Why is modern art so terrible and what does it say about our society?
Author: Papa Giorgio
|*Tears*| Miranda Lambert Brought To Tears By Soldiers Sign
(THE BLAZE) During her concert Friday, Miranda Lambert began to sing her emotional ballad, “The House That Built Me.” Then something the country star noticed near the Hartford, Connecticut, stage made her stop the song and begin to cry. No doubt Lambert has eyed plenty of signs at her shows over the years, but this one she just had to share with her audience. It was from a soldier…..
Black Prison Population and the War on Drugs ~ Heather Mac Donald
Jason Riley (http://tinyurl.com/z25my2p) asks Heather Mac Donald (http://tinyurl.com/zo4n4ek) a question in regards to the War on Drugs and black men’s prison populations. (Larry Elder in on vacation and Jason Riley is filling in.)
Follow Jason on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jasonrileywsj
This Seal Ain’t No Dummy
Seal scrambles on boat to avoid being eaten by Killer Whales. The fuller video can be found HERE ~ Two times he came aboard (love the ascents BTW!):
Babies are Evil ~ NPR
NPR notes this scare tactic working, when they note:
….”If I had told my boyfriend at the time, ‘I’m not ready to have children because I don’t know what the climate’s gonna be like in 50 years,’ he wouldn’t have understood. There’s no way,” says Hoskins, a 23-year-old whose red hair is twisted in a long braid.
This is one of 16 meetings over the past year and a half organized by Conceivable Future, a nonprofit founded on the notion that “the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis.”
Hoskins says she’s always wanted “little redheaded babies” — as do her parents, the sooner the better.
But she’s a grad student in environmental studies, and the more she learns, the more she questions what kind of life those babies would have.
In a country where even the idea of climate change can be polarizing and political, Hoskins has never shared that fear until now.
Meghan Kallman is a co-founder of Conceivable Future. “I can’t count the number of times people have said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s so nice to know I’m not the only person that worries about this,’ ” she says.
[….]
Ferorelli, 33, and Kallman, 32, are both in committed relationships, and in the throes of this problem. Ferorelli recently helped her widowed mother pack up her house, saving cherished items with the unspoken assumption that they are for a next generation.
And yet, when she imagines raising a child, Ferorelli says she can’t help but envision the nightmare scenarios that have dogged her since she first heard the term “global warming” in elementary school.
“Knowing that I gave that future to somebody is something that just doesn’t sit very well,” she says.
At the New Hampshire meeting, 67-year-old Nancy Nolan tells two younger women that people didn’t know about climate change in the 1980s when she had her kids. Once her children were grown, “I said to them, ‘I hope you never have children,’ which is an awful thing to say,” Nolan says, her voice wavering. “It can bring me to tears easily.”
She adds that of course people are driven to procreate, and you can’t really tell them not to.
One woman looks a little stunned. She’s not a climate activist — just tagged along with a friend — and says she had no idea that deciding not to have kids because of the climate was even a thing.
Previously, and part of the strategy, is that Professor Rieder talks about taxing children (WUWT):
…Climate philosopher Travis Rieder has been touring the country, trying to persuade university students not to have kids – and promoting ideas for restricting childbirth, including tax penalties against people who decide to have a child.
[….]
For the sticks part of the plan, Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child.
Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids. He knows that sounds crazy.
There is no evidence the world faces a climate apocalypse. All such claims are based onbroken climate models which have never demonstrated predictive skill.
But people who act on Rieder’s well meaning but in my opinion scientifically unsound advice may be opening themselves to a lifetime of misery.
The West is full of unhappy couples who waited too long to have a family, thanks to the financial and social pressures of modern life. An entire industry has arisen to try to help desperate couples have a child, many of whom need medical assistance because they are too old to conceive naturally. Adding to the financial and social pressures prospective parents face will exacerbate this tragedy.
When his prophesied doomsday passes uneventfully, Rieder may have the integrity to do what James Lovelock did, and apologise for being wrong….
