On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
– H. L. Mencken
JOE BIDEN: Asay-Luh-mo, Asylo offishers… En-over 100 cutting edge eshpecta-jeddy-spection machines! To stop Fentanyl komma-shass-ah-ah southwest border!” pic.twitter.com/Cf5vUdIXHp
— The First (@TheFirstonTV) January 28, 2024
The nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn’t that they are so distrustful of their government? They’re afraid they’ll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways.
-Sharron Angle
The American people can always be trusted to evaluate information and make their own judgments and decisions. When bureaucrats and partisan activists withhold data to advance a narrative, it erodes trust in our institutions. We must restore that trust. https://t.co/htPwMuk2qz
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 18, 2023
Samizdata quote of the day – ideological insanity edition
“There is an ironically neocolonial feel to the cultural elites’ absolution of Hamas. It is their indoctrination into the politics of identity that leads them to view Israel as the culpable adult in this relationship and the Palestinians as blameless children.
Critical-race-theory narratives about white privilege and brown victimhood have led to a situation where not only are whites demonised as powerful and destructive but also non-white people are patronised to an obscene degree as non-powerful and pathetic.
This hollow, pat explanation for every political event has now been cut-and-pasted on to the Middle East (despite the fact that Israel is not a ‘white’ country).
The end result? Both Israelis and Palestinians are denuded of their humanity, the former damned as the conscious authors of all ills, the latter reduced to the moral infants of world affairs, whom ‘nobody should blame’ even ‘for the things we do’, in Hamad’s words.
The anti-Israel elites take a far more racially paternalistic view of Palestinians than Israel does.”
– Brendan O’Neill, at Spiked in The absolution of Hamas
To ask the question is to answer it………
Quote O’ The Day:
“…, the current politicians who are in office are gutless.”
BLUF
America Is a Christian nation, founded on Christian beliefs and values. I urge you all to understand that, and I urge all of the gutless politicians nationwide to acknowledge it as well.
These values were earned and defended through the toughest of circumstances. They will not be forgotten, dismissed, or cast aside for the appeasement of the delusional left.
Why Can Everyone Celebrate Who They Are Except Christians?
It seems like every time you turn around there’s a new “month” being celebrated. In case you can’t keep track of them, here’s a list:
El Dorado County, California, wanted to celebrate Christian Heritage Month starting in July of 2024. In July of this year, the resolution passed by a vote of 4-1. However, in September it was rescinded because a group of liberals, atheists, and some in the Jewish community protested the proposed celebration. More on that later.
The month is celebrated by other communities across the nation in July, but it isn’t recognized as a national holiday. Why not?
As you look at the list of nationally celebrated months, it’s clear that not everyone agrees with the values that are being celebrated, yet still they are recognized. So why is it that so many sub-groups, as far as population numbers are concerned, get the approval, but the actual religion that the nation was founded on is cast aside?
A great argument for a national celebration can be found in the “Declaration of American Christian Heritage Month,” which was adopted by the Constitution Party of Pennsylvania (CPPA) on October 16, 2021.
The problem, in my opinion, is twofold. First, the current politicians who are in office are gutless. There is no reasonable explanation for why an American Christian Heritage Month isn’t on the national calendar. The second reason ties directly into the first. Every time the subject is brought up, it’s always attacked. Instead of pointing out the obvious and sticking to their guns, the politicians fold like a cheap suit.
All our liberties are due to men who, when their conscience has compelled them, have broken the laws of the land. —William Kingdon Clifford
Illinois Gun Owners Refusing to Register Their Firearms
Despite the “invitation” by the Illinois State Police to gun owners holding semi-automatic firearms that will become illegal to own on January 1, 2024 to register them, scarcely 4,600 of the more than 2.4 million holding FOID (firearms owner ID) cards have accepted the invitation.
The bill, which Illinois Governor JG Pritzker eagerly signed into law in January, was immediately challenged by numerous parties, including gun owners, gun dealers, and pro-Second Amendment political action groups. It bans the possession of more than 170 different types of semi-automatic weapons, but provides a “legacy” loophole.
That loophole opened on October 1, and, as of this writing, just 3,000 gun registrations have been received by the police, with another 1,600 “accessory” registrations. That’s out of a total of 2,415,481 gun owners holding ID cards.
