A list is making its rounds showing a crapload of “school shootings” — I will post the list at the end because it is long. But this is the most recent list shared primarily on Facebook. The version I saw was by Greg Atkinson:
It is a list of 245 school shootings. This is nothing new, per-se, at every similar event some list is trotted out to use a real event to make untrue statements about others. Why? To elicit an emotional response. This was confirmed to me as I went through the comments under the list; one person was even calling for a teacher strike.
Lol.
I thought to myself at the time of reading it (but did not respond),
“Yes, please strike… it will chase EVEN MORE parents to choose private and home schooling even more than the last 2-years of masking and ‘at home education. Pretty please’.”
Even NPR admits issues with such lists, this is from August of 2018:
How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?
We should know. But we don’t.
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.
“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.
This confusion comes at a time when the need for clear data on school violence has never been more pressing.
All lists like the one shared [below] do is add to the confusion. This was my response to a friend sharing the list:
QUOTING MYSELF
Much of this list is not an example of “school shootings” like the one that recently happened. Just to exemplify my broader statement, here is one example pulled from the list to engender emotion rather than reasonable thought on the issue (#200).
Providence Career & Technical Academy
William Parsons was shot and killed in this event;
He was not a student at Providence Career & Technical Academy, rather, a student at a nearby school, Central High School;
He was a bystander to a fight between gang members [also not students at Providence] outside Providence Career & Technical Academy while waiting for his father to pick him up;
The school was not targeted, and the violence happened to be near the school.
Much of the list is like this… and has nothing ta do with “mass shootings” like the one that killed those kids and teachers. And as a point in history, the worst school massacre was in 1927 by a school board treasurer in Michigan (Bath School disaster). He killed 38 children. Which falls at #13 in the world’s deadliest.
SIDE NOTE
As an aside: I make it a habit not to post on this person’s Facebook (FB), and this was one of almost zero comments on their FB I have made over time. And my comment was pretty benign (minus facts), which are abrasive to perceived narratives — I get that. Subsequentially my status was changed so I could not see any posts on their Facebook.
Which reminded me of a recently read article,
The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented, and it’s basically mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.(THE ATLANTIC)
It’s the “bubbles” part that interests me.
I simply offered a view unlike any other in the strain; and what did the person do? Shut themselves off to the rare viewpoint that disagreed with the consensus they wish to artificially build around themself.
Another example of regular conversation moving toward censorship of viewpoints that offer even the slightest dissent (in Orwellian fashion) is this: years ago there was a weekly series in the L.A. Times where a column would take an event or position and have a progressive leaning columnist give their thoughts and position; and another column was written by a more conservative columnist giving theirs. I believe it was called, “View from the Left,” and, “View from the Right.”
Often times the writer on the right was Dennis Prager.
The L.A. Times has long nixed thoughtful thinking, comparison, and columns/columnists like this and Dennis.
Another example comes by way of the Executive Editor of the New York Times (the top position in the newsroom), Dean Baquet, who admitted that it is the Left who does not want to hear thoughtful responses to issues from a countering viewpoint.
You see, progressive leaning individuals are far more likely to unfriend or censor opposing political views (see HERE). Here is a snippet of the poll via TOWNHALL shortly after the 2016 election
Nearly one-quarter (24%) of Democrats say they blocked, unfriended, or stopped following someone on social media after the election because of their political posts on social media. Fewer than one in ten Republicans (9%) and independents (9%) report eliminating people from their social media circle. Political liberals are also far more likely than conservatives to say they removed someone from their social media circle due to what they shared online (28% vs. 8%, respectively). Eleven percent of moderates say they blocked, unfollowed, or unfriended someone due to what they posted online…Only five percent of Americans say they are planning on spending less time with certain family members because of their political views. Democrats, however, are five times more likely than Republicans to say they are trying to avoid certain family members due to their political views (10% vs. 2%, respectively). The pattern among political independents mirrors the general population.
The least tolerant sub-demographic measured in the poll was Democratic-leaning women…
And this still holds true in large measure. And as you can see from my very reasonable, non-yelling, non-gaslighting comment [in the “Calvin” text box] — this holds true.
BUBBLES
…CONTINUING…
In another 2018 posting, DAILY CALLER catalogs CNN’s use of bad stats as well:
…The list of school shootings used by CNN and other news outlets, however, wildly exaggerates the number by lumping in accidental firearm discharges, domestic disputes, and events that don’t involve students with the active shooter situations that most people don’t lump into the specific category of school shootings.
CNN’s list includes one shooting incident in Alabama where one person was injured at an on-campus apartment building. Another shooting at Savannah State University in Georgia is counted despite the fact that the two people involved were not students.
Many media outlets also pull their numbers from Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit gun control advocacy group, and includes any time “a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds.” Their current count is even higher than CNN’s.
Again, NPR:
“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.
PIVOTING A BIT…. REAL WORLD SOLUTIONS
When I found this video I posted it on my Facebook with the following note:
Damn. Easy peasy. Should give the teacher extra time to get her or his gun out of the lock box and protect her (or his life) as well as the lives of the kids under her (or his) care.
Some schools in south-central Missouri have created their own measures to stop a mass shooter: arming teachers. The move is not without controversy—but these extremely rural communities say it was their best option for safety.
For many schools, the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, which killed 26 people, was a wake-up call. Aaron Sydow, Superintendent of the K-8 Fairview School District in West Plains, says his community looked to the school board for help.
“When Sandy Hook actually occurred, just after that, we had a lot of public outcry, locally,” Sydow told KSMU. “Parents [asked], ‘How are you going to protect the kids here? We want you to do something.’”
Fairview board members reached out to a security contractor named Greg Martin. He created a program for school employees, including teachers, to carry concealed firearms in the classroom.
Martin founded Shield Solutions, a firm that trains staff at businesses and schools in firearm skills. Its programs are currently used in more than 35 schools, mostly in south-central Missouri.
Martin says teachers and staff who are recruited for the program go through a series of mental and physical tests before being approved to carry a weapon…..
Here is the training they go through:
….The training consists of 40 hours – five hours of classroom instruction and 35 hours of range time. And the instructors don’t go easy on their pupils either. Although participants may begin their training wet behind the ears, by the end of the course they are required to prove that they can not only handle a gun safely and accurately. Additionally, the training also prepares the class to handle the emotional toil that comes when dealing with a potentially lethal situation. And if they can’t cut it, they’re cut from the program, but the school district has the option of sending another staffer in their stead.
In a recent class there was one elementary school teacher who couldn’t handle the military-style training, complete with running uphill as punishment for making mistakes.
“She’s not going to make it,” said Dan Wehmer, sales manager for Shield Solutions, who was initially told that the idea of armed teachers wouldn’t fly. “She can’t handle the stress. And if she can’t handle it out here, what would she do in a real situation?”
Greg Martin, founder of Shield Solutions and a former Missouri Highway Patrol trooper, believes the physical and emotional strain imposed is a vital part of the training.
They have to know that they won’t crumble under stress and that they can and will pull the trigger during an active shooter scenario to save lives, even if it means that – heaven forbid – the shooter is their own student who has sat in their own classroom.
“It adds to the stress,” Martin said. “But it makes them better. “They can’t fail at this.”
These districts took to heart recommendations made after other school shooting. The Parkland police also failed like the Uvalde school shooting.
So 2 of the 3 deadliest school shootings made it to that gruesome list because of inaction by armed and trained professionals. When my life is about to end by violence, I need to be trained to keep it. And I can rely on myself to do so.
But the Biden Admin doesn’t track with this common sense:
Met some awesome young believers todays on Main Street in Newhall. I was leaving Smokehouse on Main after my 2-beers and a chapter of reading in a book. They were out witnessing, which was awesome. They are Master’s College students… one young man was from Missouri, the other was a So-Cal dude, and the gal was from Costa Rica. Her English was flawless… but it dawned on me later that her parents are probably missionaries. At ANY RATE, I am reposting this encounter I had from Grace Community to our Valley.
Originally posted April 26th, 2021.
(My Facebook descriptor) The tow-truck driver I hitched a ride with today was probably surprised at the level of conversation in a reasonable and rational way. I enjoyed the challenges, and I am sure Charlie did as well. topics of discussion I engaged:
Everything good comes from God, but Priests say when something bad happens, it’s you;
Wars caused by religion, most wars not religions;
Secular governments that rejected God killed more people in 100 years than all religions previously;
Belief in the afterlife creates a worse world;
Halloween (yep, I was taken aback as well).
While driving the 5am delivery around, the work van started to give me an “Overheating” warning. I finished my 2-remaining drops and headed back to the shop… but the van would have nothing of it. So I nursed it into Grace Community Church’s parking lot and the office called for a tow truck – which took a little over an hour-and-a-half (they were busy). One of the security guards came out to check on me and I asked him if I could use the restroom. He said yes. I told him I had to retrieve my mask, he mentioned no masks were mandated to wear, that I could if I wished. I chose to support the Church’s “gravitas” and went in mask-less. Awesome. I love Grace. As I was walking around to hit the head, the security guard witnessed to me… I thought that was more awesomer.
So when the tow truck service guy (Charlie, a nice guy) had me loaded up and we were driving out, he asked what the place was I was sitting at. I explained it was a church, one of the better ones. I mentioned a couple more things about it, and then Charlie started to criticize the Christian Faith (mainly Catholicism at first), speaking of greed, how the people say all good things come from God but then when something bad happens like an accident – we are to blame, how rich the Catholic Church is, and all the wars religion started, and how people who believe in an afterlife make the world worse.
(This is a general recalling of our conversation)
I mentioned to him that I cannot speak to his points regarding the Vatican, as, I am not Catholic. But I did choose to address a couple of his broader points. (I had to break into his speaking about one topic and then going to another.)
The first point I made is that the Bible does not promise your life to be “good,” and harm free. On the Contrary, the Bible – from Genesis to Revelations documents man’s fallen nature and that from Genesis to Revelation that mankind needs a savior… someone to step into the place of wretched humanity to save it. I said, we need saving, not comfort.
I also mentioned that Nietzsche said that the death of God in the 19th century would all but guarantee the bloodiest 20th century. I then noted in conversation that this prediction came true… telling Charlie that in less than 100 years, non-God movements in Communism and Marxism through Stalin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Hitler, and others, killed more people than ALL religions previous to the 20th century.
He broke in and said this wasn’t true, and I could tell his language barrier with me was frustrating him. So I jumped in when I had a chance and mentioned that two encyclopedia sets went through 10,000 years of warfare and categorized the reasons for these wars. I mentioned these encyclopedia sets by name: Encyclopedia of Wars, 3 volumes – and — The Encyclopedia of War, 5 Volumes. I told him that only 7% of all wars were religious, and that if you took out Islamic wars, all other religions cause about 3% of the wars in a 10,000 year period.
DATA POINTS FOR THE READER:
A recent comprehensive compilation of the history of human warfare, Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what atheists have considered to be ‘most’ really amounts to less than 7% of all wars. It is interesting to note that 66 of these wars (more than 50%) involved Islam, which did not even exist as a religion for the first 3,000 years of recorded human warfare. The authors are nine history professors who specifically conducted research or the text for a decade in order to chronicle a time span from 8000 BC to 2003 AD. From over 10,000 years… (RPT)
(A well known atheist agrees) Atheists often claim that religion fuels aggressive wars, both because it exacerbates antagonisms between opponents and also because it gives aggressors confidence by making them feel as if they have God on their side. Lots of wars certainly look as if they are motivated by religion. Just think about conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Asian subcontinent, Indonesia, and various parts of Africa. However, none of these wars is exclusively religious. They always involve political, economic, and ethnic disputes as well. That makes it hard to specify how much [of a] role, if any, religion itself had in causing any particular war. Defenders of religion argue that religious language is misused to justify what warmongers wanted to do independently of religion. This hypothesis might seem implausible to some, but it is hard to refute, partly because we do not have enough data points, and there is so much variation among wars. — Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God? (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009), 33-34
I then mentioned to him a study (I was wrong about the source, I thought Stanford — it was actually done by a University of Oregon psychologist) that found that a country’s belief in heaven and hell is related to its crime rates, and that a belief in a punitive God equals less crime. So belief in a God where our actions can be morally judged make a better society.
Charlie broke into discussion about Halloween for some reason, wanting a response about why people dress up in costumes. I said I do not know much beyond that it is a Pagan holiday of sorts, and that the Church wanted to evangelize these Pagans and so stuck a holiday close to it – All Saints Eve. (I may be wrong, but what Charlie then followed up with I knew was wrong. He said that the Church killing people had a connection to it.
I said I don’t think that is the case, mentioning the Druids and Irish Paganism being more connected to the issue than anything.*
He again brought up the Vatican, and I again noted I am not Catholic, and that the church I went to spent a lion’s share of their funds on missionaries around the world in tough places (Africa, Middle-East, and even one couple that would try to sneak across the border to North Korea at times), as well as having a large outreach to the poorer Hispanic area of the church’s influence.
We were at our destination finally (the shop that fixes our work truck and van.) I said, “Charlie, remember two things from this conversation. You were wrong, historically about religion and wars, as well as ‘religious’ people making the world worse. I ask you to remember these two examples because they are great examples of how you approach the Christian Faith: with bad facts and evidence. Try to approach these topics from a better starting point and you won’t be disappointed with the outcome.”
At that, we went our separate ways. After some paperwork of course. I did finish with “Charlie, I had a pleasure discussing this with you.” But in the back of my mind, I really was thinking:
*NOTE:
There’s no one explanation for how Halloween costumes originated. Much like the holiday itself, the practice of dressing up is the result of a hodgepodge of traditions from around the world.
Many historians suspect that the tradition has some basis in the Celtic festival of Samhain (also called Calan Gaeaf in Wales). Celebrated between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, Samhain marks the official start of winter—known to the Celts as the “dark season.” During Samhain, “the world of the gods was believed to be made visible to humankind,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
That wasn’t a comfort to the ancient Celts, who believed their deities were prone to playing tricks on human worshippers. Many festival participants disguised themselves as animals or beasts, hoping to hide from malevolent spirits who might bring them misfortune.
Move forward a few centuries and the modern-day practice of dressing up and trick-or-treating has its roots in the European custom of “mumming and guising.” Mummers would dress up in costumes, often woven from straw, and perform plays and songs for neighbors in exchange for food. Scottish and Irish immigrants brought that tradition to North America, where it later morphed into what we now know as trick-or-treating.
Halloween costumes didn’t experience their true heyday until the mid-1900s, though. For that, you can thank New York City entrepreneurs Ben and Nat Cooper, who started a company producing pop culture-themed costumes at a low cost. Ben Cooper, Inc., found a niche in helping kids become the characters they admired from television and comic books, often purchasing merchandising rights before said characters ever became popular. Due in no small part to the Cooper family’s innovation, Halloween costumes became an accessible and even necessary part of holiday festivities…..
This is an excerpt from Alex Berenson’s book, “Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives.” I hadn’t planned on it, but I wanted to get on the record a response to MIKE B., who said this in a conversation in December: “And they never ever early used them [respirators]. Ever”… AFTERsaying the Wayback Machine and the Tweetby Meredith Case, an internal medicine resident at Columbia, New York, Presbyterian Hospital, was a Russian plant and merely a right wing lie.
