Russia fantasies from The Washington Post

A recent propaganda piece from The Washington Post, "Obama's secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault," is based, as usual, mostly on anonymous sources determined to make former President Barack Obama look good. The gist is that Obama tried his best to punish Russia for alleged interference in the 2016 election, but he fell short and left the matter in the hands of President Donald Trump, who has done nothing.

So Trump is blamed for Obama's failure. How convenient.

The essence of the piece is that "intelligence" was "captured" that somehow proved that Russian President Vladimir Putin gave "specific instructions" that he wanted  to "defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump."

Pardon me, but I don't believe this for a moment. This "intelligence" may be what the Post seeks to expose-Russian "active measures" or disinformation.

As we reported back in January, "Looking at the election objectively, it is possible to say that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may have had a personal vendetta against the former U.S. secretary of state for some reason, stemming from allegations of U.S. meddling in Russian internal affairs. On the other hand, Putin may have preferred that Clinton become the U.S. president because her failed Russian ‘reset' had facilitated Russian military intervention in Ukraine and Syria, and he believed he could continue to take advantage of her."

This makes far more sense than the Post story.

Remember that Obama won the 2012 election after dismissing his Republican opponent Mitt Romney's claim that Russia was a geopolitical threat to the United States. Obama had also been caught on an open mic before the election promising to be "flexible" in changing his positions to benefit Russia.

"These comments provide more evidence that Obama was never the anti-Russian figure he postured as in the final days of his second term," we noted.

The Post story by Greg Miller and others is an obvious response to the observation that, if Obama thought the Russian interference was such a big deal, what did Obama try to do about it?

One can read the entire article if you are interested in how pro-Obama propaganda is manufactured by the Post. Some parts of the article are more ludicrous than others, such as this paragraph:

    "Throughout his presidency, Obama's approach to national security challenges was deliberate and cautious. He came into office seeking to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was loath to act without support from allies overseas and firm political footing at home. He was drawn only reluctantly into foreign crises, such as the civil war in Syria, that presented no clear exit for the United States."

The paragraph is designed to mask Obama's indifference to Russian aggression in places like Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. In regard to the latter, Obama failed to save Syria from Russian aggression and facilitated a conflict-through secret arms shipments to the region-that now stands at 500,000 dead.

Obama's alleged "cautious" approach in the Middle East was to support jihadist groups in Syria and Libya, and back regimes such as the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, which was overthrown by the military backed by the people.

The hero in the Post account is Obama's CIA director John Brennan, who joined the agency after admitting to voting for Moscow's man in the 1976 presidential election, Gus Hall of the Communist Party USA. Suddenly, we are led to believe, as CIA director, he became anti-Russian after discovering a Moscow plot in 2016 to disrupt the presidential election.

"In political terms," the paper said, "Russia's interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy."

This is complete nonsense. There is no evidence any votes were changed as a result of this so-called "interference."

The crime of the century is bad journalism based on anonymous sources who hide behind papers like the Post to spread their self-serving and partisan propaganda.

"This account of the Obama administration's response to Russia's interference is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior positions in government, including at the White House, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, and U.S. intelligence services," the Post said. "Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue."

One paragraph in particular tells you everything you know about the anonymous sources behind this story. "Those closest to Obama defend the administration's response to Russia's meddling," the Post said. Yes, indeed, those "closest to Obama" would certainly do so.

Then we're told that that "They believe that a series of warnings-including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September-prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression, such as sabotage of U.S. voting systems."

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for this dramatic statement. It's completely made up.

Remember, this is the same Obama who once assured Putin that after he won his re-election campaign in 2012, he would have "more flexibility" with the Russian leader and be able to offer more concessions.

Now, all of a sudden, Obama is rough and tough and gets things done with the Russian leader. What a joke.

The paper reported that "Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that ‘we knew what he was doing and [he] better stop or else,' according to a senior aide who subsequently spoke with Obama. Putin responded by demanding proof and accusing the United States of interfering in Russia's internal affairs."

Or else? It sounds like the red line in Syria that Obama had warned the Syrian regime not to cross. But they crossed it anyway.

Obama's so-called "secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin's election assault" exists in the minds of Post reporters who are waging a not-so-secret struggle to rehabilitate the former president's disastrous foreign policy toward Russia and most of the rest of the world.

Let's not forget one more debacle-Obama's deal with Russian client state Iran to facilitate the regime's nuclear weapons program and world-wide terrorism.

That may end up being another crime of the century, on par with President Bill Clinton's deal with North Korea that was supposed to prevent the communist regime from getting its hands on nuclear weapons.

Speaking of North Korea, whose nuclear weapons program accelerated under Obama, hear the words of Otto Warmbier's father about his son being released after Trump took office: "I think the results speak for themselves."

Obama's "cautious and deliberate" approach was to let the young man languish in a North Korean prison while being tortured to near death.

SOURCE

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What Do Americans Think of Patriotism and Liberty?

America has just celebrated the 241st anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. Our nation boasts a rich history and myriad reasons for that celebration. But there are some troubling things worth pondering.

For example, a recent YouGov poll holds some disturbing numbers about patriotism. Four in 10 say they are very patriotic, and eight in ten are at least somewhat so — but nearly half the country thinks other people are losing patriotic fervor. Perhaps that’s because of the unbelievably rancorous political rhetoric these days. Indeed, the partisan split is stark — almost two-thirds of Republicans call themselves very patriotic, as opposed to just one-third of Democrats.

Another group of Americans is also troublingly unpatriotic — Millennials. More than a third of them aren’t patriotic. Hot Air’s Allahpundit elucidates, “They’ve grown up in a bad economy, saddled with skyrocketing education debt, reminded daily that their standard of living may well be worse than their parents’, and forced to live with the reality that federal entitlements won’t be there for them when they’re 65.” And yet Millennials are evidently blaming the country instead of bad, leftist policy.

In another interesting Fox News poll, while the majority (51%) of Americans are proud of the U.S., a whopping 79% of voters don’t believe George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and our other Founders would be all that impressed.

The question is worth asking: Are we honoring the sacrifice made by those who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to secure our independence and Liberty? Are we stewarding what was bequeathed to us at great cost?

In 1776, after the signing of the Declaration, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “I am apt to believe that [the signing of the Declaration] will be celebrated, by succeeding generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”

Let’s work to secure our Liberty, and to make sure that all Americans have reason to celebrate.

SOURCE

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'The Resistance' Tries to Foil Voter Fraud Probe

Donald Trump’s task of exposing voter fraud has run into some hurdles. Unsurprisingly, some states are simply unwilling to aid Trump’s effort, whereas legal concerns are barring another group of state officials from supplying unabridged voter data. Last week, the committee implored every state to make “publicly-available voter roll data  including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”

As of Friday, half of the states had either scoffed at the request or declared that state law precludes unfiltered dissemination of voter data. Some of the more haughty responses came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. According to McAuliffe, “This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.” Lundergan Grimes complained, “This commission was formed to try to find basis for the lie that President Trump put forward that has no foundation.” Hosemann suggested, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” This is what “Resistance Summer” sounds like.

Many media outlets are making a big deal out of states’ refusal to dispense private information, but that’s their prerogative, and if state law forbids it, that’s not resistance. Even the committee letter clearly states that it is requesting only “publicly-available voter roll data.” What is resistance is the vindictiveness of states like California and New York, which are flatly and boldly saying, “No way,” even in regards to public data. The problem is that this takes a comprehensive examination off the table. Which was the entire point of the committee — to get a better, more complete view of voter issues. The committee is merely asking states to work with it as best they can. But some officials just won’t accept the possibility that voter fraud, which some research affirms could include millions of voters, has merit that’s worth investigating.