Racist CNN Headline ~ Greg Gutfeld
Hugh Mungus “Aggresses” a BLM Feminist
Becuase the video is so unbelievable, I want to intro it with a couple comments from across the WWW:
Obnoxious protester, Zarna Joshi, had been getting in people’s faces and demanded to know their names. Joshi then saw a police supporter being interviewed by a news reporter, and she decided to harass him. When Joshi confronted the supporter, he identified himself to her as “Hugh Mongous.” And that’s when the world fell apart. The crazy really starts about two minutes in.
[….]
Rather than arrest Zarna Joshi for creating a disturbance and refusing to leave, the responding officers left her to run free and create more of a disturbance because: Seattle.
These are the sort of self-entitled obnoxious people that police officers are forced to deal with every day. When you think that you’ve had a bad day at work, just remember that you aren’t putting up with this kind of crazy.
This has a little of everything. It’s got social justice warriors. It’s got Black Lives Matter. It’s got PC culture. And it has a guy who called himself ‘Hugh Mungus.’ The nerve on the patriarchist!
Picture it: Seattle, 2016. SJWs and BLM are upset that the city wants to build a new police station. Because, naturally. The media chose to interview a guy – and a WHITE guy at that – whose daughter was a heroin addict instead of anyone from BLM. You know, someone whose opinion might be relevant.
And that’s where the antics ensue. Particularly at the 1:00 minute mark…
[….]
This is yet more proof that today’s SJW left is beyond parody. If I were to have created a sketch of a feminist freaking out and calling the cops over someone using the name “Hugh Mungus,” the comments sectionwould have excoriated me for creating such a straw man straw woman non-binary straw-person. If I then created a scenario in which she called the cops over “rape culture” but refused to cooperate with the cops because of “police brutality culture,” people would have accused me of debasing the argument to lazy parody. Yet here we are, 2016….
Is Trump Anti-Jewish? Ezra Levant’s Message to Fellow Hebrews
Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media issues an appeal to “my fellow Hebrews,” making the case for a Donald Trump presidency. (More)
Democrat Voters Violence On Exhibit Again
‘Racist!’: Trump Supporters Forced to Run ‘Gauntlet’ Through Aggressive, Violent Protesters (The Blaze)
Some protesters got aggressive at the end of the night as Trump supporters left Minneapolis fundraiser. @StarTribune pic.twitter.com/gNcZGYhqBm
— Renee JonesSchneider (@reneejon) August 20, 2016
Black Lives Matter Even For Jaywalkers!
- “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you’re looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you.” ~ C.S. Lewis (read more – PDF)
Police brutality right in the beginning of the video? LOL… I was swatted with a wood pattle at private school. That was more “brutal” than wrestling!
Leftists and Black Lives Matter types are saying this is “police brutality.” Anything could be further from the truth.
…According to a report provided to TheBlaze by the Fresno Police Department, the incident in question began Monday around 7:30 a.m. near Hoover High School when a traffic cop observed “a student beginning to run westbound across First Street.”
“The student was not in the crosswalk and the pedestrian crossing light was blinking red,” the report continued. “The officer told the student to go back onto the sidewalk and cross the intersection in the crosswalk when the signal changed.”
Rather than simply obey what appeared to be the most banal order on Earth, the young punk of course had to act like a brat by reportedly running behind the officer to the crosswalk and entering “into the intersection within the crosswalk but against the red signal.”
“The officer told the student to return to the sidewalk until the signal changed,” the report continued. “The student smiled at him and continued to walk westbound against the red signal.”
Finally, when the signal turned green, the young punk crossed the street, upon which time the officer approached him to issue a citation for “pedestrian walking against the red signal.”…
Issue a citation!? That is R-A-C-I-S-T! How dare he! Just joking.