[This will make more sense as you read the below discussion and the excerpt ]
FACEBOOK CONVO
Here is my Original post (OP):
[Additions by me]
I did not realize that the reasons for ventilators was not to benefit the patients early on in the pandemic, but was a way to protect the staff. In NYC hospital 90% were moved almost immediately to ventilators….
….“to avoid aersolizing procedures [such as nebulizing masks] to protect staff.” Unfortunately, the overly aggressive use of ventilators backfired. Intubation should be a last-resort procedure. Ventilated patients are at high risk for bacterial lung infections. Most must be sedated with powerful opioids because ventilation is uncomfortable and painful. ….. [later in the fight, it was found that keeping patients sleeping on their sides and stomachs helped fight infection as blood flow to those portions of the lungs helped. Intubation forced patients on their backs.] ….. Worse, many early Covid patients received high-pressure ventilation. The goal was to keep their lungs inflated, but the high pressure appears to have destroyed the lungs of some patients…..
(Adaption from pages 66 and 67 of Pandemia)
THESE ARE THE THREE PICS POSTED ON MY FB (2 mobile phone screen shots and one pic):
Here is the rest of the conversation after the OP in PC Screen Shots… it all leads up to the reason behind the larger excerpt:
The part I want to highlight specifically is this:
And they never ever early used them. Ever — MIKE B.
Ever!
EXCERPT
Without a silver bullet that could defeat the virus, physicians were reduced to offering “supportive care.” In essence, they managed patients’ symptoms, trying to keep them alive until their bodies could defeat the virus on their own.
Ventilators—machines that breathed for patients who could not—quickly became a crucial tool in the fight. Physicians in China used ventilators aggressively. By early March, physicians in Italy had followed suit.
As a letter to a journal published by the Society of Critical Care _Medicine would later explain, “Experts from China, Europe, and the United States supported a strategy of intubating patients early under the premise that early intubation allowed for more controlled circumstances and would provide superior lung protection.22
The heavy use of ventilators, which were in limited supply, was one crucial reason that Neil Ferguson and other modelers became so concerned that coronavirus patients might overrun hospitals. Even the best-equipped hospitals do not keep huge numbers of ventilators in reserve. And using ventilators properly requires highly trained pulmonologists, nurses, and respiratory specialists.
But the early use of ventilators wasn’t meant to help only the patients.
Medical staff weren’t immune from the panic sweeping the world. Doctors didn’t know exactly how transmissible the virus might be, or how dangerous. Even if the virus’s risks were concentrated among the elderly, it had sickened and killed some people treating it. On March 18, an Italian physician died only days after warning that Italy was short on protective gear.23
The specter of health system collapse also loomed, if too many physicians and nurses were sickened or died—or became too afraid to work. In a grim piece titled “We’re Failing Doctors” in The Atlantic (more to come on The Atlantic, which would soon take a unique position in the American coronavirus media ecosystem), an emergency room physician warned,
No one is so fearless or stupid as to discount all risks. Physicians fled epidemics in ancient Greece, the black death in Europe, and the great influenza pandemic of 1918….
At some point, the system could break, and we will all be gone.24
Medical staff knew that ventilators could help protect them. Intubated patients no longer coughed. They also did not need to be treated with nebulizing masks that put even more virus-filled droplets in the air. And in addition to doing the patients’ breathing for them, ventilators could deliver doses of aerosolized steroids and other drugs.
A March 27, 2020, statement from the Food and Drug Administration offered a revealing look into the agency’s priorities: “FDA takes action to help increase U.S. supply of ventilators and respirators for protection of health care workers, patients.”25
Two days earlier, a young physician in New York had explained exactly what the FDA meant, writing that her hospital was intubating patients quickly “to avoid aerosolizing procedures to protect staff.”26 (She would later delete the tweet.)
Unfortunately, the overly aggressive use of ventilators backfired. Intubation should be a last-resort procedure. Ventilated patients are at high risk for bacterial lung infections. Most must be sedated with powerful opioids because ventilation is uncomfortable and painful. But those drugs carry their own dangers. And because sedated patients cannot move, they are at risk of developing bedsores.
Worse, many early Covid patients received high-pressure ventilation. The goal was to keep their lungs inflated, but the high pressure appears to have destroyed the lungs of some patients.
As early as April 8, only weeks after American hospitals began to see large numbers of Covid patients, Stat News reported:
Some critical care physicians are questioning the widespread use of the breathing machines for Covid-19 patients, saying that large numbers of patients could instead be treated with less intensive respiratory support….
The question is whether ICU physicians are moving patients to mechanical ventilators too quickly.27
Two weeks later, on April 22, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a stunning report from Northwell Health, a major hospital system in the New York City area.
Only 38 out of 1,151 patients who had been put on ventilators during the first Covid wave had been discharged, while 282 had died. The rest remained in the hospital, their prognosis grim. In other words, for ventilated patients for whom an outcome was available, almost 90 percent had died.28 For patients under 65 years old, ventilation appeared to be especially likely to lead to bad outcomes.
The Northwell study sped the end of overly aggressive ventilation tactics, which were already going out of favor. But we may never know how many people—especially in New York City in March and April.
Alex Berenson, Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2021), 65-68, 394.
26.Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson), “1/ Almost 90% of NYC patients put on ventilators…,” Twitter, April 23, 2020, 4:16 p.m., including a screenshot of Meredith (@thisismeredith), “One problem is the sheer number….,” Twitter, March 25, 2020, 7:50 a.m. My tweet and part of the screenshot are available at the, WAYBACK MACHINE. The complete screenshot is in my possession.
Personal Statement:J-and-J in May 2020, boosted with Covid, end of December. Raging headache for days. Like a bad cold, slight fever for 2-days, have lost all sense of smell and taste….just in time [/sarcasm] to try out my wife’s Christmas present – an air fryer.
A few thoughts on a Martin Luther quote I have seen used since 2020… first, the quote fashioned by RPT
I am only writing this post because I have just seen a similar Luther quote [albeit mine is more complete] on the Facebook of someone that should know better. One commentor noted:
False equivalency, among other logical fallacies. — C.P.
I responded thus (with a slight addition):
Really? A quote about the Black Plague?
The Bubonic plague was a deadly pandemic that wiped out a massive chunk of population in the World during the mid-1300s. In Europe alone the plague wiped out nearly 50% of Europe’s population. Some estimates even claim that Black Death wiped out around two-third of Europe’s population. According to National Geographic the plague killed around 25 million people, almost one-third of Europe’s population (National Geographic). The plague also killed half of London’s population in almost 4 years (Sciencemag). The Bubonic plague is reported to have killed an estimated 75–200 million people (Shipman). Historians report that people died rapidly. The streets were filled with corpses mounted over each other. And the priests were too scared to perform the death rites. Florence, a city of Italy, alone is reported to have 50,000 deaths out of a population of 80,000. The mortality rate was as high as 50% during the Bubonic plague era. (Joshua Mark)
….How serious is Covid-19 exactly? And how will the outcome of the pandemic differ if vaccines were mandatory rather than optional? What additional loss of life can be expected if we do not make vaccination compulsory?
That Covid-19 is serious is beyond question. But let’s look at a few markers to help us evaluate the severity of the risk to humanity.
The deadly Spanish Flu from 1918-1920 is estimated to have killed somewhere between 20-50 million people, or close to 3% of the world’s population. By contrast, Covid-19 has so far killed about 5.3 million people in two years. That represents about 0.07% of the global population.
How deadly is Covid-19? The overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of Covid has been estimated to be between 0.1% and 0.2%. Quoting from an analysis by Professor John P.A. Ioannidis of multiple studies which calculated inferred IFR by seroprevalence data:
“Interestingly, despite their differences in design, execution, and analysis, most studies provide IFR point estimates that are within a relatively narrow range. Seven of the 12 inferred IFRs are in the range 0.07 to 0.20 (corrected IFR of 0.06 to 0.16) which are similar to IFR values of seasonal influenza. Three values are modestly higher (corrected IFR of 0.25-0.40 in Gangelt, Geneva, and Wuhan) and two are modestly lower than this range (corrected IFR of 0.02-0.03 in Kobe and Oise).” (emphasis mine).
For people under 60, the IFR is much lower still. And for vaccinated people, the risk of death from Covid-19 is reduced about ten fold.
For a vaccinated person, the risk of Covid-19 is no worse than seasonal influenza.
And this was before Omicron, the new variant which looks set to become the dominant strain around the world in the coming weeks, and so far appears to cause much milder symptoms and a much lower fatality rate. Why are we still in panic mode?
Over the last two years, there were roughly 120 million all cause deaths. Only 5.3 million of those (less than 5% of all deaths) were Covid-19 deaths. Thanks to the media’s scaremongering, there are many people who seem to think that Covid-19 was the leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021. Based on historical mortality data we can estimate that deaths due to cardiovascular disease probably exceeded 40 million over the last two years, while cancer deaths are likely to have exceeded 20 million. That reality does not nullify or make light of the tragic 5.3 million Covid-19 deaths so far. But it helps to put Covid-19 in perspective. …..
AGAIN, this is in no way parallel to even the 1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic. The city had reached about 50,000 residence, and over the course of the fever 5,000 died. That is 5% of that cities population. Comparing…
These unparalleled public health actions were enacted for a virus with an infection mortality rate (IFR) roughly similar to seasonal influenza. Stanford’s John P.A. Ioannidis identified 36 studies (43 estimates) along with an additional 7 preliminary national estimates (50 pieces of data) and concluded that among people <70 years old across the world, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.57% with a median of 0.05% across the different global locations (with a corrected median of 0.04%). —AIER
Back in June of 2020 I noted the following:
The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected*jump, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26% — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago. — RPT
Keep in mind in March of 2020 I noted that the rates would be from 0.03% to 0.25% — not to brag or anything, but I am in the 23-studies lane-lines of the Stanford study mentioned in June. I just couldn’t differentiate between age groups, but that was assumed as the average age of deaths.
All this is to say is that to compare such an even is at best a non-sequitur. Much like the same person’s comparing
Dr. Sarfati, with whom I agree on most things, shows unfortunately his twisted logic on vaccines — all the while calling those who disagree with his position in the slightest: anti-vaxers.”
Here is his posting:
Anti-vaxers: Is there any other vaccine in history that required three doses in a year and yet still didn’t prevent transmission of the virus it was meant to protect against?
Reality: remember your childhood vaccines which kept you safe and which you are depriving your children from.
Here are the two responses I wish to note:
S.L. –I shouldn’t respond because I am not an ‘anti-vaxxer’ (I am vaccinated with every vaccine my GP recommended), but I’d just like to comment on this vaccine schedule. I (and most people my age) received FAR less vaccinations that suggested on the above or the current schedule in Australia. I received 6 vaccinations in my first five years of life in Germany in 1970: tuberculosis, smallpox, measles, diphtheria, polio and whooping cough. Some of these were boosted ONCE. So apart from the occasional influenza vaccine (which I take when the ‘season’ looks particularly ominous) I have had perhaps 15 shots in my life. My children (born in the early millennium in Australia) had many additional vaccinations but still not as many as required above. We followed the increased schedule but spaced out and separated the MMR vaccines at the suggestion of our pediatrician at the time. We also refused the HPV vaccine for both children at 14. They were not about to be sexually active. We decided (with them) that they can choose to take the HPV vaccine as adults. Both kids (19 and 22) are healthy and have always been. Same with me – though I’ve worked in education all my life i.e.. in contact with many different people every day and exposed to every ‘childhood disease’ outbreak you can think of. I have no compelling reason to accept uncritically that vaccinations requirements should have needed to go up the way they have because someone wants to improve our health. lol.
Here is my response as well… a bit shorter:
ME – I honestly do not know. Are those doses minimized due to age? And a single or two dose be given to adults? To Wit….
To support my observational question…. well, somewhat answer it — the ATLANTIC notes the following:
….10 micrograms of RNA in each Pfizer shot, a third of the 30-microgram recipe that’s given to people 12 and older. Further down the road, pending another set of votes, authorizations, and recommendations, kids 4 and younger will get a wee 3 micrograms, a tenth of what their parents get…..
Historically, variola major [smallpox] has a case-fatality rate of about 30% (FDA| TIME). In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic became the worst outbreak in the nation’s history. Of the nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis.
(FLASHBACK) Dr. Kelly Victory says delta variant is far, far less lethal
So, even if say 3 adult vaccination shots are needed for such a horrible disease… to require boosters and laws regulating Covid “vaccines,” is not where the evidence leads. The fatality rates and survivability of Covid compared and an argument for vaccinations is moot. Both in the IFR, CFR, and the efficacy of these “vaccines” for Covid are the basis to reject such logic in the OP (original post).
I have also in the past questioned the death rate and other factors are wildly overcounted.
A pair of gunshot deaths that counted among COVID fatalities have earned the ire of a county coroner in Colorado. Grand County, in the sparsely-populated (but breathtaking) northwestern quarter of the state, is home to fewer than 15,000 people and has been lucky enough to endure only a handful of deaths related to the Wuhan Virus.
But of those five deaths, County Coroner Brenda Bock says two actually died of gunshot wounds.
Bock sounded furious in her interview with CBS4 News in Denver, and with good reason. Grand County’s economy is heavily reliant on tourism, and as Bock told CBS4, “It’s absurd that they would even put that on there.”
“Would you want to go to a county that has really high death numbers?” she asked, presumably rhetorically. “Would you want to go visit that county because they are contagious? You know I might get it, and I could die if all of a sudden one county has a high death count. We don’t have it, and we don’t need those numbers inflated.”
Bock told CBS4 that because the victims had tested positive for COVID-19 within 30 days of having been shot, the county classified them as “deaths among cases.”
That’s a curious definition, but one required by the national reporting rules created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention….
Just one more of the many examples I could share is the New York Times getting 40% wrong of their “died from Covid-19 under 30-years old” front page news story. Mmmm, no, they didn’t die of Covid.
Another four-zero. Just sayin.
First Omicron Death (With or Of)
Promises, Promises
I.E., if masks work, why don’t they work? If lockdowns work, why don’t lockdowns work?
I think these stories are related to the non-sequitur nature of the OP… in that it is a false equivalency:
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton cover the recent Microsoft Employee Introductions during the company’s recent “Ignite” conference. This is a shorter version of a longer clip (LONG VERSION HERE), but the point of introducing “royalty” I thought deserved a segment of its own. I include the call by the blind gentleman.
A couple posts on the topic for the people who want to follow up on this:
‘I’m a Caucasian Woman:’ Microsoft Event Highlights the Future of Woke Capitalism (VOICES OF A NATION)
‘WTF Is This’? Microsoft Security Podcasters Introduce Themselves By Race, Gender, And Hairstyle (In Case You Couldn’t Tell By Looking At Them) (TWITCHY)
Microsoft Mocked for ‘Utterly Bananas’ Employee Introductions (RED STATE)
And a few weeks ago I heard something by Michael Knowles said at a DAILY WIRE symposium (DAILY WIRE BACKSTAGE: LIVE AT THE RYMAN) that really hit home with me. You always hear about “Leftism” being “religious,” or environmentalism being a “stand in religion,” and the like. This in my mind’s eye give the Postmodernist/Gnostic combo a real metaphysical “umph.”