The excuse provided by Illinois anti-gun pols was the Highland Park shooting on July 4, 2022, where a mental case (who should have been singled out under the background-check system but wasn’t) climbed a ladder onto a building overlooking the July 4 parade and opened fire.
He dressed in women’s clothing to avoid capture, which explains the lag between the shooting and his arrest.
The pols focused not on the shooter and his mental problems and the failure of the background-check system to rein him in, but instead on the millions of Illinoisans who weren’t at the parade and weren’t involved in the shooting.
Quote O’ The Day
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly consider it an act of war. – Glenn T. Seaborg
Math professors: Incoming students can’t even add fractions, subtract
Colleges add tutoring, remedial courses as freshmen struggle post-COVID lockdowns
Universities across the country are struggling to address incoming students’ poor math skills after many fell behind academically during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
More than ever before, professors say freshmen cannot answer basic high school mathematics problems such as subtracting a positive number from a negative number or adding two fractions, according to a recent report from the Associated Press.
“We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third,” Maria Emelianenko, chair of the George Mason University math department, told the Associated Press.
Emelianenko said new students’ math deficiencies have become such a “huge issue” that her northern Virginia university recently began a Math Boot Camp, and approximately 100 students chose to attend the week-long remedial program over the summer.
Other colleges and universities are seeing the same problem. Many first-year college students spent their 10th grade year – when algebra or geometry is typically taught – at home due to widespread, months-long lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools switched to virtual classrooms instead, but growing research indicates many students struggled with online learning and now lag behind academically.
At Temple University in Philadelphia, Professor Jessica Babcock told the AP she began noticing the problem last year when grading STEM major students’ tests in her intermediate algebra course:
The quiz, a softball at the start of the fall semester, asked students to subtract eight from negative six.
“I graded a whole bunch of papers in a row. No two papers had the same answer, and none of them were correct,” she said. “It was a striking moment of, like, wow — this is significant and deep.”
Before the pandemic, about 800 students per semester were placed into that class, the equivalent of ninth grade math. By 2021, it swelled to nearly 1,400.
“It’s not just that they’re unprepared, they’re almost damaged,” said Brian Rider, Temple’s math chair. “I hate to use that term, but they’re so behind.”
Many universities are trying to be proactive, offering remedial summer programs, expanding tutoring services and providing more office hours with professors, according to AP. Math professors say they are thinking about new ways to teach the subject, too, including more hands-on, in-class instruction.
They want us disarmed?
There Can Be No Negotiating on the Right to Arms — with Hate Groups or with Anyone
“Senate Majority Leader @SenSchumer is negotiating with the NRA to pass his priority bill – the SAFE Act, a cannabis banking legislation – with Section 10 added as a sweetener for the NRA-backed Senate Republicans,” Newtown Action Alliance tweeted (x’ed?) Monday. “We appreciate @SenJackReed working to modify the bill to ensure that regulators can warn banks about risky customers – like gun retailers. Congress should not be negotiating with the NRA, a terrorist group that is pushing its any guns to anyone everywhere agenda. Guns are the #1 killer of our children & gun deaths have increased 50% since the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy.”
That’s a lot of vitriol-drenched lies to unpack. Let’s start with NRA’s interest, which is passage of the Fair Access to Banking Act to protect against “banks, credit card companies, and other financial service providers [setting] terms of service that openly discriminate against lawful firearm-related commerce.” Gun owners who recall the days of Operation Chokepoint recall the offensive excesses – from financial ostracism of FFLs and the pejorative conflation equating them with purveyors of “Ponzi schemes” and “racist materials” to the ridiculous revelation that ATF’s banker was stiffing porn stars – pun intended. (Note: Those last two links go to the Internet Archive and may take a bit to load).
Democrat gun-grabber Jack Reed’s interest is in imposing Operation Chokepoint on steroids, this time by mandating Department of Precrime “snitchware” via “Merchant Category Codes” developed by a “progressive” bank affiliated with a leftist union that “rakes in millions from Dem campaigns, liberal orgs,” and has organized rallies and marched in solidarity with communists.
Suddenly motives are seeming less and less about “gun safety” and more and more about totalitarian citizen disarmament. So, let’s look at the last part of Newtown Action Alliance’s missive.
Congress should just impose such edicts and not include the largest lobby group representing millions of gun-owning citizens in its deliberations…? Leave them with no voice in what’s going to happen to their property — and to them if they don’t comply…?
