Category: Deceit O’ The Day

Just 3 Percent of Afghan Evacuees in U.S. Are Special Immigrant Visa Holders.

During contentious testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed that only “approximately three percent” of the 60,000 Afghan evacuees already brought to the United States are individuals who possess special immigrant visas (SIVs).

The majority of Afghans who qualified for SIVs are people who worked with our military as interpreters and therefore placed themselves in grave danger if and when the Taliban returned to power.

As additional background, the U.S. military recruited Afghans to assist U.S. forces, and “part of that pitch when asking Afghans to trust us and put their lives on the line for us was that if this day ever came, we would do right by them and bring them out,” Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), a combat veteran, explained earlier this month. “That was part of that promise — that we will not leave you behind. That was implicit in the legislation establishing Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan allies, and that was conveyed by folks on the ground to those who chose to work with us.”

As of May, 90 percent of the 20,000 Afghans who worked with U.S. troops and diplomats had applied for SIVs, according to government figures reported by NBC.

“When their family members are included, the pool of Afghans in the SIV program was at least 70,000 and probably higher, according to refugee advocacy groups,” NBC added.

Mayorkas’s full statement yesterday about these appallingly low numbers reads:

Of the over 60,000 individuals who have been brought into the United States [from Afghanistan]—and I will give you approximate figures and I will verify them, approximately 7 percent have been United States citizens. Approximately 6 percent have been lawful permanent residents. Approximately 3 percent have been individuals who are in receipt of the special immigrant visas. The balance of that population are individuals whose applications have not yet been processed for approval who may qualify as SIVs and have not yet applied, who qualify or would qualify—I should say—as P-1 or P-2 refugees who have been employed by the united states government in Afghanistan and are otherwise vulnerable afghan nationals, such as journalists, human rights advocates, et cetera.

Between incoherent, haphazard border policies, and this dereliction of duty, Mayorkas seems more inept each day.

I’ve written multiple times on this troubling situation. It is yet another betrayal of America’s allies by the Biden administration.

Demoncraps were going to sneak in a new immigration amnesty for illegal aliens by putting it in a appropriation bill that can be passed by a simple majority vote of ‘reconciling’ the differences of a bill supposedly already passed by both houses of Congress.

Senate parliamentarian deals blow to Democrats’ immigration plan

Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on Sunday dealt a significant blow to Democrats’ plan to provide 8 million green cards as part of a sweeping spending package, warning it doesn’t comply with tight rules that determine what can be in the bill.

MacDonough’s guidance, a copy of which was obtained by The Hill, likely closes the door to Democrats using the spending bill to provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants.

MacDonough, in her guidance, called the Democratic plan “by any standard a broad, new immigration policy.”

“The policy changes of this proposal far outweigh the budgetary impact scored to it and it is not appropriate for inclusion in reconciliation,” she wrote in the ruling obtained by The Hill.

Democrats pitched MacDonough earlier this month on their plan to use the $3.5 trillion spending bill to provide 8 million green cards for four groups of immigrants: “Dreamers,” temporary protected status (TPS) holders, agricultural workers and essential workers. Getting legal permanent resident status allows an individual to eventually apply for citizenship if they can meet other qualifications.

Continue reading “”

If this is happening in the U.K., why would you think it’s not happening here as well?

Hyping the Covid Burden on Hospitals.

A Doctor Writes: The NHS Is Concealing Important Information from the Public

On Thursdays, the NHS release the weekly summary data in relation to Covid patients. Normally this is a more granular version of the daily summaries – it has some hospital level detail and figures on non-Covid workload for comparison. Usually interesting but not especially informative.

Yesterday was an exception. Placed down at the bottom of the page, almost like a footnote, was a “Primary Diagnosis” Supplement. Graph One shows the information contained in that spreadsheet. I find it astonishing. In essence, it shows that since June 18th, the NHS has known its daily figures in relation to ‘Covid inpatients’ were unreliable at best and deliberately untrue at worst.

The Yellow bars are what the NHS has been informing the nation were Covid inpatients. The Blue bars are the numbers of inpatients actually suffering from Covid symptoms – the difference between the two are patients in hospital who tested positive for Covid but were being treated for something different – where Covid was effectively an incidental finding but not clinically relevant.

