Modern politics – Page 24 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

July 26, 2022

California, A Sanctuary for Modern Gender Lysenkoism

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What is Lysenkoism and what does it have to do with California? Lysenkoism was a Soviet theory of biology that illustrates the corrupting influences of ideology on science. In addition to the bloodthirsty nature of communism, it would prove to be a force multiplier for famine in the 1930’s in the Soviet Union. In like manner, today, transgenderism is just the latest edition of the attempt to have ideology guide science, and still call it “science”. It too will have dire consequences particularly for the young who will be swept into it. California is trying to establish itself as the mecca for this latest thought experiment with our children as guinea pigs.

While pursuing this transgenderism delusion, California has a hard time keeping its people and businesses. For the second straight year, the state has registered an absolute reduction in its population, down some 117,552 in 2021 alone. From 2000 to 2020, the state shed a net of 2.6 million people. Similarly, increasingly, businesses in the state are decamping for parts beyond the reach of California’s legislators, tax collectors, and regulators. The consulting firm Spectrum Solutions counts a total of 265 relocations of California-headquartered enterprises from 2018 to June 2021. It’s undoubtedly an undercount since many fly under the radar – like the number for “apprehensions at the border”.

The published 2021 list of business out-migrations is quite impressive and includes Apple and Oracle (now Austin, Tx.) and Nestle USA (now Arlington, Va.). If the state won’t be hospitable to the spirit of enterprise, the state seems to be salivating at the prospect of becoming a kind of Vatican for the grisly arts: snuffing out unborn life and mutilating the bodies of confused tweens. Abortion from conception to birth (and maybe beyond) is lauded and subsidized, going so far as to advertise for out-of-state “customers”. The “gender affirming care” (euphemisms abound in the grisly arts) of double mastectomies, hormonal injections, castrations, genital reconstruction operations, and psychological indoctrination is favored in ways the real economy is not. Fascinating.

This medical assault on the bodies of the young is justified under “transgenderism”, today’s ideological clone of Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism is an artifact of the Marxist belief system dictating the architecture of science. The inherent qualities in basic biology are rejected – nothing is inherent in Marxism but all is said to be a product of socio-economic power structures. Sound familiar to the rantings of the race hustlers of critical race theory? Trofim Lysenko, Soviet biologist who was heralded in Soviet propaganda as a genius, rejected genetics and based his agriculture advice on discredited 18th century notions of inheritance (Lamarckism). The whole idea easily conformed to the pretensions of Marxism-Leninism. The result was the catastrophic crop failures leading to the Holodomor, the famine in the Ukraine and Donbas, the vast breadbasket of Russia and Europe.

May be a black-and-white image of 1 person — Trofim Lysenko in 1938

Thus, what happens when ideology guides science? You have massive calamities. Like the Soviet-inspired famines, we will have cohorts of impressionable adolescents equally damaged, growing up psychologically scarred and physically mutilated, and it will all be chalked up as “gender affirming”. For many, they’ll end up like the 60-year-old regretting the body-covering tattoos, now fading and wrinkled, of their twenties. Only worse.

Inspired by the conceit of transgenderism, California State Senator Scott Weiner has introduced a bill that would create an interstate underground railroad for sex-change operations, in effect, neutering the laws of the other states, according to Jeremy Redfern, press secretary of the Florida Department of Health. Children from Florida, or wherever, could be placed in California foster care, with or without parental notice and consent, and in essence Mengele-like experiments would be conducted on their bodies (Josef Mengele was the sinister Auschwitz doctor). The bill promises to prohibit the enforcement of another state’s arrest warrant if the warrant is related to that state’s restrictions on sex-change treatments.

May be an image of 1 person — California State Senator Scott Weiner (D, 11th St. Sen. Dist., SF and San Mateo County)

See the source image — Josef Mengele, Auscwitz doctor and eugenics enthusiast, and a trainload of inmates arriving at Auscwitz-Birkenau in May of 1944.

Mengele was galvanized by a faith in another popular pseudoscience of the early 20th century: eugenics, or the idea that we should breed a “better” human being like we could a horse. Many academic, medical, and public health organizations of the day jumped onboard the eugenics train. Transgenderism has the same groupie effect, and sadly it’s frequently reported by the same people who have next to no understanding of science. What’s more astonishing is the ideological capture of people who should know better. The gambit was blown wide open when the American Academy of Pediatricians guidelines on transgenderism were shown to be written by a trans activist with a degree not in science but “women’s, gender and sexuality studies”. All-too-often, such organizational policy stands are written by a narrow claque of activists. It is neither reflective of the science or the membership.

In contrast, the euphoric and headlong rush into transgenderism is taking a pause in Europe and many states, except for the half-witted firebrands running the state of California, ironically as they run people and businesses out of the state. Dutch gender-dysphoria researchers call for “more research” before more definitive actions are taken. One Dutch gender-dysphoria specialist warned of the dangers in using sex-change chemical treatments by saying that “little research has been done so far on treatment with puberty blockers and hormones in young people.” Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare (NBHW) warned that “the risks [of sex-change treatments] outweigh the benefits at present.” They cited the “uncertain science” about the most popular sex-change prognoses. Thus, to put it succinctly, “gender affirming” is a nice way of saying “dangerous”. But still, California wants to go there.

It took 8-10 million dead in the USSR in the 1930’s and chronic crop failures to have Lysenkoism quietly go down the memory hole. What will it take for California to halt its breakneck slide into an “uncertain science”? How many kids will have to be disfigured and emotionally scarred before saner heads take over?

And to think that Governor Gavin Newsom is feted as a presidential contender for 2024. Given all that we know, who’d wish that on any nation, let alone our own?

RogerG

Sources:

*California’s population decline: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/us/california-population-decline.html
*Businesses flee California: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/08/27/businesses-are-fleeing-california-along-with-its-residents-and-president-biden-should-pay-attention/?sh=6fae8b722327
* Moms for Liberty Locked Out of Twitter after Criticizing California Gender-Transition Bill, National Review Online, Caroline Downey, July 25, 2022, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/moms-for-liberty-locked-out-of-twitter-after-criticizing-california-gender-transition-bill/
* Florida Is Following Europe’s Lead on Gender-Dysphoria Guidelines, National Review Online, Madeleine Kearns, April 27, 2022, https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/florida-is-following-europes-lead-on-gender-dysphoria-guidelines/

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022

Making Energy Sense, Not a Biden Skill

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President Biden is noticing the inverse relationship between gas prices and a politician’s approval rating: one goes up, the other goes down. So, what does he do? Sacrificing intelligibility, ignoring human nature in the laws of supply and demand, and contradicting the crux of his green-energy agenda, he spirited off letters to energy company CEO’s on June 15 haranguing them for taking his war on fossil fuels seriously. He attempted to strongarm them into dropping prices at the pump by threatening,

“. . . at a time of war, refinery profit margins well above normal being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable. . . . I request that you provide the Secretary with an explanation of any reduction in your refining capacity since 2020, and any ideas that would address the immediate inventory, price, and refining capacity issues in the coming months — including transportation measures to get refined product to market.”

For decades now, our cultural hegemons have inundated the whole of humanity with climate-change doom. The drumbeat is everywhere; can’t miss it. Now, we have a government of doomsayers, who have put combative policy teeth to the apocalypse story. The hostility to the CEO’s principal product – fossil fuels – is impossible to avoid, even for the pressed suits in the c-suites. They’ve adjusted to the cultural lynch mob by running ads touting their greenie bona fides and a redirection of investments to match. They see what’s in the wind. They see a government on an eco-jihad. Cancellation of pipelines, ending new leases on federal lands, greenie Bolsheviks in charge at the EPA, greenie Bolsheviks running the show at Transportation and Energy – indeed, throughout the Article II branch – and the regulatory and permitting process under the zealous gaze of a greenie Cheka (the forerunner to the KGB), isn’t exactly a green light to increase production, “to get refined product to market”. What Lord Biden taketh away, he expects them to give.

May be an image of outdoors and text that says 'Snack Shop Regular 579% 589 599% Plus V-Power Gasoline' — Gas prices in Los Angeles in May of 2022.

Just think like a CEO of a multi-billion-dollar energy behemoth. He or she would be crazy to commit years and $5-15 billion into building a new refinery or maintaining an existing one, which mostly explains why we haven’t added a new one since 1976 and some are closing. Additionally, why commit millions – without commitment to an asylum – to exploring and extracting the stuff that is constantly portrayed to be the environmental equivalent of monkeypox?

Why do that when Biden’s commissariat, and the sub-commissariats in the blue states, have adopted the Stalinesque “Energy Portfolio Standards” (EPS)? EPS’s are Five Year Plans to shoehorn the entire population into the greenie utopia of blackouts, cramped and overpriced housing, expensive ev’s, and filthy, crime-ridden, and time-guzzling public transit, specifically subjecting it on the most hesitant in the aspiring middle class and proletariat (regular or lumpen). Imagine your standard of living being forcibly molded to fit the conscience of the Sierra Cub executive board, or the lunchroom at Google.

Don’t be a bit surprised that your life takes on the appearance of the beneficiaries – err, victims – of the New Deal-inspired urban renewal extravaganzas of the last half of the 20th century. Is Chicago’s Cabrini Green our future writ large?

May be an image of train, railroad and text that says 'not onter ΔE enter tracks' — A key goal of the Green New Deal is to herd the population into mass transit like this in NYC.

May be an image of sky and skyscraper — Another key goal of environmentalists is dense housing, much of it public, like this one in Chicago. It became a hive of crime and drugs and was demolished in 2011.

May be an image of 4 people and people standing — A policewoman searches the jacket of a teenage boy for drugs and weapons in the graffiti-covered Cabrini Green Housing Project.

So, we are set to replace $2-per-gallon gas and air conditioning for the “intermittency problem” of windmills and solar panels, which means regular episodes of things going dark and summer sweltering. The polar vortexes present particularly vexing problems for a grid with an irregular heartbeat. Be prepared for forests of windmills and seas of solar panels to mar the views during the family drive in the expensive ev, which could be a dangerous activity if no one thought to plug it in the night before.

And where will the electricity come from to charge the thing? Not much chance of charging the ev if the town went dark. I always thought that a continuous flow of electricity, one that can be ramped up as needed, was preferable to one interrupted by clouds, the rotation of the earth, or the lack of air movement. If we are so paralyzed by the thought of burning coal that we are willing to rush into the arms of “intermittency”, natural gas and nuclear could offer a way forward without upending the entire system from the generating plant to coffee maker. Building new gas and nuclear plants to power the grid makes more sense than trying to repeal the laws of physics regarding intermittency, energy density (remember the vast panoramic expanses of windmills and solar panels – the very opposite of density), and the dumping of trillions into R and D to make something work that by nature is inclined not to.

May be an image of cloud and twilight — Intermittency in action: Rolling blackouts in Southern California, 2021

May be an image of standing, nature and text — A picture of intermittency: Mojave Desert windmills, California.

May be an image of outdoors — Another picture of intermittency: Solar farm in California’s Mojave Desert

We know much more about natural gas and nuclear generation and the necessary tweaks to make them safer and more efficient. Instead, we are offered the huge opportunity costs of the Green New Deal. Money sunk into this basket of extravagances is money not available for the obvious and accessible. In fact, the obvious and accessible is sacrificed on the altar of will-o’-the-wisp “renewables” as gas-powered turbines are shut down and nuclear power plants closed. Oddly, the most emissions-friendly one, nuclear, has been especially targeted. Globally, nuclear power accounted for 17% of total energy production in 1996. Today, it’s 10%. The picture in the U.S. isn’t any better. Nuclear’s contribution to our energy total is scheduled to fall to 11% by 2050 from the 20% of today. The scare stories of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and the damage to Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plants in 2011 are dredged to make the inefficient – the aforementioned “renewables” – seem plausible.

May be an image of coast and nature — Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, California, scheduled for decommissioning in 2025.

It will turn into the classic example of government-engineered socio-economic devolution. Where will this lead? Think of the Middle Ages, the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, Venezuela, North Korea, anywhere coercive utopians seized absolute control of the government to compel others to build their dreamland.

Meanwhile, two words – “carbon” and “capture” – go down the memory hole. A fraction of the money going into R and D for overturning a civilization’s entire way of life could be devoted to “carbon” and “capture” with a much more salutary effect. The remainder of the GND price tag could remain in the pockets of the people. But all that makes too much sense.

And making sense is not the forte of eco-zealots drunk with power in the age of Biden.

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RogerG

Sources:

* Biden’s Full Letter to Oil Companies Demanding Help on Gas Prices, https://www.mediaite.com/news/read-bidens-full-letter-to-oil-companies-demanding-help-on-gas-prices-historically-high-profit-margins-are-unacceptable/
* The Global Nuclear Power Comeback, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-global-nuclear-comeback-green-energy-fossil-fuels-supply-climate-mandates-power-generation-11658170860
* The Blue-State War on Nuclear Power, by Nate Hochman, https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-blue-state-war-on-nuclear-power/

July 17, 2022

Social-Political Tumors in the Depp/Heard Case and the Trump-Russia Con

See the source image

According to verywellhealth.com, a tumor is “. . . an abnormal growth of cells, which serves no purpose in the body.” In addition, “A tumor develops when cells divide too quickly and without control.”

Are tumors limited to biological manifestations? I think not. In today’s culture, the concept applies to the weird nexus of celebrity, media, activism, government, social class, and narrow geographic location that “develops” into an “abnormal” and tight-knit social grouping “too quickly and without control”. Two stories of late illustrate the existence of a kind of social tumor with a decidedly political complexion: (1) the Amber Heard op-ed which led to the famous (infamous?) Johnny Depp lawsuit(s) and (2) the Trump-Russia imbroglio. You won’t need better evidence for the actuality of socio-political tumors.

I find few things as amusing as when the public is shocked to learn of the chaotic nature of the personal lives of celebrities. The recent Depp/Heard dustup provides ample proof of the toxicity of some celebrity marriages. Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation after an op-ed appeared in the Washington Post under Heard’s name characterizing Depp as a wife beater.

May be an image of 4 people — Heard and Depp at the trial.

But that’s only the half of it. “Under her name”? Yes, the op-ed was ghostwritten by ACLU staffers after the organization received a windfall of $1.3 million from her after her divorce settlement with Depp. Her ex-boyfriend, Elon Musk, added $2.2 million to the promised total kitty of $3.5 million. Celebrity divorce, celebrity-sized payouts, and political activism came together in one socio-political tumor, or “abnormal growth”.

It seems that the ACLU was very appreciative to Heard, whom they referred to as an “ACLU artist ambassador on women’s rights”. ACLU communications people were all over the op-ed’s composition and dissemination to big media. All of this was born out in the trial. Robin Shulman, an ACLU communications staffer, wrote the first draft with edits from Heard’s lawyers, and Terence Dougherty, the ACLU’s Chief Operating Officer and general counsel, peddled it to the media. Humungous gifts lead to humungous help in hatching a smear.

In the end, the jury in the Depp defamation lawsuit would have none of it. Juries are tied to the evidence at least to some degree. The facts showed that these were two mutually abusive individuals wrapped in nuptials. The verdict ordered Amber Heard to be on the hook for about $10 million to Depp and his legal team. For the life of me, I fail to understand why the ACLU wasn’t in the dock as well since their fingerprints were all over the slander.

Then we come to Durham, the special counsel appointed by then-AG Barr to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia fable. The Sussman trial and subsequently released court documents glaringly expose another “abnormal growth”. This one is composed of two types of cells – the Clinton Campaign and certain federal agencies – developing in cooperation “quickly and without control”. Indeed, they were intertwined like the common root system of birch trees, and like the cells of a tumor. Professional and social courtesies abound. This class of DC operatives are interwoven in a web of friendships, past and present occupational connections, and similar backgrounds and outlooks. All of this is cooped into the narrow confines of the DC metropolitan area. They can’t help running into each other at the soccer field, Whole Foods, and dinner parties. It’s a mutually reinforcing social ecosystem.

The prevalence of the bonds in the social petri dish of DC was on display in the Sussman trial, who was charged with making false and misleading statements to the FBI. Michael Sussman, one of Hillary’s key campaign lawyers and a veteran of the Justice Department’s cybersecurity team, called an old acquaintance, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, to kickstart the Hillary campaign’s scheme to connect Trump to Russia under the contrived moniker of Trump being “under federal investigation”. Keep in mind that she was under investigation for the much more real charge of violating her legal responsibility to follow security procedures in her communications as Secretary of State, and the likelihood that she obstructed justice in destroying evidence (her emails, home brew server, hard drives, and cell phones). She desperately needed the distraction of something to pin on Trump.

May be an image of 2 people and beard — Michael Sussman (l), Clinton Campaign lawyer, and John Durham, Special Counsel.

In stepped the malignant cells of the supportive DC tumor. Court records show that Hillary gave the go-ahead to begin the scam. The whole campaign apparatus in DC leapt into motion. The Campaign’s part of the tumor included Fusion GPS and co-founder Glenn Simpson to dig up dirt on Trump, Christopher Steele who provided much of the dirt, Igor Danchenko (a suspected Russian asset) who was Steele’s source, and Rodney Joffe and his Neustar data mining firm (hired by the Hillary Campaign) to help create the illusion of a Trump “backchannel” to Putin through Russia’s Alpha Bank.

May be a closeup of 1 person and beard — Igor Danchenko suspected Russian asset and Christopher Steele’s source for the “dossier”.

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'AN' — Glann Simpson of Fusion GPS, the company tasked by the Clinton Campaign to dig up dirt on Trump.

The stage was set for the sales job to friends and acquaintances in the sympathetic administrative state, the other part of the tumor. Sussman texted his old friend at the FBI, James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel:

“Jim — it’s Michael Sussmann. I have something time-sensitive (and sensitive) I need to discuss. Do you have availability for a short meeting tomorrow? I’m coming on my own — not on behalf of a client or company — want to help the Bureau. Thanks.”

What did Sussman have for Baker? The next day, Sussman plopped on Baker’s desk Joffe’s concocted illusion of Trump-Russia collusion through Alpha Bank. The Hillary campaign lawyer, Sussman, gave the FBI an excuse to do what they were chomping at the bit to do anyway. FBI headquarters opened the investigation with enthusiasm according to the chain of command in Chicago. James Comey was said to be particularly jazzed up. The FBI higher-ups hid the Sussman/Hillary Campaign connection to the alleged “information” by carrying on as if it came from the Justice Department, not the Clinton Campaign. It’s clear that the FBI wasn’t really duped by Sussman. Come on, everyone in the halls of power knew who Sussman worked for. Let’s just say that they wanted to be “duped”. It provided great cover. The rest is a history that’ll live in infamy.

In the Depp-Heard case, a storied civil liberties group is muddied by its zeal to manufacture oppression through defamation. In the Trump-Russia fairy tale, Hillary campaign friendlies in the superstructure of the DC administrative state were essentially adjuncts of the Campaign and the Democratic Party. This is the reality of socio-political tumors that plague America. Like the biological kind, they can be malignant and need to be irradiated. After all, they “serve no purpose” other than as comfortable sinecures for government careerists.

How? Dismantle the administrative monoliths in DC. Scatter them to the wind. The country has about 300 cities in the 100,000 range who’d love to have the headquarters for the Justice Department, its FBI, its ATF, the Department of Homeland Security and its sundry appendages, the Department of Agriculture, etc., etc. It’d be nice to see the pressed suits running the Agriculture Department regularly having to clean manure off their shoes, or maybe the potentates running the show at the EPA having to live in the vicinity of the people whose jobs they destroyed. It’s juicy to think about.

Malignant tumors need oncological treatment. The events of the past six years show DC to be a dangerous concentration of cells that has developed “quickly and without control”. Congress needs to act like a hospital oncology department by flinging the functions of government to the far corners of the nation. Our mode of government would be healthier if DC was more of a ghost town.

As for the Heard-type smear, put an end to the mantra of always “believe her”. Chromosomes should have very little bearing on truth and guilt.

RogerG

Sources:

*Andrew C. McCarthy’s piece on Durham and the Sussman trial: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/06/27/russiagate-misunderstood/
*Dan McLaughlin’s piece on the Heard-Depp case: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/amber-heards-aclu-ghostwriters/

July 14, 2022

The Disgraceful Politics of the Grisly

On the right, we have QAnon and tales of a pedophilia ring under the watchful gaze of Hillary Clinton, or something like that. It’s hard to follow politically inspired derangements. If that doesn’t startle, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Ga., 10th District) has openly speculated on a Jewish conspiracy of space-based lasers to ignite forest fires in California. I hope she was kidding, but one can never be sure with this mouth without a filter.

Why do I mention the cuckoo Right? The delusions of the Left prove that the affliction isn’t one dimensional. Case in point: a story is heralded in the press of a pregnant Ohio 10-year-old who had to flee the “coat-hanger R’s” of the buckeye state to the “coat-hanger R’s” of Indiana for an abortion, all to heap scorn on the Dobbs decision. The president, exhibiting his usual foot-in-mouth antics before a mic, repeated the story. The story is starting to unravel, and it’s beginning to look more like a tale of an unenforced border, thanks to Biden.

I was initially skeptical of a pregnant 10-year-old. That part now appears to be true, though there’s much more to the story. A pregnant 10-year-old? That’s rape simply by the combination of the two words, and it was reported to Columbus, Ohio, authorities by the girl’s mom on June 22. A suspect was arrested: an illegal border-crosser from Guatemala.

The fable also opens up a can of worms for Columbus. The city, run by lefty Dems, hasn’t officially adopted the moniker of “sanctuary city” but it behaves like one. In 2015, the city issued a “Police Directive” to prohibit police cooperation in the enforcement of immigration law. In 2017, Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther (D) was more emphatic. His proclamation announced that “no city department or employee may use city moneys, equipment, or personnel for the sole purpose of detecting or apprehending persons based on suspected immigration status, unless in response to a court order.” Can’t be much more “sanctuary” than that. Is he equally as insistent when it comes to holding suspects for violating federal counterfeiting or kidnapping laws? I kinda doubt it.

Furthermore, word is leaking out that the sole source for the breaking story was Dr. Caitlin Bernard of Indianapolis, a Dem activist and abortion enthusiast. And there is reason to believe that she may not have been the treating physician but only overheard another doctor who was. Anyway, either way, if she or anyone learned of the child sexual abuse and didn’t report it, they become eligible for enrollment in the hoosegow. Don’t be surprised that soon the story gets buried on A-10 as the public’s gaze is redirected to another phony outrage.

The real story is turning out to be the lengths that ideological hopes outrun the facts. Even more troubling, facts are invented or omitted to get at Kavanaugh, the Court, anybody running for office with an “R” after their name, or anyone opposing abortion from conception to the maternity ward crib. Lost in the shuffle is the grisly fact that we’re talking about snuffing out human life. There was a time when, even in states that legalized the procedure, people were disquieted enough about it to keep it private. Not anymore. A couple of days ago, the Schumer-led Senate gave a forum for some to loudly and proudly proclaim theirs. It’s grisly!

Now we have the disgraceful politics of the grisly to add to “defund the police”, neo-Marxist indoctrination everywhere from West Point to kindergarten, school buses unloading kids into a gauntlet of crack heads, immigration lawbreakers being shepherded around the country at taxpayer expense, and people and property under constant assault. And I haven’t gotten to the unraveling economy. Amazing, absolutely amazing!

RogerG

Sources:

*The Columbus Dispatch story: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/07/13/columbus-man-charged-rape-10-year-old-led-abortion-in-indiana/10046625002/
*https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/indiana-abortionist-dodges-questions-about-story-of-alleged-ten-year-old-rape-victim/
*https://www.nationalreview.com/news/illegal-immigrant-arrested-for-allegedly-raping-ten-year-old-ohio-girl-at-center-of-viral-abortion-story/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
* Columbus’s sanctuary city status: https://www.fairus.org/issue/sanctuary-policies/10-largest-sanctuary-cities-united-states
*The background of Dr. Caitlin Bernard: https://spectator.org/caitlin-bernard-abortion-phony-story/

July 13, 2022

Republicans Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity

May be an image of 5 people and people standing — Trump speaks at rally in Ohio in June of 2021.

In 1922, George Bernard Shaw once described Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, and prime minister for a brief time, as a man who “never missed an occasion of losing an opportunity”. Could the same be said of today’s Republican Party? And I say this as a longtime Republican.

Once again, the Democrats have offered victory to Republicans on a silver platter. The Democrats have become the party of Che Guevara. Lefty politics can only produce Venezuela and social and economic ruin. But the Republicans are plagued by Trump and his coterie of followers. With Democrats wreaking havoc on our way of life and heaping dishonor on our country’s reputation (the Afghanistan bugout), you’d think that the country is ready for the adults, the GOP, but the public may not be so disposed for another four years of R-rated presidential behavior and chaotic, impulsive policy making on the fly, and the bullying of serial insults from the office once held by Ronald Reagan, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln.

Guess who? Hint: Mar-a-Lago.

The silver platter is born out in polls. Biden is in the dumps in a recent New York Times poll. His countrywide approval rating stands at 33%. His standing within his party isn’t much better. 94% of the party’s 30 and under youth base want somebody else to lead the party along with 64% of everyone registered “D”. Three-quarters of independents disapprove of Biden’s job performance and right/wrong track numbers show 75% wrong, 13% right. It’s a disaster for the AOC’s of the world, except for the possible return of Donald Trump.

Biden is hardly palatable in his own party but in a face-to-face matchup with Trump, he bests Trump 44 to 41 combining all registered voters. Sure, the polls have been extremely problematic: it’s “registered” voters, not voting voters; tech changes have empowered the public to not be bothered by the pollsters; and the polling organizations haven’t come to grips with an electorate that is deeply suspicious of them, their workers, and media allies. But still, they measure an overwhelming displeasure with Biden and the D’s in general. Why wouldn’t they be within the ballpark on Trump?

I suspect that 2016 should have been a comfortable win for the GOP after eight years of the sanctimonious and lefty Obama. Heck, he messed up everyone’s health care. And Hillary comes off as Marie Antoinette. Yet, by any measure, Trump turned “comfortable” into a nail-biter. Four years later, we got another one only with Trump on the losing end. Do we as Republicans want the party of Che to have another bite at the apple in 2022 and 2024?

What Trump the candidate has done to the party’s fortunes, he’s trying to accomplish with his endorsements this time around. He’s saddled the party with Senate candidates who have the surprising ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (Oz in Penn., Vance in Ohio, etc.). Like his own campaigns, shoe-ins become tossups, all of it occurring at a very propitious time for the GOP. We might be left with desperate prayers, crossed fingers, and magical incantations to avoid a Schumer-controlled Senate eliminating the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, concocting four new Democrat senators from two new Democrat state-fiefdoms, and the Soviet-style central planning of the Green New Deal. Manchin and Sinema may not be in a position to save us.

I’m daily praying for Trump to enjoy his family, great golf, and further business success in retirement.

May be a cartoon of one or more people

RogerG

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022

The January 6 Committee: Another “High-Tech Political Lynching” (to borrow from Clarence Thomas)

May be an image of 8 people, people standing and text that says 'JANUARY 6TH Attack on the United States Capitol EXIT 恭者' — The January 6 Committee during Cipollone’s closed-door hearing.

In a June 17 post, I stated, “. . . the January 6 Committee is a farce and Donald Trump is a scoundrel.” I stand by those conclusions.

That said, a scoundrel need not be a criminal, and the attempt to make the scoundrel one by hook or by crook is an embarrassment to the country. Thanks, Liz Cheney, for lending your esteemed family name to political behavior that is reminiscent of banana republics and the worst political thuggery of the twentieth century. Andrew C. McCarthy in his column (see below) on the latest happenings of the January 6th Committee exposes the abomination.

The Committee’s sleight-of-hand maneuvering included the demand that Trump counselor Pat Cipollone testify to add weight to Cassidy Hutchinson’s (aide to Mark Meadows) earlier hearsay testimony that Trump came unglued after his January 6 speech.

May be an image of 1 person and suit — Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White Houe counsel

The Committee then molded the interview in a manner not to allow him to contradict Hutchinson’s hearsay. Everyone in DC knew that he would, so what did they do? They didn’t give him the opportunity. Thus, committee hanging judge Zoe Lofgren (D, Ca.), on a committee of hanging judges, soiled herself with the claim that Cipollone “did not contradict other witnesses”. Of course, he didn’t. The questioning was structured in such a way as to not allow him to. What a sham.

Power-hungry prosecutors have a number of techniques at hand to twist testimony. One is to never ask the witness simply what the person saw, said, or did – point by point. Contradictions would inevitably arise between the two accounts. That isn’t good when the goal of the show trial is to put on a show of guilt. If witness-A’s testimony does the trick, don’t allow witness-B to mess up the script. And, by the way, declare to the public that B “confirmed” A.

Our modern politics has become a theater of the absurd. In this latest episode, we have a tabloid, combustible, self-indulgent ex-president, a neo-Marxist revolutionary party enthralled by Marx’s ends-justify-means modus operandi, a press that functions as the public relations arm of the revolution, and a couple members of the opposition party who are so blinded by fury at the then-oval-office rascal to the point of cooperating with the revolution. Stephen King couldn’t come up with a more dramatic cast of characters for a thriller . . . or horror show.

Or maybe Clarence Thomas’s assessment is more accurate when he described his “Borking” as a “high-tech lynching”. Revolutionary parties seldom have scruples when the revolution is all that matters. For them, a “lynching” is just fine.

May be a cartoon of text that says '"A11 News FORECAST Chance ParHy Apocalypse Clovdy ThatFits" The Daily Spleen wit BOMBSHELL: JAN. 6 WITNESS HEARD FROM A FRIEND OF A GUY THAT TRUMP'S RUSSIAN HOOKERS GAVE SECRET SERVICE DRIVER A GOLDEN SHOWER IN PRESIDENTIAL LIMO FROM RUSSIA WITH Love PREZ Jan.6 Comm. Adjourns to Burn Down Supreme Court Haynέ 022 AnDREWs mcmeeL EMAIL: hpayne@detroitnews.com'

RogerG
*Andrew C. McCarthy’s column on the Cipollone testimony: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-january-6-committees-gamesmanship-on-cipollones-testimony/

July 10, 2022July 10, 2022

America’s Ya’nan Rectification Campaign

May be an image of 5 people and text that says 'CRITICAL RACE THEORY: Racism is "systemic" and present in every aspect of life. Your "identity" is function of your skin color. America's 19th century westward expansion was the shameful product of "Whiteness.' White people give blacks opportunities only when its in their own best interests. RACIST.'

1986 became the pivotal year when American universities began the process of turning American’s young people into illiterates of their own national and cultural inheritance. It was the year when political entrepreneurs like Jesse Jackson arrived on the Stanford University campus to chant “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture’s got to go.” Their target was instruction in the western way of life, the cultural legacy of advanced science, personal liberty, intellectual enlightenment, Judeo-Christian spirituality, economic prosperity, and popular sovereignty. Jackson and his student audience demanded to chuck it all.

Jesse Jackson at Stanford University in 1986 joining in a protest against a western civilization curricular core at the school, famous for the chant, “Hey Hey, ho ho, western culture has to go”.

The 1980’s core requirement of a multi-quarter Western Culture curriculum for all students had replaced Western Civilization after the uproar against western civilization by 1960’s left radicals. Shortly after Jackson’s appearance on campus, anything exclusively western would be expunged as a universal core requirement. Eventually, the Stanford faculty senate replaced Western Culture with the nebulous Cultures, Ideas, and Values. The signal for the ostracization of western civilization has since permeated everywhere down to the instruction given to the kindergartners of today. Don’t dare place a mic before a college senior on spring break to describe the Constitution’s three branches of government. You’ll get jibberish.

And look at what replaced it, for something did. Nature hates a vacuum and so does the mind. In crept a neo-Marxist self-loathing. On the heels of the incessant assault on western culture and history came the full-throated “Rectification” program of the 2000’s that mirrors what Mao did in China, which started in Moa’s remote base of Ya’nan, Shaanxi province, in the 1940’s, and was called the Ya’ana Rectification Campaign. It was a ghastly campaign that slaughtered an estimated 10,000 people before Mao was done. It was Moa’s megalomania on parade. Of interest here isn’t the bloodthirsty escapades, even though that’s bad enough. It’s his methods of inculcating the incipient Marxist/Maoist mush.

May be a black-and-white image of 1 person, standing and outdoors — Mao in Ya’nan in 1939

The isolation of groups by identity, the “struggle sessions”, the bizarre confessions, the identification of abstract enemies, the pounding indoctrination, and the denunciations goes beyond thought control and right into emotion control. It’s sickening, and it’s replicated today. Mao’s target at the time was the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), but for today’s revolutionaries, the entire society is the target. Don’t worry, Mao got there quick enough.

Under the labels of “CRT”, “Critical Theory”, “Anti-racism Training”, “Understanding White Privilege”, etc., our modern revolutionary theorists are treating the minds of Americans up and down the social pyramid from classrooms to corporate boardrooms as clay. Employees are subjected to Anti-racism training, essentially the works of revolutionary theorists such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin Deangelo. The kiddies in their classrooms go through lessons that heap shame on them for their “whiteness”, and doubly so if they happen to be male. The shaming of “heteronormativity” knows no bounds. The victimology is relentless. Watch as your kids know more about Belgian colonialism in the Congo than they do about the American founding or the Protestant Reformation. How can young minds withstand the withering assault?

I say that they don’t. They are befuddled as they are made ignorant of the West’s great gift of the probing mind that has ballooned the food supply, pulled millions out of living in the dirt, expanded the frontiers of medicine, pushed back disease, spread freedom of conscience, etc. Software engineers’ “rectified” minds are as toxic to that legacy as anything described in Orwell’s “1984” or Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”.

They have succeeded in importing Mao into America. We are having our own Cultural Revolution and it will end in the same place: stunted minds and stunted lives.

Sources:
*The 1980’s abandonment of Western Civ at Stanford University: https://stanfordreview.org/the-case-for-a-western-civilization-requirement-at-stanford/
*The debate between Donald Kennedy, president of Stanford University, and William Bennett, Secretary of Education in 1988: https://archives.stanforddaily.com/1988/04/20?page=1

July 9, 2022July 10, 2022

The Un-Unhinged Left

I have this question. You can join a political movement, but how do you join a sex? The seasoned actor Alan Alda used to call himself a proud feminist, but would it be reasonable for him to announce that he is now a woman, if he was so inclined? The thought came to mind after reading about some celebrity leftists coming to the conclusion that the ultimate of identity politics, self-identity, has its limits. The prospect of former men, now declaring themselves to be women, shattering women’s NCAA and Olympic records and sidelining women who were born women may have revitalized the obvious truism that chromosomes matter in physical activities. At some point, politics must face reality.

J.K. Rowling was one of the first lefties to the realization of the reality. She noticed that trans-ideology was the invasion route of men into women’s athletics and the obliteration of the athletic prowess of “menstruators”. As such, she has come under withering fire from hyper-activist “trans”-women. Other brave female voices have joined her as they too confront “cancellation” from the usual sources. That’s why they are courageous.

May be an image of 2 people, people standing and text that says 'ERLIME' — Bette Midler and Macy Gray

Recently Bette Midler tweeted the following: “WOMEN OF THE WORLD! We are being stripped of our rights over our bodies, our lives and even of our name! They don’t call us ‘women’ anymore; they call us ‘birthing people’ or ‘menstruators’, and even ‘people with vaginas’! Don’t let them erase you! Every human on earth owes you!”

The singer Macy Gray was succinct when she stated in an interview, “I will say this and everyone’s gonna hate me, but as a woman, just because you go change your parts, doesn’t make you a woman, sorry.”

See below:

NY Times columnist Pamela Paul, no right-winger by any stretch, echoing Gray, said, “Even the word ‘women’ has become verboten.” And further, “In its place are unwieldy terms like ‘pregnant people,’ ‘menstruators’ and ‘bodies with vaginas . . . . [this is a] bitter way to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX.”

The Left may be unhinged in many of their social, economic, and political views, but they aren’t so crazy as to accept the move to make women’s sports an offshoot of men’s sports. Call these brave voices the un-unhinged Left.

May be an illustration of indoor and text

RogerG

*Bette Midler’s tweet: https://twitter.com/BetteMidler/status/1543979948611981313?s=20&t=O37Tc0ny2mm7Zx2ooddPzg
*Macy Gray’s comment on Piers Morgan’s “Uncensored” show: https://youtu.be/K3eWYEaOqDk
*Paul’s statement: https://news.yahoo.com/pamela-paul-criticized-anti-trans-192133188.html
*Great piece by columnist Madelein Kearns on the subject: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/trans-skepticism-goes-mainstream/

July 5, 2022July 10, 2022

People Don’t Know Roe and Dobbs

Pro-life demonstrators celebrate outside the United States Supreme Court as the court rules in the Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization abortion case overturning Roe v. Wade in Washington, D.C., June 24, 2022. (Photo: Michael Mccoy/Reuters)

Journalism is a disgrace. Their job is to inform. They don’t. They have become a platform for their collective biases and prejudices, which are about as well-informed as the general public that they serve. Thus, when opinion polls are conducted on the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe, glaring contradictions stand out in public perceptions of Roe, Dobbs, and abortion. We may as well disregard the polls except as proof of the press’s dereliction of duty.

Take the recent Harvard-Harris poll after the announcement of the Dobbs decision. We certainly can hold two ideas in our heads at the same time, but what if they are contradictions? In the Harvard-Harris poll, 55% opposed the overturning of Roe, yet 72% would limit abortion to 15 weeks. So, they want abortion possibly up to birth which is the essence of Roe and the later Casey decision, but then say that they don’t. Go ahead, try to square that circle.

Let’s further pick apart Roe and Casey and Dobbs and the poll. Roe has a “health of the mother” standard wrapped into a trimester scheme. Casey replaced that concoction with an admonition against placing an “undue burden” on a woman’s choice. Either way, there’s enough room to authorize abortion at birth. That’s Roe/Casey, and where 55% are. . . until they aren’t.

Then we have Dobbs. It affirmed the constitutionality of the Mississippi law that allowed abortion up to 15 weeks, where 72% of the public stands. 55% or 72%, which is it?

The American press, what a mess, what an embarrassment.

RogerG

*The Harvard-Harris poll here: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/HHP_June2022_KeyResults.pdf
*More on the poll in Charles Cooke’s column here: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/harvard-harris-americans-dont-know-what-roe-did/

July 5, 2022July 5, 2022

Running Out of Puff

May be an image of 1 person, outdoors and text that says 'MAR NIWING 35 VEHIGLE WEMISSION GNP POLICE CE POLICE FXI8 FXI8EEN EEN' — UK police EV

Yes, that’s right. The UK’s Daily Telegraph reported on July 5 “Electric police cars ‘running out of puff’ on way to emergencies”. It’s the kind of thing that Democrat politicos wish for America. Just think, as an angry neighbor is about to go postal and you call 911, the 5-to-6-minute response time turns into . . . never. The cops’ EV ran out of juice on the way. It’s time to call the coroner.

It seems that all the EV’s accessories such as a/c, heater, radio, computers, lights, and siren run off the same battery as the one powering the wheels. The existential crisis of climate change turned into the existential crisis of a dead family member.

Following Biden’s lead, who is following the lead of California, who is following the lead of the UK – a pied piper of delusionals – the “best and brightest” have either outlawed the production of diesel and gas vehicles by date certain (2030 in the UK) or a target date of 2030 or 2035 is set for achieving 100% EV fleets. Utopians are habitual central planners and love numbered targets to force other people into meeting, no matter the disruption or loss of life.

Officers responding to emergencies in EV’s report the well-founded worry of not getting to the crisis. Batteries drain, charging stations haven’t kept up with the government mandates for EV’s, god-awful charging times (45 minutes to 8 hours), and the grid providing the power is being made more precarious at the same time by the same clowns.

It’s a cascade of absurdities. Going all-electric is quickly turning into all-farce, and a deadly one at that.

RogerG