Surprise, Guess Who Is More Popular Than Obama?

On Friday, President Trump addressed the largest crowd of conservative activists in the history of CPAC. It was another memorable Trump speech, listing his many accomplishments and encouraging the crowd to support Republican candidates in the mid-term elections. For 80 minutes, the President discussed an array of issues such as tax cuts, judicial appointments, immigration and the strong economy.

To the delight of the crowd, Trump claimed that “we have got seven years to go folks.” Of course, this did not thrill the President’s many enemies in the national news media. MSNBC’s Ali Veshi said the President’s speech was similar to what he has “heard from Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro or Erdogan. President Putin gives something like this every year, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used to give speeches like this.” Both Veshi and his co-host, Stephanie Ruhle claimed that the speech was filled with “lies.” They were also aggravated that the President discussed 31 topics but did not mention Russia. Hey, Ali and Stephanie, since there is no collusion or obstruction of justice, why should he mention a “fake news” story like Russia?

This kind of media abuse directed at the President is nothing new. Ever since Donald Trump officially entered the presidential race on June 16, 2015, the national news media has treated him with total disdain. It has been even worse since he was elected President despite their best efforts. Since that time, liberal cable news outlets like CNN and MSNBC have devoted almost their entire broadcast schedule to attacking his personality, his temperament and his administration’s agenda.

Donald Trump has received the worst media coverage of any President in modern American history. According to a recent study by the Media Research Center, the press coverage of the President by the major broadcast networks has been negative 91% of the time.

With such hatred toward the President, it must be especially upsetting for his critics to see the recent upsurge in his approval rating. In the latest Rasmussen survey, President Trump registered a strong 50% approval rating, his highest level of support since June of last year.

At this point in his administration, Barack Obama had only a 45% approval rating. Incredibly, Trump with almost universal media condemnation is more popular than Obama, who received undying adulation and praise from the press.

The same so-called journalists who idolized Barack Obama have been relentlessly hounding President Trump about non-existent “Russian collusion.” One Trump critic, Jeff Zeleny of CNN, once asked President Obama at a news conference what “enchanted him the most” about the position. This type of fawning behavior was typical of how the media treated Barack Obama. They made obsequious comments and asked President Obama no probing questions that would ever upset him. The lap dog media during the Obama years has become a rabid attack dog media during the Trump administration.

Fortunately, more Americans understand the nature of the liberal mainstream news media. Consequently, millions of Americans are consuming more of their news from other sources such as news websites, talk radio and social media. This is a good development and explains why the President has been able to grow in popularity despite the daily negative media onslaught against him. In contrast, the ratings for CNN have plummeted recently as Americans turn away from their hateful coverage of President Trump.

It also helps that President Trump has an extremely loyal base of supporters who will stand with him no matter what criticism he encounters. This bond was established during the campaign when he stood firm on the key issues and did not back down in the face of unrelenting criticism.

Another major factor in the President's surging popularity is the tax reform bill that passed Congress last December. The bill is associated with President Trump and as more Americans appreciate the many benefits of the bill, his popularity will continue to rise.

The Democrats and the news media denounced the tax cut bill, but Americans are getting raises, and bonuses and are starting to see more money in their paychecks. The reality of their improving financial situation is trumping the “fake news” being delivered by the President's many media critics.

With an improving economy and a rising approval rating for President Trump, the Republicans have a better chance of retaining control of Congress in the mid-term elections. This is news that will not enchant the liberal news media, which will start to wonder why their abusive treatment of the President is not working. Luckily, the American people are starting to understand what the liberal media is all about.

 SOURCE

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CNN’s Town Hall Event Becomes A Hate Rally Against The NRA

Hating is what the Left does

Well, talk about a tale of two meetings. The one hosted by President Trump with those who have been victimized by mass shootings was respectful, grounded, and doled out logical solutions. Yes, there was some talk about assault weapons bans and Australian-style gun control, but a lot of family members who lost their loved ones to gun violence said more armed guards, possibly the teachers themselves should be considered. Better security at schools concerning access to buildings also need to be addressed as well. That was earlier in the afternoon on Wednesday. Later that evening, CNN held a town hall event in Sunrise, Florida. The National Rifle Association agreed to participate, along with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL).

It was a hostile environment. Period. Sen. Nelson wants a new ban on so-called assault weapons. He slammed Gov. Rick Scott for incentivizing a gun manufacturer that makes the AR-15 rifles to move to Florida. That was the main course in this segment, which was broken up into two parts. The second half was with NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel.

Rubio became the punching bag. One father, Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter in the tragic shooting last week, was the first to confront the Florida Republican, saying his remarks, and that of President Trump since the event, were “pathetically weak.” A lot of cheers were thrown when Rubio was slapped repeatedly for not catering to the anti-gun atmosphere. Rubio did say he now supports raising the minimum age to buy a rifle to 21, might support limiting magazine sizes, and banning bump stocks (via WaPo):

"Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in the school this week,” Fred Guttenberg, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Jaime in the shooting, asked Rubio. She had been running down the hallway when she was shot in the back, Guttenberg said. “Were guns the factor in the hunting of our kids?” Guttenberg asked.

“Of course they were,” Rubio responded. But he said a “better answer” than banning assault weapons is to “make sure that dangerous criminals, people that are deranged cannot buy any gun of any kind.”

Rubio said he would support a law that makes it illegal for 18-year-olds to purchase rifles, as well as the banning of bump stocks and expanded background checks. He said he pushed for a $50-million-a-year threat-assessment fund so states could identify people who could potentially commit mass shootings, and stop them.

It’s here that the crowd’s enthusiasm for gun confiscation became explicitly clear.

Cameron Kasky not only asked Rubio if he would stop accepting NRA donations, but even equated him to the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. CNN host Jake Tapper just sat there (via NewsBusters):

“I'm sorry, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I'm not going to listen to that. Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel on an AR-15 and not look at Nikolas Cruz, but the point is: You're here and there are some people who are not,” Kasky spat.

After Rubio answered his question, Kasky began to browbeat him for the money the NRA donated to his campaign, basically insinuating he was being bribed. “And this is about people who are for making a difference to save us and people who are against it and prefer money. So Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA in the future,” he demanded as the crowd went crazy.

The second segment saw Dana Loesch taking serious heat from the audience, with more than a few people calling her a murderer. She noted that this was a monstrous act, and that the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, shouldn’t have been able to buy a firearm. The background check system needs to be updated and reformed, so that his disturbing behavior could be properly documented in the system. Cruz had no prior criminal convictions and was not adjudicated as mentally defective, which would have barred him from buying an AR-15.

On January 5, the FBI received a tip that Cruz could carry out a school shooting. The bureau never followed up on it; something FBI Director Chris Wray admitted last week. The FBI was invited to the town hall event, but declined. They dropped the ball, as did local law enforcement, which visited his home 39 times over a seven-year period, documenting episodes that were described as that of a “mentally ill person.” There were many red flags that were not acted upon, something that Loesch pointed out during this second hour of the town hall event.

Yet, where things got ugly was when Loesch was asked why the NRA position is not to raise the age of purchasing long guns to 21.  She mentioned Kimberly Corban was on a previous CNN town hall on the Second Amendment when Obama was president; he mansplained gun politics to her, by the way. She was brutally raped in college and wishes she was able to defend herself with a firearm, probably a shotgun, which drew boos from the crowd. Yeah, that’s the anti-gun Left, people.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get how anyone could even consider that the position of leaving women unable to defend themselves from rapists and others who seek to do harm to them is fine. The reaction on this front was appalling, but women are becoming a bigger voice in the gun industry, with many think they’re rapidly becoming the next frontier. More women are lining up to obtain their concealed carry permits, shooting sports participation is up, and they’re the fastest growing demographic embracing gun ownership.

Second, what about all the signs Cruz was exhibiting? Was it the gun? Or was it that all levels of government failed to protect these kids? It’s the latter. Is our system broken or is it that the front office handling the management of this system—NICS—has to do better at their jobs? The FBI dropped the ball here, folks. That is a fact. The FBI manages the background check system. Does anyone not think that armed guards, better security at schools, better mental health detection, proper documentation of disturbing behavior, and the ability to update NICS with this information could stop people who shouldn’t have firearms from obtaining them? I think it can. 