For example, on July 27th, the total number of beds occupied by Covid patients was reported as 5,021. However, until today, we were not permitted to know that only 3,855 of those were actually admitted with Covid as the primary diagnosis. There has been a fairly consistent overestimate of the true number by about 25% running back to mid June – figures before that date are ‘not available’.

Why does this matter?

Well in one way it doesn’t matter very much. Whether the burden of Covid inpatients is 5% of the available beds or 3.5%, isn’t massively significant – it’s still a relatively small proportion. NHS managers are already arguing that even patients with Covid being treated for another condition still need isolation procedures and present an extra burden on the system. They may argue that the NHS is still under strain from staff absences, stress levels and the waiting list backlog – so it doesn’t really matter if the published figures are somewhat inaccurate.

But it matters hugely.

Firstly, it clearly shows that the NHS has been exaggerating the burden of Covid on hospitals by 25% since at least the June 18th and almost certainly for longer. All the senior NHS leaders and politicians quoting the number of Covid inpatients for the last six weeks have been painting a seriously exaggerated picture, significantly worse than the true position. Were they in ignorance about the true numbers, or were they deliberately misleading the public?

Continue reading “”

Question O’ The Day.
So was Milley lying to Trump, or was he actually that clueless?

General Milley told Trump the George Floyd protests were no big deal.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley dismissed the George Floyd riots as “penny packet protests” — insisting they weren’t an insurrection because the mobs only “used spray paint,” according to a new book.

The under-fire general — accused of going behind President Donald Trump’s back to contact his Chinese counterpart — wildly downplayed the riots when Trump raised fears they were “burning America down,” according to Fox News excerpts from the new book, “Peril.”

“Mr. President, they are not burning it down,” he told the alarmed commander-in-chief, according to authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

“They used spray paint, Mr. President, that’s not an insurrection,” he told Trump.

It was not immediately clear when the conversation happened, but violent, fiery protests broke out in cities across the US soon after Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020.

New York City saw mass looting and fires in the street, including torched police vehicles, while other cities saw deadly shootings within days, and thousands of National Guard members were ultimately deployed in at least 15 states, Fox News also noted.

Milley, however, gestured to a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln as he tried to dismiss Trump’s clear fears over the violence.

“We’re a country of 330 million people. You’ve got these penny packet protests,” he said, using a term for something insignificant, according to the book being published Sept. 21.

Milley insisted it was not an issue for the US military — and instead said the protests were understandable given systemic racism, according to the Fox excerpts.

“That’s pent up in communities that have been experiencing what they perceive to be police brutality,” Milley reportedly told Trump.

But when the Jan. 6 Capitol riot happened, Milley believed it “was indeed a coup attempt and nothing less than ‘treason,’” the book said.

He feared that Trump might be looking for a “Reichstag moment” and believed the attack “so unimagined and savage, [it] could be a dress rehearsal for something larger,” the authors wrote.

Milley’s spokesperson told Fox News that his office was not commenting on the book.

Biden Urges Action on Climate Change: ‘We Don’t Have Much More Than 10 Years, For Real’

After decades of failed climate predictions, one would think the president of the United States would steer clear of making one. But this week, President Biden did just that when discussing what he claims is a global climate crisis.

While out West touring wildfire-ravaged areas, Biden tried to sell some of the climate change measures tucked into spending packages but which “appear increasingly at risk,” according to The New York Times.

“A drought or a fire doesn’t see a property line,” he said during at a stop at a federal renewable energy laboratory. “It doesn’t give a damn for which party you belong to. Disasters aren’t going to stop. That’s the nature of the climate threat. But we know what we have to do. We just need to summon the courage and the creativity to do it.”

He spoke of goals like investing in a modernized electric grid, electric busses, charging stations, and more.

“When I rejoined the Paris Climate Accord after we had been pulled out of it, the goal set when our last administration, the Obama-Biden administration, when that was set, they were set that we had more time. We don’t have the time now. The goals are different because the necessity is there. We don’t have a lot of time. We don’t have much more than 10 years for real,” he said.

