Category: Crap For Brains

The Chump Effect
Progressive policies penalize those who play by the rules and shower benefits on those who don’t.

Last January, a small but telling exchange took place at an Elizabeth Warren campaign event in Grimes, Iowa. At the time, Warren was attracting support from the Democratic Party’s left flank, with her bulging portfolio of progressive proposals. “Warren Has a Plan for That” read her campaign T-shirts. The biggest buzz surrounded her $1.25 trillion plan to pay off student-loan debt for most Americans.

A man approached Warren with a question. “My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money [so that] she doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?”

“Of course not,” Warren replied.

“So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?”

A video of the exchange went viral. It summed up the frustration many feel over the way progressive policies so often benefit select groups, while subtly undermining others. Saving money to send your children to college used to be considered a hallmark of middle-class responsibility. By subsidizing people who run up large debts, Warren’s policy would penalize those who took that responsibility seriously. “You’re laughing at me,” the man said, when Warren seemed to wave off his concerns. “That’s exactly what you’re doing. We did the right thing and we get screwed.” Continue reading “”

I wonder if they know the street they’re playing in is a ‘two way’ street.

CNN Gets in on the List Game, Targeting ‘Enablers’ of Trump’s Election ‘Defiance’

In the past few days, Democrats and their allies in the #NeverTrump movement have started the ominous practice of compiling blacklists of Trump supporters or those who refuse to immediately trumpet Joe Biden’s contested and as yet unconfirmed victory in the November election. CNN, perhaps afraid of falling behind, ran a report listing every single Republican senator who has refused to congratulate Biden so far. At the bottom on the screen, the outlet singled out the president’s dastardly “enablers” who dared to stand up for Trump’s right to raise legal challenges in response to serious concerns about potential fraud.

On Tuesday, CNN published a list of 49 Republican senators guilty of the unspeakable crime of waiting for the final confirmed election results. The chyron screamed, “TRUMP’S DEFIANCE FUELED BY ENABLERS LIKE BARR, MCCONNELL, FOX.”

Continue reading “”

Social Elites Call for Dangerous Gun Data Changes

It seems antigun billionaires think there’s nothing a few dollars and manipulation of government data can’t fix. Arnold Ventures, ran by former Enron trader John and Laura Arnold, is a billionaire philanthropy organization that wants to save us from ourselves through their deep pockets. More specifically, they seek to restrict the freedom to keep and bear arms

Arnold Ventures wishes to paint a grim picture that firearms are an epidemic much like political activist and gun control billionaire Michael Bloomberg. John and Laura Arnold have commissioned the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to construct and convene a panel of medical professionals to organize a wishlist of dangerous and overreaching proposals. These demands are detailed in the Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure. With major changes possible in Washington, D.C., it is crucial to not only examine the large, sweeping gun control proposals but also to look at the less attention-grabbing proposals, like changing how the government collects, shares, and presents data. Gun control advocates in Congress are already turning to items on this wish list in their latest proposals, including the misleadingly titled, “ATF Improvement and Modernization Act.” Continue reading “”

When you read BS like this:

Robert B. Reich: Can Biden heal America when Trump and his allies don’t want it healed?

Remember he first wrote this:

And if you still think they are after anything but revenge, think again as he still is writing stuff like this:

Weaponizing the bureaucraps against political enemies seems to be a time honored tradition with demoncraps.

 

What do we do? The solution is simple. And so self evident it needs no further explanation. Of course, I haven’t said it would be easy.

Hating Your Mama Over Politics.

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Smartphones were introduced in 2007; social media soon followed. Whenever I talk to middle school and high school teachers, I hear the same thing: there is nothing that competes with the power of social media to socialize young people (or rather, un-socialize them) — and it is tearing these kids up inside. 

That’s young people — but what about the elderly woman who leaves her husband because he voted for Trump? What’s her excuse? What about the man in his twenties to cuts his mother off because she voted for Trump? What about the middle-aged man who turns family members against each other by going to holiday gatherings and not shutting his big fat mouth about how the “Demonrats” are going to be the death of us all?