But that doesn’t ban so-called assault weapons or limit magazines, so it’ll be unacceptable to the anti-gun Left. The confiscatory ethos permeates every policy initiative they dish out. What happened last night was a North Korean kangaroo court and every conservative, every Second Amendment supporter, every NRA member, and anyone in America who wasn’t onboard with gun control was on trial. We’re guilty of supporting American civil rights and freedom.

 SOURCE

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'Unpatriotic:' New Wave of Horrible Tax Reform "Crumbs"  Arrives, Utility Bills Lowered in 39 States

We noted earlier in the week that Nancy Pelosi has evolved from issuing cartoonishly dire warnings about the consequences of tax reform, to sneering at the unmistakably positive results of the law passed over her objections (along with every Congressional Democrat), to muttering about how making US businesses more competitive and allowing taxpayers to keep more of the money they earn is 'unpatriotic,' or something.  Her messaging is an elitist, counter-productive mess, but it's all they've got.  It's not working.  Public polling has tracked the tax reform bill bouncing from underwater by double digits, to tied, to supported by a majority of voters -- all in about two months. 

The needle hasn't moved that significantly because Republicans have undertaken a masterful communications strategy while Democrats have fallen asleep at the switch.  It's moved because in many respect, the results speak for themselves.  As I put it on television a few days ago, Democrats don't have a messaging problem on tax reform; they have a reality problem.  And reality keeps interfering with their efforts to attack the GOP-passed law.  Here is the latest cascade of examples of employers handing down tax reform-caused benefits to employees, from a Minnesota-based food company:

Hormel Foods Corp. this morning announced that it plans to use savings from the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to award stock options to its employees and raise starting wages to $13 an hour...“Tax reform will have a clear benefit to all Hormel Foods stakeholders — our shareholders, our employees, and the communities in which we operate,” Hormel President and CEO Jim Snee said in the announcement. “The ongoing cash tax benefit will provide additional funds, allowing us to accelerate the growth of our business...Snee also announced that Hormel will continue to raise its starting wages following the $13 an hour increase. The company plans to bump the starting wage to $14 an hour by the end of fiscal 2020. “We also pledged an additional $25 million in donations over the next five years as supporting our communities through product and monetary donations is important to us,” he added. Hormel also expects to pass some of the tax savings on to its shareholders.

To an international air shipping company:

Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: AAWW) today announced record fourth-quarter and full-year 2017 revenue, record fourth-quarter earnings and robust full-year earnings growth, and a continued strong outlook in 2018...We expect the new tax legislation to have a positive impact on economic activity and corporate growth. On passage of the law, we were pleased to provide a one-time bonus of $1,000 to our global personnel in recognition of their hard work and commitment to the company's growth.” Turning to 2018 and beyond, Mr. Flynn stated: “We are operating in a strong airfreight environment, underpinned by global economic growth.

To a transportation company headquartered in Ohio:

Wilmington-based global transportation company R+L Carriers announced this week it would issue bonuses of up to $1,000 for all its employees....

Remaining in Ohio, here's a furniture business doling out bonuses and rolling out a major expansion:

Over 140 employees for a local furniture store will feel their wallets get a lot bigger. Sheely’s Furniture and Appliance President and CEO, Dale Sheely Jr. announced the bonuses Tuesday morning.....

To a bank in Virginia:

Employees of F & M Bank were surprised on Tuesday to learn they would receive a bonus, which the institution attributes to additional earnings expected as a result of the GOP tax plan....

And I'll leave you with this data point from the Speaker of the House, whose office has been tallying the results of the GOP-passed law. Not only are millions of workers experiencing benefits, and not only are 80-90 percent of taxpayers receiving a tax cut, many consumers around the country are getting helpful breaks, too:

This is the opposite of the Obama position on energy costs, which he sought to increase through his preferred policies.  Higher energy bills -- like (ahem) gas taxes -- are extremely regressive.  They hammer the people who can least afford it.

 SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The president must start protecting our democracy from Russia, says Thomas L. Friedman

More New York Times disinformation.  If there is anybody who is a threat to American democracy it is the NeverTrumpers, not Russia.  It is the NeverTrumpers who want to overturn a democratically elected president. What can Russia do?  Come and seize all the voting machines? Friedman is the towering fool.  All he has is a series of unsubstantiated allegations.

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Donald Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Mr. Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Mr. Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of his personally chosen chiefs of the CIA, NSA and FBI

SOURCE 

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A lot of intellectual conservatives still don't "get" Donald Trump

That he has actually taught us all lessons they are resisting  -- including the reality that in the present climate politics can no longer be a gentleman's game

David Limbaugh

I happened onto a piece by Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, wherein he links to "a short, powerful piece in National Review" by Rick Brookhiser, who "concludes that 'the conservative movement is no more. Its destroyers are Donald Trump and his admirers.'"

I somewhat get the sentiment — or at least I used to — because during the GOP primaries, I fleetingly entertained a similar concern that Trump, whom I didn't consider a conservative, might undermine the conservative movement in the long run if elected.

Presumably trying to console Brookhiser, Kristol writes: "Movements grow old. They eventually die. Bill Buckley founded the American conservative movement in 1955. Can a political movement reasonably be expected to thrive and retain its vigor for more than 60 years? ... Trump is the proximate, the efficient, cause of the collapse of the conservative movement. The principles of sound conservatism compel us to criticize him, to rebut him, to resist him, and to plan to overcome him. But, perhaps it is the 'silent artillery of time' that has done the damage which Trump was able to take advantage of. And that suggests our task, the task of the descendants of the founders of American conservatism goes beyond that: It is to rebuild, or to build other pillars that will uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. Brookhiser suggests at the end of his piece, 'It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn.' True. And it will take a lot of work to create a new birth of conservatism — if it even is still called conservatism — that will support American freedom and greatness."

The first thing that pops out at me is Kristol's apparent ambivalence. If all movements inevitably die after a while, then why blame Trump, who just apparently accelerated conservatism's downfall? Indeed, Kristol doesn't really seem to be grieving conservatism's alleged demise, because he is suggesting we find some substitute ideology or movement that will serve as a pillar to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century.

This strikes me as doubly ironic. Conservatism, by definition, comprises inviolable principles. It is not just one of many possible ideologies that support constitutionally limited government and ordered liberty. If Kristol believes we can find some other satisfactory "pillar," then he shouldn't cry over the supposed death of conservatism. On the other hand, if I thought it were truly dead, I would genuinely cry over it.

It's also ironic that Kristol seems to be proposing a solution that many Trump supporters would argue Trump has already implemented. That is, they believe conservatism — though it could never die intellectually — had become ineffectual because its modern standard-bearers in office were simply not getting the job done; they weren't advancing conservative principles. So, for want of a better term, they found a new "pillar" in Donald Trump to uphold the temple of American liberty in the 21st century. (Please don't send me emails about Trump's not being a pillar. That's not the point.)

I dare say that most of the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump are still Reagan conservatives who advocate mainstream conservative solutions. They could not bear to stand by while President Obama and Hillary Clinton continued to dismantle our constitutional liberties, undermine our traditional values and facilitate the further erosion of our culture. They don't have to like everything Trump does or everything he advocates, but they did have to stop the bleeding and save America. When are you guys going to understand that?

Unlike Kristol and Brookhiser, I don't believe the conservative movement has died or will die. As I said in a recent speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, I think fears that Trump is creating some nationalist or populist movement are unwarranted. What we're seeing under Trump is closer to mainstream conservatism than nationalism, in the pejorative sense of that term. Trump isn't steering the movement in that direction; rather, the movement is nudging him more toward mainstream conservatism, with a few exceptions, but even in those exceptional cases, Trump is not veering toward nationalism. And he certainly is not governing as an alt-rightist — whatever that means these days. I also do not believe his successor will be Trump-esque in a personal sense. Trump is sui generis. The front-runner at this point is probably Mike Pence, who, in terms of style, is the Antitrump. So quit hyperventilating.
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In the quoted piece, Brookhiser writes: "Admiring Trump is different from voting for him, or working with him. Politics is calculation. ... But to admire Trump is to trade your principles for his, which are that winning — which means Trump winning — is all. In three years (maybe seven), Donald Trump will no longer be president. But conservatives who bent the knee will still be writing and thinking. How will it be possible to take them seriously? The short answer is, it won't. ... It will take a lot of arguing to rebuild a conservative movement that one can contemplate without scorn."

