Category: Scratch a Lib-Find a Tyrant

New Jersey Attorney General Platkin whines like a baby about gun owners

Platty-kins, Platty-kins, unconstitutional man.
Execute me a law as fast as you can.
Lie about it, double down on it, and mark it with a “D.”
Keep it on the books for Danielsen and me!

Well there you have it; the Attorney General of New Jersey’s official nursery rhyme. Just when the patriots thought that Matt “Stuart” Platkin couldn’t get any more swampy or whiney, he sends out this whiny little tweet over all his social media channels!

Okay Plattykins, we’re rest assured. Rest assured you and the rest of the swamp creatures are in over their heads. The awful law, allegedly written by Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (I highly doubt Danielsen has the mental capacity to write something like the “carry-killer” bill by himself) has hit a minor speed bump on its journey to be overruled. The AG should be well aware that this is just a procedural thing, and that the stay on the injunction of New Jersey’s law is likely going to be reversed. This really only has to do with the fact the state asked for an emergency stay.

The state’s case is meritless. Attorney Daniel Schmutter mapped out everything that needs to be known about sensitive locations during the preliminary injunction hearing for the consolidated cases challenging this garbage law:

As Your Honor is aware, we so far have only seen one thing that gets you a sensitive place. That’s “governance.” And it’s actually narrower than government functions, because as Your Honor knows, the State claims that libraries and museums and all that stuff is government functions. It’s the function of governance. Legislatures, courthouses, polling places, those are the three Bruen sensitive places.

The policies that Platkin, Murphy, et.al. pushed for have no historical analogues. The insurance mandate, the ban on carry in the car, the fee hikes – all of it baseless and only enacted to make it more difficult on the law-abiding. Platkin is tired of defending himself because his position is indefensible. Why is he whining so much about this all of a sudden? Because he probably realizes he’s losing and has over caffeinated crazed Karens crawling up his two-hole. The guy screaming “I’m not crazy,” as he’s being whisked out of the room, usually is…well you know.

Continue reading “”

New laws in Vermont that start July 1: Gun purchases,….

Vermonters will soon see new laws that affect their wallets or their legal choices — and even possibly cut down on the theft of car parts.

Every year, July 1 is the date that many new laws take effect. Some of these laws were recently passed by the Legislature; others were approved a while ago and are just now rolling out.

Here are 11 of the changes you should know about this summer.

Waiting period for gun purchases

Young people in Vermont are less likely than their peers in other states to report feelings of sadness, hopelessness or suicidal thoughts — and yet their rate of suicide deaths is higher than the national average.

Lawmakers have decided that easy access to guns is a significant factor in those deaths. And legislation that goes into effect July 1 will institute a 72-hour waiting period for gun purchases. Lawmakers hope that preventing someone in crisis from gaining immediate access to a gun will allow time for suicidal impulses to pass. The vast majority of people who survive a suicide attempt never make an attempt again.

A new law in Vermont creates a criminal penalty for unsafe storage of firearms if those guns are used in a crime.

The law will allow family members to petition courts for an extreme risk protection order, and creates a new criminal penalty for negligent storage of firearms, if that negligence results in commission of a crime.

The 72-hour waiting period provision is almost certain to invite a legal challenge. In a landmark ruling last year, the U.S. Supreme Court established a new precedent for the manner in which courts should assess the constitutionality of restrictions on gun ownership.

Though Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law, he said he doesn’t think the 72-hour waiting period will survive a constitutional challenge.

[It makes one wonder why the goobernor let it become law then, but scratch a lib, find a tyrant applies]

Doctoral student opines lying gun owners aren’t being reached with ‘responsible’ messaging

There’s no lack of progressive think tanks out there that claim they’re not coming for our guns, they just want to promote “safety.” The New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center is one of those groups that claims to be all about safety, however they never put out any studies, materials, or articles, on the responsible and law-abiding gun owner, nor any material about the corporeal topics of gun use or ownership. A recent study done by a doctoral student at the GVRC has her claiming foul over potential untruthful survey results.

In a study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, researchers found that based on their answers to a variety of other questions, a group of individuals appeared as though they might be falsely denying firearm ownership when directly asked by researchers.

While some of these individuals resemble what previous research indicated to be a typical American firearm owner (e.g., white, male), others looked quite different (racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments), highlighting that the landscape of firearm ownership in the United States may be shifting.

