Archive for August, 2022
8th August 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
8th August 2022
U.S. Senate approves bill to fight climate change, cut drug costs in win for Biden (Reuters) Except that Biden had nogthing to do with it. It was entirely constructed and pushed through by the Democrat leadership, while he was isolated for COVID. Maybe they mean he didn’t managed to screw it up somehow.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
8th August 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
8th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
8th August 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
8th August 2022
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Scientists have joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration. The lawsuit alleges that the administration used social media companies to censor certain COVID-19 information.
Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty joined the lawsuit last week. The doctors say that Big Tech social media platforms censored them for posting content contrary to the federal government’s narrative about COVID-19.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance’s (NCLA) Tuesday press release indicated that the doctors were fighting for their First Amendment rights.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Scientists Join Lawsuit Against Biden Admin
8th August 2022
Read it.
Without mind-reading there would be no conspiracy theories.
(I love the smell of conspiracy in the morninng….)
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on With iRobot Acquisition, Amazon Wants to Scan Every Inch of Your Home
8th August 2022
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In a search for novel forms of longevity medicine, a biotech company based in Israel says it intends to create embryo-stage versions of people in order to harvest tissues for use in transplant treatments.
The company, Renewal Bio, is pursuing recent advances in stem-cell technology and artificial wombs demonstrated by Jacob Hanna, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. Earlier this week, Hanna showed that starting with mouse stem cells, his lab could form highly realistic-looking mouse embryos and keep them growing in a mechanical womb for several days until they developed beating hearts, flowing blood, and cranial folds.
You’re just a clump of cells, right? So it’s back to the factory for you.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on This Startup Wants to Copy You Into an Embryo for Organ Harvesting
8th August 2022
New York Times.
Since January, judges in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Ohio have found that Republican legislators illegally drew those states’ congressional maps along racial or partisan lines, or that a trial very likely would conclude that they did. In years past, judges who have reached similar findings have ordered new maps, or had an expert draw them, to ensure that coming elections were fair.
All the maps complained about, of course, were drawn by Republicans. No mention of any maps drawn by Democrats, who are all as pure as the driven snow.
FLASHBACK: Democrats created gerrymandering—they must own it
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on Maps in Four States Were Ruled Illegal Gerrymanders. They’re Being Used Anyway.
8th August 2022
ZMan looks at the Big Picture.
One of the great problems Enlightenment thinkers tried to solve is why it is that human beings live in ordered societies. Further, why are some people in charge of those societies and others subject to the will of those people. What explains this and more important, what is the correct system of organization? The recently rediscovered Greeks offered some insights. Scripture offered understanding of man’s nature but offered little to explain social hierarchy.
It is fair to say that Western intellectual life has been dominated by the search for the right answer as to how best to organize society. The utilitarian school gave us the claim that the goal of any social policy it to maximize total happiness. The Marxists gave us the argument that the goal of social policy is reducing exploitation. By exploitation they meant compulsion. Social contract theory gave us the general will, the idea that policy should be supported by the majority of the people.
The modern age fumbles around looking for a new answer to the great questions, having decided that the prior answers are not quite right. Restorative justice borrows a bit from all three schools. It starts with the assumption that everyone should benefit equally from society. This is an assumption that is never justified or even explained, but simply assumed as an axiom of the universe. It is the motivation to act and the authority to do just about anything to restore equal outcomes.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on A Question of Authority
8th August 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
7th August 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
7th August 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
7th August 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
7th August 2022
Washington Post publishes book preview claiming ‘sick’ GOP set for ‘destroying the world’s oldest democracy’
Tennessee college alumni lobby to remove Supreme Court Justice Barrett from school’s ‘hall of fame’
Justice subpoenas of Trump counsel mark turning point (The Hill)
Facebook quiet on election misinformation efforts as midterms loom (NBC News)
Trump’s grip on GOP activist class on display at Texas conclave (Politico) ‘Activist class’? Do the Democrats have an ‘activist class’?
Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers
Ben & Jerry’s Suing Its Owner to Keep Israel Boycott in Place
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
7th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
7th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
7th August 2022
“The only people who care about Lynne Cheney are the people related to Lynne Cheney and the people who plan to vote against Lynne Cheney. Nobody else gives a shit.” — ZMan
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
7th August 2022
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Technology’s default mode is to constantly call for my attention. Attention is engagement, engagement is profit.
And thus a big chunk of the economy devotes itself to grabbing my attention by increasingly coercive means. It took considerable effort to get technology to just shut the fuck up.
This is what this post is about; making technology quieter, and building a healthier relationship with it.
Hear, hear.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Making Quieter Technology
7th August 2022
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It was less than a day since the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending pregnancy on demand across America. And to Campbell, things seemed a little too quiet.
Campbell’s fears were confirmed June 25 when she arrived from home to learn that the pregnancy center had been attacked.
“They had taken crowbars to almost all of our windows, two of our doors, and just shattered all of the glass,” Campbell told The Daily Signal. “They had spray-painted [the shapes of] coat hangers on the sidewalks, on the brick facing of the buildings, and [wrote] political things like ‘Vote blue.’ In red on the stamped concrete, it read ‘If abortion ain’t safe, you ain’t safe.’”
Blue Ridge Pregnancy Center, in Lynchburg, Virginia, is one of about 40 pro-life organizations attacked since May 2, when someone leaked the Supreme Court’s draft majority opinion in the case called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Nobody hates like a proglodyte.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | 1 Comment »
7th August 2022
Interesting Engineering.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Dinosaurs Kept Warm — and Accidentally Survived a Mass-Extinction Event
7th August 2022
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As prices surge, store brands – also known as private labels, white labels or generic brands – have become an even more attractive option for inflation-fatigued shoppers who are looking to switch from pricier name brands. Store brands can be anywhere from 10% to 50% cheaper.
But the origins of store brands remain largely secretive.
…
Although store brands ostensibly compete with manufacturers’ national brands, manufacturers often have excess capacity on their production lines. To generate additional profit, some will use that extra capacity to make private labels.
I always buy ‘store brands’ when they are available. They’re almost always of adequate quality and superior price.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on The Hidden Makers of Costco’s Kirkland Signature and Trader Joe’s O’s
7th August 2022
Andy Matuschak.
Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.
…
Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.
UPDATE: Why Books Don’t Work: Constructivism Over Transmissionism
Very useful response to the above article. The concept of ‘generative learning strategies’ is especially attractive.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Why Books Don?t Work
7th August 2022
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The number of U.S. jobs jumped 528,000 last month, the Labor Department reported Friday, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% from 3.6%, matching a five-decade low. But that top line masks the drop in July of the labor force participation rate to 62.1% in July from 62.2% in June.
This is still far below the 63.4% labor force participation in February 2020, which translates to millions fewer people who would otherwise be working today compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Biden Tries to Get Americans to Look Away From Troubling Fact in Unemployment Report
7th August 2022
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Yesterday the New York Times attacked Republican governors for sending a handful of the illegal immigrants who have invaded their states to other jurisdictions. The Times headline was “G.O.P. Governors Cause Havoc by Busing Migrants to East Coast.”
No. The havoc was caused by the Biden administration luring illegals to the border and inviting them to cross without consequences. A tiny fraction of the havoc the Democratic Party has inflicted on red and purple states is now coming home to roost in blue states. That is a good thing.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Bringing the Havoc Home
7th August 2022
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
7th August 2022
The Other McCain is on the case.
A Baltimore ex-gang member who uses graffiti to designate ‘no shoot zones’ to discourage gun violence around the city was shot in his back, neck and jaw on Wednesday.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on He’s Not Making This Up, You Know
6th August 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
6th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
6th August 2022

Schumer calls economists ‘wrong’ who are cautioning Manchin’s spending bill will increase inflation I guess Schumer doesn’t feel any obligation to ‘follow the science’.