To the contrary, most of the millions who appreciate what Trump is doing haven't traded their principles for just winning. That is insulting and ludicrous. We do want to defeat liberalism, and we want to retain our principles in doing so, even if you think that sometimes conservatives or Christians have compromised theirs in the process. That is a complex issue that should be discussed and unpacked in detail rather than in the back-and-forth volleys of intramural conservative wars. Suffice it to say, for now, that most are not "bending the knee"; they are animated by the same principles they always have been. Most conservatives aren't in thrall to Trump in the idolatrous fashion Brookhiser implies. But they are grateful that he's employing his unorthodox style to set liberals back on their heels.

It is sad that Brookhiser paints with so broad a brush and is making this personal — with his talk of scorn. That's unfortunate because Brookhiser is a fine, principled man of formidable intellect. In his rush to judgment, he seems to have misplaced his usual grace.

SOURCE

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Pence to CPAC: ‘Promises Made, Promises Kept

Vice President Mike Pence told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday that “2017 was the most consequential year in the history of the conservative movement” and that President Donald Trump kept his campaign promises, ticking off a list of the president’s achievements.

He said Trump kept his promises on issues like military readiness, securing the border, supporting law enforcement, appointing strong conservatives to the court, and defending the right to life.

“Think about it. President Trump promised to rebuild our military and restore the arsenal of democracy, and in just a few weeks, he’ll sign the largest investment in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan. He promised to stand without apology for the men and women of law enforcement, and today we’re once again giving those peace officers the respect and the resources they deserve all across America,” Pence said.

“President Trump promised to enforce our laws, secure our borders, and today illegal crossings at our southern border have been cut nearly in half, and make no mistake about it, we’re going to build that wall,” the vice president said.

“He promised to appoint strong conservatives to the federal courts at every level, and President Trump came through. He appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and set a record for the most circuit court judges appointed in the first year of any administration in history,” he said.

“And President Donald Trump promised to stand for the unalienable right to life, and from the first day of this administration, he reinstated the Mexico City policy, and I was honored to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to send a bill to the president’s desk to allow states to defund Planned Parenthood,” the vice president added.

Pence also pointed to the president’s progress in rolling back excessive government regulations, approving the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, and tax reform.

“And we’ve been busy rolling back the heavy hand of government as well. This president has actually repealed 22 regulations for every new federal rule put on the books, and finally, President Trump promised to cut taxes across the board for working families and job creators, and two months ago today, President Trump signed the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history. Promises made, promises kept,” he said.

“On the world stage, we’ve also been restoring strong American leadership, and under President Donald Trump, America once again stands without apology as leader of the free world,” Pence said.

He pointed to the increase in NATO contributions from U.S. allies and the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

“And for decades, after one president after another promised to move the U.S. embassy to the capital of our most cherished ally, President Trump made history on December 6 when the United States of America recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” Pence said.

SOURCE

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Not My President

Melissa Emery

I recently received an email from an old friend who lives in a very blue state exclaiming that Trump was “not his president.”  This was completely unsolicited, as our email conversation up until that point had been non-political. He just felt it necessary to toss that in at the end, either as a way to build camaraderie with a fellow liberal or to be a flame-thrower to a conservative.

In my case, it was the latter.

I tried not to respond in anger, but merely with regret to learn that Trump was not “his” president, since wages were up, taxes were down, the stock market was up, and over 2 million new jobs had been created. Black and Latino unemployment were at new all-time lows. Were these not things that liberals cared about anymore? But, perhaps, I suggested a bit snarkily, these bits of news had not appeared in the New York Times. I doubt that I’ll ever hear from him again.

As the days went by, his comment that Trump was not his president kept rolling around in my head. I wanted to ask him, who IS your president? Are you operating now without a president? Is your state no longer part of the Union? And how does not having the United States’ president as your president work for you? Do you still get all your Social Security payments and Medicare benefits? Can you still sit in your lovely cabin by a lake and pontificate about how much smarter you are than people who voted for Mr. Trump?

And, after all, isn’t that really what such a comment was meant to convey? It meant that you, my erudite former friend, were just too smart to vote for someone like The Donald, and anyone who did vote for him was some sort of fool. So, you would sit back for four or eight years, take pot shots at him, smirk and guffaw at the peons who elected him, and bemoan the fact that the smartest woman in the world, for whom you voted, was not in the White House.

You would “resist”, whatever that means. You would not endorse anything Trump wanted to accomplish, even when it matched up with your liberal agenda of pre-November, 2016.

Let us imagine if Hillary had won, how things might be different now. The economy would still be limping along. The stock market would be at pre-election levels, give or take a modest amount. It certainly would not be up over $26 trillion, as stocks are now. Taxes would not have been cut, and the resultant business growth, bonuses and raises would never have happened. There would be no thought given to trying to stop illegal immigration, so our borders would be increasingly porous and crime rates would continue to climb. There would be no investigations into collusion with the Russians during our election because, as we are learning daily, the only collusion was on the part of the Democrats.

Our trade deals would continue to disadvantage the US. We would still be dependent on foreign sources of energy, and our military would be underfunded. Veterans wouldn’t even be on the list of priorities, and attacks on police would be ignored or deemed to be the fault of bad police practices. As a result, fewer people would join the ranks of the thin blue line, and more crime would take over in our cities. Sanctuary cities would not be challenged, and federal benefits to illegals would be increased at the expense of our citizens and those waiting in line to enter the country legally.

Obama’s policies would be continued, further regulations would hamper business growth and formation, and the economy would fail to grow. The deficit would climb, and tax increases would be the only solution she would offer, further stifling growth.

Gee, sounds great, but then, I am a deplorable rube who doesn’t know what’s good for me. I don’t realize that government should take care of me rather than me doing it for myself. And I don’t realize that achievement and hard work are now bad things that must be destroyed so that government can rule over all with an iron fist and make all of us dependent on them.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Russia? What Russia? Trump is polling BETTER than Obama at the same point in his presidency despite scandals, staff turnover and a special counsel

Despite a never-ending drumbeat of criticism and suspicion related to a trio of Russia investigations, President Donald Trump's approval rating is in better shape than Barack Obama's was at the same point in his presidency.

Trump's job approval number stood at 48 per cent on Wednesday in a Rasmussen Reports tracking poll. Fifty-one per cent disapprove.

On February 21, 2010, Obama's was 45 per cent, with 54 per cent opposed to his work in the Oval Office.

Trump's current level of support is also above his performance level in the 2016 election, when 46.1 per cent of voters chose him over Hillary Clinton and a handful of minor candidates.

Obama began his presidency at 67 per cent approval in the Rasmussen tracking poll, compared with 56 per cent for Trump.

Yet 13 months later, the two men have switched places on Rasmussen's Oval Office leaderboard.

The February during Obama's first full year in office was a mishmash of trouble spots that drove his numbers down by 6 points – back to where they were before his first State of the Union address.

Trump has his own collection of political headaches, including a special counsel probe into whether his campaign colluded with Russians who aimed to meddle in the 2016 election.

Nearly 20 women have accused him of some level of sexual harassment or abuse, depressing his support among female voters.

The president has also been plagued by far greater turnover of senior staff than his predecessors, most recently losing his staff secretary following domestic violence accusations from two ex-wives.

The instability of Trump's inner circle hasn't projected strength: Departures of his initial chief of staff, chief strategist, press secretary, health secretary, national security adviser, FBI director and a pair of communications directors have all been public-relations train wrecks.

Yet the president's popularity has been buoyed by December's tax cut package, especially as Americans begin to see results in their paychecks.

The Rasmussen Reports national poll was among the few that came closest to accurately predicting the results of the election that vaulted Trump to power.

Unlike other polls that ask questions in live telephone interviews, it relies on push-button phone calls – meaning voters who like Trump's performance in office aren't required to say so out loud to another person.