The reason why the officers around schools ask at first and if repeatedly ignored, issue citations for jaywalking is to protect drivers from hitting kids and especially to protect kids from being maimed, injured, or killed by cars. While this person was a high school student, some stats that show the importance of this, especially if you are a parent of a child, are these:
- One-fifth (21%) of children 14 and younger killed in traffic crashes were pedestrians.
- An estimated 9 percent of children 10 to 14 years old (6,000 of 66,000 after rounding) were injured pedestrians – the highest among the age categories.
- Five percent of all pedestrian fatalities (236 of 4,735) and an estimated 15 percent of all pedestrians injured (10,000 of 66,000 after rounding) were children 14 and younger.
Which is why the schools, the parents, the community, and the drivers wish such things be enforced. The Black Lives Matter movement will heap on bad thinking into more situations like this. Here are more examples of citations for jaywalking in another state:
Police in Charlotte hope they’ve made a point with pedestrians who violate crosswalk laws.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers handed out 100 warning tickets in 90 minutes Thursday at a single intersection downtown where 12 people have been hit in the past five years, The Charlotte Observer reported.
Police said they ticketed people who crossed in the middle of a block or crossed against crosswalk signals. Others were ticketed for entering a crosswalk when the flashing walk sign was counting down. It’s illegal to start crossing when the “no walk” sign in counting down.
Those crossing the street were not the only ones targeted.
Three drivers were given warning tickets for failing to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. About two dozen drivers were cited for various violations. One driver was arrested on an outstanding warrant….
So the prideful disregard to authority brought on by misplaced pride fueled by such hate groups like Black Lives Matter, will [again], make these confrontations even for very minor issuance of citations more common. This hatred for anything authority related will make law enforcement job more complicated. The IRONY is this… these same people who cannot stand authority vote in a party that wants bigger government. Which in turn will create more militarized policing to enforce state mandates on minor things (think of the man who died of heart failure resisting arrest selling “loosies” in New York).
Here is a meme to further this point:
PIVOT
The Bible talks A LOT about pride… and before a fall (or in this case a take down by a police officer) comes pride (Prov 16:18). If the kid had cooperated, no arrest or need to call dad would be necessary.
When I posted the above in a comment section, someone responded with this:
- I am a born again Christian. I live at church. This cop needs to be arrested. Not the kid. Don’t bring the bible into this. Cops are out of control.
To which I responded to my born-again commentator:
For what? The camera starting rolling late. Do you have evidence that the kid was just jay walking and that he humbly was going to allow the officer to reprimand him? I do not know the kid was just jaywalking. What I see is a confrontation that did not need to happen BECAUSE of the kids actions. When I got a ticket for a seat-belt violation (the top strap was under my armpit because it would bother my neck — so I had it on technically), I didn’t rip the ticket up… I didn’t get out and argue with the officer. I didn’t yell “white lives matter!”
I humbly submitted to what I thought was a bad choice on the officers part, and argued (and won) my case in front of the judge.
[….]
This kid was most likely going to — at the most — get a written warning. Satan was cast out of heaven because of pride (Isaiah 14:12-15). He had the selfish audacity to attempt to replace God Himself as the rightful ruler of the universe. Today, people try to replace the justice in the authority God instituted (Romans 13:1) with their own versions of what the law is. This pride will lead the world to a pinnacle. When Jesus was speaking about “nation rising against nation” (Mark 13:8) he was saying in Greek, “ethnicity will rise against ethnicity.” And we know the pride and secular positions in Black Lives Matter (anti-God/anti-God pride). I have posted many times on the movement and it is a black nationalist cult driven often times by the works of Elijah Muhammad through the current head Louise Farrakhan (NOI) or the Nation Gods & Earths (Five-Percenters).
This kid may not have a grip on the above… but he is being led by the nose (Isaiah 37:29) to the Battle on that final day (Ezekiel 38:4).
The FRESNO BEE has this commentary on the matter:
The 16-year-old Hoover High student who failed to comply with a Fresno police officer’s commands, as well as the bystander who videoed the incident, did the Black Lives Matter movement no favors.