Hypocrickets – That silence that ensues when the media hypocritically won’t cover something that doesn’t fit The Narrative™.–Kevin Baker
New York State recently cited Colonial laws to disarm ‘dissidents’ while attempting to justify their post-Bruen gun control legislation.
They are saying the quiet part out loud.
-Firearms Policy Coalition
Kabuki Theater
Rep. Don Beyer (So nice when they provide pictures for PID)
Democrats demand 1,000% excise tax on ‘assault weapons,’ high-capacity magazines
Democrats failed to move the same idea when they controlled the House last year
More than two dozen House Democrats put forward legislation Friday that would slap “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines with a 1,000% excise tax, a change that would raise the price of a $500 weapon to $5,000 in a bid to reduce access to guns across the country.
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., and 24 other House Democrats introduced the legislation Friday. It’s the second time Democrats have put forward the idea.
Beyer and 37 Democrats proposed the same idea last year when Democrats controlled the House, but it never moved.
The text of Beyer’s new bill was not out as of the weekend, and it was unclear if any changes were made from his 2022 version. His bill from last year imposed the tax on any magazine or related device that can accept more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
The same 1,000% tax would be imposed on any “semiautomatic assault weapon,” which last year’s bill defined as a semiautomatic rifle or pistol with a fixed magazine of 10 rounds or more or that have other various features.
Under that rule, a weapon that normally costs $2,000 would force customers to pay more than $20,000, a change Beyer argued last year could help “curb the epidemic of gun violence.”
“Congress must take action to stem the flood of weapons of war into American communities, which have taken a terrible toll in Uvalde, Buffalo, Tulsa and too many other places,” Beyer said then. “Again and again assault weapons designed for use on the battlefield have been used in mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, hospitals, churches, synagogues, malls, theaters, bars and so on.”
The National Rifle Association has argued gun control advocates invented the term “assault weapon” to “deliberately confuse the public and advance the political cause of gun control.” The NRA says the term “assault rifle” applies only to automatic weapons, while gun control advocates are looking to put controls on semi-automatic weapons.
Fully automatic weapons discharge rounds continuously while the trigger is pulled, and the NRA has said these weapons are used by the U.S. armed services but are not easily obtained by the public, unlike semi-automatic weapons that fire just a single round.
Beyer’s new bill was introduced a day after more than 100 Democrats told House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., they are “disappointed” that House GOP leaders haven’t moved any legislation this year to curb gun ownership in America.
“As Members of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, we call on you to schedule votes on gun violence prevention legislation as soon as possible this year,” they wrote in a public letter to McCarthy.
“Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America since 2020. Last year, 1,686 children were killed and another 4,485 were injured by gun violence,” the letter added. “Despite this preventable carnage, the House has yet to vote on even one gun violence prevention bill.”
Quote O’ The Day
That the leftist echo chamber in unison is doing everything it can to discredit the movie, the actor, the man who started the group by rescuing children and the group that rescues children should tell you something. They are over the target and laying down truth bombs right and left. The sound of leftist heads exploding…it’s a beautiful thing.
–Sheila Stokes
THE SOUND OF LEFTIST HEADS EXPLODING
One week ago a girlfriend, Christie and I went to go see the movie “The Sound of Freedom”. It really was quite an amazing movie. The story centers on two little children from Honduras, and how they came to be in the clutches of sex traffickers and their rescuer, Tim Ballard, a former Homeland Security officer. This was a long time ago, back when the government fought crime. Tim is now the person behind “Operation Underground Railroad” The movie covers Tim’s change in life mission, from taking down pedophiles to finding the children exploited by them.
A noble movie, right? I mean it’s true, not all of it, there were some creative liberties taken, and some characters were blurred, but many of the main ones are very much real and the names given to them in the movie are close enough that if you know them, you’d know who the were. O.U.R. really is rescuing children and I guess you could call it their mission statement is “G-d’s children are not for sale”.
What has been baffling is the media response to this! Shocking really. I mean how many times have we heard from the left that the latest gun control measure meant to take rights away from law abiding citizens, many of them parents, is “for the children”. I’m still not clear on how limiting parents ability to defend their children is to the benefit of the children but I’m not a brain rotted leftist, so there ya go.