Some political scientists have called the result 'The Trump Effect,' a phenomenon that explained how social distaste for the president might depress his numbers in polls that use live operators.

SOURCE

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Columbine attack survivor and Colorado House Minority Leader Patrick Neville (R-45) is a strong proponent of arming teachers for self-defense

Neville was first elected to office in 2014 and has introduced his bill each year since that time without success. He hopes this year will be different because of the increased attention paid to the defenseless posture of unarmed teachers and staff.

The Washington Times reports Neville’s contention that more Columbine students would have survived the April 20, 1999, Columbine attack if faculty and/or staff had been armed to take out the attackers. And he believes arming teachers now will protect future students from evil men who are planning attacks.

He described his legislation: “This act would allow every law-abiding citizens who holds a concealed carry permit, issued from their chief law-enforcement officer, the right to carry concealed in order to defend themselves and most importantly our children from the worst-case scenarios.”

SOURCE

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Dept. of Labor:  Still enforcing Obama policies

As described below, Department of Labor policy and practice supports illegal immigrants in at least three ways. This shouldn’t be surprising. Illegal immigrants had no better friend in the Obama administration, and few anywhere in American, than Tom Perez, Obama’s Secretary of Labor.

Here is how Perez used the DOL to promote the interests of illegal immigrants. First, an Obama administration-era memorandum of understanding between the DOL, the EEOC, the NLRB and DHS/ICE prohibits ICE from conducting enforcement activities against illegals when a DOL, EEOC, or NLRB investigation is pending.

This seems indefensible. Why should illegal immigrants and their employers be exempt from ICE enforcement activity merely because a DOL investigation is pending? It’s almost as if the Obama administration has carved out its own “sanctuary city.”

Second, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the DOL invests a significant amount of its budget conducting investigations and collecting back wages for illegal immigrants. This wouldn’t bother me if the budget for investigating and litigating wage and hour violations were unlimited, but it is not. By devoting resources to seeking back wages for illegal immigrants, the DOL is short-changing victims of pay act violations who are in this country legally, including American citizens.

A 2015 Report from DOL’s Office of Inspector General on WHD’s back wage distributions found that from 2010 to 2015, WHD transferred $72 million in back wages to the Treasury Department for employees it could not locate. It’s likely that a large portion of these funds were collected for illegal immigrants no longer in the country or not willing to contact DOL to claim the money. Thus, even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, the DOL’s resources would be better spent pursuing back pay on behalf of citizens and lawful residents.

Third, the DOL has entered a number of partnerships with Central American, South American, and Asian Pacific Government to facilitate complaints against employers by their citizens, regardless of immigration status. I don’t think our government should be devoting resources to encouraging complaints by illegal immigrants that apparently may immunize them from visits by ICE to their workplaces.

One year into the Trump administration, these pro-illegal immigrant policies remain intact. It’s my understanding that Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta has shown no interest in undoing any of them. The issues have been raised with Acosta, but he seems bent on ignoring them. From all that appears, he’s fine with the status quo, including the government’s own “sanctuary city” program.

As was the case during the Obama administration, illegal immigrants have no better friend in high office than the Secretary of Labor.

Unfortunately, this comes as no surprise. At both the Justice Department and the DOL, Acosta has been unwilling to take action that would alienate leftists. He has raised inaction to an art form.

At DOL, far from making regulatory roll back a priority, he has taken what can euphemistically be called “a cautious approach” to controversial policy matters. For example, although he withdrew the Obama Administration’s interpretation of “independent contractors” under the Fair Labor Standards Act with respect to home health registries, he has done nothing to prevent DOL employees from continuing to use it, which they do aggressively. Senator Rubio complained about this in a letter to Acosta.

Acosta is so unwilling to offend the left that he has not removed any of the Obama/Perez holdovers on the DOL’s Administrative Review Board (ARB), the influential body that issues final agency decisions for the Secretary of Labor in cases arising under a wide range of worker protection laws — more than three dozen of them. The members of this Board serve entirely at the pleasure of the Secretary. Acosta had the right to dismiss them the day he took office. Yet, four of the five remain in place (the other left a month or two ago on his own accord).

Given his track record, including his unwillingness even to cut the low-hanging fruit at the ARB, it was predictable that Acosta wouldn’t alter DOL policy favoring illegal immigrants. But what were the odds that President Trump would not disturb the aggressive pro-illegal immigrant, anti enforcement policies put in place by Barack Obama and Tom Perez? Until he appointed Acosta, they were slim indeed.

SOURCE

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Bad science and government are a destructive combination

In modern America, there is a little-known government entity, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which is an arm of the Center for Disease Control. NIOSH has launched more than 1,000 lawsuits costing companies hundreds of millions of dollars over the past fifteen years due to their determination that a naturally occurring as well as synthetically produced chemical, diacetyl, is linked to injuries and deaths involving microwave popcorn workers among others. 

There is only one problem – their science may not be right.

So what is diacetyl?  It is a naturally occurring chemical that is found in low concentrations of fermented foods like butter, beer and yogurt. It is also made synthetically to add buttery flavor to popcorn, chips and even coffee. Safe to eat in trace amounts, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the question is what quantity of the chemical is safe to inhale.

Bronchiolitis obliterans also known as popcorn lung is no joke, despite its almost comic book descriptor, but it is reasonable to ask whether NIOSH jumped the gun when they created the wave of lawsuits based upon their findings.

Years after the initial NIOSH finding, the Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) produced a 2008 report, which casts strong doubt on whether diacetyl is actually the villain that NIOSH and trial lawyers have made it out to be.  TERA states, “The causal link between diacetyl and the onset of bronchiolitis obliterans is not certain.”

NIOSH itself is listed among the recent sponsors of TERA at the outset of its report, so while the funding came from the food industry, it is safe to conclude that the contrary conclusion to NIOSH’s earlier findings should be taken seriously.

Additionally, the highly respected chemical toxicology firm, Cardno ChemRisk, has studied the impacts of diacetyl extensively over the past decade.  In a study published in Critical Reviews on Toxicology, they wrote, “We found that diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione exposures from cigarette smoking far exceed occupational exposures for most food/flavoring workers who smoke.” One line down they continue, “Further, because smoking has not been shown to be a risk factor for bronchiolitis obliterans, our findings are inconsistent with claims that diacetyl and/or 2,3-pentanedione exposure are risk factors for this disease.”

The argument against NIOSH’s findings can even be found within the Obama administration’s Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), where after eight years of controversy over regulating diacetyl, they chose not to regulate the chemical in the workplace. When Obama’s radical OSHA decides not to act, it should serve as a touch point for trying to get to the real truth of the matter.

Meanwhile, like the Trojan War of old, the trial lawyer bar is besieging the walls of business on many fronts, looking for weaknesses that might allow them to hit a massive payday.  When it comes to diacetyl lawsuits, NIOSH is the Trojan horse that has been wheeled behind those walls, unleashing a horde of trial lawyers looking for industries to sue.  It doesn’t matter to them whether diacetyl is the agent of illness, only that they can convince a jury, using NIOSH as their lead witness, that it does. 

Given the fact that there is serious and reasonable doubt about the causal factors of bronchiolitis obliterans, combined with the Obama Administration’s determination to not impose  workplace standards, it is time for a common sense approach to diacetyl.

Bruce Fein, a former senior ranking Reagan Administration official recommends that the federal government set up a process similar to the one undertaken in 1977 in examining saccharin.  He wrote in the West Virginia Record, “In 1977, the FDA proposed a ban on saccharin as a human carcinogen required by the Delany Amendment.  Congress balked.  It passed the Saccharin Study and Labelling Act which placed a moratorium on the ban but required labels warning that saccharin could cause cancer.  After two decades of further study, the National Toxicology Program delisted saccharin as a carcinogen in 2000.

“Congress should consider comparable oversight of NIOSH’s recommended worker exposure limits for diacetyl.”

This seems like a reasonable approach to what heretofore has been an intractable problem that NIOSH and the credibility of the federal government have been used as the cudgel in legal cases, when their determinations are disputed by multiple respected alternative studies.

It’s time to get to the right answer on diacetyl, rather than having the trial bar use one agency’s claims, that another agency of government has chosen not to act upon, to drive businesses engaged in innocuous activity like grinding coffee beans into legal hell. 