“Some individuals are falsely denying firearm ownership, resulting in research not accurately capturing the experiences of all firearm owners in the U.S.,” said Allison Bond, lead author of the study and a doctoral student with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center. “More concerningly, these individuals are not being reached with secure firearm storage messaging and firearm safety resources, which may result in them storing their firearms in an unsecure manner, which in turn increases the risk for firearm injury and death.”

This hiccup that Bond has highlighted is a valuable feature in our evolution in my opinion. Unequivocally, I will personally stand by these statements – until the medical field shows they’re unbiased – I don’t suggest exposing whether or not you’re a gun owner to anyone associated with it, without relevant cause. I salute the people that elected to “falsely deny” their firearm ownership – even though a false denial would be a double negative, but I’m not the PHD student here.

What’s really hubris, troubling, and disgustingly elitist is that Bond has this concern that because “these individuals,” which I’m going to read as meaning “those/these people” – the ones that are “racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments” – who smartly elected to lie to the center, they’re too obtuse to get proper “messaging.” Whatever Bond considers safety resources, it’s rather opinionated to assume those people won’t get them because they don’t trust those conducting the study. Bond is beyond out of touch here.

The Rutgers GVRC has done nothing but put forward an abstinence-only approach to firearms ownership. There’s never any research done on, or paper they put out, that highlights the positive elements of owning guns. Every rabbit hole they go down has a result that has to do with more regulations. Fortunately many of the regulations they’d want to see implemented would be considered unconstitutional if looked at properly with an unbiased approach.

After following the GVRC acutely since anti-gun Governor Phil Murphy instituted them, pumping taxpayer’s dollars into this gibberish, their main objective seems to have an ends in requiring firearms to be stored in a 100% unusable state. That condition goes directly against the Heller decision I might add. This has been my suspicion for a while and this study/reporting on it helps fortify that hunch.

Bond leaves out that every single brand new firearm sold in the United States includes a user manual. Nearly all handguns come with a lock and hard lockable case. In those manuals, there’s general instructions on so-called proper storage. Anyone walking into a gun store to purchase a firearm is approached with plenty of resources in the form of capitalism and altruism. At a shop, there’s generally someone wanting to help new gun owners to be safe, in addition to the fact businesses can only profit by selling more firearm safety devices.

The problem with Bond’s assertion that those people don’t get appropriately schooled on what she considers proper storage and safety rules is that Bond – and her ilk – try to squeeze everything into a one-size-fits-all solution. If we asked Bond or anyone else over at the GVRC about proper storage, they’re going to tell you firearms need to be stored unloaded, in a locked container, and ammunition stored in a separate locked container. I suspect Bond is not going to say that it makes sense to have a loaded firearm in the home for self-defense. The thought of storing a firearm in a night stand loaded, if appropriate for the given household, would be looked at with horror.

To people like Bond and groups like the GVRC, self-defense via firearm use is abhorrent. So keeping a firearm stored in any condition for ease of use would go against their biases. It’s unfortunate these alleged people of science don’t come standard where bias is completely removed. Follow the science – pish posh to that for these purposes.

The rest of the “safety resources” includes what? I’ve never heard the GVRC advocate that gun owners should take an NRA or USCCA training course to learn how to use a firearm. No, safety resources are going to come in the form of their own abstinence-only branded “education.” If groups like the GVRC advocated for people to take such branded training – by name – they’d have some credibility.

There’s an undertone that Bond was making about those people not being exposed to resources because of these “false denials.” Beyond their silly survey, what’s Bond and the GVRC doing to “educate” respondents? Do they offer self-described gun owners these important resources when respondents say they own guns? And in what form are these resources?

The study indicates a percentage of firearm owners may not feel comfortable disclosing their ownership status. Among those identified as potentially falsely denying firearm ownership, many were women living alone in urban environments.

The study indicates a good portion of people that have the right idea. While I’m all in favor of accurate data collection, I cannot support supplying any information about whether or not one is a gun owner to the GVRC or groups like it. Physicians and doctors out there may take exception to my advice here, but too bad. When the authors and groups behind these so-called studies make a good faith effort to not inject their anti-gun conclusion before the study has even concluded, then we can have a chat about being honest. They all claim they’re not about “making policy,” but that’s total and complete malarkey. I’ve chatted with the “I just want to save lives, I’m not about policy making” doctors, and I conclude they’re lying after reading their rhetoric and papers.

One of the other things that’s hinted at when talking about messaging is not said in the piece covering the study. Read into comments made by the GVRC executive director:

“There are several reasons some firearm owners might feel uncomfortable disclosing that they own firearms,” said Michael Anestis, executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center and senior author of the study. “These results serve as an important reminder that we should not assume we know everything about who owns firearms and that we should ensure that our efforts to reach firearm owners can resonate with broad audiences we might not realize would benefit from the message.”

Anestis left out one of the newer en vogue buzzwords that all readers need to be aware of. With the narrow exception of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and a few other very limited number of groups, if the phrase “credible messenger” is in the literature, run. While I have read some reporting in NSSF – who makes a good faith effort to protect firearm owners and the industry – literature where credible messenger was used, generally speaking, only grossly anti-gun think tanks use it.

The mechanism for these groups is for them to find the right person, to talk to the right people, using them as a puppet to get their own message out. That’s it. It’s agenda driven and has everything to do with policy and culturally appropriating as many people as possible – to their way of thinking.

To all “those people” out there…the “racial or ethnic minority, female, living in urban environments,” welcome to the fray. There are resources out there, which I”m sure you’re well aware of, should you need any. With Second Amendment supporters, there’s an entire community of people that are more than willing and happy to help each other, including you.

Continue to go with your gut and learn there are trustworthy organizations out there.  Let’s call the other groups those who utilize their alleged academic “achievements” to bend pseudoscience into a conclusion that results in our disarmament. Judging by Bond’s complaints, many of you have already figured this out. Kudos for that.

In 2020, the left got their chance to bring out their inner fascists, and they liked that feeling – a lot:

Do You Remember 2005?

Now that Succession is over, I’ve got something else to binge on. It’s only seven minutes and two seconds long, but it’s arguably less predictable and more dramatic. It’s an interview on The Daily Show—the original one, with Jon Stewart, before it soured into a mess so rancid it can’t even find a permanent host—from July 20, 2005. The guest? Robert F. Kennedy Jr., there to talk about thimerosal, the mercury compound used as a preservative in some vaccines and which Kennedy believes is the likely cause of various neurological disorders as well as the reason for the spike in autism in the U.S.

RFK Jr.’s message is the same one he delivers today. “It’s not all vaccinations,” he told [fellow leftist Jon Stewart on the Daily Show], just the ones that use the substance he deems unsafe. Stewart pushes back, at one point asking why the government would conspire to suppress his arguments, even at the price of public health. RFK, Jr. responds. And so on and so forth. Which is to say: The entire interview is driven by curiosity and good faith and ends with respect: “It’s a remarkable story,” Stewart says. “I wish we had more time, but I appreciate you getting the word out and I know parents of kids with autism truly appreciate it. I know it’s a very difficult thing for them to be dealing with, so I’m sure they appreciate the help and support.”

That was 18 years ago.

Back then, the very same ideas, expressed the very same way, earned RFK Jr. a friendly, measured spot on the nation’s hottest television program. Today, it brings him smug condescension and often vicious contempt, from The New York Times announcement of his run for president informing readers that his campaign would be “built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science” to the Center for Countering Digital Hate placing him on its “Disinformation Dozen” list and demanding that his social media accounts be blocked.

“He’s a crazy conspiracy theorist,” Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo shot back at someone on Twitter who dared to wonder why RFK Jr. might deserve attention, the smear rolling off Manjoo’s keyboard with the ease of someone receiving talking points from the Politburo instead of doing the work of having thoughts of his own.

What changed?

It’s a vitally important question for anyone wishing to understand our current collective lunacy, so let’s take the scientific approach.

Continue reading “”

A Quiet Bluegrass Genocide

Bluegrass Genocide

Sometimes, the comments on Bastiat’s Window take my breath away. Tuesday, (6/6/23) brought one such case. In his terrific Shiny Herd substack, Ted Balaker interviewed me on the mania for eugenic sterilization of those deemed “unfit to reproduce” for the first 75+ years of the 20th century. As Ted and I discussed:

“They were forced to undergo hysterectomies. Their tubes were tied and they were given vasectomies, sometimes without anesthesia.”

The scientific and political communities in America were solidly behind the project. Those performing the sterilizations were considered humanitarian heroes, and academics who questioned the idea were subject to vilification, loss of employment, and loss of academic funding. The press and political activists formed a solid phalanx to protect the pro-eugenics side. Glenn Reynolds of

Glenn’s Substack

PUBLIC HEALTH HAS ALWAYS INVOLVED A LOT OF GROUPTHINK: When Sterilization Was Dogma: Why the Eugenics Movement is Relevant Today. “Eugenicists sought to ‘improve’ the human species in the same way that one would improve cattle or soybeans—and using basically the same techniques.”

Later in the day, Glenn added an update—an excruciatingly poignant email that he had received from a reader:

“After giving birth to me in 1971, just months after turning 18, the rural community hospital staff convinced my mother to have a tubal ligation before she left.

Only decades later did I realize how improper this seemed for a healthy, married, drug-free young woman of 18. But she was in Appalachia, and poor. Was the hospital staff trying to avoid more of “her kind” being born?

https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/title-x-family-planning-program-1970-1977

Then I heard of the Family Planning Services Act and began to wonder if there was in 1971 a federally-funded bias toward sterilizing poor young women in Appalachia. Is this why I never had siblings and face being the sole caretaker and provider for my aging mother?

But I can only wonder because I can’t find any research or data or even articles inquiring about changes in birth and sterilization rates among women in Appalachia before/after the Family Planning Services Act took hold.

Maybe the Act didn’t make a difference at all. Or maybe it was a quiet Bluegrass Genocide.

No one seems to want to ask.”

This writer’s expression, “bluegrass genocide,” is a marvel of imagery, simplicity, and power. Nowhere to be found on the internet (till now), the term lashes an arcadian adjective to a dystopian noun. Just two words and five syllables describe a sweeping saga, imparting both sense of place and sense of horror. It starkly captures the inhumanity that, for the better part of the last century, exerted a vice grip over science, medicine, culture, politics, journalism, and public policy—the notion that experts are entitled to play God with lives in pursuit of their favored social goals. The writer’s addition of “quiet”—”a quiet Bluegrass Genocide”—makes the events described all the more vile.

Continue reading “”

Prof: ‘Nothing wrong with’ murder of Trump supporter from a ‘moral perspective.’

University of Rhode Island Professor Erik Loomis appeared to defend the murder of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, the member of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, during recent social unrest in Portland, Oregon.

In 2012, Loomis came under scrutiny after he called for NRA executive Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick” following the shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. Just weeks later, in January 2013, Loomis said, “I know the central mission of the Republican Party is to have a membership made up entirely of old rural white people.”

Now, Loomis is once again under fire after publishing a blog post titled “Why was Michael Reinoehl killed?” Reinoehl is the man suspected of fatally shooting Danielson. Reinoehl was killed as federal authorities tried to arrest him.

“Michael Reinoehl is the guy who killed the fascist in Portland last week. He admitted it and said he was scared the cops would kill him. Well, now the cops have killed him,” Loomis wrote in the September 4 blog post.

 

“I am extremely anti-conspiracy theory. But it’s not a conspiracy theory at this point in time to wonder if the cops simply murdered him. The police is [sic] shot through with fascists from stem to stern. They were openly working with the fascists in Portland, as they were in Kenosha which led to dead protestors,” Loomis continued.

In the comment section of the blog post, one reader challenged Loomis by writing, “Erik, he shot and killed a guy,” referring to Reinoehl.

Loomis responded by saying, “He killed a fascist. I see nothing wrong with it, at least from a moral perspective.” He further added that “tactically, that’s a different story. But you could say the same thing about John Brown.”

Loomis furthered compared Reinoehl to Brown who in the 1800s used violence as a means of fighting slavery.

One reader then asked, “What’s so great about assassinating a rando fascist? And in the absence of a sound affirmative justification, it should be easy to envision the drawbacks.”

Loomis was quick to reply with, “What’s so great about assassinating random slaveholders, said liberals to John Brown.”

In a separate comment, Loomis wrote, “the problem with violence is that it usually, though not always, is a bad idea. That I agree with.”