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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Statins give you a bad back

Researchers in Texas led a retrospective study to investigate the link between statin therapy and risk of spondylosis, intervertebral disc disorder, or other back problems. The team dug into de-identified health care data from 2003–12 for San Antonio-area patients aged 30 years or older who were covered under the military's TRICARE system.

Using 115 baseline characteristics—including age, gender, comorbidities, medication use, and health care utilization—they created a propensity score and matched treatment groups in a 1:1 ratio. From the overall study sample of 60,455 patients, they matched 6,728 statin users with a like number of nonusers.

Data analysis indicated that patients in the user group, who received the same care at the same cost as nonusers, were more likely to be diagnosed with back disorders. In addition, statin users were characterized by prolonged use and higher dosages compared with nonusers. The findings, the investigators conclude, speak to the need for more study into the overall effect of statin use on musculoskeletal health.

SOURCE

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Washington Post Concocts anti-Trump news, massages real news about Obama

The bald-faced Leftist double standards never stop

No section of the Post deviates from the Leftist favoritism. Let us look at the Tech section – and a “reporter” by the name of Brian Fung.

On Friday, Fung dropped the following “bombshell.” Except the key components – were entirely fake news.

The FCC’s Independent Chair is Getting Too Cozy with the White House, Critics Say: “(S)eparate meetings organized around the same event have also included a smattering of government officials, including on Thursday the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai….

“On another level, though, Pai’s presence was unusual: As the head of an agency that’s supposed to keep its distance from the White House, Pai has shown no qualms about appearing on the same agenda with President Trump. And that is now raising questions among some about his overall independence from the Trump administration.”

Cue the uber-Left “sources” the Washington Post and all the rest of the “media” keep on speed dial:

“It is a White House function in which he should not have taken part,’ said John Simpson, an advocate at Consumer Watchdog. ‘They should be going the extra mile to be independent from the White House. It is incumbent upon the chairman and the commissioners not only to act independently, but to avoid any appearance of conflict.’”

One small narrative problem – that never happened.

‘A Complete Fabrication’: FCC Blasts The Washington Post: “Pai’s chief of staff, Matthew Berry, said in a tweet that WaPo reporter Brian Fung invented a fake meeting between President Donald Trump and Chairman Pai.

“The Washington Post suggested that Pai met with Trump on Thursday as part of a larger meeting with tech industry leaders. While Pai did attend a breakout session with tech leaders as part of a general conversation about policy, he did not meet with Trump. “He left at 9:45 a.m. for an FCC Open Meeting, according to the spokesman.

“Nathan Leamer, a policy advisor with Pai’s office, also took issue with the story.  “‘It was not based on the facts of yesterday’s events,” (said) a source close to the Chairman….”

Fung and his Post – delivering us a heaping helping of fake news.

Now, let us flashback to some actual, very-much-in-evidence collusion between an FCC Chairman and a White House. It’s early 2015. It’s President Barack Obama, his FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler – and their push for a huge new Internet regulatory power grab (known as reclassification) so as to then impose the totally awful Network Neutrality.

Well it wasn’t Wheeler’s push for reclassification – until Obama demanded it. Wheeler wan’t going to reclassify, but then….

“President Obama is urging the FCC to reclassify consumer broadband service — to open it to broader government oversight and regulation — with the goal of protecting the net neutrality principles that his administration has long supported.

“In a lengthy statement that also included a video, Obama asserted ‘there is no higher calling than protecting an open, accessible and free Internet.’ He urged the FCC to reclassify broadband service as a Title II telecommunications service….”

That just screams “independent agency,” does it not?

Chairman Wheeler – then suddenly, magically decided to reclassify the Internet. And ludicrously offered up: "No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality"

No, Obama and his White House were quite open and straightforward about it. It was on WhiteHouse.gov. There was video involved. And lots and lots of news stories. Including by…the Washington Post’s Brian Fung:

Obama to the FCC: Adopt ‘The Strongest Possible Rules’ on Net Neutrality, Including Title II: “President Obama on Monday called for the government to aggressively regulate Internet service providers such as Verizon and Comcast, treating broadband like a public utility as essential as water, phone service and electricity….

“This is Obama’s most aggressive statement yet in favor of a free and open Internet and against allowing Internet service providers to charge content companies like Netflix for faster access to their customers. The president’s statement, released online Monday while he traveled to Asia, calls for the FCC to adopt the strictest rules possible for ensuring so-called net neutrality, or the principle that all Internet traffic should be treated equally.”

Where was Fung’s nose for collusion news? Where were the frantic calls to sources for corroborating collusion quotes?

Nowhere to be found. And when Republicans pointed out the very obvious White House-FCC coordination – Fung went into full-spin defensive mode.

“House Republicans are putting the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, through the wringer this week over his agency’s recent vote to apply strong new regulations on Internet providers.”

As opposed to you and the rest of the media putting Trump and Chairman Pai “through the wringer” – over nonsense nothing. More Fung:

“The GOP’s chief criticism these days is that Wheeler and his staff improperly coordinated with the White House over how to write those regulations.”

Yes, Fung, you reported on it. There was those WhiteHouse.gov Web pages, and the video – remember? But the “wringer” Republicans had more than just that:

“GOP lawmakers…are releasing previously redacted e-mails between FCC officials and members of the White House staff, lobbyists and others.…”

All of this seems to be a whole lot more coordinate-y than a Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Chairman Pai were never even in the same room. Fung didn’t freak out – he fell in line behind the Obama Administration spin.

TWICE. The aforementioned “FCC Chair: No, the White House Didn’t Give Me ‘Secret Instructions’ on Net Neutrality” – was also Fung. In which he “reported”:

“‘Nine times you went to the White House,’ Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said. ‘On Nov. 6, Jeff Zients comes to you. … My contention is, Jeff Zients came to you and said, “Hey, things have changed.”’”

Nine times. How very Ferris Bueller of them.

Yet nowhere in either of Fung’s two stories does he mention collusion, coordination or collaboration – unless he’s quoting Republicans making the assertion.

One Trump White House tech event – at which Trump and Pai never even share a room – and Fung is throwing around every word that starts with “C” of which he can think. And doing it un-factually – in fake news fashion.

“Not even a smidgen” of Washington Post bias, eh?

SOURCE

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Media priorities



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CA vs. Texas

CALIFORNIA: The Governor of  California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A coyote jumps  out, bites the Governor and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie “Bambi” and then realizes he should stop; the coyote is  only doing what is natural.

2. He calls animal control. Animal Control  captures the coyote and bills the State $200 testing it for diseases and $500  for relocating it.

3. He calls a veterinarian. The vet collects  the dead dog and bills the State $200 for testing it for diseases.

4. The Governor goes to hospital and spends  $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and on getting his  bite wound bandaged.

5. The running trail gets shut down for  6 months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to  make sure the area is free of dangerous animals.

6. The Governor spends $50,000 in state funds to  implement a “coyote awareness” program for residents of the area.

7. The State Legislature spends $2 million  to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently  eradicate the  disease throughout the world.

8. The Governor’s security agent is  fired for not stopping the attack somehow and for letting the  Governor attempt to intervene.

9. Additional cost to State of California:  $75,000 to hire and train a new security agent with additional special  training re: the nature of coyotes.