What do we do about a person like this?:

Bandy X. Lee isn’t some nobody. She is a Yale University psychiatrist and holder of a master’s of divinity degree from Yale. And she believes that Trump supporters can only be persuaded to abandon their support for the sitting President of the United States by having some immense trauma visited upon them, along the lines of the firebombing of Dresden.

How does someone come to believe that their countrymen need to be treated that way — need to see their cities leveled! — because of their politics? Again, I remind you: this isn’t some fringe nut, but a Yale-trained psychiatrist and religious thinker. This is the kind of elite figure who will usher in soft totalitarianism because she does not think her fellow Americans are simply wrong, but evil.

This is how freedom fails. When parents let their children get their heads filled with the mush of marxist professors let loose in our schools, colleges and universities.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”—Ronald Reagan

Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.

Free speech, support for the Constitution, and even having a variety of friends are taking a hit on America’s campuses as college undergraduates appear to be adopting a “my way or the highway” attitude.

A new survey of campuses developing the nation’s future leaders shows an antagonistic approach by students to views they don’t agree with. And worse, a majority feel that they can’t express a view different from those of their professors.

The survey for Yale University’s William F. Buckley Program, provided to Secrets, is the latest to show the fading of thought diversity on campuses and shrinking support for the First Amendment and the Constitution overall. Continue reading “”

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ANONYMOUS SOURCING? all you need to know:
The New York Times’ “Anonymous”? The the “senior administration official” was actually just a staff guy out in the bureaucracy.

New York Times’ Miles Taylor Op-Ed Shows Everything Wrong With Anonymous Sources
If The New York Times was willing to lie about its anonymous source for their high-profile information operation, imagine the lies they’re willing to tell about all the other anonymous sources they use.

Two years after the New York Times published an op-ed from what they described as an anonymous, principled conservative “senior administration official,” it turned out to have been written by a low-level bureaucrat who later worked for tech giant Google and gave money to far-left Democrats.

Miles Taylor revealed he was the author of the highly hyped op-ed headlined “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” He claimed to secretly work to thwart Trump’s policy goals as the elected president of the United States.

While constitutional scholars worried about implications of such unaccountable thwarting of the will of the people, most media focused instead on identifying who “Anonymous” was. The New York Times assured readers that when it said “senior administration official,” it meant someone “in the upper echelon of an administration.”

Not A Senior Administration Official
People took seriously the New York Times’ claim that the anonymous writer was in the upper echelon of an administration. In “13 people who might be the author of The New York Times op-ed,” CNN followed the New York Times’ lead by offering the names of actual senior administration officials, such as Don McGahn, Dan Coats, Kellyanne Conway, Kirstjen Nielsen, John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, James Mattis, Nikki Haley, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump. Chris Cillizza also suggested it might be Fiona Hill or Melania Trump.

He also wrote of the Times, “They aren’t publishing an anonymous op-ed from just anyone in the Trump administration. They especially aren’t publishing one that alleges a near-coup … If some midlevel bureaucrat in the Trump administration comes to the Times — or has an intermediary reach out to the Times — asking to write a piece like this one without their name attached to it, the answer would be an immediate ‘no.’” He added:

Given all of that, it’s telling that the Times was willing to extend the cloak of anonymity to this author — especially, again, because of the stakes and the target. This is not a decision made lightly. That the decision was made to publish it should tell you that this isn’t some disgruntled mid-to-upper manager buried in the bureaucracy. This is a genuine high-ranking official. A name most people who follow politics — and maybe some who don’t — would recognize. The Times simply wouldn’t do what it did for anything short of a major figure in Trump world.

In fact, they were willing to do it for a very low-level political appointee. Taylor has been billed as “chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security,” but he didn’t have even that position that nobody knew existed when he wrote the op-ed and was described as a senior administration official.