Loomis said in another comment, “Yes, sometimes violence is necessary, say to avoid greater physical harm, i.e. self-defense, or to defeat a literal army of fascists who are trying to kill people. But, ideologically, I think the idea that violence is good if it’s against our political enemies is a core part of fascism, and so the ideological opposition to that idea should be its opposite – that violence as a general rule is bad, unless the specific context of that situation requires a violent response.”

Loomis made headlines Tuesday for another comment he made on Twitter. In response to MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeting, “Trump is objectively pro-Covid,” Loomis tweeted “yeah, I mean, once Republicans figured out COVID was going to affect people of color and the poor disproportionately, they stopped caring about doing anything about it.”

Burgeoning burger battle: Agriculture really bugs Lurch and the Left

The globalist cabal desperate to remake the world to their specifications is throwing a hissy fit at the moment, worthy of any 2 year old in the aisle at WalMart.

As citizens around the world start to rouse themselves from near economic ruin and the erosion of every standard of living norm accepted for the past decades imposed on them as a result of climate change induced hysteria, the WEF members and cult adherents are starting to panic. If “the end is nigh” rhetoric was bad before, now that their chances of pulling the whole scam off are starting to recede like the floodwaters that never inundated the coastlines, they are blasting away at full trumpet.

Witness that sonorous toned, equine faced poseur of our own, who jets about the world self importantly in pursuit of achieving global accord for ever stricter climate related restraints on every aspect of the peasantry’s lives. John Kerry, our so-called U.S. climate envoy, outdid himself this week in attacks on the everyday life of the little people he flies over on his way to Gstaad or Paris.

He went after farming.

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural production is essential to the global fight against climate change, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said on Wednesday.

Agriculture generates 10% to 12% of greenhouse gas emissions globally, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The food system as a whole – including packaging, transportation, and waste management – generates a third of global emissions, according to a 2021 study published in the academic journal Nature Food.

“We can’t get to net zero, we don’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.

And he let rip with the de rigeur EMERGENCY trope.

“This sector needs innovation now more than ever,” Kerry continued Wednesday. “We’re facing record malnutrition at a time when agriculture, more than any other sector, is suffering from the impacts of the climate crisis. I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.”

Continue reading “”

The Ominous Reason Why Biden Keeps Repeating His False Claim About a White Supremacist Threat

As Ben Bartee noted Saturday, Old Joe Biden’s commencement speech at Howard University “included a hearty condemnation of the alleged scourge of White Supremacy™ in America.” In fact, the alleged president called white supremacy “the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland.” Then on Sunday, Homeland Security Secretary and failed Disinformation Governance Board overlord Alejandro Mayorkas agreed with Old Joe, emphasizing that “domestic violent extremism is our greatest threat right now.” Many other Biden regime officials have said the same thing in the nearly two and a half years now that they have been inflicting themselves upon us. The reason why they keep making this false claim is clear and ominous.

At Howard, Biden first repeated his oft-stated lie that Donald Trump had called Nazis “fine people.” Then he said: “But on the best days, enough of us have the guts and the hearts to st — to stand up for the best in us. To choose love over hate, unity over disunion, progress over retreat. To stand up against the poison of white supremacy, as I did in my Inaugural Address — to single it out as the most dangerous terrorist threat to our homeland is white supremacy. And I’m not saying this because I’m at a black HBCU. I say it wherever I go.”

A “black HBCU”? As opposed to all the white historically black colleges and universities, Joe? But anyway, Old Joe’s lie about white supremacists being the nation’s biggest terror threat has also been repeated by Gestapo chief Merrick Garland and the FBI. In November 2021, FBI and Homeland Security Department officials increased investigations of “domestic extremists,” reiterating the claim that they are today’s foremost terror threat.

Yet no matter how often Biden and his henchmen repeat this, actual white supremacist terrorists in any significant numbers have been conspicuously lacking. Yet on MSNBC (of course) Sunday, “journalist” Jonathan Capehart perpetuated the myth, asking Mayorkas: “The president, yesterday at his commencement address for Howard University graduates, called white supremacy the major domestic terrorist threat in this country. Is that correct?”

Mayorkas, of course, answered in the affirmative: “It tragically is. And the terrorism context, domestic violent extremism is our greatest threat right now. Individuals are driven to violence because of ideologies of hate, anti-government sentiment, false narratives, personal grievances. Regrettably, we have seen a rise in white supremacy. The principle underlying our work is that when one community is targeted, Jonathan, when one community is targeted, we as a country are targeted.”