10. PETA protests the coyote’s  relocation and files suit against the State.

TEXAS: The Governor of Texas is  jogging with his dog along a nature trail. A Coyote jumps out, bites the Governor’s leather boot, and attacks his dog.

1. The Governor shoots the coyote with his State-issued  pistol and keeps jogging. The Governor has spent $0.50 on a .45 ACP  hollow point cartridge.

2. The buzzards eat the dead coyote.

And that, boys and girls, is why California is  broke………..

SOURCE (Joke)

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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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Anger Privilege

If you want to know who has privilege in a society and who doesn't, follow the anger.

There are people in this country who can safely express their anger. And those who can't. If you're angry that Trump won, your anger is socially acceptable. If you were angry that Obama won, it wasn't.

James Hodgkinson's rage was socially acceptable. It continued to be socially acceptable until he crossed the line into murder. And he's not alone. There's Micah Xavier Johnson, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Dallas, and Gavin Long, the Black Lives Matter cop-killer in Baton Rouge. If you're black and angry about the police, your anger is celebrated. If you're white and angry about the Terror travel ban, the Paris Climate treaty, ObamaCare repeal or any leftist cause, you're on the side of the angry angels.

But if you're white and angry that your job is going to China or that you just missed being killed in a Muslim suicide bombing, your anger is unacceptable.

If you're an angry leftist, your party leader, Tom Perez will scream and curse into a microphone, and your aspiring presidential candidate, Kirsten Gillibrand, will curse along, to channel the anger of the base. But if you're an angry conservative, then Trump channeling your anger is "dangerous" because you aren't allowed to be angry.

Not all anger is created equal. Some anger is privileged rage.

Good anger gets you a gig as a CNN commentator. Bad anger gets you hounded out of your job. Good anger isn't described as anger at all. Instead it's linguistically whitewashed as "passionate" or "courageous". Bad anger however is "worrying" or "dangerous". Angry left-wing protesters "call out", angry right-wing protesters "threaten". Good anger is left-wing. Bad anger is right-wing.

Socially acceptable displays of anger, from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter riots to the anti-Trump marches to the furious campus protests, are invariably left-wing.

Left-wing anger over the elections of Bush and Trump was sanctified. Right-wing outrage over Obama's victory was demonized. Now that left-wing anger led a Bernie Sanders volunteer to open fire at a Republican charity baseball practice outing. And the media reluctantly concedes that maybe both sides should moderate their rhetoric. Before listing examples that lean to the right like "Lock her up".

Why were chants of "Lock her up" immoderate, but not Bush era cries of "Jail to the chief"? Why were Tea Party rallies "ominous" but the latest We Hate Trump march is "courageous"? Why is killing Trump on stage the hottest thing to hit Shakespeare while a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask was hounded by everyone from the Lieutenant Governor of Missouri to the NAACP?

Not all anger is created equal. Anger, like everything else, is ideologically coded. Left-wing anger is good because its ideological foundations are good. Right-wing anger is bad because its ideology is bad.

It's not the level of anger, its intensity or its threatening nature that makes it good or bad.

And that is why the left so easily slips into violence. All its ideological ends are good. Therefore its means, from mass starvation to gulags to riots and tyranny, must be good. If I slash your tires because of your Obama bumper sticker", I'm a monster. But if you key my car because of my Trump bumper sticker, you're fighting racism and fascism. Your tactics might be in error, but your viewpoint isn't.

There are no universal standards of behavior. Civility, like everything else, is ideologically limited.

Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from "oppressed" protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to scream threats in your face is "tone policing". An African-American millionaire's child at Yale is fighting for her "existence", unlike the Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian florist whose existences really are threatened.

Tone policing is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been replaced by a political entitlement to anger.

The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority ("When they go low, we go high") reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national tantrum after Trump's victory has all but shut down the government, turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector. And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged tantrums.

But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn't go its way, it will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished. Or there will be anger.

The angry left demands that everyone recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms of oppressed groups. But its anger isn't in defiance of oppression, but in pursuit of oppression.

Anger privilege is used to silence opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the left's monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms through public shaming, but their smears can't stop the consequences of the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on emotion.

When anger becomes the basis for political power, then it won't stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That's what the left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became the "resistance". Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor. Republicans were evil beasts.

James Hodgkinson absorbed all this. The left fed his anger. And eventually he snapped.

Anger has to go somewhere.

The left likes to think that its anger is good anger because it's angry over the plight of illegal aliens, Muslim terrorists, transgender bathrooms, the lack of abortion in South Carolina, the minimum wage at Taco Bell, budget cuts, tax cuts, police arrests, drone strikes and all the other ways in which reality differs from its utopia. But all that anger isn't the road to a better world, but to hate and violence.

Millions of leftists, just like Hodgkinson, are told every day that Republicans are responsible for everything wrong with their lives, the country and the planet. Despite everything they do, all the petitions they sign, the marches they attend, the donations, the angry letters, the social media rants, Republicans continue to exist and even be elected to public office. Where does that anger go?

Either we have a political system based on existing laws and norms of civility. Or we have one based on coups and populist leftist anger. And there are already a whole bunch of those south of the border.

Leftist anger is a privileged bubble of entitlement that bursts every other election. Its choice is to try to understand the rest of the country or to intimidate, censor, oppress and eventually kill them.

James Hodgkinson took the latter course. His personal leftist revolution ended, as all leftist revolutions do, in blood and violence. The left can check its anger privilege and examine its entitlement. Or his violence will be our future.    

SOURCE

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But Reality Isn't Fair

By Ben Shapiro

In 2014, I debated Seattle City Council member and avowed socialist Kshama Sawant. Sawant was one of the chief proponents of a city ordinance that would create a $15 minimum wage. Eventually, the city adopted a three-phase transition plan that would push minimum wage to $11 per hour, then $13 per hour, then $15 per hour. In our debate, I asked Sawant directly whether she would support a $1,000 minimum wage. She deflected the question, of course. She deflected the question because reality would not allow for a $1,000 minimum wage. Were the government to mandate such an idiocy, every business in the Seattle area would immediately cut back employment, and all of those seeking minimum wage jobs would end up losing their income.

As it turns out, it didn't take a $1,000 minimum wage to destroy the income for minimum wage workers. Thirteen dollars was plenty. According to a paper from The National Bureau of Economic Research, "the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees' earnings by an average of $125 per months in 2016."

All of this was foreseeable, given the fact that businesses compete with one another to lower cost and thus operate with slim profit margins. That means businesses have two choices when government forcibly raises labor costs: increase prices and thereby lower demand, or cut back on the work force. Businesses opted to do the latter in order to stay competitive.

Reality is unpleasant. Perhaps that's why so few politicians seem willing to face up to it.

On a larger scale, the bipartisan consensus in favor of regulations that force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions mirrors the minimum wage debate. It is perfectly obvious that forcing insurance companies — professional risk assessors that determine pricing based on actuarial estimates as to health — to cover those with pre-existing conditions costs them an enormous amount of money. If you are a consumer, why would you bother buying a health insurance plan while healthy, when you could wait to do so until after your costs materialize? Yet both parties would rather cater to the foolish notion that it is "unfair" for insurance companies to act as insurance companies than allow insurance companies to do what they do best: create a market to allow Americans to exercise choice.