Continue reading “”

The Biden-Harris Antipathy toward Guns Portends Trouble for Law Enforcement
Thankfully, under our system of federalism, state legislatures can ward off such executive overreach.

It comes as no surprise former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are campaigning on promises “to end our gun-violence epidemic.” The leftward drift of the Democratic Party on most policy questions, including lawful firearm ownership, has been made explicit in its 2020 party platform. The presidential nominee’s campaign “issues page” takes it several steps further, promising to pass or incentivize all manner of gun restrictions.

In addition to the lack of evidence supporting these initiatives and their dubious constitutionality they all share one principal problem: The federal government — the helm of which Joe Biden seeks to occupy — has very little authority in this domain. In order to accomplish these policy aims, state and local law-enforcement agencies would need to be pressed into service.

Biden has already had his wrist slapped in this regard. His website touts his “shepherding” of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Among other provisions, the bill required that local chief law enforcement officers (CLEOs) perform background checks on prospective firearm purchasers.

Jay Printz, sheriff of Ravalli County, Mont., brought suit against the United States, stating that the federal government had no authority to compel state and local officials to execute federal law. In Printz v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, holding that despite the increasingly expansive interpretation of the “necessary and proper” clause, Congress cannot enjoin state officials to do its bidding. As a result, the mandate was subsequently ejected from the Brady Bill.

Harris’s understanding of the Second Amendment within our system of federalism is even more stunted. As the attorney general of California, she signed on to an amicus brief claiming that governments have complete authority to wholly ban handguns — an assertion that has been repeatedly rejected by courts and historians alike. During her presidential run in 2019, she promised to enact her preferred elements of gun control via executive orders, none of which were within the realm of executive control. Paradoxically, she is seeking to leave the one body that could enact substantive reform without so much as ceremonially filing legislation to do what she is promising. Continue reading “”

Coyotes Comment Confuses Trump Haters

During Thursday night’s Presidential debate, President Trump claimed — correctly — that coyotes have taken unaccompanied children across the border. “Coyotes,” of course, is a common term for people who illegally smuggle humans into the U.S. Everyone knows that, right? Apparently not. In fact, progressive social media blew up after he made that comment, because everything Trump says is stupid or something.

Moderator Kristen Welker had asked him about 545 illegal children whose parents can’t be found. Here is Trump’s full response:

“These children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they used to use them to get into our country.” 

Granted, Trump isn’t the most fluent of speakers, so Joe Biden took it as his cue to show Trump’s supposed ignorance:

“Coyotes didn’t bring them over, their parents were with them. They got separated from their parents, and it makes us a laughingstock, and violates every notion of who we are as a nation.”

It’s true that the vast majority of illegal children come with family members. However, some smugglers, aka “coyotes,” do smuggle children, often with heartbreaking results.

Like the three-year-old boy whom Border Patrol agents found alone and crying in a cornfield near the border. Or the two-year-old girl — two years old! — whom smugglers left at the riverbank with just her name and a phone number on her T-shirt.

But some liberal Twitter users thought that the President was being racist or just ignorant, since Trump Derangement Syndrome controls their every thought.

Like David Hogg, the cream of Hah-vahd, who accused Trump of “xenophobia.” Why? Because “immigrant parents” are the “coyotes.”

He has no clue, does he?

 

So the “level of xenophobia is sickening?” The level of Hogg’s ignorance is staggering.

One Twitter user attempted to educate him. I’m not sure it would’ve made a difference with Hogg, however. The Trump Derangement is strong with that one.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. “Coyotes” are human smugglers; in Central America they call them “Polleros.” Human trafficking is controlled by violent cartels; many immigrants are raped, beaten, or even left behind to die.”

But Hogg the Irrelevant at least correctly identified these smugglers as human. However, lots of Trump haters across the Twitterverse thought that the President referred to the animal. Or maybe they thought Trump was talking about this guy? Who knows what goes on in their fevered brains?

coyotes Continue reading “”

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.