Note how Mayorkas related “anti-government sentiment” to “white supremacy.” Old Joe revealed the game that is being played here last September when he said in his ominous red and black speech that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

This regime aims to criminalize political dissent, and that will require demonizing and stigmatizing fully half of the electorate. It is increasingly clear that when Biden claims that white supremacists are the biggest terror threat the nation faces, he means ordinary Americans who have never broken any law but who oppose his agenda. If everyone who opposes him is a white supremacist terrorist, then the nation has over a hundred million of them. Arrests and prosecutions on false pretenses will follow. That’s the threat that was contained in his words at Howard.

And ever so conveniently for Old Joe, no sooner had he uttered this false claim again at Howard on Saturday than a couple of hundred actual white supremacist terrorists miraculously materialized in Washington. All were young, physically fit men; not a single fat Nazi in the bunch. All wore the same blue shirt and khaki pants uniform, all with their faces covered, and once again, the feds showed no curiosity about who they are and made no attempt to determine where they came from or where they went.

This clumsy false-flag operation was widely exposed and ridiculed on Twitter, but conservative writer Chris Brunet pointed out: “What’s sad about this clip is that everyone here on my side of Twitter instantly knows this is a glowie/fed operation… pure theatre. But it is actually a really effective psyop, they keep doing it, because it works. Ask any normal person on the street, ask your mom, ask your sister, and they will be terrified of this clip and fall for it hook-line-and-sinker.”

Indeed they will. They still have no idea what game is being played. But as Old Joe’s henchmen continue to move to make it possible for only their point of view to be enunciated in the public square, their objectives will become obvious to everyone.

Daydreaming the Guns Away

We find ourselves living in a highly consequential time for the legal clarification of the 2nd Amendment. Extremely aggressive, wide-ranging bans of semi-automatic firearms have been enacted in various parts of the country, drawing legal challenges. While the ultimate resolution of these challenges is unknowable, many observers believe the Supreme Court will eventually arrive at a decision prohibiting the wholesale banning of semi-automatic firearms. Those who dream of eliminating all private gun ownership in the United States face the prospect of a devastating legal defeat.

One can imagine their looming disappointment. They have failed to appoint Supreme Court justices who would effectively redefine the 2nd Amendment out of existence, and they are about to bear the consequences of that failure. But from their perspective, there is comfort to be had in the prospect of eventually stripping the 2nd Amendment from the Constitution altogether, no matter how long it may take.

Such is the hope that animates aspiring intergenerational social reformer Allan Goldstein, who, in his “Let’s get serious and repeal the Second Amendment” has stepped forward to boldly launch a 50-plus year plan to eradicate all privately owned firearms in the United States.

Perhaps the piece might have been better entitled “Let’s Get Hysterical.” How galling it must be to be deprived of so obvious a good — a gun-free society — on account of something as frivolous as an obsolete, suicidally-construed constitutional amendment. On Goldstein’s account “[t]he Supreme Court has decided that ‘a well-regulated militia’ includes gang bangers and wild-eyed loners with a grudge.” What a shame Goldstein did not bother to provide a citation to the Supreme Court decision in which this is asserted.

Continue reading “”

BLUF
The only silver lining in this minatory storm cloud is the fact that such movements, though unconscionably cruel, arbitrary, and destructive, are also astonishingly fragile.

Deliver Us from Reality

“Because he can.”

That’s the answer one has to give to those who ask how Alvin Bragg, a local district attorney in office by the slimmest of margins—and then only because of a huge subsidy from the anti-American billionaire George Soros—can get away with antics like indicting Donald Trump, a former (and, possibly, future) president of the United States, and, now, with charging former Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter because he (along with at least two others) intervened to stop Jordan Neely from attacking fellow passengers on a New York subway.

Because he can. As a friend remarked when digesting the spectacle of Penny being led away in handcuffs, totalitarian movements often start slowly, almost timidly, but as they gain power, they become more brazen. After a certain point, they do outrageous things just to intimidate the public and demonstrate their power.

We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of America’s security apparatus intervened directly in the decision making of Twitter and other social media companies to influence the course of the 2020 election. One part of that intervention had to do with organizing 51 senior former intelligence figures to sign a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter. They did it because they knew they could get away with it.

The United States is on the verge of being inundated with thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens. Many are from South or Central America. Hundreds are from China, even though they are crossing that notional line we used to be able to call, without irony, our southern border. Why did the Biden Administration decide to enact a real-life Camp of the Saints invasion of the United States? Because it could. There was no immediate price to pay.

In her classic study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt makes several observations that bear on our current situation. “There is no doubt,” she observes,

Continue reading “”

Comment O’ The Day
As with electric cars, the environmental benefits of fake meat are more claimed than proven.

Eat Meat! (2)

In today’s developed world, average people can achieve a higher standard of living than has ever before been possible. In fact, the difference between an “elite” standard of living and that enjoyed by people of average, or a little more than average, means, has dwindled to near-insignificance. It is fair to say that today, an “elite” American has little more chance of living a satisfying and happy life than the average American.

Our “elites” consider this situation intolerable, a fact that explains much of our current political turmoil. Liberals are trying to drive down the standard of living for all Americans. True, their own standards will suffer slightly. But if you are a multi-millionaire, how much do you care if your electricity bill doubles? The salient fact is that a general decline in standards of living will increase the disparity between the “elite” and the rest of us. That, I think, is the goal of many liberal policies, and the main reason why most rich people are liberals.

Today, a person of ordinary means can toss some steaks on the grill on Memorial Day. That is a good thing, in most people’s opinion, but it galls “elite” leftists, who eat steak themselves but are annoyed that the rest of us can afford to do so, too. Hence the Left’s war on meat, the point of which is to drive up prices so that they can afford steak, pork chops, bacon, etc., but you can’t.

As always, “the environment,” in the form of CO2 emissions, is the excuse. But does that actually make any sense? One of the alternatives to cows, pigs and chickens is lab-grown meat, which has been touted as an environmentally-friendly substitute for the real thing. But a recent study casts doubt on that claim:

Lab-grown meat has been touted as a way to save the planet, but a new study suggests its green credentials are not as solid as many believe.

Researchers have revealed that lab-grown or ‘cultured’ meat, produced by cultivating animal cells, is up to 25 times worse for the climate than real beef.

Which is to say, it produces up to 25 times the CO2 emissions. What are we talking about here?

Lab-grown meat is different from plant-based ‘meat’, which is not meat at all but uses vegan ingredients such as vegetable protein to replicate the look and taste of real meat.

Lab-grown or ‘cultured’ meat is generally seen as more ethical than real meat because it requires a sample of body tissue rather than the death of the animal, although many vegans and vegetarians will not touch it because it is made of animal.

I won’t touch it either, but not for these reasons:

In the study, the scientists estimated the energy required for stages of lab-grown meat’s production, from the ingredients making up the growth medium and the energy required to power laboratories, and compared this with beef.

They largely focused on the quantity of growth medium components, including glucose, amino acids, vitamins, growth factors, salts and minerals.

They found the global warming potential of lab-grown meat ranged from 246 to 1,508 kg of CO2 equivalent per kilogram of lab-grown meat, which is four to 25 times greater than the average global warming potential of retail beef.

Whatever. If it didn’t come from a cow, a pig, a sheep, or a fowl or fish, I don’t want to eat it.

And scientists are pushing back against the Left’s attack on meat:

[T]he war on meat is only just getting going – and it has some very powerful supporters. ESG (environmental, social and governance) rankings and corporate social responsibility checklists reward companies for creating vegan products, even if nobody buys them. Meat taxes are being considered to price it out of our reach. The Dutch government is spending €25bn (£22bn) to buy out its livestock farmers and close down their farms. But it’s all based on some very dubious pseudoscience.

Now the scientific establishment has begun to fight back. Last month, over 900 scientists signed the Dublin Declaration, a milestone in the defence of livestock farming. The declaration explains how ruminants, such as cows and sheep, rescue marginal land.

“Well-managed livestock systems applying agro-ecological principles can generate many other benefits, including carbon sequestration, improved soil health, biodiversity, watershed protection and the provision of important ecosystem services.” They add that a drastic reduction in animals “could actually incur environmental problems on a large scale”. It will also hurt three billion of the world’s poorest, who could use the iron and protein that comes from real meat.

Plus, meat is nutritious, and it tastes good. The author of the Telegraph piece explains the war on meat with a classical reference:

I wonder if even the most compelling rational arguments for meat will wilt when faced with such furious medieval zealotry. The motivation is not really saving the climate, or concerns about nitrogen – it’s simply that something so nutritious and delicious should be being enjoyed at all.

As Macauley wrote of the Puritans: they “hated bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.”

Exactly. The spectators here being ordinary people who can afford to buy meat. In the eyes of our “elites,” that can’t be allowed to continue.

The Left continues to whitewash its crazy, violent, and authoritarian history.

About a week before Jeff Sharlet’s new book , The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War, was published in March, a new video was uploaded on YouTube. It was a short documentary from 1983 of when Harry Belafonte, an iconic American singer and actor, visited East Germany to perform in a concert promoting communism . The “World Peace Concert” was run by East Germany’s communist youth organization. Belafonte gave his blessings to the Soviet-sponsored campaign promoting unilateral Western disarmament.

The Belafonte concert is barely mentioned in The Undertow, a collection of essays and reporting by Sharlet, an award-winning journalist who teaches at Dartmouth College. Indeed, little of the Left’s history of flirting with authoritarianism is mentioned at all. Instead, The Undertow argues that a bunch of crazy right-wingers, including militia groups, are bent on conflict with the Left. They want a second civil war, Sharlet claims, and those who stand up to oppose them are American leftists, portrayed as Christlike figures of light and wisdom.

While announcing the Right has a strong and growing MAGA force that is armed and dangerous and itching for battle, Sharlet smothers any proof that the Left is violent and crazy. His book, which opens with a long and loving profile of Belafonte, fails to mention the singer’s hardcore leftism.

Not even Belafonte tried to airbrush his beliefs. In his memoir, Belafonte wrote: “I remained not just liberal but an unabashed lefty. I was still drawn to idealistic left-wing leaders … who seemed to embody the true ideals of socialism .”

Belafonte was friends with the communist singer Paul Robeson. He praised Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, writing that the latter has “a strong grasp of Latin American history and of the fine distinctions in law between Venezuela and its neighbors.” Belafonte called former President George W. Bush “the greatest tyrant, the greatest terrorist in the world.” He was a Marxist — pure and simple.

None of this is reported in The Undertow. Instead, Belafonte is portrayed by Sharlet simply as an inspirational civil rights leader — “a radiant man” who was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and who remains a political visionary. Sharlet’s book is pure agitprop. It condemns conservatives and treats even the most violent and despicable leftists as, quite literally, messianic. In his essay about Occupy Wall Street, for example, the 2011 leftist street protests that resulted in stinky unbathed bodies and reports of sexual assault, Sharlet claims he felt like Jesus Christ — well, sort of: “I feel like one of five hundred title Christs, if by Christ you allow me to refer not to divinity itself but to one of its more wholly human representations, Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph Piss Christ.”

Say what? Piss Christ is a notorious piece of garbage “art” that was created when Serrano placed a crucifix in a jar of his urine. To Sharlet, this is the icon worth emulating: “Appreciating what happened at Liberty Park [in New York’s Occupy Wall Street] requires a mental shift akin to the one necessary to see Piss Christ — an image of a plastic crucifix submerged in the artist’s own golden urine — as not blasphemous but a strange breed of beautiful. I don’t mean ideologically beautiful, some baroque idea one admires for the complexity of its inversions. I mean gorgeous. Breathtaking, breath-giving, at the same time.”

This may be the clearest distillation of modern leftism ever committed to paper. It has the religious piety that surrounds liberalism’s self-regard but maintains its “woke” street cred by attaching itself to blasphemous “art.” We are like Jesus, but it’s the Jesus who hates Jesus. It’s perfect in its performative incoherence.

Sharlet’s main essay, “The Undertow,” takes on the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Central to the story is Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was killed by a police officer on that day. Here is Sharlet’s description: “Babbitt, shot for her trouble, was a fool who pursued her own death.” She was also, he claims, made into a symbol by the Right: “Ashli Babbitt was processed, made productive, almost immediately after her death, transformed right away into yet another flag, like a new tarot card in the deck of fascism.”

“A fool who pursued her own death.” What cold, despicable words. You can both think the Jan. 6 riot was an ill-advised disaster and question why Babbitt was shot and killed. But Sharlet, just like Belafonte and the communists he entertained and bankrolled, wants a world in which asking such questions gets you tossed into prison.