Category: Crap For Brains

New Footage Shows El Paso Engulfed in ‘Mass Migration Dumpster Fire’ as State of Emergency Declared

On Monday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre made an absurd claim: “When it comes to illegal migration, you’ve seen it come down by more than 90%” under the Biden administration. And if that was the case, why did a Democrat mayor of a Texas border town declare a state of emergency?

Well, new footage from border town El Paso, Texas, shows a sobering view of a worsening migrant crisis that the Biden administration, liberal media, and progressive politicians have ignored for two years while calling anyone who pointed it out ‘racist.’

Illegal aliens waiting to cross into El Paso due to expiration of Title 42

Anybody who is pro-open borders has never been to border towns like El Paso which are plagued with mass migration dumpster fires like this )

“It’s difficult to describe, Jim, with words… The magnitude of the number of individuals,” a CNN reporter said. If CNN can no longer cover for the Biden administration, then they’re in trouble…
The situation in El Paso is so bad that even CNN is flabbergasted.

Even MSBC has been forced to cover the migrant crisis.

El Paso is transforming into what appears to be a ‘third world’-like country, primarily due to the surge in illegal border crossings.

With the upcoming expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era border policy that allows border agents to turn migrants away on public health grounds, this will only indicate a new wave of illegal border crossings is imminent.

“El Paso mayor has declared a state of emergency. Biden is sending 1500 troops. The border has been lost,” Citizen Free Press tweeted.

Indeed.

Welcome to the Club: Car Makers Getting the Same Treatment Gun Makers are Used To

The same antigun politicians who want to sue members of the firearm industry for crimes they didn’t commit are now trying to blame automakers for when the cars they make are stolen.

Welcome to bizarro-land, where commonsense and logic don’t apply. In the inverted world these politicians concoct, criminals aren’t responsible for their crimes. Gun makers should have predicted that the firearms they produced would be stolen, illegally sold on the black market, traded among convicted felons and used in subsequent crimes. Now, these same politicians say automakers should have expected their cars would be stolen by criminals and that’s the fault of the automakers.

Not the criminals. Not those who actually steal the property of others and victimize innocent people. Those individuals couldn’t possibly be at fault. Just ask Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison.

AG Ellison blamed Kia and Hyundai for a spike in car thefts and even opened an investigation to determine if those companies didn’t include “industry-standard, anti-theft technology” in their cars’ designs.

“Kia and Hyundai vehicles might as well have a giant bumper sticker that says ‘steal me’ on them,” AG Ellison said in early March.

Alliance for Automotive Innovation is the automaker trade association and to them, all we can say is welcome to our world, where politicians blame you for the crimes committed by others, seek to destroy your industry through frivolous litigation and oh yeah… their rules are all made up.

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Biden’s Latest Alzheimer’s Moment Is Actually Very Sad

“Cringe” somehow doesn’t suffice here. This is supra-cringe, trans-cringe.

Biden’s handlers invited the Air Force football team to congratulate them on their past season and rolled their charge out to meet them for a brief photo op.

It would seem to be quite a simple task for a lifelong Swamp member: smile like you’re greeting old friends, gladhand like only a plastic politician can, gracefully accept the gifts, smile for the cameras some more, and depart.

But even that mission was too much for the alleged President to complete.

Via Military Times:

President Joe Biden on Friday awarded the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the Air Force Academy for winning football games against its rival U.S. service academies.

“Simply put, you can’t talk about the soul of the nation without talking about our service academies,” Biden told the team gathered in the White House’s East Room. “And you can’t talk about the service academies without talking about duty, teamwork, service and excellence. That’s all about you.”

He was ostensibly — as evidenced by the cadets holding the items out apparently in anticipation of handing them off — supposed to take the signed football, the helmet, and the jersey of memorabilia. Instead, he took the jersey, stared into the abyss for a few moments, and wandered away aimlessly while the visibly confused crowd looked on.

What happened here? Was it a pure dementia moment of wandering off that is unfortunately common for affected people? Did the President make a boo-boo in his Depends? Unfortunately, because the White House is unwilling to give a straight answer to any question, it’s up for speculation.

What’s not speculation is that it’s very sad. It’s elderly abuse. It should be criminal, and it’s most definitely immoral.

I dislike Biden passionately — corrupt sellout careerist goon that he has always been — but stuff like this stirs some sort of sympathy for him, and that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want to feel those sorts of things toward a creature like Biden.

That the band continues playing throughout adds an extra element of surrealism somehow that’s difficult to finger.

In addition to being dystopian and depressing, it’s also demoralizing. The Deep State has run things behind the scenes for many long decades, but only now do they seem to flaunt it in the People’s faces. The apparent message through the optics appears to be “look here, stupid, we’re going to tell you this demented zombie is in charge of the country, and you’re all going to take it and pretend it’s true. Now clap, seals.”

Insurance isn’t “the way forward” on guns

When San Jose passed an insurance requirement for gun owners, many people figured that was a new frontier they could exploit in their war against the Second Amendment.

The fact that the requirement basically just said you should have homeowner’s insurance didn’t really do much.

But it was sold as if it were the answer.

Now, an insurance-focused publication reports that a poll shows many believe it’s the answer on guns.

According to a recent ValuePenguin survey, 75% of Americans believe that gun owners should be required to have liability insurance on their firearms.

This finding suggests that insurance companies could be a possible solution to gun control. Gen Zers, those earning more than $100,000, and parents with children younger than 18 were among the most likely to support insurance requirements.

Additionally, 82% of Americans think that gun owners should be held accountable for how their guns are used. This sentiment was especially prevalent among parents with children under 18, as well as millennials.

Divya Sangameshwar, an insurance expert with ValuePenguin, believes that insurance may be the smartest way to push for gun control. “Insurers have always led the way when it comes to safety,” Sangameshwar says.

Except actual accidents with guns are relatively rare, especially compared to things like auto accidents, fires, or pretty much everything else covered by insurance.

Where guns take lives are either through suicide or intentional homicide.

Guess what’s not going to get covered by any insurance? Exactly.

Insurance does not ever cover an intentional act. I can’t run someone on purpose with my car and expect Geico to foot the bill. That’s going to be on me, as it should be.

Similarly, with guns, liability insurance isn’t going to cover any intentional act. It won’t cover a homicide and it won’t pay out with a suicide.

Further, it’s unlikely that anyone polled understands that. I’d expect a publication named Insurance Business to at least understand the practicalities of trying to implement some kind of requirement like that and at least mention that.

Then again, a lot of people think gun accidents are a lot more common than they are. Still others likely think gun owners should be on the hook for firearms that are stolen from them for some idiotic reason. They apparently think the insurance would cover the misuse of a stolen firearm, but it won’t.

Look, I get that people want to find solutions to the violence we see on the news every single day.

What I don’t get is why people can’t get beyond trying to punish law-abiding citizens for the actions of those who are anything but.

An insurance requirement is just another step, another hurdle designed to keep guns out of the hands of anything but those financially better off while doing little to nothing to actually reduce crime. It’s insane that we’re even having this discussion in the first place.

Then again, we live in Clown World where anyone can just up and decide to come up with restrictions that have no basis on reality.

This crap-for-brains is nothing more than petty politics. They’re against it simply because it’s something they see as opposite to their politics

‘Level of ignorance is embarrassing’: Dems push to ban silencers they claim are designed for discreet murder

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reintroduced the Help Empower Americans to Respond (HEAR) Act, which would ban the importation, sale, manufacturing, transfer, and possession of gun silencers or suppressors.

Menendez, a founding member of the Senate Gun Violence Prevention Caucus, took to Twitter to tout this gun control effort and in the process proved that he knows very little about that which he seeks to regulate.

“Gun silencers are designed to suppress the sound of gunfire from unknowing victims and reduce the chances they can run, hide, and call the police,” the Democrat said in a statement. “I’m reintroducing the HEAR Act to prevent these deadly devices from making shootings even more dangerous.”

U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) reintroduced the legislation in the House and she was no better informed.

“Silencers are not tools of self-defense, they are tools of murder. They have no legal application, which is why law enforcement officials around the country have called for their elimination,” Coleman said. “The HEAR Act will save lives and is part of the common sense approach to firearms legislation that has widespread support among voters on both sides of the aisle.”

Dana Loesch, a former NRA spokesperson, took to Twitter to call attention to their “level of ignorance.”

“Tell me that you have NO IDEA what silencers do without telling me you have no idea what silencers dSo. Holy wow, this level of ignorance is embarrassing,” she tweeted, before explaining,  “They’re literally required for hunting [in] Britain to protect hearing. It merely reduces decibel levels to that of concert PA system. Moron.”

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Delaware: Federal District Judge Finds Unusual Way to Ban Semi-Auto Guns & Magazines

On March 27, 2023, Judge Richard G. Andrews of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware issued an opinion that denied the request for a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the State of Delaware’s unconstitutional ban on some semi-automatic rifles and standard capacity magazines.

Judge Andrews dug deeply into his interpretive consideration to find a way to deny the request for a preliminary injunction.

With the clear guidance given by the Supreme Court in the Bruen decision to clarify the Heller decision on the Second Amendment, Judge Andrews performed some mental gymnastics.

The Bruen decision told lower courts to stop using the convoluted “two-step” framework to decide Second Amendment cases. The “two-step” frame was widely criticized as a way for the lower courts to treat the Second Amendment as a “second-class right” in the Bill of Rights.

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Now Comes ‘Equitable Grading’ to Dumb Down Our Children.

The Wall Street Journal  reports on a growing trend in high schools to ditch homework and move to an “equitable grading” system, which is supposed to measure whether a student knows the classroom material by the end of a term without penalties for behavior like skipping class.

“We’re giving children hope and the opportunity to learn right up until [the class is] officially over,” said Michael Rinaldi, the principal at Westhill High School in Stamford, Conn.

But some students and teachers in Las Vegas claim that some kids are gaming the system and that equitable grading ignores accountability.

“If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones,” said Alyson Henderson, a high-school English teacher there. Lessons drag on now, she said, because students can turn in work until right before grades are due.

We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality,” Ms. Henderson said.

Equitable grading still typically awards As through Fs, but the criteria are overhauled. Homework, in-class discussions and other practice work, called formative assessments, are weighted at between 10% and 30%. The bulk of a grade is earned through what are known as summative assessments, such as tests or essays.

Extra credit is banned—no more points for bringing in school supplies—as is grading for behavior, which includes habits such as attendance.

The system is set up to give laggards and the terminally lazy as many chances as possible to pass a course. The scale starts at 49 or 50 so that if a student misses a few assignments they won’t just give up and fail. They will still have a chance to pass as long as they complete other tests and essays.

“There’s an apathy that pervades the entire classroom,” said Samuel Hwang, a senior at Ed W. Clark High School in Las Vegas. Hwang has spoken out against the grading changes, saying they provide incentives for poor work habits.

Erin Spata, a science teacher at Westhill High in Connecticut who favors the change, said her students are moving away from constantly asking how many points an assignment will be worth and instead understand the importance of practice work, whether or not it is counted toward the final grade.

So at least the teacher’s students aren’t bothering her about insignificant stuff like a student’s progress in the class and other, you know, teacher stuff.

What I’ve come to realize with all this equity BS in schools is that the cream will still rise to the top. No matter how hard the DEI crowd tries to “level” scholastics, the really smart kids will continue to shine.

The problem with that is that kids who are in the middle of the pack or slightly lower will be left behind. They will still want to go to college, however, and in order to stay in business, colleges are also dumbing down coursework, cheapening a college degree even further.

This cancerous attitude is turning primary and secondary education into factories of uneducated and barely educated students. What will America look like when DEI has done its work and we’re all “equal” in our ignorance?

Three huge problems with Biden’s new ‘equity’-based mortgage policy.

President Biden has repeatedly rejected the traditional American principles of meritocracy and opportunity in favor of the nebulous push for “equity,” aka equality of outcome. The latest incarnation of this shift comes via the Biden administration’s new rules for mortgage fees that will punish the responsible and reward the reckless.

Here’s what’s going down.

“A new rule will raise mortgage fees for borrowers with good credit to subsidize higher-risk borrowers,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Under the rule, which goes into effect May 1, home buyers with a good credit score over 680 will pay about $40 more each month on a $400,000 loan, and upward depending on the size of the loan. Those who make down payments of 20% on their homes will pay the highest fees. Those payments will then be used to subsidize higher-risk borrowers through lower fees.”

This is a terrible idea, and here are 3 reasons why.

The housing market is already struggling

The real-estate market is already struggling right now, with home sales down significantly thanks to rising interest rates that are making buying a home much more expensive. That means it’s the worst time to add new rules that make it more expensive to buy a home. And it’s not just right-wing activists and conservative media saying this.