All the student had to do was follow orders and the likely outcome would have been an explanation of the bad things that can happen when you jaywalk at a busy intersection. No harm, no foul. Instead the result was a wrestling match that could have – but thankfully didn’t – end in injury or death for the student or the officer.
If you believe the officer singled out the student because he was black, or if you have jaywalked when a patrol car was nearby without being warned or ticketed, allow me to explain something. Patrol officers in Fresno are continually responding to calls: burglaries, robberies, domestic violence, assaults and more. They aren’t going to stop for a jaywalker.
The officer in the Hoover incident is part of the motorcycle division; his job is traffic enforcement. And early in the school year, traffic officers focus on the areas near schools with the goal of keeping everyone safe.
Imagine if this student had caused an accident by running into traffic. Everyone would be wanting to know why the cop didn’t prevent it.
Police critics are always suggesting that officers “engage in a conversation with the community.” That’s hard to do when some members of the community have no interest in talking to cops, much less following their instructions.
Full disclosure: I am the father and the brother of law enforcement officers, neither of whom works for the Fresno Police Department. I think about them often – their service to their communities, their love of the profession, and their love of family. Every morning, I pray that they return home safe and sound.
Theistic Implications of Big-Bang Cosmology
Please see my post on the “Scientific and Anecdotal Evidence for the Beginning of the Universe“
WINTERY KNIGHT notes some of the topics via the above video/lecture:
Topics:
- Up until the the last 100 years or so, everyone agreed that the universe was eternal
- This is at odds with the traditional Christian view that God created the universe
- Materialism, the view that matter is all there is, requires eternally existing matter
- Discovery #1: Hubble discovers that the universe is expanding (redshift observation)
- The expanding universe was resisted by proponents of the eternal universe, like Einstein
- Some naturalists even proposed speculative static models like the steady-state model
- However, not of the speculative models fit with observations and experimental results
- Discovery #2: Penzias and Wilson discover the cosmic microwave background radiation
- Measurements of this background radiation confirmed a prediction of the Big Bang theory
- The steady-state theory was falsified of by the discovery of this background radiation
- The oscillating model was proposed to prevent the need for an absolute beginning
- But the oscillating model is not eternal, it loses energy on each “bounce”
- A paper by Alan Guth and Marc Sher from 1982 proved that our universe will not bounce
- In addition, experiments reveal that the universe will expand forever, and not contract
- The beginning of the universe is more at home in a theistic worldview than an atheistic one
- The beginning of the universe fits in well with the Bible, e.g. – Genesis 1, Titus 1, etc.
In case you are wondering about what the evidence is for the Big Bang, here are that are most commonly offered:
Three main observational results over the past century led astronomers to become certain that the universe began with the big bang. First, they found out that the universe is expanding—meaning that the separations between galaxies are becoming larger and larger. This led them to deduce that everything used to be extremely close together before some kind of explosion. Second, the big bang perfectly explains the abundance of helium and other nuclei like deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) in the universe. A hot, dense, and expanding environment at the beginning could produce these nuclei in the abundance we observe today. Third, astronomers could actually observe the cosmic background radiation—the afterglow of the explosion—from every direction in the universe. This last evidence so conclusively confirmed the theory of the universe’s beginning that Stephen Hawking said, “It is the discovery of the century, if not of all time.”
(MORE)
Status of Forces Agreement ~ Iraq Update
Smack Down Galore!
(Above Video) The caller notes that the narrative is that the Islamic State would have still come to power even if we kept troops in Iraq. Which is true, they would have still come to existence, in Syria. But Iraq would not have lost any cities or territories if we still had a presence in Iraq. The caller mentioned a force of 10,000 troops, it would have been closer to 30,000 troops. And having a base of operations in country would have allowed the administration to deal more effectively with the Islamic State in Syria (flying sorties, and supporting quick reaction [spec-ops] units activity), and the like.
(Above Video) Megyn Kelly Destroys Jen Psaki who can’t get off talking points.