No matter how urgent Biden believes the “climate crisis” is, that doesn’t change the fact that such predictions and warnings have been notoriously wrong over the years.

In a 2019 column, the late Walter Williams recalled just some of them.

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.

In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable […] By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” (Townhall)

The major difference between predictions made in the past and those of today is how much more gullible Americans are now, Williams argued, meaning we’ll spend into oblivion to combat climate change. “The only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free,” he said.

Forbes Deletes Article by Education Expert Asserting That Forcing Children to Wear Masks Causes Psychological Trauma

Forbes deleted an article written by an education expert who asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks was causing psychological trauma after the piece began to go viral.

The article (archived here) was written by Zak Ringelstein, who has a a PhD in education from Columbia University and founded Zigadoo, an educational and development app aimed at helping children.

Ringelstein explains how he worked hard to remove standardized testing from schools but that this was derailed when the pandemic began, a process that “transformed the American public education system into something unrecognizable: a system of restrictions and mandates far more repressive than standardized testing ever was.”

Ringelstein attacked the notion that “kids are resilient” and can overcome the onerous COVID rules imposed on them by asserting, “Masks and social distancing induce trauma and trauma at a young age is developmentally dangerous, especially for children who are experiencing trauma in other parts of their lives.”

He went further, noting how the new measures were creating classrooms full of lonely, atomized kids.

Continue reading “”

It is always someone else’s fault with demoncraps

Right on Cue, the President’s Mistakes Are Our Fault Again

You can tell a Democrat is president, because we’re starting to see pieces blaming “us” for his mistakes. In The Atlantic a couple of weeks ago, Tom Nichols wrote that “Afghanistan Is Your Fault.” “American citizens,” Nichols suggested, “will separate into their usual camps and identify all of the obvious causes and culprits except for one: themselves.” Today, Max Boot makes the same argument in the Post. “Who’s to blame for the deaths of 13 service members in Kabul?” he asks. Answer: “We all are.”

This is of a piece with the tendency of journalists and historians to start muttering about how the presidency is “too big for one man” when the bad president in question is a Democrat. Under these terms, Republicans just aren’t up to the job, while Democrats are the victims of design or modernity or of the public being feckless. Last year, coronavirus was Trump’s fault. Now, it’s the fault of Republican governors and the unvaccinated (well, only some of the unvaccinated).

Still, this has happened pretty quickly with Joe Biden. Usually, it takes a couple of years before the press starts to sound like a bunch of hippies sitting around a fire saying, “you know, in a sense, you’re me and I’m you, and all of us are we — and so when the president makes a mistake, it’s really, like, the universe making a mistake, isn’t it? And, y’know, we’re in the universe, so we are the presidency. That’s democracy, man.”

The FDA did NOT grant full approval to the Pfizer shots

You may have heard that the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot received FDA approval this past Monday.  Politicians, national health officials, and journalists are breathless with excitement about how this approval will finally induce the remaining “vaccine-hesitant” into stepping forward to receive their jab.  The FDA even has a press release on its website about it.

There’s just one problem.

If you read the actual letters that the FDA sent to Pfizer on August 23, 2021, you’ll see that the FDA did no such thing.  In the sense that the term “FDA approval” is generally understood, this drug is not approved by the FDA.  It is still under EUA (Emergency Use Authorization).  It is still an experimental drug.

The FDA sent two letters.  The first one was a letter of BLA (Biologics License Application) approval, and the second was a letter of EUA extension to COMIRNATY.

The BLA approval letter approves Pfizer’s application for a license to label its COVID-19 drug with the brand name COMIRNATY.  This letter also spells out the terms and requirements for nine additional clinical trials over five years, and yearly status reports, to study the acknowledged occurrences of myocarditis and pericarditis that have followed the administering of the Pfizer shots.  This license to label and manufacture is not a full approval of the drug, which clearly is still subject to many years of clinical trials.

The EUA extension letter extends the term of the EUA for the current drug and authorizes (licenses) the experimental use of the brand-name drug COMIRNATY.  In the first paragraph on page 2, this letter references the license approval letter.  In the second paragraph on page 2, the August 12 EUA is re-issued to include the name-branded drug in the emergency use authorization, and to add “language regarding warnings and precautions related to myocarditis and pericarditis.”  In the last paragraph on page 4, the EUA nature of the drugs is re-iterated, and COMIRNATY is additionally authorized for use for individuals aged 12 through 15 years.

