Category: Crap For Brains

All the preceding has not been an ‘epiphany’ for me, but more like a confirmation of what I’ve termed the ‘.gov gravy train‘ in the past.
The gubbermint has been turned into a racket, packed with those, and their lackeys and cronies, that have been corrupted with the prospect of amassing a fortune from graft, kick-backs, bribes, outright theft and the ‘crumbs’ that are left on the table afterwards.

I think they truly fear that Trump, not being a politician that has ‘paid his dues’ scrambling up the political power ladder, and also not been subject to the usual blackmail to be extorted into being a good little rubber stamp, is an open threat to slam shut the door and derail that gravy train.
This fear has so rattled TPTB that they’ve pulled out all the stops and apparently don’t care what they destroy, somehow believing they’ll just spend more money to rebuild it all,  just as long as they can get Trump out of the way.

Unfortunately, they’ve not learned from the lessons of history, especially of the 20th Century, that quite often, if a society or culture is messed with too much, what comes afterwards is not what they had before, but something much worse.

Bottom line here, she’s holding her state hostage. No Biden, no end to lockdown. This is someone who ought to be impeached from office and swiftly thrown out.

Gretchen Whitmer admits it:
No release from lockdown without a vote for Joe Biden

For the past 200 days, Democratic governors have been commanding their states to go on lockdown, and ordering nursing homes to be seeded with COVID patients.

The result has been the twin disaster of broken economies and high COVID death tolls, way out of proportion to the rest of the country. And incredibly, they’re blaming President Trump for all of the bad consequences of their own acts, and reaping big political hay from it.

They do all the harm, Trump gets all the blame, they take all the glory.

What power-mad leftist wouldn’t want a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose setup like that? Torture your state, blame Trump, win big.

So it’s natural to expect that the worst of them might just keep holding their states on lockdown as a hostage act, at least until election day, to beat their citizens into submission. After that, the mask can come off.

Far-left Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, though, didn’t want to wait.

According to Red State:

Whitmer told host Chuck Todd that lockdowns and COVID restrictions can end, if Americans just vote for Joe Biden. The governor, who has become one of the faces of hypocritical lockdowns for the Left over the last few months, insinuated that Trump doesn’t care that 220,000 people have died so far from COVID, and that 8 million positive COVID tests have been logged so far.

…and…

She also insinuated that the real victims of the lockdowns are the heroes who are staying closed and staying home indefinitely, and that Trump and anyone who wants to get back to living their American lives are, in fact, inciting violence.

“Every moment that we are not focused on the fact that there are 220,000 Americans who have died from this virus is good for him. So in that sense, as he incites additional violence against people who are just trying to save one another’s lives. It’s good for him. And that’s why I don’t want to talk about him endangering public servants lives. I want to talk about what he hasn’t done and that’s his job. The Trump virus response is the worst in the globe. I mean in the world, it’s the worst 8 million people have been have contracted covid-19, 220000 dead. We’ve got people in food pantry line who never would have imagined that they be there and no light on the horizon because our numbers keep going up.”

The mask is off. The secret slips out. She’s been holding them hostage all along. Facts, or even taking care of her own tax base, don’t mean a thing to her. Who needs a tax base when you’ve got Joe Biden in a position of power? Continue reading “”

Modern science: Celebrating a “high priestess” instead of data

The corruption of modern science and our intellectual class was well illustrated today by the following headline and article in the peer review journal Science:

Act now, wait for perfect evidence later, says ‘high priestess’ of U.K. COVID-19 masking campaign

From the article’s lead:

In May, when several prominent U.K. scientists pushed back against a Royal Society report recommending face masks to help control the spread of COVID-19, Trisha Greenhalgh was furious. The scientists argued there was insufficient support in the scientific literature for the efficacy of masks, and the U.K. government, following their lead, declined to mandate masks for the general public.