Michael Horton defines some of the old vs. new aspects of “Gnosticism” (WAYBACK MACHINE). And Voddie Baucham describes how the Critical Race Theorists use it to “know” what is racist: “Voddie Baucham – What Is Ethnic Gnosticism?”
(Reform Wiki) In this clip, Pastor Voddie Baucham explains his phrase, “Ethnic Gnosticism,” which is the concept that certain people have a secret knowledge about racism because of their ethnicity.
I came across a comment on Facebook that I wish to refute as I am sure it is being widely used in conversations.
According to the American Medical Association 97% of all American Doctors have been vaccinated. They want to save lives even their own! We trust them when we’ve been in car accidents, when having babies, when being diagnosed with cancer, when in need of school vaccines, diabetes and any number of things we turn to doctors to fix. Please talk with your physician and save a life… hopefully your own!
A “FLASHBACK” EXAMPLE: What it is with 97%… climate ACTIVISTS love this number as well. We can see from this early example of Climate activists using the number, it was based on 77 participants:
(CLICK GRAPH TO ENLARGE IN SEPERATE WINDOW)
It looks like 98% of Climate Scientists support the “global warming” positions held by the “professional Left,” however, this is not the case.
This is the point I am making with the “Vaxxed Doctors” survey from the American Medical Association. Which is, there almost 97% was based on 300 physicians who RESPONDEDto the survey. In another survey done by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons of 700 physicians shows a different percentage.
(CLICK GRAPH TO ENLARGE IN SEPERATE WINDOW)
Of the 700 physicians responding to an internet survey by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), nearly 60 percent said they were not “fully vaccinated” against COVID.
Neither survey represents a random sample of all American physicians, but the AAPS survey shows that physician support for the mass injection campaign is far from unanimous.
“It is wrong to call a person who declines a shot an ‘anti-vaxxer,’” states AAPS executive director Jane Orient, M.D. “Virtually no physicians are ‘anti-antibiotics’ or ‘anti-surgery,’ whereas all are opposed to treatments that they think are unnecessary, more likely to harm than to benefit an individual patient, or inadequately tested.”
The AAPS survey also showed that 54 percent of physician respondents were aware of patients suffering a “significant adverse reaction.” Of the unvaccinated physicians, 80 percent said “I believe risk of shots exceeds risk of disease,” and 30% said “I already had COVID.”………
This has to do with as well which doctors belong to which organizations. For instance, I myself belong to AMAC, The Association of Mature American Citizens, and not AARP – American Association of Retired Persons, Why? Because the former uses my money in a way the latter does not that comports to my interests more closely. The former (AMAC) may support Crisis Pregnancy Centers rather than Planned Parenthood (AARP) – as one example.
So too do doctors and physicians belong to certain organizations that better represent their interests – or – respond to surveys from organizations [if they were to receive two “competing” surveys] they admire more.
At any rate, the AMA survey is not by any means the end all in percentages.
These are actual quotes from pieces I’ve just read. I don’t know why I’ve been ignoring this. Let me say that I’m serious about my respect for frontline workers. I’m confident THEY are NOT the ones calling for us to lose our jobs so they can do theirs. Politicians did that. 2/
“Tallia says his hospital is ‘managing, but just barely,’ at keeping up with the increased number of sick patients in the last three weeks. The hospital’s urgent-care centers have also been inundated, and its outpatient clinics have no appointments available.” 3/
“Dr. Bernard Camins, associate professor of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that UAB Hospital cancelled elective surgeries scheduled for Thursday and Friday of last week to make more beds available” 4/
“We had to treat patients in places where we normally wouldn’t, like in recovery rooms,” says Camins. “The emergency room was very crowded, both with sick patients who needed to be admitted” 5/
“In CA… several hospitals have set up large ‘surge tents’ outside their emergency departments to accommodate and treat … patients. Even then, the LA Times reported this week, emergency departments had standing-room only, and some patients had to be treated in hallways.” 6/
“In Fenton, Missouri, SSM Health St. Clare Hospital has opened its emergency overflow wing, as well as all outpatient centers and surgical holding centers, to make more beds available to patients who need them. Nurses are being “pulled from all floors to care for them,” 7/
“it’s making their pre-existing conditions worse,” she says. “More and more patients are needing mechanical ventilation due to respiratory failure” 8/
“From Laguna Beach to Long Beach, emergency rooms were struggling to cope with the overwhelming cases… and had gone into ‘diversion mode,’ during which ambulances are sent to other hospitals.” 9/
“Hospitals across the state are sending away ambulances, flying in nurses from out of state and not letting children visit their loved ones for fear they’ll spread… Others are canceling surgeries and erecting tents in their parking lots to triage the hordes of… patients.” 10/
“There’s a little bit of a feeling of being in the trenches. We’re really battling these infections to try to get them under control,” McKinnell said. “We’re still not sure if this is going to continue … “ 11/
“At Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, waiting rooms turned into exam areas as a medical tent was built in order to deal with the surge of patients. A Houston doctor said local hospital beds were at capacity” 12/
“Dr. Anthony Marinelli says they’ve seen a major spike in… cases. It’s so overwhelmed the community hospital that they’ve gone on bypass at times — that means they tell ambulances to bypass this ER and find another.” 13/
“Dr. Atallah, the chief of emergency medicine at Grady, says the hospital called on a mobile emergency department based nearly 250 miles away to help tackle the increasing patient demand. “At 500-plus patients a day you physically just need the space to put a patient in. “ 14/
“We’ve never had so many patients,” said Adrian Cotton, chief of medical operations at Loma Linda University Health in San Bernardino County.” 15/
“…at least one hospital has set up an outdoor triage tent to handle the overflow of people” “In Long Beach, hospitals have started visitor restrictions. In the South Bay, a conference center has been transformed into an ambulatory clinic.” 16/
We have signage set up all over the hospital to inform patients that, if they have any family members with even signs of symptoms, not to visit” “Loma Linda emergency physicians are seeing about 60 more patients a day than usual, Cotton said.” 17/
“About 150 patients have so far been treated in the tent, which is staffed according to the number of people inside. It’s expected to be up [for months].” 18/
“As the main emergency room gets full, patients are moved to the tent. For example, a patient who comes in with a broken arm is likely to be treated inside the tent, he said. Visitor restrictions have also been implemented.” “The county saw a 300-percent increase” 19/
“Overflow tents also have emerged in San Diego County hospitals. Though they haven’t pitched tents, most hospitals across Southern California have set up overflow areas inside their facilities.” 20/
Our workers are incredible and I know they’ve been trained to deal with this. But maybe the lockdown folks are correct. Maybe we opened up too quickly. Maybe we should stay in shutdown mode. I mean nothing like this has ever happened to our hospitals before?!
Watch Crowder DESTROY the Myth of “ICU Bed Shortage” | Louder With Crowder – Crowder cuts through the globalist media’s fear mongering and exposes what’s really going on in hospitals.
(OP – Original Post) Good presentation. This rant is not related to the video, but I was thinking about this today. Whenever there is a bad flu year, we always deal with the variants in years to come, and, typically they aren’t as deadly. Like Delta. So deaths, and hospitalization are typically lower than the Alpha strain. So tent triages and the like were set up for the 2017-2018 flu season — (the CDC estimates that between 46,000 and 95,000 Americans died due to influenza during the 2017-18 flu season. This resulted in an estimated 959,000 hospitalizations and a middle-ground of 61,099 deaths) and the subsequent variants were less deadly, but they are still floating around. But this seasons Delta Variant is less of a bugger than 2017-18, maybe even the 2012-2013 flu season — (56,000 deaths is the CDC estimate. 571,000 influenza-related hospitalizations). But people still want to live in fear, rather than live. Its sad.
(KRIS W. — a thoughtfully minded conservative) This doctor was great! I hope you are right about the numbers. I refuse to live in fear.
(ME)Kris W., So, the Alpha Covid strain was here in September of 2019. So the Covid season “A” was 2019-2020. We are now in a 2020-2021 season. The numbers from this season need to be separated from the previous. I bet we are closer to bad seasons from previous years. And next year will be better. But like other flu strains, we will have Covid with us forever. (Flu shots are a hodgepodge mixture of various strains, and people who get it hope one of the many strains in the shot get close to the actual, and so lessons the symptoms if they get the flu. Same here. These Covid strains may be in a cocktail mix in the future.)
FLASHBACK: Flatten the Curve (Originally posted May 27, 2020)
This first part of a multi-part post is merely to discuss what the Flattening the curve was for ~ AND THAT WAS ~ not over-burden our healthcare system.
…The goal is no longer to prevent the virus from spreading freely from person to person, as it was in the outbreak’s early days. Instead, the objective is to spread out the inevitable infections so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed with patients.
Public health officials have a name for this: Flattening the curve.
The curve they’re talking about plots the number of infections over time. In the beginning of an outbreak, there are just a few. As the virus spreads, the number of cases can spike. At some point, when there aren’t as many people left for the pathogen to attack, the number of new cases will fall. Eventually, it will dwindle to zero.
If you picture the curve, it looks like a tall mountain peak. But with containment measures, it can be squashed into a wide hill.
The outbreak will take longer to run its course. But if the strategy works, the number of people who are sick at any given time will be greatly reduced. Ideally, it will fall below the threshold that would swamp hospitals, urgent care clinics and medical offices, said Dr. Gabor Kelen, chair of the emergency medicine department at Johns Hopkins University…
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Why We Should Still Try To Contain The Coronavirus
The coronavirus outbreak that has sickened at least 125,000 people on six continents and caused nearly 4,600 deaths is now an official global pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to contain it, health experts say. The goal is no longer to prevent the virus from spreading freely from person to person, as it was in the outbreak’s early days. Instead, the objective is to spread out the inevitable infections so that the healthcare system isn’t overwhelmed with patients. Public health officials have a name for this: Flattening the curve. (Healy and Khan, 3/11)
ABC NEWS: Why Flattening The Curve For Coronavirus Matters (March 11, 2020)
NBC NEWS: What Is ‘Flatten The Curve‘? The Chart That Shows How Critical It Is For Everyone To Fight Coronavirus Spread. (March 11, 2020)
Confirming the above, you will see that the trend line was to spread out the disease, not to defeat it. And this endeavor would take two weeks at the least, six at the most:
Anywhere from 20 percent to 60 percent of the adults around the world may be infected with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. That’s the estimate from leading epidemiological experts on communicable disease dynamics.
[….]
So yes, even if every person on Earth eventually comes down with COVID-19, there are real benefits to making sure it doesn’t all happen in the NEXT FEW WEEKS.
Dena Grayson, MD, PhD, a Florida-based expert in Ebola and other pandemic threats, told Medscape Medical News that EvergreenHealth in Kirkland, Washington, is a good example of what it means when a virus overwhelms healthcare operations.
[….]
Grayson points out that the COVID-19 cases come on top of a severe flu season and the usual cases hospitals see, so the bar on the graphic is even lower than it usually would be.
“We have a relatively limited capacity with ICU beds to begin with,” she said.
So far, closures, postponements, and cancellations are woefully inadequate, Grayson said.
“We can’t stop this virus. We can hope to contain it and slow down the rate of infection,” she said.
“We need to right now shut down all the schools, preschools, and universities,” Grayson said. “We need to look at shutting down public transportation. We need people to stay home — AND NOT FOR A DAY BUT FOR A COUPLE OF WEEKS.”
The graphic was developed by visual-data journalist Rosamund Pearce, based on a graphic that had appeared in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) article titled “Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza,” the Times reports.
To slow down the spread of the pandemic virus in areas that are beginning to experience local outbreaks and thereby allow time for the local health care system to prepare additional resources for responding to increased demand for health care services (CLOSURES UP TO 6 WEEKS)
On the other hand, if that same large number of patients arrived at the hospital at a slower rate, for example, OVER THE COURSE OF SEVERAL WEEKS, the line of the graph would look like a longer, flatter curve.
And, here is a conversation via my Facebook that elucidates how people have this idea of saving lives mixed up with not pressuring or overwhelming our healthcare system
EXCERPT FROM FACEBOOK CONVO
(ME)
Steve W — you do know Steve that the same amount of death from and infection due to Covid-19 exists under the trend line of doing nothing and the most strict quarentine rules…. right? In other words, we are not saving lives. And, in fact, we have made it worse for our economy next fall/winter because it is coming back as it makes its rounds around the world.
(STEVE W)
Sean Giordano I have heard that said but not seen it from a credible source. So I think that is false.
(ME)
Steve W what is false?
(STEVE W)
Sean Giordano “the same amount of death from and infection due to Covid-19 exists under the trend line of doing nothing”
(ME)
Steve Wallace now you are saying don’t listen to Dr. Fauci?
Many bemoan Trump for not listening to him (even though he has), and some I meet do not support Fauci in the idea that this was to elongate the process as to not put any undue stress on our health care system. Even though he clearly announced multiple times this was the reason to do so
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUMmentions the following, and all the graphs of the United States shown by Doctors Fauci and Birx have all used this idea as well (graph below from CDC and WEF)
CHRIS WALLACE: All right. You talk about slowing the virus down. You talk a lot, and I’ve very used to this now, you can either have a bump like this of cases or you could make it maybe the same total cases, but it’s a much more gradual and slower and longer curve. I want to put up some numbers. We have in this country about 950,000 hospital beds, and about 45,000 beds in Intensive Care Unit. How worried are you that this virus is going to overwhelm hospitals, not just beds, but ventilators? We only have 160,000 ventilators. And could we be in a situation where you have to ration who gets the bed, who gets the ventilator?
DR. FAUCI: OK. So let me put it in a way that it doesn’t get taken out of context. When people talk about modeling where outbreaks are going, the modeling is only as good as the assumptions you put into the model. And what they do, they have a worst-case scenario, a best-case scenario, and likely where it’s going to be. If we have a worst-case scenario, we’ve got to admit it, we could be overwhelmed. Are we going to have a worst-case scenario? I don’t think so. I hope not.
What are we doing to not have that worst-case scenario? That’s when you get into the things that we’re doing. We’re preventing infections from going in with some rather stringent travel restrictions. And we’re doing containment and mitigation from within. So, at a worst-case scenario, anywhere in the world, no matter what country you are, you won’t be prepared. So our job is to not let that worst-case scenario happen.
(…. STILL ME….)
STEVE W for you not to understand the goal of all this, and then get on here sharing insights is itself insightful. I am not blaming you STEVE… I just see this fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying factors and goals of this whole endeavor of bending the curve as applicable to MANY A PERSON in these discussions here and elsewhere on social media. I am giving you, in fact, the most respectful benefit of a doubt, but am merely in conversation with you at this moment. This conversation is just multiplied (others are having) across social media many fold. Blessings to you and yours friend. Yet, this foundational view is not known well by others… that is, the reason behind flattening the curve as well as the data underneath the trend line.
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
Here I wish to switch gears a bit and start to discuss another “info graphic” post from MY SITES FACEBOOK I shared with my readers. And since the entire idea behind “flattening the curve” was to keep the health and hospital system working well by not getting inundated all at once, this should have lasted two or three weeks. Not as long as it has — our economy is important too! Damnit!
CAPACITY OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
The following was compiled after a conversation I had on Facebook. It touches on some of the issues above. Enjoy
I note the bell curve because many are under the false impression we are doing this to “save lives.” This was never the case.
The quarantine was to lessen the apex of the bell curve as to not put pressure on the hospital/health system. The same amount of people in the elongated “quarantine bell curve” (the trend-line) would die and get sick. In other words, the same statistics exist below the line (POWERLINE). Here is a site cataloging the hospitalizations for the rona that POWERLINE used – US CORONAVIRUS HOSPITALIZATIONS …they used both the CDC site and this one, but the CDC site has lower hospitalizations, so they opted for the most updated numbers. WHICH AS OF APRIL 21ST STAND AT 84,292 HOSPITALIZATIONS FROM JANUARY TILL NOW. This is important, because, the flu season of 2017-2018 we saw 810,000 hospitalization, and our health system didn’t collapse. Nor did the Swine Flu of 2009-to-2010, which saw 60-million American infected and 300,000 hospitalizations.
This then may explain why all the field hospital’s the ARMY CORE OF ENGINEERS built are being dismantled without a single bed being used.
The panic and fear among the people who cannot be bothered to read the actual statistics about this pandemic is what should concern most preppers. In fact, this virus has been so overhyped that the Army’s field hospital in Seattle, an “epicenter” of the pandemic has closed after three days without seeing one single COVID-19 patient. According to a report by Military.com, the hastily built field hospital set up by the Army in Seattle’s pro football stadium is shutting down without ever seeing a patient. [….] The decision to close the Seattle field hospital comes amid early signs that the number of new cases could be hitting a plateau in New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic in the U.S., and other states. At a news conference Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “Overall, New York is flattening the curve.” — ZERO HEDGE (see: MILITARY TIMES | DAILY CALLER)
Unlike the Mercy, the Comfort is treating COVID-19 patients on board as well as patients who do not have the virus. The ship has treated more than 120 people since it arrived March 30, and about 50 of those have been discharged, said Lt. Mary Catherine Walsh. The ship removed half of its 1,000 beds so it could isolate and treat coronavirus patients. [The Mercy has seen 48 patients, all non-Covid related] (THE STAR)
And literally handfulls of patients on the Comfort (New York City) and the Comfort (Los Angeles) — *see comment below. There was never a shortage of respirators (NATIONAL REVIEW), and we may surpass the 2018-to-2019 flu death rate, but come nowhere close to the 2017-to-2018 flu death rate:
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
And it seems that we are reaching a plateau with The Rona, so there is good news in this regard (POWERLINE).
* Here is a comment from the Military Times article from a few days ago:
So, why did we spend all that Taxpayer’s money to move the Comfort to NYC and all the added Military medical personnel to staff the Javitt’s Center? Because Cuomo was crying WOLF.
“So far, the thousands of beds provided by a converted convention center and a hospital ship have not been needed, but the extra personnel are coming in handy for the city’s civilian hospitals.
About 200 doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and others are working in New York’s medical centers, where bed space has not been overwhelmed, but where hospital-acquired coronavirus cases have sidelined civilian staff.”
…TO WIT…
HOSPITALS GOING BANKRUPT
VOX actually has a decent story on this:
Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston is laying off 900 people from its 17,000-person staff and asking full-time salaried employees to take a 15 percent pay cut, according to the Post & Courier; the hospital says it’s not laying off front-line workers at this time.
Essentia Health, a major medical system of clinics and hospitals in Duluth, Minnesota, is laying off 500 workers, per KBJR.
The Cookeville Regional Medical Center in Tennessee will be furloughing 400 of its 2,400-person staff, and a few hundred others will see a cut in their hours, Fox 17 Nashville reports.
Boston Medical Center is furloughing 10 percent of its staff, about 700 people, according to the Boston Globe.
Trinity Health Mid-Atlantic, which runs five hospitals in the Philadelphia area and employs 125,000 people there, will furlough an unspecific percentage of its staff, per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Two hospital systems in West Virginia are furloughing upward of 1,000 employees combined, Metro News reports.
The largest hospital system in eastern Kentucky is laying off 500 workers, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
I’m sure there are many more stories like these. But you get the idea.
Hospitals have typically said in these announcements that they are starting with nonmedical staff for furloughs and reduced hours, which is no solace to those workers but softens the impact on our medical capacity.
But it’s not clear how long medical systems can avoid cutting doctors and nurses as well, and some of them clearly cannot. I heard from a nurse in Texas, who asked that neither she nor her hospital be named for fear of professional repercussions, who has been furloughed because of the ongoing economic crisis.
She said how constrained she felt by the news. If she wanted to help with the coronavirus response by taking a job with a travel nursing service offering temporary postings in Covid-19 hot spots, for example, she would lose her old job and her health insurance.
”It really is frustrating to hear that you’re a hero but also we don’t value you enough to prepare or pay you,” she said. “I would be happy to temporarily relocate, work in a hot spot, and make the same wages as I normally would. I can’t afford to work for free, exactly, but it’s frustrating if I can’t work at all.”
Hospitals have taken huge revenue losses as they postpone elective surgeries and other routine care so they can make more staff and space available for the Covid-19 response. Some hospitals expect to lose half their income, and the top industry trade groups have warned that hundreds of hospitals could close after this crisis.
Congress pumped $100 billion into US hospitals as part of its first stimulus package, and Democratic leaders are already calling for another $100 billion in the next stimulus bill they hope Congress will pass.
But that may still not be enough, in the end. When one in four rural hospitals were already vulnerable to closure before the coronavirus struck, the current pandemic is almost certainly going to leave some hospitals with no choice but to close, no matter how much money the federal government provides….
And to compliment the Left leaning VOX article is the “Right” leaning FEDERALIST article:
….During a press conference Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis noted that health experts initially projected 465,000 Floridians would be hospitalized because of coronavirus by April 24. But as of April 22, the number is slightly more than 2,000.
Even in New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo said last month he would need 30,000 ventilators, hospitals never came close to needing that many. The projected peak need was about 5,000, and actual usage may have been even lower.
Other overflow measures have also proven unnecessary. On Tuesday, President Trump said the USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship that had been deployed to New York to provide emergency care for coronavirus patients, will be leaving the city. The ship had been prepared to treat 500 patients. As of Friday, only 71 beds were occupied. An Army field hospital set up in Seattle’s pro football stadium shut down earlier this month without ever having seen a single patient.
It’s the same story in much of the country. In Texas, where this week Gov. Greg Abbott began gradually loosening lockdown measures, including a prohibition on most medical procedures, hospitals aren’t overwhelmed. In Dallas and Houston, where coronavirus cases are concentrated in the state, makeshift overflow centers that had been under construction might not be used at all.
In Illinois, where hospitals across the state scrambled to stock up on ventilators last month, fewer than half of them have been put to use—and as of Sunday, only 757 of 1,345 ventilators were being used by COVID-19 patients. In Virginia, only about 22 percent of the ventilator supply is being used.
Meanwhile, hospitals and health care systems nationwide have had to furlough or lay off thousands of employees. Why? Because the vast majority of most hospitals’ revenue comes from elective or “non-essential” procedures. We’re not talking about LASIK eye surgery but things like coronary angioplasty and stents, procedures that are necessary but maybe not emergencies—yet. If hospitals can’t perform these procedures because governors have banned them, then they can’t pay their bills, or their employees.
To take just one example, a friend who works in a cardiac intensive care unit (ICU) in rural Virginia called recently and told me about how they had reorganized their entire system around caring for coronavirus patients. They had cancelled most “non-essential” procedures, imposed furloughs and pay cuts, and created a special ICU ward for patients with COVID-19. So far, they have had only one patient. One. The nurses assigned to the COVID-19 ward have very little to do. In the entire area covered by this hospital system, only about 30 people have tested positive for COVID-19.
If Hospitals Can Handle The Load, End The Lockdowns
I’m sure the governors and health officials who ordered these lockdowns meant well. They based their decisions on deeply flawed and woefully inaccurate models, and they should have been less panicky and more skeptical, but they were facing a completely new disease about which, thanks to China, they had almost no reliable information.
However, in hindsight it seems clear that treating the entire country as if it were New York City was a huge mistake that has cost millions of American jobs and destroyed untold amounts of wealth. Now that we know our hospitals aren’t going to be overrun by COVID-19 cases, governors and mayors should immediately reverse course and begin opening their states and communities for business…..
I wanted to post some responses what has been becoming a popular argument. For instance I came across this graphic on a friends Facebook:
It came up with a family member’s conversations as well. So I wanted to make accessible some responses.
MASKS AND SEATBELTS:
The first example in this section comes from ECONLOG’S Bryan Caplan (Professor of Economics at George Mason University):
….The obvious place to start is: Almost no one thought that wearing masks was a good thing before Covid-19. Yet contagious respiratory diseases that kill have been around longer than humans. So if the “In exchange for slight inconvenience and discomfort, we save lives,” argument were airtight, we should have been wearing masks all along – and should plan on doing so forever. Which seems crazy.
You could reply, “That’s a straw man. The real argument is that masks pass a cost-benefit test.” If so, that leaves anti-maskers with two obvious margins to think about.
1. The degree of effectiveness. The most popular version of this objection is that masks don’t save lives. But once you start doing cost-benefit analysis, it is sufficient to claim that masks don’t save enough lives. The evidence from Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) is surprisingly supportive of this position. (And if you deem the RCTs subpar, please join me in calling for large-scale Voluntary Human Experimentation to settle the question once and for all). Ultimately, however, I still suspect that masks reduce contagion by 10-15%.
3. The degree of dehumanization. Personally, I only find masks marginally uncomfortable. But I hate wearing them, and I dislike being around people who wear them. Why? Because a big part of being human is showing other people our faces – and seeing their faces in return. Smiling at a stranger. Seeing your child laugh. Pretending to be angry. Seeing another person’s puzzlement. Masks take most of those experiences away. At the same time, they moderately reduce audibility. Which further dehumanizes us. How many times during Covid have you struggled to understand another person? To be heard? Indeed, how many times have you simply abandoned a conversation because of masks? I say the dehumanization is at least five times as bad as the mere discomfort. And if you reply, “Want to see other people’s faces and hear other people’s voices? Just Zoom!,” I will shake my head in sorrow that you’re dehumanized enough to say such a thing.
Am I just being a big baby about this? I think not. Suppose humanity could eliminate all disease by wearing bags over our heads forever. Would you be willing to go through life not seeing the faces of your children? Would you want your child to go through life not seeing the faces of their friends? Well, during Covid we’ve moved at least 25% in that dystopian direction. The word “hellscape” is not out of place. I’ve never been a fan of the veiling of women, but I had to live through Covid to realize how horribly dehumanizing the custom really is.
What if the choice was between masks and a 50% annual chance of death? The reasonable reaction would probably be, “Fine, we’ll be severely dehumanized, but we’ll survive. Just like war. I guess I’ll take it until a better deal comes along.” When the choice is between masks and a 0.5% annual chance of death, however, the reasonable reaction is rather, “I’ll take my chances and live like a human being.” Indeed, once you’re old enough, even a 50% annual chance of death starts to look like a good deal. My considered judgment: If another Covid strikes when I’m 80, I do not want my grandchildren to wear masks around me. I want to enjoy their laughter while I still can…..
The masks are dehumanizing, seatbelts are not. The argument against women being forced to wear burkas in many counties in the Middle-East is that they dehumanizes them.
One of the main points is that almost every study shows a very slight improvement at best. Here, for instance is a CDC study showing how ineffective they are — much more-so than seatbelts.
Here is the CDC STUDY: “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures”
In our systematic review, we identified 10 RCTs that reported estimates of the effectiveness of face masks in reducing laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the community from literature published during 1946–July 27, 2018. In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks (RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.51–1.20; I2 = 30%, p = 0.25) (Figure 2). …. None of the household studies reported a significant reduction in secondary laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infections in the face mask group (11–13,15,17,34,35)….
[….]
Disposable medical masks (also known as surgical masks) are loose-fitting devices that were designed to be worn by medical personnel to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds, and to protect the wearer against splashes or sprays of bodily fluids (36). There is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza virus transmission either when worn by the infected person for source control or when worn by uninfected persons to reduce exposure. Our systematic review found no significant effect of face masks on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza….
Here is CITY JOURNAL’S last two paragraph’s of an excellent article: DO MASKS WORK?
In sum, of the 14 RCTs that have tested the effectiveness of masks in preventing the transmission of respiratory viruses, three suggest, but do not provide any statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis, that masks might be useful. The other eleven suggest that masks are either useless—whether compared with no masks or because they appear not to add to good hand hygiene alone—or actually counterproductive. Of the three studies that provided statistically significant evidence in intention-to-treat analysis that was not contradicted within the same study, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than hand hygiene alone, one found that the combination of surgical masks and hand hygiene was less effective than nothing, and one found that cloth masks were less effective than surgical masks.
Hiram Powers, the nineteenth-century neoclassical sculptor, keenly observed, “The eye is the window to the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth.” The best available scientific evidence suggests that the American people, credulously trusting their public-health officials, have been blocking the door to the soul without blocking the transmission of the novel coronavirus.
MORE EXAMPLES:
Here are two short videos via BILL MAHER making sense:
Some posts by American Institute for Economic Research (AIER):
…Princeton’s notorious utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer now joins Ezekiel “Mandate” Emanuel in an internationally syndicated column urging that everyone be legally required to take the COVID jab.
Singer justifies this imposition by comparing the proposal to laws that require people to wear seat belts in cars. From, “Why Vaccination Should be Compulsory:”
We are now hearing demands for the freedom to be unvaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. Brady Ellison, a member of the United States Olympic archery team, says his decision not to get vaccinated was “one hundred percent a personal choice,” insisting that “anyone that says otherwise is taking away people’s freedoms.”
The oddity, here, is that laws requiring us to wear seat belts really are quite straightforwardly infringing on freedom, whereas laws requiring people to be vaccinated if they are going to be in places where they could infect other people are restricting one kind of freedom in order to protect the freedom of others to go about their business safely.
Good grief. There is a huge difference between a law that requires wrapping a cloth belt around one’s body while in a moving car and injecting chemicals intoone’s system. Yes, both acts involve attempts to promote public safety. But the former’s interference with liberty is de minimus, while the latter is one of the most potentially portentous that can be asked of people.
In free societies, legal mandates must be reasonable. A national vaccination mandate — which would be unprecedented — fails that test.
Why aren’t near-universal mandates “reasonable?” Well, young people almost never become seriously ill from COVID — although a very few certainly do. But there is also some evidence of a very slight — but potentially serious — risk from the vaccines for the young. If we care about freedom, surely, for the young, vaccination may be the preferred — but should not be the mandatory — course.
There is also significant evidence that people who recovered from COVID already have significant natural resistance to the disease. That being so, is it reasonable to force people with antibodies to involuntarily inject substances into their bodies, particularly since there is a very slight potential for serious bodily injury or death from the vaccine? No.
Finally, the people most at risk of serious disease are the unvaccinated. People who choose to go unprotected are risking mostly themselves. Allowing them to face that risk is more reasonable than violating their personal autonomy…..
Unlike vaccine injury, there is no genetic risk to seat belt injury; unlike vaccines, the risk of seatbelt injure is random, and is therefore truly share among all people. People injured by one vaccine likely have a higher probability of serious adverse health outcomes from additional vaccines.
Unlike vaccines, seat belts routinely are subject to recall due to injury lawsuits, providing essential product quality feedback to seat belt and automobile manufacturers. By contrast, vaccine manufacturers are immune to liability lawsuits. Instead, families of individuals killed or injured by vaccines have to sue the US government – specifically the Department of Health of Human Services, via the Vaccine injury Compensation Program. Liability for vaccine injury was removed for vaccine manufacturers and for medical doctors and nurses in 1986 with the National Vaccine Injury Act. No vaccine injury damages visited upon vaccine manufacturers compel them to improve their product. Instead, vaccine manufacturers and the HHS are incentived to deny that vaccine injuries and death occur.
In an excellent refutation, POOR ROGER’S ALMANNAC (love the name) puts to rest this analogy:
….However, there are a few things wrong with this argument.
The State owns the roads. It licenses drivers and autos to use those roads. It develops and enforces the rules which all drivers are expected to adhere to and, if they do not, it punishes them for the infractions. Whether you agree or disagree with State ownership of roads is irrelevant and a completely separate issue. The State owns them, it can do with them whatever it wants. This is a property rights question and should not be confused with a public health crisis in a pandemic.
The State does not own our bodies or faces. It does not own the air we breathe. It does not own the space in which we live or move. These are all ours, personally and privately, to use as we see fit, within certain restrictions, such as, not violating someone else’s air, body, or space. The State has no business trying to restrict, regulate, or order what we do with our air, our bodies, and our spaces. This, too, is a property rights issue and, as such, must be kept in perspective.
Seat belts are intended for one purpose only–to afford some measure of protection to the wearer in the event that an accident occurs. There are decades of data which prove that a person who wears a seat belt has a better chance of survival in an accident than a person who does not. This cannot be denied. However, a seat belt only protects one person–the wearer. It is useless and has no value to anyone else.
Face masks (I am told) are meant to protect, not only the wearer, but also those people the wearer comes into close proximity or contact with. If they protected only the wearer, the comparison with seat belts might be a little more palatable, but that is not the assertion. “You must wear them to protect others!” is the narrative. This moves the argument from one of property rights to the moral sphere, which are absolutely not the same.
Seat belts are of value only to the wearer AND ONLY THEN if an accident occurs. Under normal driving, the belt offers nothing more than, well, for want of a better word, assurance. However, if an accident does occur, it can be the difference between life and death. The key thing to remember, though, is that a motorist MUST be involved in an accident BEFORE value is received from the seat belt.
If a face mask and seat belt use are synonomous, then it must follow that face masks are valuable ONLY to the wearer AND ONLY THEN if he/she is “accidentally” infected. Wait a minute, though. Isn’t the argument that the mask is supposed to prevent the infection (accident), not to offer insurance against harm in the event of one. Not only are face masks dissimilar to seat belts in the persons they protect, but also in the manner of protection.
To be honest, if an automobile analogy is to be made with respect to face masks, it would be more useful to equate the mask to a Tesla self-driving auto, which (I am told) is supposed to protect not only those within the car, but other motorists within the vicinity as well. Considering Tesla’s “safety record” (I use that term loosely), this comparison might hold up quite well, since face masks also do not perform to the expectation of those who believe in them.
Seat belts do. No comparison.
Oh, by the way, I nearly missed this. Whether we are talking about seat belts or masks does not matter. The State can make all the rules it wants to and try as hard as it can to enforce those rules, but at the end of the day, it cannot prevent auto accidents from happening nor can it prevent someone from getting sick by catching a cold or flu virus. The State certainly cannot prevent a death, regardless of the cause, when the Grim Reaper calls.
God can. Perhaps we should be talking about misplaced faith.
I AM COMBINING A COUPLE OF POSTS TO MAKE THE POINT — IN OONE PLACE — THAT THE BIDEN ADMIN COULD HAVE WITHDRAWN FROM AFGHANISTAN DIFFERENTLY.
100% FED-UP notes the following: “VIDEO Emerges of Biden Saying Timeline And Manner Of Afghanistan Withdrawal Was His Decision“
….Social media and leftist mainstream media are frantically trying to spin the military failure in Afghanistan on anyone but Biden, but he said it was “his decision.” Biden ignored Trump’s phased plan to leave just as he ignored President Trump’s border policy. Both are now epic failures……
JUST THE NEWS had a decent little blurb worth sharing — because I care:
Trump bombed Taliban to negotiating table; some fear Biden let them waltz to Kandahar
…..“We’re going to come back and hit you harder than any country has ever been hit,” Trump said he told Akhundzada, recounting the threatened consequences if the Taliban failed to make peace. “And your village, where I know you are and where you have everybody, that’s going to be the point at which the first bomb is dropped.”
A few hours after that March 2020 call, Trump put an insurance payment down on the threat. When the Taliban attacked an Afghan checkpoint shortly after Trump hung up, U.S. fighter jets rained down fury on the attackers. A stung Taliban immediately called for de-escalation, saying it was committed to the “plans to implement all parts of the agreement one after another to prevent conflict escalation.”
[….]
Trump and his advisers relentlessly used air power to keep the Taliban in check, making the appearance of a deadly Predator drone or warplane a constant threat. In 2019, the year before the Taliban agreed to peace talks, U.S. aircraft flew 2,434 strike sorties, releasing 7,423 weapons, the highest total ever recorded by the Air Force’s Central Command.
But since the Biden transition, the Taliban have refused the negotiation table and instead marched with surprising speed, capturing control of two-third of Afghanistan after the fall of its second biggest city Kandahar on Thursday.
The U.S. Air Force recently acknowledged a steep decline in air sorties on Biden’s watch…..
The Trafalgar Group surveyed over 1,000 potential 2022 American voters and found that 69.3% of the overall participants disapproved of Biden’s handling in Afghanistan, according to the Convention of States Action’s Monday press release. The majority in the bracket, 59.5%, said they “strongly disapprove” of the president’s performance, while the other 10% said they “disapprove.” (DAILY CALLER)
FLASHBACK:
In March 2009 Barack Obama reached out to the Taliban terrorist organization for peace talks.
Joe Biden at the time told reporters “only 5% of the Taliban is incorrigible.”
In August 2010 Barack Obama removed the Taliban from the national terror list.
In May 2012 Barack Obama rewarded the Taliban terrorists with their own office in Qatar for peace talks.
Also in May 2012 the Taliban bombed Kabul two hours after Obama announced peace talks with the terrorist group.
In 2012 the Obama administration even paid for the Taliban peace office in Qatar.
In 2013 Barack Obama secretly released five deadly Taliban prisoners from Gitmo in exchange for peace talks.
In 2014 the Taliban officially released a statement on victory in Afghanistan 6 years into the Obama presidency.
So, in a previous post it is shown the Biden Admin nixed many key components to the withdrawal part of getting out Afghanistan. Now, we know that the treaty the media, Democrats, and Biden keeps referring to….
But here’s the deal: You know — I wish you’d one day say these things — you know as well as I do that the former President made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forces out of Afghanistan by May 1. — JOE BIDEN
….was in fact conditional.
DEFINITION
conditional: subject to one or more conditions or requirements being met; made or granted on certain terms. “the consortium has made a conditional offer”
synonyms: subject to ✦ dependent on ✦ depending on ✦ contingent on ✦ hingeing on ✦ resting on ✦ hanging on ✦ based on ✦ determined by ✦ controlled by ✦ tied to ✦ bound up with ✦ contingent ✦ dependent ✦ qualified ✦ with conditions (attached) ✦ with reservations ✦ limited ✦ restrictive ✦ provisional ✦ stipulatory ✦ provisory
… Biden can go only so far in claiming the agreement boxed him in. IT HAD AN ESCAPE CLAUSE: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did, but Biden chose to stay in it, although he delayed the complete pullout from May to September.
Chris Miller, acting defense secretary in the final months of the Trump administration, chafed at the idea that Biden was handcuffed by the agreement.
“If he thought the deal was bad, he could have renegotiated. He had plenty of opportunity to do that if he so desired,” Miller, a top Pentagon counterterrorism official at the time the Doha deal was signed, said in an interview.
The piece goes on to acknowledge that that course of action may have led to difficulties of its own, but Biden should have been able to rely on the decades of foreign-policy experience he has boasted as having to craft a better deal…..
…IT HAD AN ESCAPE CLAUSE: The U.S. could have withdrawn from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed. They did…
So according to the “deal itself” and the Biden Admin ignoring that and getting rid of the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) — as the original post details below — Afghanistan is 100% Biden’s issue. Period!
The UPDATED VIDEO can be found at the bottom of the post. (Originally posted Aug 18th)
Here is an excerpt, you should read the whole article!
Joe Biden’s State Department moved to cancel a critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul, The National Pulse can exclusively reveal.
[….]
The document is dated June 11, 2021, though The National Pulse understands the decision to pause the program may have come as early as February, both undermining the original Trump-era date for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, and certainly giving the Taliban time to threaten American assets and lives on the run up to Joe Biden’s September 11th date of withdrawal.
The subject line reads: “(SBU) Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau,” and the body of the document recommends:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), and direct a further review of certain associated Department requirements and capabilities.”
It goes on:
“That you direct the discontinuation of the establishment, and termination of, CCR, consistent with the applicable legal requirements, necessary stakeholder engagement, and any applicable changes to the Foreign Affairs Manual and other requirements.”
The document reveals the recommendations were approved on June 11th 2021.
Speaking exclusively to The National Pulse, former President Donald J. Trump blasted Biden’s irresponsible move:
“My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”
In a lengthy article in Vanity Fair from May 2021, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) – also referred to in overlap with a predecessor/partner bureau called “OpMed” is described as a “little-known team of medics and miracle workers—hidden deep within the U.S. Department of State.”
“Even before COVID reared its head, OpMed was finding ways to do all sorts of things, serving as the hidden hand behind daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad,” the article states, before going on to quote Secretary of State Tony Blinken on the importance of the program’s goals.
“The Bureau of Medical Services’ Directorate of Operation—or ‘OpMed,’ as we call it—is a lifeline for the Department of State and the American people… Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis. During the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, OpMed was integral to our evacuation and repatriation of 100,000 Americans to the United States as countries began locking down their borders.”
But The National Pulse understands that career officials inside the State Department objected to the Trump-era aim of creating a Contingency and Crisis Response bureau with the express purpose of avoiding a future Benghazi-style situation for Americans overseas.
Instead, Biden’s team revoked the funding and the approval for the plan, even as the COVID-19 crisis reasserted itself, and and Afghanistan withdrawal loomed………
NEWSBUSTERS has this updated CNN clip where Darrell Issa schools Jim Acosta
There’s a reason why you don’t see conservatives on CNN very often.
Hack journalist Jim Acosta couldn’t keep up as his Republican guest, Rep. Darrell Issa [R-CA], schooled him on his own show, Sunday, over President Biden’s Afghanistan debacle. Acosta repeatedly tried to blame President Trump for the Taliban takeover, but Issa exposed the journalist’s pathetic hypocrisy…..
In my continuing masochistic experiment of commenting on one of the most openly bigoted and wrong minded books I have read (outside of maybe the books I purchased from Obama’s church’s book store), I delve into a second installment of this series. I will however, unlike my dealing with the Introduction of Ibram Kendi’s book, take smaller chunks of it and dissect it a bit. Or take topical chunks I should say. The first issue I wish to tackle are more misunderstandings regarding the Christian faith and the journey his father took (at least Kendi’s understanding of it). Here is an example. In the beginning pages of Chapter one of “How to Be an Antiracist” he writes of the influence of Tom Skinner on his parents.
However, Mr. Ibram never expresses the ideas to the reader that even though Tom Skinner was tough on white Evangelicals – making them feel uncomfortable in time (remember, many were silent in the pews during the Democratic Jim Crow era), but that Skinner himself was tougher on the black church., for instance, in an interesting article entitled, “Tom Skinner Was Not The Evangelical Radical You’re Looking For,” we find this:
…Skinner was not afraid to make white evangelicals uncomfortable. They were “almost totally irresponsible” in their avoidance of their black brethren, and it was only the pressures of the civil rights movement that had belatedly stirred them from their complacency. He blasted white evangelicals who piously intoned that “Jesus was the answer” while refusing to get involved in the problem. Skinner believed Jesus was the answer too. But he had skin in the game, and he expected other evangelicals to join him. Yet it was precisely this supplicatory undertone that made Skinner’s criticisms manageable. For all the discomfort his words could cause, he did not doubt that white evangelicals had the correct theology on the point that mattered most, and he asked them to help him bring their theology to the ghetto. Christianity Today approvingly noted that Skinner “plays down social insurgence in his sermons because he feels that reform may take ‘sixty years’ but that regeneration through Christ can help now.”[3] To put it baldly, converted Negroes were not rioting Negroes.
Remarkably, Skinner’s criticisms of white evangelicals were tame compared to his open contempt for the black church. He described most black churches as bastions of excessive emotionalism and spiritual immaturity, led by ministers given over to sexual immorality and hypocrisy.[4] As a result, he claimed, “There is hardly any Christian witness in the ghetto.”[5] There’s little reason to suppose Skinner’s hostility toward the black church was anything but sincere ….
[3]“The Gospel with Candor,” Christianity Today, October 14, 1966, 53-54.
However, on pages 16 and 17 we see the real influence on Kendi and his family. James Cone is said to have been asked by Mr. Kendi’s father this: “What is your definition of a Christian?” James Cone responded: “A Christian is one who is striving for liberation.”
Without getting into “theological woods,” James Cone pretty much announced he isn’t saved. In the previous post on this book I noted the following from the “flagship book” of Dr. Cone’s:
“The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” — Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” — James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62
“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” — James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
However, the book specifically mentioned in these pages by Mr. Kendi is the following:
“It is this fact that makes all white churches anti-Christian in their essence. To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!” — James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, p.151
This influence on the black church is detrimental to Christianity, just as much as if it were said that “God has chosen the white people.” And this thinking by Cone is what is driving some of the political violence we see today when he said “These new theologians of the Third World argue that Christians [liberation theology accepting Christians] should not shun violence but should initiate it” (Ibid. p.32)
Tom Skinner essentially taught that “converted Negroes were not rioting Negroes.” Cone taught the opposite. In the afore mentioned book, Dr. Cone noted:
“It [black liberation theology] is dangerous because the true prophet of the gospel of God must become both “anti-Christian” and “unpatriotic.”…. “Because whiteness by its very nature is against blackness, the black prophet is a prophet of national doom. He proclaims the end of the American Way” — James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.55-56
La Shawn Barber zeroes in on the above thinking promoted by Dr. Kendi
…Filtering Scripture through race or sex should instinctively strike Christians as problematic; labeling theology “black” or “white” or “Latino” or “feminist,” even more so. The most wonderful enduring truth about Christ is that He’s no respecter of persons. It is not unbiblical to recognize differences or to incorporate them into worship, as long as Christ and Scripture remain the supreme authority of our faith and practice.
The kind of black theology Reformed Christian Anthony J. Carter supports is different from Cone’s brand of race-filtered theology. Carter said theology has always had an ethnic or cultural context, and lists German Lutheran and Scottish Reformed traditions as examples. In that regard, he says a biblical black theology is necessary, because the alternative is an unbiblical black theology. “The unfortunate errors of nascent black theology were rooted in the assumption that experiences should be the primary source of truth,”[6] Carter writes. He notes that men like Cone didn’t maintain the integrity of doctrine “pivotal and indispensable to the historic Christian faith.”[7]…
[6]Anthony J. Carter, On Being Black and Reformed: A New Perspective on the African-American Experience (Phillipsburg, NJ: P and R Publishing, 2003), 14.
And this early (chapter one) setting is a red-flag for just how bad the rest of the book will be and is. As Ron Rhodes poignantly says in his quoting of Tom Skinner:
Tom Skinner agrees and argues that “like any theology, black theology must have a frame of reference…. There are some black theologians who seek to make their frame of reference purely the black experience, but this assumes the black experience is absolutely moral and absolutely just, and that is not the case. There must be a moral frame of reference through which the black experience can be judged.” That frame of reference must be Scripture. (EQUIP)
And that is where the vaunted James Cone (and, frankly, Ibram Kendi’s acceptance of the neo-Marxist positions of liberation theology) sidesteps the real issue. Salvation vs. liberation.
Something Lit-sen Chang noted many years ago: “Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man.”
As Dr. Carl F. H. Henry pointed out: “The Chicago evangelicals, while seeking to overcome the polarization of concern in terms of personal evangelism or social ethics, also transcended the neoProtestant nullification of the Great Commission.” “The Chicago Declaration did not leap from a vision of social utopia to legislation specifics, but concentrated first on biblical priorities for social change.” “The Chicago evangelicals did not ignore transcendent aspects of God’s Kingdom, nor did they turn the recognition of these elements into a rationalization of a theology of revolutionary violence or of pacifistic neutrality in the face of blatant militarist aggression.” (Cf. Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, “Evangelical Social Concern” Christianity Today, March 1, 1974.) The evangelical social concern is transcendental not merely horizontal.
We must make it clear that the true revolutionaries are different from the frauds who “deal only with surface phenomena. They seek to remove a deep-seated tumor from society by applying a plaster to the surface. The world’s deepest need today is not something that merely dulls the pain, but something that goes deep in order to change the basic unity of society, man himself. Only when men individually have experienced a change and reorientation, can society be redirected in the way it should go. This we cannot accomplish by either violence or legislation” (cf. Reid: op. cit.). Social actions, without a vertical and transcendental relation with God only create horizontal anxieties and perplexities!
Furthermore, the social activists are in fact ignorant of the social issues, they are not experts in the social sciences. They simply demand an immediate change or destruction of the social structures, but provide no blueprint of the new society whatsoever! They can be likened to the fool, as a Chinese story tells, who tried to help the plant grow faster by pulling it higher. Of course such “action” only caused the plant to wither and die. This is exactly what the social radicals are doing now! And the W.C.C. is supporting such a tragic course!
We must challenge them [secular social activists] to discern the difference between the true repentance and “social repentance.” The Bible says: “For the godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret; but worldly grief produces death” (II Cor. 7:10). This was the bitter experiences of many former Russian Marxists, who, after their conversion to Christ came to understand that they had only a sort of “social repentance”—a sense of guilt before the peasant and the proletariat, but not before God. They admitted that “A Russian (Marxist) intellectual as an individual is often a mild and loving creature, but his creed (Marxism) constrains him to hate” (cf. Nicolas Zernov: The Russian Religious Renaissance). “As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one…. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10,23). A complete change of a society must come from man himself, for basically man is at enmity with God. All humanistic social, economic and political systems are but “cut flowers,” as Dr. Trueblood put it, even the best are only dim reflections of the Glory of the Kingdom of God. As Benjamin Franklin in his famous address to the Constitutional Convention, said, “Without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.” Without reconciliation with God, there is no reconciliation with man. Social action is not evangelism; political liberation is not salvation. While we shall by all means have deep concern on social issues; nevertheless, social activism shall never be a substitution for the Gospel.
Lit-sen Chang, The True Gospel vs. Social Activism, (booklet. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co: 1976), 9.
Okay, we are a few days AFTER this contentious election for ALL involved… both sides went with horrible choices for their nominee and caused not only contentious attitudes with the opposing nominee but an internal struggle as well. That is, the Democrat base did not like Hillary Clinton, and the Republican base did not like Donald Trump. In fact, in the hopes this will give me some credibility for at least what is to follow, I even started a website to defeat Trump and his rise to be the GOP nominee. Trump is not a conservative? He is a Blue-Dog Democrat.
In conversation with a person I respect highly, he said [partially in jest], that, “You can still love Trump. It’s okay with me….” Not realizing that I do not love Trump and started a site to defeat him. I even made it clear out of the 16-other candidates, Trump was my 18th choice. (Get it?)
…Continuing
So, we are a few days after the election and I read posts like:
I’m in mourning, again. I’m sad and disgusted that sexism and racism are still alive and kicking in this country. Color, not qualifications were voted into the White House last night.
I could sit here and sob about how devastating and pathetic this is. I’m just too pissed. Disappointed. Shocked. Fucking livid. Years of progress diminished in one night. This is not the country I thought I lived in.
Everyone better order their tamales now. There won’t be any by Christmas.
…another person asked this person: Are you making them?
…here is the response: Nope. I’m afraid if I do I will be deported.
… the humorous comeback was: Nobody is getting deported till January 20 2017, Christmas tamales are safe.
Another person I know posted the graphic to the right:
These are just a few of examples of raw emotion that should be sympathized with. But like in many-a-Facebook-post this idea that if people do not agree with my position, they are one of the SIXHIRBs: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted.
One of the best turnarounds I saw from a family member is this:
So in class today I finally cried. This presidential unveiling has caused such a stir of emotions for the past 48 hours and it has all been bottled up until this point. We keep playing the blame game and it’s time to stop. Right now I blame myself because I was ignorant to the rest of the country. I didn’t think that everyone didn’t think like me. I lived in a bubble and now I feel like the different one. Because of this huge division right now the last thing we need to do divide it even further….
Wow! What a mature statement. THAT made my heart glad. She even went on to state she wished she had expressed this as clearly in an earlier class as she did on her FB. I agreed, hindsight is 20/20 and we all have said stuff that upon further reflection we could have said better.
All of us. (Especially Bush, and now Trump… NIGHTMARE!)
So, how do I explain some positions my friends and family probably think about a man they seem to fear, and I heard one psychotherapist yesterday say that the reaction of many millennials is like that of a loved one dying. In other words, this is deeply emotional to some. And while I love posting videos of people sobbing like the next dude, this gets us nowhere. So I decided to discuss three main points about Trump and this election to get people to think about what they say. Because it can be misunderstood as calling a friend or family one of those SIXHIRB labels, wounding both our Republic (because who would want to learn or discuss political matters with a racist?), as well as causing misunderstandings between friends.
It makes our political life too easy. A healthy Republic should be tough. Those labels are a cop-out for doing heavy liftin’. One very progressive leaning professor makes the same point about how this thinking harms his students:
Here, for example, is my sister noting her election day experience… and take note, she will never make her vote public:
In my 32 years as a registered voter, I have never left the polls feeling so disgusted and embarrassed by my choice. Not that my other option would have made me feel ANY different. I need a shower!
The point here is that people are more complicated than these few labels society has chosen to use. Another example (a few years back) of a dear friends mom smearing people like me is in a post discussing Judge Judy. I know, it’s a pop-culture Baby Boomer thing. Here is what she said with my response:
(She said) “Black people and white people weren’t allowed get married years ago either… if small minded, bigoted people had their way it would still be that way. Gay marriage Is NO different…. religious folks who believe and support same sex marriage ?? They must not be real religious people.”
(I Responded) In other words, a discussion to you is calling me and other readers here “bigots,” and impugning the character of religious gays by creating straw-man arguments of what I (we) say/mean? And when I politely point this out by not pointing out how you name call and use “cards” (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted ~ S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)….
People need to understand what they are saying. I make mistakes all the time. It’s in our nature. You apologize, grow, learn, and move on trying to keep friendships and family close to you. The friend’s mom unfriended me. So in response to my family member I noted something we all do, and it is this:
This election has brought to mind the now famous quote by elite Manhattanite and New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael after Richard Nixon’s sweeping presidential victory in 1972:
“I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him.”
There is a tendency to build sound rooms around one’s belief and where they choose to get their information from. WE ARE ALL susceptible to this.
So, part of our journey is allowing in other sources of information…
The conservative has no choice but to encounter leftist ideals. For instance, out of the top twenty most influential sources of news in our country, only two lean right (Fox News and the Washington Times). All the others lean left in their journalism and view of the world. In fact, Rachel Maddow noted her politics are to the left of Mao Zedong. She is more of a commentator though, and the study I am referring to only included straight news sources.
…Continuing.
So if a person is surprised at the outcome, maybe they should engage friends or family and ask questions. The key to doing this is the following, if it is not face-to-face,.and this is something I will at times start out a conversation with:
“By-the-by, for those reading this I will explain what is missing in this type of discussion due to the media used. Genuflecting, care, concern, one being upset (does not entail being “mad”), etc… are all not viewable because we are missing each other’s tone, facial expressions, and the like. I afford the other person I am dialoguing with the best of intentions and read his/her comments as if we were out having a talk over a beer at a bar or meeting a friend at Starbucks. (I say this because there seems to be a phenomenon of etiquette thrown out when talking through email or Face Book, lots more public cussing and gratuitous responses.) You will see that often times I USE CAPS — which in www lingo for YELLING. I am not using it this way, I use it to merely emphasize and often times say as much: *not said in yelling tone, but merely to emphasize*. So in all my discussions I afford the best of thought to the other person as I expect he or she would to me… even if dealing with tough subjects as the above. I have had more practice at this than most, and with half-hour pizza, one hour photo and email vs. ‘snail mail,’ know that important discussions take time to meditate on, inculcate, and to process. So be prepared for a good thought provoking discussion if you so choose one with me.”
Again, we all put into other people’s typed words our own emotional state at that time. The trick is to step away from this tendency… and this can be hard.
I shared what others wrote on election day, can I [RPT] share mine? I went and cast my ballot for Trump and wrote this afterwards:
I voted. It was really hard to overcome my original emotions of dislike for Trump with reason (mind). But this IS the essence of being human… To think and reason beyond our emotive states…
Again, people are complicated and to label them as sexist or racist without really knowing is a travesty to our Republic.
OKAY… I will now post three responses to items of discussion that my guess is those who are very distraught over Trump’s win and view either him or a large segment of the population who voted for him as racist or bigoted, or mean to disabled persons, is more complicated than these labels. First up is this:
Is Mexico Sending Rapists?
When I ask people to offer me an example of Trump’s “racism,” I get a reference to this example most often:
“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you…. They’re sending people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” ~ Donald J. Trump
Before I add information that I doubt a millennial has heard because either they or their friends are quick to label Trump as being bigoted or racist for saying this, and moving on without further reflection, I want to note that all Republican politicians said to round up illegals in America would be an impossible task. Trump has evolved on his statement that many understood as rounding up 11-million (actually, there are 30-million). ALSO, every Republican politician noted that the Constitution would not allow for the banning of all Muslims coming to our country. Again, our Constitution forbids this. It allows for banning all persons from a country, but not a religious or sectarian belief. He [Trump] has backed away from this as well, as all of us knew he would. In fact, this was removed from his site. Trump is not a politician, but his team is counseling him well.
…Continuing.
Okay. What of Trump’s statement? It surely sounds bigoted at best.
I will shock the reader.
I think that is the most pro-woman statement in a long time by a politician regarding real — violent — crime against women.
As the number of Central American women and girls crossing into the U.S. continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged against these migrants who are in search of a better life.
According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report…
[….]
Through May, the number of unaccompanied girls younger than 18 caught at the US-Mexico border increased by 77 percent.
But while many of these girls are fleeing their homes because of fears of being sexually assaulted, according to the UNHCR, they are still meeting that same fate on their journey to freedom…
For clarity in the sources for the HUFFPO article, for those that are of the impatient and research non-oriented generation:
✦ 60% Amnesty International Report (PDF) ✦ 80% Is rape the price to pay for migrant women chasing the American Dream? (FUSION)
(UPDATED EDITORIAL BY RPT) To be clear, these rapes are happening by residents who live in towns and districts these migrants are passing through. Other rapes are happening by Coyotajes, as well as many by the men making the trip as well. We know that many Honduren gang-members make the trek, and so, a high percentage of these men (criminals) do in fact cross our border into our nation. Where American women of all ethnic background are subjected to assault. Since we know illegals commit crimes at double the rate of native-born… rape is also part of these increased stats.
…“According to a stunning Fusion investigation, 80 percent of women and girls crossing into the U.S. by way of Mexico are raped during their journey. That’s up from a previous estimate of 60 percent, according to an Amnesty International report,” the well-known news outlet continued….
So, many of the men they travel with are rapping them. Many of the Coyotajes as well take advantage of them. There are what are now being called “rape trees,” which you can learn more about on a previous post of mine, here. Here is how a conversation using this understanding went in the real world:
The above exchange was discussed a bit wrong, like Trump, the main idea is lost in the presentation. Gavin McInness made it sound as if the rapes were happening at the border when in actuality they are happening during the entire trip. And the girl thought he meant Coyotes, the real animal. Not Coyotajes. (That was very funny BTW, and why I ended the video like I did.)
What would be the most compassionate step to take? I would say, to control our border. That would help the migrant woman AS WELL AS our own mothers, daughters, and wives. Many from these countries that are experiencing these horrible circumstances are experiencing it because of their government models they have chosen. But this is neither here-nor-there.
The bottom line is that Trump, while not explaining this well at all, was actually making a statement about policy that in the end will protect women. There is this as well dealing with drugs and violence aspect of the comment:
A fresh wave of crime from the infamously violent MS-13 gang in the District of Columbia is being driven by the heavy recruitment of young illegal immigrants.
A surge of minors crossing the U.S. southern border is helping the notorious gang boost their ranks and instigate a new string of violent attacks in the city, reported The Washington Times. Over the past few years a wave of illegal migrant children crossed the U.S. border, and MS-13 appears to be targeting them for recruitment.
“They are certainly susceptible,” Ed Ryan, gang prevention coordinator in Fairfax County, Virginia, told The Washington Times. “They are new, they have very little family, they don’t know the language very well. They are looking for someone who looks like them, talks like them.”
Experts say violence from MS-13, which originally started in California, historically occurs in waves. Currently MS-13, on orders from El Salvador, is ramping up efforts in cities across the U.S. to reestablish their dominance on the streets, reports The Washington Times….
This is just a very short clip of a longer audio (here: ) of John and Ken discussing Mollie Tibbetts and her murderer, Christian Bahena-Rivera. According to the DAILY CALLER, he was employed by a Republican small business owner…
“He worked on Yarrabee Farms, which is owned by the family of GOP official Craig Lang, who was a former 2018 Republican candidate for state secretary of agriculture, according to reports by the Des Moines Register.”
…who may have illegally had him in their employ? However, he was an example of the DACA young… so did he have his temporary papers? I have no idea. Nor would I know if he immigrated legally if he would have passed all the checks/balances.
As an side…
Is this man a racist or bigot? He was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, and spoke out against the racist organization, La Raza, as well as calling workers who crossed the border “illegal immigrants” and “wetbacks.”
“In the mid 1970s, he conducted the ‘Illegals Campaign’ to identify and report illegal workers, ‘an effort he deemed second in importance only to the boycott’ (of produce from non-unionized farms), according to Pawel. She quotes a memo from Chavez that said, “If we can get the illegals out of California, we will win the strike overnight.”
…“Cesar Chavez opposed illegal immigration,” Levin said during a Wednesday appearance on Fox News’ Hannity.
After saying that the premise that “compassion is an open border” is a “new idea” that has been pushed in recent times, Levin said that “a nation has a right to secure its border” and its citizens have a right to know who is coming into their country.
Chavez, who was also against ethnic organizations like La Raza, would tell illegal immigrants to get out of the country, especially because they lowered the wages of American workers. And he was often far from compassionate in handling illegal immigrants….
This one I believed for a long time. Here is a common way this is added into a litany of grievances:
If I owned a business and someone applied for the job that had a history of denigrating women, mocking a reporter with a disability, targeting people of a certain ethnic or religious affiliation, I would not hire that person. I am surprised to see that some would. Perhaps we have different values.
Firstly, it is not my job to correct EVERY detail a person brings up. Even I have a life. Barely, but it’s there… somewhere. So the denigrating women thing makes no real difference to the Democrat, because assaults, murder, and rape are all too common on the left. JFK raped a 16-year old girl in the White House and brought prostitutes into the same House. Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate,” a hero to the Left assaulted women even killing one in a drunken night out. Bill Clinton either raped or assaulted over 15-women and had sex with prostitutes, and his wife got a man she knew was guilty of rapping so violently a 12-year old girl that she could never have kids her entire life. She laughed about getting this rapist off. She [Hillary], also covered up her husbands attacks. She got so much flack for this that she removed from he campaign website a section detailing her hard work to protect women.
Thank you Bernie fans for being tough on her for this!
My answer to this requires watching a video/audio I worked on and uploaded to my YouTube… but if you want a condensed version that I responded to a person elsewhere on the WWW:
So, what have we learned so far by exchanging ideas in an open forum. Trump was right about the rapists comment, and the best thing to protect women is to control our border (both for the immigrant women and our mothers and daughters).
And the other things we learned is that Trump mocks everyone with the same motions. Childish? Yes. Not ideal for a President. Sure. He wasn’t my 18th choice out of seventeen. But what is said of him is not [often true].
Here is a time-line of each video of Trump mocking various persons (including himself) with the same mannerisms as the media says he expressly used to mock a man’s disability:
✦ May 2005 – Trump imitates a flustered Trump (decade prior to the “event” in question); ✦ October 2015 – Trump imitates flustered bank president (25-days prior to the “event” in question); ✦ November 25, 2015 – Trump imitates flustered reporter and flustered general (during the same speech given as the “event” in question); ✦ February 2016 – Trump imitates flustered Ted Cruz; ✦ October 2016 — Trump imitates a flustered Donna Brazile.
I include this call because it is more concise than my other uploads:
Again, he did this of himself, Ted Cruz, a general, and more. It is his “quirk.” One I hate, but not aimed at anyone in particular to represent a physical condition. (See a much longer report on all this here.)
Here is my “finisher” to a recent discussion via FB on this topic:
No, he was not mocking his disability. He was mocking his reporting. Like he was mocking the general later in that same speech. Unless, wait… Bonnie… you may have something… when Donald J. Trump mocked himself in May 2005, a bank president in October 2015, that general in November 25, 2015, Ted Cruz in February 2016, and Donna Brazile in October 2016…
…h-e was r-e-a-l-l-y mocking that reporter that doesn’t have a disability that causes him to make those motions.
In the opening of John Stossle’s video he deals with this:
Racists Support Trump
First, in the broad sense this has to be true… that is… somewhere in this nation I am sure a racist supports Donald J. Trump. Even if we assume the Klan all voted in unison, he would have gotten 8,000 votes at most! Nationwide.
HOWEVER, as you will see, even the above hypothetical is more complicated than most assume it to be. Let’s just clear the air first on this past charge of Trump not disavowing David Duke (a “famous” racist and past KKK leader) during the run-up-to the nomination: Trump clearly disavowed David Duke’s endorsement. As we will see, the truth about David Duke is more complicated than we often hear. Okay, moving on.
After Trump won the election the media and Hollywood types as well as comedians and Democrat Senators and Representatives all started saying there was a backlash of old-racist-white-men that came out in force and voted for Trump. This just isn’t the case. You can see from just a few of the bullet points from my “Blacks, Hispanics and Gays are Sexist, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Racist” post that this attack on American voters is just a maligning of each and everyone of those peoples character:
…Thirteen percent of Muslims voted for Trump, triple the amount that voted Romney, are they are Islamophobic, bigoted, xenophobic, and racist?
Eight percent of blacks voted for Trump, seven percent more than Romney — not to mention the black men and women who didn’t vote for the president at all in a higher percentage. These same men and women previously voted twice for Obama. These persons of color… if I understand my detractors correctly, are racist bigots?
A higher percentage (almost 30%) of Hispanics voted for Trump, more in fact than voted for Romney. These Hispanic and Latino men and women, like the others, are xenophobic, bigoted, and racist?
One hundred-and-ninety-four counties that voted for Obama once switched to GOP in the 2016 election. And, two-hundred-and-nine counties that voted for Obama twice switched to GOP. Many of these people are union members as well as life-long Democrats. Am I now being told that these Democrats who voted for Obama are: racist. sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted?
So you can see from the above and the graphic below that the people who really pushed Trump into the “win” section of the electoral count were minorities and voters who previously voted for Obama either once or both times prior to voting for Trump.
Two of the above four racist cults are both telling their followers to vote for Trump… the KKK and the Nation of Islam. Christian Identity as a cohesive movement is all but dead… and the 5% when they do vote always vote Democrat. IN FACT they all primarily vote Democrat.
A quick history point that is important for the next paragraph:
After the triumph of the civil rights movement and the introduction of a series of civil rights laws, the Klan broke up into various subgroups. Previously these KKK members were Democrats and they continued being so after.
“…virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat.” — Bruce Bartlett, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), ix;
“…not every Democrat was a KKK’er, but every KKK’er was a Democrat.” — Ann Coulter, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (New York, NY: Sentinel [Penguin], 2012), 19.
People do not realize why these groups, especially the KKK, vote Democrat. For instance, out of the four leaders in the “white-power” movement (the KKK subculture) with the most followers, three told their peeps to vote Democrat (Actually, then it was them telling their followers to vote for Obama in 2008).
Here you see some higher ups in this white racist movement telling their people (3-of-the-4) to vote Democrat for the election in 2008:
➤ Tom Metzger: Director, White Aryan Resistance; Career Highlights: Was Grand Dragon of Ku Klux Klan in the 70s; won the Democratic primary during his bid for Congress in 1980… ➤ Ron Edwards: Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America; Career Highlights: Sued in 2007 by the Southern Poverty Law Center for inciting the brutal beating of a Latino teenager; building the IKA into one of the nation’s largest Klan groups by allowing non-Christians to join. ➤ Erich Gliebe: Chairman, National Alliance; Career Highlights: Turning white-power record label, Resistance Records, into a million-dollar-a-year business juggernaut; an 8-0 record as a professional boxer under the nickname, “The Aryan Barbarian.” ➤ Rocky Suhayda: Chairman, American Nazi Party; Career highlights: Being widely quoted bemoaning in the fact that so few Aryan-Americans had the cojones of the 9/11 hijackers: “If we were one-tenth as serious, we might start getting somewhere.”
Yes, most racist groups — INCLUDING THE KKK — voted for a black nominee.
The next question should be, Why?
Reason One
One reason is that these racist white groups are typically socialists. And socialism is a political system that wants the government to run health-care, business, increase central power, etc. Here is a most basic graph of this concept (see to the right – click the graph to go to my combined post on the matter).
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” — Hitler
John Toland, Adolph Hitler: The Definitive Biography (New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1976), 223-225.
Reason Two
Another reason a lot of racist whites vote Democrat is they are very poor and use heavily the social services they support ideologically. This was even evident when less than the typical 80% that vote straight Democrat still voted straight Democrat in their respective states but did not vote for Obama.
The other Black Nationalist cults vote heavier [percentage wise] Democratic.
This year is different. You have both Louis Farrakhan telling his followers to vote for Trump, and you have more people in the disjointed KKK telling their people to vote for him. Why this change? I think it is because he has many similar views on issues with Bernie Sanders, as an example,
Forty-four percent of Sanders supporters surveyed said they would rather back the presumptive GOP nominee in November, with only 23 percent saying they’d support Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. And 31 percent said would support neither candidate in the likely general election match-up. (THE HILL)
Keep in mind those are voters in the state that put Sander’s into the Senate!
Here is the kicker though regarding the Nation of Islam (NOI). This cult, unlike the KKK, is VERY structured under a single leader. So what Farrakhan says is followed “religiously” by his adherents. Whereas, in the KKK, these leaders are not looked to in the same way Farrakhan is, as some sort of “messianic” figure. So you might have slightly more vote for Trump in the Klan on the recommendation of their leaders. This is different in the structure of the Nation of Islam, the percentages would be almost unanimous in their “lock-step.”
Many will continue to vote straight Democrat the rest of the ticket, in all groups mentioned.
“Racists Vote Republican,” or, “Republican’s Are Old Racist White Men” may be a convenient (actually evil) political narrative to scare a few voters away from the GOP, surely. But the maligning of every Republican nominee since Nixon just is not factually true.
DON’T accept the comparison. Take their arguments and return them packaged in a nice little bow.
Editor’s Aside:
Democrats want to fundamentally change America. I don’t love my wife if I want to fundamentally change her. Black Life Matters protesters teach their children to burn American flags or march down the street CHANTING “What do we want?!” “Dead Cops!” “When do we want them?!” “NOW!” They argue America was founded on nothing but slavery and greed. Hillary Clinton backed this group even going as far as far as saying (at the NAACP) that “systemic racism” needs to be eliminated. Months later calling Americans all racists: “I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think unfortunately too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other and therefore I think we need all of us to be asked the hard questions ‘why am I feeling this way?’”
Democrats think I am an imperialist white supremacist Christian cisgender capitalist heteropatriarchal male. Apparently however, these many demographic changes across the board [noted above] seem to agree that Trump’s slogan was acceptable, “Make America Great Again.”
One reason many of these hate groups (black and white) are voting for Trump is for border control. A) There is an animosity towards illegal aliens for racist reasons, and B) reasons related to economics as well. A great example would be this video “CHICAGO’S INNER-CITY POOR BLACK COMMUNITY ABANDONING OBAMA’S LIBERAL AGENDA“
To continue this point, one woman said this:
A resident of the Austin community, Jean Ray, says after 40 years of Democratic party control over the black community, the policies “are hurting,” and if there were Republicans willing to do the right job in her community, she would vote for them. (More at BREITBART)
So a good reason that black racist groups would have voted Trump includes practical economic concerns, i.e., jobs. Which is why we saw a 7% jump in blacks voting for the Republican candidate… but most likely even they voted Democrat the rest of the ticket.
Reason Three They HATE (H-A-T-E) Israel, and this is a reason they tend to support Democrats. For instance, on his YouTube, David Duke endorsed Charles Barron for Congress (video on the left). Another endorsement for Hillary was from a KKK leader here in California (right video).
So attributing racism to the GOP is silly, because as a whole, the almost 8,000 KKK members nation wide vote Democrat. AS DO ALL THE OTHER RACIST CULTS IN AMERICA (*booming megaphone affect in a cave*). NOT TO MENTION where all the hub-bub is when all these hate groups vote for Democrats in years past?
In other words, WHY is it only “newsworthy” when they vote for Republicans and not for Democrats?
I smell something fishy here.
I can continue, but this post is already long enough. On the racial issues, I suggest my page entitled: U.S. RACIAL HISTORY. This page deals with the supposed party switch by racist Democrats to Republicans, slavery, American Indian narratives, some VERY PROUD BLACK HISTORY in our country… and the like.
Recap Again, let’s recap for clarity some of my reasons white racist/nationalists cults vote Democrat:
They are typically socialist in their political views, and thus support the welfare state for personal financial reasons (poor) and ideological reasoning (socialist); or for the reason that it is a way of controlling minorities (racist reasoning). A modern plantation so-to-speak; There is a shared hatred for Israel and supporting of groups wanting to exterminate the Jews (Palestinians for instance).
This is why a majority STILL supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. She is a socialist at heart, wants a big welfare state, and does not like Israel as much as Trump, who has kids practicing the Jewish religion. Thee ONLY issue a racist could want to vote for Trump on is his immigration policies… hardly a racist position. It has only now become an issue of bigotry and racism because the Left has moved the goal post in the use of language. Racists no longer means “genetically superior,” rather, it mean you disagree with a Democrat and/or hurt their feelings. Otherwise, these people would be RACISTS!
Afterword
What are some of my suggestions to stop or prepare people for future events like this? Talk to friends or family why they are in a particular political party. I have read and studied the “Left” A LOT! But balance in peoples lives are good. I always make this point to express my thinking on this, and it was mainly based on when my boys were going through high school and their friends would pick my brain. It deals with balance:
I often bump into people that have watched some or most of the following “documentaries” I likewise own and have watched all on the following list (one should take note that some of these are shown in public school classrooms):
• Bowling for Columbine • Roger and Me • Fahrenheit 9/11 • Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price • Sicko • An Inconvenient Truth • Loose Change • Zeitgeist • Religulouse • The God Who Wasn’t There • Super-Size Me
But rarely do I meet someone of the opposite persuasion from me that have watched any of the following (I own and have watched):
• Celsius41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Dies • FahrenHYPE 9/11 • Michael & Me • Michael Moore Hates America • Bullshit! Fifth Season… Read More (where they tear apart the Wal-Mart documentary) • Indoctrinate U • Mine Your Own Business • Screw Loose Change • 3-part response to Zeitgeist • Fat-Head • Privileged Planet • Unlocking the Mystery of Life
I am not saying one should go out and watch all these opposing points of views. I am saying that probably the person reading this has seen one or two of the above, was convinced about it, and now proclaim it as “true” without testing their position with balance. Someone who has changed my views in many areas is Thomas Sowell. I can recommend that if a person is really interested in knowing what much of the base of the opposing Party believes… in this case Republicans, to read only one of Dr. Sowells books, “The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.”
Allow dissent in conversation. Our Republic is suppose to be tough. Enjoy this designed aspect of a healthy country.
Start by listening to the entire chapter entitled “The Real History of Slavery,” by Thomas Sowell (full audio here). Think racist Democrats became Republicans? Read and watch the videos in my post here.
Do not surround yourselves with Mini-Me’s. Bouncing ideas off of a sound board in a studio of all like-minded individuals does not create growth, understanding, and the like. It creates ideological group-think. DO NOT think I am saying this just to my audience. I have to tell myself this all the time. And I often fail. That is what friends and family are for. Grace and love through the hardest of times.
It really does make the person who is a staunch Democrat look silly, hypocritical, and VERY careless when bringing up the topic. In other words, to ignore Obama’s family’s close affiliation (past AND PRESENT) with self stated hard-core racists takes away any respect from me for Democrats speaking ill of some okie Ozark livin’ poor white person who is ignorant who may vote Republican once-in-a-while when for decades the Democrats have highlighted and supported the worse of these police killing cults.
The only death threats I get are from black racist nationalists via a video I did about the cult Jay-Z and Beyonce promote.
So don’t talk to me about “racism” and the KKK voting for Donald Trump… I have a list of black nationalist or black nationalists supporting POLITICIANS that recently or are currently in Congress AND in the highest office of the land. The Oval Office. Not to mention the sorted history of the Klan with a particular political Party.
If you are unwilling to learn history, and the religiously racist cultic backgrounds of what is promoted on the left as mainstream, then you are stuck where you are. Making blanket statements that cause others to wag-their-heads.
(originally posted in August 2007 on my old blog;
here originally in May, 2010; Updated April, 2015)
Agree or Not?
This is a combination of two posts, the first was a question I posed to someone in a forum. Below you see what that question was and where I led that person. The second is a bit of political science. Both repeat some of the same idea, but both are different.
So let’s highlight the first question by a court case that has, well, institutionalized the “post-modern” society. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1996), the 9th District Appeals Court wrote:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”
In other words, whatever you believe is your origin, and thus your designating meaning on both your life and body is your business, no one else’s. If you believe that the child growing in you – no matter at what stage (Doe v. Bolton) – isn’t a child unless you designate it so. You alone can choose to or not choose to designate life to that “fetus”. It isn’t a “potential person” until you say it is first a person. Understand? That being clarified, do you agree with this general statement:
“If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality…”
Sounds really close to the 9th Courts majority view doesn’t it. The above is basically saying that your opinion is just as valid as another persons opinion because both are your’s and the other persons perspective on something is formed from influences from your culture and experiences. So someone from New Guiney may have a differing view or opinion on eating dogs than an American.
Let’s compare a portion from both statements:
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe and of the mystery of human life…”
“…the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own reality…”
Whether you’re an atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, it doesn’t matter. Your reality is just that… your reality, or opinion, or personal dogma. I want to now complete one of the quotes that I left somewhat edited, not only that, but I want to ask you if you still agree with it after you find out who wrote it.
Ready?
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999), by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.
Does the Left = Communism?
And The Right = Fascism?
This blog will jump around just a bit, but the main point will be this: Fascism has nothing to do with conservatism, or the right.
First of all, let me start this blurb by stating emphatically that true fascism during WWII lived in Italy with Mussolini, who himself had a philosophy degree and even published a book (and whose son, incidentally, is a great jazz player!). Mussolini even quantified what fascism is, and you could almost take his definition and lay it over a particular political spectrum today:
“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.”
(Mussolini, Diuturna pp. 374-77, quoted in A Refutation of Moral Relativism: Interviews with an Absolutist (Ignatius Press; 1999, by Peter Kreeft, p. 18.)
(Relativism is a philosophical theory asserting that there is no absolute truth, only truth relative to the individual, or to a particular time or culture, or both. To put it another way, relativism may be defined as the radical denial of objectivity.) So fascism is almost misdefined in today’s apathetic terms, and definition is very important to not forget history and thus repeat it. Anti-Semitism is also misdefined in that it not only takes a strong-form, but a weak-form is also prevalent in today’s modern culture that should be pointed out.
Anti-Semitism can come in many forms; I would argue that when a news organization is very unbalanced in their coverage of the currant Palestinian/Israeli conflict, they are showing a bias that is feeding unhealthy views about the Semitic people and their history.
For instance, NPR: 18,321 words in pro-Arab only segments, 4,934 words in pro-Israel segments. Bias in number of Arab-only vs Israeli-only segments: 63-percent Palestinian/pro-Arab only segments, 37-percent Israel/pro-Israel segments. (CAMERA)
NPR is a left leaning, tax payer funded (government supported), radio program. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
Many years ago at a tire shop an older couple had their elderly mother with them and I noticed a number on her arm. This survivor and I talked for a straight forty-five minutes about history and politics. She said something that made me cringe. She said that in the early days of the rise of the Reich, it became immoral to kill rodents, but okay for abortion and euthanasia as moral choices. She applied that to our currant culture better and more forcefully than any author I have read. She mentioned also that one of the tactics of the socialists then were to shout down at public meetings any dissenters, or try and ban their freedom of speech while protecting theirs. This conversation has opened my mind up a bit more than it was previously. For instance, I now cringe when I see certain authors banned from being, well, even recommended.
For instance, a librarian at Ohio University recommended the book, The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom, and was voted on by his fellow professors 21-0 [with nine abstentions, so kinda like 30-0] as being a sexual harasser for recommending a conservative book. Sounds somewhat fascist to me.
The Ohio State University, an agency of the State of Ohio, is investigating a librarian for recommending a book.
Scott Savage, who serves as a reference librarian for the university, suggested four best-selling conservative books for freshman reading in his role as a member of OSU Mansfield’s First Year Reading Experience Committee. The four books he suggested were The Marketing of Evil by David Kupelian, The Professors by David Horowitz, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis by Bat Ye’or, and It Takes a Family by Senator Rick Santorum. Savage made the recommendations after other committee members had suggested a series of books with a left-wing perspective, by authors such as Jimmy Carter and Maria Shriver.
Savage was put under “investigation” by OSU’s Office of Human Resources after three professors filed a complaint of discrimination and harassment against him, saying that the book suggestions made them feel “unsafe.” The complaint came after the OSU Mansfield faculty voted without dissent to file charges against Savage. The faculty later voted to allow the individual professors to file charges.
The political commentators of a conservative political philosophy, when on campuses, are shouted down and threatened with bodily harm; leftist viewpoints in the same arena are NOT shouted down, and these left leaning guests do not need bodyguards. But when people like Ann Coulter or David Horowitz go on campus, Democrat and leftist students ramp up the death threats and attempted takeover of the mic and stage. When people like Cindy Sheehan or Maureen Dowd go to a university campus, they are treated like heroes and no personal security is needed.
The extreme Castroite left shows its love for open dialogue:
“Music that seemed to come from somewhere in the raucous audience that packed the Jorgensen Center at the University of Connecticut Wednesday night brought Ann Coulter’s speech to an abrupt end about 15 minutes after she started.
After waiting with her bodyguard on stage for several minutes for the music to stop while a section of the audience chanted ‘You suck, you suck,’ an irritated Coulter said she would not finish her speech.”
Deaniac types love to brand everyone to the right of Ted Kennedy a fascist. If you are critical of blank-slatism, oppose open borders, affirmative action, welfare payments, same-sex marriage, or on-demand abortion, you’ve likely been hit with the label. Here’s the pertinent part of the definition:
“Suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship… oppressive, dictatorial control.”
Who’s the fascist? A more effective way to disparage speakers (and retain an element of probity) was demonstrated by those outside the auditorium holding signs and pictures. Disagree vehemently, but don’t try to mute those with whom you disagree.
Coulter was invited by the University of Conneticut to give a speech followed by a Q&A two days after far left activist Cindy Sheehan (who was not shouted down or interrupted) did the same.
So, what are some similarities to the above? Let us delve into how a charasmatic figure like Hitler came to power:
The Sturmabteilung (SA)…. (Storm Detachment or Assault Division, or Brownshirts) functioned as the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party. It played a key role in Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the 1920s and 1930s. Their main assignments were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of the opposing parties … and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists and Jews (e.g. the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses).
(Wiki)
Remember when the State capital and the Governors mansion was taken over in Wisconsin? Violence and threats to Republicans in this fight to shrink government? SUVs are burnt by lkeftists, Occupy Walstreet threatens civility, on and on. FIRE notes that universities pay people to disrupt freedom of thought:
Washington State University’s web site calls the school “an ideal place to live and learn” and promises prospective students that instead of “smog or traffic jams,” they will find “an easy-going pace and eclectic college-town atmosphere.”
Here’s something else WSU students don’t find much of on the Pullman campus – freedom of speech. Hecklers who shout down speakers at WSU sometimes do so on tax dollars. Hitler used Nazi thugs called “Brown Shirts” to silence opponents as he sought power in pre-war Germany. Today at WSU, the people paying the hecklers are called “administrators.”
Here are the basic facts of this incredible event: Black student playwright Chris Lee staged his intentionally provocative production of “Passion of the Musical” at WSU April 21. He warned potential ticket buyers beforehand the play was likely to offend everybody because, as he later said, “the whole point of the play was to show people that we’re not that different, that we all have issues that can be made fun of.”
Sure enough, a group of Mormon students peacefully protested the production outside the theatre, but inside the First Amendment took a beating as 40 mostly Black protestors repeatedly shouted “I am offended” and threatened audience members and the cast. Guess who paid for the protestors’ tickets? WSU’s Office of Campus Involvement (OCI).
At one point, Lee took a microphone and asked campus security to remove the protestors. The officials declined to do so and suggested instead that Lee change the lyrics to one of the play’s songs that especially drew the ire of the hecklers….
This refusal to allow free speech on a place where freedom of thought should be paramount is an action of the Left, not the right.
★ If you are a Republican, you need not speak at a university commencement or convocation. ★ If you are a conservative Republican you need not apply for a job, as a waiter or an CEO.
Political Correctness plays a revolutionary role in this matrix of leftist ideology:
(Leon Trotsky is another example of a guy who led the way in silencing the opposition in order to install a dictator, Lenin [Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov].) Let us look at what we are told is suppose to be the political landscape if it were to be put into a line graph.
Really this is misleading. For one, it doesn’t allow for anarchy, which is a form of governance (or lack thereof). Also, it places democracy in the center… as if this is what one should strive for, a sort of balance. (The most popular — college level graph — is wrong and misleading as well):
However, the founding fathers wanted nothing to do with a democracy no matter how many times a New York Times editorialist or you’re teacher says we are in one:
James Madison (fourth President, co-author of the Federalist Papers and the father of the Constitution) Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general; been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
John Adams (American political philosopher, first vice President and second President) Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Benjamin Rush (signer of the Declaration): “A simple democracy is one of the greatest of evils.”
Fisher Ames (American political thinker and leader of the federalists [he entered Harvard at twelve and graduated by sixteen], author of the House language for the First Amendment): “A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will provide an eruption and carry desolation in their way…. The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.”
Governor Morris (signer and penman of the Constitution): “We have seen the tumult of democracy terminate as [it has] everywhere terminated, in despotism. Democracy! Savage and wild. Thou who wouldst bring down the virtous and wise to thy level of folly and guilt.”
John Quincy Adams (sixth President, son of John Adams [see above]): “The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.”
Noah Webster (American educator and journalist as well as publishing the first dictionary): “In democracy there are commonly tumults and disorders.. therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence): “Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
Zephaniah Swift (author of Americas first legal text): “It may generally be remarked that the more a government [or state] resembles a pure democracy the more they abound with disorder and confusion.”
The Founders obviously knew what a democracy was, which is why in Article IV, Section Four of the Constitution, it says:
The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government.
The following graph includes all political models and better shows where the political beliefs lie e.g., left or right is the following (take note, this graph is from a book I do not support nor recommend… but these visual insights are very useful):
In actuality, during WWII, fascism grew out of socialism, showing how close the ties were. I would argue that the New Left that comprises much of the Democratic Party today is fascistic, or, at least, of a closer stripe than any conservative could ever hope to be. I will end with a model comparing the two forms of governance that the two core values (conservatism/classical liberalism versus a socialist democracy) will produce. Before you view the below though, keep in mind that a few years back the ASA (American Socialist Association) on their own web site said that according to the voting record of United States Congressmen and Women, that 58 of them were social democrats. These are the same that put Hitler and Mussolini in power.
Which Do You Prefer?? Liberal Democrats want more government control, Conservative Republicans want less. In a discussion, I exemplified that minimally “fascism” is growth of government in this way:
I say “fascism” because it is government wanting to make policy based on false science, big-government, while labeling a large swath of it’s opposition/electorate inferior to make choices (deniers, anti-science, homophobic, bigoted, racist, etc).
Out of all of the above, the continual growth of government makes this an issue that should be important to those that know history. Out of his series on the subject, R.J. Rummels third book, “Death By Government” documents why this should raise alarms.
It is something the Founders warned of ~ and now a bunch of very left leaning — well respected — legal scholars… even going as far as saying the Constitution was written to stop men like Obama. Leftists, not Rightists saying that.
Leftist Professor of law Jonathan Turley:
Even Obama’s professor at Harvard, himself a leftie, notes the following:
Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University and former mentor to Barack Obama, said in an article last week that the EPA’s Clean Power Plan is unconstitutional.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 22, Tribe asserted that as a father and grandfather he wants “to leave the Earth in better shape than when I arrived”, but that he nonetheless has filed comments with the EPA urging the agency to withdraw the Clean Power Plan. “Coping with climate change is a vital end, but it does not justify using unconstitutional means,” wrote Tribe.
Tribe was retained by Peabody Energy to perform independent analysis of the EPA’s proposed rule. He defended his opinion saying it reflects his “professional conclusions as an independent legal scholar”, and that he only says what he believes, whether he works “pro bono, or in this case having been retained by others”.
“After studying the only legal basis offered for the EPA’s proposed rule,” Tribe wrote, “I concluded that the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.”
He further noted that the Clean Power Plan would “effectively dictate the energy mix used in each state and leave the state with essentially no choice in implementing its plan,” a move that would be in direct opposition to Supreme Court precedent that holds “such federal commandeering of state governments defeats political accountability and violates principles of federalism that are basic to our constitutional order”.
Tribe continued by saying that, like every government agency, the EPA is “constitutionally forbidden to exercise powers Congress never delegated in the first place,” and that “frustration with congressional inaction cannot justify throwing the Constitution overboard”.
In fact, many that have come from the Eastern European satellite countries of the old U.S.S.R., and holocaust survivors notice a closeness to how large government is getting and the fascism/Communism they lived under.
For instance, Anita Dittman, Holocaust survivor makes parallels between them. East German survivor, Elke, also warns America Communism doesn’t work. They both speak of charismatic people talking about redistribution of wealth, make it impossible for private businesses to prosper, nationalizing things like healthcare, gun control, a growing anti-Semitism, they force secularism (non-God) on people, etc.
Only two parties in America have an ethos, a base, that want certain things. The question is… on the scale of political ideology [it’s base], where do they fall?
To expand a bit on the Rummel book mentioned above… he shows that both the citizenry and free countries are dealt heavy hands and dedath in greater numbers as the government grows larger. Conservatives want to decrease governments size. Progressives want to increase the size of government.
Which is why I shake my head when I hear about people talking about the libertarian Koch Brothers influencing politics. They are for same-sex marriage as well as wanting to make government smaller, in other words, MORE CONSTUTUTIONAL. When people like billionaire coal magnate Tom Steyer gives millions of dollars to Democrats to increase the size of government, he is praised as a hero. The same goes for George Soros.
The bottom line is that leftist billionaires/millionaires who support more control by government over the affairs of men [like Tom Steyer, George Soros, Bill Gates, etc] are participating in the exponential growth in the chance of it’s citizenry to be killed in order to implement all these new legislative laws and powers that go along with the growth of government. By growth of government the ease to nationalize things becomes easier. Like Obama’s Harvard professor pointed out, above.
Here is a more Constitutional look (clip) at government:
A government powerful enough to give you homes is powerful enough to take them from you:
