Here, we encounter a great paradox, first identified in 1971 by Manfred Eigen7: DNA repair is essential to maintain DNA but the genes that code for DNA repair could not have evolved unless the repair mechanisms were already present to protect the DNA.
And at the very end of the article, the most common response from Darwinian naturalists is rebutted:
Those who promote unguided abiogenesis simply brush off all of these required mechanisms, claiming that life started as simplified “proto-cells” that didn’t need repair. But there is no evidence that any form of life could persist or replicate without these repair mechanisms. And the presence of the repair mechanisms invokes several examples of circular causality — quite a conundrum for unintelligent, natural processes alone. Belief that simpler “proto-cells” didn’t require repair mechanisms requires blind faith, set against the prevailing scientific evidence. …
Wintery Knight and Desert Rose interview Dr. Fazale “Fuz” Rana about the appearance of first life on Earth. What are the minimum functions of a simple living system? When did life appear on the Earth? What are the best naturalistic hypotheses for the origin of life? Are any of these scenarios plausible? What is the best explanation for the information and algorithms in the cell? Is design a better explanation? (Just under an hour)
How does this cause a problem?
In this video David Gelernter, David Berlinksi, and Stephen Meyer break down the mathematical problems with Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
Stephen C. Meyer appearing in Darwin’s Dilemma talks about Richard Dawkins’s “climbing Mt. Improbable.”
Biologist Ann Gauger discusses the challenge posed to Darwinian natural selection by the process of metamorphosis found in butterflies and other creatures. Gauger is featured in the science documentary “Metamorphosis,” which deals with butterflies, evolution, and intelligent design.
Why This Post?It is a post dealing with Natural Selection, something I haven’t dealt with specifically on my site, here. I did post on the topic at my Blogspot site, but have — through conversation — felt the need to import it to my .com. It is in it’s original sense, a response to conversations that took place in a forum, so you will see names out of the blue that at one time were in context. (I will be responding to challenges that I am not well read on the topic, and when I wrote this response originally, I have more than doubled my library… so be aware that this is a conversation from 2000 posted on my old site in 2007.) I will also update it a bit based on newer conversation and dissent. A good portion of the older post comes from the excellent book, Darwin’s Enigma (esp this chapter).
…Palaeoecologists like me are now bringing a new perspective to the problem. If macroevolution really is an extrapolation of natural selection and adaptation, we would expect to see environmental change driving evolutionary change. Major climatic events such as ice ages ought to leave their imprint on life as species adapt to the new conditions. Is that what actually happens?
[….]
“The link between environmental change and evolutionary change is weak – not what Darwinists might have predicted”
[….]
This view of life leads to certain consequences. Macroevolution is not the simple accumulation of microevolutionary changes but has its own processes and patterns. There can be no “laws” of evolution….
Another evolutionist that shows the vacuous nature of natural selection via many generations of fruit flies and the mutagenic selections imposed on it’s “fitness,” — the famous Theodosius Dobzhansky Drosophila (the fruit fly) experiments. This creation of mutations that in effect “increased stress” of “natural” selection on this species disproved Darwin’s baby showed that the predictions made were disproved by the experiments.
It is similar to the experiment subjecting a cactus to the same conditions that had resulted in it mutating. To their amazement, no matter how many times they performed the experiment, the cactus only changed into that one mutated form. The scientists in this experiment did not get a myriad of dysfunctional mutations before getting a functioning cactus. They didn’t even get several different functioning cacti. The only result was this one mutation, and there seemed to be nothing random about it. (PP. 13-15)
One of the cornerstone theories within evolutionary (neo-Darwinian) thinking has been “natural selection.” Natural selection, long thought to be the initiating force behind the many changes that would have needed to occur if evolutionary theory is correct, is now being abandoned or at least moved a few notches down in importance. There is a lot of information below, so take you time, watch the video posted and the other (Dean Kenyon) I linked to further down in the post. If you are a biology student, you may learn quite a bit more than the teacher would have liked you to, for, you see… the modern day biology teacher isn’t going to teach you that there are disagreements within the scientific community on these issues, he or she is merely there in that classroom to protect a dogma.
Take note that this dated response was part of a larger conversation, so you will see names (handles) of people that I respond to.
The Rhetoric of Charles Darwin~ via John Angus Campbell:
Rapier, the site you referenced is well received. The evidence from the pre-Cambrian shows that oxygen was indeed present, in large number. This fact did away with the Miller – Urey experiment and the others that followed, as they posited an oxygen free environment. However, the site you mentioned rests on two glaring problems. I will elucidate somewhat. The first being:
“No matter whether the atoms of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and others were there at Earth’s formation, or arrived later in alien bodies from space, they constituted the building blocks of life. These elements by intrinsic chemical nature formed organic compounds that were washed by rain into the seas…. The very nature of carbon chemical bonding to itself and other atoms predetermines the formation of organic compounds, and the subsequent catalyzing of more complex organic compounds.”
Some really smart people, from Charles Darwin to scientists today, believe in abiogenesis. A “primordial soup” of chemicals led to life as we know it. But is this really the case?
This concept of “carbon chemical bonding to itself and other atoms predetermines the formation of organic compounds” is commonly referred to as Biochemical Predestination. The term was coined by Dean H. Kenyon (and his co-author G. Steinman) who wrote a university level textbook on this subject. Kenyon is the [now emeritus] professor of biology at the University of San Francisco and was a staunch evolutionist when he wrote the book Biochemical Predestination (McGraw-Hill, 1969), which was the best-selling advanced level book on chemical evolution in the decade of the 1970’s.
Keep in mind that these two guys started this line of thought. One of Dean Kenyon’s students gave him a copy of a book written by Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith (who holds three earned Ph.D.’s) entitled The Creation of Life: A Cybernetic Approach to Evolution. In this book by Dr. Wilder, Dean Kenyon’s book is critiqued. Instead of Kenyon saying – “Well, Dr. Wilder is just a creationist, who would listen to him?” – Dr. Kenyon read the book and tried to answer the arguments in it against his own book. When he couldn’t, he began to investigate where the evidence led to… outside of his previous presuppositions, which were based on naturalism (evolutionary thinking).
Now, Dr. Kenyon refutes with the latest evidence offered, this can be found in an excellent video entitled Unlocking the Mystery of Life. When you said, “Firstly, you need to do some researching on the history of our planet…”, I have. I will comment again that I have over 2,000 books in my home library [now over 5,000], and outside of politics, the creation/evolution controversy takes up most of the space. I have well over 100 books by evolutionary biologists, archaeologists, physicists, geologists, etc. Also, I have well over 200 books by creation biologists, archaeologists, physicists, geologists, etc. I wonder if you have gone to the sources themselves like I have… in other words, read some good books on the matter at hand. Just a challenge for you to be open-minded, that’s all. Kenyon, for instance, says:
“No experimental system yet devised has provided the slightest clue as to how biologically meaningful sequences of subunits might have originated in prebiotic polynucleotides or polypeptides.”
He put in his two cents on the problem of chirality as well, “Many researchers have attempted to find plausible natural conditions under which [left-handed] L-amino acids would preferentially accumulate over their [right-handed] D-counterparts, but all such attempts have failed. Until this crucial problem is solved, no one can say that we have found a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. Instead, these isomer preferences point to biochemical creation.”
The reason I put those quotes there and will follow them with some papers by Dr. Kenyon is that since you referenced me to a site that mentions biochemical predestination, I figured you would want to read his latest work, as science is “self-critiquing,” he has critiqued the theory he helped found.
“The immutable law of natural selection dictates that life will retain those features that foster survival.”
This apparent simple sentence makes reference to two theories that really are not science or Law being that they incorporate circular reasoning, that is, natural selection and the survival of the fittest.
From a rabid anti-creationist (posted a few years back at Space Battles):
“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint — and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it — the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today…. Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.”
Michael Ruse, professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada [recently moved to Florida], “How Evolution Became a Religion: Creationists Correct?” National Post, pp. B1, B3, B7 May 13, 2000.
What Can It Explain?
To summarize what I have already written, the modern position of the synthetic theory is: the struggle for existence plays no part in evolution. The direction of evolution is determined solely by the characteristics of those animals and plants that are successful breeders. We are unable to say anything about why a particular characteristic might favor, or prejudice, the survival of any particular animal or plant.
Natural Selection
Perhaps an even more damaging criticism of the concept of natural selection is that – limited though its content may be – it is so nebulous that it can be made to fit a whole range of mutually contradictory outcomes of the evolutionary process. Natural selection is entirely compatible with the notion that all organisms in stable environments have reached a fitness peak on which they will remain forever. At the same time natural selection is entirely compatible with the idea that all organisms should regress to the safest common denominator, a single-celled organism, and thus become optimally adapted to every habitat.
In precisely the same way, because of its infinitely elastic (explained more later) definition, natural selection can be made to explain opposed and even mutually contradictory individual adaptations. For example, Darwinists claim that camouflage coloring and mimicry (as in leaf insects) is adaptive and will be selected for, yet they also claim that warning coloration (the wasp’s stripes) is adaptive and will be selected for. Yet if both propositions are true, any kind of coloration will have some adaptive value, whether it is partly camouflaged or partly warning, and will be selected for. As a theory, then, natural selection makes no unique predictions but instead is used retrospectively to explain every outcome:And a theory that explains everything in this way, explains nothing. Natural selection is not a mechanism: it is a rationalization after the fact.
Natural selection is the process by which the most successful populate the world, and the less successful breeders die out – regardless of their respective characteristics.
“The giraffe has a long neck because…?”
Here we get stuck. The only help we get from synthetic evolution is that the giraffe has survived because it has survived. (This can be applied to the person who tried to explain to me how the cleaner fish “evolved” to pick the teeth of its predator, as well as the below posts.)
Is It Testable? Can It Predict?
Ernst Mayr made some startling admissions about Darwin’s model of mutation and natural selection. He said, “Popper is right; this model is so good that it can explain everything, as popper has rightly complained.” This relates to the requirement in science that a theory or model must make exclusionary predictions. If the concept is so generalized that it can explain any conceivable type of evidence, then it is of no value to science. For example, if a theory can explain both dark and light coloring in moths, both the presence and absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, complex life forms either above or below in rock strata, etc., then it has no value in making predictions. Now, Dr. Mayr (who was professor of zoology atHarvard University) believes that “ultimately, all variation is, of course, due to mutation….”
Professor Gould (Harvard’s esteemed paleontologist) has this to say when asked,“What role do mutations play in speciation?” Dr, Gould responded:
“A mutation doesn’t produce major new raw material. You don’t make a new species by mutating the species…. That’s a common idea people have; that evolution is due to random mutations. A mutation is NOT the cause of evolutionary change. Something else than natural selection brings about species at new levels, trends and directions.”
Keep in mind that Mayr and Gould are both evolutionists. In a discussion of how evolutionary theory can explain the fact that eels, which normally reproduce only in salt water, have certain landlocked species that reproduce in fresh water, Dr Weisskopt said,
“I think it was Medawar who said that one thing about the theory of evolution [and he quoted Popper] that it is not falsifiable, that whatever happens you can explain it. I think you have an example here.”
On the same subject, Dr. Fraser said,
“It would seem to me that there have been endless statements made and the only thing I have clearly agreed with through the whole day [referring to the Wistar Symposium] has been the statement made by Karl Popper, namely, that the real inadequacy of evolution, esthetically and scientifically, is that you can explain anything you want by changing your variable around.”
“This cannot be done in evolution, taking it in its broad sense, and this is really all I meant when I called it tautologous in the first place. It can, indeed, explain anything. You may be ingenious or not in proposing a mechanism which looks plausible to human beings… but it is still unfalsifiable theory.”
Dr. Schutzenberger of the University of Paris reported on why all attempts to program a model of evolution on a computer had completely failed. He said that neo-Darwinism asserts that without anything further, selection brings about a statistically adapted drift when random changes are performed in a population. He insisted,
“We believe that is not conceivable. In fact if we try to stimulate such a situation by making changes randomly at the typographic level (by letters or blocks, the size of the unit does not matter) on computer programs we find that we have no chance (i.e., less than one in ten to the thousandth power) even to see what the modified program would compute: it just jams. Thus… we believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology.”