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Fake news was originally a Leftist term

As I recollect it, the term first arose in response to a story (put about by Russians, no doubt) that Hillary was running some sort of racket out of a NYC pizza joint.  It WAS a false story and Democrat operatives immediately dubbed it "fake news".  The concept really caught on after that

In a Tedx Talk at the University of Nevada a couple of weeks ago (watch the video below) investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson revealed the origins of the "fake news" narrative that was aggressively pushed by the liberal media and Democrat politicians during the 2016 election, and how it was later flipped by President Donald Trump.

Attkisson pointed out that "fake news" in the form of tabloid journalism and false media narratives has always been around under different names.

But she noticed that in 2016, there seemed to be a concerted effort by the MSM to focus America's attention on the idea of "fake news" in conservative media. That looked like a propaganda effort to Attkisson, so she did a little digging and traced the new spin to a little non-profit called "First Draft," which, she said, "appears to be the about the first to use 'fake news' in its modern context."

"On September 13, 2016, First Draft announced a partnership to tackle malicious hoaxes and fake news reports," Attkisson explained. "The goal was supposedly to separate wheat from chaff, to prevent unproven conspiracy talk from figuring prominently in internet searches. To relegate today's version of the alien baby story to a special internet oblivion."

She noted that a month later, then-President Obama chimed in.

"He insisted in a speech that he too thought somebody needed to step in and curate information of this wild, wild West media environment," she said, pointing out that "nobody in the public had been clamoring for any such thing."

Yet suddenly the subject of fake news was dominating headlines all over America as if the media had received "its marching orders," she recounted. "Fake news, they insisted, was an imminent threat to American democracy."

Attkisson, who has studied the manipulative moneyed interests behind the media industry, said that "few themes arise in our environment organically." She noted that she always found it helpful to "follow the money."

"What if the whole anti-fake news campaign was an effort on somebody's part to keep us from seeing or believing certain websites and stories by controversializing them or labeling them as fake news?" Attkisson posited.

Digging deeper, she discovered that Google was one of the big donors behind First Draft's "fake news" messaging. Google's parent company, Alphabet, was run by Eric Schmidt, who happened to be a huge Hillary Clinton supporter.

Schmidt "offered himself up as a campaign adviser and became a top multi-million donor to it. His company funded First Draft around the start of the election cycle," Attkisson said. "Not surprisingly, Hillary was soon to jump aboard the anti-fake news train and her surrogate David Brock of Media Matters privately told donors he was the one who convinced Facebook to join the effort."

Attkisson declared that "the whole thing smacked of the roll-out of a propaganda campaign." Attkisson added, "But something happened that nobody expected. The anti-fake news campaign backfired. Each time advocates cried fake news, Donald Trump called them 'fake news' until he'd co-opted the term so completely that even those who [were] originally promoting it started running from it -- including the Washington Post," which she noted later backed away from using the term.

Attkisson called Trump's accomplishment a "hostile takeover" of the term

SOURCE

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Trump Turns Obama Quote Against Him

In their typically psychopathic way, Leftists will say anything that suits them at the time, regardless of facts or evidence.  Very often, however, their airy assertions come back to haunt them. Below would seem to be an example of that

President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to point out that just weeks before Election Day in 2016, then-President Barack Obama suggested it would be close to impossible to “rig” a presidential election.

Trump’s tweets came in response to claims that his campaign colluded with Russia to defeat former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and win the presidency.

But during an October 2016 news conference with then-Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, it was Obama who told Trump to “stop whining” about election rigging.

“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved,” Obama said at the time, according to Politico.

“There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,” he added. “And so, I‘d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”

On Tuesday, Trump used Obama’s words against him to argue that following the election, Democrats changed their tune.

“When I easily won the Electoral College, the whole game changed and the Russian excuse became the narrative of the Dems,” Trump wrote

Muller’s report included what Republicans are calling even more vindication for the Trump campaign team. In addition to finding that no American was knowingly involved and that Russian activities did not ultimately sway the presidential election, the exhaustive report also determined that the Russian operation began as early as 2014, long before Trump launched his campaign, and that they sought to boost Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign during the Democrat primaries.

Trump later said on Tuesday that he has been “much tougher on Russia than Obama.”

SOURCE

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School shootings CAN be prevented:  Israel shows how

I’m a small government guy, however, it’s sadly apparent that the United States of America is paralyzed with political indecision over something the State of Israel figured out more than 40 years ago: all schools should have mandated security features and active shooter protocols.

The horrific scene in Parkland, and the upsetting videos broadcast from the school during the shooting, should be the final straw.  The kids should not have been hiding and screaming, they should have been in the midst of a pre-determined security protocol.

President Trump, if the Department of Education can force Americans to deal with the disaster of Common Core, it can certainly issue a federal mandate regarding school security. The time is now. 

My personal manifesto is that government should never get involved in an issue unless an ongoing clear and present danger exists to large numbers of people, and that any regulation or legislation has a sunset provision.

Here we are.

In 1974, Israel endured the Ma’alot Massacre in which “Palestinian” terrorists took 115 people hostage at Netiv Meir Elementary School.  Twenty-two children and three others were killed and 68 injured.  Israel now requires schools with 100 or more students to have a guard posted. The civilian police force handles the entire security system of all schools from kindergarten through college.  The Ministry of Education funds shelters and fences, reinforces school buses, and hires and trains guards.

Guards don’t just stand around.  They check everyone entering, and engage threats.

And yeah, they’ve got guns.The lawful purposes for carrying guns are very clear: protect school personnel and students, create a sense of security, deter the ill-intentioned, and provide self-defense.

Common sense.   Except to the illogical dullards who claim that “adding guns to schools won’t fix anything” and are fixated on the NRA and the ridiculous notions that gun laws magically stop criminals and crazy people from obtaining one of the 300 million guns in our country.

But more to the point, Israel’s Police Community & Civil Guard Department have a preventative care program that encourages safe behavior and offers violence protection strategies in normal situations.  Yet students are also trained in how to respond to an active shooter situation.

Ben Goldstein, an American who made aliyah to Israel, and now serves as volunteer security and supporter of IDF soldiers, says America is behind the curve.  Nevertheless, he says, it doesn’t take much for students and teachers to protect themselves.

“Barricade, barricade. Are desks movable?  Is the teacher’s desk movable?  Can they barricade inside of 20 seconds? If the shooter gets in, the kids should take whatever they’ve got and attack.  They can’t just sit there frozen or they will die.  America does earthquake drills, why not active shooter drills?   More kids have been killed by shooters than earthquakes.”

Barricading works, says Goldstein. In an active shooter situation, where a gunman is roaming a campus, five minutes is a lifetime, enough time for law enforcement to get to the scene.  “In those five minutes, the shooter will have to move from class to class, reload, clear malfunctions, all that stuff takes time.  And during gunfire lulls, kids must be taught to do something.  Don’t freeze.Moving once gets you out of that deer-in-headlights space.  Take command of the classroom.”

There is no other way, says Goldstein, and “sometimes children must take matters into their own hands.If the school has no proper security – two guards in case one gets shot, and no active shooter protocol, and no doors to withstand an attack – then the child needs to run as fast as they can AWAY from the shooter.”

Because right now, America is the deer-in-headlights.  Gun control debates are a distraction and impractical, and criminals ignore laws anyway.Crazy people are obviously not being dealt with properly – students at Parkland even predicted this would happen.

The only solution is for America to toughen up.  We have a pugilist for a president, and that is long overdue.  Now its time for President Trump to fight for our children by wielding government power in the proper manner, to do something that any reasoned American would agree with. 

Instead of handing out participation trophies, let’s make our kids into the self-reliant, pro-active defenders of themselves and others.

Mr. President, the time is now.

SOURCE

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Scapegoating the NRA

The FBI failed to investigate warnings about the Florida school shooter, but never mind that. And the National Rifle Association has no control over school shootings, but never mind that, either.

Two newly minted gun control activists from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida are defending the FBI, while demanding that NRA "child murderers" dismantle and disband. And they have declined an invitation to discuss their concerns with President Donald Trump, whom they call "disgusting."