The mRNA gene therapy shots are still experimental.  Mandating them is still wrong — by a wide variety of ethical standards.

Dr. Meryl Nass, M.D. found the truths that the FDA buried in the blather of these letters and offers a theory about why it was done this way.  The drug-manufacturers were granted immunity from liability for the drugs produced under the EUAs.  The granting of the license re-applies the customary liability for injury and death caused by the product.  Pfizer, the health officials, and the politicians get to take a fictitious victory lap for the “approval,” while Pfizer-BioNTech continues to stealthily enjoy immunity from product liability because there are many millions of the unlicensed doses on the shelves and in the manufacturing pipeline that will be administered first.  The licensed version will not arrive on shelves or be jabbed into arms for many months to come.

Of great concern, considering the factual content of the FDA EUA letters to Pfizer, is the breezy way the press release on the FDA website repeatedly uses the words “approve” and “approval” in reference to the Pfizer drug.  If only there were a word for intentionally saying things to the public that do not match reality…

COMIRNATY seems like an unusual name for anything, much less a cutting-edge-technology gene therapy.  Out of idle curiosity, I ran the name through an anagram solver.  For a result, it gave TIROMANCY, which is divination or prophecy by examining how curds form during the coagulation of cheese.  How apropos.  That’s something I’m willing to try for forecasting the results of the next election!

‘Stupid is as Stupid does’

Scoop: Investigation finds fired Tennessee vaccine official mailed dog muzzle to self.

A Tennessee investigation found evidence that the state’s fired vaccine chief, Michelle Fiscus, purchased a dog muzzle that she previously claimed someone had mailed in an attempt to intimidate her.

Why it matters: Fiscus, who denied sending herself the muzzle in a Monday tweet, has characterized her firing as a political move driven by Republican state officials after she shared a memo citing state law about whether adolescents can seek medical care, including a COVID vaccine, without their parents’ permission.

  • Fiscus and her husband, Brad, had said in multiple interviews, including with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, that the muzzle was sent anonymously to her state office through Amazon shortly before her firing.
  • “Someone wanted to send a message to tell her to stop talking, they thought it would be a threat to her,” Brad Fiscus told the Tennessean.

Details: The Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security found through a subpoena that the Amazon package containing the muzzle traced back to a credit card in Fiscus’ name, according to an investigation report obtained by Axios.

  • When asked by investigators, Fiscus provided information for an Amazon account in her name. It was a different account than the one used to purchase the muzzle.
  • The investigation concluded that “the results of this investigation that purchases from both Amazon accounts were charged to the same American Express credit card in the name of Dr. Michelle D. Fiscus.”
  • Fiscus told investigators she felt the muzzle was a threat and she should “stop talking about vaccinating people.” The investigation was launched after health department official Paul Peterson alerted the Department of Safety about the apparent threat to Fiscus.

The backdrop: Fiscus was fired amid criticism from Republican lawmakers who were upset about the health department’s efforts to convince teenagers to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

  • Republican lawmakers criticized Fiscus on multiple fronts, highlighting a memo she sent explaining how providers in Tennessee could vaccinate some teenage patients without a parent’s approval.
  • The health department released a memo last month stating Fiscus was fired for poor interpersonal communication skills, ineffective management and attempting to steer state money to a nonprofit she founded.
  • Fiscus denied the allegations in the memo and shared years of sterling performance evaluations. She claims she was fired for attempting to do her job well.

What they’re saying: In a statement distributed by her husband, Fiscus said she was not aware of the report until Axios shared it.

  • “We have now learned that a second Amazon account had been established under my name using what appears to be a temporary phone, possibly in Washington state,” Fiscus said.
  • “I have asked Homeland Security for the unredacted report so that I can investigate further and am awaiting their response,” she added.
  • Fiscus did not discuss the use of the American Express card in her name.