“The search for perfect evidence may be the enemy of good policy,” Greenhalgh, a physician and expert in health care delivery at the University of Oxford, fumed in the Boston Review. “As with parachutes for jumping out of airplanes, it is time to act without waiting for randomized controlled trial evidence.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words have been the typical argument of the global warming crowd for decades. “We can’t wait for evidence! We need to act now before it’s too late!”

Moreover, she — along with the writer of this Science article — also copies another global warming dishonest tactic, posing a false argument by claiming that the opposing scientists requried a “randomized controlled trial” to demonstrate the usefulness of masks. This is an absurd misstatement, as it ignores decades of research that already exists and was referenced by those opposing scientists, that showed that mandating widespread mask use was generally a bad idea, and would accomplish nothing good.

WHO's do's and don't's for mask use
For the full images, go here and here.

Greenhalgh, who belongs to a WHO committee that she forced to change from “claiming masks are harmful” to now endorsing mask use, very clearly falls into this mindset. She is outraged that scientists would dare defy her opinion on masks. Despite the clear uncertainty of the science and the solid evidence that improper use of masks can be harmful (as illustrated by the WHO graphic to the right), she forged ahead with her political campaign and got WHO to comply.

Apparently the editors and writers at Science also agree with her approach of ignoring data for the sake of an political agenda, as this article lovingly endorses her campaign and tactics.

The greatest irony here is that Greenhalgh was dubbed “a high priestess” by a critic. Now, Science is elevating that term to a compliment, and a guidepost for what future scientists should strive for. “Forget data and research, the focus must be on what we believe and desire, even if no evidence backs up those opinions! And above all, we must worship our leaders as priests and priestesses with privileged and special knowledge who must never be questioned!” Continue reading “”

Does being able to speak make a Judge’s First Amendment rulings also suspect? And another Senator confirms that being a tone deaf, clueless idjit, isn’t a disqualifier from office.

“Does Owning a Gun Make a Judge’s Second Amendment Rulings Suspect?”
“Barrett says she owns a gun, but could fairly judge a case on gun rights” — why the “but”?

Jacob Sullum (Reason) writes about this question, beginning with:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.) was trying to help out Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett when he asked her whether she owns a gun during her confirmation hearing yesterday. But the premise of his question—that gun ownership might be viewed as disqualifying a judge from dealing fairly with cases involving the Second Amendment—could not be more absurd. Here is the relevant exchange:

Graham: When it comes to your personal views about this topic, do you own a gun?

Barrett: We do own a gun.

Graham: OK. All right. Do you think you could fairly decide a [Second Amendment] case even though you own a gun?

Barrett: Yes.

CNN highlighted that exchange in a headline and tweet, noting that “Barrett says she owns a gun, but could fairly judge a case on gun rights.” The Independent also considered the point noteworthy: “Nominee owns a gun, but says she would rule ‘fairly’ on gun control cases.” So did Fox News: “Barrett admits to owning a gun, says she can set aside beliefs to rule on 2nd Amendment fairly.”

Sullum’s analysis strikes me as quite right; a bit obvious, to be sure, but the sort of obvious that people (or at least headline writers) apparently need to be reminded about.

Poverty Won.
When government presumes to reshape society, the result is likely to be gory.

Reparations for slavery, you say? Well, we tried that experiment, in the $20-plus trillion spent on welfare, Medicaid, housing, and food stamps for the mostly minority poor since Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty in 1964. As Amity Shlaes shows in her cautionary Great Society: A New History, those trillions only made matters worse. As the clamor swells to compound LBJ’s mistake, Shlaes provides a sobering postmortem, dissecting how and why, when government presumes to reshape society, the result is likely to be gory.

It took LBJ a lifetime to learn that lesson, and he learned it the hard way. He began his government career as an ardent New Dealer, first as a tireless functionary charged with pressing Texas farmers to limit their crops, on Franklin Roosevelt’s cockeyed theory that overproduction caused the Great Depression, and then as one of FDR’s most energetic congressional lieutenants, ramming through New Deal programs—many of doubtful constitutionality. He firmly believed that the New Deal had heroically wielded the power of the federal government to defeat the slump, though as Shlaes showed in her earlier best-selling book, The Forgotten Man (2007), it only prolonged it.