But on the Sunday talk shows, the students said their upcoming "March for Our Lives" in Washington is not political.

"So what do you say to the NRA?" CNN's Alisyn Camerota asked student activists Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg on Monday morning.

"Um, disband. Dismantle," Gonzalez replied.

"And don't make another organization under a different name," David Hogg said.

"Yeah, don't make another organization under a different name," Gonzalez agreed. "Don't you dare come back here. The fact that you were in power for so long and that you had so much influence for so long in America just goes to show how much time and effort we have to spend on fixing our country. And gun control is just the first thing right now, the first thing that we are mainly focusing on."

Alisyn Camerota urged the students on: "Look, I don't have to tell you guys, they give millions of dollars to politicians. They have a very powerful tool, so I mean, how do you expect politicians who need money to keep running for office to say no to the NRA?"

"Because we keep telling them, that if they accept this blood money, they are against the children," Gonzalez replied. "They are against the people who are dying. And there's no other way to put it at this point. You are either funding the killers or you are standing with the children. The children who have no money. We don't have jobs. So we can't pay for your campaign. We would hope that you have the decent morality to support us at this point."

"And not take money from people that want to keep lessening gun legislation and making it even easier for these horrifying people to get guns," Hogg interjected. "Because if you can't get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?"

Camerota read one of President Trump's tweets sent over the weekend: "Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign -- there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!" Trump wrote.

Camerota asked the students to react to that tweet:

"I think it's disgusting, personally," Hogg said. "My father's a retired FBI agent, and the FBI are some of the hardest working individuals I've ever seen in my life. They work every day, 24-7, to ensure the lives of every single American in this country, and it's wrong that the president is blaming them for this. After all, he is in charge of the FBI -- he can't put that off on them. He is in charge of them, and these people, what they love to do is push this off on the bureaucracy and say it's not them. He is in charge of the FBI..."

Gonzalez noted FBI agents were among the first responders who helped students get to safety; and "the fact that he wants to discredit them in any way and that he's trying to shift our focus onto them is -- it's not acceptable."

"Disgusting," Hogg agreed.

Both Hogg and Gonzalez said they have been invited to a listening session to share their concerns with President Trump, but neither of them are going. They're blowing off Trump for CNN's Jake Tapper, who is hosting what they called a previously scheduled town hall on CNN.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Flashback 30 Years: Guns Were in Schools ... and Nothing Happened

The millennial generation might be surprised to learn that theirs is the first without guns in school. Just 30 years ago, high school kids rode the bus with rifles and shot their guns at high school rifle ranges.

After another school shooting, it's time to ask: what changed?

Cross guns off the list of things that changed in thirty years. In 1985, semi-automatic rifles existed, and a semi-automatic rifle was used in Florida. Guns didn’t suddenly decide to visit mayhem on schools. Guns can’t decide.

We can also cross the Second Amendment off the list. It existed for over 200 years before this wickedness unfolded. Nothing changed in the Constitution.

That leaves us with some uncomfortable possibilities remaining. What has changed from thirty years ago when kids could take firearms into school responsibly and today might involve some difficult truths.

Let’s inventory the possibilities.

What changed? The mainstreaming of nihilism. Cultural decay. Chemicals. The deliberate destruction of moral backstops in the culture. A lost commonality of shared societal pressures to enforce right and wrong. And above all, simple, pure, evil.

Before you retort that we can’t account for the mentally ill, they existed forever.

Paranoid schizophrenics existed in 1888 and 2018. Mentally ill students weren’t showing up in schools with guns even three decades ago. So it must be something else.

Those who have been so busy destroying the moral backstops in our culture won’t want to have this conversation. They’ll do what they do -- mock the truth.

There was a time in America, before the Snowflakes, when any adult on the block could reprimand a neighborhood kid who was out of line without fear.

Even thirty years ago, the culture still had invisible restraints developed over centuries. Those restraints, those leveling commonalities, were the target of a half-century of attack by the freewheeling counterculture that has now become the dominant replacement culture.

Hollywood made fun of these restraints in films too numerous to list.

The sixties mantra “don’t trust anyone over thirty” has become a billion-dollar industry devoted to the child always being right -- a sometimes deeply medicated brat who disrupts the classroom or escapes what used to be resolved with a paddling.

Instead of telling the kid to quit kicking the back of the seat on a plane, we buy seat guards to protect the seat.

If you think it’s bad now, just wait until the generation whose babysitter is an iPhone is in high school. You can hardly walk around WalMart these days without tripping over a toddler in a trance, staring at a screen.

The high school kids who shot rifles in school in 1985 were taught right and wrong. They were taught what to do with their rifle in school, and what not to do. If they got out of line, all the other students and the coach would have come down on them hard. There were no safe spaces, and that was a good thing.

Culture is a powerful force for good. When good behavior is normalized and deviant destructive behavior is ostracized, shamed, and marginalized, you get more good behavior.

Considering evil in this debate makes some of you uncomfortable, but evil bathes all of these shootings. I am reminded of Justice Antonin Scalia’s spectacularly funny and profound interview in 2013 when he toyed with a New Yorker reporter about evil. “You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil!”, he chortled.

Thirty years ago, kids who brought their rifles to the high school shooting range didn’t wonder about evil and cultural decay. They simply lived in a time in America when right and wrong was more starkly defined, where expectations about behavior were clear, and wickedness hadn’t been normalized.

The idea that guns caused the carnage we have faced is so intellectually bankrupt that it is isn’t worth discussing. Remembering where we were as a nation just 30 years ago makes it even more so. It’s time to ask what changed.

SOURCE

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It's the Culture, Not the Guns

Leftists want to restrict the entire conversation to gun control. But their destruction of culture is the culprit. 

Last Wednesday, Andrew Pollack was photographed while searching for his daughter, Meadow, who was a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Tragically, he learned Meadow was one of the 17 murder victims.

A parent’s worst nightmare, eliciting an avalanche of sympathy? No, Pollack was shown wearing a “Trump 2020” T-shirt. Apparently nothing else mattered.

“He’s a pro-Trump guy which means he supports the guy who is responsible for the death of his child!!” tweeted iMO@_sheateher. “I don’t feel sorry for him and f—k trump,” stated Walterlee@eastsidedogg. “Maybe he should have thought twice before voting for #TerroristTrump,” added #TrumpforPrison@SolRyaz.

These twisted souls were hardly an anomaly. Trump is “obviously mentally ill,” according to TV host Jimmy Kimmel, who joined a chorus of other hate-filled leftists promoting pure propaganda.

Trump and the GOP made it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns? What they really did was reverse an attempt by Barack Obama’s administration to automatically define anyone incapable of managing their own finances as “mentally defective.” Under that unconstitutional scenario, the name of every Social Security Disability Insurance recipient would have been sent to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

Leftists also pushed a bogus assertion by Everytown for Gun Safety, Michael Bloomberg’s rabidly anti-gun group, stating the Parkland mass murder was the 18th shooting on a school campus in America since the start of this year. Even The Washington Post was forced to concede that was “flat wrong,” because it included instances such as a man shooting a BB gun at a bus window, a student in a criminal justice club accidentally shooting a peace officer’s real gun instead of a training gun at a target on a classroom wall, and gunshots that were fired from somewhere outside of Cal State San Bernardino, all of which resulted in no injuries.

As always, leftists want to restrict the entire conversation to gun control. And as always, none of them can name a single new law that would prevent a tragedy like this.

What might? Ramping down leftist hate. Ever since the election, those who profess to own the franchise on tolerance have not only been utterly deranged, but increasingly proud of being so.

Examples abound. “Where’s Rand Paul’s neighbor when we need him?” tweeted Bette Midler in response to the senator’s words on the budget. Midler was apparently hoping the Democrat neighbor who broke Paul’s ribs and punctured his lung would be up for an encore.

Her tweet garnered 23,000 “likes.”

As columnist Melissa Meckenzie notes, this was Paul’s second brush with Democrat-perpetrated violence. He was also present when a deranged Bernie Sanders fanatic targeted Republican lawmakers at a baseball field, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise.