‘Fudd for Chipman’ Democrat Ploy to Manipulate Low-Information Gun Owners

“Guest view: David Chipman can unite us on Second Amendment issues,” an August 5 testimonial appearing in, among other outlets, the Montana Standard, declares. The author is Dave Stalling, a self-described “past president of the Montana Wildlife Federation, … gun owner, former Force Recon Marine and avid hunter who lives in Missoula.”

The only surprise is that such a piece hasn’t appeared earlier. Gun owners have long been subjected to sudden appearances of Democrat citizen disarmament enablers trying to pass themselves off as fellow “tribe” members when there is a political goal to be attained. In the last presidential election, two groups tried to make their mark, “Sportsmen and Sportswomen for Biden — a coalition of more than 50 prominent hunters and anglers from across the country, who have come together to endorse Joe Biden for President of the United States,” and the Giffords’-bankrolled Gun Owners for Safety.

Yeah, they’re Fudds for Biden. If you’re inclined to take offense at that word, hold on a second: It’s not a pejorative for all hunters and sport shooters – just the ones who throw their fellow gun owners under the bus and support citizen disarmament edicts that don’t impact their hobbies. But a Fudd is what Stalling proves himself to be, particularly when he accuses Donald Trump Jr. of lying when he says Montana Sen. Jon Tester is not “staunchly pro-Second Amendment.” He’s not.

Tester’s a prime example of a self-serving opportunist who recognized that he had to vote “pro-gun” in order to be elected in that state, and was allowed to get away with it by Democrat Party leadership because it served their purposes to have him advance the rest of the agenda. Revealingly, Tester showed his true nature when he voted to keep Post Offices “gun-free zones.” The last straw for NRA was Tester’s Supreme Court confirmation votes (for Kagan and Sotomayor, against Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) when they downgraded his one-time “A” to a “D.”

“As a gun owner, former ATF special agent, and internationally recognized gun safety expert, David Chipman is hardly ‘anti-Second Amendment,’” Stalling continues. “As a Montana citizen, gun owner, former Force Recon Marine, and hunter, I fully support Chipman’s nomination, and urge my fellow Montanans to do the same.”

“Hardly”? And “recognized” by who? As for being a gun owner, so is Dianne Feinstein – who was reported to have a concealed carry permit that you or I couldn’t get to save our lives –literally. What does that prove? With all the evidence of his personal penchant for infringements that’s been amassed to the contrary (just enter the search term “Chipman” in the AmmoLand search bar), you wonder what more the guy has to do.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
If people are suspicious of Islam, Rizwan Wadan could fight that by confronting, rather than perpetuating, the perception that claims regarding Islam being peaceful are disingenuous and based on an incomplete reading of the relevant texts. Instead, he has produced yet another deceptive endeavor that is just going to create more of the “Islamophobia,” in the sense of suspicion of Islam, that he claims to be trying to stamp out.

Star Wars Filmmaker Makes Documentary Slamming ‘Islamophobia,’ Ends Up Showing Why There Is ‘Islamophobia’

Here’s something you’ve all been waiting for: A Muslim filmmaker has produced a documentary hitting “Islamophobia.” Rizwan Wadan, who was part of the technical crew for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Churchill and The Favourite, has directed a documentary entitled Error In Terror about “Islamophobia,” and is now traveling around with it, spreading peace and tolerance. The only problem is that Error in Terror itself only reinforces why some people are suspicious of Islam in the first place and wary regarding its growth in Western countries.

The problem starts with the term itself. “Islamophobia” is a fraught word, because while it is thrown around all the time these days, few of those who use it to defame and smear others bother to explain what they mean by it. It is most commonly used for two quite distinct phenomena: vigilante crimes against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary. Islamic advocacy groups and their leftist allies have been insisting for years that such analysis, too, constituted “Islamophobia,” and continue to try to drive such analysis outside the bounds of acceptable discourse by conflating it with those attacks on innocent Muslims.

Rizwan Wadan doesn’t appear to take any pains to explain what he means by the term, either. According to a report from Britain’s ITV News Saturday, Wadan is “a talented filmmaker who has worked on blockbusters including Star Wars and The Favourite,” and has now “produced a hard-hitting film which highlights terrorism and Islamophobia in the UK. It is part of his Error In Terror campaign, which he is bringing to different parts of the country to inspire communities and effect change.”

“Growing up as a Muslim, living in the UK,” Wadan explained, “I’ve seen our relationships within the communities deteriorate. And that’s kind of happened – from my perspective – through how Islam and Muslims have been perceived. A lot of that has come through our representation in films, in the news, in newspapers.”

Now come on, Rizwan. Honestly, when did you last see a negative portrayal of Muslims in films, in the news, or in newspapers, except in the case of jihad terror attacks in which the identity of the perpetrator was impossible to conceal? The international media goes to immense lengths to make sure that no one gets a negative view of Islam or Muslims.

One notorious example of this is the fact that in the British media, gangs of Muslims who sexually abused and exploited thousands of British girls for years were universally referred to as “Asians,” despite the protests of non-Muslim Asian groups and the fact, which some of the rapists openly confessed, that this activity was based on Islamic principles.

Continue reading “”

A Teacher’s Union is Suing a Mother For Repeated Attempts to Know What Her Kindergartener is Learning

On Monday, Nicole Solas, a Rhode Island mom whose daughter will be going into kindergarten, was sued by chapters of the National Education Association (NEA) for submitting multiple requests to find out what her daughter was learning when it comes to lesson plans on concepts such as transgenderism and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

The ‘epidemic’ is not that there are committees of vigilance roaming the streets – a blatant canard since, if true, would likely reduce crime – but that there are criminal street gangs roaming the streets of major metropolitan cities, shooting up each other’s members (as well as a lot of unintended targets) with the membership demographic causing the majority of this; black men, ages 14 to 35.

The ACLU Claims the Second Amendment Is Racist, But Gun Control Has the Real Record on Systemic Oppression
To date, black Americans are more likely than any other group to suffer the adverse impacts of gun control laws.

The ACLU fired shots on Twitter last month, claiming that the Second Amendment is “racist” alongside an article and podcast episode that posed the question “Do Black People Have the Right to Bear Arms?”

The article, written by Ines Santos, claimed that gun violence in America — which she labeled an “epidemic” caused by widespread “vigilante” firearm ownership — negatively impacts black people because of racially discriminatory policing. “What is absent in the intense debates on gun rights in America is the intrinsic anti-blackness of the unequal enforcement of gun laws,” she wrote.

Santos went on to say that racism determined the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Bill of Rights.

These are hefty charges worth examining. Let’s break down the claims made here and review the history.

Continue reading “”

The Mythological White Supremacist

Washington — We at The American Spectator call it “Kultursmog,” and it is the only kind of smog of which our friends on the left approve. Actually, they not only approve of Kultursmog, but they contribute to it. Kultursmog is that aspect of American culture that is utterly politicized, and it is politicized by the politics of the left. Its leading centers of pollution are Hollywood, California; New York City; Washington, D.C., and, increasingly, Silicon Valley. I had hoped that Silicon Valley, with its brave claims to libertarianism, might have escaped the pollutants of Kultursmog, but I was wrong. The lure of virtue flaunting proved too strong for the tycoons of Silicon Valley. Now they are taking it to outer space. Did you see that Jeff Bezos had hardly gotten his feet back on terra firma when he donated $100 million not to the Red Cross, not to the Little Sisters of the Poor, but to Van Jones, who is himself a leading smokestack of Kultursmog over at CNN.

Kultursmog is everywhere. It is in the books we read, the movies we attend, the songs we sing. It does not permeate our history, which is why the woke folk are so intent on tearing down our history, including statues of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and even Frederick Douglass. Can Martin Luther King Jr. be next?

I have made a career of sounding the alarm against the propaganda of the left, and just the other day, I caught the left extruding their propaganda into the public arena. They were using the obituary pages of The New York Times to spread their malign message. Is there no place they will not defile with politics?

One of the left’s favorite myths is that America is abundant with white supremacists and practitioners of something called the alt-right. I know. I, too, once thought the alt-right was a roadside direction or an indication a detour was ahead, but apparently it has something to do with the politics of a distinctly extremist variety. Advocates of the alt-right apparently tend to congregate at rural gas stations, usually in the dark of night. That is about all I know about it, but the writers at The New York Times claim to be highly agitated over it.