GOP governors sent buses of migrants to D.C. — with no plan for what came next (NPR) The plan is that ‘sanctuary city’ mayors have to put their (or their taxpayers’) money where there mouth is. Talk (especially virtue-signaling) is cheap.
How Ruth Bader Ginsburg Will Have the Last Laugh on Samuel Alito (Politico) The farce is strong in this one.
How the climate bill could save you money on electricity, cars and appliances (CNN) That’s our Narrative, and we’re sticking to it.
New data sheds light on one method to combat election lies (NPR) Apparently the plan is to double down on the Narrative.
If Dems Fought an All-Out Culture War, They’d Win (Daily Beast) They are, after all, the Party of Hate.
A dad and his daughter came from Brooklyn to S.F. for Outside Lands. Then their rental car got broken into (S.F. Chronicle)
State Legislatures Are Torching Democracy (The New Yorker) In the Narrative Media, ‘democracy’ means ‘Democrat vote fraud’.
ABC, NBC Promote ‘Historic,’ ‘Massive’ Democrat Spending Bill, Omit Criticism
UN Chief Urges Tax On Oil Industry For “Grotesque Greed” How about a tax on the U.N. for ‘grotesque greed’?
FLASHBACK: CBS Exposed Danger of Illegal Border Crossings… From Canada
Lena Dunham’s VILE New Film Features First ‘Abortion Baby Shower’ I guess it’s a cascade of blood from between her legs.
Absurd MSNBC: Racist, Transphobic, Flat-Earth Pro-Lifers Want To Criminalize Miscarriage
The Liberal Media and the Criminalization of American Politics
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
6th August 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
6th August 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
6th August 2022
Read it.
The situation in Germany, and elsewhere in the West, has come to resemble more and more the scenario in “The Marching Morons”, a novella written in the early 1950s by C.M. Kornbluth. The increasing use of advanced technology has reduced the employment opportunities for low-skilled, less intelligent workers, whose numbers are increasing. In a high-tech society this creates a pool not just of the unemployed, but of essentially unemployable people. As pointed out by the translator of the following article, a large (but not precisely known) number of work-averse culture-enrichers may be added to the pool of citizens who subsist on what has become for all practical purposes a Universal Basic Income.
In the following report, Friedrich Merz, the leader of the CDU (the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel), criticizes the state subsidy of hundreds of thousands of people who do not work, but are perhaps capable of doing “simple jobs”. He isn’t specific about what sort of work these not-so-bright people could do — perhaps polishing the shoes and the limousines of state functionaries such as himself.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Nice Non-Work If You Can Get It
6th August 2022
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- Jeff Bezos: Democrat (1a. Mackenzie Scott: Democrat)
- Elon Musk: Was a Democrat, but he’s been mugged by reality, so who knows?
- Mark Zuckerberg: Democrat
- Bill Gates: Democrat
- Larry Page: Democrat
- Sergei Brin: Democrat
- Larry Ellison: Democrat
- Warren Buffet: Democrat
- Steve Ballmer: Democrat
- Michael Bloomberg: Democrat who pretended to be a Republican to get elected Mayor of New York.
Well, I’m glad we know who to blame.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Republicans, Party of the Rich
6th August 2022
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Global warming religion is international, and the same anti-farming movement is coming soon to the U.S., the world’s number one agricultural economy. The first target will be nitrogen-based fertilizers, which are a principal foundation of the world’s ag productivity. Without fertilizers, the world will go hungry.
That leads to target number two: animals, especially cows. By far the largest crop in the U.S. is corn, and that corn is fed to cows and pigs to produce steaks, ground beef, bacon, pork chops, and so on. Liberals will argue that this is “inefficient.” People should live on vegetables and insects, and animal husbandry should be phased out. The fact that cattle also emit methane, primarily by chewing cud, makes their decline an added bonus from a global warming perspective.
…
Making food scarce and expensive, so that much of the population is threatened with starvation, has another benefit for liberals. They can respond by writing people checks representing food subsidies. Thus they turn millions of formerly self-sufficient Americans into government-reliant serfs. It’s a win-win, if you are a liberal.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on The Coming War on Agriculture
6th August 2022
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Jobs data reported this week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that, as of the last business day of June, there are 10.7 million job openings. Hence, according to the numbers, there are many more available jobs than willing workers.
At the same time, the U.S. unemployment rate’s just 3.6 percent – near a five-decade low. So, by the numbers, the economy is at full employment and still overflowing with jobs to be filled.
The U.S. economy couldn’t possibly be in a recession, given this robust and healthy jobs market, could it?
…
“Today’s job situation has nothing at all to do with a booming economy. All those jobs are sitting there open because NO ONE WANTS THEM. The people who once filled jobs like that don’t want to work. That is not the sign of a strong jobs market. It is the sign of a very sick job market. What it means is that the labor market is no longer able or willing to supply labor. That’s called “broken.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on What Happens When Work Doesn’t Pay
6th August 2022
Heated.
A GOP-linked dark money organization is running deceptive ads on Google and other platforms in an attempt to kill historic climate legislation.
Be sure you’re hunting the right witch.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Beware of This Fake Pro-Climate Group
6th August 2022
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Sen. Maggie Hassan’s reelection campaign ads tout that the Granite State Democrat is the “most bipartisan” lawmaker in the Senate. But state residents across the political spectrum say they consider Hassan a reliable vote for the Biden administration.
Sean Chambers, a 43-year-old construction worker and registered independent, said Hassan’s time in the Senate has been “nothing but broken promises.” He said he has yet to decide on whether he will vote Republican in November but refuses to back Hassan.
“She says she’s for the worker but hasn’t done anything,” Chambers told the Washington Free Beacon. “I don’t buy the bipartisan talk. There’s a big divide and nothing is getting done.”
I’m sure she still gets paid. That’s what Democrats mean by ‘getting stuff done’.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on ‘I Don’t Buy the Bipartisan Talk’: New Hampshire Voters Reject Dem’s Campaign Message
6th August 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
6th August 2022
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Democratic lawmakers spent the better part of two years assailing their Republican colleagues for not taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough for their liking. Nevertheless, these same Democrats are flagrantly disregarding COVID safety protocols to ensure the timely passage of a massive tax-hike and spending bill before Congress adjourns for the summer recess.
Gee, you’d think there wasn’t a Pandemic Panic going on.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on ‘Don’t Test, Don’t Tell’: Democrats Flout Safety Guidelines To Pass Climate Spending Bill Before Summer Recess
6th August 2022
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Your tax dollars at work. (Wait ’til you see the kevlar ceramic inserts….)
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on US Army Is Developing a Tactical Bra for Its Female Soldiers
5th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
5th August 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
5th August 2022
Randi Weingarten blasts ‘right-wing extremists’ for fighting ‘culture wars’ in conference speech American Federation of Teachers comes out of the closet.
Why is a Hungarian autocrat and Putin ally in Dallas? (Dallas Morning News) A Voice of the Crust is not afraid to ask the easy questions.
College is increasingly out of reach for many students. What went wrong? (NPR) Government paying for college.
Wisconsin Dem Senate candidate spent nearly $600k on police detail while cozying up to defund police movement Safety for me but not for thee.
A stunning GOP losing streak since Dobbs could remake the midterm landscape (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin indulges in some wishful thinking. “I think we can! I think we can!”
Judge Rules Medicaid Must Cover Transgender Surgeries
Law-Abiding Gun Owners Will Not Harm You. But Criminals Will. Armstrong Williams points out some inconvenient truth.
Michigan Town Votes to Defund Library Over LBGT Books
Post Roe v. Wade Ruling, Will We See More Startups Offering Abortion Pills?
Gideons Now Smuggling Thomas Sowell Books Into Public Schools (Babylon Bee)
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
5th August 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
5th August 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
5th August 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in War
5th August 2022
Trump blasted by Dick Cheney as former vice president stars in his daughter’s latest ad
Josh Hawley’s problem with masculinity (Washington Post) When it comes to ‘masculinity’, Jonathan Capehart and the Washington Post are not my first stop.