“This confusing approach won’t work and more importantly couldn’t come at a worse time for an industry struggling to get back on its feet after these past 12 months,” said former Obama administration housing official David Stevens. “To do this at the onset of the spring market is almost offensive to the market, consumers, and lenders.”

This rule makes responsible people pay for irresponsible people

Biden’s new rule is fundamentally unfair. If you’ve made responsible decisions and have a good credit score, you will now be punished—to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars over the lifetime of your mortgage—to bail other people out of the consequences of their poor decision making that’s led them to have a poor credit score. That’s an insult to hardworking Americans and a boon to those who don’t deserve it.

Further encourages people to buy houses they can’t afford

We need look no further than the 2008 financial crisis to see what happens when you make it easier for people to get a mortgage who can’t actually afford to buy a house or be trusted to pay back a mortgage. That’s exactly what this fee system does, however. As the Journal notes, “This is the socialization of risk, and it flies against every rational economic model, while encouraging housing market dysfunction and putting taxpayers at risk for higher default rates.”

All in all, it’s a terrible idea. And, unfortunately, it’s part of a broader pattern. On everything from so-called student debt “cancellation” to Affirmative Action, the Biden administration is siding against American meritocracy and endorsing radical redistributionism.

Biden Establishes ‘Interagency Task Force With Senior Government Officials’ to Stop ‘Islamophobia’

Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriters issued a statement Thursday to congratulate Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the fasting-by-day-and-gorging-by-night month of Ramadan. Predictably, it was anodyne and obsequious in the extreme, with Biden celebrating how Muslims “decorate their homes, give gifts to loved ones, wear new clothes, and visit family and friends.” The faux president is made to add: “I am moved by the generosity that is shown from families that can provide food and give charity to those in need through Zakat-al-Fitr.” In the course of all this flattery, Biden’s writer drops in a serious note: there is now a U.S. government task force dedicated to fighting “Islamophobia.”

The statement quickly shifts from telling us how wonderful it is that Muslims wear new clothes and visit family and friends to depicting Muslims as victims: “Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of a holy month dedicated to devotion, charity, and reflection—a time when we also remember Muslim communities around the world that are enduring conflict, poverty, hunger, and disease, and those that are displaced from their homes.” That served to set up the big announcement. Biden’s ghostwriter continued: “As we celebrate our blessings this Eid, let us also recommit ourselves to the timeless work of building peace and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people.” When the White House writers start depicting Old Joe babbling about peace and human rights, you know something bad is coming.

Doing this work for peace and human dignity will apparently require new restrictions on speech: “My Administration is also committed to addressing all forms of hate, including Islamophobia. This is why I established an interagency task force with senior government officials to tackle this and related challenges and encourage every American to build a more inclusive nation.” Good, because Lord knows we aren’t “inclusive” enough yet. Every last person in the world doesn’t live here on the taxpayer dime yet, so there is a long way to go.

Meanwhile, exactly what pressing need is this interagency task force designed to address? Are Muslims in the U.S. really subjected to such widespread discrimination and harassment that the feds need to step in? The record shows otherwise. FBI hate crime statistics show that Muslims are rarely targeted in hate crimes, which far more often victimize Jews and others. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes actually declined by 42% from 2020 to 2021. But those facts don’t fit the narrative that Muslims face widespread discrimination and harassment in the United States, and so the facts have to take a back seat.

And how is the new “interagency task force with senior government officials” going to “tackle” “Islamophobia”? No doubt we will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “interagency task force” really is. The “Islamophobia” task force will therefore likely enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.

Related: Ilhan Omar Takes Aim at the REAL Problem Facing America Today

Most importantly, since the Biden regime is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will the interagency task force make any efforts to protect the right of Americans to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression? Will it be careful to distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that this task force is supposed to be combating, or will it act upon the assumption that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, subjects Muslims to “hate” and must accordingly be silenced?

Since the Left has been insisting that opposition to jihad violence is “hate” ever since 9/11, my money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to “hate” and violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. And the freedom of speech will be eroded even further.

After 53 [now 54] Earth Days, Society Still Hasn’t Collapsed.

Cassandra in Greek mythology was the Trojan priestess who was cursed to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. Ideological environmentalism features a cohort of reverse Cassandras: They make false prophecies that are widely believed. Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 classic, The Population Bomb, prophesied, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Ehrlich continues to predict imminent overpopulation doom.