(Above Video) Larry Elder (and Paul Bremer) dismantle older as well as new mantras flying around via our friends on the left. In the interview that is the centerpiece of the segment[s] here via Larry Elder, Erin “Monkey” Burnett gets all of her talking points smacked down. The only thing Miss Burnett accomplished was showing her bias/sarcasm well.
Here Bremer educates Erin with facts she knew, but refuses to deploy in her logic because it would ruin her defense of her Master Obama, “The planning in 2011, leaked very heavily from the Pentagon and the White House was to keep 20 to 30 thousand troops after 2011, the White House leaked that it wanted to only keep 3,000 troops, then they said to al-Maliki not only do we want a Status of Forces Agreement but you have to get it through your Parliament. So for the first time, to my knowledge, since 1945, we have 84 SOFA agreements around the world, we were telling the host government how to they proceed in approving that Status of Forces Agreement. That put al-Maliki in an impossible situation.”
Bombs Over Erbil
Obama is SUCH a joke! HotAir has this:
….A dandy little edit here by the Free Beacon, via Ace. I know I’ve linked it before but the piece you want to read as accompaniment is Iraq hawk turned dove Peter Beinart lamenting all the ways Obama screwed up post-Bush American policy in the country. O wants you to believe at the end of the video here that he pushed hard to keep a residual American force inside Iraq for counterterrorism (i.e. counter-ISIS) operations but it’s simply not true. He didn’t push hard for it; when Maliki initially resisted his demand that U.S. troops be granted immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts, O took that as his cue to pull everyone out. And that wasn’t the only time he indulged Maliki’s dumbest impulses. The story of the U.S. vis-a-vis Iraq after 2009, writes Beinart, is a story of disinterest and disengagement:
The decline of U.S. leverage in Iraq simply reinforced the attitude Obama had held since 2009: Let Maliki do whatever he wants so long as he keeps Iraq off the front page.
On December 12, 2011, just days before the final U.S. troops departed Iraq, Maliki visited the White House. According to Nasr, he told Obama that Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, an Iraqiya leader and the highest-ranking Sunni in his government, supported terrorism. Maliki, argues Nasr, was testing Obama, probing to see how the U.S. would react if he began cleansing his government of Sunnis. Obama replied that it was a domestic Iraqi affair. After the meeting, Nasr claims, Maliki told aides, “See! The Americans don’t care.”
In public remarks after the meeting, Obama praised Maliki for leading “Iraq’s most inclusive government yet.” Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh al-Mutlaq, another Sunni, told CNN he was “shocked” by the president’s comments. “There will be a day,” he predicted, “whereby the Americans will realize that they were deceived by al-Maliki … and they will regret that.”
And now the day has come. Remember that the next time O walks out to the podium and acts indignant about Maliki clinging to power.
One more bit, this from Dexter Filkins, on just how much of a fight O put up in demanding a residual troop presence:
President Obama, too, was ambivalent about retaining even a small force in Iraq. For several months, American officials told me, they were unable to answer basic questions in meetings with Iraqis—like how many troops they wanted to leave behind—because the Administration had not decided. “We got no guidance from the White House,” Jeffrey told me. “We didn’t know where the President was. Maliki kept saying, ‘I don’t know what I have to sell.’ ” At one meeting, Maliki said that he was willing to sign an executive agreement granting the soldiers permission to stay, if he didn’t have to persuade the parliament to accept immunity. The Obama Administration quickly rejected the idea. “The American attitude was: Let’s get out of here as quickly as possible,” Sami al-Askari, the Iraqi member of parliament, said…
(Still the Lynn University campus debate via WaPo)
- Romney: “With regards to Iraq, you and I agreed, I believe, that there should be a status of forces agreement,”
- Obama: “That’s not true,”
- Romney: “Oh, you didn’t want a status of forces agreement?”
- Obama: “No,” … “What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq that would tie us down. That certainly would not help us in the Middle East.”
Some other things Mitt got right and “O” didn’t: