22nd December 2022
Read it.
There is an interesting controversy this week after ABC’s Martha Raddatz took Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott to task for public comments about the open Southern border as fueling the crisis. Raddatz is being criticized for her claim that President Joe Biden has never encouraged migrants to come over the border — a statement that many objected to as demonstrably false. However, I am more interested in a different aspect of her remarks: the objection to Abbott’s language. It is the type of objection that one finds from a system of state media where the narrative is supposed to be replicated and uniform.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on ABC’s Martha Raddatz Under Fire Over Abbott Interview
22nd December 2022
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd December 2022
Read it.
Momentum toward passing a $1.7 trillion government funding bill with more aid for Ukraine slowed considerably Wednesday as lawmakers struggled to reach an agreement on amendments needed to get to a final vote and avoid a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate was making progress, but lawmakers exited the chamber late in the evening looking glum and talking of a standoff.
“This bill is hanging by a thread,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.
UPDATE: Title 42 immigration fight stalls mammoth $1.7 trillion spending bill in the Senate
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Senate Hits Snag in Bid to Pass $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill
21st December 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
21st December 2022
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
21st December 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st December 2022
Read it.
You can learn a lot about a man by seeing how he spends his money. You can learn about a congressman by seeing how he spends everyone else’s money.
Congress is—yet again—preparing to spend nearly $2 trillion of taxpayers’ dollars in a massive omnibus spending bill.
Some in Congress are reluctant to keep overspending taxpayer dollars, but the complicity of some GOP senators in the latest budget negotiations shows—yet again—that some legislators on both sides are willing to blow out spending while paying lip service to fiscal restraint.
Appropriators have thrown in thousands upon thousands of pet projects across the country to help entice members of Congress to vote for the massive budget.
Here is a small sampling of the pork that soon may be coming to 10 states if Congress passes this spending bill.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on The Weird, the Woke, the Wasteful: 10 Flavors of Pork for 10 States Bringing Home the Bacon
21st December 2022
Read it.
Everyone knows that the quality of education in our public schools is declining. We continue to fall behind the rest of the world, and this is particularly true in science and in math. Personally, I am a product of the public schools. I attended public schools all the way through high school, and I earned three degrees at public universities. And I have to admit that the quality of the education that I received was terrible. If I had not spent a great deal of time and effort educating myself, I would not be able to do what I do today. Sadly, things have gotten even worse in recent decades. Today, a large proportion of our young people are not even equipped to function on a very basic level in our society once they graduate from high school, and that has huge implications for the future of our country.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on How Extreme Has the Dumbing Down of America Become? You Might Want to Brace Yourself for This One
21st December 2022
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
21st December 2022
Read it.
On January 1, 2023, copyrighted works from 1927 will enter the US public domain.?1? They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. These include Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse and the final Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, the German science-fiction film Metropolis and Alfred Hitchcock’s first thriller, compositions by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, and a novelty song about ice cream. Please note that this site is only about US law; the copyright terms in other countries are different.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works From 1927 Are Open to All!
21st December 2022
Read it.
The Green movement in Germany advocates a contradictory socio-political agenda. On the one hand, they affirm an absolute individualism that celebrates self actualization for innumerable, biologically non-existent gender variants, and on the other hand, they push for a globalist policy of mandated tolerance. However, despite this contradiction, it is safe to say that it logically follows that the movement opposes all intermediary institutions, from the family to the nation-state, religion to Western culture.
This is why environmentalists, who were first and foremost anti-capitalists, fully came into their own in the fight against global climate change. They find the West’s traditional understanding of the balance between the individual and the community ‘disgusting’ because it stands in the way of both a radical unleashing of the individual and the enactment of globalist fantasies.
According to the Green movement, any policy oriented towards the survival of humanity, consumer interests, and even of the socially weak, is morally illegitimate if it harms the ecosphere. Instead, this ideology cultivates a megalomaniacal sense of responsibility towards humanity in the abstract; ironically this sentiment relieves globalists of any responsibility for local and concrete concerns.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on German Self-Assertion and a New Consensus
21st December 2022
Read it.
Supposedly, European high-speed trains are so successful that the airlines stop operating when new high-speed rail corridors open. The reality is much more dismal: in order to guarantee customers for its trains, France is banning airline flights in corridors served by high-speed rail. This is a tacit admission that government-owned trains can’t compete without forcibly shutting down competitors.
Under the new rule, commercial air flights are banned in corridors where trains can make the same journey in under 150 minutes. So far, this is limited to Paris-Bordeaux, Paris-Lyon, and Paris-Nantes. The French government wanted to extend it to five more city pairs, but the European Commission ruled that France could only ban air travel in corridors that had not just fast but frequent rail service. Members of France’s Green Party also want to extend it to corridors where trains make the journey in under 240 minutes.
Paris-Lyon is supposed to be the most successful high-speed rail corridor in Europe, one that supposedly makes a profit. The Antiplanner has questioned such claims because the state-owned rail company hasn’t published actual numbers, but France’s effort to legislate away the competition suggests that the trains aren’t doing as well as people claim.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on France Bans Rail Competitors
21st December 2022
Read it.
A commercial airship firm, LTA Research, is building two new airships. Pathfinder one was completed in October 2022 and successfully flight tested. This airship is 120 meters long, can lift 28 tons, including up to 14 personnel and cargo. Cruising speed is 110 kilometers an hour and unrefueled range is over 4,500 kilometers. The larger 180-meter-long Pathfinder 3 is under construction and will be ready in 2023. Because of the low speed and small cargo carrying capacity, the intended mission; delivering aid to natural disaster victims in remote locations, is limited.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Air Transportation: Commercial Airships
21st December 2022
Read it.
We’ve all seen the videos of activists from Extinction Rebellion and similar groups who glue themselves to roads, trains, walls, and works of art to protest governmental and corporate climate policies. Motorists in Germany had apparently had enough of all that nonsense, and forcibly removed the glued-on protesters.
It’s important to note that these pro-active citizens seemed to be “New Germans”. Perhaps “Germans who have been here longer” were unwilling to take the risks associated with unauthorized spontaneous actions.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Clearing the Roadway
21st December 2022
Read it.
Sometimes I wonder whether he’s even Christian.
The title of this post is a reference to an old rhetorical question — which was also usually accompanied by an allusion to the defecatory habits of ursines in an arboreal environment — intended to convey the idea that one’s interlocutor was stating something obvious. Concerning the Pope, however, the question is no longer a rhetorical one. He’s not really Catholic, but what is he?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Is the Pope Catholic?
21st December 2022
Read it.
Congressional leaders have dropped 6,825 pages of text for their “omnibus” spending bill, plus explanatory materials that include a list of at least 4,000 earmarks, on the doorstep of every American family.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on 18 Absurdities of the McConnell-Schumer Omnibus Spending Bill
21st December 2022
Read it.
You can read the report below as we are currently doing, however upon first read – and the fact that it was quietly released on a Tuesday night instead of via a Washington Post bombshell detailing specific ‘evil things’ Trump’s done, we are going to – for now, assume this is a giant nothingburger.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Dems Dump Trump Tax Data In Tuesday Night Release
20th December 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
20th December 2022
Judge strikes down California gun law modeled on Texas abortion measure (Politico)
Delaware Supreme Court Strikes Down Voting By Mail, And Same-Day Registration
U.S. Congress aims to pack additional measures into government funding bill (Reuters) Of course they do.
Rhode Island Ban On High-Capacity Firearm Magazines Is Constitutional: Judge
Legal Group Sues to Stop Voter Information From Flowing to Left-Wing Groups
Electoral Count Act, crafted as response to Jan. 6, will be in omnibus bill (Washington Post) They don’t dare try to pass it separately.
40% of students at liberal arts colleges now identify as LGBTQ, study finds
DC is officially clearing out its homeless tent cities
EU adopts global minimum 15% tax on big business (BBC) Governments love to tax businesses because they hide behind the illusion that they’re ‘soaking the corporate greedheads’. In fact, businesses don’t pay taxes; they are merely unpaid tax collectors for the government, which taxes are actually paid by their customers.
Transhumanist Prophecies of Doom: Infertility, Plastic, and Aliens
Anthropology in Ruins
Rep. Stefanik: House GOP Will Hold Dems Accountable for ‘Abuse of Power’ Oh, would that that were true.
Big Tech Divided and Conquered to Block Key Bipartisan Bills (Bloomberg) Money talks.
A Pennsylvania county delayed certifying the midterms. That has scary implications for 2024. (Vox) Scary for the vote-stealers, certainly.
Study: Marine Corps Should Drop Gender-Specific Salutations The science-deniers strike again.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
20th December 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
20th December 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
20th December 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
20th December 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
20th December 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
20th December 2022
Read it.
Perhaps you’ve seen the story on the Wall Street Journal editorial page today (or in some other outlet where it is booming this morning) about Stanford University’s “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” which reads like a parody of our idiotic woke university culture today. But no—Stanford employed a task force that worked for months to advocate that no one on campus use the word “American” because “This term often refers to people from the United States only, thereby insinuating that the US is the most important country in the Americas. . .”
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Welcome to Stanford Kindergarten
20th December 2022
Read it.
There are probably hundreds of thousands of men and women who, because of political differences, maintain minimal or no contact with their parents and, even more cruelly, do not allow their parents to have any contact with their children—their parents’ grandchildren.
Probably an unprecedented number of Americans with grown children will be alone this Christmas because their children will neither visit them nor invite them for the holiday dinner.
In some rare instances of horrific parental behavior, this may be excusable, but when the reason is politics, it is inexcusable.
This is a huge bugaboo for Dennic Prager.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Why Many Conservatives Won’t Be With Their Children or Grandchildren This Christmas
20th December 2022
Read it.
Congressional leadership released a massive $1.85 trillion “omnibus” spending bill early Tuesday. This 4,155-page bill is filled with woke policies to advance the Left’s extreme agenda to remake America using your tax dollars.
It is unprecedented for a lame-duck Congress to jam through an omnibus spending bill after the American people voted out the majority party in the House of Representatives.
However, Senate Republican leadership has worked with outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for one last liberal spending blowout before the conservative majority takes control of the House on Jan. 3.
The omnibus spending bill is loaded with thousands of earmarks, which are line-item funding for specific pet projects directed by members of Congress.
Many of these earmarks would advance the Left’s extreme agenda and fund its institutions using the taxpayer’s money. House Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., bragged that the omnibus “fulfills 98% of Democratic member requests in the House, with $5.4 billion for 3,213 Democratic projects.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on 12 Woke Earmarks in Omnibus Spending Bill
20th December 2022
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
20th December 2022
Read it.
The study authors created customizable wood in their lab from the cells of a flowering plant known as Zinnia elegans, popularly referred to as common zinnia. They claimed their novel approach allowed them to bio-print wooden pieces of any shape and size. This means that if you need a wooden table, you can directly produce a wooden table from the cells.
So no deforestation and no wastage, like what happens in the case of traditional furniture. This was achieved by treating common zinnia cells first with a liquid medium and then with a gel solution. The latter comprised hormones and nutrients.
We have the technology,–allegedly. Let’s see whether it will scale.
Posted in News You Can Use. | 2 Comments »
20th December 2022
Read it.
These are the kinds of immigrants that America needs.
That drive steered him toward studying business marketing at the University of Rochester and, in 2019, he brought a class project to life as a real business. He took a leave of absence from college, with one year left to graduate, to focus on it full-time.
Today, the 26-year-old runs Don Carvajal Cafe, a coffee roasting company out of the South Bronx that sources its beans from the Dominican Republic.
From January to early December 2022, his business brought in roughly $190,000 in sales. From that, Carvajal lives off a $25,000 salary. ”’I just make it work, the same way my mom made it work,” he says.
Some people are just born American; it simply takes them a while to get here.
Posted in Is this a great country, or what? | Comments Off on 26-Year-Old Coffee CEO Lives on $25,000 a Year Outside of NYC: ‘I learned that you don’t need much to survive’
20th December 2022
Read it.
The federal government is running annual $1 trillion to $2 trillion budget deficits, which is more than the entire gross domestic product of most nations. But if you believed that Republicans would take a chainsaw to the budget (figuratively) and slash the waste from the federal budget, then to paraphrase the “Oliver Twist” character of Fagin, the miser, “I think you had better think it out again.”
So far, since the midterm elections, the Republicans in Congress seem to be doing just the opposite. The first decision by House Republicans when they learned they had won a slim majority of 222 to 213 was to bring back earmarks. These are bridges to nowhere, peanut subsidies and sports arenas for local professional teams paid for by federal taxpayers.
Some Republican lawmakers offer the excuse that it’s called bringing home the bacon to local constituents. But both parties apparently love to play Santa.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Even Republicans Are All In on Washington’s End-of-Year Spending Spree
20th December 2022
Steve Sailer is guilty of Noticing.
One of the funnier patterns that you can’t unsee is how the New York Times works hard to make many of its article more boring than they have to be to avoid upsetting the delicate amour propre of subscribers.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Don’t Mention Google Was Infiltrated by a Gay Art Cult Until Way Down in the Article
20th December 2022
Read it.
The absurdity of the concept of reparations for slavery, an institution that ended several generations ago, is beyond mind-boggling. But there’s a blatantly cynical reason for the sudden lurch in that direction: formerly reliable Black voters are now slipping away from the Democrats. This also explains Biden’s recently expressed profuse generosity towards the nations of sub-Saharan Africa.
What is also painfully obvious is the lame, demagogic pandering that is the Democrats’ knee-jerk response, especially to a defecting constituency: just throw money at them and that’ll keep ‘em on the reservation. Never mind the exposure to ridicule attached to redistributing money from people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves, since the despicable practice was abolished over 150 years ago.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Why Reparations Now?
19th December 2022
Ann Coulter does a beat-down.
For at least a half-century now, every special pleader in America has made the following argument: Yeah, but what if we were black?
This is supposed to be rhetorical kryptonite, capable of anathematizing “discrimination” against any group: atheists, women, gays, immigrants, illegal immigrants, the disabled, Muslims — basically anyone except a fully abled, cis-gendered, white male born in this country.
Oh my gosh! You’re right — we DO have to let girls try out for the Green Bay Packers!
OK, fine, we’ll hire more blind lifeguards.
Of course, Shadi Abdullah is welcome to be president of our campus Hillel group.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Gays, You’re Not Black
19th December 2022
jRead it.
You have to see it to believe it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Philosophy Bro
19th December 2022
Read it.
Take whatever action you deem appropriate.
Posted in Dystopia Watch, News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Honey Consumption Improves Blood Sugar and Cholesterol Levels, Study Suggests
19th December 2022
Read it.
The Twitter Files prove that corporations, intelligence agencies and the Democrats conspired to rig an election. The Biden team instructed that a particular story be squashed, and it was. They gave lists of individuals and organisations to suppress, and these lists were acted on.
The social media company was effectively an outsourced arm of government, suppressing 1st amendment free speech rights.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on When Scandals Were Scandals
19th December 2022
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
19th December 2022
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in BIPOC Privilege
19th December 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
19th December 2022
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Trump Derangement Syndrome
19th December 2022
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
19th December 2022
Welfare Programs Based on Race and Gender Identity Demonstrate Where Institutional Wokeness Is Going
Journalists Warn Of Frightening Trend Where Rules Apply To Them (Babylon Bee)
Washington Post Reporter Asks Musk for Comment, Gets Suspended From Twitter (Daily Beast) The Doxxing Queen finally experiences karma up close and personal.
It pays not to work in Biden’s America thanks to welfare benefits (N.Y. Post)
15 Million Americans Are About to Lose Their Health Care. Congress Must Act (Newsweek)
Vatican kicks pro-life activist priest out of clergy, alleges ‘blasphemous communications’
Why solar power could be the next victim of San Francisco’s bloated bureaucracy (S.F. Chronicle)
Safety concerns shake Downtown Pittsburgh as businesses fear crime-related issues are threatening the city’s core (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
What Happened When the Bay Area Rejected Growth (Bloomberg) Nothing good.
Social media should not be thought-policing for Joe Biden
AOC Blasts Musk for Suspending Some Journalists on Twitter My, what a surprise.
CNN Declares Dictators Will Cite Musk To Clamp Down On Press Freedom
ABC, NBC FREAK OUT Over Twitter Suspending Slew of Lefty Journalists
Candidates backed by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried pledge to donate campaign cash (NBC) Not, you’ll note, return it to the bankrupt company so it can be given back to the people he cheated–oh, no, heaven forfend; there’s no power or influence gained by doing that.
Richmond Children’s Museum Celebrates ‘Pride Night With Legendary Santa’ & Drag Snow Queen
Top Republicans try to tank new ESG rule (Axios)
Democratic lawmakers are looking for the exits in case Twitter implodes
Kristi Noem’s Health Department Fires Transgender Group Ahead of ‘Gender Summit’
US Lawmakers Negotiating Over 7,500 ‘Pork-Barrel Spending’ Earmarks Totaling $16 Billion For Spending Bill
Court Rules Trans Athletes Can Compete on Conn. Sports Teams
THE TWITTER FILES: Twitter… The FBI Subsidiary
Father of July 4 Parade Shooting Suspect Charged With Felony
Judge to halt provision making California gun suits costlier
California Is Impossible For The Middle Class
US Court Rejects Maintaining COVID-19 Asylum Restrictions
NY Court Orders Yeshiva University to Recognize LGBTQ Club Bare-faced violation of the First Amendment.
Cha-Ching! Jeff Bezos’s Ex-Wife Is Using Her Divorce Settlement To Enrich Radical Left-Wing Groups
Indiana School Board, Superintendent Refuse to Explain Secret Transgender Policy to Parents
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
19th December 2022
Read it.
Only days after a 65-year-old French pensioner was beaten to death in his apartment in a Paris suburb, allegedly by an illegal migrant from Algerian, another elderly man, this time aged 88, has died from injuries he sustained while being brutally attacked by two brothers—Mohamed K. and Hichem K.—in the basement of an apartment building in Bezons, a Paris suburb.
The brutal attack, which resulted in the 88-year-old victim suffering multiple severe traumas to his head, along with a broken jaw and injuries to his leg, took place on the night of Monday, December 5th, allegedly carried out by the two brothers, both of whom had criminal records involving drug trafficking and violence, the Paris-based news magazine Valeurs Actuelles reports.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
A Muslim waits there
To try to kill you.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on France: 88-Year-Old Man Beaten to Death in Apartment Building
19th December 2022
Read it.
Twitter’s top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections.
More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in October.
The Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter. He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire’s efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Twitter’s Top Ranks Riddled With ex-FBI Employees