* * *

When vice president Johnson assumed the presidency upon John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, his sunny faith in the boundless power of government to do good shone undimmed. In his State of the Union Address at the start of the new year, he declared his aim to unleash that power in an “unconditional war on poverty” that would “cure” that scourge once and for all. In the spring, his vision expanded further still. With unemployment low and national prosperity high, he said, America could now afford to create a “Great Society,” abolishing the country’s remaining pockets of poverty and also stamping out racial injustice across the land. Those who mistakenly feared big government would see that “far from crushing the individual, government at its best liberates him from the enslaving forces of his environment.” Continue reading “”

BLM Supporter Tied to Michigan Gov. Whitmer Kidnapping Plot. Demands Grow for Her to Apologize to Trump.

Yet another one of the conspirators indicted in the plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has turned out to be an anarchist and this time is an identified Black Lives Matter, Inc.™ supporter.

If you’re keeping book, that now means at least three of the six men indicted by the federal government for the frightening conspiracy to kidnap the governor from her vacation home are avowed anti-Donald Trump anarchists and at least one is a BLM protester. When half the conspirators rolled up by the feds are anarchists, this is what you might call a pattern.

The BLM connection comes from no less than The Washington Post, which buried the lede of its own story by headlining its piece, “Accused leader of plot to kidnap Michigan governor was struggling financially, living in basement storage space,” as if living in a basement was the most surprising thing about the conspirator. Indeed, we can be assured that if one of the conspirators had attended a Trump rally that would have headlined the story.

One of alleged plotters, 23-year-old Daniel Harris, attended a Black Lives Matter protest in June, telling the Oakland County Times he was upset about the killing of George Floyd and police violence.

Parker Douglas, a lawyer for Harris, said his client was a former Marine who lived at home with his parents and did construction work. Douglas said Harris told him some things described in the FBI affidavit were taken out of context while others he “thinks just didn’t happen.” Douglas said his client believes “not everybody mentioned in this knew everything that is described in this complaint.” He said his client, in a brief meeting, had suggested he had voted for candidates from both parties, had not expressed a view on President Trump and seemed to favor small government. [Emphasis added]

Continue reading “”

H-O-M-E-S-C-H-O-O-L !
“Just do it”

WHAT OUR CHILDREN LEARN IN SCHOOL

Our public schools are run, for the most part, by liberal administrators, and teachers are drawn, usually, from the lowest quadrant of academic ability among college graduates. There are exceptions, of course, but the overall level of instruction in the public schools is abysmal. And that isn’t the worst of it: teachers who are marginally able, at best, to teach the subjects for which they are nominally responsible often devote themselves to political indoctrination instead.

Most such forays into left-wing mythology go unreported, but occasionally an enterprising kid turns on his phone and records a teacher’s rant. That happened a few weeks ago in a 9th grade Geography class in a suburban Twin Cities high school:


The teacher’s ignorance is cosmic: 1) There is no “Speaker of the Senate.” 2) McConnell didn’t say there wasn’t enough time to confirm Merrick Garland. 3) The idea that “life in America is gonna change radically” if there is a conservative majority on the Supreme Court is a fantasy. 4) “This is an opinion of the court”? Sheer incoherence. 5) “Conservatives believe that corporations should be considered humans and should have rights.” Stupid beyond belief. No one has ever said that a corporation is a human, nor has anyone ever denied that corporations have rights. This is why, for example, President Trump can’t shut down CNN and the New York Times. Tempting though it may be.

In this particular case, the kid’s parents are fighting back and taking the teacher’s incompetent and inappropriate conduct to the local school board. But this kind of thing goes on every day, in thousands of classrooms across the country. Almost never are there consequences.

A colleague of mine had an idea that I think has merit. She thinks that if parents knew this kind of political indoctrination is going on, teachers would stop, or at least scale back. Thus, every classroom should be streamed online, and parents of kids in every class should be given access to the stream. At any moment, a parent could check in and see exactly what is going on in his son’s or daughter’s classroom. This is much like the manner in which parents use cameras in their homes to keep tabs on what babysitters are up to. Given the quality of instruction in our public schools, the analogy is almost perfect.

Mathematics Association Declares Math is Racist

The Mathematical Association of America released a statement Friday claiming both that mathematicians should engage in “uncomfortable conversations” about race, and that policies of from the Trump administration, like the lack of a mask mandate in the United States, are somehow an affront to mathematics. The group concludes with a call for a “pursuit of justice” within math.

“Thanks to science and mathematics, we understand now that masks, social distancing, frequent, rapid, mass testing, and contact tracing are all fundamental to keep our communities safer during the COVID-19 pandemic, ” the association wrote.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
That’s the thing about “insurrectionary anarchists.” They make fickle allies. If they help you get into power, they will try to oust you the following day, since power is what they are against. Many of them don’t even vote. They are experts at unraveling an old order but considerably less skilled at building a new one. That’s why, even after more than 100 days of protest in Portland, activists do not agree on a set of common policy goals.

Even some anarchists admit as much.

“We are not sure if the socialist, communist, democratic or even anarchist utopia is possible,” a voice on “The Ex-Worker” podcast intones. “Rather, some insurrectionary anarchists believe that the meaning of being an anarchist lies in the struggle itself and what that struggle reveals.”

In other words, it’s not really about George Floyd or Black lives, but insurrection for insurrection’s sake.

The Truth About Today’s Anarchists
“Insurrectionary anarchists” have been protesting for racial justice all summer. Some Black leaders wish they would go home.

On the last Sunday in May, Jeremy Lee Quinn, a furloughed photographer in Santa Monica, Calif., was snapping photos of suburban moms kneeling at a Black Lives Matter protest when a friend alerted him to a more dramatic subject: looting at a shoe store about a mile away.

He arrived to find young people pouring out of the store, shoeboxes under their arms. But there was something odd about the scene. A group of men, dressed entirely in black, milled around nearby, like supervisors. One wore a creepy rubber Halloween mask.

The next day, Mr. Quinn took pictures of another store being looted. Again, he noticed something strange. A white man, clad in black, had broken the window with a crowbar, but walked away without taking a thing.

Mr. Quinn began studying footage of looting from around the country and saw the same black outfits and, in some cases, the same masks. He decided to go to a protest dressed like that himself, to figure out what was really going on. He expected to find white supremacists who wanted to help re-elect President Trump by stoking fear of Black people. What he discovered instead were true believers in “insurrectionary anarchism.” . . .

Mr. Quinn discovered a thorny truth about the mayhem that unfolded in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Minneapolis. It wasn’t mayhem at all.

While talking heads on television routinely described it as a spontaneous eruption of anger at racial injustice, it was strategically planned, facilitated and advertised on social media by anarchists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial justice. In some cities, they were a fringe element, quickly expelled by peaceful organizers. But in Washington, Portland and Seattle they have attracted a “cultlike energy,” Mr. Quinn told me.

Don’t take just Mr. Quinn’s word for it. Take the word of the anarchists themselves, who lay out the strategy in Crimethinc, an anarchist publication: Black-clad figures break windows, set fires, vandalize police cars, then melt back into the crowd of peaceful protesters. When the police respond by brutalizing innocent demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and rough arrests, the public’s disdain for law enforcement grows. It’s Asymmetric Warfare 101. Continue reading “”

They clutch that necklace and have a case of the vapors over that .50 cal rifle, then completely disregard the guy in the pick-up holding an M60 machinegun right behind it.
You don’t find those at your local gun store, so the stupidity of the people making this piece of propaganda is readily evident.

#1, Gun violence is an issue no one can avoid any longer.
This is why I carry a gun!
#2, Would Lanza have ever come up with this disgusting, perverse courage to walk into that school if he didn’t have an AR-15?
Murphy is attributing an ability to the rifle to have influenced Lanza. This is the old medieval superstition of The Deodand, where a thing, an inanimate object has moral responsibility and the capacity to exert mental and physical control over people.

As we see, there are people who today still believe in crap-for-brains BS, or think they can pander to those who do.

Sen. Chris Murphy: Gun Violence Is An Issue ‘No One Can Avoid Any Longer’

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy spoke with Boston Public Radio on Friday about his new book that examines what he says is the American failure to address gun violence. Murphy was elected to the U.S. Senate a month before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, when 20 children between the ages of 6 and 7, and six adults, were shot dead by Adam Lanza.

“This easy access to weapons of mass destruction is probably the simplest and most accurate explanation of the mass shooting epidemic,” Murphy said. “Would Adam Lanza have ever come up with this disgusting, perverse courage to walk into that school if he didn’t have an AR-15?”……………….

 

Joe Biden is retired
The campaign has called nine early press lids this month

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called another early morning press lid at 9:20 a.m. on Thursday, leaving strategists and reporters wondering what the hell is going on. It was the ninth time this month that Biden had no public events on schedule and thus told the press before lunchtime that they would not be needed for the rest of the day.

It’s downright bizarre that a campaign would squander nine perfectly good days that could be spent on the trail just two months out from the election. What was Biden doing during this time instead? Sitting at home with his wife in Wilmington and hopping on the occasional Zoom event? Sam Stein, who is a Daily Beast reporter and purportedly not a campaign spokesperson, insisted that Biden must have been prepping for Tuesday’s debate against Trump. But even Hillary Clinton, who was blasted for being ‘over-prepared’ for the first debate in 2016, only started lightening her campaign schedule the week prior. Debate prep thus hardly comes close to explaining Biden’s subdued September.

If we compared Biden’s recent campaign schedule to the supposedly standard 40-hour work week (full time employees in the US actually work about seven hours longer than that, on average), we’d have even more reason to be concerned. From August 31 to September 6, Biden called an early lid three times and was out in public campaigning for just over 34 hours. From September 7 to 13, he again called three early lids and was out on the trail about 35 hours. He made up some slack in the third week of September, putting in 65 hours on the trail. But so far this week, he’s only been out and about for just over 24 hours and has already called two early lids. It seems like a bad sign that Biden is campaigning for an office that requires brutally long working hours and can’t even keep up with the average American worker while campaigning. Perhaps it would be fairer to compare him to the average American retiree? Obama only slept for about five hours each night while in office, and Trump sleeps about four. Could Biden’s physical health be as troublesome to his campaign as his mental health seems to be?

Perhaps Biden’s frequent rest stops are an extension of his campaign’s strategy to ‘never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’. They opted to keep him locked in the basement during the early months of the pandemic while Trump held daily press conferences about the coronavirus. It worked for a short time, with Biden taking a comfortable lead in many swing states, but since then the polls have tightened. Biden risks falling into the same trap that Hillary Clinton did in 2016 when she got too comfortable with the idea that Trump would talk his way out of victory. She took for granted voters in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. They responded by casting their ballots for her opponent. Will voters in 2020 feel similarly snubbed when they find out Biden spent more than a third of his month on the couch?

I wish

Some Senate Democrats Consider Boycotting SCOTUS Confirmation Hearing

At least two Democrats on the powerful Senate panel that will soon oversee the confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump’s forthcoming Supreme Court nominee remain on the fence about whether they’ll attend the televised meetings.

Senate Judiciary Committee members Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told Newsweek they’re uncertain if they’ll participate in the several days of public hearings expected for mid-October, signaling they may boycott the confirmation process in an apparent snub to Republicans moving at breakneck pace to fill the vacancy on the nation’s highest court before Election Day.

“We’ll see,” Coons said. “My gut inclination is this is the shortest time in American history, the closest to an election—ever—that there’s been a nominee, and we’re given just two weeks to do what should take a month