Near the end of the Symposium, Murray Eden explained:
“In consequence, the theory has been modified to the point that virtually every formulation of the principles of evolution is a tautology…. It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws – physical, physicochemical, and biological…. In summary, it is our contention that the principle task of the evolutionist is to discover and examine mechanisms which constrain the variation of phenotypes to a very small class and to relegate the notion of randomness to a minor non-crucial role.”
Observable, Repeatable, and Refutable?
To the surprise of many casual observers, and to the embarrassment of many journalistic influences, evolution has never been demonstrated to be a viable explanation for life origins (or cosmic origins for that matter). By definition the scientific method requires that the objects or events under study must beOBSERVABLE, REPEATABLE, and REFUTABLE. Evolution certainly cannot be observed or repeated in the field or the laboratory. With this in mind, evolutionist Karl Popper, the honored referee of the modern scientific method, pointed out:
“It follows that any controversy over the question whether events which are in principle unrepeatable and unique ever do occur cannot be decided by science; it would be a metaphysical controversy.”
In his introduction to a 1971 publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, L. Harrison Matthews, British biologist and evolutionist, wrote:
“The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory – is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation – both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.”
Intense controversy has erupted within the evolutionary camp. Newsweek featured an article by Sharon Begley titled “Science Contra Darwin.” She revealed:
“The great body of work derived from Charles Darwin’s revolutionary 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, is under increasing attack – and not just from creationists…. So heated is the debate that one Darwinian says there are times when he thinks about going into a field with more intellectual honesty: the used car business.”
Agnostic (non-creationist) Michael Denton (in his book Evolution: A Theory In Crisis) wrote that the evolutionary paradigm was, “… an idea which is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious twentieth century theory….” Steven M. Stanley (evolutionist), Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 72:640-660, (1975), p.648.
“If most evolutionary changes occur during speciation events and if speciation events are largely random, natural selection, long viewed as a process guiding evolutionary change, cannot play a significant role in determining the overall course of evolution.”
Richard C. Lewontin (evolutionist); “Adaptation.” Scientific American (and theScientific American Book, Evolution), Sept. 1978.
“Adaptation leads to natural selection, natural selection does not necessarily lead to greater adaptation … Natural Selection operates essentially to enable the organisms to maintain their state of adaptation rather than improve it … Natural selection over the long run does not seem to improve a species’ chances of survival, but simply enables it to ‘track,’ or keep up with, the constantly changing environment”
Pierre-Paul Grassé (evolutionist), Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York (1977), pp. 97, 98.
“Mutations, in time, occur incoherently. They are not complementary to one another, nor are they cumulative in successive generations toward a given direction. They modify what pre-exists, but they do so in disorder.”
Arthur Koestler (evolutionist), Janus: A Summing Up, Random House, New York, 1978, pp. 184-185.
“In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutation plus natural selection — quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology.”
ONE ASKS: “who survives?”
THE ANSWER: “the fittest.”
SO ONE ASKS: “who is the fittest?”
THE ANSWER: “those who survive.”
Philosophy professor Gregory Alan Pesely notes:
“One of the most frequent objections against the theory of natural selection is that it is a sophisticated tautology… What is most unsettling is that some evolutionary biologists have no qualms about proposing tautologies as explanations. One would immediately reject any lexicographer who tried to define a word by the same word, or a thinker who merely restated his proposition, or any other instance of gross redundancy; yet no one seems scandalized that men of science should be satisfied with a major principle which is no more than a tautology.”
Fitness does not always mean survival. The smartest, most resourceful persons are not necessarily those who leave the most offspring. So in recent years, evolutionists reduced the definition of “fitness” to simply “those who leave the most offspring.”But even this entails a rather circular argument. As geneticist Conrad Waddington of Edinburgh University noted:
“There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: ‘Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others;’ and you ask, ‘which leaves more offspring than others;’ and it is ‘those who leave more offspring;’ and there is nothing more to it than that…”
I think Tapper knows he knew Biden was a wreck and getting worse for years… and he is trying to reclaim his “bias by omission” guilt, so he feels better about himself… and better about being a real reporter.
CNN’s Tapper plays another Biden gaffe: “Your ears did not deceive you,” Biden said he’ll beat Trump in 2020 pic.twitter.com/3KuZ9BbSaT
But Tapper kept the voice of the masses silent thru “censorship by omission.” Bias isn’t just WHAT YOU REPORT, but what anchors and orgs CHOOSE NOT TO AIR.
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a DM clip CNN’s Jake Tapper revealing how much he has turned on Joe Biden by reading word for word some of his quotes from recent interviews designed to regain Democrat’s confidence in him.
POWERLINEhas an excellent article regarding the Left’s predictable turn to their canards… or “cards”. The “Race-Card” or the “Fascist-Card” — here is that article, followed by some historical examples:
With the presidential election slipping away from the Democrats, the apparat is cranking up the old playbook. Behold the cover of The New Republic, once a sober and serious journal of liberal opinion:
Well now, that’s not what the Tomaskys of the 1970s and 1980s said. In the days right after Reagan’s first landslide in 1980, the head of the Joint Center for Political Studies, which the Washington Post described as a “respected liberal think tank,” wrote: “When you consider that in the climate we’re in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening.” This was also the line from Raul Castro (funny how the American left and actual Communists always say the same thing): “We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany.” Claremont College professor John Roth wrote: “I could not help remembering how economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism—all intensified by Germany’s defeat in World War I—to send the world reeling into catastrophe… It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our post-election state with fear and trembling.” Esquire writer Harry Stein says that the voters who supported Reagan were like the “good Germans” in “Hitler’s Germany.” Alan Wolfe of Boston College wrote in the New Left Review: “The worst nightmares of the American left appear to have come true.” And he doubled down in The Nation: “[T]he United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era.”
As I’ve observed here before, this is the oldest cliche of the left, going all the way back to FDR and Truman. Let’s take in the front page of the New York Times, October 25, 1948:
PRESIDENT LIKENS DEWEY TO HITLER AS FASCISTS’ TOOL
Says When Bigots, Profiteers Get Control of Country They Select ‘Front Man’ to Rule DICTATORSHIP STRESSED Truman Tells Chicago Audience a Republican Victory Will Threaten U.S. Liberty
CHICAGO, Oct. 25 — A Republican victory on election day will bring a Fascistic threat to American freedom that is even more dangerous than the perils from communism and extreme right “crackpots,” President Truman asserted here tonight. . . “Before Hitler came to power, control over the German economy passed into the hands of a small group of rich manufacturers, bankers and landowners,” he said.
When Barry Goldwater accepted the 1964 Republican nomination, California’s Democratic Gov. Pat Brown said, “The stench of fascism is in the air.”
Former Rep. William Clay Sr., D-Mo., said President Ronald Reagan was “trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from ‘Mein Kampf.'”
Coretta Scott King, in 1980, said, “I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party.”
After Republicans took control of the House in the mid-’90s, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., compared the newly conservative-majority House to “the Duma and the Reichstag,” referring to the legislature set up by Czar Nicholas II of Russia and the parliament of the German Weimar Republic that brought Hitler to power.
About President George Herbert Walker Bush, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., said: “I believe (Bush) is a racist for many, many reasons. … (He’s) a mean-spirited man who has no care or concern about what happens to the African American community. … I truly believe that.”
About the Republican-controlled House, longtime Harlem Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel, in 1994, said: “It’s not ‘s—-‘ or ‘n——-‘ anymore. (Republicans) say, ‘Let’s cut taxes.'” A decade later, Rangel said, “George (W.) Bush is our Bull Connor,” referring to the Birmingham, Alabama, Democrat segregationist superintendent of public safety who sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on civil rights workers.
Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s presidential campaign manager, in 1999, said: Republicans have a “white boy attitude, (which means) ‘I must exclude, denigrate and leave behind.’ They don’t see it or think about it. It’s a culture.” The following year, Brazile said: “The Republicans bring out Colin Powell and (Rep.) J.C. Watts, (R-Okla.), because they have no program, no policy. … They’d rather take pictures with Black children than feed them.”
About President George W. Bush, former Vice President Al Gore said: “(Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.” Digital “brownshirts”?
About George W. Bush, George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor, said: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”
Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, in a 2006 speech at historically Black Fayetteville State University said, “The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.”
Former Gov. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2005, described the contest between Democrats and Republicans as “a struggle between good and evil. And we’re the good.” Three years later, Dean referred to the GOP as “the white party.”
After Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill said George W. Bush “let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were Black.”
Feminist superlawyer Gloria Allred, in 2001, referred to Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as “Uncle Tom types.”
Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, in 2006, said, “The (Republican-controlled) House of Representatives … has been run like a plantation. And you know what I’m talking about.”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democratic National Committee chairwoman in 2011, said “Republicans … want to literally drag us all the way back to Jim Crow laws.”……
I bet almost all of my family believes Trump mocked a disabled man’s handicap; think that when he said “there are fine people on both sides” he was saying there were “fine Nazis or white supremacists;” or think that racists and white supremacists have voted Republican in general; or that the bodies natural defenses in immunity are non-existent and only “vaccines” can bring immunity.
Matt Allen interviewed Professor Bill Jacobson (Legal Insurrection) regarding the recent Supreme Court ruling on Presidential immunity. Professor Jacobson has a good post on the topic here:
John Yoo: Jack Smith Charges Will Be Tossed Out (July 1st)
John Yoo on Life, Liberty and Levin. “The charges regardless of whether President Trump has immunity, the charges that Jack Smith has brought are all going to be tossed out.”
Tucker Notices Something About The Debate No One Noticed
Are the Dems now trying to replace Biden? Was it always the plan?
PLUS:
Joe Rogan And Jimmy Dore Laugh At The Media’s Coverage Of President Joe Biden
Via – KanekoaTheGreat 》》Joe Rogan and Jimmy Dore laugh at the media’s coverage of President Joe Biden following his disastrous debate performance.
@joerogan: “When you see Biden, ‘We beat Medicare.’ And they go, thank you, Mr. President. How is that real? The guy locks up like Windows 95, stammers for 15 seconds, and then says we beat Medicare.”
@jimmy_dore: “No one has ever loved Joe Biden. He’s always been a joke and a punch line. And the idea that this is somehow Joe Biden’s truth-telling against Donald Trump. The first time Joe Biden ran for president, he had to drop out because he was exposed for being a pathological liar. He said he graduated at the top of his class. He graduated at the bottom. He said he had three majors. He said he was chosen as the most outstanding in his class. It was all lies. And then he got caught plagiarizing their speeches and their life story. Who does that?”
@joerogan: “Did I ever tell you about the Joe Biden night we had at Stitches Comedy Club in 1988? I would go on stage and do your act, and you would do my act [because he’s a plagiarist]. It was an open mockery that he was a known plagiarist in 1988.”
@jimmy_dore: “I had to tell Cornell West this when he was on my show. Hey, the reason why black and brown people are locked up at way higher rates is because of Joe Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill. Not because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump actually passed the First Step Act, which is probably why he’s getting 20% of the black vote right now. So, you’re right. All of their narratives are falling apart.”
EXTRA:
That Moment She Realized Her Hero Doesn’t Like Black People
CIGAR SKUNK 2 makes a great point below. Wow. They want the narrative to be about Trump – don’t let it!
“This new official-acts immunity now ‘lies about like a loaded weapon’ for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
When the president “uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” she continued. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune.”
OK, so why is she upset as Biden is president right now which means that he can send Seal Team 6 to assassinate President Trump and be immune?
No, this is just Sotomayor and Jackson once again demonstrating that they got their law degrees thanks to racial quotas and are your typical incompetent DEI hires.
Why?
Simple — assassinating political rivals falls under “unofficial” since the POTUS is not officially permitted to assassinate his political rivals.
Interesting though that the first thing which came to the heads of the liberal justices was using presidential immunity to assassinate political rivals — shows us what they’ve been thinking about.
To bolster the idea above, let me note that most political violence comes from the Left, as well as political assassinations:
…. Even I initially thought that whoever did it was either a Republican or some backwoods, tinfoil-hat-wearing pseudo-Libertarian. Now that it’s come out he is a Democrat/Independent, it’s no surprise; virtually every assassin or would-be assassin of American presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have been leftists (to the extent that their political views are known).
Successful assassins (whose politics we know):
John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat, shot and killed President Lincoln
Charles Guiteau, a member of the communist Oneida Community, shot and killed President Garfield
Leon Czolgosz, a leftist anarchist (similar to the useful idiots in the Occupy movement) shot and killed President McKinley
Lee Harvey Oswald, a communist, shot and killed President Kennedy.
Failed assassins (whose politics we know):
Severino Di Giovanni, a leftist anarchist, tried to bomb President-elect Hoover’s train
Giuseppe Zangara, a professed anti-capitalist, tried shooting President-elect Franklin Roosevelt
Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, two Marxists, tried killing President Truman at the Blair House
Samuel Byck, who tried joining the leftist Black Panther group, attempted to kill President Nixon
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, member of the Manson Family and also a hippie environmentalist, shot at President Ford
Sara Jane Moore tried to kill President Ford as well because, as she said, “the government had declared war on the Left.”
Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a leftist connected to the Occupy movement, tried getting a one-in-a-billion shot at President Obama by firing a gun at the White House
The only individual whose political motivations can be deduced as coming from the right side of the political spectrum is Francisco Martin Duran, who claims he was “incited” by conservative talk-show host Chuck Baker, but also claimed that he was trying to save the world from an alien mist which was connected by an umbilical cord to another alien in the Colorado mountains. So there’s that. ….
This is just crazy stuff. See the fuller video at NEWSBUSTERS. I think this is how low they think of Republicans, and are merely projecting… as well as their animosity for the Military. What a horrible statement.
Senator John F. Kennedy Reading Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1957
Sound recording of Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts reading the Declaration of Independence. A recording of Senator Kennedy’s reading was broadcast on WQXR Radio in New York, on July 4, 1957, as part of the station’s observance of the Fourth of July.
Happy July 4 to everyone here in America. Just a reminder of the price that was paid for our freedom. I honestly just did not know the great sacrifices that these men paid… Makes me love this country even more.
What happened to the signers of the Declaration of Independence?
This is the Price They Paid
Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army, another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the revolutionary war.
They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated. But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.
Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.
Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.
Vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.
At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. The owner quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.
Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.
John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished. A few weeks later he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston suffered similar fates.
Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education. They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing tall, straight, and unwavering, they pledged: “For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
(School is in!) Mark Levin shares his study of the U.S. Constitution and it’s Founding. The American Founding. Levin discusses the miracle of the death of the two men key to the Declaration’s appearance (Jefferson and Adams) on the Fourth of July. He then treads into progressive waters and the current dislike of our American Founding as compared to history. He reads from Woodrow Wilson (our first Ph.D. President) and his disdain for the Founding document and Principles. Then a reading from — really a counter point — Calvin Coolidge to cement the idea that these are eternal principles. Levin wonders aloud how Leftists can even celebrate the 4th in good conscience.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers. — Calvin Coolidge (POWERLINE)
BTW, if one does not know the history of the fourth in regard to Jefferson and Adams, or the eternal principles BEHIND the Declaration, here are some decent videos:
Just a quick word regarding Mark Dice — who is the guy in the first video (and 3rd n 4th):
While I like their rants (Paul Watson, Mark Dice, and others) and these commentaries hold much truth in them, I do wish to caution you… he is part of Info Wars/Prison Planet network of yahoos, a crazy conspiracy arm of Alex Jones shite. Also, I bet if I talked to him he would reveal some pretty-crazy conspiratorial beliefs that would naturally undermine and be at-odds-with some of his rants. Just to be clear, I do not endorse these people or orgs.
Media analyst Mark Dice asks beachgoers in San Diego, California some basic questions about America’s 4th of July Independence Day celebration and their answers are quite disturbing.
MORE SADNESS:
FOR THE HISTORICAL RECORD:
The signers of the Declaration of Independence (ALL BIOS HERE)
Delaware
George Read | Caesar Rodney | Thomas McKean
Pennsylvania
George Clymer | Benjamin Franklin | Robert Morris | John Morton | Benjamin Rush | George Ross | James Smith | James Wilson | George Taylor
Massachusetts
John Adams | Samuel Adams | John Hancock | Robert Treat Paine
New Hampshire
Josiah Bartlett | William Whipple | Matthew Thornton |
Rhode Island
Stephen Hopkins | William Ellery |
New York
Lewis Morris | Philip Livingston | Francis Lewis | William Floyd |
Georgia
Button Gwinnett | Lyman Hall | George Walton |
Virginia
Richard Henry Lee | Francis Lightfoot Lee | Carter Braxton | Benjamin Harrison | Thomas Jefferson | George Wythe | Thomas Nelson, Jr. |
North Carolina
William Hooper | John Penn |
South Carolina
Edward Rutledge | Arthur Middleton | Thomas Lynch, Jr. | Thomas Heyward, Jr. |
New Jersey
Abraham Clark | John Hart | Francis Hopkinson | Richard Stockton | John Witherspoon |
Connecticut
Samuel Huntington | Roger Sherman | William Williams | Oliver Wolcott |
Maryland
Charles Carroll | Samuel Chase | Thomas Stone | William Paca |
Reagan, Cash, and Harvey
Dennis Prager
Video Description:
Dennis Prager reads from the popular leftist website, VOX. From newspapers such as the N.Y. TIMES, the L.A. TIMES, and the N.Y. DAILY NEWS. These mainstream opinion pieces bemoan and degrade America to the point of hatred. Anti-Americanism is growing on the Left, and in taking these positions these people benighted themselves as our cultural commissars… dishing out their version of history to those unintelligent lap-dog readers they call customers.
Some More History
I want to thank Israel Matzavfor the following, good stuff!
During the 1700s, Philadelphia was an unpleasant place in the summer. Malaria and yellow fever were rampant. There were no cures and no known ways to prevent infection. Most people of means tried to escape the city, if they could.
But in the scorching summer of 1776, scores of our country’s leading men remained behind closed doors in Philadelphia. They were kept there by their work. And what a monumental work it turned out to be.
The 56 leaders, representing all 13 British colonies, signed a declaration that would birth a great nation and illuminate the very future of humankind. It’s this Declaration of Independence that Americans celebrate each July 4.
The document’s first job was to officially announce to the world that all the colonies had decided to declare themselves free and independent states, absolved from any allegiance to Great Britain. That was momentous enough for the years ahead, since in order to make good on that declaration, the colonies would have to defeat the British in a war that stretched until 1783.
But the greater meaning of the Declaration — then as well as now — is as a statement of the conditions that underlie legitimate political authority and as an explanation of the proper ends of government.
The signers proclaimed that political power would spring from the sovereignty of the people, not a crowned hereditary monarch. This idea shook Europe to its very core.
The Declaration appealed not to any conventional law or political contract but to the equal rights possessed by all men and “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and nature’s God” entitled them.
What is revolutionary about the Declaration of Independence is not that a particular group of Americans declared their independence under particular circumstances. It’s that they did so by appealing to –and promising to base their particular government on — a universal standard of justice.
It is in this sense that Abraham Lincoln praised “the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.”
Of course, it required another war to extend those rights to all Americans, but the fact that they were written down in the Declaration was crucial in 1865, in 1965 and remains so today as well.
“If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence,” wrote noted historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, “it would have been worthwhile.”
As Thomas Jefferson, lead author of the Declaration, put it in 1821, “The flames kindled on the 4th of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”
Those flames, the flames of freedom and opportunity, continue to spread. That’s a truth worth celebrating on the Fourth — and all year ’round.
Even the Minutemen reflected strong religious involvement. While they are generally recognized for their exploits as a group, few today know many specifics about them. For example, these men who stood to fight for their liberties and defend their town were often groups of laymen from local congregations led either by their pastor or a deacon! Records even indicate that it was not unusual that following their militia drills they would go to church “where they listened to exhortation and prayer.”
The spiritual emphasis manifested so often by the Americans during the Revolution caused one Crown-appointed British governor to write to Great Britain complaining that:
If you ask an American who is his master, he’ll tell you he has none. And he has no governor but Jesus Christ.
Letters like this, coupled with statements like that delivered by Ethan Allen, and sermons like those preached by the Reverend Peter Powers (“Jesus Christ the King”), gave rise to a motto of the American Revolution. Most of us are unaware that the American Revolution even had a motto, but most wars do (e.g., World War II—”Remember Pearl Harbor”; the Texas’ war for independence—”Remember the Alamo”; etc.). The motto of the American Revolution was directed against King George III—considered the primary source of the conflict; for it was he who was arbitrarily, capriciously, and regularly violated “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” The motto was very simple and very direct:
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