But in economics, once one heresy has been advanced, a slew of other heresies follow. Coverage of pre-existing conditions has to be subsidized somehow. Democrats propose to mandate that people buy health insurance; this violates freedom of choice and artificially increases premiums for the healthy in order to pay for the sick. Republicans propose subsidies to encourage purchase, artificially creating demand without allowing the competition among health plans that would keep premiums down.

But everyone is surprised when such schemes fail.

They shouldn't be. Politics used to be the art of educating the public about reality and pushing for change where change is possible. Now politics is the art of convincing the public that you can make reality disappear if it votes for you. Sadly, our politicians can't make reality disappear. And every time they try to do so, reality comes rushing back with a vengeance.

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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Lawfare: Hindering President Trump from Investigating Obama

The defeated Democrats are colluding with the mainstream media to create an echo chamber of false accusations, fake news, and demands for groundless investigations and frivolous lawsuits to impede President Trump and sabotage his administration by preoccupying them in court. The Trump administration is under siege.

The Democratic Party is not your mother's Democratic Party. Today the party is composed of radical left-wing liberals and anarchists fully committed to destroying American democracy and replacing it with socialism. The Democrats today have no interest in making America strong and great again - they have the opposite agenda and intend to pursue Obama's goal of weakening America toward socialism in preparation for Obama's globalist ambition of one-world government.

The "resistance" movement lead by lawless Obama is designed to topple constitutionally elected President Donald Trump and create social chaos.

There are two tiers to the Democrats' attack strategy. The blatant goal of toppling President Donald Trump disguises the primary objective of preventing Trump's Department of Justice from investigating the criminal activities of the Obama administration. Investigations of Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, Lois Lerner, John Brennan, James Comey and the corrupt Clinton Foundation would be devastating to the Democratic Party.

America is no stranger to war - we are just not used to Americans waging war against a sitting president. It is an extremely unAmerican and treasonous strategy the Democrats have embraced. Instead of complying with the rules of law and fielding a stronger candidate for the 2020 elections they have adopted the tactics of revolution and anarchy - it is appalling. The Democratic party is fomenting anarchy and attempting to delegitimize, destabilize, and topple the government of our constitutionally elected President Donald Trump.

The current strategy of the defeated Democrats still crying and trying to destroy American democracy is lawfare. Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare consisting of using the legal system against an enemy. Lawfare is designed to damage or delegitimize the enemy, tying up their time or winning a public relations victory by casting the pall of criminality and suspicion over them. The theory of lawfare against President Trump is that if the President and his administration are spending their time and resources defending themselves in court he will not be able to govern effectively, keep his promises to strengthen and make America great again, or investigate the criminal activities of Obama and his gang. The Democrats hope disappointment in President Trump will reward the Democrats with a gain of enough seats in the midterm election to impeach President Trump.

Even if the Democrats are unsuccessful in their goal to reverse the balance of power in the midterm elections, their objective is to make it impossible for President Trump to govern effectively and investigate criminality in Obama's term. Lawfare is the preferred method being used by the Democrats to protect their lord and master Barack Hussein Obama - the greatest threat to American sovereignty and democracy since 1776.

First on the current list of lawfare activists is deceitful James Comey who deliberately leaked a memorandum of a conversation with President Trump saying he thought it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel to discover the truth about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey leaked the memo through Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman who took it to the NYT. Comey deviously made his case for a special counsel by manipulating the colluding media. Later Comey contradicted himself and exposed his actual motive saying he hoped for a special counsel to corroborate his claims that President Trump had asked for his loyalty. Comey implicated himself and revealed his deceit - he was not looking to find the truth about Russia he was looking to bring down President Trump.

Comey was disingenuously presented to the American people by the colluding mainstream media as being bipartisan. In fact, Comey was the FBI director who replaced Mueller under Obama's lawless presidency and with Lynch's Justice Department refused to prosecute criminal acts of the Obama Administration. Obama was the King of of Lawlessness in America for eight years and Comey, Clinton, Holder, Lynch, Lerner, Brennan, and Rice were his vassals. This is a short list of unprosecuted crimes that Comey ignored or supported provided by The Millennium Report:

James Comey has been the fixer for the Clinton crime family for decades beginning in the 1990's with Whitewater and most famously making the strong case for prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her illegal unsecured private basement server and then stunningly recommending against prosecution. What the public did not realize is that prosecuting Clinton could expose Comey himself which is why he is actually part of the Clinton email coverup.

Next on the lawfare list is Robert Mueller, James Comey's mentor and predecessor. Instead of investigating the blatant crimes of Obama and his administration for which there is ample evidence, Robert Mueller is now empowered as special prosecutor to investigate the imaginary crimes of President Trump with a twin purpose. Mueller will keep President Trump bogged down for two years under a false veil of suspicion until the midterm elections in service of the defeated Democrats hoping to regain seats, and more importantly Mueller's deceitful investigation will hinder any investigation into the Obama administration by President Trump's Justice Department.

It is incomprehensible why the Trump administration would ever have considered Clinton loyalist James Comey for FBI director or his equally biased mentor Robert Mueller for special prosecutor. Both are proven Obama/Clinton loyalists willing to sabotage President Trump's presidency.

Third on the lawfare list are Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee. These men are not stupid - they know that what they are doing is not legal and they cannot possibly win - but they do not care. Their bluster narrative is pure political theater intended to tie Trump up in court - more lawfare. Governors do not have the Constitutional authority to make agreements with foreign countries. They cannot usurp the power of the presidency. This treasonous ploy of theirs is just another ignominious example of the Democratic Party's tactic of lawfare against President Trump.

The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island has publicly declared on the New York State government website its intention to treasonously "convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement." Governor Jerry Brown pompously described President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord saying, "This is an insane move by this president - deviant behavior from the highest office in the land."

Really? Insane? Deviant?

Let's talk about the meaning of insanity and deviant behavior because words matter.

Insanity is defined as unsoundness of mind or lack of the ability to understand that prevents one from having the mental capacity required by law to enter into a particular relationship, status, or transaction or that releases one from criminal or civil responsibility. President Donald Trump was perfectly clear when he explained in a cogent argument that the Paris Accord was extremely harmful to America. So, by definition President Trump's withdrawal from Obama's unlawful ant-American agreement was not insane.

The Governors Three by contrast all seem to have serious identity issues - they are out of touch with reality and do not seem to know who they are. They appear confused and  without the soundness of mind to correctly identify themselves as governors and not the president of the United States. Perhaps they missed or slept through the civics class that taught that governors have zero authority to enter agreements or treaties with foreign nations and, in fact, such agreements are a criminal offense in strict violation of the Logan Act. The Logan Act (1 Stat. 613, 18 U.S.C. § 953, enacted January 30, 1799) is a United States federal law that details the fine and/or imprisonment of unauthorized citizens who negotiate with foreign governments having a dispute with the United States.

Deviant is defined as departing from usual or accepted standards. If anyone's behavior was deviant it was Obama's when he made the unsanctioned Paris Agreement because he failed to protect the economic interests of the United States. The agreement itself was contemptuous of Congress and the democratic process. It was an example of Obama's executive overreach and deeply divisive governance.

President Donald Trump recognized the non-binding Paris Agreement made by Obama without Congressional approval to be harmful to the United States. So, by definition President Trump's decision to withdraw from the agreement followed the accepted standard of an American president protecting America and American interests.

All three governors are public officers sworn to protect America and uphold the Constitution - by entering into agreements they are not authorized to make, particularly agreements that fail to protect American interest, they are derelict in their duties and have, like Obama, deviated from accepted norms. This left-wing liberal threesome are colluding with the international community to de-industrialize America by damaging our mining industries and redistributing our wealth to non-industrialized nations.