Meckenzie also reminds us more than 200 people were arrested during a violent demonstration precipitated by antifa at Trump’s inauguration, and that anti-Trump protesters spat on Gold Star families attending the American Legion’s “Salute to Heroes” gala honoring those who defended the nation.

Leftist-instigated violence has also become almost routine on college campuses. Heather MacDonald’s speech at Claremont McKenna College was shut down by what she described as an “exercise of brute totalitarian force.” Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger was injured and forced to flee in fear for her life with author Charles Murray, following Murray’s speech at that campus. Leftist protesters were permitted to walk around Evergreen State College wielding baseball bats and causing $10,000 of property damage, following leftist professor Bret Weinstein’s assertion that white people should not be forced to leave campus for the school’s annual “Day of Absence” discussions about race.

Those examples merely scratch the surface.

Even simple decency has been cast aside. When Republicans going to a retreat were involved in a train crash killing one person, CNN political commentator Ken Boykin suggested it was a “metaphor for American politics.” Democratic/socialist strategist Jonathan Tasini and self-described “CNN talking head” insisted, “God is working hard today to clean up the stink. Thank her [sic].”

For a largely secular Left, God, Christianity and its practitioners are often targets of contempt and derision. Thus, “The View’s” Joy Behar found it amusing to mock Vice President Mike Pence. “It’s one thing to talk to Jesus; it’s another thing when Jesus talks to you,” she asserted. “That’s called mental illness.”

Behar’s disdain was emulated by the openly homosexual and openly puerile Olympian skier Gus Kenworthy. Like so many leftists, he conflates Pence’s commitment to religious freedom with anti-homosexual bigotry.

Back to the problem of “gun violence.” There are solutions, but most of them are utterly anathema to the American Left. We could restore some sense of codified morality to a society grotesquely disconnected from it. What do we mean? The death of 17 people is mourned as a national tragedy, while genocidal levels of abortion and the sale of fetal tissue is celebrated as “freedom of choice.” And yet progressives still scream about pandering to the religious Right and creating a nation that supposedly resembles the “Handmaiden’s Tale.”

We could stop medicating children with heavy-duty drugs whose side effects produce psychotic behavior, but then they wouldn’t be submissive enough for “inconvenienced” parents and school administrators — or emasculated enough to fulfill the Left’s dream of “proving” there’s no difference between boys and girls.

We could arm teachers and guards in schools, but that would constitute “selling out to the NRA,” according to leftist politicians and celebrities — protected by armed bodyguards.

We could revamp a “multicultural” immigration system that welcomes too many people from places where life is cheap, but leftists insist it’s xenophobic bigotry to do so, even though the bloodthirsty ethos of MS-13 gangbangers, or terror-precipitating “refugees,” suggests it’s not.

We could also revamp a public school system contaminated by the Left’s determination to teach children more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right about it.

“When I was in high school, every one of those rigs in the high school parking lot had a gun in the gun rack,” Spokane Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich told a group of reporters following a school shooting near that city last September. “Why? We went hunting on the way home. None of those guns ever walked into a school, none of those guns ever shot anybody. … Did the gun change or did you as a society change?”

“We are a formerly Christian society in an advanced state of decomposition,” Pat Buchanan asserts.

It’s a decomposition where “see something, say something” is either labeled bigoted or Islamophobic, or reduced to tragic farce by the gross incompetence of the same FBI leftists defend as sacrosanct when it’s going after Trump.

For an American Left that champions celebrity has-been Madonna’s dreams of “blowing up the White House,” Kathy Griffin’s severed Trump head, a New York City Public Theater that assassinates a Trump-like Julius Caesar, or a violence-fomenting “Resistance” with an end game of nullifying an election, conversations about gun control are nothing more than the last refuge of leftist scoundrels.

Scoundrels who own the degradation of our culture. As Andrew Klavan asserts, “Over the last fifty years, it’s the left that has assaulted every moral norm and disdained every religious and cultural restraint.”

And now America is living — and dying — with the permutations.

SOURCE

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A possible gun regulation compromise?

Leftists regularly argue while having no apparent knowledge of the relevant facts.  And the current outcry for gun control after the Florida shooting is a prime example of that.  They act as if nobody had ever tried gun control before.

Yet gun regulation varies greatly across the fruited plain -- so the data to assess the proposal is readily available.  And the fact is that in places like Chicago guns are very heavily regulated.  Yet Chicago, Detroit etc are also the places where gun deaths are at their highest.

So the existing facts on the ground tell us that gun control does more harm than good.  Criminals are greatly encouraged when the rest of the population has little or no protection so shoot with every expectation of impunity.

But a conservative writer has come up with a suggestion that may have some merit.  It may not however pass constitutional muster:

Instead of debating gun regulations that would apply to every gun owner, we could consider limits that are imposed on youth and removed with age. After all, the fullness of adult citizenship is not bestowed at once: Driving precedes voting precedes drinking, and the right to stand for certain offices is granted only in your thirties.

Perhaps the self-arming of citizens could be similarly staggered. Let 18-year-olds own hunting rifles. Make revolvers available at 21. Semiautomatic pistols, at 25. And semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 could be sold to 30-year-olds but no one younger.

This proposal would be vulnerable to some of the same practical critiques as other gun control proposals. But it is more specifically targeted to the plague of school shootings, whose perpetrators are almost always young men.

And it offers a kind of moral bridge between the civic vision of Second Amendment advocates and the insights of their critics — by treating bearing arms as a right but also a responsibility, the full exercise of which might only come with maturity and age.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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The battle for time

The article below is from a Leftist source but it has half a point.  He says that when we assemble a flatpack we undervalue our time.  But do we?  It is probably time taken out of recreational activity such as TV watching and is itself pretty interesting, if not exactly entertaining.  So as recreational time we valued it at  nil commercially so nothing is gained or lost

Standing at a supermarket self checkout the other day I was struck by one of the paradoxes facing the modern consumer.

On the one hand we’re encouraged to buy products that save time like dishwashers and home-delivered meals.

But at the same time shops are inviting us to spend time on things that were once done for us – like the self checkout.

It is just one example where consumers have been convinced to supply their own labour to facilitate new business models and help boost company profits.

The most shrewd innovator of all may be Ikea. The Swedish furniture icon has persuaded generations of consumers to buy products in flatpacks and then devote hours of their own labour putting them together at home.

An Ikea guest bed I recently assembled with a family member had an instruction booklet that ran to 28 pages. I calculated the hours of labour we spent in assembly would have added at least $120 to the cost if we had been paid the minimum wage.

One of many discoveries of behavioural economics, which analyses how real-life human behaviour affects economic decision-making, is a tendency for consumers to undervalue their own time.

Despite all the talk about people being “time-poor” it turns out we are often willing to give time away for free.

Richard Thaler, a pioneering behavioural economist and latest winner of the Nobel prize for economics, emphasised how fallible humans can be when making economic decisions, in his acceptance speech just before Christmas

Rather than being the calculating, hyper-rational “homo economicus” of economics text books, humans are absent-minded, procrastinating and notoriously over confident, he said.

You can add the tendency to undervalue our own time to the list.

It’s a trait that crops up in all sorts of curious ways. Like a willingness to walk very long distances for cheaper parking or a determination to take a longish drive out of your way to save a few dollars at the petrol pump. My own huge underestimation of how many hours it would take to assemble that Ikea guest bed is a neat example.

The tendency to undervalue our own time creates all sorts of anomalies and inefficiencies in how we organise our economic life.

This is likely to become more problematic as fresh business models and methods of exchange are made possible by new digital technologies.

That’s because our tendency to undervalue time afflicts workers as well as consumers.

Economist Jim Stanford, director of the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work, says that when people undervalue their own time it easier for companies (and even governments) to take it for free - whether it’s working unpaid overtime or being stuck on hold.

“The way we organise society tends to trick a lot of people into thinking their own time is free,” says Stanford.

“The less we are aware of the value of our own time, the easier it becomes for employers and governments to steal it.”

There is a long history of employees and bosses fighting over the use of time at work, of course. Trade unions have sought to limit work hours and standardise employment relationships. Employers have strived for industrial rules that allow the highest output for the lowest labour cost.

But Stanford reckons trends in the jobs market today mean the “battle over time” is intensifying and will become a central issue in economic policy and regulation in years to come.

