Category: Crap For Brains

The Double Standard About Gun Ownership

While looking at gun-related stories earlier, I came across one that asked people of different faiths if the American interest in firearms was idolatry. Now, as a Christian myself, I was curious to find what people thought.

I had my ideas of what I’d find, of course, but one of the responses just outright infuriated me.

See, while most of those they talked to about it recognized that there’s no actual worship of firearms, one person both failed to answer the actual question and managed to show just how idiotic they were on the topic itself. It was kind of impressive, really.

David Gardiner – Buddhist

David Gardiner is an associate professor in the Colorado College Religion Department, specializing in Buddhism and religions of China and Japan, and is co-founder and director of BodhiMind Center.

I believe the relationship many Americans have with guns is pathological. Not all gun owners idolize their possession, but those who do suffer from insecurity, paranoia, susceptibility to conspiracy theories, likely racism and other disorders. Similarly, some idolize the power of the military and police to keep our world and communities safe. Missing is a consensus to care for one another just as we care for ourselves. We have a violence fetish in America that profoundly damages our individual and collective well-being. As some bible scholars say, perhaps one source is the image of the angry, retributive God of the Hebrew bible that remains strong in our Christianity, despite Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek, to practice forgiveness. Regardless, we need to grow.

Now, first, I’m always amused when a non-Christian seems to try to lecture Christians in how to Christian correctly. Usually it’s atheists that try to do it, at least in my experience, but a Buddhist doing it doesn’t surprise me.

However, what really pisses me off is the first sentence in his response. “I believe the relationship many Americans have with guns is pathological,” Gardiner said.

Just how is it pathological? Our relationship with firearms, even if you’re susceptible to conspiracy theories or what have you, is not a pathology. Maybe the susceptibility is, but the relationship with guns? Hardly. 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.

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?”……………….

 

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

There’s no ‘anonymous sources’ for this
That is right from the horse’s ass.

The Biden campaign confirmed to The Daily Beast that the video was real, but claimed that Biden made the comments “jokingly.”

Bull. Every time some leftist, proggie opens their mouth and inserts their feet and then gets taken to task for their insults, they again open their pieholes and so often use the ‘it was just a joke‘ excuse that anyone with more than 2 functioning brain cells should realize that they’re lying again. And insulting us again by thinking we’ll believe their BS.

 

‘Utterly baffling’ Really? Are you kidding me, or do you think we’re stupid?
You introduce -intentionally, or even otherwise – the bug into an elderly populated nursing home environment and you’re ‘baffled’? Now, of the same attention can be paid to the Gubbernor of New York state and the mayor of New York City…………

‘Utterly baffling’: 76 vets die of Covid at soldiers home

They stormed the beaches at Normandy, liberated Nazi concentration camps and fought the Cold War in Korea and Vietnam only to die in their beds from a virus that infiltrated the veteran’s center in western Massachusetts that was their home.

But on Friday the loved ones of the 76 veterans who, starting in March, died from the coronavirus at the Holyoke Soldiers Home, received a measure of belated justice.

Former Superintendent Bennett Walsh, a Marine, and the home’s ousted medical director, Dr. David Clinton, were each charged with five counts of “wantonly or recklessly” causing or permitting bodily harm and five counts of neglect or mistreatment of an older or disabled person, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy announced.

“My heart goes out to the families that lost loved ones at the Holyoke Soldiers Home,” Healy said. “They risked their lives from Normandy to the jungles of Vietnam and to know that they died under these circumstances is truly shocking.”

Walsh, 50, and Clinton, 71, are accused of making the “disastrous decision” on March 27 to mix patients already displaying symptoms with healthy patients and accelerate the spread of Covid-19 through the center.

But the charges Healy announced stem specifically from the decision by the pair to place five asymptomatic veterans into what had been a dining area “a few feet apart” from four other vets who already had Covid-19. Continue reading “”

Kamala Harris to Appear Alongside Hanoi Jane.
The event comes one week after Biden hosted a veterans outreach roundtable.

The Biden campaign, which has bombarded President Donald Trump with attacks about his respect for U.S. soldiers, will be campaigning this weekend with Jane Fonda, a celebrity best known for fraternizing with enemy troops during the Vietnam War.

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is set to join Fonda at a Saturday virtual event held by progressive advocacy group Supermajority. The event—titled “Supercharge: Women All In”—will “bring together thousands of women to laugh, sing, dance, and celebrate women’s political power,” according to the group’s website.

Fonda traveled to North Vietnam in 1972 as part of an anti-war protest that saw her pose for photos with enemy troops on an anti-aircraft gun. The photo sparked outrage among Vietnam veterans, earning her the nickname “Hanoi Jane.” Fonda’s public appearances remain subject to controversy—a group of Ohio veterans called on the actress to donate her $83,000 speaking fee to the families of fallen soldiers ahead of a May appearance at Kent State University. Continue reading “”