It appears that if anyone is insane or deviant the award goes to Democratic Governors Brown, Cuomo, and Inslee.

Perhaps California Governor Brown, New York Governor Cuomo, and Washington Governor Inslee will use an insanity defense to absolve themselves of treason charges for their U.S. Climate Alliance attempts to uphold the anti-American Paris Climate Agreement that President Donald Trump decisively rejected.

Carolyn Glick summarized the path forward for President Trump succinctly saying, "It is time for Trump to delegate the dirty work of attacking his opponents to his attorneys, advisers and supporters. He must devote his public appearances entirely to advancing his own presidential agenda. By firing Mueller, appointing a special counsel to investigate the Obama administration, removing Obama's political appointees from government and replacing them with his own hires, and concentrating on implementing his agenda, Trump will end the siege on his presidency. He will defeat the self-proclaimed "resistance" whose purpose is to defeat him politically through administrative and bureaucratic abuses."

It is also time for President Trump to renew an American tradition of speaking (not tweeting) directly to the American people in weekly televised broadcasts from the Oval Office that inform Americans about the efforts and accomplishments of his administration and their progress in making America great again. President Trump was elected by the people for the people and he must speak directly to the people because the mainstream media is colluding with the defeated Democrats to destroy him. President Trump can resist the resistance movement and expose the fabricated lawfare being waged against him by ignoring the media and speaking directly to the American public.

SOURCE

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Russia allegedly 'jealous' of Royal Navy's new £3bn aircraft carrier

The Defence Secretary has taunted the Kremlin over fears it will attempt to spy on HMS Queen Elizabeth during its sea trials, saying Russia will envy Britain’s new flagship.

Sir Michael Fallon contrasted the Royal Navy’s new 65,000-ton carrier with what he called the “dilapidated” Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, which sailed through the Channel late last year.

The largest warship Britain has ever possessed later used low tide to glide under the Forth Rail Bridge shortly before midnight on Monday, before anchoring in Kirkcaldy Bay ahead of sailing into the North Sea.

Royal Navy commanders have said they expect Russian vessels and aircraft to spy on the Navy’s new aircraft carrier as it undergoes sea trials in the North Sea.

Sir Michael said: “It's really routine for the Russians to collect intelligence on our ships. We will take every precaution to make sure that they don't get too close, but I think they will be admiring her.”

He went on: “When you saw that old, dilapidated Kuznetsov sailing through the Channel, a few months ago, I think the Russians will look at this ship with a little bit of envy.”

The 55,000 ton Kutnetsov has been plagued by years of technical problems and is accompanied everywhere by a tug in case it breaks down.

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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Liberal advocates genocide

No mystery where the racism is to be found these days

“White supremacy” is the new liberal rage.  Like “global warming” and “”misogyny,” it exists everywhere, in all places, at all times, but only they can see it.

And now they have a plan to fight  it — by aborting all white babies.

Nicole Valentine, writing in “Medusa” magazine, claims American society is hopelessly racist, and the only way to solve it is through the wholesale elimination of “white family units.”

“America’s fascination with the white family unit has gone hand-in-hand with the historical proliferation of white supremacy,” says Valentine, who uses the term “white supremacy” an obsessive 17 times in a short article, but produces zero examples of an institutional belief in the debunked theory that one race is superior than the other.

So how do racists like Valentine plan to fight perceived racism?  With actual, blood-soaked racism.

“White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite,” claims Valentine. “White women should be encouraged to abort their white children, and to use their freed-up time and resources to assist women of color who have no other choice but to raise their children.”

Apparently as confused as she is obsessive and racist, Valentine claims the very notion of abortion itself is racist.

“It is critical to understand that the appeal to abortions being ‘Constitutional’ reinforces white supremacy. There is no way around it. The Constitution was drafted and signed by white men, for white men…Constitutionality is often synonymous with ‘exclusively beneficial to the white race,'” Valentine rambles, adding “the notion of ‘choice’ in abortion is inherently white supremacist and ableist.”

Instead of suggesting that Planned Parenthood be shut down for deliberately targeting minority neighborhoods and disproportionately aborting black babies, Valentine believes the group, founded on explicit racism, is her ally.

“Women of color simply do not have the absolute choice when it comes to their bodies. It is time to stop pretending that they stand on equal footing with white women, when it has been proven that the embedded systems of white supremacy do not act impartially to all women,” claims Valentine. “Because white supremacy prevents women of color from their freedom to choose, we must level the playing field by other means.”

By “other means,” she means killing all white babies.

Let’s hope Valentine gets the counseling and racial sensitivity training she needs.

SOURCE

UPDATE:  It occurs to me that the above may be some warped Leftist's idea of satire

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More Dishonest “Poverty” Research that Doesn’t Measure Poverty

I periodically share data showing that living standards are higher in the United States than in Europe.

My goal isn’t to be jingoistic. Instead, I’m warning readers that we won’t be as prosperous if we copy out tax-and-spend friends on the other side of the Atlantic (just like I try to draw certain conclusions when showing how many low-tax jurisdictions have higher levels of economic output than the United States).

I’m sometimes asked, though, how America can be doing better than Europe when we have more poverty.

And when I ask them why they thinks that’s the case, they will point to sources such as this study from the German-based Institute of Labor Economics. Here’s some attention-grabbing data from the report.

The United States has the highest poverty rate both overall and among households with an employed person, but it stands farther away from the other countries on its in-work poverty rate than its overall poverty rate. The contrast between the US and three other English-speaking countries — Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom — is particularly striking. Compared to those three nations, the United States has an overall poverty rate only a little higher but an in-work poverty rate that is much higher.
And here’s the main chart from the study, with the United States as the bottom. It appears that there twice as much poverty in the USA as there is in a stagnant economy like France.

There even appears to be more poverty in America than there is in Spain and Italy, both of which are so economically shaky that they required bailouts during the recent fiscal/financial crisis.



Sounds horrible, right?

Yes, it does sound really bad. However, it’s total nonsense. Because what you read in the excerpt and see in the graph has nothing to do with poverty.

Instead, it’s a measure of income distribution.

And, if you read carefully, the study actually admits there’s a bait-and-switch.

The…approach to measuring poverty is a “relative” one, with the poverty line set at 60 or 50 percent of the median income.
Think about what this means. A country where everyone is impoverished will have zero or close-to-zero poverty because everyone is at the median income. But as I’ve explained before, a very wealthy society can have lots of “poverty” if some people are a lot richer than others.

And since the United States is much richer than other nations, this means an American household with $35,000 of income can be poor, even though they wouldn’t count as poor if they earned that much elsewhere.

This is like grading on a rigged curve. And if you read the fine print of the IZA study, you’ll see that the “poverty” threshold for a four-person household magically jumps by $16,260.

For a household of four (two adults, two children) the difference between the official US threshold and the 60-percent-of-median threshold amounts to more than $16,000 ($24,000 versus $40,260). This means that the size of the working poor population in America according to the official poverty measure is significantly lower than the size obtained in studies using a relative threshold.

In other words, you can calculate a much higher poverty rate if you include people who aren’t poor.

By the way, since the IZA report acknowledges this bait-and-switch approach, I guess one would have to say that the study technically is honest.

But it’s still misleading because most people aren’t going to read the fine print.  Instead, they’ll see the main chart showing higher “poverty” and assume that there is a much higher percentage of actual poor people in the United States.

