds us that he is not just good at rhetoric, he’s also a good thinker.
Pearson is urging us to go beyond the truth that racism has in various ways helped shape many views of Indigenous people to a more subtle but perhaps more damaging truth – that lack of familiarity and friendship with First Peoples could determine votes in the referendum on the advisory body, the voice to parliament.
The 2022 Boyer lecturer drew on the horrible sledging of former AFL great Adam Goodes to make his point. What happened to the footballer reminded Pearson of the trouble people had with Indigenous Australians, trouble that could readily be called racism and “certainly racism is much to do with it, but the reality is not that simple”.
“Unlike same-sex marriage there is not the requisite empathy of love to break through the prejudice, contempt and, yes, violence of the past. Australians simply do not have Aboriginal people within their circles of family and friendship with whom they can share fellow feeling.” It does not detract from the truth of Pearson’s comments to see this as an inspired tactic – sidelining the unhelpful argument about what is or is not racially motivated behaviour and staking out far less threatening ground for a conversation with opponents of the voice. Yet it has rarely, if ever, been articulated.
Most non-Indigenous Australians – even those committed to the voice and a treaty, those who value the deep culture of Aboriginal people; those who want in every way to atone for the wrongs of the past – know Pearson is right when he says Aboriginal people are simply not in the friendship and family groups of the overwhelming number of Australians.
It is difficult for many non-Indigenous Australians to even meet an Aboriginal person, given that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders comprise less than 4 per cent of the population. Many Australians will never see an Indigenous Australian other than in a media photograph or on television. Views are formed through news stories or cultural products such as paintings, dance, literature, film and music or exhibitions or books. There’s sport of course, the great Australian equaliser, which allows for largely positive recognition – except in cases such as that of Goodes. In country areas, First Nations people are more visible, but again class, economic differences and the social problems in many Indigenous communities mean the distances between the groups can be even more pronounced. The reality is unless you work in the arts, universities, the public service, or you are an elite sports person, you may have little chance of finding an Indigenous friend. It’s very different when it comes to homosexual people, for example.
A colleague reminds me that more than a decade ago we were at an election event at Rooty Hill in outer suburban Sydney when a woman got to her feet and asked Julia Gillard, the prime minister at the time, why she could not marry her same-sex partner. The crowd erupted with clapping and one knew then the experience of many families was dramatically shifting attitudes. Legislating for same-sex marriage is not the same as amending the Constitution, but Pearson’s point is well made.
Time, then, to come to terms with the reasons behind this “enduring antipathy against my people” – in short, that the colonial project required the first settlers to deny the rights of Aboriginal people to succeed. There are other reasons why Indigenous Australians may not be popular, but terra nullius underpins them all. That original denial and its tragic consequences are well documented yet still so little understood by many Australians offered little or inadequate history across so many decades. Australians need to accept and absorb this if we are to have any chance of exercising good judgment in the forthcoming referendum.
************************************************************
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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
*****************************************
Sidebars
The notes and pix appearing in the sidebar of the blog that is reproduced above are not reproduced here. The sidebar for this blog can however be found in my archive of sidebars
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used my blogs in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and clicking will bring the picture up. See here (2021). See also here (2020).
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; Subject index to my short notes. My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
Email me (John Ray) here.