A couple of weeks back, William Regnery II, a man who supposedly “bankrolled” what the Times called “some of the leading organizations and figures behind the rise of the alt-right and championed efforts to win adherents to a modernized notion of white supremacy,” bit the dust. And do you know how the hysterics at the Times handled his passing? They devoted an entire half-page to him, complete with a picture of him standing with some young adjunct who looked understandably uneasy. The young man was wearing an ill-fitting suit, and he might have been more comfortable was he armed, but he was not. The recently deceased Regnery and I might have met years ago at some Republican function, for he was active in the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964. Or possibly, it was at a stamp collectors’ conference. I used to be an avid collector. At any rate, he is dead, and from the Times’s own information gathered for Regnery’s obit, it is clear that he never succeeded in any political endeavor, from his earliest Republican days to his days of aimless wanderings with fanatics.

BLUF:
Anti-gun researches will continue to use flawed methodology and bad data as long as a fawning media and gun control establishment continue to fuel any “research” with the “right” conclusion

How Anti-Gun Research Works

The objective world mistrusts most gun policy research because it’s clear the objective is to produce an anti-gun outcome rather than honest analysis. Politicians and professional activists claim the mantle of evidence but will ignore any findings that threaten their anti-gun agenda.

Anti-gun politicians continue to advocate for policies that the very researchers they champion have contradicted, if not found to be ineffective. Researchers and activists cherry-pick data, but they also cherry-pick which findings to use – even from a single study. Can you imagine if the same low threshold for credibility was applied to pro-gun findings?

Let’s try an exercise. Vermont – one of the safest states in the nation, one that had Permitless Carry for centuries – enacted a magazine capacity restriction in 2018. Let’s look at the violent crime rate in Vermont and the U.S using data from the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. The national violent crime rate decreased from 2018 to 2019 but the rate in Vermont increased – and even increased more than it had from 2017 to 2018.

Continue reading “”

The utter open hypocrisy of this Kabuki Theater is simply stunning.
For the entire length of the Trump presidency they were all adamant in their hate of all things Trump, calling his election illegitimate because it didn’t go their way. It again confirms that when they make an accusation, they’re projecting their own faults.

Image

When the ‘Fact-Checker’ gets it right back at them

PolitiFact Claims Joe Biden ‘Doesn’t Want to Ban Handguns,’ But Here Are His Actual Words.

Joe Biden has been pretty clear about his desire to ban handguns.

During his CNN town hall last week, Biden was asked, “So, how will you address gun violence, from a federal point of view, to actually bring about change and make our local cities safer?”

In his response, Biden told the woman who asked the question: “The idea you need a weapon that can have the ability to fire 20, 30, 40, 50, 120 shots from that weapon — whether it’s a — whether it’s a 9-millimeter pistol or whether it’s a rifle — is ridiculous. I’m continuing to push to eliminate the sale of those things…”

In response to the tweet from House Republicans declaring that Biden “says he wants to ban handguns,” PolitiFact claims “the clip doesn’t back up the GOP tweet, and the full transcript goes further to sink this claim.”

PolitiFact claims that the numbers cited by Biden “apply to assault-style firearms and high-capacity magazines. As recently as June, when Biden rolled out his strategy to bring down murders, he said he wants to ban both.”

“Experts disagree over what is or isn’t an assault weapon. States set different thresholds for what qualifies as a high-capacity magazine,” PolitiFact continued, before adding, “But regardless of the definition, neither term includes all handguns.”

Did anyone say Biden wants to ban all handguns? Nope. Yet, PolitiFact unwittingly admitted in its analysis that some handguns would be affected by Biden’s gun control proposal. So, does Biden want to ban handguns? He’s publicly indicated that he wants to ban some. There’s no doubt about that.

Yet, PolitiFact rated the claim that Biden wants to ban handguns as “False.” In fairness, they could have gotten away with rating the claim “Half True” because one could argue that the House GOP’s wording wasn’t clear, but they didn’t take Biden’s words out of context. They even showed the video of Biden’s response to the question. Biden may not have said he wanted to ban all handguns, but he clearly said he wants to ban some. Yet, PolitiFact disingenuously rated the claim false, which seems to imply that Biden never said he wanted to ban any handguns at all.