Another reverse Cassandra was Rachel Carson who warned in her 1962 Silent Spring of impending cancer epidemics sparked by humanity’s heedless use of synthetic pesticides. In fact, even as pesticide use has risen, rates of cancer incidence and mortality have been falling for 30 years.

On the occasion of the 53rd Earth Day, let’s take a look at the prophecies of another reverse Cassandra, the Club of Rome’s 1972 The Limits to Growth report by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and William Behrens. The book and its dire forecasts were introduced to the world at a March 1972 conference at the Smithsonian Institution. Let’s focus primarily on the report’s nonrenewable resource depletion calculations. The 1973 oil crisis was widely taken as confirming the book’s dire scenarios projecting imminent nonrenewable resource depletion.

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HANSON V. DC: “LARGE CAPACITY” MAGAZINE BAN

I’ve only been up for a couple of hours (as I begin typing), and the news is already full of stupidity that I’ll need to address. I’ll lead off with a case challenging Washington, DC’s “large capacity” magazine ban, Hanson v. DC. The judge, one Rudolph Contreras, denied a preliminary injunction against the ban. His… reasoning is… remarkable. Or something; I’m trying to be somewhat polite.

A weapon may have some useful purposes in both civilian and military contexts, but if it is most useful in military service, it is not protected by the Second Amendment.
[…]
[Large capacity magazines] are not covered by the [2A] because they are most useful in military service.

Oddly, Contreras cites HELLER in making that point. I can’t find that argument in HELLER, which was largely about whether non- military weapons could be regulated, and how, but there is this.

It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service—M–16 rifles and the like—may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large.

Rather the opposite of Contreras’ weasel-wording, eh? Indeed, HELLER even cites the earlier MILLER, which establishes that militarily-useful arms are protected by the Second Amendment.

In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.

Having chucked decades of SCOTUS precedent already, Contreras proceeds to demonstrate an amazing lack of judicial awareness of current events and Supreme Court decisions. Now that he’s established in his own deluded mind that standard capacity magazines are not 2A-protected, he addresses whether this particular restriction of such magazines is permissable.

WARNING: If you’re drinking, swallow before proceeding, for the protection of your screen.

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Biden signs order prioritizing ‘environmental justice’

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order that would create the White House Office of Environmental Justice.

The White House said it wants to ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm. Biden tried to draw a contrast between his agenda and that of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. GOP lawmakers have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices, while the Biden administration says the GOP policies would give benefits to highly profitable oil companies and surrender the renewable energy sector to the Chinese.

“Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The order tells executive branch agencies to use data and scientific research to understand how pollution hurts people’s health, so that work can be done to limit any damage. Under the order, executive agencies would be required to inform nearby communities if toxic substances were released from a federal facility.

As part of the announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris is separately traveling to Miami, Florida, to announce $562 million to help protect communities against the impacts of climate change.

The EPA last year formed its own Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, merging three existing EPA programs to oversee a portion of Democrats’ $60 billion investment in environmental justice initiatives created by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The order puts more pressure on federal agencies — and the White House itself — to deliver on promises the Biden administration has made to clean up the environment in communities of color and poor communities and prepare them for the effects of climate change.

The administration has had mixed results in fulfilling this promise. There has been unprecedented spending on environmental and climate justice issues. But there have also been disagreements over how to gauge which communities are most in need of the funding and the administration’s greenlighting of controversial drilling projects as Republicans have criticized Biden for high gasoline prices.

Biden to hike payments for good-credit homebuyers to subsidize high-risk mortgages

Homebuyers with good credit scores will soon encounter a costly surprise: a new federal rule forcing them to pay higher mortgage rates and fees to subsidize people with riskier credit ratings who are also in the market to buy houses.

The fee changes will go into effect May 1 as part of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s push for affordable housing, and they will affect mortgages originating at private banks across the country. The federally backed home mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will enact the loan-level price adjustments, or LLPAs.

Mortgage industry specialists say homebuyers with credit scores of 680 or higher will pay, for example, about $40 per month more on a home loan of $400,000. Homebuyers who make down payments of 15% to 20% will get socked with the largest fees.

The new fees will apply only to Americans buying houses or refinancing after May 1.

Lenders and real estate agents say the changes will frustrate homebuyers with high credit scores and homeowners seeking to refinance because the rule punishes them for their relatively strong financial positions.

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