A key factor is the rapid growth in short-term, temporary jobs in the so called “gig economy”.

Valuing time in the gig economy can be tricky for workers.  While some professions, like legal services, have become very adept at charging “billable hours”, the army of freelancers offering their services in the gig economy are unlikely to be so savvy, especially if they are low-skilled. “People can be tricked into working for way, way below the minimum wage,” says Stanford.

He says new “peer-to-peer” digital platforms like Uber or Deliveroo rely heavily on the human tendency to undervalue our own time. “Uber drivers are paid by the ride, so any time that they spend waiting is free, and time they spending driving to pick up the next passenger is also free,” he says. “If Uber was unable to wrest that time for free from its drivers the business model would collapse.”

Meanwhile, mobile technologies are blurring the boundaries between leisure time, voluntary work and paid work.

A fashion vlogger, for instance, can now make videos at home and post them on YouTube in the hope of selling advertisements or being paid to make product endorsements. Or a software developer might give away some software for free in the hope that it will help snare future work as a consultant.

Is it worth the time? In many cases that’s likely to be complex calculation.

What we do know is that for consumers and workers time is surprisingly easy to squander. A recent study by academics Hal Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner Holmes and Uri Barnea underscored the difficulties people have making judgments about their time.

They asked about 4,000 Americans of various ages, income, jobs, and marital status whether they would prefer more money or more time. About two-thirds said they’d take the money. But the researchers also asked survey respondents to report their level of happiness and life satisfaction. It turned out the people who chose more time were on average statistically happier and more satisfied with life than the people who chose more money.

The upshot? There’s a strong link between our wellbeing and how we value time.

SOURCE

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How a sleazy pol went to the White House and became a reformer

I think we will all get what Jeff Jacoby is implicitly driving at below.  He used to be very anti-Trump.  He appears to have learned

WHEN CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR became president of the United States, everyone knew what to expect — and it wasn't good. Arthur was a thoroughgoing hack. He was a partisan crony who had risen to influence as a loyal henchman of Senator Roscoe Conkling, the arrogant and ruthless boss of the New York Republican machine.

The prospect of Arthur in the White House, lamented the Chicago Tribune, was "a pending calamity of the utmost magnitude." As the eminent diplomat and historian Andrew Dickson White would later recall, the most common reaction to the news in political circles was: "Chet Arthur, president of the United States?! Good God!"

But Arthur surprised them all. The sleazy insider redeemed himself. He governed honestly and conscientiously, putting country ahead of party and turning his back on the win-at-any-cost cynicism in which he had marinated for so long. On this Presidents Day weekend, the story of the nation's 21st president offers a reminder that power doesn't have to reinforce a political leader's worst inclinations. Sometimes it can awaken the best.

* * *

THREE YEARS before he was elevated to the highest office in the land, Arthur's political career appeared to be wrecked beyond repair.

In the summer of 1878, President Rutherford Hayes had fired Arthur from his job as collector of the Port of New York, one of the most lucrative positions in the federal government. Conkling had originally recommended Arthur for the job, and Arthur had milked it for the benefit of Conkling's machine. The nation's largest custom house became a hive of rigged hiring, illegal kickbacks, and political patronage: the spoils system at its most brazen. During political campaigns, every employee was required to pay an "assessment" — a cash contribution to the Republican Party. Jobs went to party loyalists, who routinely passed the application exam with flying colors — even when they didn't know any of the answers.

By the 1870s, disgust with the spoils system was rising in both parties. Hayes, a leader of the GOP's reform wing, had run for president on a platform of dismantling the sleazy arrangements perfected by Conkling's machine. On his first day in office, he had called for "thorough, radical, and complete" reform of federal hiring. He instructed the Treasury Department to investigate political manipulation and fraud at the nation's custom houses, and when it produced a scathing report on the unscrupulous practices in the New York Custom House, Hayes sacked the man who ran it.

Yet "rather than ruining Arthur's career," as Arthur biographer Zachary Karabell writes, "Hayes's vendetta catapulted him to national attention." He became a hero of the "Stalwarts," the anti-reform faction of the Republican Party. In 1880, Arthur led the New York delegation to the Republican national convention in Chicago. He and the other Stalwarts couldn't prevent the party from nominating another reformer to succeed Hayes — the widely-admired James A. Garfield. But Garfield knew he couldn't win the election if he didn't carry New York, and New York — Conkling's empire — was Stalwart territory. To balance the ticket, Garfield's campaign offered the vice-presidency to Arthur.

It worked. The Republicans won the November election, and the following March, Arthur was sworn in as vice president. But even then, he continued as before, looking out for Conkling's interests and not even pretending to back the new administration's reform agenda.

Then Garfield was murdered.

On July 2, 1881, in a Washington train depot, a deranged assassin shot the president twice. The gunman, who had delusions of being named an ambassador and was enraged when no offer was extended, convinced himself that Garfield's successor would give him the patronage post he craved. "I am a Stalwart, and Arthur will be President!" he proclaimed.

Garfield died painfully and slowly, clinging to life for more than two months. All the while, Arthur was distraught with grief and fear. "I pray to God that the president will recover," he said. "God knows I do not want the place I was never elected to." When word reached him that Garfield had finally died, a reporter knocked on his door to ask for a statement. Arthur's valet had to turn the man away: The new president was "sitting alone in his room sobbing like a child, with his head on his desk and his face buried in his hands."

Garfield's assassination made Arthur president, but there was no satisfaction or triumph in it. The awful knowledge that a good man had been murdered so that he could take his place and preserve the spoils system haunted him — and changed him.

Conkling and the Stalwarts were shocked by the transformation in their old friend and fellow hack. When Garfield's inner circle resigned, Conkling expected to be offered a top cabinet position. He also expected Arthur to name a reliable Stalwart to run the all-important New York Custom House. But Arthur was no longer taking orders from Conkling, and no longer committed to blocking civil service reform. Having acceded to the presidency as a result of Garfield's death, Arthur said, he considered himself "morally bound to continue the policy of the former president." When he wouldn't budge, a furious Conkling returned to New York and denounced Arthur as a traitor.

Arthur was only getting started. In his first Annual Message to Congress, he explicitly called for an overhaul of federal hiring practices. His support astonished those who had assumed Arthur would serenely return to corruption as usual. Around the country, civil service reform groups sprang into action. Democratic Senator George Pendleton of Ohio introduced legislation to mandate merit-based hiring in many federal agencies, and in 1882, Arthur endorsed it.

Thus did a champion of the Stalwarts drive the first nails into the coffin of political patronage as it had been practiced since the days of Andrew Jackson. Within a month of Arthur's endorsement, the Pendleton bill sailed through both houses of Congress. On January 16, 1883, Arthur — erstwhile flunky of Roscoe Conkling, ultimate creature of raw Republican bossism — signed it into law. He appointed qualified members to the new Civil Service Commission, and firmly enforced the commission's new rules.

* * *

ARTHUR SERVED only a single term as president. His repentance and conversion to the cause of reform meant breaking with what today we would call his base, and the party leaders he alienated refused to nominate him for another four years. Not that Arthur wanted another term. Unbeknownst to the public, he was gravely ill. He was slowly dying of Bright's disease, a chronic inflammation of the kidneys that at the time was incurable. He would die at the age of 57, just 18 months after leaving office.

But while Arthur may have been in physical distress when his presidency ended, gone was the emotional distress that had tormented him at its start. He left office knowing that the American people thought far better of him than they had in 1881. No less a hard-boiled observer than Mark Twain wrote: "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration." The "pending calamity" so many dreaded when Arthur replaced Garfield hadn't materialized. Instead he had risen to the challenge of leadership — risen above his worst instincts, above his dishonest former comrades, above the habits of greed and partisanship that had defined his career.

Arthur isn't reckoned a great president. But he turned out, against all expectations, to be a genuinely decent one.

In the 1880s, as in the 2010s, decency in politics was something rare and admirable. Arthur deserves credit for presiding over a watershed reform in the workings of the federal government. But he deserves to be remembered for something else — for proving that even the most polarizing and distrusted politician can choose to heed the better angels of his nature, and become better than he was.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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