Moreover, some people may understand that there’s a bait-and-switch and simply want to help fool additional people.

And I’m guessing that this is exactly what the authors and the IZA staff expected and wanted. And if that’s the case, then the study is deliberately misleading, even if not technically dishonest.

I’ll close by stating that I don’t mind if folks on the left want to argue that market-based societies are somehow unfair because some people are richer than others. And it’s also fine for them to argue that we should be willing sacrifice some of our national prosperity to achieve more after-the-fact equality of income.

But I’d like for them to be upfront about their agenda and not hide behind dodgy data manipulation.

P.S.When you do apples-to-apples comparisons of the United States with the best-performing economies of Europe, you find that the poor tend to be at the same level, but every other group is better off in America.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

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The left's health-care rhetoric is unhinged

by Jeff Jacoby

The left's most popular "argument" against replacing Obamacare is the slander that Republicans want to kill people.

REMEMBER HOW liberal politicians promised to tone down the partisan rhetoric after a heavily armed Bernie Sanders fan opened fire on GOP lawmakers taking batting practice on June 14? Remember how they signed on to a "pledge of civility?" Remember how they said they would use the near-massacre as a jolt that "brings us together"?

You don't remember? Apparently they don't either. For no sooner had Senate Republicans released their proposed health-insurance bill last week than Democrats were once again dialing the hate speech up to 11.

Before Representative Steve Scalise was even out of intensive care, Democrats were back to calling his party and its legislation not just "heartless" and "evil," but downright homicidal. Sanders, in a tweet he later deleted, charged Republicans with "trying to pass a bill that could kill up to 27,000" in order to "give tax cuts to the wealthy."

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, in her usual caustic style, said the legislation amounts to "blood money" and that "people will die" if it is enacted. Hillary Clinton added to the slander: "If Republicans pass this bill, they're the death party."

So much for dialing back the unhinged rhetoric.

The toxic contempt that so many prominent voices on the left bring to the public discourse is by now wearily familiar. In 2009 Sarah Palin was disdained for claiming that Obamacare would empower "death panels." Yet liberals and Democrats in 2017 not only insist ad nauseam that Republicans want to kill people, they won't stop saying such things even after one of their own tries to perpetrate a massacre.

I've no doubt that many of those playing the death card sincerely believe that rolling back Obamacare will keep thousands of Americans from getting lifesaving medical treatment. Human beings have a great capacity for convincing themselves that their opinions and prejudices are obvious truths — particularly when they have a strong political incentive to believe it.

In my view, the keening on the left about how the GOP bills will strike people dead is sheer hysteria. For years, it has been a familiar liberal claim that if conservative policies prevail — on health care, on fossil fuels, on welfare reform, on abortion rights, on the Second Amendment, even on rent control — more people will die. The dire warnings about rewriting Obamacare are just more of the same.

Something no advocates of Obamacare saw coming: Mortality rates in the United States are up

But for the sake of argument, let's take the claim at face value. If changing Obamacare is a prescription for higher death rates, that must mean enacting Obamacare led to lower death rates.

Only — it didn't.

When Barack Obama came to office, mortality rates in the United States had been declining for decades. By the time he left the White House, deaths were on the rise. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), America's overall death rate rose by 1.2 percent in 2015 (the most recent year for which data is available). It marked the first significant increase in death rates since 1999, and it was broad-based:

"Increases occurred among white men and women as well as black men," The Wall Street Journal reported. "Death rates rose for eight of the top 10 leading causes of death," including respiratory diseases, injuries, Alzheimer's, diabetes, kidney disease, and suicide. Most ominous was the increase in deaths from heart disease, which is the nation's leading killer.

As a result of the climbing death rate, US life expectancy shrank — something that hadn't happened since the early 1990s, when AIDS and homicide were cutting down tens of thousands of lives each year.

It isn't clear why Americans are dying at higher rates. But this much is plain: In the aggregate, the Affordable Care Act hasn't kept more people alive. So lawmakers who supported the law should be accused of sending more Americans to their graves, right? Defenders of Obamacare should be smeared as "heartless" and "evil" and the "death party." Shouldn't they?

Of course they shouldn't. Obamacare is a grievously flawed government program, and its implementation has coincided with higher death rates. But it would be vile to scream "Killers!" at the Democrats who passed Obamacare. It is no less vile to scream it at the Republicans who want to repeal 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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Bring back the church militant?

In the Middle Ages, strong young Christian men responded to the call of the Pope to push back the Muslims and regain control of the Holy Land by force.  They threw out the Muslim invaders and brought the Holy land back into Christian hands, where it had been for around a thousand years.  And they held their gains for around 200 years.  So they were a major demonstration of the church militant

Why is there no church militant today?  Mainly because of bad theology -- under the influence of Christ's words in Matthew 5  where he counselled not hitting back at oppressors:

39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

41 And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Clear enough one might think.  But what are we to think of Matthew 10: 34?

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword"

or Luke 22:

36 Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

38 And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough

So we gather from the second and third scriptures above that Jesus at a minimum believed in his followers defending themselves.  So was Jesus being inconsistent?  Are Christians under different commands?  If we believe the Bible to be the word of God, that is surely ruled out.  So what is going on?

Clearly, Christ was giving different advice for different occasions.  And the advice in Matthew 5 runs against all nature.  No-one naturally behaves that way.  It is anti-instinctual. So it must have been designed for a very special occasion.  And it was.

Part of his foresight was that his disciples would be persecuted after his death -- so it was important that he give them ways of surviving that.  He had to tell them to behave in a way that would protect them.  He had to give them what modern-day psychologists call "de-escalation techniques".  Above all else they had to avoid getting killed by hostile others, so that they could pass on his message.

And in Matthew 5:38ff he taught exactly how.  He taught his disciples to be unthreatening and even likable when confronted with hostility.  He was giving them lessons in survival against great threat -- things to do immediately after his death,  not rules for all times and all situations.  And when modern-day psychologists look at his rules they will see that his de-escalation techniques were pretty good. You can turn down hostility if you go about it the right way.

So Matthew 5:38ff was the practical aspect of his teachings.  What at first sight seems totally impractical was in fact superbly practical. The survival of Christianity attests to that.

But, as the other scriptures show, that advice was not for all occasions, all situations and all times.  Jesus did not preach pacifism.  So it is unsurprising that few Christians today are pacifists.  Only some small sects preach it: Seventh Day Adventists, traditional Quakers, Christadelphians and Jehovah's Witnesses.   The U.S. army, for instance, is still largely a Christian army despite various attempts to suppress that.

So the conventional response to Matthew 5 is broadly right.  It does not stand in the way of both individual self-defence or defence of one's own society.

But when it comes to oppression from forces within one's own society, many Christians suddenly decide that Matthew 5 is applicable.  There is no reason to.  Matthew 5 was an instruction designed to protect a small and threatened minority.  Christians are certainly threatened in minor ways today but they are not small and their collective survival is not at stake.

There is for instance no reason why they should be passive when confronted by Muslim aggression.  If Muslims hold aggressive demonstrations, Christians should be out holding aggressive counter-demonstrations. If Muslims carry around placards extolling Mohammed, they would be perfectly justified in carrying around placards saying that Islam is a false religion and that the Koran is the ravings of an insane pedophile.

If masked Leftists attack them during a demonstration, they should shoot. And what about demonstrations in support of Christians who defy the homosexual Mafia?