WaPo op-ed condemns Hawley, warns conservative masculinity is more about ‘prejudice than manliness’ Hawley’s mistake was getting into this pissing contest in the first place.
A judge unleashed a tirade on a prominent Jan. 6 defendant for his post-plea comments (NPR)
Merrick Garland has sped up his investigation. He cannot let up now. (Washington Post) Jennifer Rubin loses her shit.
How a Trumpy Billionaire Is Single-Handedly Reshaping Campaigns (Daily Beast) It’s Peter Thiel’s turn on the bonfire.
California Gov. Newsom asks Hollywood to stop filming in conservative Georgia, Oklahoma after abortion ruling Come to California, where we can tax you!
In the GOP, the paranoid fringe is becoming the establishment (Washington Post) Dana Milbank loses his shit.
Dining across the divide: ‘I was bewildered when she said Donald Trump was intelligent’ (The Guardian) Which he is, certainly more so than anybody at The Guardian.
Time is running out. The Department of Justice must indict and convict Trump (The Guardian) Larry Tribe loses his shit.
Ex-WH Adviser: ‘I Was in the Room’ When Trump Requested National Guard for Jan. 6
Viktor Orbán’s racism not a deal breaker for the right in the U.S. (MSNBC) In the Narrative Media, ‘racism’ means ‘preferring one’s own countrymen to foreigners’.
‘Echoes of History’: CNN Implies Hungary’s Orban Will Launch a Second Holocaust
Orban at CPAC brings the ‘far-right international’ into focus (Washington Post) There is no Right but the Far-Right.
Orange Man Bad … But Florida Man Worse
The New Right Finds a Home at the Intersection of Populism and Elitism (The Dispatch) The Goldberg Group joins the Kristol Krew in RINOland, continuing the Buckley tradition of peeing on their ideological neighbors rather than fighting the Left.
Trump Leaves RNC Ensnared In Criminal Probes Of His Coup Attempt (Huffington Post) Or, more accurately, the Left’s attempt to make everybody pretend that there was a coup attempt.
Malicious Vox Editor Fantasizes About Justice Alito’s Death
‘Bull in a china shop’: Ukrainian-born GOP lawmaker rankles colleagues with her aggressive criticism of Kyiv (CNN)
NewsGuard Fails Fox News, Still Gives Phony BuzzFeed News a Perfect Credibility Rating
Trump’s Pre-Jan. 6 Actions Demolish Democrats’ ‘Coup’ Fantasies
‘Never Has America Faced A Greater Threat Than Donald Trump,’ Says Guy Who Started Two Wars And Shot A Dude In The Face (Babylon Bee)
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
5th August 2022
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While peddling the ludicrously named Inflation Reduction Act on CNN this past week, Sen. Joe Manchin claimed that Democrats were merely trying to “close the loopholes and collect the taxes that are owed to the Treasury and the United States people.”
In Washington, a “loophole” is a euphemism for a perfectly legal policy that Democrats have decided they want to regulate or tax. The word “loophole” suggests that some ambiguous wording or omissions in the text of a bill have allowed people to exploit the law. Few of the Democrats’ “loopholes” meet this definition. Indeed, in most cases, the “loopholes” they’re talking about were deliberately written to exist in their present form.
Many of them by Democrats to favor campaign donors and other ‘friends’.
Posted in Democrats: Party of Plundering and Blundering | Comments Off on It’s Not a Loophole Just Because Dems Don’t Like It
5th August 2022
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There’s been a lot written about the trust freefall. People haven’t trusted politicians for years (U.S. Congress: 18% approval), but now even formerly highly trusted institutions like the church (now at 31% confidence) and the U.S. military (trust down 25% since 2018) are in a trust freefall.
You may expect national leaders to be racking their brains on how to rebuild this trust, yet there is no sign of that. Instead, the attitude seems to be, “What the hell is wrong with the American people?” Leaders bemoan the rise of populism yet refuse to give even the briefest thought to its root causes.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on America’s Leaders Need to Step Up Before It’s Too Late