That does not mean Christians should abandon Matthew 5 in their personal  lives.  Christian forgiveness still is a wise response to many conflict situations in 1 to 1 relationships -- JR

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Trump Supporters Arrested in Cudahy After Illegal Aliens Verbally Accost and Physically Attack Them!

A group of Trump supporters showed up to the Cudahy, California city council meeting to voice their disdain over the city’s recent motions to become a “sanctuary city”.

After the meeting, several illegal alien supporters confronted the actual American citizens and began to verbally accost and physically attack them, all while Los Angeles County deputies stood by doing nothing.

Up the block, at a gas station, a car that contained friends of Congressional candidate and current Cudahy city councilman Omar Navarro was being charged at by a throng of illegal aliens and their supporters. The driver, fearing his safety and the safety of his passengers, drew his legally owned and concealed gun. The mob of illegals do the expected lamebrain stunt and move in to surround the car (what brainiacs!).

Police quickly moved in and arrested them….. The guy defending himself and his occupants, while allowing the mob of illegals to continue to run rampant.

Apparently all four people in the car were arrested, for some reason.

In a video posted by apparent illegal supporter Anthony Diaz on twitter, you can clearly see protesters converging on the car.

Some folks from The Red Elephants were apparently on the ground, and have the full story.

Meanwhile, mainstream hacks like Hailey Branson-Potts of the LA Times and Julia Wick of LAist couldn’t wait to pounce on the driver, Thomas Green, and the other actual American citizens, making them out to be the unhinged aggressors and the mob of illegal aliens out to be the poor innocents.

Once again, the police prove they are not there to protect citizens, but exist as the enforcement arm of the state and do the bidding of the communists. Perhaps it’s time mainstream conservatives rethink the whole “thin blue line” flags and “back the blue” stickers.

SOURCE

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Don't Be Fooled, the Supreme Court Handed the President a Big Victory

Hans von Spakovsky
 
There seems to be some debate over the extent of the victory that the Trump administration won on Monday when the Supreme Court stayed (or lifted) almost all of the injunctions issued against his revised executive order temporarily suspending entry of foreigners from six terrorist safe havens. But there is no doubt about it — this was a significant and substantial victory despite the fact that the Court left a small portion of the injunctions issued by the Fourth and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal in place.

The Court accepted the case for review, and oral arguments on the substantive merits of the claims will be heard when the Court starts its new term in October. Most importantly for the national security and safety of the nation, the Court slapped down the appeals courts by dissolving large portions of the injunctions issued against the executive order until the Court hears the case.

The March 6 executive order suspended for 90 days the entry of foreigners from six terrorist safe havens — Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan -– while the government determines if it has the vetting procedures in place to prevent terrorists from getting into the country. The executive order applied a 120-day suspension to refugees for the same purpose, and capped the number of refugees allowed into the country at 50,000.

The Court lifted the injunctions on foreigners or refugees who have no connection to the U.S. According to the Court, the “interest in preserving national security is ‘an urgent objective of the highest order’” and to prevent the government from “pursuing that objective” by not allowing these restrictions “against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests, without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else.”

But the Court left in place the portion of the injunctions that would apply to any foreigner “who can credibly claim a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

Some have painted this as setback to the administration, but that is also not true — it simply recognizes the procedures that the Trump administration had already put in place.

As the Court pointed out, the executive order “itself distinguishes between foreign nationals who have some connection to this country, and foreign nationals who do not, by establishing a case-by-case waiver system primarily for the benefit of individuals in the former category.” Section 3(c) of the executive order provides special consideration for foreigners who have "significant contacts,“ "significant business or professional obligations," or family in the U.S., or who are admitted students or have employment offers in the country.

This is not much different than what the Court outlines would satisfy the "bona fide relationship” standard. The Court says that for individuals, “a close familial relationship is required.” For entities, “the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course rather than for the purpose of evading” the executive order.

Thus, students admitted to American universities and workers “who accepted an offer of employment from an American company or a lecturer invited to address an American audience" would qualify.

No doubt to the annoyance of the advocacy groups who have filed these challenges, those who enter into a relationship "simply to avoid” the executive order will not qualify. For example, according to the Court, a “nonprofit group devoted to immigration issues may not contact foreign nationals from the designated countries, add them to client lists, and then secure their entry by claiming injury from their exclusion.”

The other important detail to keep in mind is that this does not mean that foreigners who meet the “bona fide relationship" requirement must be automatically granted a visa and admitted. They just have to be considered despite the ban on entry of other foreigners. Thus, the government will still be able to deny entry due to individual security issues or other problems that are routinely considered.

Something else that seems to have gotten lost in the reporting: This was a "per curiam” decision. That means that all nine justices agreed to lift the injunctions. The fact that none of the justices disagreed is another sign of how far out-of-line the lower court decisions were.

The only partial dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch) was to tell the Court that it should have lifted the injunctions in their entirety. He warned that the “bona fide relationship” standard set up by the Court will “invite a flood of litigation until this case is finally resolved on the merits, as parties and courts struggle to determine what exactly constitutes a ‘bona fide relationship,’ who precisely has a ‘credible claim’ to that relationship, and whether the claimed relationship was formed ‘simply to avoid’” the executive order.

Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch may be right about the flood of litigation, but we might have seen a similar such flood contesting the very similar standards in the waiver program outlined in Section 3(c) of the executive order.

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court in large part agreed with the president. The tenor of this decision shows that the challengers will have a very hard time in the Fall convincing the Court that the president acted outside his statutory and constitutional authority. Or that federal judges should substitute their judgment for that of the president when it comes to national security.

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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Very strong study shows health advantages for high IQ people across the board

This sort of finding emerges so often that I should probably stop putting them up.  But when the Left keep dismissing IQ as meaningless, what am I to do?

Childhood intelligence in relation to major causes of death in 68 year follow-up: prospective population study

Ian J Deary et al.

Abstract

Objectives: To examine the association between intelligence measured in childhood and leading causes of death in men and women over the life course.

Design: Prospective cohort study based on a whole population of participants born in Scotland in 1936 and linked to mortality data across 68 years of follow-up.

Setting: Scotland.

Participants: 33 536 men and 32 229 women who were participants in the Scottish Mental Survey of 1947 (SMS1947) and who could be linked to cause of death data up to December 2015.

Main outcome measures: Cause specific mortality, including from coronary heart disease, stroke, specific cancer types, respiratory disease, digestive disease, external causes, and dementia.

Results: Childhood intelligence was inversely associated with all major causes of death. The age and sex adjusted hazard ratios (and 95% confidence intervals) per 1 SD (about 15 points) advantage in intelligence test score were strongest for respiratory disease (0.72, 0.70 to 0.74), coronary heart disease (0.75, 0.73 to 0.77), and stroke (0.76, 0.73 to 0.79). Other notable associations (all P less than 0.001) were observed for deaths from injury (0.81, 0.75 to 0.86), smoking related cancers (0.82, 0.80 to 0.84), digestive disease (0.82, 0.79 to 0.86), and dementia (0.84, 0.78 to 0.90). Weak associations were apparent for suicide (0.87, 0.74 to 1.02) and deaths from cancer not related to smoking (0.96, 0.93 to 1.00), and their confidence intervals included unity. There was a suggestion that childhood intelligence was somewhat more strongly related to coronary heart disease, smoking related cancers, respiratory disease, and dementia in women than men (P value for interactions less than 0.001, 0.02, less than 0.001, and 0.02, respectively).Childhood intelligence was related to selected cancer presentations, including lung (0.75, 0.72 to 0.77), stomach (0.77, 0.69 to 0.85), bladder (0.81, 0.71 to 0.91), oesophageal (0.85, 0.78 to 0.94), liver (0.85, 0.74 to 0.97), colorectal (0.89, 0.83 to 0.95), and haematopoietic (0.91, 0.83 to 0.98). Sensitivity analyses on a representative subsample of the cohort observed only small attenuation of the estimated effect of intelligence (by 10-26%) after adjustment for potential confounders, including three indicators of childhood socioeconomic status. In a replication sample from Scotland, in a similar birth year cohort and follow-up period, smoking and adult socioeconomic status partially attenuated (by 16-58%) the association of intelligence with outcome rates.

Conclusions: In a whole national population year of birth cohort followed over the life course from age 11 to age 79, higher scores on a well validated childhood intelligence test were associated with lower risk of mortality ascribed to coronary heart disease and stroke, cancers related to smoking (particularly lung and stomach), respiratory diseases, digestive diseases, injury, and dementia.

BMJ 2017; 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2708

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Sarah Palin Sues New York Times For Defamation

There should be more of this.  Leftism floats on a sea of lies -- so that should be made plain to all

Sarah Palin is filing a lawsuit against The New York Times for defamation, based on a June 14 op-ed the paper wrote. The lawsuit charges that the op-ed “falsely stated as a matter of fact to millions of people that Mrs. Palin incited Jared Loughner’s January 8, 2011 shooting rampage at a political event in Tucson, Arizona, during which he shot nineteen people, severely wounding United States Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, and killing six, including Chief U.S. District Court Judge John Roll and a nine-year-old girl.”

As Townhall noted, “An FBI investigation, whose findings were revealed last year, found that Jared Lee Loughner was a disturbed young man who may very well have been obsessed with Giffords. His social media postings suggested he was undergoing a ‘mental breakdown,’ The Arizona Republic reported. In conclusion, he was the sole author of the carnage.”

But the Times op-ed, which was referencing the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise, ignored the evidence and wrote:

"Was this attack evidence of how vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs. Conservatives and right-wing media were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Though there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right."

SOURCE

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Rage Is All the Rage, and It's Dangerous

A generation of media figures are cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He is killing all their sacred cows

Peggy Noonan
 
What we are living through in America is not only a division but a great estrangement. It is between those who support Donald Trump and those who despise him, between Left and Right, between the two parties, and even to some degree between the bases of those parties and their leaders in Washington. It is between the religious and those who laugh at Your Make Believe Friend, between cultural progressives and those who wish not to have progressive ways imposed upon them. It is between the coasts and the center, between those in flyover country and those who decide what flyover will watch on television next season. It is between “I accept the court’s decision” and “Bake my cake.” We look down on each other, fear each other, increasingly hate each other.

Oh, to have a unifying figure, program or party.

But we don’t, nor is there any immediate prospect. So, as Ben Franklin said, we’ll have to hang together or we’ll surely hang separately. To hang together — to continue as a country — at the very least we have to lower the political temperature. It’s on all of us more than ever to assume good faith, put our views forward with respect, even charity, and refuse to incite.

We’ve been failing. Here is a reason the failure is so dangerous.

In the early 1990s Roger Ailes had a talk show on the America’s Talking network and invited me to talk about a concern I’d been writing about, which was old-fashioned even then: violence on TV and in the movies. Grim and graphic images, repeated depictions of murder and beatings, are bad for our kids and our culture, I argued. Depictions of violence unknowingly encourage it.

But look, Roger said, there’s comedy all over TV and I don’t see people running through the streets breaking into laughter. True, I said, but the problem is that, for a confluence of reasons, our country is increasingly populated by the not fully stable. They aren’t excited by wit, they’re excited by violence — especially unstable young men. They don’t have the built-in barriers and prohibitions that those more firmly planted in the world do. That’s what makes violent images dangerous and destructive. Art is art and censorship is an admission of defeat. Good judgment and a sense of responsibility are the answer.

That’s what we’re doing now, exciting the unstable — not only with images but with words, and on every platform. It’s all too hot and revved up. This week we had a tragedy. If we don’t cool things down, we’ll have more.

And was anyone surprised? Tuesday I talked with an old friend, a figure in journalism who’s a pretty cool character, about the political anger all around us. He spoke of “horrible polarization.” He said there’s “too much hate in DC.” He mentioned “the beheading, the play in the park” and described them as “dog whistles to any nut who wants to take action.”

“Someone is going to get killed,” he said. That was 20 hours before the shootings in Alexandria, VA.

The gunman did the crime, he is responsible, it’s fatuous to put the blame on anyone or anything else.

But we all operate within a climate and a culture. The media climate now, in both news and entertainment, is too often of a goading, insinuating resentment, a grinding, agitating antipathy. You don’t need another recitation of the events of just the past month or so. A comic posed with a gruesome bloody facsimile of President Trump’s head. New York’s rightly revered Shakespeare in the Park put on a “Julius Caesar” in which the assassinated leader is made to look like the president. A CNN host — amazingly, of a show on religion — sent out a tweet calling the president a “piece of s— ” who is “a stain on the presidency.” An MSNBC anchor wondered, on the air, whether the president wishes to “provoke” a terrorist attack for political gain. Earlier Stephen Colbert, well known as a good man, a gentleman, said of the president, in a rant: “The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c— holster.” Those are but five dots in a larger, darker pointillist painting. You can think of more.

Too many in the mainstream media — not all, but too many — don’t even bother to fake fairness and lack of bias anymore, which is bad: Even faked balance is better than none.

Yes, they have reasons. They find Mr. Trump to be a unique danger to the republic, an incipient fascist; they believe it is their patriotic duty to show opposition. They don’t like his policies. A friend suggested recently that they hate him also because he’s in their business, show business. Who is he to be president? He’s not more talented. And yet as soon as his presidency is over he’ll get another reality show.

And there’s something else. Here I want to note the words spoken by Kathy Griffin, the holder of the severed head. In a tearful news conference she said of the president, “He broke me.” She was roundly mocked for this. Oh, the big bad president’s supporters were mean to you after you held up his bloody effigy. But she was exactly right. He did break her. He robbed her of her sense of restraint and limits, of her judgment. He broke her, but not in the way she thinks, and he is breaking more than her.

We have been seeing a generation of media figures cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He really is powerful.

They’re losing their heads. Now would be a good time to regain them.

They have been making the whole political scene lower, grubbier. They are showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium, their knowledge of themselves as public figures, as therefore examples — tone setters. They’re paid a lot of money and have famous faces and get the best seat, and the big thing they’re supposed to do in return is not be a slob. Not make it worse.

By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage. They celebrate themselves as brave for this. They stood up to the man, they spoke truth to power. But what courage, really, does that take? Their audiences love it. Their base loves it, their demo loves it, their bosses love it. Their numbers go up. They get a better contract. This isn’t brave.

If these were only one-offs, they’d hardly be worth comment, but these things build on each other. Rage and sanctimony always spread like a virus, and become stronger with each iteration.

And it’s no good, no excuse, to say Trump did it first, he lowered the tone, it’s his fault. Your response to his low character is to lower your own character? He talks bad so you

do? You let him destabilize you like this? You are making a testimony to his power.

So many of our media figures need at this point to be reminded: You belong to something. It’s called: us.

Do your part, take it down some notches, cool it. We have responsibilities to each other

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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